Text: Killis Campbell, “The Poe-Griswold Controversy,” Publications of Modern Language Association (PMLA) (Baltimore, MD), January 1, 1919, vol. 34, pp. 436-464

[page 436:]

In any serious consideration of Poe's life and character it will be necessary to take account of Griswold's estimate of the poet. This estimate was set forth in two articles published during the year following Poe's death — one, an obituary notice published in the New York Tribune of October 9, 1849; the other, the memoir of Poe included by Griswold in his edition of Poe's works and first published in September, 1850. Out of these two papers sprang the bitterest of all the controversies that have been waged about Poe. Most of Poe's editors and biographers of the present generation have ranged themselves on the side of Poe and have condemned Griswold; but there have been some — and among them some that may speak with the highest authority — who have held that Griswold's estimate of Poe is essentially just and fair. The present paper attempts a fresh examination of the case in the light of the evidence collected by Poe's biographers, and also brings to bear on the case a number of documents, mainly from the periodicals of Griswold's time, that have heretofore been either overlooked or ignored.

The discussion will naturally center in Griswold's two papers — the obituary notice of Poe, commonly known (from the pseudonym adopted by Griswold on its original publication) as the “Ludwig Article,” and Griswold's Memoir of Poe. But I shall first briefly review the relations of Poe and Griswold down to the poet's death in 1849, by way of indicating the ultimate grounds of the animosity existing between the two. And I shall conclude with an inquiry into the integrity of Griswold's [page 437:] editing of Poe, about which question has from time to time been raised.

I.

Poe and Griswold first met in March, 1841.(1) Poe was at that time editor of Graham's Magazine, and Griswold was busily at work on the first of his anthologies, The Poets and Poetry of America. Poe's first public mention of Griswold appears to have been a brief notice in his “Autography “ (published in Graham's for December, 1841).(2) He here describes Griswold as “a gentleman of fine taste and sound judgment” and as possessing a “knowledge of American literature, in all its details, [such as] is not exceeded by that of any man among us.” Griswold's first public mention of Poe appears to have been the sketch of him printed in the Poets and Poetry of America in the spring of 1842. Griswold is silent, in this sketch, as to Poe's character, but he declares his verses to be “highly imaginative” and “eminently distinguished for their spirituality and skilful versification.”(3) During the summer of 1842 Poe wrote a review of Griswold's book in which he reaffirmed his faith in Griswold as a critic and pronounced his anthology “ the most important addition which our literature has for many years received”;(4) [page 438:] and in a letter to Griswold, written about the same time, he assures him that his anthology, though not without faults, was “a better book than any other man in the United States could have made of the materials.”(5)

Early in the summer of 1842, Griswold succeeded to the place that Poe had lately vacated as editor of Graham's Magazine, and shortly thereafter a coolness sprang up between the two. On July 6, 1842, Poe wrote to a correspondent at the South that he intended, in a magazine that he was projecting, to “make war to the knife against the New England assumption of ‘All the decency and all the talent’ which has been so disgustingly manifested in the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold's ‘Poets and Poetry of America.’”(6) He abused Griswold, also, in other letters of this period ;(7) and in delivering a lecture on the “Poetry of America” at Philadelphia in November, 1843, and again in Baltimore in January, 1844, he is said to have been “witheringly severe” on Griswold.(8) In 1843, moreover, there appeared two anonymously written articles, both of which have been attributed to Poe, in which Griswold was held up to ridicule. In the first of these, published in the New World of March 11,(9) Griswold is declared to be “wholly unfit, either by intellect or character, to occupy the editorial chair of Graham's”; in the other, published a little later in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum, he is severely attacked and mercilessly ridiculed, his anthology being described as “a very muttonish production,” and its [page 439:] editor as “one of the most clumsy of literary thieves “ and as knowing no more about poetry than “a Kickapoo Indian.”(10) Griswold, on his part, although Poe had condescended on June 11, 1843,(11) to appeal to him for a loan of five dollars on the plea of his wife's illness, is said to have circulated some “ shocking bad stories “ about Poe;(12) and Poe mentions in one of his letters a “ beastly article “ at his expense, published apparently in 1843, which he suspected Griswold of having written.(13) There followed a period of a year or more when the two were not on speaking terms.

But early in 1845 Poe made an attempt to patch up his quarrel with Griswold;(14) and they soon resumed, ostensibly, their former amicable relations. On repeating his lecture in New York in February, 1845, Poe omitted, as he took pains to assure Griswold, all that might have been offensive to him;(15) and during the course of the year he published in the Broadway Journal two brief notices in praise of Griswold and his editorial accomplishments.(16) Griswold also published during the year an article in which he praised Poe ungrudgingly. This article, which, it [page 440:] seems, has escaped Poe's biographers, appeared in the Washington National Intelligencer of August 30, 1845, and is devoted to a consideration of the chief “Tale writers” of America. Charles Brockden Brown, Hawthorne, Cooper, Irving, Willis, and Simms are treated in turn, but Poe is given larger space and fuller praise than any of these. “He belongs to the first class of tale writers,” so wrote Griswold, and his stories not only possess “a great deal of imagination and fancy,” but are “the results of consummate art.” The same year Griswold generously responded to an appeal from Poe for a loan of fifty dollars to tide over a crisis in the affairs of the Broadway Journal.(17) In his Prose Writers of America, moreover — a second famous anthology, compiled largely in 1845(18) — he made room for The Fall of the House of Usher in its entirety, prefacing it with a sketch of the poet in which he praised both his poems and his tales.(19)

Poe, it seems, published in 1847 a letter relating in some way to Griswold — a notice of the Prose Writers, perhaps; but this I have been unable to find.(20) It is clear, though — whatever may have been the nature of this article — that another rupture, or partial rupture, between the two had come about in 1846.(21) Their correspondence [page 441:] lapsed during the years 1846-1848 ; and Mrs. Clemm informs us, in a notice prefixed to the first volume of the Griswold edition of Poe, that their “personal relations” prior to 1849 had “for [some] years been interrupted.”(22) Griswold is said to have indulged during these years in something of backbiting at Poe's expense;(23) and he further aroused the ill-will of Poe by publishing in the fall of 1848, in the New England Weekly Gazette, an article in which he touched on certain flaws in The Raven.(24)

