Text: John Watson Dalby, “Edgar Allan Poe: a Vindication,” St. James' Magazine and United Empire (London, UK), vol. 36, ns. vol. 1, no. 5, August 1875, pp. 473-487

[page 473:]

“SIMPLE faith” undoubtedly warrants what Tennyson has said of it, but “Norman blood” is not without its claims to respect, and no one will deny the subtlety of its influences. The boy Byron felt them, and boasted of the feeling; Edgar Allan Poe was no boaster on this score, nor, indeed, on any other; yet he had a right, scarcely inferior to that of the aristocratic poet, to be proud of his descent; and passages of his life prove that the chivalrous instinct was strong within him. He could trace his line to the twelfth century, his family having settled in Ireland in the reign of Henry II. That family was founded by Sir Roger le Poer, a companion in arms of Strongbow; and of Sir Roger, Geraldus Cambrensis pointedly observes, “It might be said without “offence that there was not a man who did more valiant acts than “Roger le Poer.” Adventurous and brave, he was the founder of a race as courageous as himself, contemners of conventionality, and — probably without much nicety of conscience as to the mode of acquisition — recklessly generous in outlay. A wild irregularity, often rendered respectable by high-spirited impulses, seems to have been the distinguishing feature of the race from Sir Roger le Poer down to Edgar Allan Poe.

General Poe, the poet's grandfather, married a Miss Cairnes, of Pennsylvania, a woman, it is said, of remarkable personal attractions. Their fourth son, David, was placed in a lawyer's office at Baltimore; but love, which laughs at law as freely as at locksmiths, soon drew him from his desk. He met a young English actress — Elizabeth Arnold — eloped with and married her. Cast off by his parents, who naturally resented the imprudence of the boy of eighteen, he tried the stage, apparently without success. The birth of a child to the youthful couple awakened relenting feelings at home, whither David returned; and he and his wife, said to be “a lovely little creature” of great talent, were kindly and forgivingly welcomed. Soon after this re-union, however, [page 484:] both died, within a few weeks of each other, at Richmond, Virginia, of consumption, leaving three children — Henry, Edgar Allan, and Rosalie.

The confusion and uncertainty which attended Edgar throughout his whole career seem to have commenced with his birth, about the date of which no two biographers are agreed. Mr. James Hannay says January, 1811; biographical dictionaries which we have consulted, among them Haydn's “Universal Index of Biography,” give the same year; Mr. Ingram has printed the date February 19th, 1809. We have his authority, however, now to say January, and that Poe's birthplace was not Baltimore, as has been sometimes stated, and is so printed in Mr. Ingram's memoir,* but Boston, and that 1809 was the actual year of his birth. It is of more importance to know that at six years of age he was an orphan, adopted by his godfather, Mr. Allan, a wealthy friend of Poe's family, long married, but childless. Edgar's earliest experiences were those of a child indulged to an injurious extreme. Beautiful in person, precocious in intellect, he was of course an infant prodigy, the little orator and oracle of the drawing-room; and Mr. Ingram well remarks, “Gratifying as those exhibitions may have been “to the godfather's vanity, the probable consequence of such a system of recurring excitements on the boy's morbidly nervous organisation could scarcely fail to be disastrous.” Poe himself had furnished the text for his biographer's comment. He said, “I am the descendant “ of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at “all times rendered them remarkable, and in my earliest infancy I gave “evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I advanced in years, it was more strongly developed, becoming, for many “reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive “injury to myself. . . My voice was a household law, and at an age “when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to “the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master “ of my own actions.”

Thus, it is scarcely paradoxical to say, the romance of Poe's life commenced before and with his birth. The past seemed to chalk out the distempered disjointed future of the foregone victim of an evil destiny. His adopted parents, having come to England in 1816, left him at the Manor House School, in Church Street, Stoke Newington. Here he remained for five years, dreaming much, but clearly not shrinking from study, as Mr. Ingram traces to this school the acquisition of the ground-work of “that curious superstructure of classic lore which in after-years [page 475:] was one of the chief ornaments of his weird and wonderful works.” The Manor House School and its proprietor, Dr. Bransby, are quaintly described by Poe in his “Reminiscences of William Wilson.”

