Text: Anonymous, “[Poe and Griswold],” Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield, IL), vol. X, no. 75, September 9, 1857, p. 2, col. 3

[page 2, column 3, continued:]

The recent decease of the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, whose name has become in a measure identified with our national literature, will revive in the minds of many, his unfortunate connection with the memory and fame of him whom we have chosen as the subject of this article. Mr. Griswold in compliance with the dying request of POE became his literary executor, and having made a collection of his works published them, prefaced with a life of the author written in exceedingly bad taste, and dictated by what we must believe to be a very bad and vindictive nature.

We are not here to extenuate the sins and weaknesses of this misguided genius — his faults were many and aggravated; he had outraged gratitude and betrayed friendship; he had lived a miserable and wretched life and died a most miserable and wretched death, leaving scarcely a single friend to mourn his loss or defend his darkened memory. One there was however, a poor woman, clad in widow's weeds who bewailed the death of “her darling Eddie” and besought Mr. Willis in a brokenhearted note to “speak well of him and say what an affectionate son he was to me, his poor desolate mother.”

But POE was dead — the sanctity of the grave had enveloped him, and there, whatever of evil and wrong had sullied his name should have been buried in charitable oblivion. It was certainly to be supposed, or at least hoped, that the man selected by the dying wish of the poet for the performance of a task evincing by its very nature such a reliance upon his generosity and forbearance, would so far rise above petty personal animosities as to temper justice with mercy in telling the mournful story of a wasted life and the downfall of a great intellect. But no veil of compasion [[compassion]] was drawn across that gloomy picture — no word of pitying regret for fallen humanity — no tears for the degradation of Heaven-born genius; but instead, there was drawn such a portrait as a fiend would weep to look upon! Every fault, every sin, every crime — and God knows they were neither few nor small — Mr. Griswold thought best to rake up from the past and heap into a monument of infamy above the pauper grave of poor POE. And now when he too after a life by no means immaculate, has passed beneath the shadows of the dark valley, may he find more mercy than he gave.

But it was reserved for the gentle hands of a woman to throw over POE's memory the mantle of kind and sympathetic charity. “Calling,” says Mr. Griswold, “soon after POE's death upon Mrs. Francis S. Osgood, the beauty of whose character had made upon POE's mind that impression which it never failed to produce upon minds capable of appreciating the finest traits in human nature; she said she did not doubt that my view of Mr. POE, which she knew to be the common one, was perfectly just as it regarded him in his relations with men, but to women he was different, and she would write for me some recollections of him to be placed beside my harsher judgments in any notice of his life that the acceptance of the appointment to be his literary executor might render it necessary to give to the world. She was an invalid — dying of that consumption which in a few weeks removed her to Heaven — and calling for pillows to support her while she wrote she drew this sketch.”

And here follows a most touching tribute to her ill-starred friend; we wish we had space to copy it, for it is such an one as none but a woman could write; so kindly, so tenderly pitying and pardoning the wrong while recognizing and praising the good. The quick preceptions of her noble heart had caught glimpses of an inner and better life which the coarser faculties of his biographer had never seen, and she gave them to us that we might love her for the deed.

Blessed lady! — Thou couldst have had no better passport to the Heaven whose glories were already opening, than this parting diction as it were, upon that lost and ruined soul!

There is in some respects we think a similarity between the characters of POE and Swift. We do not of course imagine him the equal of the great Dean in point of mind, yet there is some resemblance in their literary efforts. Says Thackeray of Swift — “The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition is our author's constant method through all his works of humor. Given a country of people of six inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved at so many stages of the calculation. The audacity of circumstantial evidence, the astounding gravity of the speaker make it complete; it is truth topsy-turvey, entirely logical and absurd.”

We quote an extract from a late article in “Fraser's Magazine” on POE. “He gives all his narratives an extraordinary veri-similitude by a circumstantiality of detail which exceeds that of “Robinson Crusoe” or “Sir Edward Seaward,” and although the relation is almost extravagant and impossible, one needs occasionally to pause and recollect to avoid being carried away by the air of truthfulness and simplicity with which the story is told.”

But their lives are nearer parallel than their works. They were both bad men — bad in their conduct, bad their philosophy. They alike hated their fellowmen, despising them all as villains or dupes. They were envious of those more favored by fortune than themselves, and they followed their enemies with a vindictive hatred. They were both literary Ishmaels with their hands against every man, and every man's hand against them. POE broke his wife's heart; so did Swift that of STELLA — “The sweet saint of English story” — who has not read and wept over her sad history? They both drained the cup of wretchedness to the very dregs. “A remarkable story is told by Scott of Delaney, who interrupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conversation which left the prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agitation in his countenance upon which the Archbishop said to Delaney, “You have just met the most unhappy man on earth, but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question.”

Says Mr. Griswold of POE — “He walked the streets in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses or with eyes turned in passionate prayer (never for himself, for he felt. or professed to feel; that he was already damned) but for their happiness who were at the moment the objects of his idolatry; or with his glances introverted to a heart knawed with anguish, and with a face in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms, and all night with drenched garments and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits, that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitution subjected him — close by the Aidenn where were those he loved — the Aidenn which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses as its gates opened to receive the less firey and more happy natures, whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death.”

There is a slab of sculptured marble within the stately Cathedral of St. Patrick's in Dublin, and there is an unmarked, unknown grave in a humble cemetery in Baltimore — shall we not breathe a Requiescat in pace for the souls of those whose ashes rest beneath?

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