THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 M. A. DiWOLFE HOWE 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MACY 
 
- THE 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MACY 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 MCMV1I 
 
Copyright, 
 By Small, Maynard & Company 
 
 (Incorporated} 
 
 Entered at Stationers Hall 
 
 Published October, 
 
 Press of 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis Co., 
 Boston, U.S.J. 
 
The photogravure used as a frontispiece 
 to this volume is from a photograph of a 
 daguerreotype taken in Lowell, Massachu- 
 setts, in November, 1848. The photograph 
 is lent by Mr. Walter Leon Sawyer. The 
 present engraving is by John Andrew & Son, 
 Boston. 
 
 464612 
 
TO 
 V. R. E. OF VIRGINIA 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 "Whoever writes of Poe or Whitman finds 
 himself in controversies irrelevant to pure 
 letters. Whitman has become prophet of 
 an Idea, and the fierce light that beats about 
 him is not clear to see by. Poe, on the con 
 trary, paid a posthumous penalty for his sins 
 by furnishing a moral issue in biography, 
 over ichich there is even to this day unpro 
 fitable contest. Worse yet, he has become 
 one of the toys in the childish game of inter 
 national and intersectional prejudice-pitch 
 ing. Europe, delighting to praise him, but 
 ignorant of the biographical facts, has sent us 
 the best critical essays, with an inkling that 
 so fine a poet is more than we deserve who 
 do not enshrine him in our Hall of Fame 
 and persist in telling unpleasant truths about 
 his life. New England, surcharged with 
 the burden of Longfellow and Whittier and 
 remembering that Emerson dismissed Poe 
 
x PEEFACE 
 
 as u the jingle man," has turned cautious 
 eyes from the pacific, homely records of its 
 own poets to the unlovely story of Poe, and 
 has betrayed its inherited doubt whether a 
 bad man can be a good poet. Virginia, not 
 yet accustomed to feel that the country as a 
 whole has title right to wear her jewels, has 
 given Poe an individual setting in her crown 
 whence he throws a light not universally 
 poetic, but peculiarly Virginian. Sympathy 
 with poets should transcend defence of their 
 private morals. In its best temper, biography 
 takes only a cool interest in Byron s amours 
 or Shelley s desertion of his wife. But, if 
 the starker ethical principles will not retreat 
 from biography, certainly geographical con 
 siderations can be persuaded not to inter 
 fere. 
 
 The Life and Letters of Poe should be 
 put together at this day by some one strong 
 enough to ignore no fact and large enough 
 not to follow too creepingly the surviving 
 documents. This little sketch can, of course, 
 undertake no such broad adjustment of the 
 
PEEFACB xi 
 
 story ofPoe. It follows conventionally from 
 one to another of the topics usually discussed 
 in more extended accounts. But it seeks 
 to treat those topics icith fairness to Poe 
 and to give the reader a right view of 
 the man as seen from modern days and in- 
 
 terests. 
 
 J. M. 
 
 WBENTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, 
 August 26, 1907. 
 
CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1809 
 
 January 19. Edgar Poe was born in 
 Boston. 
 
 1811 
 
 December 8. His mother died. 
 December 25. Eichmond Theatre burned. 
 Poe was taken into the family of John 
 Allan. 
 
 1815 
 
 June 17. The Allans took Poe to Eng 
 land. 
 
 Autumn. Poe was sent to Manor House 
 School, Stoke Newington, near London. 
 
 1820 
 
 June 20. Poe left England. 
 August 2. Arrived at Eichmond. 
 
 1820-25 
 
 In school under Masters Clarke and 
 Burke. 
 
xiv CHEONOLOGY 
 
 1826 
 
 February 14. Entered the University of 
 Virginia. 
 December 15. Left the University. 
 
 1827 
 
 Published Tamerlane and Other Poems in 
 Boston. 
 
 May 26. Enlisted in the United States 
 Army. 
 
 1829 
 
 January 1. Appointed sergeant-major. 
 February 28. Mrs. Allan died. 
 April 15. Poe was honourably dis 
 charged from the army. 
 Published Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and 
 Minor Poems in Baltimore. 
 
 1830 
 
 July 1. Entered West Point. 
 October 5. Mr. Allan married his sec 
 ond wife. 
 
 1831 
 
 March 6. Poe was dismissed from West 
 Point. 
 
CHBOFOLOGY xv 
 
 1831 (continued) 
 
 Published Poems, Second Edition, in Hew 
 York. 
 
 1831-33 
 Obscure years in Baltimore. 
 
 1833 
 
 October. Published in Saturday Visiter 
 "A. MS. Found in a Bottle, " which won 
 a prize of one hundred dollars. 
 
 1834 
 March 27. Mr. Allan died. 
 
 1835 
 
 Published in Southern Literary Messen 
 ger " Berenice," "Morella," " Shadow/ 
 and other tales and criticisms. 
 November. Assistant editor of Messenger. 
 September 22. Secured license for mar 
 riage with Virginia Clemm. 
 
 1836 
 
 Published more tales and criticisms in 
 Messenger. 
 May 16. Married Virginia Clemm. 
 
xvi CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1837 
 
 January 3. Ceased to be editor of Mes 
 senger. 
 
 Went to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New 
 York. 
 
 1838 
 
 July. Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym 
 was published by Harpers. 
 Settled in Philadelphia. 
 
 1839 
 
 April. Published The ConchologisV s First 
 Book. 
 
 July. Became associate editor of Gentle 
 man s Magazine. 
 
