Text: Anonymous, “The Poe Revival,” Sunday Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), vol. XXXIII, no. 162, October 29, 1899, p. 6, col. 3

[page 6, column 3, continued:]

THE POE REVIVAL.

On the 7th day of the present month the University of Virginia, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson, unveiled, at its seat, the ancient town of Charlottesville, a bronze bust of Edgar Allen Poe, the work of Zolnay, the Hungarian sculptor. The main address on this occasion was by Hamilton W. Mabie, who extolled Poe as “primarily and distinctively the artist of his time.” The poem of Father Prout was as follows:

The records of this famous seat of learning, which now recognizes in Poe its most illustrious son, disprove the oft-repeated story that he was expelled from it for misconduct, and show that during the 10 brief months he passed there, he was a diligent and exemplary student.

This was in 1826. In 1849, at the age of 40, this man, who is now known the world over as the most original genius America has yet produced, ended in a ward of a Baltimore hospital a life of poverty, neglect and disappointment. After a long period of comparative oblivion, he is now enjoying in our country a literary renaissance. In France and Germany, and to some extent in England, he has for years had a vogue denied him at home. Our critics, biographers and essayists now make him a frequent theme, and our publishers are issuing complete and partial editions of his works.

While his wonderful poems, his essays, his “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” and other stories of remarkable metaphysical analysis, power and originality, are being widely read, there are few who care for his critical articles on American authors of his own day. We were surprised to find in a volume of these that the list of American writers of the first half of our century whom he deemed worthy of critical notice, was very large, and that in the last decade of his life the number of these then living and writing was more than 70. In their own time these writers all enjoyed a fair measure of renown; today most of them are forgotten. Among them all, the names still called great are Bryant, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier and a few others.

Mr. Poe's criticisms are of that slashing style once adopted by the London Quarterly, which is accused of having killed poor Keats, and by the Scotch Reviewers, who goaded Lord Byron to madness and renown. While his laudations are extravagant, his condemnations are merciless and too often savor of that dialect of Billingsgate which Addison calls “a region where they sell the best fish, and speak the plainest English.” Some who now stand at the head of American letters he “damns with faint praise.”

Of Longfellow he says: “He is a deft, well-read artist, but a little quacky, and most remarkable as a determined imitator and a skillful adaptor of the ideas of other people.” He calls Hawthorne a genius, and praises him with some reservations. He has few good words for Lowell, then at the outset of his career. He mercilessly scores the “Fable for and with good reason, since its estimate of himself begins in this wise:

Possibly the contrast between these favorites of fame and fortune, and himself, more than their equal in genius, yet starving for lack of appreciation, added bitterness to that keen critical faculty which under other circumstances would have found more delight in praise than in censure.

Boston, which Mr. Poe styles “Frogpondium,” was a special object of his aversion. Born in that city when his parents were playing a theatrical engagement there, he was of Southern blood and prejudices, and never could abide what he thought its narrow and egotistical ways. He calls its once pet literary organ, the North American Review, “that infernal buzzard.”

It may be said of Poe's criticisms on contemporary writers, some of which are disfigured by ill-natured personalities, that they were pot-boilers, the half frantic efforts for subsistence of a harrassed and impecunious man. In his poems and romances he rises to the heights of an inspiration as yet unequaled in this country.

His brief life was full of sorrow. From birth to death he was a tempest-tossed soul, goaded to desperation by poverty, constantly pursued by the envy and malice of enemies, who even in his untimely grave have maligned him. One of his maligners was Rufus W. Griswold, whose infamous memoir was for years accepted as the truth. In the interests of common decency this memoir has been suppressed.

Later and trustworthy biographers tell us that during the 15 years that Poe was connected editorially and as a contributor, with leading magazines and newspapers, he was model of industry and punctuality, doing more work and devoting to this work far more time and pains than the meager remuneration of that day would justify. “The Raven” brought him only $10. His poems and short stories were pirated, and sometimes brought large returns to others.

We are also told that Poe's unfortunate drinking habits, which darkened the last two years of his life, were due to the necessity of taking stimulants to sustain him during the wearisome vigils which for eight long years he kept by the bedside of his dying wife. Other faults of his which have been exaggerated, might find like extenuation.

He passed his life in sowing that others might reap. He has come to his own 50 years too late. If a little of the praise now lavished upon him could have been given him while he was yet living, if he could have enjoyed a small share of the money now expended on luxurious editions of his works, the whole tenor of his existence would have been changed. All who knew him through wild, sweet legend of the lost Lenore,” and the other creations of his marvelous genius, will echo the words of Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet of his own time whom he justly praised: