[page 108:]

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

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As the grave has closed over the poet, we shall give a short biographical sketch of him.

Edgar Poe was the son of David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold. His father was the fourth son of General Poe, a name well known in the Revolutionary War. Some little interest is attached to his memory from the fact of General Lafayette, during his memorable visit to this country, making a pilgrimage to his grave.

Mr. David Poe had three children — Henry, Edgar (the poet), and Rosalie. On the death of their parents Edgar and Rosalie were adopted by a wealthy merchant of the name of Allan. Having no children, Mr. Allan unhesitatingly avowed to all his intention of making Edgar his heir.

In 1816 the subject of this memoir was taken by his adopted parents to England, and after making with them the tour of Scotland, he was left for five years to complete his education at Dr. Bransby’s, of Stoke Newington. The curious reader will find a description of this school in one of Poe’s sketches called “William Wilson.”

Returning to America he went to various academies, and [page 109:] finally to the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville. The dissolute manners of the institution infected him, and he was no exception to the general rule. His abilities, notwithstanding, enabled him to maintain a respectable position in the eyes of the Professors. His time here was divided between lectures, debating societies, rambles in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in making caricatures of his tutors and the heads of the college. We are informed he had the habit of covering the walls of his sleeping-room with these rough charcoal sketches. Rousing himself from this desultory course of life, he took the first honors of the college and returned home.

To escape from the reproaches of his friends, and possibly from the consequences of his thoughtlessness, he formed the design, in conjunction with a friend, of visiting Greece, with the intention of aiding the Revolution then in progress in that classic land. His companion, Ebenezer Burling, abandoned the rash design almost as soon as projected, but the energetic nature of the poet was not so easily turned aside from his path. He proceeded, therefore, as far as St. Petersburg, where he had a narrow escape from the fangs of that brutal government, in consequence of an irregularity in his passport. The exertions of the Consul saved him from the consequences of the error, and through his friendship he returned to America.

Here he found a great change awaiting him. His benefactress, Mrs. Allan, was dead; he reached Richmond the day after her funeral. This was the origin of all his subsequent misfortunes. After an apparent reconciliation with Mr. Allan, he entered West Point Academy, resolved to devote himself to a military life. Here he entered upon his new studies and duties [page 110:] with characteristic energy, and an honorable career was opened to him; but the Fates willed that Mr. Allan should in his dotage marry a girl young enough to be her husband’s granddaughter. The birth of a child convinced Mr. Poe that his hopes to inherit his adopted father’s property were at an end, and he consequently left West Point, resolving to proceed to Poland, to join the struggle for liberty then making by that heroic nation against her diabolical oppressors. The fall of Warsaw ended the conflict, and our chivalric poet was again deprived of his intention.

He therefore proceeded to Baltimore, where he learned the death of Mr. Allan. As he had left him nothing, he was now thrown upon the world well nigh resourceless. It is said that this man’s widow even refused him his own books.

About this time came the turning point in Mr. Poe’s life. Nature had given him a poetical mind; accident now afforded the opportunity for its development.

The Editors of the Baltimore Visitor [[Visiter]] had offered a premium for the best prose tale, and also one for the best poem. The umpires were men of taste and ability, and, after a careful consideration of the productions, they decided that Mr. Poe was undoubtedly entitled to both prizes. As Mr. Poe was entirely unknown to them, this was a genuine tribute to his superior merit.

The poem he sent was the “Coliseum,” and six tales for their selection. Not content with awarding the premiums, they declared that the worst of the six tales referred to was better than the best of the other competitors.

Some little time after this triumph he was engaged by Mr. [page 111:] White to edit the “Southern Literary Messenger,” which had been established about seven months, and had attained a circulation of about four hundred subscribers.

There he remained for nearly two years, devoting the energies of his rich and ingenious mind to the interest of the Review; so much was he regarded there that when he left he had raised the circulation of the journal to above three thousand.

Very much of this success was owing to the fearlessness of his criticisms. Always in earnest, he was either on one side or the other; he had a scorn of the respectable level trash which has too long brooded like a nightmare over American Literature. Mr. Poe did not like tamely to submit to the dethronement of genius, and the instalment of a feeble, sickly grace, and an amiable mediocrity. What gods and men abhor, according to Horace, a certain class of critics and readers in America adore. America is jealous of her victories by sea and land — is proud of advantages with which she has nothing to do, such as Niagara, the Mississippi, and the other wonders of nature. An American points with pride to the magnificent steamboats which ride the waters like things of life. Foreigners sometimes smile at the honest satisfaction, even enthusiasm, which lights up the national face when a few hundred troops file down Broadway, to discordant drums and squeaking fifes. But all their natural feeling and national pride stop here. So far from the American public taking any interest in their own men of genius — in the triumphs of mind — they absolutely allow others openly to conspire, and put down every attempt to establish a National Literature.

The Americans are a shrewd and far-seeing people, but they [page 112:] are somewhat too material; they must not believe that a nation can long exist without men of thought, as well as men of action. The salvation of America lies in the possession of a Republican Literature. The literature of England is slowly sapping the foundation of her institutions. England does all her thinking, and if this system continues, the action of this great nation will be in accordance with the will of the old country. Like the Gulf Stream of Florida, the current of aristocratical genius is slowly drifting the ark of America to a point they little dream of, and never intend. The very bulk of this country renders the operation unseen; but, though imperceptible to the eye, it is palpable to the mind, and certain in its results.

What hope of victory would the armies and navies of this young republic have had, if, when they were arming for the fight, the bystanders had discouraged them; or when sailing to the encounter, the jibes or indifference of their fellow-citizens had been expressed? Certain defeat and disgrace, as sure as heaven! And how can America expect her young authors to vindicate her national glory when she treats them with indifference and neglect. Nay, even worse, she openly discourages them in their attempt, and tacitly confesses that it is hopeless to compete with the writers of England or France. These remarks apply to every branch of American literature; let the people consider this matter, and remedy it before they find the republican form governed by a foreign and aristocratical mind. If luxury enervated the Roman Body, so will a foreign pabulum destroy the American Mind.

It is a curious fact that the worst enemies of the national mind have been a few of her own sons. These are authors who till [page 113:] lately have entirely enjoyed the monopoly of the English market; now they will be obliged to join the body of native authors, and hurry to the rescue. So long as they could trespass on the mistaken courtesy of the British publishers, and get four thousand guineas for this Life of Columbus, and two hundred guineas for that Typee, there was no occasion for any interference; in fact, they were materially benefited by this crying injustice to the great body of authors. Now their own rights are in jeopardy, and they must join the ranks of International Copyright.

We cannot help here remarking that if we were an American author, we should compel certain writers to account for their past apathy and their present activity; as, however, we wish to close these remarks with good-humor, we shall quote a little anecdote which has gone the round of society in England. It also evidences that Janus-faced figure which every fact and fiction possesses for the human thought.

Owing to some accident there are two portraits of an author in Mr. Murray’s private office, in Albemarle street. A friend inquiring of him one day the cause of this superabundant reverence for the great writer, received for reply: “Really, I cannot account for it on any other ground than the fact that I have lost twice as much by that author as by any other.”

Although somewhat irrelevant the mention of Mr. Murray’s name reminds us of a joke played off by Byron upon that prince of publishers. Mr. Leigh Hunt was our informant.

The “moody Childe” had given to Murray as a birthday present a Bible magnificently bound, and which he enriched [page 114:] by a very flattering inscription. This was laid by the grateful publisher on his drawing-room table, and somewhat ostentatiously displayed to all comers. One evening, as a large company were gathered around the table, one of the guests happened to open the Testament, and saw some writing in the margin. Calling to Murray, he said: “Why, Byron has written something here!” Narrower inspection proved that the profane wit had erased the word “robber” in the text and substituted that of “publisher,” so that the passage read thus: “ Now, Barabbas was a publisher!” The legend goes on to state that the book disappeared that very night from the drawing-room table.

