Text: James Hannay, “Edgar Allan Poe,” The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, London: Addey and Co, 1853, pp. xi-xxx

[page xi, unnumbered:]

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

WE must all have observed, I am sure, with a great deal of pleasure how much the literature of our American kinsmen has been spreading amongst us within the last few years. Such men as Washington Irving and Cooper were familiar friends from the first. But they both founded, more or less, on our own classical models. Irving's whole tone of thought [page xii:] and style, for instance, is English-his sentiment is essentially English. But we are now beginning to get acquainted with writers amongst the Americans who are really national — in the sense that American apples are national. Emerson has a distinct smack of the rich and sunny West — just as the honey in Madeira tastes of violets. Lowell's humour in the “Biglow Papers,” is as gloriously Yankee, as Burns's humour is gloriously Scotch. Is not the genius of Hawthorne a real native product? And from whom but an American could we have expected such a book as we had the other day in the “Whale” of Herman Melville, — such a fresh, daring book — wild, and yet true, with its quaint, spiritual portraits looking ancient and also fresh, — Puritanism, I may say, kept fresh in the salt water over there and looking out living upon us once more! These writers one sees, at all events, have our old English virtue of Pluck. They think what they please and say what they think. And while M’Fungus is concocting philosophical histories in the style of the last century which drum on our ears, these other open-hearted men are getting into all our hearts and making themselves friends by our firesides. Small apology, let us hope, one needs for introducing an American Poet to one's countrymen. I have undertaken this office very cheerfully, with regard to EDGAR ALLAN POE. I owe his acquaintance — as I owe much of [page xiii:] the happiness of my life — to the society of a few young friends devoted to art and poetry. His music has made several summers brighter for me: and now that his reputation (the man himself died just three years ago) is appealing for recognition to the English “reading public,” I feel that I ought to say a few words about him. At all events this notice may serve as a finger-post to direct the wanderer to a tumulus as worthy of honour as any that has been made on the earth lately.

EDGAR ALLAN POE was a native of Virginia; and as Virginia is more rich in “good families” than other American States, we learn that he was of honourable descent. The name is not a common one in England. There was a Dr. Poe, physician to Queen Elizabeth, and there is a highly respectable family of the name in Ireland who bear the same coat-armour as the doctor. The poet's great-grandfather, who married a daughter of Admiral M’Bride, was, I should think it probable, of the same stock. His son was a quartermaster-general in the American line; and his grandson, David, the poet's father, — commencing an “eccentricity” which, we shall see, ran in the blood afterwards, — married an enchanting actress of uncertain prospects. Having achieved this, David Poe (who was a younger son) took to acting himself; but both he and his wife died young, leaving three children destitute. Edgar (who was born at [page xiv:] Baltimore in January 1811) accordingly began the world — for he was thrown thus early on his “own resources” — as naked as a cherub.

Mr. Allan, a rich gentleman who had no children of his own, adopted Edgar, brought him to England, where he put him to school at Stoke-Newington. Edgar, who was a “spoiled child,” — a beautiful, witty, precocious boy, it seems, — remained at school there for some five years. In 1822 he returned to the United States; went to the academy at Richmond; and thence to the University at Charlottesville. Always he signalised himself by early intellect, quickly learning all that came in his way, brilliant, vivacious, passionate, always — but always “eccentric” in proportion, so that, what with intemperance and insubordination, this youth,

— was expelled from the University. Distant rumours — and what fly faster than even rumours — bills — kept good Mr. Allan informed of the youth's progress. Mr. A., who seems to have been a good-natured old gentleman of the school of MICIO in the Adelphi, could pardon a great deal, but there are limits to the patience even of a MICIO. Edgar — finding that his bills recoiled on himself as boomerangs do — seems to have tried his satire on the worthy man, and, after [page xv:] writing a sharp letter, went off to the Mediterranean, to free the Greeks from the Turkish yoke. We rarely hear of a more heroic project!

