Text: James Purves, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Dublin University Magazine (Dublin, Ireland), vol. 85, whole no. 507, March 1875, pp. 336-351

[page 336:]

THE most dismal reading in literature is the errors and failures of authors; the loss of good intentions; the bankruptcy of good nature; the desertion of happiness; the black ruins of youthful aspiration. The charred chapters in their lives rise before us as weird and eerie spirits from an unfriendly region. There is nothing for one to feed on; there is nothing invigorating; there is no nobility, and little true manhood. A pensive, sad depression of thought, a heavy, heart-felt pity creeps through us, making our whole frame shudder as we gaze on the huge shipwreck lying at the bottom of the rugged, death-inviting cliffs, to be broken up as the waves of time ebb and flow. The roaring, foaming breakers, which swept a short time ago across the ocean, are nowhere visible; the sea is musically quiet; the sun breaks out with its cheering rays, but, as the days brighten, the wreck is only the more ghastly. As day by day advances, fragments of the wreck are washed ashore, sometimes far and many miles from the fatal rocks. Gatherers, friends and foes, diligently collect the spoil; the wreckers, to gloat and rejoice over it; the friends and sorrowing, simple inhabitants gather a few relics to hang over their firesides, or wear near their hearts. Some travel far to the scene to obtain and bury some beloved mortal remains.

The most depressing shipwreck of any is not of water, but of mind; [column 2:] the ruined life of a son of genius; one of Nature's teachers, but him- self untaught; possessed of vast knowledge, yet deficient in will.

One of the greatest calamities that can befall an author is to have the facts of his life perverted and falsified. A false biography is almost as bad in its results and impressions as a record of bad actions. Long after all that was mortal of the man has mouldered into dust, the gross lies hang over his memory, as a great malady over a town, frightening many from partaking of its hospitality and enjoying its beauties. The evil is not so great if the untruths were told in one's own lifetime, and had damaged for a time his reputation, for his friends would have laughed the statement to scorn. It becomes more serious, and the evil is even more reprehensible when the author bas gone to that bourne from whence can come no defence or explanation, when many readers would only willingly become his defenders but for the charges against him, which they feel in their consciousness to be false. Some are so horror-struck at the heinousness of the alleged offences, their ordinary ideas are so completely revolutionized and over-thrown, that they at once credit the fictitious accounts; the statements seem so terrible that they never hesitate in believing them; the heinousness of the charges chill and benumb their critical faculties. They travel at a marvellously rapid rate through literary circles, as leaping [page 337:] tongues of fire through a wooden erection, consuming and destroying everything they touch. A blaze is seen, and the complete structure falls to the ground, a mass of black, smouldering ruins. It is only after the slow, burning flames have been doing their work for a long time that any one thinks of investigating into the facts, when the result is announced that it was all the work of an incendiary!

How the heart throbs, and the pulse beats with feverish joy when the glad news are passed from eager lip to eager lip that the ship has not been wrecked, and that the report was false! These false rumours do a world of damage; damage incalculable. They live, it is true, only for a few short years; but yet in these few short years how many lives have they saddened! how many heart-hopes have they blighted! The truth comes sooner or later; and, when it comes, it is eternal, A strong reaction sets in; the slanderer made an outcast from society, and the slandered one recouped with interest.

The vague ideas which, somehow or other, have crept through our mind regarding many men we have read about in a desultory manner; the strange, mystic thoughts that often weave themselves over us, as ivy creeping over an old gable end, are solved and set at rest when we read an accurate life of the man. Around many, indeed most, of our authors, there is hung a thick veil of sorrow. Their lives were one continued struggle, and very powerfully illustrate the old truism, that he who increaseth in knowledge increaseth in sorrow. The heavy waters were too much for their strength; they perished in the deep, black waters of sorrow within the reach of friends, or close by outstretched arms, which, in many cases, were outstretched in the [column 2:] wrong direction. The bold, rugged grandeur of their lives resembled something that of the solitary mountains, or the towering rocks, which are too bold and too rugged for a profitable crop to take root, far less grow. Their poems were but fragments of their ownselves; weak echoes from a prison-house; rivulets which burst from the mother stream, lying concealed beyond a thick, huge, unpenetrated forest. Yet, as popu- lar representation goes, they are the smallest among the great! Fame (every life we read repeats the story) has got its detractions, as well as attractions; and that it is —

Few men have had their hearts so cruelly torn out at glory's temple-gates before the crowd than Poe. For many years the mere mention of his name has called up opprobrious names, epithets have beer flung at him by the score; his name has been trampled in the mire, and flung outside society, as a child throws aside its besmeared and broken toy. A strong voice has now called, hold; and a man appears to refute the accusations brought against the poet. We give our hearty welcome to any man who reaches the truth; we give our hearty welcome still to him who clears up the lives of our sons of genius. The task is a heavy one, and the man deserves every encouragement. Mr. John H. Ingram is engaged editing and collecting Poe's complete works, they are to be the first complete collection yet [page 338:] published. Of his memoir we can Speak in the highest praise.* It introduces us for the first time to the poet in his true light. It is the most accurate life, the truest life of the poet; all other lives for their falsehood now only deserve to be burned. This memoir is the best criticism of his genius that we have yet read. Strange is it not that this first complete refutation of the charges against the poet should be written by an Englishman and not by an American? Meantime we will devote our space to an examination of his life; and will treat of his writings on the issue of the succeeding volumes.