 Published " Silence," " The Fall of the 
 House of Usher," u William Wilson," 
 and other tales and criticisms. 
 
 1840 
 
 January-June. Published " Journal of 
 Julius Rodman." 
 
 June. Resigned from Gentleman 7 s Maga 
 zine. 
 
CHEOXOLOGY xvii 
 
 1840 (continued) 
 
 December. Published Tales of the Gro 
 tesque and Arabesque, in two volumes, in 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 1841 
 
 April. Became editor of Graham* s Maga 
 zine. 
 Published " Murders in the Eue Morgue." 
 
 1842 
 
 April. Eesigned from Graham 7 s Maga 
 zine. Published "The Oval Portrait 7 
 and "The Masque of the Eed Death. 
 
 1843 
 
 Issued prospectus of a magazine. 
 Applied for a clerkship in Washington. 
 Published "The Tell-tale Heart, "The 
 Pit and the Pendulum, " "The Mystery 
 of Marie Eog6t, " The Gold Bug > > (one- 
 hundred-dollar prize story). 
 
 1844 
 April. Moved to N"ew York. 
 
xviii CHKONOLOGY 
 
 1844 (continued) 
 
 Published "The Balloon Hoax," "A 
 Tale of the Bagged Mountains." 
 Became assistant editor on Willis s Even 
 ing Mirror. 
 
 1845 
 
 Wiley & Putnam published Tales. 
 February 28. Lectured in New York. 
 March. Withdrew from Mirror and be 
 came co-editor of Broadway Journal. 
 Attacked Longfellow. 
 October. Became sole proprietor of 
 Broadway Journal. 
 
 October 16. Lectured before Boston Ly 
 ceum. 
 
 December 26. Bade farewell to Broad 
 way Journal. 
 
 Published "The Purloined Letter," 
 "The Imp of the Perverse," "The 
 Facts in the Case of M. Yaldemar." 
 December 31. Wiley & Putnam pub 
 lished The Raven and Other Poems. 
 
CHEONOLOGY xix 
 
 1846 
 
 Spring. Bemoved to Fordhani. 
 Published "The Literati 77 and "The 
 Cask of Amontillado. 7 7 
 Newspapers appealed to charity in behalf 
 of the Poes. 
 
 1847 
 
 January 30. Virginia Poe died. 
 February 17. Awarded damages for libel 
 by Thomas Dunn English. 
 Published "Ulalume." 
 
 1848 
 
 February 3. Lectured in New York on 
 "The Cosmos of the Universe. 7 
 George P. Putnam published the final 
 form of this lecture as Eureka, a Prose 
 Poem. 
 
 Lectured in several cities and began or 
 renewed acquaintance with Mrs. Whit 
 man, Annie Eichmond, Mrs. Shelton. 
 
xi CHKOKOLOGY 
 
 1849 
 
 Published For Annie, > > Annabel Lee, > 
 "The Bells. ?? 
 
 July-September. Was in Biehmond. 
 September 29-30. Left Eichmond. 
 October 7. Died in Baltimore. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE. 
 I. 
 
 EDGAR POE S life begins and ends 
 in obscurity, and includes several years 
 about which little is known. For this 
 his secret! veness and mendacity are some 
 what responsible. He is authority for 
 the statements that he was born in 1811 
 and in 1813. The date accepted as true, 
 January 19, 1809, is that which he wrote 
 in the matriculation book of the Univer 
 sity of Virginia. When Poe died at the 
 age of forty, famous in three nations, his 
 closest literary associates thought that 
 his birthplace was Baltimore. It was 
 in fact Boston, the " Frogpondium" 
 which he satirised in undutiful despite. 
 
 The Poe family may be traced back 
 to one of Cromwell s Irish officers through 
 John Poe, who came from the north of 
 Ireland to Pennsylvania in 1745. Who 
 ever will may discern the Keltic strain in 
 
\9\ EDGAR ALLAN FOB 
 Poe, and by it account for his melancholy, 
 his sentimentalism, and the magic of his 
 poetry. Perhaps his want of humour may 
 be ascribed to his English mother. Con 
 jectures as to Poe s inherited characteris 
 tics are safest when they deal only with 
 his immediate ancestry, his stage-struck 
 father and his pretty mother, actress, 
 dancer, and singer. 
 
 Poe s father was David, son of David 
 Poe, of Baltimore. The first David was 
 assistant quartermaster-general during 
 the Revolution. He was patriotic and 
 valorous. To his country in the throes 
 of rebellion he gave money, and after the 
 successful issue of the Revolution he was 
 not reimbursed. In our second war he 
 fought in the ranks at the age of seventy- 
 two. A dozen years later Lafayette . 
 kissed the grave of David Poe, and said, 
 "Ici repose un cceur noble. " Warrior 
 David was not the man to forgive his son 
 for quitting the sober profession of law 
 and pulling on the poor actor 7 sundarned 
 
EDGAE ALLAN FOE 3 
 
 buskin and sock. Until genius chose to 
 shine in a poor relation, tlie other Poes 
 were not friendly to the family of David, 
 the actor, though some of them lent 
 Edgar money and the General took care 
 of Edgar s brother, William. Player 
 father and poet son were social outcasts 
 and ne er-do-weels. 
 
 David was a poor performer, unthrifty 
 and addicted to drink. He rendered no 
 service to art except to beget an artist, 
 and he disappears early from the records. 
 The distinguished son says that his 
 mother and father died within the same 
 few weeks. 
 
