[page 62:]

CHAPTER IV.
 
AT THE SOUTH.

POE determined to settle at Baltimore, probably because he had a grateful remembrance of the kindness of his relatives there during his visits two years before, and because he had no prospects else where nor money to seek them. He at once asked employment of his former acquaintance, William Gwynn, the editor, who apparently had some cause to distrust him, and it is noticeable that the form of his application shows that he still kept ostensibly on some terms with Mr. Allan: —

And if further proof be needed (for the facts have been denied), it is furnished by a letter of Poe's years afterwards, in which he says, “Mr. Kennedy has been, at all times, a true friend to me — he was the first true friend I ever had — I am indebted to him for life itself.”(2) Poe also made the acquaintance of Dr. Miller, with whom he after wards had some correspondence, and of Mr. Latrobe, who describes(3) him as below the middle stature, erect in carriage, self-possessed in manner, and grave in countenance until he became animated in conversation, when his face lighted up and his manner became demonstrative. [page 68:]

For the following six months Poe employed his time in contributing to the “Saturday Visiter,” of which no file is now known, and upon such hack work as Mr. Kennedy could procure for him, none of which has been traced; but he attracted no further public notice. He lived from the sum mer of 1833, at least, if not earlier, in a very retired way with his father's widowed sister, Mrs. Clemm, who, with her single surviving child, Virginia, seems to have settled in Baltimore in the spring, after a long absence from the city; and whatever he earned went into the small common stock of the family. Mr. Wilmer, the editor of the “Saturday Visiter,” was a constant companion. Nearly every day they walked out together in the suburbs, and sometimes took Virginia, a child of eleven, with them. Poe was then neatly, though inexpensively, clad (Hewitt, his successful rival, says he wore “Byron collars and a black stock, and looked the poet all over”), and in his features there was a delicacy which was perhaps the pallor of his Southern complexion; his companion, who was of a coarse fibre, mistook his refinement for effeminacy, but perceived that he was possessed of quick sympathies and an affectionate disposition. During an unbroken intimacy of some months, Wilmer saw no sign of bad habits in his friend, except on one occasion when Poe's et out some Jamaica rum at his lodgings and drank moderately with his guest; and on another when Mrs. Clemm [page 69:] scolded the young man for coming home intoxicated the night before from a tavern supper, but as if it were a rare occurrence. These recollections,(1) however, cover only a comparatively short period. Wilmer was soon crowded out of his editorship by Hewitt, and left Baltimore on foot and in want, to follow journalism in other quarters. A cousin, Miss Herring, on whom Poe used to call, says he would write poems in her album and read to her; but his attentions were discouraged by her father on account both of the relationship and of Poe's use of liquor. These visits began as early as 1831, and continued until her marriage in 1834. It would appear, too, from her account that he went at times to Philadelphia and other places.(2)

On March 27, 1834, Mr. Allan died of the dropsy. Shortly before this event Poe called at his house, and being told by Mrs. Allan, who did not recognize him, that the physicians had forbidden her husband to see any one he thrust her aside and walked rapidly to Mr. Allan's chamber; on his entrance Mr. Allan raised the cane which he used to walk with, and, threatening to strike him if he came within his reach, ordered him out, a command that Poe at once obeyed.(3) This was the so-called [page 70:] violent scene in which the two parted. Mr. Allan left three children; his will cut off any lingering hopes of inheritance Poe may have indulged in, and threw him irretrievably on his own resources. About this time he gathered his tales together and sent them to a Philadelphia house. He probably employed the summer upon the tragedy “Politian,” and the autumn upon “Hans Pfaall.” He also projected a new literary magazine, to be edited at Baltimore by himself and Wilmer, to whom he sent a prospectus;(1) and after the new year opened, upon Kennedy's recommendation, he sent some tales to the “Southern Literary Messenger,” still in the first struggles of its existence. Mr. T. W. White, the editor, was attracted by his new contributor's talents, and in March published one of the stories, “Berenice,” with a very flattering notice; at the same time he addressed a letter of inquiry to Mr. Kennedy, which elicited the following response: —

“BALTIMORE, April 13, 1835.

“DEAR SIR: Poe did right in referring to me. He is very clever with his pen — classical and scholar-like. He wants experience and direction, but I have no doubt he can be made very useful to you. And, poor fellow! he is very poor. I told him to write something for every number of your magazine, and that you might find it to your advantage to give him some permanent [page 71:] employ. He has a volume of very bizarre tales in the hands of ——, in Philadelphia, who for a year past has been promising to publish them. This young fellow is highly imaginative, and a little given to the terrific. He is at work upon a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudging upon whatever may make money, and I have no doubt you and he will find your account in each other.”(1)

“Berenice” was followed in successive numbers by other tales and some criticism. On the 30th of May he wrote to Mr. White, thanking him for his kindness: —

“In regard to my critique of Mr. Kennedy's novel I seriously feel ashamed of what I have written. I fully intended to give the work a thorough review, and examine it in detail. Ill health alone prevented me from doing so. At the time I made the hasty sketch I sent you, I was so ill as to be hardly able to see the paper on which I wrote, and I finished it in a state of complete exhaustion. I have not, therefore, done anything like justice to the book, and I am vexed about the matter, for Mr. Kennedy has proved himself a kind friend to me in every respect, and I am sincerely grateful to him for many acts of generosity and attention. You ask me if I am perfectly satisfied with your course. I reply that I am — entirely. My poor services are not worth what you give me for them.”(1)

A month later, in reply to some advances made by Mr. White, he again wrote: — [page 72:]

“You ask me if I would be willing to come on to Rich mond if you should have occasion for my services during the coming winter. I reply that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I have been desirous for some time past of paying a visit to Richmond, and would be glad of any reasonable excuse for so doing. Indeed I am anxious to settle myself in that city, and if, by any chance, you hear of a situation likely to suit me, I would gladly accept it, were the salary even the merest trifle. I should, indeed, feel myself greatly indebted to you if through your means I could accomplish this object. What you say in the conclusion of your letter, in relation to the supervision of proof-sheets, gives me reason to hope that possibly you might find something for me to do in your office. If so, I should be very glad — for at present only a very small portion of my time is employed.”(1)

In the first of these letters is the earliest mention of ill-health in Poe; but from this time he frequently complains of nervous exhaustion, which can be ascribed only to the reaction of drugs and stimulants on a weakened system. Neither at college, nor in the army, nor at West Point, is there any proof that he showed any dangerous or even injurious taste for liquor; the evidence goes rather to indicate that he was free from the vice of intoxication. Now, however, when he emerges from his obscurity, he seems to have already fixed upon him self the habits of indulgence, which, although less strong in their hold and less violent in their effects [page 73:] than they afterwards became, were gradually accustoming him to surrender at longer or shorter intervals to a temptation which, once yielded to, rendered him irrational and irresponsible for days, and left him prostrated. At some time between his abandonment by Mr. Allan and his literary adoption by Mr. Kennedy, the weakest spot in his nature had been found, During this period Poe was very poor; he was solitary, proud, and despairing. That a nervous system extraordinarily sensitive should have been permanently weakened by such bodily privation and mental strain is not unlikely; that a youth of twenty three or four years, possibly with an hereditary taint in his blood, should indulge in such a vice admits no wonder; and that under the circumstances his frame retained an unusual susceptibility to such influences, even after better days had come, offers nothing strange to ordinary experience. His excesses, however, seem to have been infrequent, and he was now trying to overcome his temptation. In Mr. Kennedy, to whom he apparently confided all his troubles, he had a kind and invigorating friend, and in Mrs. Clemm he had found more motherhood and in her daughter more tender affection than he had ever known. He had no choice but to go to Richmond, but he seems to have felt that separation from these friends would cast him back into that state of loneliness and despondency out of which they had helped him to rise. Virginia was greatly attached to him, and Mrs. [page 74:] Clemm had no one else to look to for support. Under the circumstances it was not so unnatural as it was unwise that, before leaving for Richmond, Poe proposed to keep the family united by marrying his cousin, and the engagement was approved by her mother.

In midsummer, with this understanding, Poe left Baltimore apparently without regret, for he owed little gratitude to that city, nor did he ever return to it to live, although there he was destined to die and be buried. He went directly to Richmond, to the home and associates of his childhood; nor did he doubt that, in spite of the changes in his lot, life there would be pleasant to him; he may have thought that his literary position would compensate for his loss of social pretension and the considera tion that attaches to wealth, or even that his old acquaintance would be advantageous to him. How ever this turned out, he entered at once on his duties as an assistant, although he was not nominally an editor until November, at a salary of ten dollars a week. It was not high pay, but the position he held was a good opening and well adapted to his talents. He had on hand nine tales besides those which had already been published (“A MS. Found in a Bottle,” “Berenice,” “Morella,” “Lionizing,” “Hans Pfaall,” “The Visionary,” and “Bon-Bon”), and he expected to print the whole sixteen in the fall at Philadelphia. He had been highly praised by Paulding, Tucker, Kennedy, and others who were [page 75:] the literary autocrats of their day. The Southern press welcomed him loudly. His fortunes, however regarded, were in bright contrast to his immediate past; but not long after his arrival all this was made as naught, because an obstruction arose in the course of true love.