After this digression we must return to our poet’s fortunes.

Mr. Poe abandoned the “Southern Literary Messenger “ to assist Professors Anthon, Henry, and Hawks in the conducting of the “New York Quarterly Review.” Here he came down pretty freely with his critical axe, and made many enemies. At the end of a year he went to Philadelphia, and amused himself by writing for the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” since merged into Graham’s. His criticisms here, as usual, occasioned much discussion.

Mr. Poe’s first volume of poems was a modest pamphlet, called “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, by a Virginian [[Bostonian]].” It was published at Boston, in his fifteenth year. The following lines were written two years previous; they exhibit great promise for a boy of thirteen.

There is a confused and misty classic reminiscence about these lines which shows the poetical mind in its first dreamy efforts to realize.

A second edition of this volume was published in Baltimore in 1827; and a third, we are informed, during the author’s cadetship at West Point.

We are much struck with a poem entitled “Ligrea [[Ligeia]].” It is intended as a personification of music. It is too long to quote entire; we must, however, find space for a few stanzas. For a boy of fourteen it is certainly a singular production, and evidences a psychological development painfully precocious, and indicative of future sorrow.

There is a peculiarity of rhythm in all Mr. Poe’s verses [page 116:] which is attractive, although occasionally exhibiting too much of their mechanical nature.

This is the “Spirit’s Invocation.”

It is evident to all that the melody of the young poet was here, and only required study and opportunity to come out in glorious and enduring shapes.

In the ensuing extract we have a singular phase of the youthful mind — dreamy, confused; yet in this misty vision we see a world of order forming. It is evidently inspired by some of Keats.

When critical readers object to the laborious combination of images here, let it be remembered this was the composition of a boy. This, however, if carried out strictly, becomes a very serious drawback upon our estimate of Mr. Poe’s genius, for we do not find, as a poet, he made much progress from fourteen to forty. His prose grew firmer, more thoughtful, fuller of artistic effects every year he wrote, as his numerous tales unmistakably testify; but his verses seemed modelled on his earliest school. Of all poets he seems earliest to have caught the trick of verse. His schoolboy effusions possess the glow of his more matured efforts; and with the exception of two or three productions, where the ingenuity of the mechanical construction shows the man’s thought, there is nothing to demarcate one poem from another.

That development of progressive power so naturally visible in all the productions of a great mind is not traceable in our author’s verse, but, with a singular psychological contradiction, is evident throughout his other writings.

In this short extract we may observe much of the after man.

This description of poetry is, of all others, the most difficult to judge from. It possesses so many features of the composite order that we know not how much belongs to the memory or the imagination. Still there is a flow of music throughout which convinces the most sceptical of the presence of poetic susceptibilities and power of sound.

In his sonnet to Science we have a clearer insight into our author’s mode of dealing with thought in an emphatic manner:

This is certainly a fine sonnet, and contains an agreeable mixture of classical reminiscence and personal romance.

Without in any way meaning to convey to the reader the [page 120:] idea of imitation, we cannot help quoting, as an agreeable companion to the above, Wordsworth’s sonnet embodying similar regrets. It is justly considered one of the old English Bard’s most finished efforts.

Of all the masters of versification Mr. Coleridge was certainly the one who made it a great feature in his poetry; but his system was so refined, so subtilized, as to escape the notice of the outward senses; its presence was felt within by reason of the effect produced on the mind by his charmed verses. His witchcraft was invisible; the spell was a pervading power. In Mr. Poe, who in some respects may be called a mechanical or machine Coleridge, we have more of the old conjurer’s tricks. There is a needless display of cabalistic symbols; an officious [page 121:] devil draws ostentatious circles, and other mathematical deviltry, so that we surrender to the show, and not to the soul of magic power; it is really not too much to say that a fine algebraist might get a tolerably correct idea of some of the most characteristic of Mr. Poe’s verses by an architectural skeleton or design of his poems. The physique of melody is generally fatal to its spirituality; but, owing to a curious faculty in our author, he marvellously escapes detection, except from a few of the more over wise and over curious critics. To many, we feel sure this is his great charm; it requires a very nice and a very dose analysis to discover the source of his success with the many.

