Text: Sidney P. Moss, “Chapter 02,” Poe's Literary Battles, 1963, pp. 38-62 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 38, unnumbered:]

Poe, assuming the “generalship” of the Southern Literary Messenger in December, 1835,(1) fired in that issue the first shot in what was to become one of the major battles of American periodicals — a battle that Poe was to wage single-handedly for almost an entire year against four Northern journals, and in the course of which he was even to make enemies of three neutral Southern ones. More significantly, this battle was his first campaign in a career-long war against the New York clique.

It all began quite innocuously on July 11, 1835. The New York Mirror, at that time the best literary weekly in the United States, on whose staff the favorite of the New York [page 39:] littérateurs — Theodore Sedgwick Fay (1807-1898) —— was an associate editor (together with George P. Morris and Nathaniel p. Willis), published by way of prepublication puffing a two-column extract from Fay's forthcoming novel. The extract was headed, “MR. FAY'S NOVEL — NORMAN LESLIE,” and was prefaced as follows: “We this week present our readers with two detached passages from Mr. Fay's forthcoming novel — the first as a specimen of his powers of descriptive pathos, and his facility of touching the feelings, and the other as an example of his style of narrative!”(2) The next month the Mirror again published a passage from Norman Leslie, this time devoting an entire page to it and introducing it in this manner: “The last extract we gave from Mr. Fay's forthcoming novel having been extensively copied, and spoken of in high terms by our brethren of the press, we are induced to present them with another selection from these beautiful volumes, which we shall continue from time to time until their publication.”(3)

Again, at the end of that month, the Mirror presented another two-page “sample” of the forthcoming Norman Leslie, heralding the novel with this statement: “In our present number we continue our extracts from this beautiful performance, which will make its appearance in this city and in London simultaneously.”(4) Nor was the Mirror satisfied with this spread alone. Noting that fine weather had come to New York, the Mirror felt that it could be adequately described only by another quotation from Norman Leslie.(5) Once more, in October, the Mirror felt obliged to charm its readers by printing another passage from Fay's book.(6)

In November, 1835, the long-trumpeted, widely puffed two-volume novel — Norman Leslie: A Tale of the Present Times — appeared anonymously under the banner of Harper and Brothers. The Knickerbocker, which was destined to become one of [page 40:] the leading monthly magazines of the next decade and with whose editor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, Poe was to carry on a sustained literary feud, reviewed Norman Leslie in this way:

Inadvertently or otherwise, this review was misleading, for although it is true that Norman Leslie represented Fay's first attempt at a novel, it was his third published work, Dreams and Reveries of a Quiet Man and The Minute-Book having appeared in 1832 and 1833 respectively. The sell-out of the first large edition, moreover, is not to be taken, as is urged, “as a conclusive evidence of the power of the novel,”(8) but rather of the power of the press to create a best-seller by puffing. Furthermore, the fact that the writer of this review, no doubt Lewis Clark himself, could praise a book which he blithely confessed he had not even read, shows, in addition to the general irresponsibility of both the magazines and the critics of the period, the favoritism accorded Fay.

The “anonymous” Norman Leslie formally came to Poe's attention in November, 1835. In reviewing it for the Messenger of December, 1835,(9) Poe devoted almost as much space to it (some four thousand words) as the Mirror had, periodically, in all its notices and extracts, and showed that he had read the novel with perhaps more thoroughness than its author had written it. Modeling his critical style on Jeffrey's of the [page 41:] Edinburgh Review, Wilson's of Blackwood’ s Edinburgh Magazine, and Gifford's of the Quarterly Review, which he had obviously studied, he went to work on Norman Leslie:

Poe proceeded to deride the Preface, particularly Fay's plea for the “indulgence of the solemn and sapient critics,” declaring that since he himself was neither solemn nor sapient, he was not bound to show Fay a shadow of mercy. Then Poe provided his readers with a detailed summary of the plot, after which he remarked: “Thus ends the Tale of the Present Times, and thus ends the most inestimable piece of balderdash with which the common sense of the good people of America was ever so openly or so villainously insulted.

“We do not mean to say,” Poe continued, “that there is positively nothing in Mr. Fay's novel to commend — but there is indeed very little.” That little Poe pointed out briefly, “for we can positively think of nothing farther worth even a qualified commendation. The plot, as will appear from the running outline we have given of it, is a monstrous piece of absurdity and incongruity. The characters have no character,” for reasons which he proceeded to explain. “As regards Mr. Fay's style, it is unworthy of a school-boy. The ‘Editor of the New York Mirror’ has either never seen an edition of Murray's Grammar, or he has been a-Willising so long as to have forgotten his vernacular language. Let us examine one or two of his sentences at random.” This he did and found many faults in diction and syntax. He concluded: “Here we have a blistering detail, a blistering truth, a blistering story, and a blistering [page 42:] brand, to say nothing of innumerable blisters interspersed throughout the book. But we have done with Norman Leslie, — if ever we saw as silly a thing, may we be — blistered.”

