Text: Joel Benton, “Precursor of Poe,” In the Poe Circle (1899), pp. 7-30

[page 7:]

THERE is no literary reputation in America, and few literary names of the last half-century, that evoke the curious, haunting memory which belongs to Poe. A new and well-authenticated poem bearing his name, which Mr. R. H. Stoddard says he believes it will never be possible at this date to find, would make a tremendous literary event. The discovery of a new Shakespearian play might be more interesting to more people; but in America, and in France, where Poe's influence has distinctly touched two groups of authors belonging to two generations, a genuine Poe discovery would, with large numbers, take precedence.

One may state the fact without being able [page 8:] to give it critical justification. In fact, the critic of Poe as a poet cannot reasonably account for him and his fame. A great deal of the verse that he wrote, if it was presented to-day for the first time, would at tract little attention. If you subtract from his body of poetry — which is not a large quantity taken altogether — “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and possibly one or two more of the poems, in which list “The Bells,” for its bizarreness, might be included, what, really, would there be left to found this singular and unchallenged fame upon?

But no such treatment would be detrimental to Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, or Lowell; and Holmes and Whittier could bear it equally well without essential loss of distinction. What was it, then, that Poe contributed to literature which so tingles the nerves and stirs up pulsations of delight? It is certainly nothing that he offers in the domain of thought. He settles no real problems, nor discusses them even, nor [page 9:] peers into them. In one or two passages in Wordsworth's “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” and on almost any page of Tennyson's “In Memoriam,” can be found more criticism of life, which is what Matthew Arnold calls the function of poetry, than there is in all the poems Poe ever wrote. No great poet that we know drifted so far away from Arnold's ideal as Poe did; while some of our minor poets fulfil it to a very high degree.

Certainly somewhere and somehow he had and gave charm ; and Arnold said also:

This charm, too, may have been heightened, or made piquant, by his romantic and desolate career. Such a career, marking nearly a whole life, and ending it with a sharp climax so inverted from what we could wish it to have been, no doubt gives added interest to his work. It gives it, be cause it seems so hard that a man of so [page 10:] ethereal genius should not have been a crowned prince instead of being driven to a lifelong struggle which he was ill fitted to maintain. You cannot harness humming birds as common carriers, nor spirits like Poe's to prosaic daily concerns. Yet the world has no allowance to make for this law of adaptation. It cares little at the time the poet is living what becomes of that most precious commodity which is called genius, nor did it ever care. But it will rave over and dote upon it a generation after the time help and honors have ceased to be of any earthly avail. Was it not long ago said —

Yet if Poe felt impediments acutely, a romantic career, with poverty and various ills combined, will not create a genius, as it sometimes will not suppress one. Poe, it must be conceded, had a hard, tragical fate, [page 11:] and for his waywardness we need not stop to partition the blame. Differ here as we may, it is not denied that he brought to us, independently of his condition, a bouquet of thrilling verse that seems to hold perennially its place, its beauty, and its wonder, and to glow ever afresh “in the corridors of Time.” There was at any rate some subtle substance, or color, or melody in it, that the world does not willingly let die. From his best pages exhales an aroma that his imitators do not quite repeat, and cannot pro duce. There was a mould of form and a music which were, as the world thinks, his own, but which have been echoed more or less, and have influenced other poets — notably Baudelaire and Swinburne. Nor would the modern decadents have been just what they are if Poe had not lived, and written as he did.

But, in writing thus far, and saying these few things, I am not aiming to enlarge the quantity of Poe criticism which we now [page 12:] have, or to even emphasize the mental picture of Poe which is already very definite in the public mind. My purpose, rather, is to speak of a poet little known now, who once made claim to be, or whose friends assert was, Poe's precursor. That he came very near to being a considerable poet, and that he embodies more of the Poe atmosphere and melody than exist anywhere out of Poe's verse, will not be hard to prove.

This author, as was true of Poe himself, belonged to the South ; but of his life I have only a slight record, which shows that he was a doctor and lived during his later years, at least, in Georgia. Before Poe was known, this poet — T. H. Chivers, M.D. — was writing various weird and musical lyrics which I presume went from time to time through the Southern press. Nearly sixty years ago he began collecting them in book form ; and there were seven or eight volumes of them in all — a much more voluminous poetical legacy than Poe's. I have only seen one of [page 13:] these volumes, but the following list gives the names of all the books Chivers wrote, so far as I can discover,* in the order of their appearance:

“Nacooche, or the Beautiful Star, with other Poems,” 12mo, pp. 153, New York, 1837; “The Lost Pleiad, and other Poems,” 8vo, pp. 32, New York, 1845; “Eonchs of Ruby: A Gift of Love,” 8vo, pp. 108, New York, 1851; “ Memoralia, or Phials of Amber,” “Full of the Tears of Love,” “A Gift for the Beautiful,” 12mo, pp. 168, Philadelphia, 1853; “Virginalia, or Songs of My Summer Nights and Gift of Love for the Beautiful,” 12mo, pp. 132, Philadelphia, 1853; “The Sons of Usna: A Tragic [page 14:] Apotheosis in Five Acts,” pp. 92, Philadelphia, 1858.

It would be difficult, ordinarily, to write about a poem from a consideration chiefly of one of his many volumes, and I feel the limitation this attempt imposes. But it is admitted, I believe, by the few who know the most of Chivers, that he put his char acteristic, and probably his best work in the third volume which he issued — “The Eonchs of Ruby.” And it is this volume which I have before me. The motto on the title-page of it is as follows:

The publishers were Spalding & Shepard of New York. The publishers of the remaining volumes I do not know, and I regret that I cannot give their title-pages as com pletely as I have that of the volume which is at hand.

It will be noticed at once that Chivers did not abide altogether by the dictionary, [page 15:] as no such word as “Eonchs” exists. But more of this tendency of his to speak large, sonorously, and with independence, will ap pear later on.

The most Poe-like and the best of his pieces in this volume is undoubtedly his “Lily Adair.” If he really wrote this poem before Poe was known to him, the coincidence of accent, rhythm, and style with Poe's work suggests a curious study. Although the date of the book containing it was too late to show an antecedence to Poe, the separate pieces in the book must have preceded that year by a distance not now to be determined. It must be remembered, too, that the two volumes which were first issued by Chivers were given to the public — the second six years, and the first fourteen years before “The Eonchs of Ruby” appeared; so that, if we properly antedate the poems Chivers collected in 1837, we find him writing in the Poe manner over sixty years ago — perhaps over seventy years ago. [page 16:]

But here is the poem, and it will tell, in part at least, its own story :

LILY ADAIR.

Here, without question, is a typical breath of the Poe afflatus, which it needs no delicate ear to detect. The sacrifice of sense to sound is sometimes extreme, but the fault in a lesser degree was also Poe's. If you forget it or pardon it in “Lily Adair,” you will feel the same flow of consonance and melody that was a supreme and characteristic part of Poe's endowment. In an other poem, which is entitled “Love,” appears the note or echo of “The Bells.” I quote below a few stanzas from it: [page 20:]

If this poem merely followed “The Bells” we should call it a very weak washing of Poe's chalice; but if it preceded that poem, it may have given to Poe the hint on which he wrought his far superior production. [page 21:]

II.

IN “The Vigil of Aiden” Chivers is distinctly Poesque. He opens it as follows:

“The Vigil of Aiden” covers twenty-six pages of the “Eonchs of Ruby,” so that it is difficult to sample it accurately. But I give a few additional extracts from it below:

Did Chivers strike first these cadences, now so familiar? Or were they Poe's invention who made them immortal in “The Raven”? In Chivers's poem of “Avalon” occur such passages as follow:

On the poem titled “Lord Uther's Lament [page 25:] for Ella” the imprint and flavor, which we know as Poe's, are unquestionable. Mark, for instance, these stanzas:

Here, also, is a visible Poe touch from the poem of “The Dying Swan”:

In one of Bayard Taylor's witty accounts in “The Diversions of the Echo Club,” Chivers is discussed. “The Ancient” says: “Why, we even had a hope that something wonderful would come out of Chivers! “

Omnes — Chivers?

The Ancient — Have you never heard of Chivers? He is a phenomenon. . . . One of the finest images in modern poetry is in his “Apollo”:

Further on “The Ancient” says: “I remember also a stanza of his ‘Rosalie Lee’”:

It is not only in the swing of his verse, but in the epithets of this bizarre Georgia poet, and sometimes in the exact phrases, that we are confronted with the Poe manner. Such words as “Aiden,” “abysmal,” “Eulalie,” “Asphodel,” “Evangel,” “Avalon,” “Auber,” and dozens of others require no comment or footnote. Two poets could not have fallen upon them by original choice, to say nothing of the atmosphere which was drawn around them. Of course there is no question that Poe used this machinery and hypnotism better than Chivers did or could. One leaves an immortal halo around his name, and the other a nebulous mist which failed to condense into a star.

Poe sometimes divorced sense from sonority — so that he was called by Emerson “the jingle poet.” Chivers carried this habit often to a grotesqueness fairly lunatic. Poe's nomenclature at least was sound. But Chivers ‘s was so far-fetched and abnor mal that meaning never entered many of [page 28:] his words, and etymology did not preside over their capricious and erratic birth. Perhaps their mystery makes them more expressive and appalling. Who, for in stance, can tell what is an “Eonch”? “Anthosmal” is not entirely normal; and some others which he uses are, apparently, merely the fruitage of his fertile fancy.

Chivers made extreme pomp and majesty of expression his high aim. He could also be fluent when he revealed no message. You are reminded by him of Edwin Lear's “The Jumblies,” and of the epithet quality of Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwock.” But if he set the mould and pace for Poe, on which Poe erected his own fame, he will surely have some claim to remembrance. It is true the poetry, which is weird and mystifying, and which, to use Taylor's phrases, “has a hectic flush, a strange, fascinating, narcotic quality,” is not now in the ascend ant. When its fashion comes around again, as it may in nature's cyclic progress, will [page 29:] Poe and Chrivers stand together as our poetic Castor and Gemini, or “Heavenly Twins”?

One event which suggests Chivers ‘s priority to Poe is the fact that Bryant in his “Selections from American Poetry, “ made in 1840, gave Poe no place, while Chivers ‘s first book of verse appeared several years before that date; and Poe was hardly known as a poet before 1844.

Chivers ‘s full name and title was Thomas Holley Chivers, M.D. Somehow his fame went to England early; for there has been for years, it is said, a complete set of his works on the shelves of the British Museum. And a complete set of them, it is thought, can be found nowhere else. So hard has it been to pick up the facts in this curious Georgia poet's life that we cannot find them in Allibone's or Appleton's dictionaries, though the editor of the latter one made a diligent effort to produce them.

But it seems Swinburne's knowledge of [page 30:] Chivers ‘s work began before he himself was so very widely known. When Bayard Taylor was in England, nearly thirty years ago, the name of Chivers happened, casually, to be mentioned in Swinburne's presence. “Oh, Chivers, Chivers,” said Swinburne, in his peculiar voice, “if you know Chivers, give me your hand.” Mr. Stedman says that an allusion to Chivers in Swinburne's hearing causes the author of “Atalanta in Calydon” to jump up and down in his chair, when he will repeat with great hilarity and gusto whole passages from Chivers's books.

It has been suggested to me by one critic and author that Swinburne not only repeated them, but that he has put in his own poetry many marks of their influence. This is something near to a laurel or bay-leaf for Chivers, if he was really so forceful. But the imperfect crown, even if it remain so, must be enlarged if his friends can prove, in addition, that he was the precursor of Poe.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 13:]

* In the “Diversion of the Echo Club, “ there is reference to a seventh volume by Chivers, titled “Facets of Diamonds.” Allibone's supplement mentions also an eighth, titled “Atlanta, or the True Blessed Island of Poesy”; a Paul epic in three lustra; Macon, Ga. , 1855, 8vo. [While this article is going to press I find a record of what must be this prolific poet's first book, and it is titled as follows, “Conrad and Eudora, or the Death of Alonzo. A Threnody,” 16mo, pp. 144, Philadelphia, 1834.]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 16:]

* It was a beautiful idea of the Greeks that the procreation of beautiful children might be promoted by keeping in their sleeping apartments an Apollo or Hyacinthus. In this way they not only patronized Art, but begat a likeness of their own love.