A reconciliation between the two again took place, however, with the beginning of the year 1849. Poe in February published in the Southern Literary Messenger a favorable notice of Griswold's Female Poets of America.(25) Griswold, in turn, in bringing out a new edition of the Poets and Poetry of America, enlarged the number of Poe's poems there collected to fourteen. And in June their friendly relations had so far been resumed that Poe felt at liberty to call on Griswold for aid in disposing of certain of his literary wares.(26) On October 7, 1849, Poe died, and it developed soon afterwards that he had expressed the wish shortly before his death that Griswold [page 442:] should serve as his literary executor. On the second day after Poe's death Griswold published in the New York Tribune (evening edition) the obituary notice of Poe already referred to as the “Ludwig Article,” and in September of the following year he published his “Memoir” of Poe.

II

The “Ludwig Article” — Griswold's obituary sketch of Poe — is mainly a summary of the facts of Poe's life, based for the most part on the sketch already published in Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America; but it contains also a section devoted to Poe's mind and character.(1) It is here that Griswold's chief strictures on the poet occur.

The main observations derogatory to Poe that appear in the “Ludwig Article” are these:

1) That Poe “had few or no friends”; and that, although the announcement of his death “will startle many, . . . few will be grieved by it.”

2) That in character he was unamiable, arrogant, irascible, envious, a cynic, and a misanthrope.

3) That “you could not contradict him but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy.”

4) That “ there seemed to him [I quote Griswold's words] no moral susceptibility; and . . . little or nothing of the true point of honor.”

Griswold's article called out a magnanimous defence of the poet by N. P. Willis in the Home Journal of October 20, 1849,(2) in which disapproval was expressed of the severity of Griswold's judgment, and the poet's alleged [page 443:] irregularities of conduct — of which Willis professed to have no first-hand knowledge(3) — were attributed to a “reversed side of his character” displayed by him only when under the influence of drink. There was also a protest by Henry B. Hirst in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier of the same date, in which Griswold's sketch was pronounced “brilliant,” but “unjust.” And three weeks later (on November 13) there appeared in the New York Tribune a verse-tribute to the poet's memory, by an anonymous contributor from Chicago, in which Griswold's statement that Poe died friendless was warmly challenged. The attack was continued in the early months of the following year (1850) with the publication (in January) of the first two volumes of Griswold's edition of Poe (the first volume of which included Willis's article, into which the “Ludwig Article” had been incorporated in part). The most vigorous of the protests now published was that of George R. Graham,(4) proprietor of the magazine which bore his name and which Poe and Griswold had successively edited. Graham denounced Griswold's sketch as “unfair and untrue,” “a fancy sketch of a perverted, jaundiced vision,” “an ill-judged and misplaced calumny upon [a] gifted son of genius.” Griswold was hotly assailed also by John Neal, in an article published in the Portland Advertiser on April 26, 1850. And a defense of the poet, more temperate in tone, was made by the editor of the American Whig Review,(5) G. W. Peck, who based his dissent from Griswold on an examination of Poe's writings, [page 444:] and who concluded on this basis that Poe “had as much heart as other men,” that he was “a pure-minded gentleman,” and that there was no ground for believing that he was “ mainly destitute of moral and religious principle.”

But there were also those who sided with Griswold. Lewis Gaylord Clark published in the Knickerbocker for February, 1850, a notice of Griswold's first two volumes in which he endorsed both Griswold and his appraisal of Poe;(6) and William Wallace wrote a reply to Neal's attack on Griswold.(7) Others, without specifically mentioning Griswold or writing avowedly in his defence, advanced much the same view as Griswold of Poe's temper and character. Charles F. Briggs, Lowell's friend, published a paper in Holden's Review [[Dollar Magazine]] for December, 1849,(8) in which he describes Poe as “a strange and fearful being,” and declares that it would be a bold biographer who would dare to make such a revelation of his life as the task demanded. George Ripley, in reviewing these volumes in the Tribune of January 17, 1850, remarked that while Poe was a man of “uncommon genius,” “he had no earnestness of character, no sincerity of conviction, no faith in human excellence”; and John M. Daniel, a fire-eating editor of Richmond, wrote an article for the Southern Literary Messenger of March, 1850,(9) in which, while condemning Griswold, he went even farther than Griswold or his defenders in condemnation of Poe.(10) [page 445:]

These articles made it clear that Poe had a number of bitter enemies ; but they also served to show that he was not without loyal friends, and they tended to discredit, in a measure, Griswold's statements as to the perversity of his character.

III

Griswold's “Memoir” of Poe was first published in 1850 as a part of the third volume of the Griswold edition of Poe, in which it comprises some thirty pages.(1) It is introduced by a note from Griswold in which he endeavors to justify his course in publishing the “Ludwig Article” on the ground that he was unaware, at the time, of his appointment as Poe's executor; and he intimates that he had felt impelled to write this article by the attacks that had been made upon him by Graham and Neal.