The engagement between Edgar and his cousin Virginia had come to the ears of his relative, Neilson Poe, who, himself a third cousin to both, had recently married her half-sister, also his third cousin; and, led by his wife, who thought Virginia too young to marry (as indeed she was, having been born August 15, 1822,(1) and consequently hardly turned of thirteen years), he offered to take her into his family and care for her until she should be eighteen, when, if she desired to marry Edgar, she would be free to do so. The communication of this news to Poe had an extraordinary effect upon him, and seems to have cast him into the deepest dejection. He wrote to Mrs. Clemm, August 29, imploring her not to consent to separate him from Virginia, and appealing to her pity for himself in such terms that his sincerity cannot be questioned. Some days later, evidently under the same influence, he wrote to Mr. Kennedy as follows: —

To this painful letter, exhibiting an unmanned spirit, Mr. Kennedy replied: —

Probably before receiving this letter Poe left Richmond and arrived at Baltimore to plead his suit in person, since on September 22 he took out a license in that city for the marriage.(3) It has been said, on the authority of Mrs. Clemm's conversation taken down in short-hand, that the ceremony was performed by the Rev. John Johns, at Old Christ Church, and that the next day Poe returned to his duties.(4) If this was actually the case [page 78:] the matter was kept very private. There is now no complete legal proof of the marriage; but this is not conclusive against its having taken place, as the marriage records of Old Christ Church were badly kept and are very defective. It is certain, however, that Poe so far succeeded in his entreaties that the proposal of Neilson Poe was rejected, and Mrs. Clemm and her daughter removed to Richmond within a few weeks, where the three continued to live together. There they planned to start a boarding-house, and with this in view Poe's ent the following letter to George Poe in Alabama: —

George Poe's ent the money, but the history of the plan belongs to a later period. [page 80:]

From the first Poe had entered upon his work with vigor, and he soon took entire charge of the magazine. Besides fulfilling the manifold and distracting duties incident to mere editorship he contributed tales, poems, and reviews, signed and unsigned, as well as compendious articles, which al though unclaimed are clearly from his hand. A considerable portion of this matter had been writ ten before he came to Richmond, but the entire mass is so large as to prove that he was a not less diligent than facile author. Much of his work was of slight importance then, and now posterity is interested in little more of it than a few poems and the seven new tales, “Loss of Breath,” “King Pest,” “Shadow,” “Metzengerstein,” “Duc de L'Omelette,” “Epimanes,” and “A Tale of Jerusalem,” which he added to the seven already issued.

These fourteen, presumably all but two of the “Tales of the Folio Club,” which the Philadelphia house had so long held under consideration, stand in a group by themselves as the first fruits of Poe's genius. In conception and execution they afford types of his later works in both the arabesque and grotesque manner, as he afterwards happily named the two extremes of his style, and without requiring too close a scrutiny they illustrate the development of his mind and art. Only five of them are purely imaginative, and of these “Berenice” is the most varied and comprehensive; in it Poe's hero first comes upon the stage, a man struck with some [page 81:] secret disease, given to the use of drugs and to f: musing over old books in an antiquated and gloomy I chamber, and reserved for a horrible experience. In it, too, are such themes of evil fascination for his mind as the epileptic patient and the premature burial; such marks of his handling as the cousin-ship of the principal actors, the description of morbid physical changes, the minute analysis of sensations, the half-superstitious reference to metempsychosis, and the vivid analysis of the effects of drugs; and such traits of literary style as the absence of conversation, the theatrically elaborated scene of the action, the speed of the narrative with its sudden and yet carefully prepared catastrophe. “Berenice” reveals a mind at once analytical and constructive, in which the imagination is the dominant faculty and a taste for sensuous effects, melodramatic incidents, and fantastic suggestions is the most shaping influence. Defective as the tale is in refinement — Poe never but once indulged again in a dénoumént of such mere physical horror — it exhibits, in however crude a form, the capacity to conceive startling imaginative effects and to select the right means to bring them about directly, forcibly, and without observation; in a word, artistic power. In the Venetian story of “The Visionary,” now known as “The Assignation,” there is more of splendid coloring, of the purely spectacular and decorative element; in the Hungarian myth of “Metzengerstein” there is a more violent and raw [page 82:] superstition; in “Morella” — the history of the revolting victory of that aspiring will, by which the dying mother's spirit, passing into her new-born babe, retained in that childish frame the full intelligence and ripe passions of womanhood — there is a solemn and breathless dread beneath the coming of a vague but sure terror: and these several traits individualize the three tales, but in none of them is there the finely wrought complexity of “Berenice.” All yield, however, in comparison with the fifth and last of the early arabesque series, the parable called “Shadow,” which, within its narrow limits of a page or two, is at once the most noble and most artistic expression of Poe's imagination during the first period of his career, and furthermore is alone distinguished by the even flow and delicacy of transition that belong to his best prose style. The elements in this rhapsody of gloom are simple and massive, the accessories in perfect keeping; the fine monotone of stifled and expectant emotion in the breasts of the Greek revelers in the lighted, sepulchral, plague-isolated hall is just sustained at its initial pitch until the one thrilling, solitary change arises in the emergence of the shadow from the black draperies of the chamber, and its motionless relief under the gloom of the seven iron lamps, against the burnished, brazen door, opposite to the feet of the young and shrouded Zoilus — as it were the semblance of a man, but “the shadow neither of man, nor of God, nor of [page 83:] any familiar thing,” — the vague, formless One that was not indifferent to the low-voiced question of Oinos, but spoke and told its dwelling-place and its appellation; “and then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.”

Perhaps the “MS. Found in a Bottle,” reprinted as from Miss Eliza Leslie's annual, “The Gift,” full as it is of fantasy and magnificent scenic effects of ocean views, should be placed among the tales of pure imagination; it stands slightly apart from them only because it has some relationship with those stories, partly of adventure, partly of science, which Poe built rather out of his acquired knowledge than his dreams. Of this class “Hans Pfaall,” the narrative of a voyage to the moon, is the first complete type. The idea of such a passage from the earth to its nearest neighbor in space was not novel, nor was the astronomical information involved by any means abstruse, being furnished in fact by Herschel's popular treatise, then first published in America; but Poe claimed that the design of making a fiction plausible by the use of scientific facts and principles was original, and he certainly worked it out with great patience and skill, and even [page 84:] a high degree of scientific consistency. It is not without obligation to an obscure deus ex machina, a providence unknown to physics, which overruled the balloonist's fate; but, with all its whimsicalities, it exhibits for the first time the keenness and lucidity of Poe's intelligence as distinguished from his imagination, and proves that he then possessed a considerable power of applied thought. It is noteworthy, too, as the earliest of those attempts to gull the public, for which he afterwards became notorious. At the time it was less successful in this respect than the celebrated “Moon-Hoax” of Mr. Locke, published a few weeks later in the “New York Sun,” which made fools of many highly intelligent citizens and caused Poe some chagrin, as he showed in his later comments upon it, because so many more people were taken in by it than by “Hans Pfaall,” while he had put himself to so much more pains than Mr. Locke to seem truthful; certainly if verisimilitude were the gauge of the crowd's folly in credulity, he deserved better luck than his rival.

The remainder of the tales Poe would have called grotesque. Unfortunately he was not so plentifully gifted with humor as with either imagination or intelligence, and consequently his fame would suffer less by the omission than by the retention of these lucubrations. Some of them are the merest extravaganzas, such as the “Duc de L‘Omelette,” in which the devil poses as a gambler who can lose, or [page 85:] “Bon-Bon,” in which he plays his part as a cannibal of human souls. Some are satirical, and among them is to be reckoned one of his weakest productions, “Loss of Breath, A Tale à la Blackwood,” which in its first form, with its expanded narrative of the hanging and the burial alive, was more perceptibly aimed at the inane jargon (as it was then thought) of German metaphysics. In all of them, too, Poe is less original than in his other tales; he shows more plainly the traces of his reading. “King Pest” is very closely modeled on Vivian Grey's adventure in the castle of the Grand Duke of Johannisberger (the cabinet of the Prince of Little Lilliput in the same novel contains the double of the Saracen's horse in Metzengerstein's tapestry); and “Lionizing,” a sketch which was repeatedly and elaborately corrected in later years, apart from its Shandean touch, copies in style and conception “Too Beautiful for Anything” in Bulwer's “The Ambitious Student in Ill Health, and other Papers,” apparently a favorite book of Poe's. “Epimanes” and “A Tale of Jerusalem,” the flattest of the series, need hardly be mentioned. The humor in all, where it exists in any degree, is too hollow, too mocking and sardonic, to be agree able; there is no laughter in it. The fact is that just as Poe desired to be considered precocious he had also the weakness of wishing to be thought a universal genius. The grotesque tales are the spectral progeny of this illusion. [page 86:]

But it was as a critic, not as an imaginative or humorous author, that Poe made the editorial hit that placed the new Southern monthly at once be side the “Knickerbocker” and the “New Englander” as a national magazine. While at Baltimore he had contributed a few perfunctory book notices, but only when he was publicly known as editor did he, to use the expression of a contemporary, “fall in with his broad-axe.” Late in the fall of 1835 there appeared the loudly-announced, much-bepuffed “Norman Leslie,” one of the popular novels of its day; it was ambitious, crude, and foolish, but its pretentiousness seems the particular quality which led Poe to single it out for an example. In the issue for December, therefore, he subjected it to such scrutiny as had never been known in our country before, and he did his task so trenchantly and convincingly, with such spirit and effect, that the public were widely interested; they bought, read, and looked for more. The Southern press with one voice cried on havoc; they were only too glad to find in their own country a youth with the boldness to rouse and the skill to worry Knickerbocker game, for the young author, Theodore S. Fay, was a pet of the metropolitan litterateurs and an associate editor of the “New York Mirror,” then the best literary weekly of the country. Even if Poe had not been applauded to the echo, he was not of a nature to hesitate in following up a predetermined line of policy; but he [page 87:] soon found a stand making against him. There was some show at first of closing the New York columns, with gentleman-like contempt, to any remonstrance against the insult; but at length the “Mirror,” after several insidious attacks, made one openly, to wit: —