Returning to America in 1821, Mr. Allan sent him to a school in Richmond, Virginia. Here he was remarked for his love of pets, which Mr. Ingram, by a curiously forced inference, attributes to a revulsion of feeling from his cold unsympathetic patron — as if home-indulgences could be extended to a boy away at school. It was whilst here that he first saw Mrs. Helen Stannard, whose son, a schoolmate, had taken him to her residence. She was kind, and he was grateful. It was to this lady that he afterwards addressed the verses, “To Helen,” included in “Poems written in Youth.” Mr. Hannay writes of the poem with rapturous praise, adding, “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 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.” Mrs. Stannard became, says Mrs. Whitman, “the confidante of all Poe's boyish sorrows;” and it was her death a few years later which tinged all the fancies of his after-life with melancholy. “Like his contemporary, Petöfi, at the “grave of his girl-love Etelka,” says Mr. Ingram, “Poe would go nightly “to visit the tomb of his revered friend, — ‘the one idolatrous and “”purely ideal love’ of his tempest-tossed boyhood.” It was to her Poe inscribed his juvenile poem, “The Pean,” which he subsequently re- published as “Lenore;” indeed, “Helen” and “Lenore” and “lost “Lenore” run through and strike that melancholy note in many of his poems, to which we have now the key.

From Richmond Poe went to the university at Charlotteville, where, contrary to the assertions of the Rev. Rufus Griswold, he is proved to have been a successful student, obtaining distinctions in Latin and French at the closing examinations of 1826. This implies a tenacity of purpose and steadiness of character, at this time at all events, for which his reverend calumniator would refuse him credit at any period. “At the university,” says Dr. Griswold, “he led a very dissipated life; the manners which then prevailed there were extremely “dissolute, and he was known as the wildest and most reckless student “ of his class. . . . He would have graduated with the highest honours, “had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices induced his expulsion [page 476:] from the university.” Pity that Griswold did not consult his own dates, the inaccuracy of which is as palpable as the animus of the writer. These would have shown the incompatibility of his statement with the age of Poe, and the impossibility of intemperance and “other vices” in a mere child! But the looseness of his accusations is further exhibited in what he says about “graduating with the highest “honours,” no provision for conferring degrees of any kind having been made at the university at the time Poe was a student there. This we have on the authority of Mr. Wertenbaker, Secretary of the Faculty, who also says, “He spent but one session at the university, and at no time “did he fall under the censure of the Faculty.” Mr. Wertenbaker, however, sustains Griswold's imputation as to the propensity for gambling. He says, “He was not at that time addicted to drinking, but had an “ungovernable passion for card-playing.”

In 1827, when every generous heart was throbbing with the hope of the restoration of the independence of Greece, if not of her “glory” — when Byron had fired every intellectual boy in both continents with emulation, and an enthusiasm more poetical than practical — a sympathy much more prolific of words than deeds, — Poe started for Europe with the idea of giving his personal assistance to the heroic work. He was absent for more than a year, and the story of that year has never been told; its history is a complete blank. But many malicious stories were built on that absence, which, though known to and uncontradicted by Poe in his lifetime, are now exploded. The American minister at St. Petersburg did not relieve the youth from “temporary embarrassment,” and enable him to return to his native land; for the mysterious wanderer never reached that city, nor the scene of war, “which,” says Mr. Hannay drily, “was doubtless a great loss to the Greeks.” Mr. Ingram seems to think it probable that Poe did not get farther on his expedition than England; and therefore Mr. Hannay's eloquent rhapsody about Poe in the Mediterranean, who — “with his passionate love of the “Beautiful, in the ‘years of April blood,’ in a climate which has the “perpetual luxury of a bath, must have had all his perceptions of “the lovely intensified wonderfully” — is also baseless.

