Text: John W. Graham, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Home Monthly (Nashville, TN), vol. 2, no. 1, January 1867, pp. 17-20

[page 17:]

THERE seems to be a disposition on the part of a few individuals, Englishmen especially, to present the character of Edgar Poe in such vestments as will exhibit him most unfavorably and repulsively. Every foible of his life — every instance in which integrity and principle yielded to the pressure, or rather through the weakness of his weak human nature — is caught up with unwarrantable zeal, and the whole so arranged, without one single feature of redeeming character, as to portray indeed a sorrowful spectacle. Now, it might be asked, where is the life whose shortcomings, culled and set apart from its merits, would not take the hue and cast of this portraiture of Poe? He had, unquestionably, his faults,.and grave ones, too, they may have been; but that he had his merits, who will question? ‘The darkest picture of moral depravity and heartlessness, on the page of the past, must have its ray of light, however dim and flitting. Hence we feel that there must have been, nay, that there were, threads of silver in the dark woof of the character and temperament of our subject; but he lived in and breathed, it may be, created for himself, an atmosphere of melancholy, the gloom and chilliness of which often repelled those who would have approached him with such encouragement and sympathy as would have thrown light into that rayless, [page 18:] starless night, which seemed to hide him from the glance of hope.

It is on this account that we were filled with surprise and pain on seeing the sentiment from an English critic, that “Poe was the most worthless writer that ever lived. All the characteristic deficiencies of other authors met in him.”

How microscopically small must be that charity, no less beautiful in literary than Christian life, which, so far from cloaking the faults and frailties of this wayward son of genius, delights to vaunt his follies to the world! The milk of human kindness must have long since turned to curd in that heart that would not rather kneel by the narrow bed in the church-yard, and sigh, that one so gifted should have been so unfortunate, than to drag forth the errors of the dead past from the shades of forgetfulness. How vastly different must have been the soul of that angelic creature who stopped at the side of the poor inebriate in the thoroughfare of a populous city, and, covering his face to hide him from the jests of thoughtless passers-by, sent a short but tearful appeal, for the fallen, to the throne of the Infinite!

why is it that it is so strenuously sought to hold him to the execration of the world? Why do they strive to dim the splendor and effect of his glorious mind by ever linking it with the errors that darkened his life? Is it because, like a hero of the present day, he has carried the scourge of war into the only home-haunts of helpless old age and innocence, and looked back with exultation upon a region which he has swept of every vestige of living thing? Is it be cause, like the author of “Common Sense,” he has prostituted the powers of high intellect to the dangerous doctrines of skepticism, and, availing himself of the force of rhetoric and reason, attempted to build up a fataliy prolific creed, and to break down the supports of Christianity and the Bible? Or, is he the prototype of that aspiring Corsican who, to gratify his own insatiable ambition, would have [column 2:] felt proudly exalted in ruling a world draped in mourning, and filled with the dirges of the burial-service? No, no; none of these. Poe was but a private individual, occupying but a comparatively humble position in the walks of men; filling but a small space in human society and thought. To others he was known as the man of genius and folly — to his friends and those who knew him best, as the crazed victim of misfortune. Full, he may have been, of the vices which infect the flesh; yet it was impossible, from the natural constitution of the man, to prevent them from gaining publicity, while thousands of others as great by name — and almost as great by genius — have been guilty of the same vices, but which they have had the good for tune, or, it may have been, the shrewdness, to keep concealed from the public eye. Who will deny that there are men, with moral characters as dark as that of Poe, who move with erect front and unabashed air through the ins and outs of social-life, and receive the warm est salutations, often from those of the highest position, and are even sought after and courted by men of known intelligence and refinement? Need I give one illustration of the above to the readers of this magazine? It is not in point to answer, that human motive is some times warped by policy. An evil heart is an evil heart, no matter in what connection it is found.

Again, is it because they wish to present a warning to rising genius that the name of Poe is draped with such gloomy hangings? No reflecting mind will believe that it is necessary to go to the grave for such warnings. Instances are startlingly numerous of high intellect brought down from the loftiest eminences of society to its obscurity, and even its very dregs, by yielding to the blandishments of illicit pleasure and the allurements of vice. A few months ago, a once Judge of the Circuit Court of the United States was ap pealing for a clerkship at Washington. A Judge once eminent at the bar of Missouri [page 19:] is to-day vending fruits in the city of St. Louis. We have Police Gazettes, which serve no other purpose than the chronicles of crime; of crime — high and low; of the wretched foot-pad, whose home is in the cesspools of depravity and shame, and of the villain of polished mind and elegant manners, who seeks his victims among the favorites of fortune and the brilliant of society.

