Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Poe and His Poetry,” Glasgow University Magazine (Glasgow, Scotland), vol. 1, no. 1, January 1878, pp. 8-10

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THE history of poetry — even if we confine ourselves to that of our own country — furnishes us with many illustrations of the truth of the old adage, “extinctus amabitur idem,” in its restricted sense — the poet who is sneered at or neglected when alive will be admired and honoured after his death — that we are warranted in accepting it as a kind of literary axion.

Notes: The phrase “extinctus amabiture idem” translates literally as “the extinct one will be loved the same,” or somewhat more elegantly as “the same [hated] one will be loved after he is dead.” The idea, of course, is not really true in either form as plenty of people, poets and otherwise, who have been hated are not even remembered. Poe may be one of the rare instances where the phrase may apply, and certainly Poe's enduring fame might give a sense of hope to the legions of writers who never achieve notoriety or recognition during their lifetimes. The mere man of rhyme, however, is far from justified in looking forward to an immortality of fame as the posthumous recompense of suffering inflicted on him when living, by adverse criticism; the rule applies only to the true poet, the child of genius. To refer in illustration to such familiar cases as those of Burns and Keats — the one almost neglected in life, and now the acknowledged greatest poet of a land pregnant with poetical associations; the other sinking into the grave under contemporary abuse, and now ranked high on the roll of nineteenth century poets — How can we account for this sudden veering of the popular opinion? The reason — at all events the chief reason — is not far to seek, if we bear in mind the close connection which necessarily exist between a poet's character can only be known from his life — to understand it properly, we must view it in the light of the actions which are its outcome. The world at large can know little of the true character of a poet till his life is finished, and the tongues of biographers are unloosed: we rise to a fuller appreciation of a poet's works, when we bring to their study some sort of definite knowledge of the character and modes of thought of the author.

In his life-time Edgar Poe found little sympathy with his adoration of poetry — to the American editors, with whom he had to do and whose hack he was, he appeared to have more of the drunkard about him than of the poet — and the cold shoulder was liberally given him — American editors are — at any rate they were then — the steersmen of public opinion on matters of a literary nature, and whom they condemned either by abuse or “with faint praise,” as in the case of Poe, no American citizen dared or cared to justify. Neglected, then, uncared for, known to few, and to those only as an itinerant lecturer who occasionally wrote verses, Poe lived and died his tragical death. It was not long, however, before a remarkable change in opinion occurred. A false account of Poe's life was published by a hypocritical individual whom the poet had named as his executor; this in process of time led to the publication of a true biography and in a very few [column 2:] years, Poe was recognized as the greatest poetical genius of America. We have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that this result was brought about by the fairer views of Poe's character, which the public obtained from the study of his life as a whole, and not be glancing at it, as formerly, in mere isolated fragments. Let this be our apology, then, for introducing in this place a hurried sketch of the life of Poe, in which we shall dwell chiefly on those facts which illustrate the more striking points of his character.

Edgar Allan Poe was born at Boston in 1811 [[1809]], being one fo the three children of a fourth-rate American actor. This actor, David Poe, was a a man of excellent family, his father having held the office of Quartermaster=General of the U.S. Army during the Revolution. While a student of law at Baltimore, David Poe fell in love with, and subsequently married a pretty-faced English actress of no very high standing in her profession. By this step he forfeited his father's favour, and was reduced to the necessity of abandoning all his prospects, and taking his palce along with his wife on the strange. At his death, his three children were left in circumstances of the most abject poverty, their mother also being dead. Even at this early period Edgar Poe seems to have given evidence of the superior virtue that was in him, by which means he found favour in the eyes of Mr John Allan, a commercial Dives, who appears to have had no interest in the family beyond having known the father in his palmier days. To this gentleman's residence young Poe was transferred, and there, no doubt, his patron expected him to justify the choice which had fallen on him, by exhibiting himself on all possible occasions as an “infant prodigy.” Mr Allan seems however, to have had a misguided fondness for the boy, for he indulged him in all his whims and (practicable) wishes, whereby the germs of reckless passion, which beyond doubt he inherited from his father, developed apace. The consequence was that before he was out of his teens the impulse of the moment was his guide in all cases. His university career was one of the utmost dissipation and debauchery, interrupted now and then by short periods of the most earnest study, which gave ground for believing that, had his early training been anything but what it was, he would have achieved a reputation in more than one department of scholarship. But never having been shown the nobleness of temperance and the degradation of excess, Poe gave so loose a rein to passions naturally strong and fervent, that the heads of the university felt it necessary to insist upon his expulsion. And so it was throughout his whole life — the grand old Greek virtue of measure was unknown to Poe — and recklessly and with a kind of madness he gave himself up to the indulgence of his grosser instincts. A few months’ residence as a cadet at a military college ended as his university course had ended; and shortly afterwards, owing to a rupture variously accounted for, his patron cut him adrift and left him to fight his way, as best he could, along and unaided. Here [page 9:] the was a man who, despite all the education which in its loose sense he had received, was totally uncultured — a man who had been virtually taught that self-indulgence and momentary pleasure were all that life had to give — suddenly brought face to face with the necessity of earning his own bread — of stuffling for every breath, or succumbing at once. Man a one in such circumstances would have adopted the latter alternative; but, besides the passions which he share with his kind, Poe had a higher passion — the passion of poetry — and this sustained him. “With me,” he himself tells us, in one of his prefaces, “poetry has not been a purpose, — it has been a passion,” and in the indulgence of this noble passion he found more than a substitute for his previous sensual enjoyments. But, notwithstanding all this, this very passion of poetry had much in it which impelled him to renounce every kind of moderation. Waking from some glorious vision of the “sinless Aidenn” to the pollutions of the life round about him, — turning his eyes from feasting on forms of voluptuous beauty, to escape the misery of the moment, Poe should have plunged into the vortex of unlawful excitement.