I like to think of Poe in the Mediterranean, with his passionate love of the Beautiful, — in “the years of April blood,” — in a climate which has the perpetual luxury of a bath he must have had all his perceptions of the lovely intensified wonderfully. What he did there we have now no means of discovering. He never reached the scene of war (which was, doubtless, a great loss to the Greeks!), but he turned up — whence, or how, no man knows — in St. Petersburgh. The American Minister — one regrets to hear — had to relieve the youth from “temporary embarrassment,” and he returned to his native land. He now appears to have thought that it was time for his friends to exert themselves. Micio Allan was once more kind and forgiving, and Edgar was entered as a cadet at the Military Academy. In the groves of that academy he did not remain long, we may be sure; — the fact was, he was “cashiered.”

It seems to have been about this time that he published, while still a boy, his first volume of poems — those comprised in his later collections as “Poems written in Youth.” I agree with all that Lowell says of their wonderful precocity, though I by no means agree with Lowell in his depreciation of Chatterton. There are, of course, obvious traces of [page xvi:] imitation — adoptions of the metres of Scott — imitations of the verse of Byron. But there is the keenest feeling for the Beautiful, — which was the prodominant feeling of Poe's whole life; there is the loveliest, easiest, joyfullest flow of music throughout. There is, too — what must have been almost instinctive — an exquisite Taste — a Taste which lay at the very centre of his intellect like a conscience.

We should notice here two phenomena in this volume, both of importance to one who wants to understand Poe as man and poet. There is no trace of any depth of spiritual feeling — no “questioning of Destiny,” — none of those traces of deep inward emotion, which, like the marks of tears, we see on the face of so many a modern muse. On the other hand, though it appears only too certain that his wild passions carried him into most unhappy self-abandonment, his verse is all as pure as wild flowers. This is the way in which the boy Edgar — the rejected of the Military Academy — the rake of Charlottesville — noted for “intemperance” and “other vices,” — writes about a girl: —

TO HELEN.

Could anything be more dainty, airy, amber-bright, than this is? In point of finish it is Horatian. It is merum nectar, as Scaliger says of the Ode to Pyrrha. I do not believe what is asserted, that this was written when Poe was fourteen, but it was undoubtedly written in his earliest youth. — Now, Poe may have done this and done that. Youths brought up by fine good-natured old Micios — particularly if their “veins run wine,” as is believed of some-will do many strange things. There are hundreds of youths as “wild” as Poe, but this one wrote the above poem! That is the interesting fact. A fragment of song like this comes out of the inner being of a man, and the capability of producing it is the fact of his nature.

These poems had, as was natural, great success. He was already known as a youth of “genius” — one who had shown a certain power of a mysterious [page xviii:] character — one who breathed the breath of that sacred wind which “bloweth where it listeth.” But he was still as irregular as ever — having been created to be so, seemingly. He entered as private into a regiment, and again disappeared from his friends. We have a striking account of his next appearance from Mr. Griswold's memoir of him. He turned up once more, “thin, pale, and ghastly,” the mark of poverty branded upon him, and began the world now regularly as a “literary man.” He soon got employment — he was a scholar — had read a great deal — and was not wanting in people to encourage him. There still remained, however, one step to take. Edgar, while his income was about a hundred a-year, thought it was time to — marry. He married, accordingly, — a most beautiful girl, of course. She was his cousin, Virginia Clemm, — “as poor as himself,” says Griswold, grimly. A most amiable, loveable, and lovely person, however — which some people think the most important consideration — she appears to have been. Whenever the curtain of Poe's private life is pulled aside — which is not frequently, for his biographers and countrymen tell us more of his misdoings generally than of his Home — for he had a Home — we get a glimpse of her beautiful face — cheerful, affectionate, always — sad alas! latterly, but still, like Oriana's, “sweet” as well as “pale and meek.” How little do we know of the wives of [page xix:] famous men! What idea do we carry away of any of the three Mrs. Miltons? Of all the goodness of the wife of “brave old Samuel?” Of the tenderness and affection of Mrs. Fielding? To us they are barely names; but we ought to hear more of them. Mr. Thackeray might lecture on the Wives of Men-of-Letters, and teach us a great deal!

Poe's life henceforth is the life of a man-of-letters, by profession, and on the whole it is a melancholy history. No man can complain that there is not in the literary profession as much — indeed, there is more — allowance made for frailties, eccentricities, short-comings of all kinds, than there is in other departments of active life in our modern social state. When, therefore, we find Edgar Poe quarrelling with so many people with whom he had business relations — continually in miserable embarrassments when he had a pen which could command money, what can we say? A career like that of our old Savages and Boyses — as his, too, often was — what can we make of it? We must even admit that his misery was mainly caused by the “dissipation” which we find universally attributed to him. All his aspirations — his fine sensibilities — sought madly for their gratification through the medium of the senses. The Beauty which he loved with his whole soul, he madly endeavoured to grasp in the forms of sheer indulgence. Like Marlow's “Faustus,” he used his genius to procure him [page xx:] self-gratification; and always at the end of such a career, it is the Devil — as our pious old singers believed — who waits for the hero.

In truth, it was the Beautiful that he loved with his entire nature. In sorrowful forms — sombre or grotesque forms — brilliant and musical, or scientific forms, he sought the Beautiful; and in all these forms his writings have embodied it. In his life, too, he loved the emotions which the Beautiful produces; but, we know from the “Phædrus,” — old wisdom yet new, — “that though the Beautiful be the dearest and most loveable of all things,” yet, that “he who hath not been lately initiated in the Mysteries, or rather has become depraved, he is not easily excited to the true Beauty itself, but only to a certain likeness of it which goes by its name; and so he does not venerate it, but after the manner of animals striveth after pleasure.”* And thus Edgar Poe drew a sensual veil across the vision of his soul, and in that blinded way, sinned, — and sinning, suffered.

Other men have been as reckless as he in their youth, and have escaped out of it, and have risen into clear day. But he did not, — he made strong efforts, — he fell, however, finally.

From the period of his marriage, as I have said, he made literature his profession, and was connected [page xxi:] at different periods with leading American journals. Occasionally he produced one of the few poems which compose his collection; “The Raven” in particular excited immense attention. He wrote Tales, and Essays, and Reviews of all that was noticeable in American literature; the latter, in his work the “Literati,” I have read, and admire their sharp, cutting vividness of analysis. They show a man of large and various literary attainments — (he always passed for one of the best scholars in America) — with a spice of that bitterness which sprang from his misanthropy; for poor Edgar, as Griswold dryly and solidly informs us, “considered Society as principally composed of villains!” He hated and despised the blockheads who, perhaps from no virtue of their own, were exempt from his failings and consequent sufferings; but unhappily the blockheads, in their condemnation of Edgar, were but too often desperately in the right! Yet, let not such — there or elsewhere — be too harsh on the failings of a fine nature, and the degradation of a noble mind. Who shall explain the mysteries of temperament — who calculate the force of circumstances? The spiritual part of this man — of which a specimen remains with us — was highly beautiful, and allied to the perennial beauty! Let solid excellence of the epitaph — description remember, that perhaps all its parlour virtues are not worth one hour of Coleridge's remorse! [page xxii:]

I have hinted above that it is difficult to get such details of the better part of Edgar's life as would enable me to give some little picture of him. WILLIS has written a fine graceful sketch, both manly and tender, of him, and describes him as “a winning, sad-mannered gentleman.” But Willis never visited his home, and cannot be said to have been intimate with him. Yet we hear of the air of simplicity and elegance which pervaded the poet's house, — we have a glimpse of it from the pen of Frances Osgood, — we see the poet industrious, playful, with his beautiful and affectionate Virginia with him —— and her mother, whose name is never to be mentioned in the history of Poe's life without signal honour. Maria Clemm, his mother-in-law, was truly a mother to him, — faithful to him through all the strange fortune which he underwent with true womanly constancy.

His portrait, prefixed to the American edition, is a very interesting — a very characteristic one. A fine thoughtful face you see at once, with lineaments of delicacy — such as belong only to genius or high blood. The forehead is grand and pale, the eyes dark, gleaming with sensibility and the light of soul. A face of passion it is, and in the lower part wants firmness — a face that would inspire women with sentiment, — men with interest and curiosity.

His wife died, — they had had no children. His “Annabel Lee” records his recollection of her with [page xxiii:] something more than tenderness. I suppose his wayward ways caused her much sorrow; but they loved each other truly. She seems to have been a simple, affectionate creature — contented on very easy terms — rich with a heart that could bear much, and, most likely, placed its highest hopes elsewhere. She, at all events, did her duty in all purity and goodness, and is gone where these virtues are better understood than here.

Poe had been lecturing on “the Universe” in 1848, and producing his strange great book “Eureka,” on which I am not competent to speak critically. In the autumn of 1849 he had, after a sad fit of insane debauchery, made one vigorous effort to emerge. He joined a Temperance Society, — he led a quiet life, and his marriage was talked of. But, on the evening of the 6th October, 1849 — a Saturday evening — passing through Baltimore on his way to New York, accident threw him among some old acquaintances. He plunged into intoxication, and on Sunday morning he was carried to an hospital, where he died that same evening, at the age of thirty-eight years. No details have been given of this last scene: let us be thankful that we bear not that pain in our memory!

It remains that I should say something of his Genius, and the fruits of it which remain with us. [page xxiv:] Of his character, what is there to say? “Theory” of it, or how to “explain” this and that about such a problem, so as to pronounce what his life meant, — only the presumption of pedants ventures on decisions about these matters nowadays. There is something about the “mystery of a Person”* which we should be very cautious in explaining, though there are some who think that from a post-mortem examination of the body you can learn the soul of a man. conditions of a man's life, complex as they are, make the real understanding of his character very difficult. Too often — particularly in artificial ages like ours — a man's whole career has to be run — like a race at a fair — in a sack! Many a man never gets fair play — sometimes is born with a constitution that won’t permit it — sometimes is born into circumstances that will not. Let us be charitable. Southey's “Doctor,” when he heard of a “toper,” was wont to say compassionately, “Bibulous clay, sir — bibulous clay!” I would not put forward this compendious excuse for Poe, but we must allow for infirmity in the man. He was indulged early, he was seduced by example. Because he left traces of something high and beautiful in him in spite of this, don’t let us make that a reason for being harsher on him than on the frail mortals of his race. One pious scribbler told us — very soon after his death —— [have they not in America, [page xxv:] as here, a rule at all Cemeteries that “no dogs are admitted?”] that

But I learn from those who knew him — men like BUCHANAN READ, himself a fine, graceful, tender poet — that his friends loved him, and that those who understood him pardoned his infirmities. Much more should they be pardoned now to one,

It has been remarked of him that he united singularly the qualities of the Poet with the faculties of the Analyst. He wrote charming little ballads, and was a curious disentangler of evidence — criminal evidence, for instance — and fond of problems and cypher. The union is indubitable; but I scarcely think it should have been so much dwelt upon. Every man of fine intellect of the highest class includes a capacity more or less for all branches of inquiry. Carlyle was distinguished in arithmetic long before he became the Teacher which we hail him as now. On the other hand, Inventors in the regions of mechanics partake of something poetic in their inspiration. Brindley was as eccentric as Goldsmith. Watt would muse over a tea-kettle as Rousseau did [page xxvi:] over la pervanche, or over the lake into which he dropped sentimental tears. One very curious theory was hit upon by a solid critic a little while ago to explain Poe's two-handedness. He knew that Poe wrote fine poetry — he knew Poe made subtle calculations; and what was his inference? Credite posteri! He insisted that the calculating faculty was the fact, and that the poetry was calculation! I scarcely ever remember a more curious instance of the “cart being put before the horse” — by the ass! Nothing can be more clear, to be sure, than that Poe employed a great deal of ingenuity and calculation in the finishing of his Tales and polishing of his Poems. But all this leaves the poetic inspiration pure at the bottom as the essential fact. Otherwise, if we are to make the calculating the predominant faculty, we may look out for a volume of Sonnets by Cocker! Poe has admitted us in one of his essays to the genesis of “The Raven,” and has even told us which stanza he wrote first, and on what mechanical principles he managed the arrangement of the story. But surely all this presupposes the pure creative genius necessary to the conception!

Keeping the distinction in view, we shall easily see that all his Tales — analytic and other — resolve themselves into Poems, instead of the Poems resolving themselves into machinery! The “Gold Bug,” for example, makes a most ingenious use of cypher, but [page xxvii:] the cypher is only materiel. Without creative genius mere cypher is an affair for the Foreign Office — which still remains a very inferior place to Parnassus. The same remark applies to his other poetical exercises — for such they are — in Mesmerism, Physics, Circumstantial Evidence, &c. Far from being a narrow student of the details of these, he always has clearly an eye in using them to the poetic goal or result.