The man is only now, for the first time, beginning to be understood; the traces of his flight are only now being correctly followed. Poe in the course of nature might have been living yet; he died in the prime of manhood with plenty of work in him. The problem of his life is only at this distant time being satisfactorily solved. The nine days’ wonder has long since elapsed, yet he is an interesting study, and will ever hereafter be a more interesting study. Well educated, well furnished with original talents, he failed to turn them into gold as thousands of more un- important men have done. His poems were but occasional effusions with him; sparks which flew from the fire within; goods thrown over- board to lighten the ship in the storm. They are by far the smallest amount of his writings, but they are the most interesting; they were his soul's effusions, written to relieve it, and not written for money. Into them his life entered. For him the sun never shone; around him merry laughter never played with joyful mirth; the only happiness that [column 2:] melted into his soul were the pre- cious gains of woman's love. Born of sorrowing, erring parents, he died a sad, sorrowful death, and even at this distance of time the erring man would not appear to have satisfied the law, for lives after lives have been heaped on his stoneless grave, charged with the foulest lies, shrieking vengeance on his memory for crimes he never committed, and never would have committed.

Edgar Allan Poe was descended from an ancient Norman-Irish family, Le Poers or De la Poers. The founder of the family, Sir Roger le Poer, was one of the companions-in-arms of the famous Strongbow. Some of the descendants were valorous and chivalrous, for instance, Sir Arnold le Poer, seneschal of Kilkenny castle, “a knight, and instructed in letters,” who rescued Lady Alice Kytler from the hands of ecclesiastics who accused her of witchcraft; and the brave defence of the castle of Don Isle by a lady descendant of Nicholas le Poer, Baron of Don Isle, who, however, perished along with the castle, it having been blown up by gunpowder by Cromwell. The family name underwent changes as its members emigrated. David Poe, Edgar's grandfather, removed from Ireland to America, and became a quarter- master- general in the American army. Edgar's father, David Poe, was the quarter-master-general's fourth son, and intended for the law, but while a student he married a young English actress, Elizabeth Arnold. The father was greatly incensed at the alliance, and for a livelihood the youth threw in his fortune into the life of his wife — the stage.

Edgar, the second of the three [page 339:] children of the marriage, was born on the 19th of February, 1809, in Baltimore. He was named Allan after a wealthy friend. Before that event old Poe had received his son and wife back into the family circle; but the forgiveness had not come much too soon, as the young couple died of consumption, within a few weeks of each other, leaving their children on the cold bosom of charity for provision. The embryo poet was a remarkably pretty, precocious, and agreeable child. At the early age of six, Mr. Allan adopted him, and treated him as his own son. The boy was petted, fondled, and made much of, as all favourites are, which augured badly for the future. He inherited to a great degree the family waywardness, which was only strengthened in his upbringing in place of being well kept under. “When few children have abandoned their leading strings,” he truthfully wrote, “I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions.”

His adoption by Mr. Allan was, we consider, the first and one of the greatest blunders in Poe's training. It was the most unfortunate thing that could have befallen him. He was not one ‘of those natures that could love because he should have loved; he loved of no will of his own, but because he could not but love. The boy and the man misunderstood each other; the one longed for love in requital of money and care, the other longed to love one unencumbered with much purchase-price. Grateful though the boy was, his sensitive nature shrunk from the exhibitions of affection; each exhibition in place of gaining the boy's heart only drove him the farther into his own. Remember, too, that the boy never knew what it was to have a mother or a father! He could not help thinking occasionally that he was more an object [column 2:] of pitying charity than of great regard.

In his seventh year Mr. Allan laced him in a school in Stoke Newington, England. This proceeding strengthens our opinion, that Allan regarded the boy in the light of a charitable trust, else he would not surely. have left him friendless in a foreign country at so early an age. He could have been sufficiently well educated in America. In that quiet haven the boy spent the next four or five years of his life; it was a kind of spirit-land to him in his after life, whereto memory winged its flight from out the toiling present for invigoration and hope. Fondly he lingered o’er his English schoolboy days; their pleasant recollections was a song he never wearied of singing. Very often in his after years, when full of sorrow, his memory dwelt on these halycon schoolboy days, as one leaves the city, its noise and strife, for the pleasant pastoral scenery of one's youth. “In truth,” he said himself in his tale, “William Wilson,” “it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town.” Years after his childhood he recalled “the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with ineffable delight at the deep hollow note of the church bell, breathing each hour with sudden and sullen roar upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted gothic steeple lay embedded and asleep.” No doubt one good result of his training there was the classic knowledge he received, which formed the backbone of some of his writings.

He was recalled to America in 1821, and thereafter sent to an academy at Richmond, Virginia. Mrs. Whitman, in her book, “Edgar Poe and his critics,” relates an anecdote of his academy life. Accompanying home a schoolfellow one day his mother, by her gracious words of [page 340:] welcome, so touched his heart that he was unable to speak. He had then only one hope, “to hear again the sweet and gracious words that had made the desolate world so beautiful to him, and filled his lonely heart with the oppression of a new joy.” The lady had great influence with him, but she died very shortly after. That she made a lasting impression on his heart is undoubted; he regularly visited her grave; he lingered longest, and came away most regretfully when the nights were wet and dreary; and it was this lady he addressed in his poem “To Helen,” commencing, “Helen, thy beauty is to me,” only twelve months before his death. This was the first great grief he encountered, and it made a very great impression on his sensitive nature; it cast a gloom over his writings.

In 1826, at the age of seventeen, he became a student of the University of Virginia. The story up to this date that has been generally told is, that he only spent a few months at Richmond on his return from England, and that he was expelled from the University because of his intemperate habits and “other vices.” Both of these statements are disproved. The secretary and president of the University combine in saying that he never fell under the censure of the faculty, and that he took the highest distinction the University could give the one session he attended. He never graduated, there having been at that time no power to confer degrees.

Next year, 1827, aroused by the heroic efforts the Greeks were making to throw off the yoke of the Turks, he started for Greece. The old version was that he had contracted debts which Mr. Allan refused to pay, Poe then wrote an abusive letter and quitted the house. This strikes us as very incredible; for how could a youth, if he was so deeply in debt, have got money to [column 2:] take him to Greece? He was absent nearly a year, but he was very reticent on the subject of his adventures, and did not even take the trouble to contradict rumours that were afloat concerning the journey. Many stories have been invented regarding his adventure, but no credence can be given to them.

Two years after, 1829, he returned to Richmond. He published that year his first volume of essays, “Al Aaraaf,” “Tamerlane,” and other poems. In July in the following year, he was admitted as a cadet into the Military Academy at West Point. This was an ill-judged step. The only thing that could have qualified him for military life was his fine martial spirit. But he was totally unsuited for the matter-of-fact routine of military life. His nature could not bear discipline, while his early life had been wayward. After a few months’ experience the gold dust began to fall off, and the bare steel faced him. It was a mistake that many poets have often made, in putting themselves in stations of life for which they were totally unsuited; Poe's imagination had painfully misled him. Need the result astonish one” — for various neglects of duty and disobedience of orders,” he was, in the grandiloquent words of the Academy officials, “dismissed the service of the United States!” It would have been better for him, as Mr. Ingram says, had he then left America, and tried his fortune anew on other shores. But before he was dismissed, and while he was a cadet, he published a volume of “Poems” dedicated to “the United States” Corps of Cadets.” The cadets, from General Cullum's statement, “considered the author cracked, and the verses ridiculous doggrel.” It is not the first time a poet has been mistaken for a madman, and splendid poems considered “ridiculous doggrel.” [page 341:]

Returning again to Richmond to Mr. Allan's house, he formed an attachment to a young lady, but to which Mr, Allan was strongly opposed. A violent quarrel ensued; Poe left with the intention of going to Poland to assist the Poles against the Russians, while Mr. Allan married again. The vilest of innuendoes have been flung at the cause of the quarrel. On this we quote Mr. Ingram's telling remark*: — “Griswold suggests that the poet's quarrel with his adopted father arose from an act of Poe's — ‘scarcely suitable for repetition;’ — but apart from the fact of Poe's subsequent kindly reception by those acquainted with all parties concerned, and looking at the biographist's well-known mendacity, it is sufficient to allude to this tale, unsupported as it is by an iota of evidence, as, in its author's language, unfit for any ‘register but that of hell.’”

We know nothing of him for two years; he roamed about, but where, and what he did, we know not. He next appears, in 1833, in Baltimore, as the successful competitor for the best story and poem offered by the Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]] The cloven hoof, visible in all the statements by Griswold, is here also clearly marked. His statement, and repeated in all the biographies published this side of the Atlantic, was that the adjudicators, to simplify their duty, and facilitate their trouble, resolved that the prizes should be paid to the “first of the geniuses who had written legibly.” Poe wrote a remarkably beautiful and distinct hand, and not another MS. was unfolded when they saw his. Now, as usual, the facts were against Griswold, and the adjudicators went out of their usual way so far as to publish a highly flattering award, the concluding sentence of which [column 2:] ran in these words: — “These tales (“MS. found in a bottle”) are eminently distinguished by a wild, vigorous, and poetical imagination, a rich style, a fertile invention, and varied and curious learning.” The surviving adjudicators, the Hon. John P. Kennedy, and Mr. J. H. B. Latrobe — Mr. James H. Miller having predeceased — at once denied the fictitious story whenever they heard it. It is almost impossible to conceive a viler attempt to defame an author's character, and sad to say it should have been allowed to go uncontradicted so long.

Poe, through the recommendation of Mr. Kennedy, who became his staunch and firm friend, got a connection with a paper called the Messenger, he being at that time in great poverty. Again the black, heavy veil of melancholy fell over him, his soul craved for human sympathy, and a human voice to speak words of hope and comfort to his strangling aspirations. He was tottering on the verge of a precipice, from which he was removed by the friendly advice of Mr. Kennedy. His expert pen now brought the circulation of the periodical from seven hundred to as nearly many thousands. On the order of the publisher, he commenced the practice of writing sharp and biting critiques on living little authors, which increased the periodical's circulation, but made him many unknown enemies.

In 1836, a bright sun ray appeared in his marriage to his cousin, Miss Clemm. It lit up the path for a short time, and after it had died away the gloom was denser than before. The girlish, consumptive wife was destined to shed her gleams of sunshine over his soul for a short time; but it brought [page 342:] him under the motherly care of Mrs. Clemm, an excellent woman.

He left the Messenger for the New York Quarterly Review, assisting various professors. Griswold here again steps in with his unproven statements. Poe, he said, was dismissed for drunkenness. The facts were, as we have stated, he resigned for a more lucrative post, where his classical knowledge was required; even the Messenger, after alluding to the ability with which he had conducted the periodical, stated Mr. Poe would contribute to it “from time to time with the effusions of his vigorous and popular pen.”

Unable, however, to earn the independence in New York by his pen that he desired, he removed in 1838 to Philadelphia, to write for another magazine, of which he soon thereafter became editor. Even the salary attached to the office was insufficient to maintain him, so he had to write in what leisure moments he had for other publications. Another false charge has been at this period of his life brought against him by Griswold — plagiarism. The evidence of one undoubted witness, Professor Wyatt, a Scotchman, is sufficient to show the falsehood of the invention. Poe's magic pen again increased the circulation of the magazine with which he was connected, this time from five to fifty-two thousand. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote for its columns many of her shorter poems, and it was due to Poe that her fame in America was won. His prospective notice of “Barnaby Rudge,” then newly begun, drew from Charles Dickens an admiring letter. For several years he zealously performed his duties with marvellous success. He steadily added to his reputation as an author, especially for his daring critiques, essays, and fascinating tales. The tale of “The Murders of the [column 2:] Rue Morgue,” on being published was translated into French, and an as an original story by a Frenchman; on this being repeated in another French magazine, a hue and cry arose that Poe was a plagiarist. Had Poe with his usual indifference to these rumours allowed the matter to rest, it would most likely have been fastened on by his enemies, and paraded as another instance of his want of principle. Fortunately, and it would have been better for his reputation to-day had similar courses in other cases been adopted, a lawsuit was instituted, and it was found that he was the author. These proceedings tended to make him better known in France than he had previously been; the foreigner's tales were highly spoken of by the leading Parisian journals, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the Revue Français. It is said that he is the only American writer that is popularly known in France.

Another restlessness came over him, an insatiable love of change. Hope with him when realized was chaff. Unsatisfied he ever was. The seeds were sown by Mr. Allan having sent him to England for his education; by his having recalled him when he was settling down, and placing him in the Virginia University. He was born of roving, restless, actor parents; his early childhood nourished the vagabondish feelings; and the training of Mr. Allen [[Allan]] was ill calculated to root them out. Not only were his parents travellers and seekers after the Eldorado of their hopes, but their parents also had inherited the same failing, if the reader chooses so to call that restless spirit. These feelings towards things external sunk into his mind, and influenced the internal. It is to that we attribute his journey towards Greece, his enlistment, his intention to proceed to Poland, and [page 343:] also his continually severing himself from the various magazines with which he was connected. He severed his connection with Graham's Magazine, another name for the Gentleman's Magazine. Mr. Graham's letter most decidedly proves it was not because of drunkenness, as alleged by Griswold; the reason seems to have been that Poe desired to start a magazine of his own.

Thereafter he had the terrible misfortune to make the acquaintance of his American biographer, Rufus Griswold. Mr. Ingram states that the quotations from letters, purporting to have been written by Poe in the narrative of this meeting, “are fabrications.” We follow his hard-working career, his writings for various magazines, his success again for a prize tale, during several succeeding years. Little seems to have been known of his life during these years, perhaps because no lies have been told about him! He appears, however, not to have been too well off, for, in 1843, he went into a daily newspaper office as a sub-editor and “mechanical paragraphist.” This he left for another newspaper, the conductors of which record that they were “very reluctant to part with him; but we could not object — he was to take the lead in another periodical.”

It was while he was hard at work in a newspaper office, from early in the morning until it went to press, that his best productions were written. It was about this time that he published his chef d’œuvre, “The Raven.” It first appeared in the American Review for February, 1845, under a nom de plume. It circulated like wildfire over the whole of the United States, parodies and imitations appeared without number. The strangeness of the subject, the weirdness of the sentiment, and the artistic execution of the poem were everywhere the subject of comment. No one suspected [column 2:] Poe of being its author, until one evening he electrified a company of men of letters and noted artists by his accomplished recitation. The authorship, the strange and most striking affinity. of the recitation with the poet's conception — thus discovered, was everywhere proclaimed, and the author's name attached to the poem. He had now. reached the pinnacle of his fame; most hearty words of commendation came across the Atlantic to him from the greatest of the living poets. He was the lion of the season. Yet, it is said, he only received at the height of his fame for this poem, the sum of ten dollars, about two pounds!

He started a magazine himself, but although he had made an excellent editor, he was by nature unfit to be a good financier or a conductor. He had long looked forward to it, but many things were against him. Of assistance in writing for the paper he had equal to none, he was unable to pay for it; to fill up the space, he had to write an enormous quantity; and he was a slow writer, correcting and altering very greatly. He reprinted many of his tales and poems, about the worst thing, we think, he could have done. Ill- health, a dying wife, pecuniary difficulties were reasons surely sufficient to account for the non- success of the undertaking. It was not hope deferred, but hope blasted that made his heart sick. His slashing critiques had long been silently making him fierce enemies; while he did not possess the slightest tact or worldly wisdom to conciliate them. Haughty, proud, and retired, he steadfastly pursued his aims; the opposition he met never made him flinch or swerve from his intentions. So on the occasion of his address to a society, he alluded thereafter to his reception, and the paper he read, — “We knew that write what [page 344:] we would, they would swear it to be worthless. We knew that were we to compose for them a ‘Paradise Lost,’ they would pronounce it an indifferent poem.”

We quote an anecdote which shows his generous nature, and proves him to have been a true scholar. A lady, noted for her great lingual attainments, wishing to apply a wholesome check to the vanity of a young author, proposed inviting him to translate for the company a difficult passage in Greek, of which language she knew him to be profoundly ignorant, although given to a rather pretentious display of Greek quotations in his published writings. Poe's earnest and persistent remonstrance against this piece of méchanceté alone averted the embarrassing test.

Let us pause a little and take a glimpse into his domestic life. Foul calumny crept not only into the sacred precincts of his home, but into his sacred relationship with his wife. His fair young wife some- times accompanied him into literary circles, where her pleasant, animated face bespoke a happy marriage. The poet was most devoted in his attentions towards her during her slow, consumptive illness. It was for her sake that they left New York for the quietness of Fordham, where, in a little Dutch cottage, he passed the remaining three years of his life. “It was,” said Mrs. Osgood, “in his own simple yet poetical house, that to me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child — for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came he had, even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Leonore, he would sit hour [column 2:] after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts, the ‘rare and radiant’ fancies as they flashed through his wonderful and ever-wakeful brain.” The little cottage was neat, charming in its simplicity of furnishings; although it was but poorly furnished, there was an air of taste and gentility that money could not have purchased. Poe was in the straits of poverty, and his wife, sad, sad to say, lay on a straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat. The poet was too proud to ask assistance. A large tortoise-shell cat lay in her bosom, which seemed to be conscious of its own usefulness. At the top of the bed the poverty-stricken but passionately, devoted, husband stood holding her hands, and warming them with his own, while her mother stood at the bottom warming her feet. The picture is a sad one, but yet a noble one. The two heroic watchers, and the hectic sleeper were drawn very closely to each other. A pure and holy love bound them inseparably together: there existed a stronger love among that poor triad than exists in squares, crescents, or palaces. The lower we descend in the scale of riches, the higher become, as a rule, the affections. “Here,” says Mrs. Whitman, “he watched her failing breath in loneliness and privations, through many solitary moons, until, on a desolate dreary day of the ensuing winter, he saw her remains borne from beneath its lowly roof.” The young wife looked very young; she possessed large black eyes, and pearly whiteness of complexion. Her pale face, brilliant eyes, and raven hair, gave her an unearthly look. “One felt,” says a brother author, “that she was almost a disrobed spirit.” — “His love for his wife,” says Mr. G. R. Graham, “was [page 345:] a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes.” The strong love that he had for his child-wife is sufficient to prove that his heart was of considerable depth and breadth. Several friends at this stage set about, unknown to the poet, a subscription list, and published a short paragraph in the newspapers. His being thus, as he himself said, “ pitilessly thrust before the public,” was exceedingly distasteful to him. “My poor Virginia was continually tortured (although not deceived) by anonymous letters, and on her death-bed declared that her life had been shortened by their writers.” She died in January, 1847, and was buried on a dreary, desolate day. The sorrowing husband was thrown into a melancholy stupor for some time, and for a year he lived a secluded life with his mother-in-law, to whom he was greatly attached, receiving visits now and then from friends and admirers. A small Scotch critic, and dissenting clergy- man, has either been made the dupe of an enemy, or perpetrated a huge joke, when he said that Poe caused the death of his wife that he might have fitting theme for “The Raven.” The total absence of reverence is perhaps sufficient to expose the false statement; but the poem was published two years prior to that event! A false statement, as in this instance, is generally found out by some small loop; if the poet had only delayed from some cause or other the publication of the poem during his wife's life, then this falsehood would no doubt have been not only believed by all, but the truth would have been declared false! We are glad to say that this gentleman has been just enough since this memoir appeared, to acknowledge the error of his statement. Poe, although at this time in failing health, was kept up by his strong will — “I have a great [column 2:] deal to do, and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done.”