In 1827 Poe's first volume of poetry appeared, — a thin little volume of forty pages, bearing on its title-page the legend, “Tamerlane, and other Poems, by a Bostonian.” Mr John H. Ingram, who has done so much for Poe and for his poetry, gives* some interesting particulars as to this “tiny tome.” The “Tamerlane” of the 1827 edition is quite different, in all but its main outlines, from the now accepted version Among other points of difference, a name is given in the early edition to the lady of whom the poem is written, and Tamerlane is only a secondary title of the hero, who is there most commonly styled Alexis. This edition was subsequently suppressed by the author, and in 1829 appeared, printed at Baltimore for private circulation, a volume entitled “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. By Edgar A. Poe.” The sixty pages of which it consists contain the poem of “Al Aaraaf,” substantially as now published, with the beautiful sonnet beginning — “Silence [[Science]], true [[meet]] daughter of old Time thou art,” prefixed; the present version of “Tamerlane’” the lines beginning “Romance who loves to nod and sing;” the song, “I saw thee on thy bridal night [[day]];” the “Lake;” and six other pieces. Mr Ingram points out that in the 1829 edition, the stanzas “To M —— ” read thus, instead of as at present: —

In the New-York volume of 1831 the most notable of our contents are “Israfel,” “To Helen,” “A Paean” (now known as “Lenore”), “The Valley of Unrest” (in a form somewhat different from that now received), and the poem now called “The City in the Sea,.” In 1845 Poe issued his last volume, containing among its new pieces “The Raven,” “The Conqueror Worm,” and “The Haunted Palace.”

During the years that these works were being published Poe held various offices in connection with provincial newspapers — offices which entailed on him hard and uncongenial work, and afforded very slight remuneration. During this period, moreover, he married his cousin, the Virginia of the lines “To my Mother,” a girl of great beauty whose gentle nature had a marked influence for good on the poet's life. She died, however, after only a very few years of married life, and Poe returned to his reckless indulgence with even greater license than before. He lost situation after situation, and only managed to subsist by writing prose tales for periodicals not of the highest class. Finally he died in an insanity brought on by over-excitement, on the evening of Sunday, the seventh of October, 1849, in his thirty-ninth [[fortieth]] year. Thus “sank extinct in his refulgent prime” one of the most gifted and most unfortunate of that gifted and unfortunate order of beings, poets. It cannot be denied that Poe's life was blame-worthy; but, knowing what we do, we feel bound to question whether it was possible for a man of his peculiar temperament, nurtured as was by external influences at a period when he himself was powerless to counteract them; a struggle by and by ensued — nature predominated — and misery, madness, and death, closed the strife. We can, we must pity; we dare not condemn.

Turning shortly to the poetry of Poe let us ask ourselves what are its main distinguishing features And first of all, and most obviously, Poe's genius is intensely lyrical — his passion was too deep to be capable of being long sustained. Had Poe endeavoured to write an epic his attempt would probably have been a failure — he had none of the elements in him [page 10:] that go to make an epic poet — he wrote with a wild irregularity on the impulse of the moment. And yet Poe himself seems to have thought hat this true sphere lay outside the lyric, for in one place he pathetically writes, — “Events, not to be contradicted, prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the file of my choice.” Under any circumstances, we are inclined to believe that Poe could not have written a poem, sustained throughout, which would have been — as he says his lyrics were not — creditable to himself. There would certainly have been in such a work, had such a work been otherwise possible, passages of power and beauty, but as a whole, it would probably have to be pronounced as failure, in the same sense that “The Excursion” is a failure, though for a different reason. Nor, we think, was Poe formed for a dramatic poet — no rules would have bound down his genius — and the result of any attempt on his part at the production of a drama would, probably, have been a collection of isolated, passionate, and tender scenes, lacking that unity which a drama must possess. In the “Scenes from ‘Politian,’ an Unpublished Drama,” usually included in collections of Poe's poetical works, we find sufficient reason for advancing the opinion which we do advance on this point. In some scenes there is evidence of the highest dramatic art — in others, there is nothing but mere commonplace. Tkae as a short specimen of the former, the latter part of the dialogue between Lalage and the Monk: —

From this quotation it will be seen that we by no means deny Poe the possession of dramatic power, but only the ability to sustain it. Even in his lyrics there is evidence to be found of great dramatic skill, as, for example, in the beautiful poem of “Lenore,” and more particularly in the following stanza: —

In his essay entitled “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe states his theory that “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem — that pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating and the most pure, is found in the contemplation of the beautiful.” Further, he believes that “Beauty, of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.” These statements suggest two further characteristics of Poe's poetry — beauty both of idea and form, and the general melancholy tone which distinguishes it. Poe held that a kind of voluptuousness was necessarily associated with beauty, and this idea is fully brought out in the exquisite little lyric “To Helen”: —

The last point which we have space to notice as characterizing Poe's poetry is his power of vividly presenting horror. We might illustrate this be reference to many of his poems — notably ot “The Bells” (in parts) — but perhaps the most striking instance is to be found in the following passage from “The Conqueror Worm,” a most powerful lyric: —

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 9, column 1:]

* In an article in the Athenæum (No. 2544, July 29, 1876), to which we are indebted for the substance of the remarks in the text as to Poe's “bibliography.” An article on the same subject, by the same writer, in the Belgravia Magazine for June, 1876, will repay perusal.