It may be noted, however, in passing, that although there is nothing to show that Poe, in selecting Griswold as his executor, intended that he should also serve as his biographer — Mrs. Clemm's statement (in a notice “ To the [page 446:] Reader” prefixed to the first volume of the Griswold edition) is fairly explicit to the effect that it was the poet's desire merely that Griswold should act as literary executor and “superintend the publications of his works,”(2) while Willis was looked to for “observations on his life and character” — there is evidence tending to show that Griswold had set about collecting material for a memoir within a few weeks after the poet's death. This evidence is afforded by a letter of John R. Thompson's to Griswold, written December 21, 1849, in which the following sentence occurs: “I have too long delayed sending you the promised mems of poor Poe, and I fear that what I now enclose will be of little value, scarcely sufficient to warrant their incorporation into the Life.”(3) That he was further actuated in the writing of the Memoir by the attacks made upon him by Graham and others there is no reason to doubt.(4)

In the “Memoir” Griswold enters much more fully into a consideration of Roe's writing than he had done in the obituary sketch, and he also develops at greater length the details of Poe's life. His judgments on Poe's writings are, for the most part, commendatory, and coincide, in the main, with the view now generally held. In his observations on Poe's life and character, however, he is much more severe than he had been in the Tribune article. The old charges of arrogance, envy, misanthropy, and a debased [page 447:] sense of honor are renewed, and the following additional charges are brought forward :

1) That while a student at the University of Virginia Poe had “ led a very dissipated life,” and that he had been expelled in consequence of his excesses there.(4a)

2) That after leaving West Point he had enlisted it the United States Army, but had deserted soon afterwards.(5)

3) That he had been guilty of a still darker crime in his relations with the second Mrs. Allan.(6)

4) That he had in certain of his publications — among them his Conchologist's First Book — been guilty of plagiarisms that were “ scarcely paralleled for their audacity in all literary history.”(7)

5) That his “ unsupported assertions and opinions were so apt to be influenced by friendship or enmity . . . that they should be received in all cases with a distrust of their fairness.”(8)

6) That he exhibited “ scarcely any virtue in either his life or his writings,” and that both his life and his writings were “ without a recognition or a manifestation of conscience.”(9)

This sketch, coming as it did from the approved editor of Poe and presented with much circumstantiality, had the effect of silencing for a time most of Poe's defenders and apologists. It was adopted as authentic in all save a very few of the contemporary notices of Griswold's edition that I have seen, and in virtually every other edition of Poe's writings that appeared during the first two decades after Poe's death. Among reviews in which it is accepted as [page 448:] authentic (or largely so), are those published in the Richmond Whig for September 28, 1850; the Knickerbocker for October, 1850 ; the Democratic Review for December, 1850, and January and February, 1851; the Westminster Review for January, 1852; Tait's Magazine for April, 1852;(10) Chambers's Edinburgh Journal for February 26, 1853;(11) Gilfillan's Third Gallery of Portraits, 1854;(12) the North American Review for October, 1856; Fraser's Magazine for June, 1857; and the Edinburgh Review for April, 1858.

The writer of the first of these reviews, John R. Thompson,(13) editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, took occasion in commenting on Griswold's memoir to say that it was, in his judgment, “truthful,” and that such “hard things” as Griswold had brought out, “seem to have been brought out because their suppression would have been as palpable a departure from an honest estimate of the poet, as a direct misstatement of any of his qualities.” Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the Knickerbocker, who had, in February, 1850, vouched for the correctness of the “Ludwig Article,” also made occasion to vouch for the correctness of this second article of Griswold's.(14) And there were some who did not scruple to enlarge on Griswold's story. The writer of the notice in the Edinburgh Review, for instance, declared that Poe was “a blackguard of undeniable mark” and that “ the lowest abyss of moral imbecility [page 449:] and disrepute” had never been attained until Poe's advent into this world;(15) while the reviewer in the London Critic, George Gilfillan, a British clergyman, boldly asserted that Poe's “heart was as rotten as his conduct was infamous,” that he had “absolutely no virtue or good quality,” and that he broke his wife's heart, “hurrying her to a premature grave, that he might write ‘Annabel Lee’ and ‘The Raven.’”(16)

Of outspoken public protests at this time there were amazingly few. The only vigorous protest that was promptly forthcoming, so far as I know, was that of an anonymous contributor to the Saturday Evening Post of September 21, 1850. This reviewer,(17) while admitting that he held “no very exalted opinion of Mr. Poe's character,” insists, nevertheless, that he is unable to find any excuse for Griswold's course; and he suggests that Griswold probably understood literary executor to mean “one who executes.” Continuing he says:

Others, while not excepting to the facts as set down by Griswold, demurred to the spirit of his article. The reviewer in Fraser's Magazine, for example, Rev. A. K. H. [page 450:] Boyd, remarked that it was “curious . . . how little pains the biographer takes to conceal the shortcomings of his hero”;(18) and the editor of the Democratic Review remonstrated against any unnecessary “rattling of Poe's bones.”(19) E. A. Duyckinck, editor of the Literary World, while apparently accepting Griswold's account of Poe's life, inquired whether Griswold in republishing the Literati papers had not tampered with his text, and drew attention to the fact that Griswold was careful to omit “any unhandsome references” to himself.(20)

Graham is said to have written Mrs. Clemm in the fall of 1850 that he and other friends were determined to come to Poe's defense;(21) but in the December number of his magazine he dismissed the matter with the statement that “by the decision of several discreet friends of the lamented Poe” he was omitting ‘’a number of letters and articles which [had] been collected in relation to his life and writings,” giving as his reason that “the wounds made by his criticisms are too fresh — the conflicting interests too many, to hope to do that justice which time and the sober second thought of educated minds will accord to his memory;” and he concludes with the promise (made good in Graham's for February, 1854) to perform at some later time “the grateful duty “ which he felt himself to owe to the poet.(22) Willis appears to have contented himself with republishing, in his Hurrygraphs in 1851, his reply to the “Ludwig Article,” and with branding the article published in the North American Review in 1856 as “uncharitable,” and [page 451:] “needlessly severe,” and, in some of its conclusions, “merciless.”(23) He had also republished in the Home Journal of March 16, 1850, Graham's first article on Poe, declaring at the time that it was “most creditable to Graham,” and he admitted to the columns of the Home Journal (March 30, 1850) a stinging reply to Daniel's article in the Messenger. See also a letter of his to George P. Morris in October, 1859 (quoted by Ingram, Poe's Works, 1874, I, pp. xlvii-xlviii).

