Text: Anonymous, “New England Sectionalism in the Case of Edgar Allan Poe,” Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD) vol. CXLIV, no. 62, January 17, 1909, p. 4, cols. 1-2

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The one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe. will be commemorated in Baltimore and in other cities of the United States by celebrations befitting the centenary of a poet and man of letters whose genius has compelled almost worldwide recognition. We use the word “almost” in the interest of absolute accuracy, for New England still withholds from Poe the just and discriminating recognition which his work has commanded in the Old World and in the greater part of the New.

Perhaps if Edgar Allan Poe had spent his life in New England, if Boston had been not only his birthplace, but also the city in which his genius achieved its noblest triumphs, Poe's primacy in the field of American poetry would never have been disputed seriously. New England has ever been loyal to her sons, ever appreciative of her own excellence, ever imbued with the conviction that the New England spirit is the most forceful and uplifting influence with which Providence has blessed this nation. We do not know whether Poe could have adapted himself to the New England environment. His genius and temperament would probably have broken through the bounds of any pent-up Utica. He was not local, not provincial. He had the “world spirit.” But if fate had decreed that the products of his genius should be associated distinctively with New England be would have been accorded long ago, without contention, his rightful place in the domain of American letters. It would have been then a labor of love, of pride, of patriotism to secure general recognition of Poe's pre-eminence. All the energies and talents of New England litterateurs and the vast machinery for molding public opinion would have been directed to the accomplishment of that end. But Poe was not of New England. He was an iconoclast without counting the cost if he thought idols were made of clay. He held Longfellow up to the scorn of the literary world as an “imitator” of other poets. He went so far, indeed, as to accuse him of plagiarism and to present proofs. He lashed other New England writers with a whip of scorpions. He made enemies right and left among the friends of aspiring poets whose products came under the analysis of his acute and brilliant intellect. For Poe was not only the first American poet of his time and of later times, but he was also pre-eminent among the literary critics of his day. His famous feat in anticipating the plot of Dickens’ “Barnaby Rudge” from the opening chapters was an illustration of the penetrating quality of his intellect, his extraordinary powers of insight, of analysis and of deduction. No reviewer of his day wielded a pen as caustic as that of Poe. Yet he was quick to recognize merit and 1 to applaud it.

Poe was the most popular writer of his generation, but after his death his reputation suffered grievously and most unjustly because of the statements made by his biographer, Griswold. Yet it is now well established that most of these statements were either gross exaggerations or were wholly unfounded. Before his death and, indeed, throughout his literary career, when, as has been said, he was “a model of thoroughness and punctuality” in the discharge of his duties, when he was a “profligate” only in the sense that he overtaxed his energies and was “superfluously industrious,” he was charged with excessive indulgence in drink. Very recently, at a gathering in Baltimore, Poe was characterized as “a man in the gutter.” In the January number of Scribner's Magazine the allegation is made that “the whole world of morals was a terra incognita to him — not the same as saying, which is also true, that he had no morals.” In this Scribner article a labored and, it seems to us, an insincere attempt is made to belittle Poe, to depreciate the quality of his prose writings and of his poems. After wading through 15 pages of disparagement, of innuendo, of inconsistencles, of patronizing praise and raw and bumptous assertions that Poe was vastly overrated, the reader will find this to be the conclusion of the man who sits in judgment on Poe: “As literature Poe's writings are essentially valueless.” The New England sectionalism against which Poe protested, and which he denounced in “the Emersons, the Alcotts and Fullers,” has been reproduced with increased rancor and brutality by the writer in Scribner's. He does condescend to suggest, however, that Poe, in charging Longfellow with “imitation” was actuated by a motive “not more malign than that of the strutting and consciously clever Ishmael.” It is interesting to recall, for the enlightenment of those who are not familiar with Poe's accusations against Longfellow, the precise character of some of the charges which he presented.

In the first place Poe commented upon the striking resemblance between Longfellow's “Midnight Mass for the Dying Year” and Tennyson's “Death of the Old Year.” The imitation, he declared, “is too palpable to be mistaken and belongs to the most “barbarous class of literary piracy. * * * Nearly all that is valuable in the piece of Tennyson is the first conception of personifying the old year as a dying old man, with the singularly wild and fantastic manner in which the conception is carried out. Of this conception and of this manner he is robbed. What is not here taken from Tennyson is made up, mosaically, from the death scene of Cordelia in ‘Lear.’

“In Graham's Magazine for February, 1843.” wrote Poe, in presenting his second specification, “there appeared a poem furnished by Prof. Longfellow, entitled ‘The Good George Campbell’ and purporting to be a translation from the German of O. L. B. Wolff. In ‘Minstrels Ancient And Modern,’ by William Motherwell, published by John Wylie, Glasgow, 1827, there is to be found a poem partly written and compiled by Motherwell himself, entitled Bonnie George Campbell.’” Poe arranged the two poems side by side. We give here the first verse of each poem:

 

Another specification charged Mr. Longfellow with imitating in his “Psalm of [column 2:] Life” the following lines written by the Bishop of Chichester and published in London in 1810, on the death of his wife:

In the “Psalm of Life” Mr. Longfellow wrote:

“Had I accused Mr. Longfellow,” declared Poe, “in loud terms of manifest and continuous plagiarism I should but have echoed the sentiment of every man of letters in land beyond the immediate infuence of the Longfellow coterie.” We believe Mr. Longfellow's explanations were convincing to his friends, while ti those who were in sympathy with Poe concluded that he had substantial grounds for his accusations against Mr. Longfellow. We refer to the matter now not with the view of upholding either party to this famous controversy, but only for the purpose of indicating one of the causes of Poe's unpopularity in New England, and to cite one of the reasons for the disparagement of him in that quarter during his life and the persistent efforts to depreciate his work ever since his death.

To those who find satisfaction in decrying Poe the pre-eminence assigned to him by Swinburne, the “master of modern verse,” has proved most embarrassing and difficult either to explain away or to sneer away. “Once as yet, and once only,” declared Swinburne of the United States. “has there sounded out of it one pure note of original song worth singing and echoed from the singing of no other wan: a note of song neither wide nor deep, but utterly true, rich, clear and native to the singerthe short, exquisite music, subtle and simple and somber and sweet, of Edgar Poe.” The writer in Scribner's Magazine cannot ignore Swinburne's praise, but he suggests that “the interests of literature occasionally call for restraint in the indulgence of Mr. Swinburne's ‘generous pleasure of praising’ in order to maintain unobscured and unimpaired the standards of literature itself.” That is to say foreign criticism must adjust itself to New England prejudices.

Poe had grave defects of temperament. His early life and training did not conduce to habits of self -control. But his place in literature is to be determined not by his weakness, his lack of self-restraint at times, but by the value of his contributions to the world's literature. In comparison with Byron he was in private life without grave reproach. And it was of the attitude of a certain section of the British public toward Byron that Macaulay wrote: “We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. * * * Once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. * * * Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offenses have been treated with levity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. * * * At length our anger is satisfied and our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more.” Condemning all that was gross and vicious in Byron's life, Macaulay reached the following conclusion as to the products of Byron's genius: “We have little doubt that, after the closest scrutiny, there will remain much that can only perish with the English language.” No man or woman was ever degraded, ever smirched or ever sensualized by Poe's poems. They are full of beauty and have a quality of purity of which Byron was utterly incapable. And we believe the judgment of men of unbiased minds and broad culture, in Europe as well as in the United States outside of New England, is that much of Poe's poetry can only perish with the English language.