Text: William F. Gill, “The Author of ‘The Raven’,” Baldwin's Monthly (New York, NY), vol. XV, no. 8, August 1877, p. 5

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When the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe passed away, while yet the poet was in his early prime, the life-work of the most original genius America has produced was summarily arrested ere it had fairly begun.

Not that in matter, the product of Edgar Poe's pen has been slight or of ordinary importance. Few writers have, within the same brief span of years, composed a greater amount of actually significant writing. The few who have accomplished anything like the amount of work performed by Poe , have been men born to the profession of letters, whose paths have been smoothed by every positive advantage ad opportunity. With such writers, poetry has been a purpose; with Poe, it was as a passion, and as he most feelingly says, “the passions should be held in reverence; they must not — they cannot, at will, be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.” Wonderful as are some of Poe's creations in verse and prose, one cannot refrain from picturing to what boundless heights his creative fancy might have soared, had his education and circumstances combined to adapt him to the vocation of a writer. But, in estimating by his finished works, the quality of the genius of the writer, it should never be forgotten that his career in letters was purely accidental and enforced.

Up to the age of twenty-two, Edgar Poe had lived one of the “sleek darlings” of the world of fashion, the heir presumptive to an estate of thirty thousand a year. He had been encourage in every extravagant folly. Naturally impulsive and generous, the exercise of thrift never entered into his calculations. He had, for a profession, with the approval of his indulgent but misguided foster-father, chosen the army. While at West Point, he experienced his first heavy affliction — one for which he was altogether unprepared, and totally unfitted to bear with equanimity. His foster-father married a second time, and young Poe's heirship, which had been as much a certainty to him as his very existence, was summarily ended. From that moment his life was one unequal struggle with untoward circumstances. He returned to the paternal roof, there to encounter a second heavy disappointment in the refusal of his foster-father to sanction his engagement with an estimable young Southern lady with whom he had fallen in love. He left the home of his boyhood in anger and bitterness, and went out into the world, his young heart already seared by these cruel vicissitudes, which his abnormally sensitive nature so illy fitted him to bear.

He found kind friends, however, and lived on for a while, not altogether hopeless. His last hoe failed him, however, when his relentless foster-father, who was alone responsible for the young man's patrician tastes and unpractical character, died, without leaving the orphan a penny. What influence had been brought to bear, can only be conjectured. A young wife is, usually, all [column 2:] powerful with a doting old husband. Certain it is, that Edgar Poe was left to his own resources, when, so far as Mr. Allan, the foster-father, knew, he did not possess any resources whatever. Mercantile education was altogether lacking. The wealthy planter would have despised to have made his heir a shop-keeper, and that he possessed any of the germs of literary genius was quite unknown to the man who so cruelly cut him off.

How Poe's natural poetic instinct led him, when other means failed, to attempt the composition of prose and poetry, is universally known; but it may not be generally known, that never, at any time after he entered the profession of letters, was he in comfortable pecuniary circumstances. His life was one eternal conflict between inspiration and necessity What wonder is it that the best work of which his genius was capable, was never possible, under such circumstances! Writing of his poetry, he says, when about to offer a volume of his poems to the pubic: “In defense of my own taste, it is incumbent upon me to say, that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public or creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled, have prevented me from making at any time any serious effort to what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice.” During one year the poet, to eke out a living income, in those days when small wages prevailed, was engaged with every important literary magazine in the country. Is it not a wonder that his mind was able to endure the mental strain incumbent upon such a position?

