To have done so would have been to provoke the amazement and censure that was the lot of Mark Twain many years after, when, at a dinner in the Hub, he sought to jest irreverently with the sacred names of Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow.

Again try to fancy the shy, eccentric, improvident genius of "Ulalume," "The Bells," and "The Fall of the House of Usher" at ease in a company that, while delightful, was all propriety and solid intellectuality.

No, Poe would no more have fitted into the Century than Balzac or Zola would have fitted into the French Academy which so persistently denied them.

And, to be perfectly frank, had the writer been a Centurion of that period, and had the name of Edgar Allan Poe come up for election, he might have been one of the first to drop a black pill in the box, loudly acclaiming the genius, but deploring the impossible and unclubable personality.
After the presidency of Bancroft came that of Bryant.

He held the office until his death in 1878, but as he was always averse to crowds, he was seldom seen at the club except in official meetings.