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WORKS OF EDGAR A. POE. Volume 3 THE LITERATI: Some Honest Opinions about Authorial Merits and Demerits, with occasional words of Personality. Together with Marginalia, Suggestions and Essays. By EDGAR A. POE. With a Sketch of the Author, by RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. New York: J. S. Redfield. For sale by W. B. Zeiber, Philadelphia.
This volume consists of three parts, — a Preface; a Memoir of Mr. Poe, by Mr. Griswold; and a large number of Mr. Poe's criticisms on various authors, his Marginalia, &c. We shall treat of them briefly in their order.
As to the Preface, it is an answer to a letter relative to some strictures of Mr. Griswold, upon Mr. Poe, which letter appeared over (not “under”) the signature of George R. Graham, in “Graham's Magazine.” Some similar animadversions of Mr. John Neal's are also alluded to. A portion of this answer is composed of letters from Mr. Poe to Mr. Griswold, showing how these gentlemen once quarrelled, how Mr. Poe apologized, how the quarrel was made up, and how Mr. Poe ever afterward considered Mr. Griswold one of his best friends, even to the extent of appointing him “literary executor,” (which Mr. Griswold probably supposed to mean, one who executes). In this Preface Mr. Griswold avers that he did not know he had been appointed “literary executor” at the time he wrote the strictures in question; he also endeavors to come down upon Mr. George R. Graham and Mr. John Neal with the weight of one of his own volumes — but as these gentlemen are generally believed able to take care of themselves, we shall not meddle with this part of the matter.
We now, in regular order, come to the Memoir, which Mr. Griswold, as “literary executor” for his dear departed comrade, has attached to this third volume of Mr. Poe's collected works, that where they go it may go, and the relatives and friends of the late Mr. and Mrs. Poe, solace themselves with this last tribute of literary companionship. And first, it may be well to ascertain in what light Mr. Griswold regards the duties of the office he has accepted of “literary executor.” We turn to the Preface, and find it, as follows: “The duties of which I regarded as simply the collection of his works, and their publication, for the benefit of the rightful inheritors of his property, in a form and manner that would probably have been most agreeable to his own wishes.”
Now, this biography may be considered in two lights — first, as the production of a “literary executor,” to be attached to the works of a deceased friend; secondly, as a simple biography. Considering it in the first light, we must say that a more cold-blooded and ungenerous composition has seldom come under our notice. Nothing so condemnatory of Mr. Poe, so absolutely blasting to his character, has ever appeared in print, as this work of his “literary executor.” It is absolutely horrible (considering the circumstances under which Mr. Griswold writes) with what cool deliberateness he charges upon Mr. Poe the basest and most dishonorable actions. Writing as the “literary executor” of the deceased poet, we should have thought it would have suggested itself to any generous mind, that his part was that of a friendly counsel, rather than of a prosecuting attorney, or even of the judge sworn to do exact justice, to the extent of pronouncing the sentence of death. We have no desire to be uncharitable to Mr. Griswold, but really we are not able to find any excuse for him. He either knew that he was doing a most flagrantly ungenerous act, or else he did not know it — we think one horn of the dilemma quite as sharp as the other.
That our readers may see in what manner this “literary executor” deals with the character of the deceased author, we quote the following passage, showing how basely Poe acted towards Mr. Burton, when editing the latter's “Gentleman's Magazine:”
“Two or three months afterward Burton went out of town to fulfil a professional engagement, leaving material and directions for completing the next number of the magazine in four days. He was absent nearly a fortnight, and on returning he found that his printers in the meanwhile had not received a line of copy; but that Poe had prepared the prospectus of a new monthly, and obtained transcripts of his subscription and account books, to be sued in a scheme for supplanting him.”
Again we are told that in order to break off a marriage engagement with a certain lady, Mr. Poe went to her house intoxicated on the evening previous to that fixed for the marriage, and “committed such outrages as made necessary a summons of the police.”