Poe returned in 1829, reaching Richmond the day after the funeral of his adopted mother. Whatsoever the feeling with which Mr. Allan regarded the conduct of his protégé, he does not seem to have relaxed in his efforts to forward Poe's views. The latter having expressed a readiness to devote himself to the military profession, Mr. Allan exercised his influence and got him entered as a cadet at the Military Academy. According to the rules of this institution, no candidate can be appointed after he is twenty-one, and Poe was barely in time to [page 477:] secure his nomination. He had just privately printed his first little volume of poems, according to Hannay; but, says Mr. Ingram, “Lowell “and others of the poet's reviewers speak of an earlier edition of this “book* as published in 1827, and from it the delicate little lyric To “Helen’ is professedly extracted.” In 1831, whilst still a cadet, he published an enlarged edition of his early rhymes, under the title of “Poems by Edgar A. Poe,” and dedicated it to “The United States Corps of Cadets.” His fellow-students did not appreciate the compliment, thought the verses doggerel, and their writer cracked. It is unquestionable that the volume contained much of juvenile ineptitude; but it is doubtful if these young gentlemen were at all qualified to sit in judgment on it.

In the short space of eighteen months the martial ardour which had “high-mettled the blood in his veins” cooled down. Poe found that he had made a mistake. Drill was disagreeable, and discipline intolerable. If he was dissatisfied with his position, the authorities were equally weary of him. On the 7th January, 1831, he was tried by a general court-martial “for various neglects of duty and disobedience of “orders,” to which he pleaded guilty, and was “dismissed the service “of the United States.” It is idle to grow sentimental over this matter, to ejaculate “Poor fellow!” and talk of “Pegasus at the plough.” “Pegasus” had sought the “plough,” and should have stood honourably by it. There was a “ploughman” of a different kind who ought to have been his model — one as much his equal in pride and compeer in occasional excess, as he was his superior in principle and in poetical power —

and did not disobey the orders, hard though they were, of his official masters.

Discharged from the Military Academy at West Point, Poe sought his old asylum at Richmond. He had not been long at home when he fell in love with a Miss Royster, whom he would have married, but Mr. Allan had insuperable objections to the match. A serious quarrel ensued, and Poe went off to aid the Poles against Russia! This time it is conjectured that he never left America, — learning on his way that Warsaw had fallen, and in its fall had buried the last hopes of the Polish patriots. Worse intelligence, as regarded his own prospects, quickly reached him — Mr. Allan had married “the beautiful Miss Paterson,” and the faithless Miss Royster had become Mrs. Shelton. [page 478:]