 The mother was Elizabeth Arnold, 
 widow of an actor named Hopkins. IsTot 
 foreseeing that she would be of interest 
 to biographers, she failed to carry out 
 the elopement they afterward planned 
 for her, and instead married David Poe 
 in regular manner. They lived three 
 years in Boston, and played in the prin 
 cipal American cities. She is well 
 
4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 spoken of in the newspapers of the time 
 as entertaining actress and good woman. 
 But the theatre in America was not a 
 prosperous institution, and the family 
 knew poverty and misery. 
 
 Elizabeth and David Poe had three 
 children. The first, William Henry 
 Leonard, who died in early manhood, 
 was reputed clever and adventuresome. 
 The third, Rosalie, outlived her illustri 
 ous brother, but seems not to have been 
 strong of mind or body. Elizabeth 
 Arnold Poe died in Richmond on De 
 cember 8, 1811. On the following Christ 
 mas night the Richmond Theatre was 
 burned, and many were lost, including 
 the Governor of Virginia. The Memo 
 rial Church in Richmond marks the 
 place of real and mimic tragedy. Those 
 who died in the fire lie buried in the 
 portico. In the rush of charity succeed 
 ing the disaster prompt refuge was 
 offered to the actress s children. Will 
 iam was taken by his father s friends 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 5 
 
 or kinsmen in Baltimore ; a Eichmond 
 lady, Mrs. McKenzie, mothered Eosalie; 
 and Edgar became socially, though never 
 formally, the adopted son of Mr. and Mrs. 
 John Allan. 
 
 John Allan was a Scotsman. The 
 house of Ellis & Allan was building up 
 a tobacco business in Eichmond. Stories 
 abound of the rich man s suppers at 
 which young Edgar stood on the table 
 and amused the company by precocious 
 song and declamation. Some biographers 
 are moved by the picture of the young 
 Poe sent downward on his road to ruin 
 by the indulgent hand of an opulent 
 foster-father. In point of fact, Mr. Allan 
 was not rich. His firm assigned in the 
 year when Edgar was thirteen. At the 
 time that Poe came under Allan s roof, 
 that roof was above the second or third 
 story of his tobacco shop. It was not 
 until later that the death of a relative 
 made the Allans wealthy. Mr. Allan 
 opened his house to Poe probably at the 
 
6 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 instance of his young wife, they were 
 childless after several years of married 
 life, and he was a sensible, long-suffer 
 ing guardian to his wayward charge. 
 There is nothing to censure in Allan 
 except his failure to recognise genius 
 before it revealed itself. 
 
 In the summer of 1815 he went to Eng 
 land to establish a London branch of his 
 business. His six-year-old proteg6 was 
 sent to the Manor House School in Stoke 
 Newington, a suburb of London. This 
 school is shadowed forth in " William 
 Wilson. 7 The biographer finds in the 
 relation between the school at Stoke 
 Newington and the early career of Will 
 iam Wilson an instance of Poe s remark 
 able sensational memory. No record, 
 however, that Poe makes of his expe 
 riences, either in avowed autobiography 
 or in fiction, can be accepted at face 
 value. It is not the part of the fiction- 
 maker to reveal himself directly in his 
 stories, and Poe was a fictionist, not only 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 7 
 
 in his narratives, but in his letters and 
 other records of his life and character. 
 
 The Allans stayed in England five 
 years. That the Virginian merchant 
 was in a measure prosperous is indicated 
 by the recollection many years later of 
 the head of the school, Dr. Bransby, that 
 young Poe had too much pocket money. 
 The Poe records contain a large amount 
 of reminiscence accordant with some be 
 lief or fact about Poe which developed 
 in after years. 
 
 The English school no doubt gave Poe 
 that old-fashioned grounding in essen 
 tials, resting upon which his native alert 
 ness made his course in American schools 
 easy and pleasant. 
 
 On their return to Eiehmond in 1820 
 the Allans placed Poe in a school con 
 ducted then by Joseph Clarke, of Trin 
 ity College, Dublin, and later by another 
 Irishman, William Burke. All that we 
 know of Poe s character at this time is 
 that he was quick of brain and body. 
 
8 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 He may have been proud and aloof. 
 His companions may have remembered 
 that his parents were actors, and have 
 denied him the leadership which heroes 
 of biographies merit. When we look 
 back on the boyhood of a " future poet," 
 our vision is intercepted by the poet 
 that stands between. Poe s nimble brain 
 no doubt kept him in the favour of his 
 teachers. His body was so sound and 
 supple that he was able to compass one 
 poetic episode which links him appro 
 priately with Byron. He swam a six 
 mile stretch on the James Eiver and 
 walked home unfatigued. His precocity 
 in literature is not evident in any fact 
 of this period, although it is said that at 
 the age of ten or twelve he showed Mr. 
 Allan a manuscript volume of poems, 
 which of course that parental villain did 
 not appreciate ; and Poe was good at elo 
 cution, an art practised more by Amer 
 ican school-boys then than now. 
 There is a story that the mother of one 
 
EDGAE ALLAtf POE 9 
 
 of his playmates " befriended " him (he 
 was at this time thoroughly befriended 
 at home), that she became the " con 
 fidante of his boyish sorrows," and that, 
 when she died, he haunted her grave of 
 nights. It is easy to see that this ro 
 mantic lingering upon a lady s grave 
 foreshadows much in Poe ? s poetry and 
 prose. It is as easy to see that Poe s 
 poetry and prose suggest the story, which 
 he himself related. He called the lady 
 Helen because he did not like her real 
 name, Jane. The change was evidently 
 made by a poet with a mature ear ; 
 that is, after he had written ( To Helen, 7 > 
 which is to nobody in particular. Poe s 
 ladies are as visionary as the Julias and 
 Altheas of Herrick. The difference is 
 that Herrick expressed a fleshly warmth 
 toward ladies who never were, whereas 
 Poe attached his visions, the creatures 
 of a pretty name in his head, to what 
 ever lady happened to be interesting 
 him. He fitted poetic abstractions 
 
10 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 the same poetic abstraction to several 
 women ; and, since there is singularly 
 little human passion in his work, it is 
 likely that his conception of women was 
 usually untinged by desires of the blood. 
 