“[[rhand]] Those who have read the notices of American books in a certain southern monthly which is striving to gain notoriety by the loudness of its abuse, may find amusement in the sketch, in another page, entitled The Successful Novel. The Southern Literary Messenger knows [[rhand]] by experience [[lhand]] what it is to write a successless novel. [[lhand]]“(1)

The sketch referred to was a clever squib in the style of Poe's “Lionizing,” and while satirizing his attention to the minutiae of style and his readi ness to cry plagiarism somewhat in a jackdaw manner, as if the word were his whole stock in trade, insinuated further that the Harpers had rejected Poe's longer, as the “Mirror” itself had his shorter, effusions. In this charge there was little, if any, truth; and to the point Poe replied with a flat denial: he “never in his life wrote or published, or attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless,”(2) — a statement which must be under stood as relegating into nonentity the alleged early work of Poe, “An Artist at Home and Abroad.” [page 88:] This trivial incident drew from Poe a statement of the spirit in which he believed himself to be under taking the reform of criticism, and the grounds of his action: —

These views were by no means novel or unshared. The periodical press was frequently weighted or padded with essays, reports of lectures, or editorial remarks, endeavoring to explain the feebleness of American criticism, and deprecating it. A writer in the “Knickerbocker” itself ascribes many causes, not confined, perhaps, to that period, such as the interests of publishers, the social relations of editors, the wish to encourage the young, the fear of being esteemed unpatriotic, and the like. What distinguished Poe was the audacity with which he took the unenvied post, and the vigor with which he struck. Undoubtedly his worldly fortunes were affected by the enmities he thus made. The New Yorkers never forgave him. Colonel Stone, of the “Commercial Advertiser,” and W. Gaylord Clarke, of the “Philadelphia Gazette,” denounced him, and in the house of his friends the “Newbern Spectator” was an envious foe. But the presumptuous young critic did not therefore withdraw his hand; and though at a time when Gifford and Wilson handed down the traditions of critical style he did not write with the urbanity that now obtains, though he was not choice in his phrase nor delicate in his ridicule, all of his adverse decisions but one (that on “Sartor Resartus”) have been [page 90:] sustained. Moreover, the severity, what is called the venom and heartlessness, of these critiques has been much exaggerated; there were in all but four like that upon “Norman Leslie,” and these were milder than the first, a fact very creditable to Poe when one recollects how loudly he was urged “to hang, draw, and Quarterly,” and how aptly such a literary temper fell in with the proud self-confidence of his nature. His end was justice, if his manner was not courtesy.

In fact, his reputation as a critic would now suffer rather for the mercy he showed than for the vengeance he took. With what hesitancy he suggests that Mrs. Sigourney might profitably forget Mrs. Hemans; with what consideration he hints a fault in Mrs. Ellet, or just notices a blemish in Miss Gould; with what respect he treats Mellen and Gallagher! And if he asserts that Drake had an analogical rather than a creative mind, and insinuates that Halleck's laurel was touched with an artificial green, — these were the names that a lesser man would have let pass unchallenged. The whole mass of this criticism — but a small portion of which deals with imaginative work — is particularly characterized by a minuteness of treatment which springs from a keen, artistic sensibility, and by that constant regard to the originality of the writer which is so frequently an element in the jealousy of genius. One wearies in reading it now; but one gains thereby the better impression [page 91:] of Poe's patience and of the alertness and compass of his mental curiosity. Here and there, too, one sees signs of his growth, as when he praises with enthusiasm Godwin and Coleridge, Bulwer, Disraeli, and Scott; or one finds the marks of his peculiar individuality, the early bent of his mind, as when he mentions the love of analytical beauty in this author, and whispers to the next the secret of verisimilitude by obscuring the improbability of the general in the naturalness and accuracy of the particular. In especial some progress is made in his poetic theory, but this must be treated by it self.

He had reprinted without a signature his “Letter to B——” from the 1831 edition of his poems, with the editorial remark that “of course we shall not be called upon to indorse all the writer's opinions.” To the somewhat bald conclusions there advanced, that poetry should aim at pleasure, and be brief, indefinite, and musical, he now had some thing to add in a peculiar dialect of German meta physics and phrenology, then the fashion. The most significant passage is one in which, after identifying “the Faculty of Ideality” with the “Sentiment of Poesy,” he goes on as follows: —

Poe's meaning may not be entirely plain at first sight, built up as it is out of obscure Coleridgian elements, which he derived mainly from the “Biographia Literaria.” In the plainest words, Poe conceived that beauty, whether natural or imaginary, whether springing from the creative act of God or the creative thought of man, affects the mind as a glimpse of the infinite, and thus excites instantaneous pleasure, and furthermore, by intimating a fuller delight beyond, stimulates men to endeavor to penetrate deeper into the mystery that encompasses [page 93:] them. Beauty is thus a revelation of infinite truth, seized only by the imagination. Poetry consequently, according to Poe's view at this time, makes its highest appeal to the intellect instead of the passions, and requires imagination rather than sympathetic power in both its makers and its readers.