Now comes an interval of two years, during which nothing is recorded of Poe's work or wanderings. In 1833 he is found in Baltimore, competing for prizes offered by the proprietor of the Saturday Visitor for the best prose story and the best poem; the palm was awarded to Poe for both. The subject of the poem was the “Coliseum;” and six prose stories which he sent in so pleased the adjudicators that they drew up and published a statement that they had awarded the premiums to the author of “MS. found in a Bottle,” and strongly urged the publication of all the stories, which were called by Poe “Tales of the “Folio Club.” This event brought him into connection with Mr. John P. Kennedy, who found him completely out-at-elbows, and almost starving. Mr. Kennedy gave him generous assistance and useful patronage, and strongly recommended him to Mr. White, the spirited projector of the Southern Literary Messenger, in Richmond, Virginia. This was a most opportune turn in Poe's affairs; for in the spring of 1834 Mr. Allan had died, leaving nothing to the godson, who at one time entertained just expectations of being the rich merchant's heir. Mr. Allan's marriage and the birth of a son naturally affected the disposition of his property, apart from any feeling of resentment which Poe's conduct might have created. It is possible that a vague hope clung to Poe to the last; but with its utter extinction must have come the conviction that his sole reliance must be on himself. He was now fairly sailing on the broad ocean of literary enterprise; and if he had possessed that staying power on which Mr. Carlyle has so impressively dwelt, and of which the sage's own course has been a noble illustration, he would never have supplied his enthusiastic biographer, Mr. Ingram, with occasion for the lachrymose comment on the dismissal from the Military Academy: “Better for him, poor fellow, and better for the “credit of his countrymen, if he had then and there accepted the fiat “of the Academy officials as that of his nation, and sought on some “foreign shore the hospitality denied him by his own countrymen.” Mr. White had engaged Poe exclusively for his magazine, which was profiting greatly by contributions so original and startling as the new writer's; and he says, in a letter to Mr. Kennedy dated Richmond, September 11th, 1835, “Mr. White has been induced, through your “influence, to employ me in assisting him with the editorial duties of “his magazine, at a salary of 520 dollars per annum.” The letter in which this fact is announced is written in a style of pitiable prostration, and drew from his friend what Mr. Ingram calls a “kindly if “commonplace reply,” but which seems to us admirable in spirit and sound sense: “I am sorry to see you in such plight as your letter “shows you in. It is strange that just at this time, when everybody is [page 479:] praising you, and when fortune is beginning to smile upon your hitherto wretched circumstances, you should be invaded by those blue devils. It belongs, however, to your age and temper to be thus buffeted; but be assured it only wants a little resolution to master the adversary for ever. You will doubtless do well henceforth in literature, and add to your comforts, as well as to your reputation, which it gives me great pleasure to assure you is everywhere rising in popular esteem.”

In little more than a twelvemonth Poe raised the circulation of the Messenger from seven hundred to nearly five thousand. In connection with his labour at this time, Mr. Ingram enters a curious protest against Poe's “crucial dissection of bookmaking mediocrities. . . . Why could he not have left the work of crushing or puffing his Liliputian contemporaries to the ordinary disappointed authors?” We were told just before, that Poe “could not be made, either by flattery or abuse, a “respecter of persons,” yet here is his admiring biographer accusing him of the mean artifice of “puffing.” The profuse reviewing was, Mr. Ingram shrewdly suggests, done at the instance of Mr. White, who probably found his account in it; but the Messenger must have owed its marvellous success to Poe's sensational tales, his brilliant bursts of lyrical beauty, and his profoundly thoughtful essays.

It should not be overlooked that the peculiar hold Poe exercised over his readers, and the distinctive position he took in American literature, were due, not only to his abnormally rich and fantastic imagination, but to the scientific attainments he pressed into its service, and the faculty — so rarely combined with it — of minute and painstaking elaboration. His mind attained a precocious maturity; and the studies in which he most delighted — the classics, mathematics, botany, and astronomy — were turned to such account in his weird romances as to give to the wildest of them a seemingly truthful circumstantiality. So far was this carried, that in many cases (we may instance the “Mesmeric Revelation,” the “Balloon Hoax,” “The Adventures of Hans “Pfaall,” the “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” and the “Narrative “of Arthur Gordon Pym,”) the public took Poe's clever fictions for records of facts, and were proportionately irate with the author when they discovered that he had deluded them, or rather that his genius had led them to delude themselves. How nearly such literary hoaxes as Poe's jeu d’esprit recounting the “Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck “Mason's Flying Machine,” approach downright imposition and a fraud upon newspaper readers, we will not stop to inquire. In a humble way Poe has his English imitators, — the concoctor of the “Waterloo “Bridge Tragedy;” Mr. David Ker, the inventor of the “Old Savage ;” [page 480:] and Mr. Greenwood, whose imaginative but monstrously clever “Dog “and Man Fight at Hanley” created such a sensation and aroused much genuine indignation a little while ago.

In 1836, Poe married his cousin Virginia, the daughter of his father's sister Maria. Miss Clemm was very young, and symptoms of consumption, the hereditary disease of the family, were already perceptible in her. But neither this nor his restricted means was allowed to bar the union, which, whilst it made the young lovers happy, afforded Poe the inestimable blessing of maternal care in his aunt, Mrs. Clemm.