But as time passed, the number of those who were unwilling to accept Griswold's account steadily increased. In February, 1852, C. C. Burr, who had known Poe in his darkest days, contributed to the Nineteenth Century(24) a brief article in which he dissented from Griswold's imputation to Poe of ingratitude and heartlessness. “He was,” writes Burr, “in the core of his heart, a grateful, single-minded, loving kind of man . . . a very gentle, thoughtful, scrupulously refined, and modest kind of man,” who although “he had faults and many weaknesses,” had also “a congregation of virtues which made him loved as well as admired by those who knew him best.” Stoddard, in spite of his animosity to Poe, admitted, in an article in the National Magazine for March, 1853, that the biographical sketches of Poe had been written “ by indifferent friends or open foes,” and that they had been “ needlessly cruel.”(25) In August, 1853, an anonymous contributor to the Waverley Magazine [[“Edgar A. Poe,” by J. J. P., August 13, 1853, p. 105]], in speaking of the inaccuracy of Griswold's Memoir, expressed the hope that it would not be long before an “unbiased life and collection of Poe's works” should be published. In the following year Graham published his second article in defense of Poe, in [page 452:] which he again protested against the accusations of looseness in money matters and of habitual unfairness in his criticisms.(26) Two years later appeared Baudelaire's famous sketch of Poe,(27) in which a vehement protest was made against the tone and spirit of Griswold's account. The next year (1857) a lively defense of Poe by J. Wood Davidson appeared in Russell's Magazine.(28) In the same year, L. A. Godey, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, wrote to the editor of the Knickerbocker to say that he was not to be “counted in among those . . . to whom . . . Poe proved faithless,” and that the poet's conduct toward him was “in all respects honorable and unblameworthy.”(29) In 1859, another Philadelphia acquaintance of Poe's, L. A. Wilmer, in his book, Our Press Gang, remonstrated against Griswold's treatment of Poe.(30) And toward the end of the year 1859 appeared Mrs. Whitman's book, Poe and his Critics, an entire volume devoted to the defense of Poe and directed mainly against Griswold, whose Memoir of Poe she declares to be unjust and misleading and to [page 453:] involve a “ remorseless violation of the trust confided to him.”(31) Among other articles in defense of Poe that appeared during the next decade are the articles by Mayne Reid,(32) who had known the Poes in Philadelphia, and T. C. Clarke, a Philadelphia printer and publisher who had known him intimately.(33) There appeared also, in 1866, a strange article by one who styles himself Parke Van Parke(34) and who professes to write at the instance of the poet's sister, Rosalie Poe, in which Griswold's memoir is pronounced the most “atrocious instance of human iniquity . . . since the days of Cain.”

Such was the contemporary attitude to Griswold's Memoir of Poe. What, now, does an examination of Griswold's sketch in the light of our maturer knowledge of Poe as brought out by his editors and biographers reveal as to the trustworthiness of Griswold's account? Such an inquiry reveals, first of all, that some of the ugliest charges made by Griswold against Poe were based on Poe's own misstatements to Griswold. The authority for the statement that Poe led, while at the University of Virginia, a “ very dissipated life,”(35) turns out to be a document in Poe's handwriting sent to Griswold in March, 1841,(36) and now preserved among the Griswold Papers. Chargeable to Poe also are Griswold's inaccuracies as to the date of Poe's birth,(37) as to the duration of his stay in London when a boy,(38) and as to an alleged second expedition to [page 454:] Europe in 1827.(39) Investigation has also shown that Griswold was correct in charging that Poe had made improper use of another's materials in the composition of his Conchologist’ s First-Book.(40) And it is now reasonably clear that Poe was sometimes governed by considerations of friendship or by a feeling of jealousy in his critical notices.

But there is a good deal of error in Griswold's Memoir for which we can be sure that Poe was not responsible. It has long since been established that Poe was not expelled from the University of Virginia. Nor is there any reason to believe that he ever deserted from the army. And the sole basis for the vile insinuation of an attempted assault upon the person of Mrs. Allan is the quite unsupported assertion of John M. Daniel,(41) in whose testimony, obviously, little reliance may be placed. That Poe was without friends at the time of his death or that he was incapable of gratitude for service done has been disproved over and over again by the testimony of those who knew him best. And the charge that he was without a sense of honor or without any manifestation of conscience is too sweeping to call for serious consideration.(42) [page 455:]

Other charges, affecting certain contemporaries of Poe, were specifically denied by those affected, either publicly or by letter, soon after the appearance of the Memoir. Within ten days after the publication of the Memoir, Longfellow wrote to Griswold to correct his statement that he had “ been shown by Mr. Longfellow . . . a series of papers which constitute a demonstration that Mr. Poe was indebted to him for the idea of ‘ The Haunted Palace.’”(43) In the New York Tribune of June 7, 1852, W. J. Pabodie, a friend of Mrs. Whitman, made a formal denial of Griswold's charge that Poe had, at some time in 1848, committed at the home of Mrs. Whitman . “ such outrages as made necessary a summons of the police.” Further denials were made by Mrs. Whitman herself in her book, Edgar Poe and his Critics.(44) A score of years later Col. J. H. B. Latrobe corrected some inaccuracies in Griswold's account of the deliberations of the judges on the occasion of the awarding to Poe his first short-story prize in 1833.(45)

It is proper to note also — what the reader can hardly escape — that Griswold, although he wrote as literary executor, assumes in his comments on Poe as a man an attitude of undisguised hostility. He does, indeed, introduce the gracious testimony of Mrs. Osgood as to Poe's chivalrous conduct toward women and as to his affection for his invalid wife; but he is careful to state that Mrs. [page 456:] Osgood accepted his analysis of Poe's character and meant to testify only as to the character assumed by the poet when in the presence of women.(46) And in justification of his course he argues, forsooth, that “ it has always been made a portion of the penalty of wrong that its anatomy should be displayed for the common study and advantage.”(47)

Our conclusions, then, as to Griswold's Memoir of Poe are 1) that a number of the charges there made by Griswold were true, and 2) that certain inaccuracies in his account rest upon Poe's inaccurate statements to him ; but 3) that most of the more damaging things alleged by Griswold against Poe were without substantial basis in fact or were greatly exaggerated; and 4) that Griswold both discredited himself and discounted his judgments on Poe by consistently assuming, in his observations on the poet's character, an attitude of unabashed hostility to him.