However, it is with his Poems that our main business is just now. I should say that he was a true poet, first of all. I mean simply, that his view of a piece of scenery, or an event, or a condition of human suffering or joy, will tell itself to you from his lips in a music inseparable from it, and, by dint of perception into the heart of the feelings which such scenery, or event, or condition, would naturally awaken in every human soul. There is no occasion for going into recondite inquiries, about the “Nature of the Poet.” We see how GOËTHE had tired of all that, when he tells Eckermann, “lively feeling of situations and power to express them make the poet.” I say, take the verses “To Helen,” “The Bridal Ballad,” “The Sleeper;” take these two lines, —

if we do not find poetry in these places, where are we to look for it? It is easy to talk about the “deep [page xxviii:] heart,” &c., and there are half-a-dozen unreadable gentlemen always ready to assure one that poetry is gone to the dogs — all except their own; but submit Poe's volume to persons most habitually conversant with all poetry, and they will admit that the charm of it is in his book. As un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme, so a real poet, of course, ranks with the family. The head of a family is perhaps a duke, but every cadet, however distant, shares the blood.

My remark on a point in his youthful poems. extends to all his poems. Traces of spiritual emotion are not to be found there. Sorrow there is, but not divine sorrow. There is not any approach to the Holy — to the Holiness which mingles with all Tennyson's poetry — as the Presence with the Wine. And yet, when you view his poems simply as poems, this characteristic does not make itself felt as a Want. It would seem as if he had only to deal with the Beautiful as a human aspirant. His soul thirsted for the “supernal loveliness.” That thirst was to him Religion — all the Religion you discover in him. But if we cannot call him religious, we may say that he supplies the materials to worship. You want flowers and fruit for your altar; and wherever Poe's muse has passed, flowers and fruit are fairer and brighter.

With all this passion for the Beautiful, no poet was ever less voluptuous. He never profaned his [page xxix:] genius whatever else he profaned. “Irene,” “Ulalume,” Lenore,” “Annabel Lee,” “[[For]] Annie,” are all gentle, and innocent, and fairy-like. A sound of music-rising as from an unseen Ariel — brings in a most pure and lovely figure — sad, usually; so delicate and dreamy are these conceptions that, indeed, they hint only of some transcendant beauty — some region where passion has no place, where

as Shelley says.

Poe loved splendour, — he delighted in the gorgeous — in ancient birth — in tropical flowers — in Southern birds — in castellated dwellings. The hero of his “Raven” sits on a “violet velvet lining; the dead have “crested palls.” He delighted, as Johnson says of Collins, “to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.” His scenery is everywhere magnificent. His Genius is always waited upon with the splendour of an Oriental monarch.

I have spoken of the tinge of melancholy which gives an effect like moonlight to all that he has done. I have said elsewhere that his “genius, like the eyes of a Southern girl, is at once dark and luminous.”* “The Raven,” “Ulalume,” “For Annie,” all turn on [page xxx:] Death. And this melancholy, too, is of a heathen character. You might say that his book is funestus. The stamp of sorrow is upon it, as cypress hung over the doors of a house among the ancients when a death had happened there. Remembering this, one must admit that his range is narrow. He has, for instance, no Humour — had little sympathy with the various forms of human life. But he is perfectly poetic in his own province. If his circle was a narrow, it was a magic one. His poetry is sheer poetry, and borrows nothing from without, as Didactic Poetry does. For Didactic Poetry he had a very strong and a very justifiable dislike.

His melody is his own. You will find a music in each poem which is inseparable from the sentiment of it. He gives a certain musical air as a soul to each poem, but he works up the details as an artist. Witness” The Raven” or “The Bells.” Everything he has done is finished in detail, and has received its final touches. He had an exquisite eye for proportion, and every little poem is carved like a cameo.

Such are the hints which I have to prefix to this American Poet, — and with three-times-three from a select band of his admirers, he is now launched on the English public!

LONDON, November, 1852.

[[Footnotes]]

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

* From the Latin version of PLATO by FICINUS.

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

* CARLYLE.

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

* “SINGLETON FONTENOY,” vol. ii.