 The grave-haunting yarn belongs in 
 Poe s biography because he made it and 
 because it may have root in fact. At 
 the age of thirty-nine, a year before his 
 death, Poe referred to this story in a let 
 ter to a poetess. Poets and poetesses 
 communicate and receive ideas which 
 the facts of life do not support. 
 
 It is not necessary either to take too 
 seriously the story of Poe s attachment 
 to Sarah Elmira Eoyster, his young 
 neighbour, except to credit her statement 
 that her father intercepted Poe s letters. 
 Miss Eoyster was presently married at 
 the age of seventeen. She appears later 
 in Poe s life as the severe-lipped widow, 
 Mrs. Shelton. For the present we may 
 imagine him poetically desolate at her 
 marriage. 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 11 
 
 In 1825 Mr. Allan came into his 
 uncle 7 s fortune. The spendthrift habits 
 by which Poe is supposed to have been 
 unfitted for his later life of poverty be 
 gan now, if ever, and could have con 
 tinued but a year or so, for Poe abused 
 his guardian s new wealth, and Mr. Al 
 lan soon took him to task. Poe prepared 
 under tutors for the University of Vir 
 ginia, and entered it on the 14th 
 of February, 1826. This institution had 
 been opened the year before. Its dis 
 tinguished founder lived a few months 
 to enjoy the fatherhood of his college 
 and to find the practical difficulties in 
 the methods of administration which he 
 had contrived. Jefferson s fine and high 
 idea was to import European culture 
 (six of the eight professors were foreign- 
 born), to make university education 
 free, and to dispense democratically with 
 formal degrees and discipline. His 
 dream was part of the early American 
 confidence in unhindered human nature. 
 
12 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 The elective system, whereby Calvin s 
 God abdicated in favor of Democracy s 
 child, was born in Jefferson s university. 
 The difficulty at "the University 7 was 
 not with the elective system, but with 
 the whole combination of new theories 
 and old human facts. The European 
 teachers were not used to conducting 
 classes over which they had no disciplin 
 ary power. The young men who could 
 take advantage of free higher education 
 were of course the sons of the well-to-do, 
 and Poe and his classmates were boys, 
 with a different idea of honour from that 
 of old men. 
 
 Poe elected "ancient and modern lan 
 guages. " He had no difficulty in keep 
 ing up his class record. He showed his 
 aptitude in things linguistic, and browsed 
 among the books in the library. Once 
 when the instructor in Italian suggested 
 as optional work a translation from a 
 passage of Tasso, Poe was the only one 
 
EDGAE ALLAK POE 13 
 in the class to respond, and he was com 
 mended for his rendering. 
 
 Poe never fell under faculty censure 
 or did anything to distinguish him from 
 his fellows in point of wildness or diso 
 bedience. When the Board of Visitors 
 appealed to the civil authorities to bring 
 discipline into the young educational 
 democracy and a sheriff appeared with 
 writs for the gaming students, Poe was 
 only one of many who bolted. Like his 
 companions, he gambled and drank. It 
 was the gambling which was his imme 
 diate undoing. Mr. Allan refused to 
 pay his gaming debts, and on the 
 15th of December, 1826, after ten 
 months in the university, Poe ended his 
 academic schooling. He stood his final 
 examinations with credit : the examin 
 ations in any American college of that 
 time must have been easy for a clever 
 boy to stand. 
 
 In the university he encountered the 
 dangers of alcohol, not because he was 
 
14 EDGAE ALLAN FOB 
 in college or because he was in this par 
 ticular college, but because he lived in 
 a civilised community and was eighteen 
 years old. He must needs learn at this 
 time and, being what he was, he could 
 not learn wisely his physiological inca 
 pacity for alcohol. 
 
 Most that has been written of Poe s 
 encounters with the demon rum has been 
 based upon ignorance of the demon, or 
 upon insufficient knowledge of Poe, or 
 upon an elaborate pseudo-psychology 
 which is current in France, whereby Poe 
 is represented as dipping his pen in a 
 pot of alcohol, his fine poems are ex 
 plained as neurological phenomena, and 
 he is made spirituous forefather of all 
 absinthe poetry. Poe is an exotic ; he is 
 strangely un-American ; he is what we 
 Anglo-Saxons think of as "Frenchy." 
 His work has enjoyed the refinements of 
 French criticism and the literary sincer 
 ity of a great French translator, and we 
 have by intellectual compulsion yielded 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 15 
 him to France. But the French have 
 not interpreted the man as he lived in 
 these United States. 
 