His inborn restless spirit was soothed and softened by his solitary walks. He found in Nature that secret sweetness of sympathy which lulls one's fiercest passions, and heals the deepest scars in the human heart. An acre or two of clear, smooth, greensward encircled his cottage, shaded by some fine old cherry-trees. Clumps of dahlias and beds of flowers bespoke the taste of the man for flowers. His favourite seat was round an old cherry-tree, while he had a large assortment of bright plumaged birds. A favourite cat enjoyed his company, and often, when writing, it seated itself on his shoulder, “purring as if in complacent approval of the work proceeding under its supervision.” Through night and day the poet sat and strolled in his favourite haunts, dreaming fine thoughts, and regretting bygone sorrows,

A poetical life that may seem, but it is one of painful teaching to the sorrowing heart, which frets at the terrible visitation of death. He then wrote the poem called “Ulalume,” and he himself tells us it was “in its basis, although not in its precise correspondence of time, simply historical.” It possessed originally an additional verse, which, on the suggestion of Mrs. Whitman, he suppressed. The final verse thus suppressed read thus: —

He issued the prospectus of a paper he proposed publishing under the name of The Stylus; a monthly journal of literature proper, the fine arts, and the drama. Notwithstanding a long and cleverly-written prospectus, and the statement that it was “to be edited by Edgar A. Poe,” he could not muster the number of subscribers necessary to start with. In fact, his name now was on the wane, but why we are only left to conjecture, as Mr. Ingram does not make it plain. At all events the potency of his name had gone, and left him poor indeed. The reputation in which he was held at New York is indicated by the fact, that only sixty attended his lecture on “The Universe.” The lecture, from Mr. M. B. Field's statement, was not unsuccessful; it was “a rhapsody of the most intense brilliancy; his inspiration affected the scant audience almost painfully.”

His frequent intercourse with the beautiful young widow and poetess, Mrs. Whitman, inspired him with love for her. She was wholly unconscious of it, until in the summer of 1848 she received the poem “To Helen; I saw thee once — once only — years ago.” No signature was attached, but she knew the poet's handwriting well. The one heart knew each other without further particulars. They loved each other as only two poets love — too passionately — but not happily. They were betrothed in the autumn, notwithstanding the opposition of the lady's relatives. he following excerpts from a letter , written on October 18, that year, give one an idea of his private [column 2:] letters, and give an insight into his own self: —

These words have a sincere ring, and speak a very correct, crucial self-examination. The engagement between him and Mrs. Whitman was broken off, for what reason is not known. According to Griswold, Poe on the eve of what should have been the bridal morn, committed such drunken outrages at the house of his affianced bride, that the police had to be called to remove him, and so the engagement was broken. Immediately after the [page 347:] publication of that story, Mr. Pabodie, a mutual friend, wrote to the New York Tribune stating, “I am authorized to say, not only from my own personal knowledge, but also from the statements of ALL who were conversant with the affair, that there exists not a shadow of foundation for the story above alluded to.” An honest, truth-loving, and truth- seeking biographer would have corrected such a grave mis-statement, but Griswold, in a savage letter to Mr. Pabodie, threatened terrible things if his statements were not withdrawn! Mr, Pabodie, in reply, pointed out several other falsifications of Griswold, who remained “discreetly silent.” One of the best facts in favour of Poe is, that Mrs. Whitman has been through- out one of his stoutest defenders. The correct story remains to be told, but it is too much to expect that it will be given us while one of the parties is alive.

The worn-out, brain-wrought man now approached his closing days. He continued to write reviews, but devoted the greater part of his time to the last work of his genius, “ Eureka.” The quietness of Fordham continued to be his home. That secluded spot was his haven of rest. It was his quiet retreat from the busy street-world. He was

The poet, who held the great world at arm's length, now cast his eyes, which had lost their glowing fire, and were dimmed with sad experience, towards his secluded home. In his little Dutch cottage, in the midst of clumps of trees, hallowed with the dear memories of her who was his heart's idol, he sought that “blest [column 2:] retirement, friend to life's decline.” In the rural shades and pastures green, by degrees one's hold on the world falls asleep, as a child with a toy in his hand, which prepares the way for our last long sleep. Even the strong-limbed man, as he lies gripped in the pangs of death, struggles to make known his desire that he wishes to be buried in the churchyard of his native country parish. As the grassy fields and quiet waters keep our hearts green and fresh, so we seem to think our memory will be better cherished if we sleep under the grassy mounds of a secluded parish church.

On the 4th of October, 1849, when in Richmond, on a visit, he left to go home to bring his mother-in-law. Before leaving he complained of indisposition. He left the train at Baltimore, and the next time he was seen he was found some hours after insensible. How he had been taken ill is not known, but he died in the hospital, on the 7th, of inflammation of the brain. He was buried near the grave of his grandfather, but no stone marks the spot. When will an American Burns erect a stone to the memory of an American Ferguson?

We rejoice to know that the reports circulated regarding the cause of his death, and his last moments — he was insensible to the end — are absolute falsehoods.

Here ends our narrative; here the curtain falls. Such is the strange, wayward life, the sad death of one of the greatest of American authors. It is difficult to find in literature another who has been so much maligned. Has there lived one about whom so many untruths have been told? He has met

and has had his name paraded as a [page 348:] liar, a drunkard; and as having been unprincipled, and guilty of everything that was bad. Saddest of all, he was an author defamed by brother authors.