The remainder of his proposition amounts only to saying that one who is able to analyze the elements which give rise to his own experience of the vision that poetry brings, and thus to discern how such moods are caused, can by forethought so select and combine these elements as to arouse the same state in others, whereas one who is merely susceptible to such experience might not be capable of reproducing it with certainty: the latter has the poetic temperament, the former has in addition the analytical power which is necessary to art; one is the creature, the other the master, of his inspiration. All this, which means that “The Ancient Mariner” had been written by Coleridge, is a good illustration of the rationalizing by which Poe was accustomed to feed his own vanity indirectly. Did he not possess “analytical power“? Was he not distinguished by “metaphysical acumen“? And through all, too, most noticeable is his constant parroting of Coleridge, who was, taken all in all, the guiding genius of Poe's entire intellectual life.

Of more consequence than either Poe's mysticism [page 94:] or his metaphysical acumen, however, was the lesson he learned from Schlegel, and now adduced in support of his pet canon, that poems should be brief. “In pieces of less extent,” he writes, “the pleasure is unique in the proper acceptation of that term the understanding is employed, without difficulty, in the contemplation of the picture as a whole — and thus its effect will depend, in a very great degree, upon the perfection of its finish, upon the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially upon what is rightly termed by Schlegel, the unity or totality of interest.”(1) This is the first expression of Poe's intellectual sense of poetic form, the quality in which his early verse was most defective and his latest most eminent.

The new poems which were published in the “Messenger,” out of his compositions since 1831, were the five scenes from that academical drama, “Politian,” the “Hymn” in “Morella,” “To Mary,” “To ——” in “The Visionary,” “To Eliza,” “To Zante,” and the “Bridal Ballad.”(2) These offer no occasion for remark in this place, except that the latter contained the following stanza, which, perhaps [page 95:] marks the nadir of Poe's descent into the prosaic, tasteless, and absurd: —

It is hardly necessary to add that the maturer judgment of the poet canceled these lines, nor would it be useful to revive their memory were it not to give, by a striking example, an impression once for all of the real worthlessness of much of Poe's early work. Of his old poems he reprinted in the “Messenger,” in forms more or less revised, “Irene,” “A Pæan,” “The Valley Nis,” “To Helen,” “To Science,” “Israfel,” “The City of Sin,” from the New York volume, and “The Coliseum,” a fragment of “Politian,” from the Baltimore “Saturday Visiter.”

The paucity of Poe's poetic productions while editing the “Messenger” may be laid partly to his lack of leisure. Indeed, he never wrote poetry except in seasons of solitary musing. Now he was largely employed in the correspondence and routine business of the office, or in simply furnishing copy, or attracting public interest by attention to the topics of the hour. The most noted article of this transitory nature was that in which he demonstrated that Maelzel's Chess Player must be operated by human agency, and solved the methods [page 96:] used. The paper was well reasoned, and shows that its author had a quick and observant eye, but it has been vastly overrated, as any one may convince himself by comparing it minutely with Sir David Brewster's “Letters on Natural Magic,” to which it stands confessedly obliged, and from which it is partly paraphrased. Another article, “Pinakidia,” being selections from Poe's commonplace book, is worth a moment's detention for the light it incidentally throws on his habits as a scholar. In prefacing the clippings (which by an obvious but very unfortunate misprint, never as yet corrected in any edition of his works, are declared to be original instead of not original), he says that in foreign magazines extracts of this sort are usually taken “by wholesale from such works as the Bibliotheque des Memorabilia Literaria, the Recueil des Bon (sic) Pensées, the ‘Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses,’ the ‘Literary Memoirs’ of Sallengré, the ‘Mélanges Litéraires’ of Suard and André, or the ‘Pieces Intéressantes et Pen Connues’ of La Place.”(1) These titles must have been taken down at hap-hazard, for a thorough search of bibliographies fails to reveal the existence of the first two, and the others, apart from their bad French, are incorrectly given. The earmark in this masquerade of borrowed learning is seen in the “Mélanges Litéraires of Suard and André,” — a title evidently noted from the recent translation of [page 97:] “Schlegel's Lectures on the Drama” (which furnished some extracts to the body of the article), for there alone it occurs, the translator having erred in rendering “Suard und Andre” (andere), that is, Suard and others; Poe innocently followed him, and so tripped. The satirical young editor goes on to say that “Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, Literary Character, and Calamities of Authors have of late years proved exceedingly convenient to some little American pilferers in this line, but are now becoming too generally known;” and forth with he takes from this same convenient repertory several fine bits, including nearly all the alleged plagiarisms of the poets.(1) Similar examples of the disingenuousness of Poe, the flimsiness of his pretended scholarship, and his readiness to appropriate from others by easy paraphrase occur throughout his career.