It remains to inquire into the charge that has been made against Griswold of garbling certain of Poe's letters in his effort to strengthen his case against him.

In the preface of his Memoir, Griswold collects eleven letters written by Poe to him. The originals of only six of these are now preserved.(48) Four of these six originals differ but slightly from the versions printed by Griswold ; but two of them(49) exhibit noteworthy variations from Griswold's text. To make these discrepancies as graphic [page 457:] as possible, I give here the two letters as printed by Griswold, putting in italics the more important passages which do not appear in the postmarked originals and enclosing in brackets certain passages that appear in the originals but are omitted in Griswold's text.(49a)

The first of these letters, dated February 24, 1845, runs as follows :

The second letter is “without date” (and is so described by Griswold), but the original manuscript as mailed to Griswold hears the postmark “New York Apr. 19,” and it is evident, both from Griswold's statement that it was Poe's “ next “ letter after the letter of February 24,(50) and from the reference to Poe's New York lecture (delivered February 28, 1845), that it was written in 1845.

How to account for these discrepancies is not entirely clear. Possibly the passages that I have italicised in these two letters were interpolated by Griswold; possibly he relied on rejected drafts of these letters, found (on this supposition) by him among Poe's papers.(54) But on either [page 459:] supposition it is plain that Griswold was at fault. He had in his hands the postmarked originals that Poe had addressed to him, and he was obviously under obligations to follow them or to give some reason for not doing so.(55) Whether he actually found variant versions of these letters among Poe's effects, I am unable to say. So far as I am aware, no such variant versions exist.(56)

IV

What, finally, of the integrity of Griswold's editing of Poe? Evert A. Duyckinck in his review of the third volume of the Griswold edition of Poe (printed immediately after the appearance of that volume)(1) raises the question whether the Literati papers (first collected there) had not “undergone editorial revisal.” Both Ingram(2) and [page 460:] Gill(3) have made a similar imputation of editorial recklessness against Griswold, instancing, in particular, the article on Thomas Dunn English as bearing the marks of having been tampered with. More recently the editors of the Virginia Poe have charged that Griswold not only tampered with the text of the Literati, but that he also took indefensible liberties with still other papers. Specifically, it is alleged that Griswold substituted for five of the Literati papers (those on Briggs, English, Lawson, Mrs. Osgood, and Mrs. Hewitt) “other papers in the Poe manner,”(4) and that in the case of a number of Poe's reviews he made free to combine two or more papers into one, to omit or to transpose numerous passages of considerable length, and to mutilate in still other ways his originals.(5)

Such comparison as I have made of Griswold's text of the poems and essays with their originals leads me to believe — indeed, convinces me — that Griswold, judged by standards of to-day, was not a careful editor. It is reasonably plain that he silently altered the titles of several of the poems and that he omitted the sub-titles of others.(6) It is all but certain that he did not always adopt Poe's latest text.(7) He allowed numerous typographical errors to escape him.(8) And he omitted from his edition some things of importance that were surely known to him — among them the earlier lyric To Helen. That he also made bold here and there to prune away matter that he [page 461:] felt to be unimportant, or that he even transposed parts of certain papers and combined others, I think not improbable.(9)

But that Griswold made any very substantial changes in the texts of Poe's critical papers or that he introduced any papers not actually written by Poe I doubt very much. The article on Mrs. Osgood as printed by him among the Literati papers(10) turns out to be, as Professor Woodberry has already noted,(11) a review of Mrs. Osgood's poems contributed by Poe to the Southern Literary Messenger of August, 1849. Another of the Literati papers whose authenticity has been questioned, that entitled “Thomas Dunn Brown,”(12) survives in a manuscript in Poe's autograph, owned by the Rosenbach Company of Philadelphia.

The three remaining Literati papers supposed to have been substituted by Griswold without authority — namely, those on Briggs, Lawson, and Mrs. Hewitt — were, I imagine, similarly based either on manuscripts found by Griswold among Poe's papers (as in the case of the article on English) or had already been published in some periodical (as in the case of the article on Mrs. Osgood). Professor Woodberry suggests(13) that these articles (he includes also [page 462:] the article on English) were a part of a volume variously entitled(14) “The American Parnassus,” “A Critical History of American Literature,” “Living Writers of America,” and “The Authors of America in Prose and Verse,” on which Poe was engaged for half a dozen years before his death; and this suggestion is confirmed, so far as the article on English is concerned, by the manuscript containing the “Thomas Dunn Brown” article, which contains also autographic copies of the Literati papers on Richard Adams Locke and Christopher Pease Cranch, and which bears the title, “Literary America.”(15)

So, also, it seems to me most likely that the longer passages believed to be unauthentic in Griswold's texts of Poe's reviews(16) are, in reality, the work of Poe, and that [page 463:] Poe, likewise, was responsible for much, if not most, of the curtailing and rearranging exhibited in Griswold's edition.(17) As is well known, Poe was constantly revising work that he bad already published. Some of the recasting which he may be supposed to have made in his critical articles was made, in all likelihood, with a view to incorporating these articles in his “Literary America,” which was to include, not only the writers of New York City (to which the Literati papers as published in Godey's and the Democratic Review had been restricted), but in addition writers of note from all parts of America — in fact, is described, in one of the titles under which it is referred to, as “A Critical History of American Literature.”(18)

But what most inclines me to doubt that Griswold wrote any considerable part of the matter thought to have been interpolated or substituted by him in Poe's essays is the complete lack of motive for such a course.(19) Griswold [page 464:] was a busy man; and there was in the case of these papers — the case was different with Poe's letters — nothing for him to gain by tampering with them: there is in these suspected passages nothing that would tend to exhibit Poe in a darker light, nothing that would in any way inure to Griswold's benefit. And there is, besides, the test of style. Griswold wrote at times with exceptional pungency and vigor; but it is not very difficult to distinguish his manner from Poe's. There is, I feel, no one of the papers — or of the brief passages — whose genuineness has been called in question that does not bear the stamp of Poe's manner.

