Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Poe,” Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (Edinburgh, UK), vol. 19, no. 4, April 1852, pp. 231-234

[page 231:]

EDGAR POE.

BETWEEN the physical and mental and moral faculties of men, there are, of course, many differences; but there is one which is peculiarly worthy the attention of those who insist that the latter spring from, or are connected structurally with, the former. It is, that while health and disease, strength and weakness, are incompatible, as separate existences, in the human physique, it is by no means uncommon to find moral beauty and moral degradation, mental weakness and mental strength, co-existing independently and in high development in one person. Every man tolerably acquainted with himself is aware of this truth, to a certain extent, as far as morals are involved; and a very imperfect acquaintance with literary humanity would assure him that not only do vast discrepancies exist between intellect and morality, though perfect union seems to be the natural condition of healthy existence, but that equally strange discrepancies exist between common-sense and intellect, or genius. ‘The transcendent, the almost superlative inspirations of Goldsmith have descended to us accompanied by testimony to the effect that they were the inspirations of an idiot, who was also a solemn coxcomb. ‘There was doubtless some foundation for such opinions, and Goldsmith is not unique in this particular; but it is satisfactory to the admirers of the “Vicar of Wakefield” to know that the aberrations of its author were not of that character which so frequently astonish us in men of genius, where want of deceney, in open addiction to degrading vices and meannesses, is the most prominent evidence of want of sense,

A forcible instance of such incongruity, but immeasurably more prominent from the greatness of the genius that was obscured and crippled than from the vicious weakness that was suffered to obtain mastery, has lately been bruited into the ears of the world in the history of Hartley Coleridge; a lamentable history — the history of an April day; but which, most justly, has met with little condemnation and very great pity. For his Weakness was one which, any rate, was not exercised at the expense of others, and was, of all other weaknesses, the most likely to beset a man of such a temperament. Full of dreamy and poetical intoxication at all times, born of all the fantasies and mysteries that rapt the “old man eloquent,” Hartley Coleridge was, perhaps, of all living men, the most liable to attack from his peculiar foe. The same excuse, on similar grounds but less justly, may be made for some others of strong imagination who have fallen into intemperate habits: but by far the most frequent and most exaggerated instances of mental and moral degradation in men of acknowledged genius or talent will not allow of so plausible an interpretation.

A little shilling book, the first of a new series of [column 2:] such,* recalls to our remembrance a sad example — if, indeed, it is not the most sad and the most remarkable in all the range of literary biography. Edgar Poe, an American celebrity, is not altogether unknown in England, nor is the present the first occasion on which any of his productions have been laid before the English public; but he is sufficiently unknown, and his life and writings sufficiently eccentric, to render interesting a sketch of the former and a brief estimate of the latter.

Poe was born in the United States, in the year 1811. His father was a lawyer, but finally adopted the profession of his wife, who was an actress.† Dying early in life, they left behind them three children in utter destitution. Edgar, the eldest, was then six years old, and is stated to have been a child of remarkable beauty and precocious wit. A Mr. John Allan, a merchant, adopted the boy, who accompanied him to England in 1816, and who, after visiting the more interesting portions the country, was sent to a school near London. Remaining here four or five years, he returned to the United States, and entered the University of Charleville, where the career of his dissipation commenced. ‘The manners prevailing at the University at that time, says the Rev. R. Grimsworld [[Griswold]], were extremely dissolute; and Poe “ was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class. But the remarkable ease with which he mastered the most difficult studies kept him all the while in the first rank of scholarship: and he ‘would have graduated with the highest honours had not his gambling, intemperance and other vices induced his expulsion from the University.” At this time, though below the middle height and slenderly formed, he was noted for feats of hardihood, strength and activity; and on one occasion, in a hot day, he swam seven miles and a half against a tide that was running probably at from two to three miles an hour.