That the author of the “Raven,” &c., was a poet no doubt can exist. Extravagant as our opinion may now appear, we venture to say that in a few years, when the memory of his failings shall have died away, he will be considered one of America’s best poets. He was the first who arrested our attention, and conveyed to our mind the fact that a man of great peculiarity was speaking. We use peculiarity out of a sort of insecurity and hesitation we do not often feel, otherwise we have a full and strong inclination to write originality. Had we been in England we should unhesitatingly have done so; but as Mr. Poe is only an American, we forbear to move a second time the indignation of the Press by claiming for a native of this great republic a common share of God’s great gift of intellect. The day will, however, come when all the objections of a foreign Press will not prevent justice being done to the native genius of the land of Washington. [page 122:]

One grand distinguishing feature in Mr. Poe’s mind is his mathematical power. He even constructs his poetry on its basis: in his prose writings he carries this occasionally to a wearisome extent: it is also visible in the mechanical form of his verse. In his later productions it is very strong; we more particularly allude to the most celebrated of his poems, viz. “The Raven;” this is too well known to quote entire, we shall therefore content ourselves by giving only a few stanzas, in order to illustrate our position and confirm our assertion.

We cannot dismiss this subject without paying our earnest tribute to the womanhood of the poet’s chief friend, his wife’s mother. To Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] will be awarded in the history of genius the rarest of all crowns, the wreath placed by God’s hands — through his noblest creatures — on woman’s beautiful and matron brow. Even in her lifetime she will receive the world’s acknowledgment of her nobility of soul; and the tongues whom envy or shame froze in the life of her gifted but unhappy son-in-law, will thaw, and like the fable of old utter praises to the perished one, condemning their own wretched selves.

Oh! that a hand would arise, who, carefully registering the arts of these wretched shams of humanity — these suits of dress with a patent digester placed inside — would whip them naked through the world; when — after persecuting the prophets, and guarding the clothes of the murderers — they, terrified into a mongrel and disgusting recognition of genius, audaciously join in the procession, as though they were the genuine mourners of the martyred man. [page 123:]

We will not dwell long on the darkness of our poet’s fate: his errors were many and grievous. We all know how greedily the dull and the malignant catch at any straws to save them from perishing in their own self-contempt, for it is given to every man to feel his own low nature as compared with the lords of mind.

We have been told by those who knew Mr. Poe well, that so weakly strung were all his nerves, that the smallest modicum of stimulant had an alarming effect upon him, and produced actions scarcely resolvable by sanity. It may be said that it is not the quantity of stimulant, but the effect produced, which constitutes the drunkard, and that Mr. Poe was as much to blame for the inebriation of a glass as of a bottle; but we would tell these cold-blooded fishes — for they are not men — that it is not given to the common-place men either to feel the raptures of poetical inspiration, or the despondency of prostrated energies. The masses are wisely, as Pope says,

There is a homely verse in an old ballad which was made upon Shakspeare’s masterpiece of human philosophy:

This rough and unconditional doggrel gives a graphic [page 124:] insight into the proprieties of the masses: they have neither had the impulse nor the opportunity to be indiscreet. Let our readers clearly understand we are not the apologists of Mr. Poe’s errors — as Mark Antony says,

but, at the same time, we will not allow any undue deference to the opinion of the world.

We are glad to be confirmed in this by the testimony of the Editor of the Home Journal, a gentleman not only distinguished for his sympathy with men of genius, but also for the respect he pays the proprieties of life.

We quote the following manly tribute to his “dead brother in verse:”

The peculiar cadence of “the poet’s soul — somewhat, perhaps, too artificially forced upon the attention, is well developed in the little poem of Annabel Lee. It is evidently an echo of “Christabel,” but it is a very beautiful one, and charms the ear, if it does not strike the mind as an original. There is a haunting sense of beauty about the metrical arrangement of Poe’s [page 126:] verses which is always evidence of a finely strung nervous system.