Abundant testimony exists to the absolute devotion both mother and daughter felt for Edgar Poe, and Mr. Ingram quotes many contemporary sketches of his domestic life at this period, all speaking highly of his industry, his regular and simple habits, and his passionate affection for his “most amiable, loveable, and lovely” young wife. To illustrate the reckless absurdity of the calumnies invented against Poe, we may mention that he was said to have “caused the death of his “wife, that he might have a fitting theme for ‘The Raven’” — a poem published two years before her decease! We have already pointed out that the Lenore of “The Raven,” and many of Poe's elegiac poems, was really Mrs. Stannard. Indeed, all the circumstances of Poe's marriage seem to refute the obloquy heaped on his character. A girl who only met him occasionally in society might have been sufficiently dazzled by his powers and fascinations to rashly risk her happiness with him; but his aunt and cousin must have been well acquainted with his disposition and course of life, and his mother-in-law assuredly would not have shown such faithful affection as she did for one who had been a cold or cruel husband.

Until January, 1837, Poe remained with Mr. White, whom he left for the more lucrative employment of assisting Professors Anthon, Hawks, and Henry, in the New York Quarterly Review. Mr. White parted with him most unwillingly, and whilst complimenting the retiring editor on the great ability with which he had conducted the Messenger, gave his readers the consolatory assurance that Mr. Poe would still occasionally contribute to its columns. That he had resigned for other employment was more than once stated by Mr. White, and is a sufficient refutation of Griswold's very characteristic calumny that he was dismissed for drunkenness.

The reviewing department of the New York Quarterly does not seem to have been very engrossing; for in the first two months of 1837, Poe contributed portions of the “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” to his old friend the Messenger. Encouraged by the interest excited, he completed it; and in July of the following year it appeared in book form, [page 481:] and was, Mr. Ingram says, even more successful in England than in America. Contradicting Griswold, he adds that it was several times reprinted in England.

Poe's expectation of improving his pecuniary position at New York was not realized, and a prospect of constant employment offering itself in Philadelphia, he removed thither in 1838. In Philadelphia, Poe attached himself to the Gentleman's Magazine, which, whilst it assured him a tolerable income, afforded him leisure for contributing to other publications. About this period Poe was charged with having represented Captain Brown's work on Conchology as his own, and taken out a copyright for the American edition, omitting all mention of the original. Mr. Ingram disposes of this charge satisfactorily. In 1839 appeared two volumes of Poe's stories, under the title of “Tales of the Arabesque and the Grotesque.” Among them was “The Fall of the House of Usher,” containing a poem called “The Haunted Palace,” for the idea of which Griswold asserted that Poe was indebted to Longfellow's “Beleaguered “City.” Mr. Ingram asserts that Poe's poem was “published long prior to Longfellow's,” but admits that “Tennyson had worked out the same idea many years previous to either in ‘The Deserted House,’ published in 1830.”

In 1840, Mr. George R. Graham blended his Casket with the Gentleman's Magazine, under the name of Graham's Magazine; and retaining Poe's editorial services, and being a liberal paymaster to other contributors, in little more than two years the number of subscribers rose from five to fifty-two thousand. In this magazine Poe's papers on “Autography” and “Cryptology” attracted notice, and were much criticised.

