Text: Anonymous, “[Review of W. F. Gill's Life of Poe],” Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), August 4, 1877, p. 10, col. 1

[page 10, column 1, continued:]

THE LIFE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, By WILLIAM F. GILL. Illustrated. New York: C. F. Dillingham. Chicago: W. B. Keen. $1.75.

In a recent article the London Times remarked that if the people of Great Britain, and particularly the people of Ireland, were not made sober by acts of Parliament it would not be for want of attempts at such legislation. We may easily apply the same remark to Edgar Poe. Dr. Griswold tried to blacken his fame, and recently a number of champions have appeared, each of them more eager than the other to prove that Poe was not only a model of sobriety. but a paragon of all the virtues. Mr. Gill's book is a piece of special pleading in reply to Griswold, and in favor of Poe, which, like all such one-sided attempts, has tendency to defeat its own object. We cannot see what particularly good office is to be served by raking up these old stories and scandals concerning a man of genius, long since dead and gone, rolling them as a sweet morsel under the tongue, and discusssing [[discussing]] them ad nauseam. They are for the most part of a very petty character, and at this time of day may surely be permitted to drop. Poe was blessed, or perhaps cursed, with the fatal gift of genius. His nervous organization was strung to the highest point of tension. The smallest amount of liquor would loosen his tongue, and halt a bottle of wine would render him frantic. His excesses, like those of all delicate organizations, were magnified by his enemies to a high degree. That he had enemies is not to be Wondered at. His satire, like Hazlitt's. was keen as a razor. and his morbid fancies quite as eccentric as those. of the English essayist. Poe did not find literature a lucrative profession, although he was by no means wanting in shrewdness. or ability to turn an honest penny. He was a man, and the same remark may be made of all men of genius, who seemed intended for another planet. He walked among the ordinary sons of toil like a being apart. His fancies were not their fancies, his impulses above the practical things of everyday life. What wonder that he tasted the cup of bitterness, and sought by night some lonely spot, where he might people the air with creatures of his own imagining. We care nothing for such a life of the poet as this before us. His defender is no more capable of appreciating him than was his enemy. Indeed the poet's life, however written, would leave but sorrowful expression behind, and it is doubted whether he even understood himself. Poe had many good qualities, linked with many failings. The general impression produced upon us by the man. and his works is one of insincerity, or rather artificiality. He seems to have written of emotion for emotion's sake, not as the result of the causes which led to that emotion. He placed a higher value upon technical beauty than beaut [[beauty]] of idea. Had the man felt more in sympathy with nature and with man he would have led a happier, and perhaps a better life. His was poetical genius out of tune. His feeling glitters like the moonbeams on the frozen sea, his humor is of a kind to wake wild laughter in the throat of death. Had he been a sensible man he would have been a Swinburne: being made of colder clay, he gave himself over to the weird, the unreal and the mystical. We turn from this life. and its twaddling gossip, with a feeling of relief. There are some lives which it were better to have unwritten, and we think that Poe's was one of them. Being written, the general features of his career were sufficient: the rest should have been permitted to sleep. His works will ever command the wonder and admiration of critical minds. He gained what he most probably signed for more than earthly joys, a literary immortality. With that assurance, let his memory rest.