ANNABEL LEE.

The next line is a striking proof of that mixture of puerility and beauty, which, like the conflict of his own discordant [page 127:] nature, renders his writings as well as himself a problem to his fellow men.

There is great force and beauty in

and yet how immediately he spoils the effect for the sake of the jingle of “chilling and killing —”

Well known as the “Raven” is, we should leave the poetical idea of him incomplete without illustrating our remarks by a quotation. We have printed the stanzas differently in shape to the method he has followed, but the words are of course unaltered.

The next stanza closes with one of the finest touches of poetical imagery and pathos.

As Coleridge says, “beautiful exceedingly.”

The mechanical structure of the verse is very apparent when read with attention to the pauses. Nevertheless, it is a poem which will always give pleasure to the reader, even though it be read for the hundredth time; for, notwithstanding the marked arithmetic [page 129:] of the shape, it is one of those few productions which bear repetition without palling.

The last stanza is very felicitous.

How visibly the poet’s intention to produce effect by the outer shape of verse is here made apparent:

Although his mechanical art is too visible, we cannot withhold our praise for the success of the attempt. Coleridge was a [page 132:] great master of the musical chords of verse, but he superadded a charm which spiritualized the vehicle of his thought.

In Mr. Poe we miss this power, and consequently we feel at times inclined to consider the whole affair as machine poetry, so far as the outer shape is concerned. But here Mr. Poe has not done himself justice; he has wilfully made his mechanical artifice so prominent, as to intercept the effect of his own poetical spirit. He has encumbered it with a needless ornament, which resembles a scaffolding so interwoven with the structure, as to persuade the beholder it is essential for the very support of the building.

We need hardly point out the injurious effect this has had upon Mr. Poe’s reputation as a man of genius, for such he undoubtedly was.

Nor was his power confined to poetry alone. As a prose writer he was one of the most peculiar of his age; his stories have a circumstantiality about them perfectly marvellous; they seem bewilderingly true; the most astounding contradictions are accounted for, and a combination of improbabilities seems to meet as matter of course. This of necessity implies a genius, in our estimate of the word, although many acute writers merely term it ingenious. We would say above all other writers of American prose and verse, Mr. Poe is undoubtedly the most peculiar. Now that the grave has made him famous in the eyes of the world, he will have a school of imitators, and this will no doubt be accepted as a sure proof of a certain originality. From first to last there is the peculiar stamp of the man on everything he did: it is his own genuine coin, with his well-known effigy upon it. We must, however, [page 133:] state that we think his circumstantiality becomes tedious, and that his over-anxiety to make every improbability fit into another improbability, so as to form a consecutive chain out of inconsistencies, throws very often a doubt over the whole story, and defeats his own object. We cannot illustrate this better than by relating a little anecdote we heard in our boyhood.

A certain Gascon nobleman, famous for his enormous fables, which he always swore were true, had a sycophant, who, whenever his patron’s guests seemed staggering into unbelief by some outrageous Munchausen, was appealed to as a kind of witness to testify and confirm the truth of the story in question.

At an entertainment one day, the Gascon lord was peculiarly sublime in his marvels and his boastings, and encouraged by his guests’ capacious swallow, he ventured to affirm that he had a herring pond in his park. As this was well known to be a salt-water fish, a general doubt of the fact was expressed. The somewhat offended owner of the pond in question appealed to his convenient friend, as to the truth of the statement. He readily and boldly confirmed it in the following manner:

“I can assure you, gentlemen, that what my lord says is true. He has a pond in his garden full of herrings! Ah! and red herrings too.”

This over-proving a case by capping it with a notorious impossibility is the besetting sin of Mr. Poe’s writings, more especially of his prose works. Nevertheless they are so marvellously [page 134:] well done, that we are inclined to think in a few years he will chiefly be remembered for his tales, and that his poetical works will dwindle into a small compass composed of half-a-dozen favorite poems.