This critique differed from Poe's other harsh reviews in the Messenger in that it was directed against the work of a member of “one of the most powerful literary cliques in America,”(10) but apparently it was a dud, for it elicited no immediate comment from that coterie. But reactions from other journals were so instantaneous and numerous that White, no doubt at Poe's suggestion, added a Supplement to the next number of his magazine consisting entirely of notices of the Messenger, and calling attention to “the source, especially” of many of the notices — a gratifying matter considering the sectionalism of the times.(11)

The New York papers, however cordial they were to the Messenger (and the Messenger under Poe's editorship was uniformly praised for being the “neatest in typographical execution — in whiteness of paper and elegance of type, of any American publication of the kind” — a real novelty for the period), were, on the whole and as might be expected, less hospitable to the Norman Leslie review than the Southern journals. The New York Courier and Enquirer observed that the criticism in the Messenger was “the boldest, the most independent, and unflinching, of all that appears in the periodical world,” but expressed certain reservations about the Norman Leslie review. For, “though we cannot deny the truth of the greater portion of it, [the review] is paralyzed by the strong symptoms of personal hostility not to Fay only, but to all who may be supposed to favor or admire him.” The New York Spirit of the Times remarked of Poe's reviews that “in one instance undue severity is shown towards a clever young author; yet they are, in the main, clever and just.” The New Yorker, the warmest of the metropolitan journals in its praise, noted that the “Editor examines with impartiality, [page 43:] judges with fairness, commends with evident pleasure, and condemns with moderation. May he live a thousand years!”

The Southern journals cited in the Supplement were in almost total accord in praising the Messenger in general and Poe's criticisms in particular. For example, the Petersburg Constellation said: “We have rarely read a review more caustic or more called for than the flaying which the new editor of the Messenger has so judiciously given Mr. Fay's ‘bepuffed, be-plastered and be-Mirrored’ novel of ‘Norman Leslie.’” The Lynchburg Virginian remarked: “Such reviews as that of Mr. Fay's ‘Norman Leslie’ will be read. Men — and Women alike — will always be attracted in crowds to behold an infliction of the Russian knout or to see a fellow-creature flayed alive. And Mr. Fay — who, by the way, is a great favorite with us — fully deserves a ‘blistering’ for putting forth such a novel as Norman Leslie.” And Major Mordecai M. Noah of distinguished reputation, whose loyalty to America can scarcely be described as sectional, remarked that “we are glad to see the censures so unsparingly, but judiciously directed against the mawkish style and matter of those ephemeral productions with which, under the name of chef-d’oeuvres in novel writing, the poor humbugged public are so unmercifully gagged and bamboozled.”

So encouraged and by now no doubt aware of the journalistic value of “kicking up a bobbery,” Poe in February, 1836, again peppered Norman Leslie, for that novel, despite Poe's review, had passed into a second printing within a few months,(12) and, made into a stage play, had drawn large audiences into the American Theatre in New York for almost a whole month.(13) In reviewing Paul Ulric, or The Adventures of an Enthusiast,(14) Poe began by saying: “These two volumes are by Morris Mattson, Esq. of Philadelphia, and we presume that Mr. [page 44:] Mattson is a very young man. Be this as it may, when we called Norman Leslie the silliest book in the world we had certainly never seen Paul Ulric.” In speaking of Mattson's style, he said, “all fine writers have pet words and phrases,” that, for example, “Mr. Fay had his ‘blisters’ ... and Mr. M. must be allowed his ‘suches’ and ‘so muches.’ Such is genius. ...”

Meanwhile, Poe, who had submitted a collection of short stories to Harper and Brothers, the publishers of the very novels whose worthlessness he had so savagely exposed, had his manuscript rejected. Paulding, writing to T. W. White on March 3, 1836, explained Harpers’ refusal to publish: “The stories had so recently appeared in the Messenger that ‘they would be no novelty.’ “(15) But Harpers commented in a letter to Poe that they were generally pleased with Poe's criticisms and took pleasure in sending him all their books, at least such of them as they felt were worthy of his notice.(16)