While at the university, his allowance of money had been liberal, but he quitted the place very much in debt; and when Mr. Allan refused to pay some of the drafts with which he had paid his losses in gaming, he wrote him an abusive letter, quitted his house, and soon after left the country, with the intention of joining the Greeks in their struggle with the Moslem. He never reached his destination; and we next hear of him at St, Petersburgh, where, shortly after his arrival, the American Minister in that capital was summoned one morning to save him from the penalties of a drunken debauch. Through the ambassador's intervention, he was set at liberty and enabled to return to the United States. Here Mr. Allan [page 232:] again proffered his aid; and upon Poe's expressing some desire to enter the Military Academy, obtained his appointment to a scholarship in that institution. For a few weeks the cadet applied himself assiduously to his studies, and he became at once a favourite with the officers and the professors: but his habits ‘of dissipation speedily reappeared. Duties were neglected, orders disobeyed, and in ten months from his matriculation he was cashiered. Mr. Allan, ever disposed to be his friend, again received him into his family; “but,” says Mr. Grimswold, “it soon became necessary that he should close his doors against him for ever. According to Poe's own statement, he ridiculed the second marriage of his patron with a Miss Paterson, a lady some years his junior, with whom he stated he had a quarrel; but a different story, scarcely suited for repetition here, which, if true, throws a dark shade upon the quarrel and a very ugly light upon Poe's character, was told by the friends of the other party. From this time Mr. Allan refused to see or assist him; and, dying in 1834, bequeathed hot a single dollar to Poe. Enough has been quoted to indicate the character of Edgar Allan Poe; but let us now rapidly trace it im connexion with his literary career. Soon alter he left the Military Academy, Poe published a small volume of poetry; and the result was to confirm him in a belief that he might succeed in the profession of letters, to which he forthwith applied himself. His contributions to the journals, however, attracted little attention; and his hopes of gaining a livelihood in this way being disappointed, he enlisted as a private soldier. He was recognised by some officers who had known him When in the Academy; and efforts were made, privately, to obtain for him a commission, when it was found that he had deserted. He next makes his appearance as competitor for two prizes offered by an American journal; and these, it seems, he gained chiefly through a beautifully distinct caligraphy. This attracted the notice of one of the committee of award, his contributions were read, and it was unanimously decided that the prizes should be paid “to the first of geniuses who had written distinctly,” without opening another manuscript. ‘The prize tale was the “Manuscript found in a Bottle;” and the publisher introduced Poe to a Mr. Kennedy, a literary character well known in America, at that gentleman's desire. The prizes not having been paid, the costume in which he appeared at this introduction was that in which he had answered the advertisement of his good fortune. “Thin, and pale even to ghastliness, his whole appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A well-worn frock-coat concealed the absence of a shirt, and imperfect boots disclosed the lack of hose. . . . Poe told his history and his ambition, aud it was determined that he should nut want means for a suitable appearance in society, nor opportunity for a just display of his abilities in literature.” He was immediately supplied with apparel from a clothing-store, and sent to a bath, “whence he returned with the suddenly regained style of a gentleman.”

Through the efforts of his new frends [[friends]], Poe obtained [column 2:] the editorship of a magazine published at Richmond, Virginia, to which he contributed largely; but at the lapse of a few months his old habits returned, and for a week he continued in a condition of “brutal drunkenness,” which resulted in his dismissal. By professions of repentance and promises of reformation, however, a reconciliation was effected, and a new contract arranged; but Poe's frequent irregularities exhausted the patience of his kind-hearted employer, aud in January, 1837, he took leave of the magazine.

While at Richmond, and with an income of but a hundred pounds a-year, he married; and leaving this town, he vacillated from state to state, depending upon his chances of success as a journalist, until, settling in Philadelphia, he became editor of a magazine which had been recently established there. He seems to have entered upon this office under the influence of a healthy ambition and a determination to reform; and the conviction that his reputation was increasing led him for a while to cheerful views and regular habits. The close of a single summer, however, brought with it a relapse; and “for weeks he was regardless of anything but a morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of intoxication.” On one occasion, and although similar neglect had been once before committed, the proprietor of the magazine returned after a short absence to find no preparation made for the publication of the number, the day on which it was due being past; and not only so, but that Poe “had prepared the prospectus of a new monthly, and obtained transcripts of his subscription and account-books, to be used in a scheme for supplanting him.” He was of course dismissed.

Notwithstanding this conduct, he was installed a few months afterwards, as editor of “Graham's Magazine,” and during his engagement on this periodical, which lasted about a year and a half, he wrote some of his finest tales and criticisms, and drew attention by his papers on cryptology and cyphers. In 1844, however, his old infirmities having again thrown him upon the world, Poe ‘removed to New York, and entered on a new existence. [or the first time he was received into circles capable both of the appreciation and production of literature; his reputation serving as 4 passport to any society he desired to enter. He added to his fame goon after he arrived in this city by the publication of a poetical composition called “The Raven,” regarding which we entirely concur in Mr. Willis's opinion, that it “is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative. power.” It is, indeed, mainly on account of this little poem that we so deeply deplore the manifold vices and weaknesses with which the mind of its author was besotted. very verse in this unique poem rings with the true note of genius; and without dilating particularly on its merits, We must say that, in its kind, we do not hope to see it excelled. It is impossible to turn from this composition to the author's biography, without calculating, distressfully, how much talent, of which this is perhaps merely a scintillation, was here overborne and drowned in the flood of intemperance [page 233:] to say nought of wonder and regret at the same time that it should exist at all in the came nature with so much inherent and natural vice. Another and most flagrant instance of this latter quality — one, it is said, of many such — we pass over, and proceed quickly to the last scenes of this extraordinary man's existence. While in New York his fame as a magazinist rose rapidly; he contributed to several of the chief periodicals, but as the summer of is 1846 wore on, his habits reduced him to “much more than common destitution.” The dangerous illness of his wife added to his misfortunes; and, his energies prostrated by dissipation and anxiety, the subject was introduced into the public journals, which resulted in pecuniary contributions sufficient to relieve him from all temporary embarrassment; but this fortune his wife lived not to share. At this period of Poe's history we are introduced to his mother-in-law: and a beautiful contrast to his character does her character offer. Mr. N. P. Willis describes her with a countenance “made beautiful and saintly, with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness” — clinging to this degraded aud poverty-stricken man even long after her daughter's death — “living with him, caring for him,” and begging for him. “Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight in the whole city has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article, or some literary subject, to sell — sometimes simply pleading with a broken voice that he (Poe) was ill, and begging for him; mentioning nothing but that ‘he was ill,’ whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing; and never, amid all the tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions.” Surely, then, after all, there must have been something noble in the heart of this man to have commanded such ministering — from one, too, who was not bound to him by kindred, nor by that love which in woman is the spring of so much heroic devotion. For her sake, we are almost inclined to retract our harsh expressions against the object offer tenderness.

A few words will suffice to bring this melancholy sketch to a close. Poe's life, in fact, during the three years that yet remained to him, Was simply a repetition of his previous existence, notwithstanding which his reputation still increased, aud he made many friends. He was, indeed, at one time, engaged to marry a lady who is termed “one of the most brilliant women in New England.’ He, however, suddenly changed his determination; and after declaring his intention to. break the match. he crossed the same day into the city where the lady dwelt, and, on the evening that should have been the evening before the bridal, “committed in drunkenness such outrages at her house as made necessary a summons of the police.” On the 4th of October, 1849, Poe set out for New York from Virginia, to fulfil a literary engagement, and to prepare for a marriage with a lady whom he had known in youth: again resolved [column 2:] to lead a thoroughly reformed life, to aid which resolve he had joined a Temperance Society. On arriving at Baltimore he gave his trunks to a porter, and entered a tavern to obtain refreshment. “Here he met acquaintances who invited him to drink. All his resolutions and duties were soon forgotten; in a few hours he was in such a state as is commonly induced only by long-continued intoxication; and after a night of insanity and exposure he was carried to a hospital, and there, on he evening of Sunday, the 7th of October, 1849, he died, at the age of thirty-eight.”

We think our readers will by this time agree with us that a more melancholy story is not told in the curiosities of literature. They will remark in it a monotony of dissipation, an unvarying and unrelieved repetition of vicious incident which we fear the subject of the biography himself had mainly to answer for. But to complete the sketch we have here borrowed from Mr. Grimswold's [[Griswold's]] memoir, we must add, in that gentleman's words, that Poe's conversation was at times almost supra-mortal in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with the most astonishing skill, and his imagery was from the worlds which no mortal can see but with the vision of genius. . . . He walked the streets in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer — never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned — but for their happiness who, at the moment, were objects of his idolatry. Irascible, envious, says our authority, his passions vented themselves in sneers. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honour.

The writings of Edgar Poe, whether poems or tales, are quite as remarkable and incongruous as his character. They evidence an imagination the most fervid and daring; and in most of his tales this imagination is brought to bear on abstruse phenomena in nature and science, with results which are rendered more astounding to the reader by the apparently strict adherence to fact and scientific detail. We remember one of these, not, however, included in Messrs. Vizetelly's little volume, wherein all the phenomena resulting from the near approach of a comet to the earth, on vegetable and animated nature, are described with a terrible plausibility.

In the same spirit the “Effects of Mesmerism on a Dying Man” is conceived; and though it certainly has not that refinement of imagination and general excellence, as a flight into the regions of probability, which renders the story of the comet fascinating, there is a yet a boldness in the assertion of phenomena, and an apparent scientific detail, that for a time entirely impose upon the mind, and, spite of the absurdity of the circumstances asserted, render the horrible story true. To be able to produce such an effect is proof of great power; to use that power in a manner so outre is at first sight proof of a diseased mind, or, to [page 234:] use a cant expression, of a naturally “morbid imagination.” If such were the case, some kind of palliation, some scintillation of pity, might be applicable to that dissipation he w allowed in. But in fact it really was not so; and, however much his mental powers may have been weakened or diverted by being sodden in strong drink, which there can be no “doubt they were to an extraordinary degree, it seems to us that the original mind was by no means of that painfully sensitive and delicate character which has almost naturally induced habits of intoxication in men of dreamy and ultramundane genius. boldest character was here naturally united to unusual powers of analysis and practical observation: some of the best of Poe's tales depend entirely upon this latter quality. ‘These are undoubtedly the main elements of genius; and such a combination, but with rather less imagination, perhaps, [column 2:] and proportionately more practical application, is unquestionably the source of sober scientific — even of mechanical excellence.

But without going farther, we may as well re. turn at once to the observations we made at starting; for the closest investigation of this man's character and abilities will only lead us to wonder and regret that so mach intellectual power may co-exist with so much moral weakness. In his character there existed at once strongest commonsense and wretchedest folly: it was steeped at once in depravity and poetry. For though to allow any literary excellence to our American brethren is considered a tolerably good proof of a low standard of taste, we yet venture to say that a half-dozen such poems as “The Raven” would have placed Edgar Poe in the foremost ranks of modern poetry. We hope to be forgiven if we have spoken too harshly of a dead man.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 231, column 2:]

* Readable Books. Vol. I. Tales of Mystery, Imagination and Humour. By Edgar A. Poe. London: Vizetelly.

† The facts here related og the life, &c., of Poe, are condensed from a memoir by the Rev. R. Grimswold [[Griswold]], prefixed to a late edition of his works, and reprinted at length i in the present little volume.