 In critical clinics on Poe the terms of 
 pathology, alcoholism ? and i dipso 
 mania, " are familiar words. Neither 
 term expresses Poe s weakness. Alcohol 
 ism is disease resulting from exces 
 sive drinking : any one may develop it 
 with perseverance. Dipsomania is an 
 uncontrollable thirst for alcohol : it ex 
 ists as a disease, even if the thirst is not 
 gratified. There is yet a third condition 
 which can exist without excessive or 
 continuous indulgence and without an 
 initial morbid craving. Under this con 
 dition the " patient " is affected by al 
 cohol and other drugs as if he were a 
 cold-blooded animal. There is imme 
 diate unbalance, hysteria, insanity, a 
 poisoned condition. Such, according to 
 the evidence, was the effect of liquor on 
 Poe. One glass sent him off his head. 
 He was never pleasantly intoxicated. 
 
16 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 His longer sprees were dreary illnesses. 
 He was not a jolly carouser. He did not 
 make crafty effort to get liquor. His 
 indulgence was fitful, due to accidental 
 meetings and opportunities, and later to 
 starvation and misery. He was clear 
 headed enough to know this when he 
 wrote that misery made the vice, not 
 vice the misery. His life was not a 
 downward course under self- indulgence, 
 but a retreat on the level in the face of 
 a chemical fact. He seldom had money 
 enough to pay for much liquor, and the 
 quantity of work that he did in twenty 
 years is proof that he was not drunk for 
 relatively many working days. At im 
 portant crises in his career drinking 
 helped to bring disaster. He was not 
 the good fellow to compel forgiveness of 
 his sins, as we forgive the swaggering 
 intoxications of Byron and the domestic 
 evenings with Burgundy in which Lamb 
 drowned his tragedies and delighted 
 his friends. All that we can ask for 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 17 
 Poe is that defenders shall not ob 
 scure the truth, and that others relin 
 quish the assumption that a pure poetic 
 heart and a head marvellously clear can 
 not be borne by feet that stagger. In 
 the last decade of Poe s life, after too 
 much drinking and periods of malnutri 
 tion, he was so elastic and fine-muscled 
 that he jumped and played leap-frog to 
 the destruction of his only pair of shoes. 
 And he was to the end of his life so 
 clear-minded, in his professional writing, 
 that no comma was misplaced, and his 
 manuscript is in itself a work of manual 
 art. 
 
 Poe was a weak man with a great 
 brain, small in his failings, not giganti- 
 caUj^wicked. We do not pretend to like 
 him as we do large natures that fail. 
 
 But a golden tankard with dents in it 
 is not chiefly interesting for the liquor 
 it has held. Poe s worst vices were not 
 drunkenness, nor yet his philandering 
 with sentimental women, but his dis- 
 
18 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 honesty, his failure to pay his debts of 
 deed and word. Poe produced books 
 which are of consequence in the history 
 of our country and in the world s library. 
 It ought to be interesting to see the con 
 ditions under which those books were 
 produced. As we are human, we crave 
 to know when Shakespeare was married 
 and on what occasions Poe befuddled his 
 fine brain, but the Poe that lives is the 
 dreamer of dreams imaged in the pen 
 sive head that adorns the University of 
 Virginia. 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 19 
 
 II. 
 
 After leaving the University of Vir 
 ginia, Poe was not in Mr. Allan s favour, 
 though the final break did not come till 
 later. For a while he chafed in Mr. 
 Allan s counting-room, where he must 
 soon have shown his incapacity for busi 
 ness affairs. His failure as clerk, his 
 bad debts, and something in him of vaga 
 bond and adventurer sent him on his 
 way. In 1827 he was in Boston, where 
 he " commenced author " and turned 
 soldier. Tamerlane and Other Poems by 
 a Bostonian is a remarkable first book. 
 The bumptious preface, now that we 
 know what a poet it ushered into the 
 world of letters, seems to have the con 
 fident swing of genius. Everything of 
 value in the booklet was later revised 
 and reprinted. The best of it is in kind, 
 if not in pitch, unmistakably Poesque, 
 and from this feeble beginning to "Ula- 
 lume" of twenty years later the work 
 
20 EDGAR ALLAK POE 
 
 of Poe in prose and poetry is distinct 
 from all other things in books. 
 
 Tamerlane made no stir in the world, 
 and in after years the publisher, Calvin 
 Thomas, apparently did not know until 
 he was told that the manuscript had been 
 fetched to him under the arm of the 
 great Mr. Poe. Perhaps Mr. Poe ap 
 peared before his first publisher as Mr. 
 Edgar A. Perry, for it was under that 
 name that he enlisted on May 26, 1827, 
 in the United States Army. He went 
 with Battery H of the First Artillery 
 from Fort Independence in Boston to 
 Fort Moultrie in Charleston, thence 
 to Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Although 
 his career in the army seems to have 
 been meritorious, he kept this period of 
 his life in the dark, and to fill in the 
 years invented picturesque stories of 
 having joined the Greeks in their war 
 for independence and of having written 
 and published a novel in France. 
 
 Early in 1829 Mr. Allan was informed 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 21 
 of the whereabouts of Sergeant-major 
 Perry-Poe, and after Mrs. Allan s death 
 in February Poe went on furlough to 
 Eichmond. Perhaps he received assur 
 ances that Mr. Allan would help him to 
 the extent of getting comfortably rid of 
 him, for he planned to seek appointment 
 to the United States Military Academy. 
 On April 15, 1829, he was honourably dis 
 charged from the army, having procured 
 a substitute for whom Mr. Allan paid. 
 Mr. Allan s letter to the Secretary of 
 War should have shown the applicant 
 who bore it how far he could presume on 
 the merchant s good will. " Frankly, 
 sir, I do declare that he is no relation to 
 me whatever ; that I have many [in] 
 whom I have taken an active interest to 
 promote theirs ; with no other feeling 
 than that every man is my care, if he 
 be in distress. 7 
 