In Poe's private life during the eighteen months of his residence at Richmond the principal event was his public marriage to his cousin. On May 16, [page 98:] 1836, having secured one Thomas W. Cleland as his surety, he gave a marriage bond as the law required; and Cleland was further obliging enough to take oath before the deputy clerk, Charles Howard, “that Virginia E. Clemm is of the full age of twenty-one years, and a resident of the said city.”(1) The ceremony was performed on the evening of the same day at the boarding-house of the family, by the Rev. Amasa Converse, a Presbyterian minis ter, then editor of the “Southern Religious Tele graph.”(2) Mrs. Clemm, whom the minister remembered as “being polished, dignified, and agreeable in her bearing,” was present, and gave her consent freely; the bride, too, had a pleasing manner, but seemed to him very young.(3) Virginia was in fact slightly under fourteen. Poe was twenty-seven.

At this time it was expected that Mrs. Clemm, who had not abandoned her plan of starting a boarding-house, would rent a house recently purchased by Mr. White, and would board himself and family as well as the newly-married pair. The arrangement had been made, and Poe had expended all his money and incurred a debt of two hundred dollars in buying furniture before it was discovered that the house was barely large enough for one family, and the scheme was abandoned. In his [page 99:] consequent financial embarrassment, Poe wrote to Kennedy on June 7, and asked a loan of one hundred dollars for six months in order to meet a note for the same amount due in three months (perhaps the money advanced by George Poe in February), which he declared was his only debt. His salary, he said, was fifteen dollars a week, and after November was to be twenty; and added, “Our Messenger is thriving beyond all expectation, and I myself have every prospect of success.“(1) Kennedy probably acceded to this request; but however that was, the little family took up their abode together, and were temporarily, at least, well provided for.

Poe might now justly regard his future as bright. The “Messenger” had so prospered under his management that it was an assured success, and was likely to afford him a constantly increasing income. His reputation was steadily growing; the veteran Paulding declared him the best of the young and perhaps of the old writers; the Southern press was vociferous in its praises, and Poe, whose virtue was never modesty, took good care that these acclaims should not die away unechoed, as his advertising columns still show. He was settled in life; his salary was seven hundred and eighty dollars, and was to be a thousand and forty; he was actively planning for future work, and plainly contemplated a long residence in the city; and yet in a few months he was again a wanderer. The first number of the [page 100:] magazine for 1837 announced that, “Mr. Poe's attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present number, the editorial duties of the ‘Messenger;’ ” and on a later page Mr. White added that the resignation had taken effect January 3, but would not prevent Poe's contributing articles from time to time. In this number, nearly one third of the matter, about thirty-five octavo pages, was by Poe, but up to this date he had published no original tale since the previous April, and no poem since August; of criticism, however, there was usually no lack. It is more significant that the October issue was delayed by the illness of both editor and publisher, and the November issue by a press of business, while in the latter there is a very marked shrinking of the space de voted to reviews. Some light is thrown upon the matter by the following undated letter: —

The circumstance to which this note refers evidently belongs to an early period in Poe's editorship and was antecedent to his marriage. It has been suggested that the direct cause of Poe's resignation was Mr. White's declining to allow him higher wages or a share in the profits of the magazine; but both the demand and the refusal are mere sup positions. It is possible that his head was turned by his rapid and brilliant success, and he was the less solicitous to retain his post, particularly if, as has been asserted,(2) he had received an invitation from Dr. Francis L. Hawks, a North Carolina divine settled in New York city, to contribute to the newly projected “New York Review.” But when it is recollected that Mr. White was Poe's attached [page 102:] friend, and must have required on business grounds very strong reasons to make him part with the editor who had proved his capacity by making the “Messenger” the good investment it was, to a can did mind it seems more probable that the extraordinary effects of Poe's fits of intoxication, however infrequent, the irregularity they caused at the time and the exhaustion they left behind, furnished the real ground for Mr. White's determination to let his protege go. Mr. Kennedy, who should have known the facts, writes in reference to this incident of Poe's life, “He was irregular, eccentric, and querulous, and soon gave up his place.”(1) Poe him self afterwards confessed, as will be seen, that at Richmond he gave way at long intervals to temptation, and after each excess was invariably confined to his bed for some days. The only contemporary reference by him to this matter occurs in a business letter, in which, although it was written six days after his resignation went into effect, he accepts an article from a West Point classmate without any hint that he had ceased to be the editor of the magazine, except that he begs pardon for delay because of “ill health and a weight of various and harassing business.”(2) These facts all go to support the view that Mr. White, after exercising forbearance for a while, at last refused to yield to Poe's penitence, and insisted on a separation, which, however, [page 103:] was not suddenly or violently effected. The two parted friends, and Mr. White continued through out life to speak of Poe with great kindness and warm feeling. When the matter was settled Poe wrote to his old friend Wilmer, who was starving in Baltimore, that if he would come to Richmond the position would be given to him.(1) This Wilmer was unable to do, and it fell to the lot of some other editor to wonder why Poe, who soon left the city, furnished no more installments of his serial narrative, “Arthur Gordon Pym,” which had just been begun in the “Messenger.”

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 64:]

1. Poe to Gwynn, MS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 65:]

1. Works, cxlvii-clii.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 66:]

1. Life of John Pendleton Kennedy. By Henry T. Tuckerman. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1871: p. 376.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 67:]

1. Life of John Pendleton Kennedy, p. 375.

2. Poe to F. W. Thomas. Stoddard, xcv.

3. Mr. Latrobe states that this visit was made on the Monday following the award, but he is clearly in error or has confused two visits, since he makes Poe mention the Southern Literary Messenger, which did not appear until nine months later, and Plans Pfaall, which by Poe's own statement was suggested to him by reading a book published a year afterward.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 69:]

1. Recollections of Edgar A. Poe. By L. A. Wilmer, Baltimore Daily Commercial, May 23, 1866.

2. Miss A. F. Poe to the author, September 13, 1884.

3. Edgar Allan Poe. A letter by Colonel Thomas H. Ellis to the Richmond Standard, April 22, 1881. Mr. Ellis had the very best means of judging the truth in this matters

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 70:]

1. Our Press Gang; or, A Complete Exposition of the Corruptions and Crimes of the American Newspapers. By Lambert A. Wilmer (ex-editor). Philadelphia: J. T. Lloyd, 1859: p. 36.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 71:]

1. Griswold, xxix.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 72:]

1. Griswold, xxix.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 75:]

1. The Records of St. Paul's Parish, Baltimore. The date August 13 has some authority by family tradition.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 77:]

1. The Life of John Pendleton Kennedy, pp. 375, 376.

2. Griswold, xxix, xxx.

3. Marriage Records of Baltimore City.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 77, running to the bottom of page 78:]

4. Didier, p. 58. The date of marriage is given as September 2. As Mr. Didier knew nothing of the record of the marriage license granted September 22, the error is of a kind to support rather [page 78:] than to discredit the marriage. The license was the last issued on that day, and it fails to prove the marriage only because there is no return of the minister officiating; but such a return was not obligatory, and there are several other entries in the records that are similarly incomplete.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 79:]

1. Poe to George Poe, MS.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 87:]

1. New York Mirror, April 9, 1836.

2. Southern Literary Messenger, ii. 327 (April, 1836).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 89:]

1. Southern Literary Messenger, ii. 326 (April, 1836).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 92:]

1. Southern Literary Messenger, ii. 328 (April, 1836).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 94:]

1 Southern Literary Messenger, ii. 113 (January, 1836).

2 Of these To Mary, To ——, To Eliza, and the Bridal Ballad are now known in revised versions, and the first three are entitled respectively To F——, To One in Paradise, and to To F——s S. O——d. An earlier version of To One in Paradise, from some unknown source, is quoted from The Athenæum by Curwen in his Sorrow and Song. To Zante was suggested by a passage in Chateaubriand's Itineraire de Paris à Jerusalem, already mentioned.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 96:]

1. Works, ii. 507.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 97:]

1. A more curious instance of Poe's mode of dealing with authorities is his note on Israfel, which originally read, “And the angel Israfel, who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures: Koran.” The passage referred to is not in the Koran, but in Sale's Preliminary Discourse (iv. 71). Poe derived it from the notes to Moore's Lalla Rookh, where it is correctly attributed to Sale. At a later time he interpolated the entire phrase, “whose heart strings are a lute” (the idea on which his poem is founded), which is neither in Moore, Sale, nor the Koran; and with this highly original emendation, the note now stands in his Works as an extract from the Koran.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 98:]

1. Hustings Court Records, Richmond, Va.

2. Southern Religious Telegraph, May 20, 1836; Richmond Enquirer, May 20, 1836.

3. Mrs. F. B. Converse to the author, May 20, 1884.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 99:]

1. Poe to Kennedy, Ingram, i. 140.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 101:]

1. Griswold, xxx.

2. Hirst.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 102:]

1. Life of John Pendleton Kennedy, p. 376.

2. Poe to Allan B. Magruder, January 9, 1837. MS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 103:]

1. Our Press Gang, p. 40.