The following is even worse:
“On one occasion Poe borrowed fifty dollars from a distinguished literary woman of South Carolina, promising to return it in a few days, and when he failed to do so, and was asked for a written acknowledgment of the debt that might I exhibited to the [page xxiv:] husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied all knowledge of it, ami threatened to exhibit a correspondence which he said would make the woman infamous, if the said any more on the subject Of course there had never been any such correspondence, but when Poe heard that a brother of the slandered party was in quest of him for the purpose of taking the satisfaction supposed to be due in such cases, he sent for Dr. Francis and induced him to carry to the gentleman his retraction and apology, with a statement which seemed true enough at the moment, that Poe was “out of his head.” It is an ungracious duty to describe such conduct in a person of Poe's unquestionable genius and capacities of greatness, but those who are familiar with the career of this extraordinary creature can recall but too many similar anecdotes; and as to his intemperance, they perfectly well understand that its pathology was like that of ninety-nine of every hundred cases of the disease.”
There's a touching biography of a deceased literary friend for you — of course the above, published in connection with Mr. Poe's works, would, to use Mr. Griswold's words, “probably have been most agreeable to his (Poe's) own wishes.”
But even this is not the worst charge brought against Mr. Poe — a crime of a still baser and more unnatural nature is darkly hinted at, in relation to his adopted father, who had married a lady considerably younger than himself. It is only fair to add, that this charge is copied in a note, from the Southern Literary Messenger; but we do not perceive that this makes any material difference.
But, damnatory to Poe as this biography is, we should not have objected to Mr. Griswold's publication of it — that is, if its charges be true, and the whole truth — were if not for the peculiar relation to Mr. Poe that he occupies. As a simply biography, written by one from whom Mr. Poe had no right to claim more than common justice, we should not be disposed to condemn it. If Mr. Poe did do what Mr. Griswold says he did — if he committed not only one dishonorable actions, but unrepented crime after crime — let his memory bear the penalty. If a biography be written at all, let the truth be written. Of course, however, the good should be told as well as the evil, and if Mr. Griswold has omitted any facts, within his knowledge, tending to prove that Poe was not entirely devoid of moral principle, he has committed an additional outrage upon the dead.
But we confess to having ourselves no very exalted opinion of Mr. Poe's character. We have reason to believe that he published, as his own, a Scottish “Text book of Conchology” — the publishers being so well satisfied of the fact, that they withdrew his name from the title-page of the second edition — and as to his genuine works, prose and poetry, we agree with Mr. Griswold's remark, which is as true as it is ungenerous (in his particular position,) that “Probably there is not another instance in the literature of our language in which so much has been accomplished without a recognition or manifestation of conscience.”
In relation to the criticisms contained in the present volume — some seventy-six in all — some are as fair and able as Mr. Poe could make them, and others are mere slashing onslaughts on persons with whom he had quarrelled. In our opinion, Mr. Griswold would have done well to have omitted these latter altogether. Even when Mr. Poe is fair and impartial, he is not a reliable critic. His own theory of poetry, owing to his intellectual and imaginative powers being cultivated out of all proportion to his moral nature, was very narrow. He was an acute detector of little faults, a halting rhythm, or a faulty rhyme — and had a generally fine appreciation of a certain limited department of the beautiful. But he often failed even where it seemed he should have succeeded. For instance, he calls the following passage from “Alnwick Castle,” “gloriously imaginative, the noblest to be found in Halleck,” and says he would “be at a loss to discover its parallel in all American poetry” — the italicized line is his: —
Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom —
They were born of a race of funeral flowers
That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
A Templar's knightly tomb. [column 7:]
Mr. Poe's excessive praise of the above, seems to us simply ridiculous. Speaking of Miss Barrett's poetry, he things “‘The Lost Bower,’ perhaps, upon the whole, the most admirable of her compositions; or, if it is not, then ‘The Lay of the Brown Rosarie’ is.” He thinks Dr. Cheever's “Commonplace Book of American Poetry,” (an excellent selection for its size,) “exceedingly commonplace;” and denounces Lowell's admirable “Fable for Critics” as “a complete and pitiable failure.” We believe that Dr. Cheever did not quote a single poem of Mr. Poe's, which accounts for the denunciation of the “Common Place Book;” while Mr. Lowell notices him in this fashion:
Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge —
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge;
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make all men of common sense d — n meters
Who has written some things far the best of their kind;
But somehow the heart seems squeezed out by the mind.”
But enough of Messrs. Griswold, Poe and their works — “sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”
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Notes:
The name of Henry Peterson is assigned as the author of this article by Arthur Hobson Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (p. 676), without explanation. Peterson was one of the editors, noted in the masthead.
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[S:0 - SEP, 1850] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Poe Bookshelf - Review of Literati volume of Works (Henry Peterson)