In 1841, the appearance (in Graham's Magazine) of “The Murders in “the Rue Morgue” gave the author a Parisian reputation. French periodicals of repute praised him, Madame Mennier translated several of his stories, and Baudelaire reproduced with surprising vraisemblance many of them. In 1842 he published the “Descent into a Maelstrom” and the “Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” About this time occurred Poe's severance from Mr. Graham, for what reason is not known, unless it were that he had conceived the notion of starting a magazine of his own, to be called The Stylus, — a project which met with no encouragement, and was dropped. In 1843, Poe obtained the one hundred dollar prize, offered by the Dollar Magazine, by an ingenious tale illustrating his theory of ciphers, called “The Gold Bug.” In 1844 he moved to New York, whither his fame had preceded him, and where he found literary companionship of a genial kind. Towards the end of the year Poe became sub-editor and critic on the Mirror, a daily paper of which [page 482:] N. P. Willis and General George Morris were proprietors. This engagement lasted only six months; but during that period (in Feb. 1845) the production of Poe's genius that most captivated the world came to the light — “The Raven” contributed by him to Colton's American Review, under the signature of “Quarles.” Willis was the first to republish it with the author's name; but very soon afterwards Poe prefixed it to a volume entitled “The Raven, and other Poems,” dedicated to Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, “the noblest of her sex.”

This dedication is in itself sufficient to set aside the charge of conscious plagiarism in “The Raven” from “Lady Geraldine's Courtship,” for certainly the last thing done by even the most artless of poets would be, after deliberately imitating a lady, to inscribe the imitation to her! But that “The Raven” unconsciously owed something of its sentiment, its rhythm, and even its actual rhyme, to the deep impression made on Poe by “Lady Geraldine,” no one who compares the two poems can doubt, and two or three passages will serve to show. In “Lady Geraldine” we have :

In “The Raven”:

Mrs. Browning makes Lady Geraldine's despairing lover speak of —

while Lenore's lover apostrophises the Raven as — as

The instances of mere verbal correspondence in the two poems, such “ silken murmur,” “silken stirring,” “within the inner chamber,” “she fluttered like a tame bird,” “eyes now throbbing through me . . . “are ye ever burning torrid o’er . . . my heart,” from “Lady Geraldine:” and “silken rustling,” . . . “into the chamber turning,” “not a feather then he fluttered,” “fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core,” from “The Raven,” are numerous; and the more singularly noticeable from the fact that in a minute, and on the whole appreciative, critique of Miss Barrett's poetry, contributed by Poe to the Broadway Journal, in the very year in which he wrote “The Raven” (1845), he said that “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” was “a very palpable imitation” of Tennyson's “Locksley Hall.” This only confirms what we have said before, that poets should be chary of accusing each other of “imitation;” unconscious reproduction being to a certain extent inevitable [page 483:] where sympathy and admiration are strong, and the current of thought sets in the same direction.

Mrs. Browning herself either did not observe, or generously refrained from drawing attention to, these striking resemblances. She had great admiration for Poe's unquestionable genius, and wrote as follows of “The Raven,” in a letter to a friend, shortly after its publication: —

“This vivid writing — this power which is felt — has produced a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons who are haunted by the ‘Nevermore.’ ” It seems probable that she herself came under that spell, and that the refrain of the grand, though un-prophetic poem, addressed by her to Napoleon III., “Emperor — evermore,” was a reminiscence of Poe's “Nevermore.”

In 1845, Poe became possessor of the Broadway Journal, only to see it die in the January of the following year. During the summer of 1846, Poe moved his wife, for quiet and fresh air, to Fordham near New York, where they occupied “a little cottage at the top “ of a hill,” with “an acre or two of greensward, fenced in about the “house, as smooth as velvet, and as clean as the best kept carpet.” “So neat, so poor, so unfurnished, yet so charming a dwelling I never “saw,” writes a literary friend who often visited there, and wrote in the most glowing terms of the fascinations of Mrs. Poe — then dying of her insidious and deceptive disease — and of the tender solicitude with which her husband nursed her. The representations made by the same writer of the depth of poverty to which, chiefly from his wife's and his own protracted illness, Poe was then reduced, occasioned a generous appeal to be made for him by Willis, and a public subscription. raised by a lady relieved his immediate wants.

In January, 1847, Mrs. Poe died, and her husband and mother remained at Fordham, in seclusion and the deepest grief. Here, in memory of Virginia, he wrote “Ulalume,” and devoted himself to the completion of his “Eureka,” a work embodying his theory of “the cosmogony of the universe,” which Mr. Ingram calls “the last and “grandest monument of his genius.”