The Mirror, hearing in a conjecturable way that Poe's manuscript was rejected, found ammunition for an offensive against Poe, an offensive designed to avenge their editor Fay, at whom Poe was still taking potshots. On April 9, 1836, the Mirror published an article called “THE SUCCESSFUL NOVEL!!”(17) which, introducing Poe under the sobriquet of Bulldog, sought to explain ex post facto his hostile criticism of popular literary successes in terms of his own personal failure. Typical of the satirical statements in that article is this: “. . the Harpers, you know, have so little principle, that they publish only works which they think will sell.” Lest readers of the Mirror should overlook this article or fail to detect its target, despite such obvious allusions as the Southern Literary Passenger, a squib, interspersed with pointing fingers, appeared on another page: “Those who have read the notices of American books in a certain ‘southern’ monthly, which is striving to gain notoriety by the loudness of its abuse, may find amusement [page 45:] in the sketch, in another page, entitled ‘The Successful Novel!’ The ‘Southern Literary Messenger’ knows, by experience! what it is to write a successless novel.”(18)

Encouraged perhaps by Poe's failure to reply to the personal attack of the Mirror, or, as seems more likely, in league with the Mirror, the big guns began firing on Poe, the big guns being Willis Gaylord Clark of the Philadelphia Gazette and Knickerbocker and Colonel William L. Stone of the New York Commercial Advertiser. The attack that W. G. Clark made on Poe and printed in his newspaper,(19) W. L. Stone reprinted in his;(20) and not satisfied with this alone, Stone added his own strictures,

Clark's attack read:

While these remarks were personal and only suggested again that Poe's manuscript had been rejected, Stone's comments were more direct:

Poe, his critical integrity impugned, decided to level his charges against the cliquish practice of puffing works into reputation, however undeserving such books might be, and to rationalize, both by statement and demonstration, his principles of critical judgment to indicate that he was not malicious, but simply just. These were charges and principles that were central to the entire body of his criticism and were not formulated merely to stave off immediate difficulties. This he did in his Drake-Halleck review.(21) He asserted that American criticism, with “some noble exceptions,” had willed itself into decline in consequence of adopting the wrong means of encouraging a native literature, the means being “indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent. ...” Such uncritical and meaningless laudation, far from producing a native literature of which we can be proud, is, he said, injurious to it, for it encourages the bad and indifferent as indiscriminately as it encourages the good. But critics, “far from being ashamed of the many disgraceful literary failures to which our own inordinate vanities and misapplied patriotism have lately given birth, and so far from deeply lamenting that these daily puerilities are of home manufacture, ... adhere pertinaciously to ... the gross paradox of liking a stupid book the better, because, [page 47:] sure enough, its stupidity is American.” Admittedly, once we were too subservient to British critical dicta, he went on, but, however servile that subservience was, those dicta at least forced us to discriminate between what was good and bad in our own literature. Now, “boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a too speedily assumed literary freedom,” we give up all effort at such discrimination in favor of wholesale laudation.

Having made these statements, Poe proceeded to deal with Clark and Stone, alluding in a footnote to the attack (“THE SUCCESSFUL NOVEL!! “) that had recently been made upon him in the Mirror. Clark's charge he chose to treat summarily, since it was personal. But Stone's charges he answered in detail, since they questioned his critical practice:

When he had finished with Clark and Stone, Poe proceeded to accuse the majority of American critics of having no critical standards and to formulate his own in regard to poetry, since the poems of Drake and Halleck were the subject of his critique:

Then, conceding that poetry as a term was troublesome, if not impossible, to define, he felt that he could describe its nature in such a way that it would be “sufficiently distinct for all the purposes of practical analysis” — a description that he proceeded to give and was to give in critique after critique until, after much modification, it reached its final form in “The Poetic Principle.” Unlike his eighteenth-century predecessors who had striven to formulate a body of objective rules by which to test the merits of a poem, Poe, in common with all Romantic critics, relied upon a species of impressionism — upon an innate faculty — to recognize a work of art. Thus, he said that poetry is not primarily concerned with human passions, however magnificent, or scenes of nature, however august, or moral lessons, however practicable. Instead, poetry is concerned with Beauty, which Poe called its only legitimate province. All else, whether passion, nature, or truth, is subsidiary to this concern. As Poe put the principle in its definitive form:

In passing, we may notice, however perfunctorily, that this in essence is Poe's statement as to what constitutes poetry and, by implication, the means by which one may recognize poetry. Poets and critics must be transcendent and catch these apocalyptic glimpses of supernal beauty, however briefly and indeterminately. The only significant difference between the true poet and the true critic is that one renders the vision and the other understands and feels its genuineness. For Poe, it followed from these statements that critical principles could be fixed once and for all, since that which the poem adumbrated was eternal.

Poe then passed to an analysis of books by two then renowned American poets, The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, a posthumous work by Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820), and Alnwick Castle with Other Poems by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), to demonstrate how his theoretical remarks could be applied to poetry. The conclusion he reached after a close reading of Drake's volume had equal validity for Halleck's: “Yet such are the puerilities we daily find ourselves called upon to admire, as among the loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to assign a rank with the proud [page 50:] trophies of the matured and vigorous genius of England, is to prove ourselves at once a fool, a maligner, and no patriot.”