But we would inquire, in what sense is the epithet previously referred to applicable? Certainly not to his literary character. As a man, he may have been unworthy; yet we cannot avoid believing his greatest error to have been his passion for drink. But there is one event in his life especially dwelt upon to confirm the supposed perfidy of the man — we refer to his conduct during a matrimonial engagement in Boston. Now, though the report may have been greatly exaggerated, believing it to the be in the main correct, we would put the cast to any impartial, thinking mind, if it were possible, in the nature of things, for a man in perfectly sane moments, possessing the reputation he then had — for he must have been of good repute, at least, to have gained access to Boston's first society — to have so deported himself as he must have known would have incurred the contempt and loathing of the respectable in all classes, and this without the shadow of possibility that it could result in good to himself? Human nature, in some instances, is astoundingly depraved, yet it will always be found that every exhibition of depravity and crime springs from the contemplated gratification of some passion. Then is it not, in the highest degree, unjust and absurd to and believe that Poe would disinterestedly and consciously work out such a measure of reproach for himself? Dark, indeed, and unforesighted, would be the heart that would deliberately degrade itself before that bar from which only he could expect to receive assurance of success and compliment to his genius.

Again, when we remember that there Were six or eight years of his life, after [column 2:]

his first essay in writing for the public, during which he was incapable of any intellectual exercise, the conviction is forced upon us that he could not have been altogether an idler. He has left four volumes which are equal in amount to that which the generality of men effect in the same time, one of which is evidence of the fact that he had not neglected the light literature of his own country; and of his own time; and if the merit of an author is at all commensurate with the effect produced upon the reader, then we opine that those volumes are the offspring of the highest order of genius, and that his descriptive writings are equal to any in this or any other language. Who does not feel that he almost hears the “long, loud, utterly anomalous shriek,” of the black cat, in the story of the same? Who does not involuntarily raise the hand to brush from the eye the specter of the horse, in the Fall of the House of Usher? But it is not in prose writing that his chief merit lies; his countrymen have awarded him the highest and brightest scroll in the temple of their poetry. His ‘Raven” is such a production, says an English reviewer, as is sufficient in itself to send the name of the writer down to the latest period of time: Thousands have lingered, and will ever linger, with unalloyed pleasure among those dark, mysterious stanzas. How many have felt their hearts go out in pity for this sad and erring, yet proud unfortunate, as they hear the sorrowful wailings of his stricken spirit, sighing through the inmost recesses of their beings, as he cries in his anguish:

“And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor,

Shall be lifted — never more!”

And if we observe the tone of those criticisms which are so severe in their denunciations of Poe's moral character, the uninformed must take the impression that he was the ever-sinning and never sinned against; that the world bestowed its favors with a lavish hand upon a petted genius; and the only return it received [page 20:] for so much kindness was heartless indifference and ingratitude. But this is far from being the case. Had fortune smiled as benignly upon him as she often does upon less gifted minds, undoubtedly we should be able to-day to portray him in happier and more brilliant coloring. If those, who were near to him by the ties of kindred had sustained and encouraged him, as he had a right to expect, what a grand and imposing monument might he not have erected to perpetuate the name of Poe! Instead of being mentioned as a poet of more than ordinary genius, men of letters to-day might associate his name with Hamlet, Childe Harold, and Paradise Lost, But it is known beyond a peradventure, that fortune rarely seemed to smile upon him: that he was brought face to face with poverty — “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt” poverty; that misfortunes assailed him in battalions. After acquaintances, friends, publishers, all, had been faithless to him, how sadly could he sing to the raven,

“Other friends have flown before —

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”

Thus, when smarting under the slights inflicted upon him everywhere, he turned, galled with the spurns that patient genius of the unworthy takes, is it wonderful that gloom, aye, that despair, should weigh him down like an incubus, and drag his} very spirit in the dust? Ah, no! it is hard to battle when the elements of the visible and invisible world are arrayed against you. He saw the young and aspiring basking in the meridian sunlight of success, wearing chaplets fresh and fragrant with the breath of popular praise, and, contrasting his own sickening lot, he felt crushed beneath the pressure of adverse circumstances, and he became, as well he might, morose, cynical, misanthropical. And herein we which to view his life. As no one can, n any degree, appreciate the hard conditions [column 2:] under which he lived, let not those conditions be too lightly estimated, which were at least sufficiently powerful to drive him from the path of virtue and honor. That he suffered, deeply, fearfully, incessantly, who can doubt that reads his writings? Then, if the doctrine of retribution in this life is correct, he may have been meeting but the consequences of the license of earlier days.

In the end, we would not have the reader suppose that we would excuse Poe from censure — we only wish to appeal for mercy. Te lived, sinned, suffered, died. The effect of his life, save so far as the principle of inevitable influence is concerned, we believe died with him; for that he has gone to his reward. He has left the emanations of his splendid intellect, which will prove an ever-gushing fountain of pleasure to his admirers. We would not have that pleasure marred with the memory of his unfortunate life. We would forget his errors —— as those of Lord Bacon are forgotten — in the delight we derive from his works.