The romance of Poe's life was not buried in Virginia's grave. In the autumn of 1848 he obtained an introduction to Mrs. Whitman, a beautiful young widow, called by Mr. Ingram “the finest female poet New “ York has produced,” whom Poe had first seen in 1846, on his way from Boston, where he had been reciting “Al Aaraaf” and “The Raven,” at the Lyceum. “Restless, near midnight,” says Griswold, “he wandered “from his hotel near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a “garden. He related the incident afterwards in one of his most exquisite [page 484:] poems.” This poem, the second “To Helen,” (is a curious coincidence that Mrs. Whitman was the second Helen, young, beautiful, and widowed, whom Poe had loved,) beginning —

Poe sent to Mrs. Whitman in 1848, anonymously; but she knew the writing, and thus identified the writer. Though long interested in each other, the poet and poetess did not meet till September, 1848, but having once met, they speedily became engaged, in spite of determined opposition from the lady's friends. The engagement only lasted two or three months, and was broken off because, according to the version of Griswold, Poe found his way to Helen's house, on the eve of what was to have been their wedding-day, in a state of such mad intoxication that he had to be forcibly expelled. Mr. Ingram does not believe this; but, we are compelled to ask, if the estrangement is, as he supposes, susceptible of an explanation honourable to both parties, why did not Mrs. Whitman afford that explanation, since her zeal for Poe's reputation enabled her so far to brave painful memories as to publish a little book in his defence,* from which Mr. Ingram makes copious and valuable extracts. We must echo Mr. Ingram's hope that, in justice to the dead, if Griswold's story is really false, Mrs. Whitman may some day tell the true one. Mr. Pabodie, a friend of both parties, denied the slander “on authority.” But denials in general terms fail to set at rest specific charges; Griswold in his turn gave Pabodie the lie; Pabodie retaliated by proving other statements of Griswold's to have been incorrect; Griswold was silenced, but the public were not convinced. After the termination of his engagement to Mrs. Whitman, Poe returned to Fordham for a time, revisiting Richmond in the summer of 1849, and renewing his acquaintance with the lady to whom, when Miss Royster, he had first proposed marriage, but who jilted him for Mr. Shelton. She had become a widow, and it is said that Poe renewed his proposals to her, and was accepted; at all events, she wore mourning for his death.

During this last visit to Richmond, Poe delivered two lectures on “The Poetic Principle.” “When in that town,” says Mr. Thompson, “he made the office of the Messenger his frequent resort. His conversation was always attractive, and at times very brilliant. Among modern authors his favourite was Tennyson, and he delighted to recite from ‘The Princess’ the song, ‘Tears, idle tears,’ a fragment of which —

he pronounced unsurpassed by any image expressed in writing.” [page 485:]

On the 4th of October, Mr. Ingram tells us, “he left Richmond by “train, with the intention, it is supposed, of going to Fordham to fetch Mrs. Clemm. Before his departure he complained to a friend of indisposition, of chilliness and exhaustion, but, notwithstanding, determined to undertake the journey. He left the train at Baltimore, and some hours later was discovered in the street insensible. How he had been taken ill, no one really knows, and all the absurd reports circulated about his last moments were absolute inventions. He was dying when found, and being unknown, was taken at once to the hospital, where he died on Sunday the 7th of October, 1849, of inflammation of the brain, insensible, it is supposed, to the last. The following day he was buried in the burial-ground of Westminster Church, close by the grave of his grandfather, General David Poe. No stone marks the spot where he lies.”

In the essay on the “Life and Genius of Edgar Poe,” by James Hannay, before referred to, and written within a year or two after Poe's death in no unfriendly spirit, we read — “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 the 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.”

