Text: Anonymous, “The Misfortunes of Genius,” Wilmington Journal (Wilmington, NC), vol. 6, no. 8, November 2, 1849, p. 2, col. 3

[page 2, column 3, continued:]

THE MISFORTUNES OF GENIUS. — The papers for the last few weeks have teemed with notices of the recent death of the gifted but erratic Poet, Edgar Allen Poe. We noticed in our last week's paper, the fact that Charles Fenno Hoffman, the song writer and novelist, was confined in the Baltimore Hospital with an attack of that disease which had proved fatal to so many of the most brilliant minds of the country. That disease, the result of the besetting sin which has ruined Poe, Hoffman, and hosts of others, was delerium [[delirium]] tremens — insanity resulting from intemperance.

We have nothing to do with the temperance movement one way or other, and although temperate in practice, do not belong to any society; still we cannot but feel the awful lesson which the melancholy fate of these gifted men, is calculated to teach. Charity would throw a veil over the failings of genius, and the tear of pity blot out their remembrance forever, did not truth imperatively demand that they should be held up as a beacon to guide others against the rock upon which they have split

Just as we pen this article, we notice in a Philadelphia paper a short biography of one who might have attained competence, respectability, and fame, but who died some two years since, a miserable outcast in the streets of New Orleans — Sumner Lincoln Fairfield. High honors and a pompous funeral were awarded to the lifeless remains of the poor Poet, who but a day or two before had died in want and misery. Yet why did he so perish? The answer is plain — poor Fairfield was a victim of, intemperance. This terrible habit had divorced the wife of his bosom, and torn the children of his love from his embrace, and yet he still clung to it with a terrible fascination. The mere money spent on spirituous liquor is nothing compared with the energies wasted, the talents misdirected, the genius blighted by indulgence in its ruinous excitement.