 Poe gathered other credentials, and 
 went toward Washington. On his way 
 he published in Baltimore his second 
 
22 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 volume, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor 
 Poertis. He had sent manuscript copies 
 of the verses to John Neal, then an im 
 portant personage in the world of litera 
 ture. Neal had said in the Yankee that 
 E. A. P., of Baltimore, " might write a 
 beautiful, if not a magnificent poem." 
 In a later number he quoted Poe s am 
 bitious reply : " I am quite certain that I 
 have not written either but that I can, 
 I will take oath if they will give me 
 time." The Boston editor was amused 
 by the confidence of the letter, but he 
 was also impressed by the poetry, from 
 which he quoted liberally, and con 
 cluded : " Having allowed our youthful 
 writer to be heard in his own behalf, 
 what more can we do for the lovers of 
 genuine poetry? Nothing. They who 
 are judges will not need more ; and they 
 who are not why waste words upon 
 them? "We shall not." This good- 
 natured comment of Poe s first critic 
 serves fairly well, after three-quarters 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 23 
 of a century, for the "last word" to 
 readers of Poe s poetry. 
 
 The Baltimore volume contained five 
 revised pieces from the volume of 1827. 
 "Al Aaraaf," the new title poem, is 
 over- elaborate and obscure, but it is so 
 characteristic of Poe in its combination 
 of starry vision and pseudo- astronomy 
 that it is of a piece with " Eureka," his 
 last work, and it contains fine imagery 
 and music of a kind which men who 
 began to read in the sunset of the Vic 
 torian age will think of as " modern " : 
 
 " Falling in wreaths through many a 
 
 startled star." 
 " The eternal voice of God is moving by, 
 
 And the red winds are withering in 
 the sky." 
 
 Such lines and the song, 
 
 " Spirit that dwellest where 
 
 In the deep sky 
 
 The terrible and fair 
 
 In beauty vie," 
 
 whether we take them from the Balti- 
 
24 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 more volume or the later revisions, carry 
 Poe into the company of strange singers 
 from Shelley and Coleridge to Eossetti 
 and James Thomson. 
 
 The Baltimore volume is noteworthy 
 for the literary sophistication of the 
 foot-notes. Critics have broken the but 
 terfly upon the wheel by pointing out 
 that Poe quoted at second-hand from 
 authors he had not read, and that he 
 made a false show of learning. The 
 important thing is that he quoted with 
 literary tact, and it required much dili 
 gent criticism to find him out. Emer 
 son likewise drew analogies and illustra 
 tions from religions and literatures of 
 which he knew little, and Carlyle s defi 
 nition of kingship is not less eloquent 
 because his discovery of "king" and 
 "ableman" in a common source is false 
 philology. 
 
 Poe s new book found little welcome 
 except in the quizzical appreciation of 
 Neal, and did not divert the poet from 
 
EDGAE ALLAK POE 25 
 
 his soldierly aspirations. He entered 
 West Point on July 1, 1830, and thus, 
 like a later undisciplined and eccentric 
 American artist, he became associated 
 with an institution of rigid bearing and 
 dutiful formality. When Poe entered 
 the Academy, he was older than the al 
 lowed age limit, twenty-one, but, being 
 a master of mathematical puzzles, he had 
 no difficulty in being recorded as under 
 twenty. He looked older than he really 
 was, and the story was circulated that 
 the appointment had been intended for 
 the son, but the father had come instead. 
 This story rightly suggests a prematurely 
 old youth who had seen a good deal of 
 the world and whose vocabulary and 
 intellectual interests were a decade in 
 advance of boyish cadetship. The story 
 did not please him so much as another 
 one, even less warranted by the facts, 
 that he was a grandson of Benedict Ar 
 nold. Like Byron, who also swam, 
 wrote poetry, and championed the 
 
26 EDGAR ALLAJST POE 
 
 Greeks, Poe enjoyed dark reputations. 
 Poe s literary tastes were known to his 
 associates. He was glib and dogmatic 
 in his criticisms of books which his fel 
 lows probably did not read, and he 
 made satirical jests in rhyme about the 
 instructors, one stanza of which still 
 remains. But he was not regular in 
 class-room work. He was insubordinate, 
 and his infringements of regulations in 
 creased as the year waned. 
 
 It is assumed that Mr. Allan s second 
 marriage in October, 1830, made Poe 
 more than ever doubtful of succeeding to 
 any part of his guardian s fortune, and 
 Poe said later, in effect, that the pros 
 pect of living on a soldier s wage did 
 not please him. He tried to resign, 
 but Mr. Allan did not approve, and 
 Poe took measures to have himself dis 
 missed. He was among the delinquents 
 summoned to court-martial in January, 
 1831. Before his case came on the calen 
 dar, he neglected his duties. Then he 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 27 
 pleaded guilty to every charge except 
 the one most easily proved, failure to 
 be at his post. He was dismissed, and on 
 March 6, 1831, he found himself again 
 free, penniless, and without a trade or 
 profession. 
 
 He signalised his departure from West 
 Point by taking subscriptions from 
 the cadets for a new volume of poems 
 which he dedicated to them. The ca 
 dets thought the book would contain the 
 kind of poetry they enjoyed, the satiri 
 cal skits on instructors. They received 
 instead of such interesting matter a vol 
 ume in which there were, among much 
 amateurish poetising, two or three fine 
 poems. 
 