He died as he lived — alone. His career was a solitary one, without much sympathy from his fellow-beings. He stood alone, like a church, rich in architecture and noble in appearance, standing off the street of monotonous houses. Like a sovereign hoarded in a drawer, giving delight to the owner, which would give more if it were circulated, bartered by different people, and rattled among other gold. In this solitariness the man gained force of character, but his gain was overbalanced by his want of sympathy. Among those he lived, and to whom he was known, yet, paradoxical it may seem, he was entirely unknown. He was one of those strange creations that are only known by those to whom he was personally unknown. Of the sweets of friendship he probably had no knowledge, because he did not desire friends. His friends were those of his mind's creation, in them he most assuredly had his being. With man he had little sympathy in common, but with woman and his child-wife he had a close affinity. When his wife died the fire in the hearth flickered out, leaving the hearth cold and cheerless.

The successful manner in which Mr. Ingram has refuted the more serious charges against the poet, gains the approval of all admirers of honest biographies. The exceeding boldness of his undertaking, and his intense labour, are worthy of much commendation. He has scraped off the old plaster from the pillars, and we now see them in their original, true state. There are, however, thick blemishes remaining, which no man can smooth over. We deeply regret that he has [column 2:] not dipped deeper into the stream, and given us the undercurrent of Poe's life. The memoir, as a whole, is too much surface-work; the froth and dirt are taken off, but the liquid is almost left untouched. To many questions — for instance, how he influenced those around him, and the servants under him; his early literary life, its hopes and work; his domestic life; his inner life — we cannot get sufficient materials for answer. The only times we do get glimpses into his own personal life, is, when some charges are brought; to clear them up Mr. Ingram has to take us over new ground, and into the poet's habits. We should have liked to have been introduced to him as he usually lived, and not only when Mr. Ingram was driven to do so to refute serious accusations. In such circumstances one is apt to arrive at inferences which, if the memoir had been fuller, would have been groundless. It treats less of the inner, and more of the outer, man than we care for.

That Poe had failings is undoubted, and beyond dispute, but they have been exaggerated to a very great extent. The poisoned tongue of falsehood has licked the flesh from the fair form, leaving a hideous skeleton. Mr. Frederick Martin's life of John Clare bears a striking contrast to this memoir. In reading that beautifully written life of the poor peasant English poet, who was probably as great, if not a greater erring brother, we feel throughout that the living man is before us on the canvas; we live with him; we seem to have become one of his personal acquaintances; all his weaknesses and frivolities are faithfully set before us, and not apologized for. But a good deal of Poe's life is still buried to us; some one will, we hope, rescue the full-grown statue from the heap of rubbish under which it is presently buried. Why [page 349:] is no evidence got from Professors Authon, Hawks, and Henry to testify to the poet's’conduct while engaged on the New York Quarterly Review? What was the enmity “long, intense, and implacable,” that existed between Griswold and the poet? It would almost seem necessary to prove the latter before we can understand why Griswold should have falsified the life of the poet. Griswold deserves to be placed in the literary pillory, as a warning to deter others from tampering with truth. There are some points about which we would like to get more extensive information than that given; but probably from the mist which Poe flung over his life, it has been nearly impossible to gather trustworthy evidence. Although this memoir is a most satisfactory defence of the more serious charges, it does not attempt to give us a full-length portrait of the man.

Poe's personal appearance was very striking. His appearance to any stranger distinguished him as a man of work. His features were regular, his forehead, as may be easily seen from his portraits, finely proportioned, broad, high, clear, and beautifully balanced. It has been said he was one of the best realizations of a poet in feature, air, and manner. There was always about him a hauteur, combined with a calmness and earnestness, that impressed all, The man carried the electric feeling of genius wherever he went, and no one met him but was cognisant of the power. There was little or no demonstration of feelings with him; he was always quiet, pensive, and calm. “He was,” says an author who knew him well, “a gentleman upon all occasions that I ever saw him; so tasteful, so good a talker was Poe, that he impressed himself and his wishes, even without words, upon those with whom he spoke.” The [column 2:] weird-melancholy which distinguishes his works was seldom met with in his company. None are so loud in his praise as Mrs. Whitman, to whom he was engaged to be married. Mrs. Osgood, a fine American poetess, has thus spoken of him: “I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and delicately-nurtured woman there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, graceful, and almost tender reverence with which he invariably approached all women who won his respect.” His voice was very quiet and melodious, and, even in a loud discussion, peace had to reign that he might be heard. Mr. Graham has told us that he was the soul of honour in his transactions, and kept his accounts as accurately as a banker. Do not all these facts go to prove that he was a gentleman, and that he possessed a soul wherein nothing vile, mean, or despicable could grow? Do they not show that his slight excesses arose from circumstances, and not from character?

It is probably useless to refer te the charges of envy brought against him. It was false to say he considered society as composed altogether of villains. That his strange career should not have left some dregs in the cup would have been wonderful. Most men will understand the feelings of a cultured, experienced author, as he wanders in his full manhood from publisher to publisher with his beautifully-written manuscript, finding no market for the wares of his brain, while his beloved ones are suffering not only from disease, but from gaunt hunger. He knows, too, that his writings are infinitely superior to those that are accepted and printed. The greatest misery that can afflict one possessed of the power and the will to work, is to [page 350:] be in the straits of poverty, while no man will hire his services. Consider, then, the finely-strung sensitiveness of the poet's nature. Is it any crime for a hungering man to envy his well-to-do brother? His nature certainly was not round and genial, but it is easily seen many misconstrued hauteur into envy.

Enemies magnify a speck into a thunder cloud. What one man may do without much injuring his reputation, another cannot do without being heralded as a criminal of the direst hue, over the breadth of the country. It is a proverb, that while one man may steal a horse another can’t look over the hedge. Many literary men have committed greater indiscretions than Poe without being heard of to the same extent. The failings of Robert Burns at the festive board to the infirmities; the forgeries of Chatterton; the excesses of Charles Lamb; the errors of Goethe; the riotous life of Byron; the debaucheries of John Clare; the immorality of Shelley; the weakness of Thos. De Quincey; have been more leniently dealt with than the smaller errors of Edgar Poe. The world has accepted the works of their genius as compensation, and it will do the same in the case of Poe, now that his tree life is known. Some of these we have mentioned injured not only themselves severely, but their children, their wives, their friends, Poe hurt no one but himself; and it has been justly said, no one has suffered so severely in character in consequence. The man has been looked upon as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades.* The feelings which we experience on reading these fierce criticisms on the false life by Griswold, is like those with which we listen to the summings [column 2:] up of a judge on a case, which, unknown to him, has been trumped up on forged certificates, and perjured witnesses.

He was a fond admirer of romance, and his life was influenced with her touch. He was a dreamer. He had no tangible ideas of his life; his character wanted firmness, resolution, perseverance. An American born, he yet possessed the Celtic flushed-veins of restlessness. Born a genius, he was an intense lover of intellect; his mind was to him a world, a country wherein he could travel, and yet never exhaust its vast riches. The world was a huge library to him, a place for study, brain work, certainly not a place to make money in. He looked at everything from the standing-point of intellect, and could no more help doing so than most people can avoid looking on the world as a place to acquire wealth, honour, power, position. He lived for literature, but it would be satire to say he lived by literature; from early youth he had to depend on the creations of his brain for the maintenance of himself and family, and insufficient his earnings were to do so in any degree of comfort. “Literature with him,” says Mr. Graham above mentioned, “was religion; and he, its high priest, with a whip of scorpions scourged the money changers from the temple.” In all else he had the docility and kind-heartedness of a child. No man was more quickly touched by a kindness, none more prompt to atone for an injury. His mind was his greatest companion; the thoughts of his brain were dearer to him than the friendships of life. The world to him was a place to think, and to write in, not for working. An idle or an idle dreamer he assuredly was not, yet his life is [page 351:] devoid of much manhood. The love which he had for his girlish wife was noble, pure, and great, but it may be thought his love would have exhibited itself in greater nobility had he provided her with a well furnished home, and clothed her bed in her lingering illness with warm blankets.

Why could he not work and thrive? It was almost impossible for a literary man in his lifetime to live by literature in America. Earning a livelihood by the pen is always very precarious. As the aspirants increase the ranks, there is a tendency to cheapen literary work; and if a man had then alone to depend on his writings for his livelihood, he was to be pitied. It is, no doubt, true that other men lived on the means Poe received; but it is also true Burns could not keep himself on his excise officer's pay any more than John Clare could do on the wages he earned, augmented, as they were, by an annuity. Poets never can properly estimate the value of money until they want it. Poe's writings only appealed to the educated mind, and the channels through which he could do so were few. His tales were not so very popular, nor were his poems so much read, as to induce a publisher to remunerate him more than ordinary writers. Poe did not possess the self-restraint and self-will that a man who lives by literature requires. Could he but have obtained some such appointment as John Stuart Mill's, that he might [column 2:] not have entirely depended on literature, he might have been living yet, and his pen might have done more valuable work. But, alas! the career of any one cannot be chalked out in one's study, and it is easy to be wise after the man is dead; there's something — call it what we will — that overrules every ones career, “rough hew it how we may.”

Any living cur can bark or snarl at a dead lion. The tide has now turned in his favour; the light at last breaks through the darkness of night, which for a long period has reigned over this great American genius. The everlasting truth is now told, and the terrible falsehoods which have hung over the portals of this sanctuary of his memory are now swept away. There are probably no elements of greatness about him; a hero he was not, in Mr. Carlyle's sense. Yet to all lovers of true, honest biography, there is an indescribable feeling of love and sympathy in one's heart towards the much injured, but gentlemanly, Edgar Allan Poe. He was one of the greatest worshippers of the beautiful that has lived in the present century. He was one of those who sought in vain the greatest Eldorado of human happiness, whose life was one endless toil and endeavour, but —

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 338:]

* “The Works of Edgar Allan Poe,” edited by John H. Ingram. Vol. I. Memoir — Tales. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. 1874.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 341:]

* Memoir, p. 28.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 350:]

* See the Edinburgh Review, No. 208, 1858; and the North American Review, vol. 83, 1856.