Text: John Seely Hart, “Poe,” A Manual of American Literature: A Text-book for Schools and Colleges, Philadelphia: Eldredge and Brother, 1872, pp. 140-144

[page 140:]

I. THE POETS.

Poe.

EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1811-1849, was endowed with poetical gifts of the rarest and most wonderful kind. Had he united with these gifts high moral principle, and a power of will and of persistent labor, such as marks all true greatness, he might have made for himself a name above that of any yet known to American letters. The two short poems by which almost exclusively he is known, The Raven and The Bells, although not of the [page 141:] highest order of poetry, and only hints of what the author might have done, are yet unique and unsurpassed in their kind.

Poe was a native of Baltimore. While still very young, he was left an orphan, and adopted by Mr. Allan, a Richmond merchant Young Poe was sent successively to the University of Virginia and to West Point, hut was dismissed, or advised to leave, in cotisoqueuce of his dissipation. lie also quarrelled with his benefactor, who henceforth abandoned him. Poe resolved thereupon to lead the life of a mau of letters. He became editor of several magazines and journals, among them, The Southern Literary Messenger, The Gen• tloman's Magazine, and Graham's Magazine, besides contributing to many others. After a career of reckless intemperance, in which he estranged himself from many of his friends and harrowed the feelings of all, he died in a fit of delirium tremens in the Baltimore Hospital, at the early age of thirty-eight.

Brief and unhappy as was his career, Poe has left behind him a memorable name In the annals of American literature He is a remarkable instance of precocity and eccentricity of genius. Some of his earlier poems, written before he was twenty, are still much admired. His genius was cast in a peculiar mould. His writings are thoroughly pervaded with the spirit of melancholy. Poe is pre-eminently the poet of morbid anatomy.

The writings of Poe group themselves naturally into three classes: Poems, Tales, and Literary Criticisms, collected under the heading of The Literati. Among the poems, The Raven and The Bells stand alone. Indeed, there are no similar poems to be compared with them in English literature. Not that they represent poetry in its highest form. The Raven is the expression of absolute despair; The Bells is the rarest instance of the suggestiveness of rhyme and the power of onomatopoetic words. There is nothing exalted or morally invigorating about them. But taken for just what they are, they must be pronounced unique. The Tales are equally powerful as proso specimens. The Murder in the Rue Morgue, The Gold Bug, The Mystery of Mary Roget, etc., are unrivalled in their word-painting and their power of subtle analysis. And yet, like The Raven and The Bells, they leave the mind of the reader depressed and desponding. In his Criticisms Poe displays altogether too much acrimony. His remarks are occasionally very just and striking, but there runs through them all a spirit of fault-finding. Moreover, in many instances, “his judgment is completely blinded to real merit.

Could Poe have overcome his one besetting sin of intemperance, and disciplined his mind thoroughly by severe and regular study, he might have become a leader of American thought. The genius for such a position was there, but its eccentricities were not toned dowu or eradicated, and hence his life was what it was — a failure, and his works are what they are — fragmentary and one-sided.

There is a curious bit of literary history in regard to The Bells. This poem, as first written by Poe and offered for publication, contained only eighteen lines, as follows:

[[The Bells, short form]]

The poem in this form came into the hands of the writer of the present volume, who was then editing Sartain's Magazine. Some mouths after the receipt of the poem, but before its publication, Poe sent the piece altered and enlarged to nearly its present condition. About three months later, and before it actually saw the light, he sent me the finished poem in its present shape. The facts are only another illustration of the gradual development of aq idea in the mind of a man of genius.

[[The Bells]]

Among Poe's prose pieces is one on The Rationale of Verse, that deserves particular study. One of the curiosities of this essay is that part of it in which he describes minutely the process of his own mind in the creation of The Raven.