How are these two statements to be reconciled? Mr. Ingram, whose object in writing his biography is avowedly to clear Poe's character from injurious aspersions (an excellent motive, so far as he can support his vindication with facts) would say, by the simple method of disbelieving Mr. Hannay. But at statements so circumstantial it is not sufficient to level the simple assertion that they are “ill-judged and misplaced calumnies.” Facts must be placed against facts, details against details. While sympathising entirely with Mr. Ingram in his generous aim, we should wish to see him endeavour to attain it with more fulness and precision as to dates, places, and authorities. It is not that we question the truth of his charitable view; we only want it to carry the same weight as the old accusations did, by being equally elaborate and outspoken.

At present all Mr. Ingram's friendly endeavours have achieved no reversal of judgment in Poe's case. They only bring into relief the middle period of steady industry and happy domesticity which intersected the wild commencement and tragic end of his career, and throw a [page 486:] brighter, stronger light on those extenuating circumstances which every impartial reader of Poe's sad and stormy life and his luridly brilliant writings must always have admitted. Poe's temperament, gloomy from the first — hereditarily disposed to morbid influences — no doubt required to be stimulated to activity by methods which in themselves he loathed. Some months before his death, he wrote to a dear friend who tried to save him, “I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I “sometimes so madly indulge.” One glass of wine, it is said, would “madden him.” It is a painful picture; and we gladly turn from the errors and woes of the man to the abiding triumphs of his genius. The bitter animus and exaggeration of Griswold's narrative we rejoice to see exposed; but unfortunately the failings on which he based his charges did exist — we read them here in the deep regrets of Poe himself, and the pitying extenuation of his friends.

Notwithstanding these inherent difficulties of subject, we are grateful to Mr. Ingram for the zeal and industry he has displayed in these four handsome volumes; we are glad to see Poe's character portrayed in a more favourable light-through testimony inaccessible to

English readers while scattered over Transatlantic magazines and papers and welcome as enabling us to do more ample justice to a maligned and misunderstood man; and we are sensible of the value to literature of a reliable collection of Poe's works. English readers, already tolerably familiar with the most important of Poe's tales and poems, will turn with curiosity to his criticisms, in which he appraises the work of contemporaries on both continents. We must confess to a little amusement at his glorification of the “illustrious unknown” when describing certain of his fellow-countrymen and women, presenting them in a strain of eulogy by no means justified by the quotations from their works. But this is amiable, if weak; and Poe is not always the one, nor often the other. When he treats of English writers, his hearty and ungrudging admiration is refreshing. Dickens, Mrs. Browning, Hood, and R. H. Horne (with the saving clause that we join issue with Poe as to the philosophy of “Orion”) are especially discriminating.

The usefulness of this standard edition, as its merits entitle it to be considered, would have been materially increased by chronological arrangement, enabling readers to watch the growth of the author's mind, and by reference to the publication in which each review, story, or poem originally appeared. This may generally be dug out of the memoir by painstaking search; but the simpler plan, wherever practicable, would be infinitely more advantageous to students. We do not exactly understand on what principle Mr. Ingram has altered Poe's arrangement of [page 487:] the “Poems.” From what ‘American edition issued during Poe's lifetime did he reprint? On what authority does he place “The City in the “Sea,” “The Valley of Unrest,” “Israfel,” and the “Bridal Ballad,” amongst the “Poems written in Youth,” when we believe Poe himself regarded them as mature productions? Then again, a complete edition of Poe's works should, we think, have included all the poems extant, and also, as a curiosity of literature, the controversy with “Outis” on Plagiarism. The index is an excellent feature, but we could wish it amplified as regards the Memoir.

We make these suggestions for Mr. Ingram's consideration when he issues the second edition of his book, which we hope the public will soon call for. It is a worthy tribute to the powers of one who stood alone both in talent and misfortune; and a fitting record of the love which attended his erratic course in life, and watches over his memory after death.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 474:]

* “The Works of Edgar Allan Poe.” Edited by John H. Ingram. 4 vols. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1874-5.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 477:]

* The title of which was “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and other Poems” (Baltimore), 81 pp.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 484:]

* “Edgar Poe and his Critics.”