Accordingly, I believe we are justified in concluding that Griswold's chief delinquencies as editor were the minor delinquencies of careless proofreading, of a willingness to set his own judgment against Poe's in the matter of certain textual readings and probably of the form of certain articles, and of the omission of sundry more or less important items. As editor — that is, merely as editor — he probably performed the task committed to him as well as any other American editor of his time, save possibly Lowell, could have done. It was as biographer, not as editor, that Griswold sinned against Poe.

KILLIS CAMPBELL.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 437:]

1. Griswold's edition of Poe's works, I, p. xxi. This edition is hereafter referred to merely by Griswold's name. My references are to the edition of 1856.

2. Virginia Poe, ed. Harrison and others, XV, p. 215.

3. At the same time, however, he limits the number of Poe's poems that he includes in his anthology to three, although he had made room for twenty-five of Percival's poems and no fewer than thirty-three of Charles Fenno Hoffman's.

4. See the Boston Miscellany for November, 1842, and the Virginia Poe, XI, p. 156. There was also a review in Graham's Magazine for June, 1842, which Poe probably wrote.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 438:]

5. Griswold, I, p. xxi.

6. The Critic, April 16, 1892 [[pp. 228-229]].

7. Woodberry's Life of Poe, I, p. 353; II, p. 87.

8. Modern Language Notes, March, 1913, XXVIII, p. 68.

9. Not included among Poe's works by any of his editors, but assigned to him by W. M. Griswold in Passages from the Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold, p. 118, and, apparently also by L. G. Clark, in the Knickerbocker, April, 1843 (XXI, p. 380). [[“Our Magazine Literature” — the attribution is disputed — JAS]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 439:]

10. The article is republished by W. F. Gill in his Life of Edgar Allan Poe, pp. 327-346, and is accepted as Poe's both by Harrison (who prints it in the Virginia Poe, XI, pp. 220-243) and by Woodberry (II, p. 48). [[The attribution of this review of The Poets and Poetry of America has been disputed — JAS]]

11. Griswold, I, p. xxi.

12. Letter of Briggs to Lowell, quoted by Woodberry, II, p. 123.

13. Griswold, I, p. xxii.

14. See Griswold, I, p. xxii; Virginia Poe, XVII, pp. 196, 198.

15. Griswold, I, p. xxii; Virginia Poe, XVII, p. 203.

16. In his review of “The Magazines” in the Broadway Journal of May 17, 1845 (in a note on Hoffman's sketch of Griswold in Graham's Magazine for June, 1845), and in his notice of Griswold's edition of The Prose Works of John Milton in the Broadway Journal for September 27, 1845 (reprinted in the Virginia Poe, XII, pp. 244-247).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 440:]

17. See Poe's letters of October 26 and November 1, 1845: Griswold, I, p. xxii.

18. Not published till the spring of 1847.

19. He mildly condemns Poe's work as a critic, however; and in later editions he was less liberal in his praise of the tales.

20. See the list given by him of articles he had published about Griswold, in a letter written in the year of his death (Griswold, I, p. xxii), in which he includes the item “Letter in Int., 1847.” “Int.” is perhaps an abbreviation for Intelligencer, but a fairly careful hunt through the columns of the National Intelligencer for 1847 reveals nothing that I can recognize as Poe's.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 440, running to the bottom of page 441:]

21. Or, possibly, late in 1845: see Poe's animadversions on Griswold's poetical anthology in the Broadway Journal of November 29, 1845. [page 441:] Evidently this breach did not extend to a complete severance of relations; see Griswold's Correspondence, p. 230, for mention of a meeting in 1847, and Griswold's Memoir (Poe's Works, I, p. xlii) for a meeting in 1848.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 441:]

22. Griswold, I, p. iii.

23. See, in this connection, Sartain, Reminiscences of a Very Old Man, p. 215.

24. This article I have not seen, nor do I know precisely at what date it appeared; but something of its nature we may glean from a letter of Poe's written at the time apparently to Eveleth (see Ingram, Life and Letters of Poe, p. 222), and a clue to the date is furnished by his reference to it in a letter to Mrs. Whitman, written November 26, 1848 (Last Letters of Edgar Allan Poe to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, p. 43).

25. Griswold, III, pp. 289-292.

26. Ibid., I, p. xxiii.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 442:]

1. The article is reprinted in the Virginia Poe, I, pp. 348-359.

2. Ibid., I, pp. 360-367.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 443:]

3. It should be noted, however, that this testimony conflicts with the testimony given by Willis in an earlier notice of Poe (Home Journal, December 19, 1846), in which he tells of having seen Poe on one occasion when the poet was suffering from the effects of drink.

4. In Graham's Magazine for March, 1850 (XXXVI, pp. 224-226).

5. American Whig Review, March, 1850 (XI, pp. 308-315).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 444:]

6. The Knickerbocker, XXXV, pp. 163-164.

7. See Woodberry, II, pp. 452-453. I have not seen this article.

8. Holden's Review, [[Dollar Magazine]] IV, pp. 765-766. The article was unsigned, but was evidently by Briggs, who was editor of the magazine. [[December 1849]]

9. Southern Literary Messenger, XVI, pp. 172-187.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 444, running to the bottom of page 445:]

10. It is only fair to Poe to say that three of these five — Briggs, Clark, and Daniel — nursed a grudge of some sort against Poe. Briggs and Poe had quarrelled in 1845 over the Broadway Journal, [page 445:] and Poe had been attacked by Briggs in the Literati papers (Virginia Poe, XV, pp. 20-23) ; Clark, also, had been “used up” by Poe in the Literati papers (Virginia Poe, XV, pp. 114-116); and Daniel had been challenged by Poe to fight a duel in the summer of 1848 (Woodberry, II, pp. 273, 443 ff.; Whitty, The Complete Poems of Poe, p. lxix).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 445:]

1. It first appeared about the middle of September, 1850: see the New York Tribune for September 14, 1850, and the Literary World for September 21, 1850. It was also published about the same time in the International Monthly Magazine (for October, 1850); see the New York Tribune of September 25 and the Literary World of September 28, 1850.