At this time (it was the year preceding his untimely death) he wrote to a near friend: “I have now an engagement with every leading magazine in America. I have only to keep up my spirits to keep out of pecuniary troubles. The least price I get is five dollars per Graham page, and I can easily earn sever dollars a day.” At an earlier period, he scarcely earned as much a week, and he worked hard for that with his weary pen. His literary duties (he never was independent enough to determine their range himself) demanded a degree of versatility to which few authors ever attain. They extended from the conventional newspaper paragraph “puff” t the highest original creations in verse and prose. But even his least work, in his position of newspaper paragraphist on the Mirror, had the indelible stamp of individuality upon it. One of these paragraphs, written either for the Mirror or the Museum, is before me, in tghe poet's clean-cut chirography. It describes a view of London, and, as showing the comparatively recent development of the important art of stereotyping, a portion of it is worth quoting:

The paragraph is interesting, as describing a process then, apparently, in its infancy, the present universal one of which, in reproducing and printing wood-cuts, possibly dates from the experiments made in printing this very picture described by Poe.

“The Raven” was written under the most harrowing circumstances, while the poet's beloved child-wife, Virginia, was wasting away from consumption at Poe's humble home in Bloomingdale, N. Y. Under any other circumstances, or amid either surroundings, it is not conceivable that such a creation could have been evolved or wrought out. Like the picture of Parrhasius’ captive, it is the incarnation of human agony and despair It is a product of art only in so far as the hand that limned it was that of an artist. The conception from which it [column 3:] sprung was not artificial, but the spontaneous inspiration of a mind combining wondrous delicacy and sensitiveness, with a depth of spiritual intensity, altogether inconceivable to ordinary minds.

His powers of imagination were supramortal, so much so, that one in listening to his conversation, when under the influence of the mystic spell of his imagination, could hardly conceive that the speaker was not possessed of supernatural gifts. Only to his intimates was it vouchsafed to bear his matchless word-painting of the imageries of his inner world. Not less wonderful was his analytical power; and his psychological intuitions were so keen that, from a person's autograph, he was able to fill out a complete description of the character of the writer, which he would support by the most logical and incontrovertible evidence. In fact, he dissected minds with the same ease with which a skillful surgeon reveals the interior integuments of the subject of the dissecting-room. He held the world at large in undisguised contempt, and, conscious of the intellectual inferiority of the people by whom he was surrounded, rejoiced in playing upon their credulity by mischievous fictions, all of which were accepted as bona fide facts, to the intense delight of the perpetrator.

Poor, persecuted, and self-despairing as he was, he was yet an autocrat. He was as an implacable Nemesis to the pretentious superficiality and littleness that sired their egotistical assumption before the uncritical constituency of the readers of that period. He dared to be independent and uncompromising, and paid the penalty by securing the life-long hate of all who fell below his exacting standard.

Personally, he presented a strange compound of opposing characteristics. He was, physically, an athlete, capable of accomplishing feats of strength and endurance that have never been surpassed by any professional athlete. Yet, in appearance, his figure was slight, although exquisitely proportioned. He was not tall, yet above the average height. His forehead was magnificently massive, and, from beneath, shone eyes that kindled and glowed with the sublime internal fires of his matchless imagination. He was ruggedly manly, yet as sensitive and emotional as a woman; and, like all persons endowed with warm sympathies, he was a passionate lover of nature; and, wherever he made his swelling, he surrounded himself with a profusion of plants and flowers; while, like Scott, he was fond of pets, and was seldom without them. His ideal home would have been in some valley, shut out from the rude gaze of the world by thick groves and shrubbery. “One may go out to the mountain,” he wrote to a near friend, “but one should always come home to the valley.”

It is not singular that a temperament so absolutely sui generis, should have been harshly judged by practical people, and cruelly misrepresented. His faults were few and altogether superficial, not including any of the cardinal vices. As a husband, he was tender, devoted, and self-sacrificing. Slender as was his income, he willingly resigned many little material comforts, that he might indulge his adored Virginia in her passion for music, by providing her with the best masters; and, all through the years of her wasting illness, he was tenderly watchful, and anxiously devoted to her every want.

In taking a retrospective glance at the literary career of Edgar A. Poe, and considering in connection with the undying fame that attaches to his works in prose and poetry, written under circumstances that, undoubtedly, cramped and warped the brilliant possibilities of his original genius, one of his least-quoted poems significantly suggests itself, as a melancholy but faithful epitome of his life: