Text: James B. Reece, “Fitz-Green Halleck,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 104, continued:]

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), the son of a merchant, was a native of Guilford, Connecticut. His mother was a descendant at the colonial missionary John Eliot, the “apostle to the Indians.” Halleck attended the public schools until his fifteenth year when his formal education ended. Before coming to New York in 1811 he worked for six years in Guilford as a clerk in [page 105:] a store owned by a kinsman. In 1810 his first published verse appeared in New York newspaper, but he had begun to write almost a decade earlier.

In New York Halleck found employment in the banking house of Jacob Barker, in whose service he remained until the business failed in 1828. His infrequent poems continued to appear, but it was the publication in 1819, chiefly in the New York Evening Poet, of the popular Croaker papers that brought him prominently before the public as an author. Although this series of satiric sketches, the joint production of Halleck and his friend Dr. Joseph Rodman Drake, appeared pseudonymously, its authorship was widely known. Also in 1819 Halleck published what proved to be his longest poem, Fanny, a highly successful satire on social climbers. Halleck's visit to Europe in 1822 resulted, some years later, in two poems which added significantly to his growing reputation, “Alnwick Castle” and “Burns.” The zenith of his popular fame was perhaps reached in 1825, when his greatly admired “Marco Bozzaris” was published. His account of the death of the Greek hero quickly became a standard recitation piece in schools and theaters.

Until the end of his life Halleck enjoyed the reputation of one of America's leading poets, but after 1828 he lived in the reflected glow of an earlier period. Despite frequent appeals from his friends and the press for renewed activity, little appeared from his pen during the last four decades of his life.

In 1832 Halleck began his sixteen years of employment as secretary to John Jacob Astor. When Astor died in [page 106:] 1848 he left Halleck an annuity of $200, and in the following the poet retired to his native Guilford. His later years were marked by frequent visits to friends in New York.

The first collection of Halleck's poetry, Alnwick Castle and Other Poems, appeared in 1827; enlarged editions bearing the same title were published in 1835 and 1845. Editions of Byron's works (1832) and Selections From the British Poets (1840) bore his name. Later volumes include The Poetical Works of Fitz-Greene Halleck (1847) and a collection of the Croaker papers (1860).

Halleck's many literary friends included such notables as Bryant, Cooper, and Irving. Long before Poe made their acquaintance; the unassuming bachelor had established friendships with many of the “Literati” subjects. With Francis and Verplanck, he was a member of the Bread and Cheese Club in the 1820's, and in the same general period he met Willis, Wetmore, and Miss Sedgwick. With Lawson he enjoyed a friendship which lasted for almost fifty years. In 1842 Griswold could write without any great flattery that Halleck “is as popular among his friends for qualities, as he is with the world as a poet.”(1) [page 107:]

From both, a personal and a literary standpoint Poe's relationship with Halleck is marked by its consistency. The rather slight personal association of the two poets seems to have been entirely congenial, and Poe's earliest estimate of Halleck's poetical merits remained essentially unchanged. His admiration for Halleck as a person did not blind Poe to the shortcomings of his poetry. He was always as ready to point to faults as to praise, and he never relinquished his original impression that Halleck, like others of the elder American, writers of the period, enjoyed a popular esteem beyond his desert.

Early in his editorial career Poe expressed in the Southern Literary Messenger his pleasure upon learning that a new edition of Halleck's poems would soon be published. “As a writer of light, airy and graceful things,” he remarked, “Halleck is inimitable,”(2) But when the volume came under his critical examination, Poe tempered his compliments with more than a little censure. He gave individual analysis to a number of the poems in Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems (reviewed jointly with Joseph Rodman Drake's The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems) and illustrated both merits and defects by quotation. The chief merits of Halleck's verse, Poe found, were grace, felicity of expression, and occasional flash of imagination. Often, however, the poems were disfigured by poor grammar, harsh versification, and an inappropriate intrusion of burlesque elements. Poe offered the [page 108:] opinion that Halleck's poetical powers were inferior to those of Drake and, with reference to both poets, stated, that he felt obliged to dissent materially from that public opinion ... which would assign them a very brilliant rank in the empire of poesy.”(3) A few months later Poe listed the Drake-Halleck criticism among his Messenger reviews in which “praise slightly prevails.”(4)

The review apparently did not offend Halleck. In the July number of the Messenger, replying to a charge made by the New Bern, North Carolina, Spectator that his critical articles were savage and unmerciful, Poe wrote:

This letter probably was a reply to Poe's request that Halleck contribute to the Messenger.(6) However, nothing from Halleck appeared there. Halleck apparently failed to reply to Poe's later proposal that he agree to contribute regularly to the projected [page 109:] Penn Magazine.(7)

“I have employed Mr. Edgar A. Poe to write an essay on your poetry and a sketch on your history,” Griswold, then editing Graham's, wrote to Halleck on July 25, 1843. “I have just read his MS:, and I think your friends will be gratified with the article.”(8) Poe's critique contained some new material but was in effect a restatement of the estimate he had made in the Messenger. The article, however, is somewhat more laudatory than the previous review; Poe asserted that Halleck was able to refute the imputation that America was unable to produce a great poem and failed to repeat his opinion that Halleck's merits were overrated by the public.(9)

The time of the first meeting of Poe and Halleck is not clear. Both had attended the bookseller's dinner in New York on March 30, 1837.(10) What appears to be the only recorded meeting of the two is that described by Gabriel Harrison, and from his account it is apparent that Poe and Halleck had previously met. Harrison wrote that in the fall of 1843 or 1844, when he was operating a tea store on the corner of Broadway and Prince Street in New York, he became acquainted with a customer who introduced himself as “Thaddeus Perley.” Harrison was a friend [page 110:] of Halleck, then employed nearby in the office of John Jacob Astor. Harrison and Halleck entered the shop one evening to find “Perley” standing by the counter.

In his lecture of February 28, 1845, Poe spoke briefly of Halleck, and read from his poetry.(12) His connection with the Broadway Journal provided several other points of contact with Halleck in 1845. On April 5 He acknowledged a new edition of Alnwick Castle, with Other Poems by noting that the merits of the volume had long been settled and by expressing the wish that Halleck write a new poem which would “give ns an opportunity of praising him anew.”(13) In May James Russell Lowell's harsh [page 111:] review of Halleck's volume appeared without signature, in which fact Poe saw a plot between Briggs and Lowell to discredit him with Halleck. But Halleck was not long deceived, according to Poe's account of the matter in a letter to Laughton Osborn.(14) The Journal for November 29 reprinted Halleck's “Lines. To Her Who Can Understand Them,” to which Poe appended a note calling attention to the “high intrinsic merit” of the poem.(15) On December 1 Poe appealed by letter to Halleck for a loan of a hundred dollars to keep the Journal alive.(16) Halleck is reported to have sent the money, which Poe was never able to repay.(17)

Halleck was among those who attended the receptions at Miss Lynch's,(18) and it is likely that he occasionally met Poe there. Poe, writing for Miss Lynch, invited Halleck to one of these affairs.(19) Evidence of later personal contact between the two is lacking.

The literary relationship virtually ceased with the publication in July, 1846, of the “Literati” sketch.(20) Here Poe placed Halleck among the pioneers of American literature, who, he said, had been praised more than they deserved. The criticism [page 112:] of specific poems was little more than a rearrangement of material from earlier reviews. Poe's final reference to Halleck is a passing description of the Croaker papers as “local and ephemeral,” in the review of A Fable for Critics.(21)

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