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Insulted and Injured. Modern readers know Griswold because of someone else. A penniless, difficult poet dogged him all his life. This poet was drunk, tormented, wild. Griswold replaced him as Graham's editor. Griswold quarreled with him, patronized him, lent him money, and after his death became his literary executor. He did one of the poorest jobs with the richest material that any literary executor has ever done. This poet (or someone writing for him) said what Griswold was and would be with deadly accuracy: For gotten, save only by those whom he has injured and insulted, he will sink into oblivion, without leaving a landmark to tell that he once existed; or, if he is spoken of hereafter, he will be quoted as the unfaithful servant who abused his trust. The poet: Edgar Allan Poe.