 Poe s third volume contained revisions 
 of the best in the Baltimore volume, and 
 in addition "Israfel," "To Helen/ 7 
 "The Doomed City " ("The City in the 
 Sea > >)," Irene " ("The Sleeper ), "The 
 Valley Nis" ("The Valley of Unrest ).. 
 The earlier books of verse were the 
 
28 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 doubtful attempts of the young poet, of 
 which we might have forgotten the good 
 lines if later achievement had not com 
 pelled us to scan them closely ; but had 
 Poe died at the moment this third vol 
 ume was published, it must surely have 
 been remembered, for the original magic, 
 the haunting cadence, the fresh use of 
 language, which mark the new, the un 
 forgettable poet. The introduction con 
 tains Poe s first enunciation of the prin 
 ciple that the purpose of poetry is 
 to utter a definite idea in musical form. 
 This idea, "the rhythmical creation of 
 beauty, " and so on, has long been com 
 monplace, or at least has been com 
 monly accepted by poets from Coleridge 
 to the youngest Irish bard in London, 
 That it was revolutionary in America is 
 indicated by our tardy recognition of 
 Poe s supremacy among American poets 
 and by the ascendency of those less finely 
 tuned moralities of American verse 
 against which Poe protested all his life. 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 29 
 Three days after Poe s dismissal from 
 West Point he wrote from New York to 
 Colonel Thayer, the superintendent of the 
 Military Academy : "Having no longer 
 any tie which binds me to my native 
 country, no prospects nor any friends, 
 I intend, by the first opportunity, to 
 proceed to Paris with the view of ob 
 taining, through the interest of the Mar 
 quis de La Fayette [who, it will be re 
 membered, admired Poe ? s grandfather], 
 an appointment, if possible, in the Polish 
 Army." He asks Colonel Thayer s as 
 sistance. "A certificate of standing in 
 my class is all I have any right to ex 
 pect." This letter, not published till 
 five years ago, shows that Poe seriously 
 cherished those adventuresome projects 
 which his romantic invention subse 
 quently transmuted into events, and that 
 he had no immediate hope in Mr. Allan s 
 bounty. The story of a violent scene 
 and his final ejection from the Allan 
 house about this time seems probable. 
 
30 EDGAE ALLAtf POE 
 
 The next authentic record of Poe is 
 his letter of the 6th of May, 1831, to 
 William Gwynn, the Baltimore editor 
 and lawyer. Gwynn had expressed the 
 opinion that "Al Aaraaf," which he 
 had seen in manuscript, was indicative 
 of a " tendency to anything but the busi 
 ness of matter-of-fact life." This judg 
 ment was probably supported by less 
 poetical evidence, for Poe apologised to 
 Gwynn for foolish conduct on a previous 
 occasion. His request for employment 
 was not granted, nor was one to N. C. 
 Brooks, in whose new school Poe hoped 
 for a place as teacher. 
 
 Of the next two years of Poe s life the 
 records are sparse and shadowy. If Poe 
 liked to befog biographers while he ex 
 isted in the flesh, perhaps his spirit is 
 contemplating with sardonic pleasure 
 the fact that some of his letters of this 
 time, known to exist, have escaped pub 
 lication, and that the papers of John P. 
 Kennedy, his benefactor, are sealed by 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 31 
 
 Kennedy s will until 1920. There seems 
 X) be no good reason at this late day why 
 my possible source of information about 
 Poe should be closed to biographers. 
 Facts are thistles easily grasped by firm 
 lands. Mystification and reticence have 
 lone more to condemn him than any 
 inpleasant revelations. Charles G. Le- 
 and s service in destroying papers about 
 Poe which he found in Gris wold s desk 
 .s nullified by our knowledge that the 
 papers were destroyed. 
 
 Some legends belong to this time. One 
 relates Poe s love for Mary, ? whose oral 
 account of the affair was first published 
 in a magazine about twenty years ago. 
 Her description brings Poe clearly into 
 vision: "Mr. Poe was five feet eight 
 inches tall, and had dark, almost black 
 hair, which he wore long and pushed 
 back in student style over his ears. It 
 was as fine as silk. His eyes were large 
 and full, grey and piercing. He was 
 then, I think, entirely clean shaven. 
 
32 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 His nose was long and straight, and hi 
 features finely cut. The expression abou 
 his mouth was beautiful. He was pal 
 and had no color. His skin was of i 
 clear, beautiful olive. He had a sad 
 melancholy look. He was very slende 
 when I first knew him, had a fine figure 
 an erect, military carriage, and a quid 
 step. But it was his manner that mos 
 charmed. It was elegant. When h 
 looked at you, it seemed as if he couL 
 read your very thoughts. His voice wa 
 pleasant and musical, but not deep. 77 
 
 This description of Poe at twenty-tw 
 resembles other verbal pictures of hii 
 and most of the surviving portraits take] 
 from life. It omits mention of a strik 
 ing characteristic, the great breadth be 
 tween the temples, and of a curious twis 
 of his face, which gives to one side 
 slightly sinister look. Most friendly ac 
 counts of Poe dwell on his fine manner 
 and the distinction of his bearing. H 
 had the training of a Virginia gentle 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 33 
 man, and lie believed himself one. 
 Though he fell into disreputable habits, 
 was uncertain in his sense of honour, of 
 fended good breeding in his quarrels, 
 and became so reduced by poverty that 
 he could write with enthusiasm to his 
 mother-in-law of the " elegant ham ? in 
 a New York boarding-house (there is 
 tnore simple pathos in that letter than 
 in many of his more emotional ones), yet, 
 for all that, he retained to the last the 
 grand manner, the something proud, 
 aloof, formally courteous, of the edu 
 cated gentleman, the distinguished per 
 son. 
 
