Text: Anonymous, “Poe and His Biographers,” Athenaeum (London, UK), whole no. 2470, February 27, 1875, pp. 287-288

[page 287, column 2:]

POE AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS.

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by John H. Ingram. 4 vols. (Edinburgh, Black.)

Sorrow and Song: Studies of Literary Struggle. By Henry Curwen. (H. 8. King & Co.)

TARDY justice is at length done to the merits of Edgar Allan Poe. So strange and capricious has been his fate, and so much at variance with ordinary experience appear the facts connected with his history, there seems something like ground for the question of Baudelaire, whether he was not the sport of some diabolic agency, which “premeditatedly cast his fine and spiritual nature into hostile crowds, as the martyrs were cast into the arena.” In the fact that his countrymen and those whose language he has enriched with original and fervent compositions are only now beginning to be proud of him, there is little cause for wonder. Poets, as a rule, are innovators, and the world, after it has paid them the tribute of a little curiosity, is likely enough to turn round and drive them forth from its bosom. The list of poets who have shocked the feelings of respectability and have undergone a social or political persecution and ostracism is long, and includes the names of Dante, Milton, Shelley, Byron, and Heine, as well as that of Poe. It has been, however, the special misfortune of Poe that the biographer, who in every other case has been the apologist and the advocate of the poet, has in his case proved the worst of libellers. What motive can have led Poe to select Dr. R. W. Griswold as his literary executor it is difficult now to conjecture. No choice could have been more unfortunate. A biographer at once hostile and self-chosen is, indeed,

That spite and wounded self-love influenced Griswold in the task of writing the prefatory memoir with which the early editions of Poe's works appeared is now acknowledged. During many years, however, the memory of Poe has been dishonoured by the imputations and assertions of a man equally unscrupulous and malignant. Now, even when the truth is told distinctly and with authority, it will be slow to win its way to general recognition. There are few men of experience who have not seen how much of the mire of a groundless accusation clings to the accused. Years after a charge, shown to be false, has been brought against a man, one is asked, at mention of his name, “Was there not something against him?” This being so in ordinary cases, what must be the difficulty of removing an impression such as has been communicated concerning Poe to every one with no special sources of information who has read his works? Poe's conduct, moreover, was of a kind to give the appearance of credibility to the charges advanced. Nervous, impetuous, and excitable in nature and temperament, a little wine was enough to flurry him, and he took a great deal. He was, in fact, what is now called a dipsomaniac. This truth it is impossible to ignore. Making all allowance for the excuse generously advanced in the case of men of intellect who find solace in alcohol, that wine produces more effect upon them than upon men of coarser faculties, it must [column 3:] be admitted that too much is too much under all circumstances, and that the penalties of delirium tremens, from which Poe suffered, are not begotten of those small indulgences which heighten the circulation of a man of excitable temperament. Other poets besides Poe, however, have drunk as much, it may be, as he, and have not thus been gibbetted as he before posterity. Griswold's assertions did not stop with the charge of drunkenness. According to him, Poe was a man licentious, untrustworthy, and of utterly depraved habits; a libertine, contact with whom involved some sullying of reputation and character — one whose death “will startle many, but few will be grieved at it.” How far this is from the truth will be first made known to the English public by Mr. Ingram's memoir, which prefaces the first collected edition of Poe's complete works. Baudelaire's triumphant vindication of Poe is known only to students. Baudelaire, moreover, is no very satisfactory champion of Poe, his own reputation being little less savoury in the nostrils of respectability than that of the man whose defence he undertook. The refutation by Mr. Moy Thomas, which appeared in a serial publication in England, did not obtain publicity enough to answer the desired end.

In America, even, where the libel upon the dead met immediate and adequate denial, its effect was none the less powerful Griswold's first pseudonymous sketch, which preceded the longer biography, was denounced by Mr. Graham, of Graham's Magazine, which Poe had edited, as “an immortal infamy.” John Neal described it as “false and malicious,” —— the work of a man who had felt towards Poe “a long, intense, and implacable enmity.” Writers of unquestionable authority have since come forward to give experiences that contradict every charge brought by Griswold; and the thefts he has imputed to Poe are proven to be false by reference to the works from which he is said to have stolen. Yet the mention of Poe's name in America in miscellaneous society is still likely to bring up recollections of the spurious biography which communicated the earliest impressions concerning him.