Though Poe had acknowledged that Clark had “a right to think us quacky if he pleases,” and that he had not assumed for a moment, despite Clark's charges, “that we could write a single line of the works we have reviewed,” Clark was not content to leave the matter there. On May 10, he published the following in his newspaper:

As for Stone, he did not take up the gauntlet that Poe had thrown, for not only did he fail to answer Poe's request to be shown his blunders, his flippancy, and, above all, his personalities, but he ignored him entirely. Opportunely enough, however, Colonel Stone's novel, Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman, came “anonymously” to Poe's attention some two months later. Already a past master of the “hanged, drawn, and Quarterly” method, Poe analyzed the Ups and Downs in about the same way that he had analyzed Norman Leslie. The introduction to the novel he found to be “much the best portion of the work — so much so, indeed, that we fancy it written by some kind, good-natured friend of the author.” He then labored through most of the sixteen chapters of the work, chapter by chapter, giving an extract of one of the best passages in the book, to let the book condemn itself by an objective presentation of its own ludicrousness. He concluded: “We have given the entire pith and marrow of the book. The term flat, is the only general expression which would apply to it. It is written, we believe, by Col. Stone of the New York Commercial Advertiser, and should have been printed among the quack advertisements, in a spare corner of his paper.”(24) The use of the word quack must have amused Poe, since he had managed to turn the point of that word — first used by Clark to describe Poe's criticism and then reprinted by Stone — against Stone. Moreover, in heralding the Sketches by Boz in the same number of the Messenger,(25) Poe took occasion to observe: “We should like very much to copy the whole of the article entitled Pawnbrokers’ Shops [from the Sketches], with a view of contrasting its matter and manner with the insipidity of the passage we have just quoted [in the Stone review] on the same subject from the ‘Ups and Downs’ of Colonel Stone, and by way of illustrating our remarks on the [page 52:] unity of effect. ... So perfect, and never-to-be-forgotten a picture cannot be brought about by any such trumpery exertion, or still more trumpery talent, as we find employed in the ineffective daubing of Colonel Stone.”

Single-handed and under fire, yet still blasting away at the Northern periodicals, Poe at this time received successive attacks from the most unexpected quarters, which must have made him lose heart momentarily. The Southern Literary Journal of Charleston, South Carolina, which had hitherto been, if not an active ally, at least a sympathetic neutral, printed an article called “The Puffing System”(26) in which the editor denounced American journals which filled up columns with puffs and which, anonymously and under the pretext of criticism, vented their “private spleen or malignity ... against worthy persons ... whose literary reputation ... may be sacrificed to gratify the revenge of the cowardly critic. ...” The anonymous writer then puffed “The Uses and Abuses of Criticism” in a recent number of the Knickerbocker, as well as an article by Paulding in the current Knickerbocker.

Poe felt that he was the party so broadly alluded to by the Southern Literary Journal, and he had good reason to feel sensitive. He had republished puffs of the Messenger and had anonymously criticized the works of “worthy persons” with a causticity hardly precedented in American journals, not to mention the fact that, at the same time, he had eulogized the novels of friends — namely, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker's George Balcombe and John Pendleton Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson. Thus, with a tone of regret, conspicuous for its singularity and not to be sounded again, he replied:

Whitaker, of course, could not allow Poe's innuendoes to pass unchallenged. After puffing the Knickerbocker again, he proceeded to “praise” the Southern Literary Messenger, adding ambiguously, among other left-handed compliments: “Its criticisms betray, in most cases, but little of the spirit of puffing — on the contrary, the editor seems resolute to avoid any such charge, and knows no better way than to rush into an opposite extreme. ... So far from universally puffing, he does not often praise; and he discriminates more justly, where he does so, than all the rest of our periodicals.” He added that he was happy to see that the Messenger had abandoned the “practice of reprinting in its own pages the voluminous newspaper encomiums that are every month so generously and so justly paid to it.” Coming to the point at last, Whitaker said:

Then, as if to justify his disavowal of “concert” with the Knickerbocker, Whitaker remarked: “The ‘Knickerbocker’ continues to reprint compliments paid to itself. ... The editors of that magazine may have their reasons for this policy which are unknown to us, and which we cannot surmise. All that we have a right to say ... is that we disapprove the practice altogether ...”(28)

In addition to the attack by the Southern Literary Journal, the Newbern Spectator of North Carolina also took issue with Poe's unrelenting critical tactics:

Poe was braced and ready for all corners. Adding a Supplement to the July number of the Messenger, he quoted the Newbern Spectator in full and responded: “We are at a loss to know who is the editor of the Spectator, but have a shrewd suspicion that he is the identical gentleman who once sent us from Newbern an unfortunate copy of verses. It seems to us that he wishes to be taken notice of, and we will, for the once, oblige him with a few words — with the positive understanding, however, that it will be inconvenient to trouble ourselves hereafter with his opinions.” Poe went on, quite contemptuously, to ridicule the remarks of the Spectator editor, and, to humiliate him further, to quote various celebrities such as Paulding who said that the Messenger “is decidedly superior to any [page 55:] Periodical in the United States, and Mr. Poe is decidedly the best of all our young writers; I dont [sic] know but I might add all our old ones, with one or two exceptions, among which I assure you I dont include myself.” Poe concluded:

Poe could afford to be proud, though the contempt he evinced here was quite unwarranted. The editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, as well as an impressive number of other newspapers and magazine editors both in the North and the South, had hailed the Messenger as being “at the very head of the periodical literature of its class, in the United States,” and this in Virginia where, as the editor of the Richmond Compiler rightly remarked, such a venture was “looked upon as chimaerical in the last degree; and when ... speedy downfall [for the Messenger] was universally predicted.”(30) The editor of the Courier and Enquirer added, however, as might be expected from one who favored his renowned fellow New Yorker: “We do not agree by any means with some of its literary conclusions. For instance, it is very wide of our opinion on the merits of Halleck; but there is a vigor and manliness in most of the [editorial] papers that appear in the Messenger, which we are almost ready to admit, are found no where else in American periodicals.” In the Supplement containing these remarks, there were many other quotations copied from various magazines and newspapers. Two excerpts appeared from the New Yorker, one of which found fault with Poe, who, like an Indian, “cannot realize that an enemy is conquered till he is scalped,” but which praised him for his ability. The editor thought him “too severe, as in the case of ‘Norman Leslie,’ “but found the review of Drake and Halleck [page 56:] done “faithfully, fairly, and with discrimination.” The second excerpt from the New Yorker found the criticisms “spirited but just,” and observed that “Col. Stone's unfortunate ‘Ups and Downs ... ’ [had been] most unsparingly shown up.”

Similarly, a Philadelphia journal, the Weekly Messenger, judged the Southern Literary Messenger to be “as good as any, if not the very best [magazine], in these United States,” but objected to the Norman Leslie review on the grounds that it was “burlesque, or caricature, not criticism. ...” From the Southern journals, however, there was almost universal acclaim. The Petersburg Constellation, alluding to the Mirror's satire of Poe, said: “Let the New York Mirror snarl if it will; there are papers in each Messenger which will outlive all the Norman Leslie [‘s, Willis's] ‘Pencil-lings by the Way,’ and [Morris's] ‘Wearies my Love of my Letters?’ of its erudite editors. Kennel a stag-hound with a cur, and the latter will yelp in very fear.”

Typical of many of the other Southern notices was that of the Baltimore American, which praised Poe for his “spirited and just remarks on the puffing system” and for the “vindication of his course”: “He is on the strong side, whatever . influences may be arrayed against him, and will do much good even though he run occasionally into the extreme of severity. ... Let the editor of the Messenger and others, go on ... assuming a high standard of literary merit, require substantial qualifications in candidates for fame, and condemn unsparingly all who do not unite genius with cultivation, a union indispensable for the production of works of permanent value.”

The last and most timid assault came from the South again; this time from the Richmond Courier and Daily Compiler — in Poe's own city. Though allowing that the Messenger was well received by most editors; that the commendations of the editorial corps “may be valued, because they emanate from sources beyond influence of private friendship”; and adding his own testimony that the criticisms in the Messenger “are pithy and often highly judicious,” the editor nevertheless remarked that “the editors must remember that it is almost as [page 57:] injudicious to obtain a character for regular cutting and slashing as for indiscriminate laudation.(31)

Poe responded to this “attack” in the columns of the Daily Compiler itself: “Your notice of the Messenger would generally be regarded as complimentary — especially so to myself. I would, however, prefer justice to a compliment, and the good name of the Magazine to any personal consideration.” He said there was but one editor of the Messenger: “It is not right that others should be saddled with demerits belonging only to myself.” The point to which he took special objection, however, was that the Messenger had obtained a reputation for regular cutting and slashing. Were this statement just, Poe commented, “I would be silent, and set immediately about amending my editorial course. You are not sufficiently decided, I think, in saying that a career of ‘regular cutting and slashing is almost as bad as one of indiscriminate laudation.’ It is infinitely worse — it is horrible. The laudation may proceed from — philanthropy, if you please; but the ‘indiscriminate cutting and slashing’ only from the vilest passions of our nature.” Poe then inventoried his reviews for the period to show that he had not regularly cut and slashed:

Poe continued:

The Daily Compiler, hitherto quite sympathetic with the Messenger, beat a hasty and rather apologetic retreat: “ ... we did not mean to assume that the editor had already obtained ‘a character for regular cutting and slashing.’ We only warned him against that unenviable sort of reputation. ... It is not probable we shall ever again disturb the current of laudation, even by a hint. ...”(32) Even Colonel Stone was far from aggressive when, in the Commercial Advertiser of September 8, he replied to Poe's remarks in the Daily Compiler. Citing the substance of Poe's statement given above, he demurred by saying:

Poe answered neither of these editors, though, if he had been really sincere in setting the record straight, he would have acknowledged the truth of Colonel Stone's statements. Nevertheless, his attitude shows that he was becoming quite sure of himself and of the journalistic value of his critical pen. Alone, he had harried and defied the powerful literary clique of New York and had defended himself against the editorial powers of the South, to emerge triumphant and with reputation. Subscriptions to the Messenger were mounting impressively; money was pouring into White's coffers; Poe had made the new Southern monthly a leading national magazine; and accolades [page 59:] from established authors were being showered upon him.(33) Meantime, Poe seems to have assumed an ambivalent attitude toward Fay, mindful that it was his novel that had been the impetus for his editorial success and the stimulus for the hostility against him. This attitude became evident in August, 1836, when Poe, introducing a unique column called “Autography,” printed as a last entry the signature of T. S. Fay and commented:

Hardly by chance, Colonel Stone's autograph immediately preceded Fay's, about which Poe remarked in part: “From the chirography no precise opinion can be had of Mr. Stone's literary style. [Mr. Messenger says no opinion can be had of it in any way.] “

At this time the controversy, marked by such clamorous, if sporadic, violence, came lamely to a halt, if only for want of an adversary. Having defended himself against the New York Mirror, the New York Commercial Advertiser, the Knickerbocker and the Philadelphia Gazette (which Poe lumped together, since Willis Clark was co-editor of the Knickerbocker), the Southern Literary Journal, the Newbern Spectator, and the Richmond Courier and Daily Compiler, Poe in the September number of the Messenger pleaded that “illness of both Publisher [page 60:] and Editor will, we hope, prove a sufficient apology for the delay in the issue of the present number, and for the omission of many promised notices of new books.”(35) October saw no renewal of the quarrel; and in November Poe again wrote that a “press of business ... has prevented us from paying, in this Messenger, the usual attention to our Critical Department.”(36) In December the Messenger did not appear at all,(37) and the January number contained Poe's brief valedictory: “Mr. Poe's attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present number, the Editorial duties of the Messenger. ... With the best wishes to the Magazine, and to its few foes as well as many friends, he is now desirous of bidding all parties a peaceable farewell.”(38)

In the atmosphere of such editorial practices as these, Poe's criticisms were written, criticisms sometimes so forthright and often so caustic that he provoked hostility, particularly, as might be expected, in those who were partial to the authors reviewed. Accused of undue severity, Poe was impelled to explain that if he was unkind, it was to perform a great good for American literature. Charged with being dictatorial in his judgments, he was forced to expound the principles on which his judgments rested — statements that became part and parcel of his reviews. Poe himself, standing off in time and space and resurveying that old campaign, tells us the issues for which he fought, even while fighting the same battle on new fields. The occasion was his review of Wilmer's Quacks of Helicon, the essence of which has already been quoted:(39)

Whether, when Poe went to New York a month after he left the Messenger (February, 1837), the New York clique managed a more insidious revenge upon him for his treatment of Norman Leslie (not to mention his other attacks upon books by favored Knickerbocker writers) by preventing his employment on a periodical is still uncertain, however likely. It is known that Poe bore Fay no personal animosity, if it counts for evidence that when he edited Graham's Magazine (April, 1841 May, 1842) Fay was represented by a series of papers on Shakespeare. It is also known that he bore no grudge toward Willis or Morris, two of the editors of the Mirror, nor they to him, inasmuch as he joined their staff sometime in October, 1844, having previously contributed to it under its new name, the Evening Mirror (a daily except Sunday) and to its Saturday supplement, the Weekly Mirror.(40) But Poe was to wage continual war with Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the Knickerbocker and was to show only contempt for Colonel Stone. In renewing his “Chapter on Autography” for Graham's Magazine,(41) Poe recalled that in the Messenger days there was “one instance only” that his jeu d’esprit was resented: “Colonel Stone and the Messenger had not been on the best of terms. Some one of the Colonel's little brochures had been severely treated by that journal, which declared that the work would have been far more properly published among the quack advertisements in a corner of the Commercial.” He added with gross exaggeration, “The colonel had retaliated by wholesale [page 62:] vituperation of the Messenger.” Again in December, 1841, Poe expressed his opinion of Stone, this time more fully:

Years later, in response to an anonymous writer in the Mirror, Poe uttered his last sentiments about Norman Leslie. Mr. or Mrs. Asterisk, as Poe called the nameless writer, had argued that Poe “seems to have quite an original and peculiar standard of judging of the merits of men and books. Success,” the writer asserted, “is the common measure of talent,” whether in literature or business. “We doubt if the copy-right of all Mr. Simms’ collected works would bring as good a price in America or England, as the ‘Norman Leslie’ of Fay, or the ‘Sketch Book’ of Irving.” Poe, after pulverizing the article, concluded: “Putting the author of ‘Norman Leslie’ by the side of the author of the ‘Sketch-Book,’ is like speaking of ... a Mastodon and a mouse. If we were asked which was the most ridiculous book ever written upon the face of the earth — we should answer at once, ‘Norman Leslie.’ ”(43)

It was the Norman Leslie incident, then, and the editorial corruption that Poe exposed that led Poe into his fight with the New York coterie and eventually with the Boston clique — a fight that was to be fought openly and in ambush, that was to draw other combatants, and that, finally, was to engage Poe during most of his critical career.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 38:]

1. See “Publisher's Notice” in the Messenger, II (Dec., 1835), 1. Poe's connection with the Messenger began, of course, at an earlier date, but the relations between him and Thomas Willis White, proprietor of the Messenger, were uncertain and unsatisfactory both before and after Dec., 1835. See Ostrom, Poe's Letters, I, 53-107 passim, and White's letters reproduced by David E. Jackson in Poe and the Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, Va., 1934), Pp. 96-115 passim.

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2. New York Mirror, XIII (July II, 1835), 10-11.

3. Ibid., XIII (Aug. 8, 1835), 47.

4. Ibid., XIII (Aug. 29, 1835), 66-67. The “simultaneous” appearance of Norman Leslie in America and England was designed, of course, to secure the English copyright to that work.

5. Ibid., XIII (Aug. 29, 1835), 72.

6. Ibid., XIII (Oct. 10, 1835), 114 [[also Oct. 3, 1835, p. 107 — JAS]]

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7. Knickerbocker, VI (Nov., 1835), 483.

8. “Affected and melodramatic” as the novel is, Mott (American Magazines, I, 635) thinks that it succeeded because “it used a notorious murder of the day as the center of the plot, and because its author was one of the editors of the popular New York Mirror. ...”

9. Southern Literary Messenger, II, 54-57. Poe had actually written the Norman Leslie review sometime before Nov. 23, 1835. See T. W. White's letter to Lucian Minor of that date (Jackson, Poe and the Messenger, p. 105) in which he comments on “the Leslie critique.”

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10. Quinn, Poe, p. 244.

11. The quotations that follow in the text appeared in the Supplement to the Southern Literary Messenger, II (Jan., 1836), 133-140.

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12. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, ed., The Prose Writers of America (Philadelphia, 1847), p. 447.

13. “The American Theatre, Bowery. — Norman Leslie,’ dramatised from Mr. Fay's well-known novel of that name, has for nearly a month drawn crowded auditories at this theatre” — Knickerbocker, VII (Feb., 1836), 215. See also the notices of the play Norman Leslie in the Knickerbocker (pp. 311 and 437), which show that from January through April the play crowded the American Theatre “with eager and admiring audiences.”

14. Southern Literary Messenger, II (Feb., 1836), 173-180.

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15. Quoted by Una Pope-Hennessy, Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849: A Critical Biography (London, 1934), p. 177 n. 1.

16. For the entire letter, dated June, 1836, see Quinn, Poe, pp. 250-251.

17. New York Mirror, XIII (April 9, 1836), 324-325.

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18. Ibid., XIII (April 9, 1836), 327. The last sentence of this squib was another misrepresentation, since Poe had submitted, not a novel, but a collection of tales — a fact that Poe duly noted in the Messenger, II (April, 1836), 327 n.: “The Editor of the Messenger never in his life wrote or published, or attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless.” As has been pointed out, Poe submitted the stories to Harpers after, not before, the Norman Leslie review, so that rejection of his stories cannot be adduced, as was adduced by the Mirror, as motivation for a hostile review. The simple truth is that Norman Leslie is an exceptionally inferior novel and, as such, received an exceptionally unfavorable review.

19. Philadelphia Gazette, and Commercial Intelligencer, April 8, 1836, p. 2. Also reprinted by Poe in the Messenger, II (April, 1836), 327, with the sentence beginning, “Professor Dew's address ...” omitted.