The “Memoir,” though first published in the third volume of Griswold's edition, was transferred to the first volume on the publication of a second edition in 1853, and it continued to occupy this position on the publication of an edition of four volumes in 1856.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 446:]

2. Griswold, also, in a note prefixed to the Memoir interprets his office to be simply “the collection of his works and their publication.”

3. This letter is preserved among the Griswold Papers in the Boston Public Library. See also a letter of Griswold to John Pendleton Kennedy (Sewanee Review, April, 1917, xxv, p. 198).

4. See in this connection a letter to J. T. Fields (of September 25, 1850), published in Passages from the Correspondence of Griswold, p. 267.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 447:]

4a. Griswold, I, p. xxvi.

5. Ibid., p. xxvii.

6. Ibid., p. xxvii.

7. Ibid., p. xlviii.

8. Ibid., p. xlix.

9. Ibid., p. xlvii.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 448:]

10. Reprinted in Littell's Living Age, XXXIII, pp. 422-424.

11. Ibid., XXXVII, pp. 157-161.

12. First published in the London Critic, and reprinted in the Southern Literary Messenger for April, 1854, and in Littell's Living Age, XLI, pp. 166-171.

13. That this review was from the pen of Thompson is established by a letter of Thompson's, of September 30, 1850, to Griswold; now among the Griswold Papers.

14. See the Knickerbocker, October, 1850 (xxxvi, pp. 370-372).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 449:]

15. Edinburgh Review, CVII, pp. 420-421.

16. A Third Gallery of Portraits, London, 1854, p. 376. Another clergyman, A. K. H. Boyd (Critical Essays of a Country Parson, p. 248, — see also Fraser's Magazine for June, 1857), is perhaps echoing this statement of Gilfillan's when he asserts that “Poe starved his wife, and broke her heart.”

17. Probably the editor of the Post, Henry Peterson.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 450:]

18. Fraser's Magazine, June, 1857 (LV, pp. 684-700). Also in Critical Essays of a Country Parson, London, 1867, pp. 210-248.

19. Democratic Review, February, 1851 (XXVIII, p. 172).

20. Literary World, September 21, 1850 (VII, pp. 228-229).

21. Ingram's Life and Letters of Poe, p. 432.

22. Graham's Magazine, December, 1850.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 451:]

23. See the Home Journal for October 18, 1856.

24. Nineteenth Century, V, pp. 19-33.

25. National Magazine, II, p. 197.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 452:]

26. See Graham's Magazine, February, 1854, XLIV, pp. 216-225. He further declares that Poe was a “long-suffering, much-persecuted, greatly-belied man [who] had a soul as soft, as delicate, as tender as a child's” and that “every effervescence of excess, of anger, of irritation, or of wrong done to others, was followed by an agony of penitence, and oftentimes by earnest, long-sustained and half-successful efforts at reformation.” He explains the attacks upon Poe after his death as dictated largely by a spirit of revenge on the part of those whom he had antagonized by his criticisms and reviews. But he admits that Poe's criticisms were in some cases unjust; and he instances his attacks upon Longfellow as among the few that were “utterly unjust.”

27. “Edgar Poe: sa vie et ses œuvres”; published as an introduction to his translation of Poe's tales.

28. Russell's Magazine, November, 1857 (II, p. 171).

29. Knickerbocker, January, 1857 (IXL, p. 106).

30. See especially pp. 284-285. See also a more detailed defense of Poe by Wilmer in the Baltimore Daily Commercial, May 23, 1866.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 453:]

31. Poe and his Critics, pp. 11, 14, 15.

32. Onward, April, 1869, I, pp. 305-308.

33. Newark Northern Monthly, January, 1868. [[“The Late N. P. Willis and Literary Men of Forty Years Ago,” pp. 234-242]]

34. Discussions and Diversions, by Parke Van Parke, p. 264.

35. Griswold, I, p. xxv.

36. Virginia Poe, I, pp. 344-346.

37. Griswold, relying on Poe's autobiographical memorandum, gives the date as 1811.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 453, running to the bottom of page 454:]

38. Griswold had followed Poe in stating that the period of his stay [page 454:] in England was 1816 to 1822; in reality it covered the years 1815 to 1820.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 454:]

39. This yarn survives in several different versions, all apparently traceable to Poe. See Woodberry, I, pp. 72 ff., 365 ff., and the Sewanee Review for April, 1912 (XX, pp. 209-210).

40. See the Virginia Poe, I, pp. 146-148, and Woodberry, I, pp. 194-198. Griswold, however (I, pp. xlviii-xlix), badly overstates the case against Poe as a plagiarist.

41. Southern Literary Messenger, xvi, p. 176.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 454, running to the bottom of page 455:]

42. Among minor inaccuracies in Griswold's account are the allegations 1) that Poe was not born at Boston (Griswold, I, p. xxxvii); 2) that “not a line by Poe was purchased for Graham's Magazine” for “four or five years” before the poet's death (ibid., p. li: in reality two articles by Poe appeared in Graham's in 1849); and [page 455:] 3) that Poe “prepared with his own hands” the sketch of his life contributed by H. B. Hirst to the Saturday Museum in February, 1843 (ibid., p. 1).

43. Griswold, I, p. xlviii; Virginia Poe, XVII, pp. 408-409.

44. Mrs. Whitman (l. c., p. 15) speaks also of an article in the Home Journal, in 1859, or slightly earlier [[October 30, 1858]], in which a “calumnious story” proceeding from Griswold was refuted.

45. Griswold, I, p. xxviii; Edgar Allan Poe: A Memorial Volume, ed. Miss S. S. Rice, p. 59.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 456:]

46. Griswold, I, pp. lii-liv.

47. Ibid., p. xlvii.

48. Five of these (see the Virginia Poe, XVII, pp. 83-84, 198, 200-201, 202-203, 216) are in the Boston Public Library (four of the number being postmarked originals); and the sixth (ibid., pp. 346-347) — which is unhappily incomplete as preserved — is in the Wrenn Library of the University of Texas.

49. One of these is printed in the Virginia Poe (XVII, pp. 200-202) with the two versions juxtaposed.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 457:]

49a. For each of these letters I use Griswold's text (l. c., I, p. xxii ) as the basis for comparison. Certain minor variations from the manuscript originals are not taken account of.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 458:]

50. Griswold, I, p. xxii.

51. Here Poe quotes four lines from The Raven, dividing them each into two lines: see the Virginia Poe, XVII, p. 202.

52 The original manuscript has “the line” where Griswold has “you have,” and “should read” where Griswold has “for”; and also has the word “alteration” where Griswold has “correction.”

53. This sentence appears as a postscript in the original manuscript.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 458, running to the bottom of page 459:]

54. That Griswold did, in one instance, follow a discarded first draft of one of Poe's letters — a letter to Mrs. Jane E. Locke — is established [page 459:] by examination of the manuscript (now in the Boston Public Library) on which he based his text of this letter (Griswold, I, p. xli). In this instance, however, he did not have the original manuscript in hand: see Griswold's Correspondence, p. 265.

55. Griswold points out in his Memoir (I, p. li) two instances in which Poe, in quoting from letters received by him, departed slightly from his originals. But Poe's derelictions in this particular will scarcely be held to excuse or to palliate Griswold's.

56. It seems that Griswold also took liberties with at least one other letter. In his Memoir (I, p. xlvii) he quotes a brief excerpt from a letter of Poe's to P. P. Cooke, one sentence of which differs in one important particular from the original. The second sentence of this excerpt, as quoted by Griswold, reads as follows: “The last selection of my tales was made from about seventy by one of our great little cliquists and claquers, Wiley and Putnam's reader, Duyckinck.” In the manuscript of this letter as preserved among the Griswold Papers the words, “one of our great little cliquists and claquers,” do not appear. He also took the liberty, it seems, as Professor Harrison has pointed out (Virginia Poe, XVII, p. 198), of abridging and otherwise altering, in his Memoir, one of his own letters to Poe.

1. Literary World, September 21, 1850.

2. Poe's Works, Edinburgh, 1874, I, p. lxi.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 460:]

3. Life of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 179.

4. Virginia Poe, XV, pp. ix, 263.

5. Ibid., x, pp. vi-vii.

6. See the variant readings as reported by Stedman and Woodberry, by Harrison, and by other editors.

7. See, for instance, the variant readings of The Raven, Lenore, and Dream-Land.

8. See the list of errata collected by the editors of the Virginia Poe.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 461:]

9. It is altogether probable, for instance, that Griswold was responsible for the combining of the several articles in reply to “Outis” into one article.

10. Griswold, III, pp. 87-99; reprinted in the Virginia Poe, XV, pp. 271-288.

11. In an unsigned review in the New York Nation for December 4, 1902, p. 446. I owe it to Professor Woodberry to say that I have been anticipated by him in still other points made in this section of the present paper and, likewise, in the general conclusions that I have reached as to Griswold's editing. I trust that it will not seem improper for me to add that I reached my main conclusions independently and before I knew of Professor Woodberry's article.

12. Griswold, III, pp. 101-104; Virginia Poe, XV, pp. 266-270.

13. The Nation, l. c., p. 446.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 462:]

14. Either in Poe's references to it in his letters or in contemporary advance notices of it in the press.

15. The rest of the title-page of this manuscript, which is dated “1848,” runs in part as follows: “Some Honest Opinions about our Autorial Merits and Demerits / with / Occasional Words of Personality. / By Edgar A. Poe.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 462, running to the bottom of page 463:]

16. The chief reviews which exhibit important variations in the Griswold edition are those on Hawthorne (Griswold, III, pp. 188-202; Virginia Poe, XIII, pp. 142-155, XI, 104-113), the Davidson sisters (Griswold, III, pp. 219-228; Virginia Poe, X, pp. 174-178, 221-226), R. M. Bird (Griswold, III, pp. 257-261; Virginia Poe, VIII, pp. 63-73, IX, pp. 137-139), Griswold (Griswold, III, pp. 283-292; Virginia Poe, XI, pp. 147-160), Longfellow (Griswold, III, 292-334; Virginia Poe, XII, pp. 41-106), a second paper on Longfellow (Griswold, III, pp. 363-374; Virginia Poe, XI, pp. 64-85), Mrs. Browning (Griswold, III, pp. 401-424; Virginia Poe, XII, pp. 1-35), and R. H. Horne (Griswold, III, pp. 425-444; Virginia Poe, XI, pp. 249-275). By a most unhappy oversight, the last six paragraphs of the second of the two papers on the Davidson sisters (as published in Graham's Magazine for December, 1841) are omitted in the Virginia Poe (X, p. 226), thus making Griswold's supposed irregularities in the case of this article appear much more serious than they actually are.

The paper on Mrs. Lewis (Griswold, III, pp. 242-249; Virginia Poe, XIII, pp. 215-225) for which no place of prior publication has hitherto [page 463:] been pointed out, appeared condensed and freely paraphrased in the sketch of Mrs. Lewis included by Griswold in his anthology of The Female Poets of America. The papers on Bayard Taylor and William Wallace, which Griswold prints as separate articles (in, pp. 207-209, 240-241), were printed originally in the Marginalia (Virginia Poe, XVI, pp. 145-148, 175-177).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 463:]

17. In the case of the Marginalia the order adopted by Griswold is so radically different from that originally adopted as to present a veritable puzzle to one who would unravel the mystery of their arrangement. So far as I can discover, no logical system of arrangement has been followed by Griswold. It looks as though the separate items might have been thrown pellmell into a basket and then taken out at haphazard and published in the order drawn.

18. See Woodberry, II, p. 96. In a notice of this projected work, in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier of July 25, 1846, moreover, the statement is made that it will “ embrace the whole Union”; and a similar statement was made by Hirst in his sketch of Poe in the Saturday Museum.

19. This point has been dwelt on by Professor Woodberry, l. c., p. 446.