The particulars now first collected concerning Poe show him to have been in ordinary life fairly gentle and tractable. They have chiefly reference to the period of literary activity after his fiery and adventurous youth was over, and before the effect of the stimulants to which he resorted had fully developed itself. Such particulars as are preserved concerning his early days are partly derived from Mrs, Whitman's ‘Edgar Poe and his Critics,’ the most sympathetic and appreciative notice the poet has yet obtained. Concerning the marvellous escapade, when Poe went to Europe for the purpose of rivalling Byron and aiding the Greeks to throw off the yoke of the Turks, no information is supplied. Such has again and again been promised from America, but it is not as yet forthcoming. Mr. Ingram tells us that the story of his having arrived at St. Petersburg, and got into “difficulties that necessitated ministerial aid to extricate him, must be given up.” He does not, however, state on what ground we are to reject a story that commends itself to Baudelaire, and gains some colour of probability from the expedition to Poland subsequently contemplated and [page 288:] almost commenced. The suggestion in the Southern Literary Messenger, that “ Poe when in London formed the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt and Theodore Hook, and lived like that class of men, . . . dragging out a precarious existence in garrets, doing drudgery work, writing for the great presses and for the reviews, whose world-wide celebrity has been the result of such men's labour,” scarcely needs to an Englishman the denial it receives. Mr. Ingram truthfully observes, “The ignorance displayed in these words of English men and letters needs no comment.” Poe's birthplace and the date of his birth are given inaccurately in the memoir, the error being corrected in a short Preface to the fourth volume of the works. It may be worth stating that the date of birth, as definitely accepted by Mr. Ingram, is the 19th of January, 1809, and the scene Boston. It will show to what extent uncertainty upon the subject has hitherto prevailed, when we state that in the biography of Poe included in Mr, Curwen's ‘Sorrow and Song,’ and in the Preface to his Poems by the late Mr. Hannay, he is stated, on the authority of Griswold's memoir, to have been born in Baltimore, in January, 1811. Mr. Curwen departs, in this instance, from Baudelaire, to whose memoir he is largely indebted. Baudelaire fixes the date of his birth as 1813, on the strength of one of the poet's not infrequent mis-statements.

In devoting so much space to the consideration of a memoir which forms but a small part of four portly volumes, we are influenced by the consideration that the vindication of Poe's memory now afforded constitutes the principal value of the work. It is but seldom that those writings of an author which he has not himself selected for preservation add to his reputation. Useful they may be in many respects for the biographical information they supply, and for the insight they afford into the writer's modes of thought or methods of workmanship. In the face of the attempt still made to gag some forms of literature, notably the dramatic, and in presence of the growing demands of Philistinism, the fancy of the public for the entire works of a man of intellectual eminence is to be commended. Before we have a taster we must know what is the taster's palate. With the increasing demands of literature, however, which each succeeding generation witnesses, a time must surely arrive when the public will hold that edition of a writer the best which contains what he judges worthy of preservation and no more, rather than one which supplies every attainable scrap of crude production and incomplete and abandoned effort. We have not yet reached the point at which we are disposed to be captious. There is little in the four volumes before us that does not witness to the quick perception and instinctive appreciation of the beautiful which was a portion of Poe's poetical endowment. There is much, however, to make us regret the way in which his talents were misapplied. Poetry, like beauty, “is Nature's brag”; and we think, as we read page after page of criticism upon commonplace and forgotten writers, of Milton's assertion concerning it: —

Coarse complexions, And cheeks of sorry grain, will serve to ply The sampler and to tease the huswife's wool. What need a vermeil-tinctur’d lip for that, [column 2:]

The criticisms upon Mrs. Barrett Browning, however, upon Mr. R. H. Horne, and a few other writers, have a wealth of revelation and illumination, such as we should expect from Poe. He is a little over given to controvert the opinion already expressed by English critics, — a natural failing, perhaps, when we refiect that America had then scarcely learned to feel the weight of her own verdict, and looked to England — as, indeed, to some extent she still looks — as the arbiter of taste and dispenser of awards. Upon some writers, like Charles Lever and Capt. Marryat, Poe is unnecessarily severe. In his worship of beauty he is apt to forget that work which comes short of a high standard may yet have estimable qualities. He has, on the other hand, an admiration for Moore which it is difficult to reconcile with his general taste and judgment.

Next to the Tales and Poems of Poe, the Marginalia which appear at the close of the third volume are the most interesting portion of his works. Many of these are startlingly frank and audacious. Speaking of ‘Thiodolf the Icelander,’ by the Baron de la Motte Fouqué, the writer says —

A few passages further on he says: —

Some of the comments upon Mr. Longfellow are interesting as being favourable, and contrasting with the regretable attack that Poe had previously made. There is little of wit or humour, though there is a good deal of severity. The following passage, from what are called ‘Fifty Suggestions’ is, perhaps, the wittiest: — “K——, the publisher, trying to be critical, talks about books pretty much as a washerwoman would about Niagara Falls, or a poulterer about a phoenix.” Generally speaking, Poe's most successful efforts in this direction appear to consist in a happy employment of the accumulated stores of a scholarly mind, as when he says, “Newspaper editors seem to have constitutions closely similar to those of the Deities in ‘Walhalla,’ who cut each other to pieces every day, and yet get up perfectly sound and fresh every morning”; or apropos of the rage about Anglo-Saxon English, writes — ”It is fast leading us to the language of that region [column 3:] where, as Addison has it, ‘they sell the best fish and speak the plainest English.’ ”

In speaking of Poe's work we are dealing only with that portion of it which is not generally known. It is “too late a week” to enter upon the question of his imaginative gifts, his grotesque fancies, and his command of the English language. His position upon Parnassus is not disputed; it is only, indeed, concerning that he occupied in New York, Boston, or Baltimore there is any squabbling, Apropos of Poe's disorderly life, it seems worth while to quote the strange apology of Baudelaire: —