20. New York Commercial Advertiser, April 12, 1836, p. 1.

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21. Southern Literary Messenger, II (April, 1836), 326-336.

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22. “The Poetic Principle,” Sartain's Union Magazine, VII (Oct., 1850), 233, and also in the Home Journal of Aug. 31, 1850, where it appeared earlier in consequence of being copied from advance sheets of Griswold's forthcoming edition of Poe's The Literati. If Poe differs in this respect from other Romantics of his time — and one must remember that Romantics are pathetically few, even in a period so labeled — it is largely in the degree of his insistence upon this Principle and in the nature of his vision.

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23. Philadelphia Gazette, p. 2. Poe remarked in a preface to the Supplement he added to the July, 1836, number of the Messenger (p. 517) carrying the extracts that he had “duly weighed the propriety and impropriety of this course” before he decided to comply “with the suggestion of many of our friends, and ... a majority of our contributors”; and lest some readers might suspect that the extracts were culled so that only favorable ones were published, he would “now publish every late criticism received.” One obvious, if tacit, objection that Clark had to such an imposing array of decidedly favorable notices was that it provided impressive testimony that the Messenger was becoming a serious rival of the Knickerbocker. As the National Intelligencer remarked in an earlier notice of the Messenger (Jan., 1836, p. 135): “This journal has, very unexpectedly, left its Northern competitors behind in the race for fame, and assumed all at once a pre-eminent rank among American periodicals.”

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24. Southern Literary Messenger, II (June, 1836), 455-457.

25. Ibid., II, 457-460. The Knickerbocker, VII (May, 1836), 550, reviewed Ups and Downs enthusiastically: “Having read it entirely through ... and at a single agreeably-protracted sitting, we are enabled to pronounce it entertaining in the extreme.”

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26. II (June, 1836), 312-315.

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27. Southern Literary Messenger, II (June, 1836), 460.

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28. Southern Literary Journal, II (July, 1836), 396-403.

29. Reprinted by Poe in Supplement, Southern Literary Messenger, II (July, 1836), 517.

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30. All these quotations appeared in the Supplement, ibid., II, 517-524.

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31. Aug. 31, 1836, p. 1. For a review of the Messenger so favorable that the editor of the Courier and Daily Compiler felt called upon in advance to exonerate himself from the charge of puffing, see the July Supplement to the Messenger, p. 518.

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32. Poe's defense and the apology of the editor of the Daily Compiler both appeared in the Courier and Daily Compiler, Sept. 2, 1836.

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33. According to Poe, he began the editorship of the Messenger with 700 subscribers, and “the general outcry was that because a Magazine had never succeeded south of the Potomac, therefore a Magazine never could succeed. Yet, in despite of this, and in despite of the wretched taste of its proprietor, which hampered and controlled me at all points, I increased the circulation in fifteen months to 5,500 subscribers paying an annual profit of $10,000 when I left it. This number was never exceeded by the journal, which rapidly went down and may now be said to be extinct” (letter to Charles Anthon written in Oct., 1844) . See James A. Harrison, ed., The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1902), XVII, 177-178, and Ostrom, Poe's Letters, I, 269. Killis Campbell in “Contemporary Opinion of Poe,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXXVI (June, 1921), 160-161, states that Poe's boast was valid.

34. Southern Literary Messenger, II, 604.

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35. Ibid., II, 668.

36. Ibid., II, 788.

37. White was ill; a printers’ strike was on; and White complained of lack of funds (Quinn, Poe, 259).

38. III, 72.

39. See chap. i, n. 92.

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40. An article that appeared in Alexander's Weekly Messenger, with which Poe was connected from Dec., 1839, to May, 1840, and that Clarence S. Brigham in his Edgar Allan Poe's Contributions to Alexander's Weekly Messenger (Worcester, Mass., 1943), pp. 19-20, cites and ascribes to Poe, reviewed a number of the Mirror in which a “well written critical notice commends, in the highest terms, Mr. Poe's ‘Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.’” The writer of the article attributed this review “to the pen of General Morris; and it certainly has a double weight in coming from him; for, if we are not mistaken, Mr. Poe evinced much hostility to the ‘Mirror’ during his editorship of the Southern Literary Messenger. Or, perhaps, his thrusts were aimed only at the author of Norman Leslie?”

41. XIX (Nov., 1841), 224-234.

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42. Graham's, XIX, 274-275. In the same number of Graham's (p. 277), Poe again printed the autograph of Fay and referred to Norman Leslie as “The Great Used Up.”

43. Broadway Journal, II (Oct. II, 1845), 216. Norman Leslie made its final appearance in 1869 in a one-volume edition published by G. P. Putnam and Son and re-subtitled, “A New York Story.”