Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Allen's Indian Mail and Official Gazette (London, UK), vol. XLV, whole no. 1,783, January 10, 1887, pp. 34-35

[page 34, column 2, continued:]

EDGAR ALLAN POE*

We have read this book with great interest. The vagaries of an erratic genius usually contain the germs of instruction for the everyday mortals who have mo pretension to genius, and no desire to be erratic. And it is not often the case that men of real ability are more communicative as to their inmost feelings than Edgar Allan Poe. “Poe, like Byron, and other brother bards, was,” says the writer, “ready to bare the secrets of his heart of hearts to the veriest stranger” (p. 332).

Of gentle race, exquisitely sensitive, and possessing all the poet's abhorrence from the common place aud the vulgar, which Charles Kingsley has so well depicted in his “Eisley Vavasour, Poe was doomed, throughout life, to struggle for his daily bread ; and was, probably, never in a position to reveal the full extent of his ability. Like a far greater genius, Mozart, who often had to [page 35:] earn ten florins, wherewith to purchase the necessaries of life, by composing the music for a song over his publisher's counter, Poe had to submit to performing the very drudgery of his profession, no matter how highly his innate abilities would have enabled, and, when an opportunity offered, did enable, him, to soar above it.

His life seems to have been of the most Bohemian character. Repeatedly (pp. 85, 115, &c.) we are told, by so careful and sympathetic a biographer as Mr. Ingram, that he is wholly lost to view, and, whether owing to any hereditary taint, to an ill-balanced mind, or to dissolute habits — of which last he does not, however, seem to have become the victim as a youth — he appears from an early date to have been afflicted with strange fits of despondency. Fancy a young man of twenty-four writing to a friend who had obtained for him a position on the staff of a newspaper: — “The situation is agreeable to me for many reasons, but, alas! it appears to me that nothing can give me pleasure or the slightest gratification!” This is hardly the language which one would expect of a young man who, having been at school in England, at school and college in America, and at the United State, well known military academy at West Point, must, without having had the chance of becoming utterly bluer, have seen at least something of the world.

His ideas of (that great test of a man's character, his) relations with the opposite sex seem, too, to have been peculiar. We are by no means satisfied with the remarks about a poet's love. We really do not see why it should of necessity differ from that of another rational being, unless it be, indeed, on the somewhat violent assumption that a poet cannot be a rational being. True it is that Göthe, Byron, Shelley, had abnormal ideas on this delicate subject; but Shakspeare, greater than all the three combined, may fairly be quoted on the other side. Be this as it may, Poe can hardly, in this respect, claim admiration. He married, early in life (.and after a previous love-affair) his cousin, then aged fourteen; and, to do him justice, he seems to have been a devoted husband. But his wife had not been dead eighteen months before he assures Mrs. Whitman (“Helen”) that he loves (p. 372) “now — now, for the first and only time.” The fair Helen, however, after a first brief acquiescence, refused to link her lot with an intemperate admirer. So Poe shortly afterwards wrote effusions. as nearly amatory as possible, to “Annie,” and wound up by proposing to his first lady-love, who was now a widow!

That the literary career of Poe was one of drudgery has been already indicated. It is the common fate of a journalist that many of his best productions are read, liked, and — line trunks or enshrine musty bacon. And doubtless this Las been the case with the subject of this memoir. But (putting aside his poems, which are known to all the world,) Poe appears to us to have especially shone in attack. Of his brilliancy in literary controversy we have in this volume many — perhaps too many — specimens. As a critic be seems to have bad (pp. 124,152,) exceptional powers — for instance, he forecast from the first few numbers the entire plot of Barnaby Rudge — though no reader of any sense would agree in his verdict (p. 283) that Tennyson is “the greatest” (poet) whoever lived a criticism which comes the more oddly from a man who was, if not a ripe, at least a competent, classical scholar, and who was versed in the masterpieces of German, as well as of English, poetry. As a rule, however (save when he allowed himself to fall into that mutual-laudation system which renders contemporary American criticism worthless where American works are concerned), his pen was dipped deep in gall. Many a telling phrase has been, and many more will be, stolen from those of his literary onslaughts which have found their way into a reprint.

Mr. Ingram has, we think, done well in again bringing before the English public the life of a man, admittedly one of the most original whom the century has produced, and of whose interesting — nay, sensational — career no equally readable narrative has come before us.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 34, column 2:]

* “Edgar Allan Poe. His Life, Letters, and Opinions.” By John H. Ingram. New Edition. London: W. H. Allen and Co. 1886.