Text: Anonymous, “Woodberry's Poe,” Atlantic Monthly (Boston, MA), vol. LV, whole no. 331, May 1885, pp. 705-707

[page 705, continued:]

MR. WOODBERRY(1) has done for Poe the greatest service which one man can [column 2:] render another. He has told the truth about him. It is doubtful if Poe would have relished the service, for he rarely told the truth about himself, and at first sight the laborious task which this latest [page 706:] biographer has finished seems a cruel one. Nevertheless, even though Poe's imaginary character were gone forever, we repeat that no better service could be done the man than that the facts of his life should be correctly given. Not literature alone, but humanity also, is served by a pitiless accuracy of statement; and this can be secured only when the biographer has an eye single to this end. We think it clear, from the whole tone of Mr. Woodberry's work, that he set out on his task with no partiality for his subject, and completed it with no unkindly feeling toward the man whom he had so steadily pursued through all the windings and turnings of his melancholy career.

Poe has suffered at the hands of biased biographers, but he has been his own worst enemy; and therefore it is that any one who should put that enemy to rout might justly be called Poe's best friend. Mr. Woodberry has patiently examined not only the material which was accessible to previous biographers, but much which his industry and the kindness of others have made his own. He has shown a lawyer-like acumen in threading the mazes of a confused and contradictory career, and has enabled the student of Poe and his writings to construct a consistent and intelligible whole. It is possible now, as it has not been before, to rest one's conception of this singular being upon a solid foundation of fact.

This is the peculiar value of the latest contribution to the Poe literature. The separate discoveries which Mr. Woodberry has made may not seem to the casual reader very important. Even the most considerable, that of Poe's army life, will not appear to him indicative of any serious disclosure of character. The value, however, is in the sureness of step by which one passes to each successive grade of development in Poe's life, in the confidence with which one surveys the accumulation of minute [column 2:] facts, and in the gradual unveiling of the unhappy man's figure by his own words and acts.

Mr. Woodberry's critical estimate of Poe's work is less satisfactory rather by what he omits to say than by what he says. The method which he applied to the discovery of the facts of the life is indeed used with excellent skill in stating the external history of the writings, and the account given of Poe's economy and double use of his printed material is in itself a commentary on the poet's character. The few pages in which he sums up Poe's qualities as a poet, and his explanation of the mood in which Ulalume was written, make us wish that he had dwelt at more length and with more specific criticism upon the few poems which constitute Poe's passport to immortality, and we could have better spared the minute examination of the pseudo-philosophy exploited in Eureka.

The judgment of Poe's critical faculty is scarcely so sound as that of his poetic power. Too much credit is given to Poe for independence, and perhaps too little for that insight which he really had, and which atones for much of his prejudice and personal feeling. Poe's independence was an Ishmaelite sort of freedom. It was not the result of a fearless conviction, but of a lawless nature. At one time he would characterize Hawthorne as one whose mind was original in all points; at another dismiss him as not original, but only peculiar. He would praise by the column some female writer whose name has been absolutely forgotten, and he would parade cheap learning with an ostentation which seemed to deceive even himself. The defect of his poetry was the defect of his criticism. In each case a great endowment had been so encrusted with artificiality that there was little chance for healthy truth to find its way through. The power of the one was the power of the other. The occasional hours when Poe saw clearly, and was lifted by his [page 707:] imagination out of the miserable net in which he had involved himself, were luminous, and the poems which he then wrote, the criticisms which he offered, were of exceeding value. The difficulty is that in the confused mass of Poe's criticism the good is so mingled with the bad as to discourage one from at- tempting to appropriate it. His criticism has a certain historical interest, and is of worth in helping to determine Poe's individuality; but it can scarcely be regarded as a contribution to literature, and it may be doubted if it exercised any very potent influence upon the writers or readers of his time. It was too willful, in the main, to have a very stringent effect.

Mr. Woodberry will be called by some a bard judge for the final estimate which he passes upon Poe. His estimate is doubtless the outcome of that long and familiar acquaintance with his subject which the writing of such a book compelled. It is also partly due to the [column 2:] slightly unsympathetic mood which is betrayed throughout the work. We do not find this a very grave defect. It has answered the purpose of giving a cold and dispassionate survey of a life which has been almost as hardly treated by friend as by foe. Nor is the reader at the mercy of the biographer. On the contrary, he has been supplied most carefully with all the facts, and the slight tinge of contempt with which they are colored only provokes one to a more generous, certainly to a more com- passionate, estimate. It is impossible to avoid the pathos of the situation, as one follows the fortunes of Poe and his wife. His steadfastness to her means an immense amount in any summary of his character; his loneliness, as he drifts through the clouds of a world in which he always seems to be fighting unreal figures, comes to affect one with a fine pity, and to make one forget all the lessons of Poe's life except that of a mournful charity.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 705, column 1:]

1 Edgar Allan Poe. By GEORGE E. WOODBERRY. [American Men of Letters Series.] Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885.