Text: Lewis Gaylord Clark, “Works of the Late Edgar A. Poe,” Knickerbocker (New York, NY), vol. XXXVI, no. 4, October 1850, pp. 370-372

[page 370:]

WORKS OF THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. Third Volume. The Literati, etc. Together with Marginalia,’ Suggestions and Essays. With a Sketch of the Author, by RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. New-York: J. S. REDFIELD, Clinton-Hall.

IN a series of volumes which, when concluded, are to embrace all the ‘various writings’ of the late EDGAR A. POE, it was doubtless found necessary, by the literary executor himself had appointed, to include the matériel of which is mainly composed the book before us. On the score of entertainment of any sort, however, or of good taste, we trust these disjointed criticisms, praises ‘ower sweet to be wholesome,’ and poor personalities, (which had already passed their brief existence,) are not considered by their editor as presenting any considerable claim to the regard of the public. Indeed, we have his implied judgment in this regard; although in relation to many other productions of the author, his admiration of the peculiar genius which they exhibit is, to our conception, something more than sufficiently strong. In a notice of the first and second volumes of the present series, we took occasion to express, at some length, our own judgment of Mr. POE'S writings, and that judgment we shall not now repeat, but shall confine ourselves to a synopsis of the extraordinary career of the author, as furnished by Dr. GRISWOLD, in a biography accompanying the work. His biographer remarks, that ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’ is a common and honorable sentiment, but that in its application it would be impossible to include Mr. POE, so notorious, and so much a part of his history, were his faults; ‘and it would be unjust to the living, against whom his hands were always raised, and who had no resort but in his outlawry from their sympathies,’ to say nothing of the lessons of his career, so full of instruction and warning. According to the authentic records of this volume, then, while a resident of Virginia, we find POE abusing and leaving a generous patron, for refusing to honor drafts which had been given to pay losses at the gaming-table; not long after, while in a foreign country, we find our American minister interfering to ‘save him from the penalties incurred in a drunken debauch,’ through which interference he regains his liberty, and is enabled to return to this country. Subsequently, through the influence of his friends, he is secured a cadetship at West-Point; but in ten months from his matriculation, through habitual dissipation, neglect of duty, and disobedience of orders, he is cashiered. After various failures, literary and other, he enlists in the army as a private soldier; ‘but when it was discovered, and efforts were made privately, and with prospects of success, by his friends, to procure him a commission, it transpired that he had deserted.’ Not long after, through the aid of Hon. Mr. KENNEDY, of Baltimore, who assisted him when at the lowest ebb of destitution, he was secured, by the late lamented T. W. WHITE, the editorship of the Southern Literary Messenger’ monthly magazine; [page 371:] but ‘brutish drunkenness,’ says Mr. GRISWOLD, caused his dismissal; he was reinstated, however, after professions of repentance and promise of reformation, but his irregularities continued, and he soon received his final dismissal.’ The next year, after having written some tales, which, in his biographer's estimation, added greatly to his reputation, we find him in Philadelphia, editing another monthly magazine; but as in Richmond, he is subsequently, and for the same causes, discharged by his employers. We say ‘the same causes,’ but there was one other, according to his biographers. In the absence of the proprietor, his employer, he prepared the prospectus of a new monthly, obtained transcripts of the subscription and account-books of the magazine upon which he was engaged, which were to be used in a scheme for supplanting its proprietor. It was not long, however, before he was engaged as editor of another Philadelphia magazine; but the infirmities,’ says Mr. GRISWOLD,’ which caused his previous dismissals, at length compelled the proprietor to take another editor. He then endeavored to start a magazine of his own, but the unfortunate notoriety of his habits,’ and the failure of his friends to induce him to change them, had banished the confidence which might otherwise have stood him in good stead, and have secured him success. After writing some of his best, and most popular productions, tales of ‘wonder,’ ‘terror,’ ‘ratiocination,’ etc., Mr. POE arrived in this city, where he added to his reputation by the publication of that remarkable piece of versification, ‘The Raven.’ He was now engaged upon the old ‘Evening Mirror,’ under Messrs. MORRIS and WILLIS, and for a time as one of the editors of the short-lived ‘Broadway Journal.’ After leaving one and killing the other of these journals, he began the series of papers, six in number, upon our ‘Literati,’ of which the present volume is in part composed, and which were published in GODEY'S ‘Lady's Book,’ of Philadelphia. They soon led,’ we are told, ‘to a disgraceful quarrel, and this to their premature conclusion.’ Two of the most painful things mentioned in his subsequent history, is the slander of a well-known literary lady, who had befriended him when in need, and ‘which slander he was obliged to retract under a threat of personal chastisement from the lady's brother, on the plea of temporary insanity. His wife, a most excellent, amiable woman, soon after died; and some time subsequently it was publicly announced that a contract of marriage had been entered into between himself and one of the most brilliant women of New-England. They were not married,’ adds Mr. GRISWOLD,’ and the breaking of the engagement affords a striking illustration of his character. He said to an acquaintance in New-York, who congratulated him upon the prospect of his union with a person of so much genius and so many virtues; ‘It is a mistake: I am not going to be married.’ ‘Why, Mr. POE, I understand that the banns have been published.’ ‘I cannot help what you have heard, my dear Madam: but mark me, I shall not marry her.’ He left town the same evening, and the next day was reeling through the streets of the city which was the lady's home, and in the evening. that should have been the evening before the bridal — in his drunkenness he committed at her house such outrages as made necessary a summons of the police. Here was no insanity leading to indulgence: he went from New-York with a determination thus to induce an ending of the engagement — and he succeeded.’ In a ‘Defence of Mr. Poe,’ which appeared in that excellent magazine, ‘The Southern Literary Messenger,’ the writer observes: His changeable humors, his irregularities, his caprices, his total disregard of every thing and every body, save the fancy in his head, prevented him from doing well in the world. The evils and sufferings that poverty brought upon him, soured his nature, [page 372:] and deprived him of faith in human beings. This was evident to the eye; he believed in nobody and cared for nobody. Such a mental condition of course drove away all those who would otherwise have stood by him in his hours of trial. He became, and was, an Ishmaelite.’ With a genius at certain styles of composition, which were sufficiently original, Poe's plagiarisms are nevertheless pronounced by his biographer as ‘scarcely paralleled in literary history.’ He accused Mr. LONGFELLOW, for example, of a plagiarism from himself, when it turned out that the poem of LONGFELLOW was written two or three years before the publication of that by POE, and was, during a portion of that time, in Poe's possession. His unsupported literary opinions could rarely be received with credit. His present desire to please or to offend, robbed them of all honesty; and he frequently retracted his judgments, from private motives,’ eating his words’ with sudden alacrity, and entirely reversing opinions recorded in spleen or malice.

His death was most unhappy. After various but characteristic fortunes, a long-continued and consecutive season of intoxication, and a night of insanity and exposure, he was carried to a hospital in Baltimore, where, on the evening of Sunday, the seventh of October, 1849, at the early age of thirty-eight, he closed his desolate and turbulent existence. Such, by the showing of well-fortified facts, cited by his own appointed biographer, was the life, and such the fate, of EDGAR A. POE. His is a melancholy history, but it is not without its lessons, which rightfully regarded, may prove salutary to the young, the impulsive, and the gifted.