 "Poe s Mary" was not allowed to 
 continue her relations with the penni 
 less young man, whereupon he ungal- 
 lantly published a satirical poem about 
 her in a Baltimore paper. The young 
 lady s uncle interfered. Mr. Poe horse 
 whipped him, and flung the whip at 
 Mary s feet. She afterward married, 
 visited the Poes at Fordham, and was 
 
34 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 there when Virginia died. At the time 
 of this love affair, the story of which 
 seems to have a core of truth, Poe lived 
 with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, and 
 her daughter Virginia, aged ten or 
 eleven, was the bearer of Poe s love 
 letters. 
 
 Poe was certainly not at this time re 
 ceived in good society either in Eich- 
 mond or Baltimore. There is a tradition 
 in the Kennedy family that Kennedy 
 used to drive down town in Baltimore, 
 pull Poe out of improper places, and take 
 him home. Mrs. Kennedy went with 
 her husband on these friendly missions. 
 When Poe in sorry condition reached 
 the carriage, the presence of the lady 
 touched the spring of his chivalry, and 
 made him amenable to Kennedy s min 
 istrations. The statement of Griswold, 
 that Kennedy gave Poe shirt and coat, 
 is probably true. Poe s declaration that 
 he was indebted to Kennedy for life it 
 self seems to be more than an instance of 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 35 
 
 he exaggerated fervor which is common 
 in Poe s letters, and there are indica 
 tions that Kennedy knew and helped 
 Poe before they appear in open relations 
 as judge and successful contestant in 
 the Saturday Visiter prize competition. 
 Whatever is discovered about the years 
 from 1831 to 1833 will probably show that 
 |Poe was then as low as he ever was in 
 fortune and habits. Instead of repre 
 senting him as a brilliant youth going 
 down hill to an early death, we more 
 jfairly discern him as plunged by ill luck 
 and faults of temper into a bad hole at 
 (the beginning of his manhood and fight 
 ing his way out of it, with considerable 
 jpluck, toward renewed social recognition 
 iand successful industry. 
 
36 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 III. 
 
 In the summer of 1833 Foe emerge! 
 from obscurity as the winner of a prize 
 of one hundred dollars offered by the 
 Baltimore Saturday Visiter for the best 
 short story. The prize of fifty dollars 
 for the best poem would have beer 
 awarded to Poe s "The Coliseum, 77 had 
 he not won the larger premium. The 
 successful story, "MS. Found in a 
 Bottle, 77 was one of six "Tales of the 
 Folio Club, 77 all submitted by Poe to 
 this contest and marking his entrance 
 upon his professional career. Poe re 
 garded himself as a poet deflected into 
 prose by the necessity of earning a liv 
 ing. He had published three books of 
 verse before he tried the short story. 
 Then he encountered the fact in Ameri 
 can publication that the short story pays 
 better than any other form of writing. 
 The short story is the only type of litera 
 ture to which America has made a con- 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 37 
 siderable contribution of distinguished 
 quality, and this is in some measure due 
 to the peculiar dependence, in our social 
 order, of genius on the wage conditions 
 of daily labor. Poe s ability for criti 
 cism was revealed to him unexpectedly 
 by the ringside applause at his slashing 
 strokes with the book reviewer s pen. 
 For ten years, until "The Raven" 
 blazed amid his other reputations, the 
 poet remained in abeyance 5 the short- 
 story writer developed under the neces 
 sity of producing salable work; and the 
 man found the immediate gratification of 
 his ambition for power in his increasing 
 authority as critic. 
 
 In the fall of 1833 Poe s "Tales of the 
 Folio Club" began to appear in the 
 Baltimore Visiter. The judges in the 
 contest, Kennedy, Latrobe, and Miller, 
 said in a signed note, "We cannot re 
 frain from saying that the author owes it 
 to his reputation ... to publish the en 
 tire volume. These tales are eminently 
 
38 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 distinguished by a wild, vigorous, and 
 poetical imagination, a rich style, a 
 fertile invention, and varied and curi 
 ous learning. 7 Poe was now a promis 
 ing young author. His early stories, 
 including ten more that he added in 
 the next year to the " Tales of the Folio 
 Club," show most of his characteristics 
 of substance and method, clearness, com 
 pression, speed, conviction in narrating 
 the extraordinary and the bizarre. They 
 include none of his masterpieces, and were 
 no doubt less skilful in the first versions 
 than in the form which later revision 
 gave to them. Poe reprinted his tales 
 and poems in several magazines, to the 
 meagre profit of his purse and to the 
 great gain of art, for he worked them 
 over with fine care, and at each re 
 printing gave them new excellence. 
 There seems to me nothing unfair in his 
 thrifty reselling of old material. The 
 editors probably knew what they were 
 buying, they seem to have been glad to 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 39 
 
 get it, and they did not pay him enough 
 for his work to have the slightest case 
 against him as a purveyor of magazine 
 material. His business conscience was 
 as fine as that which prevailed in Amer 
 ican book and magazine trade, and one 
 rejoices in any device of republication 
 which gave him opportunity to exercise 
 his literary conscience. 
 
 It was not, however, Poe s original 
 work which brought him his limited 
 loaf of bread, but his work at the 
 editor s desk, though, to be sure, his 
 editorial efficiency depended on his abil 
 ity to contribute to any department of a 
 magazine. He was our first great maga- 
 zinist. He could furnish anything from 
 a catch-subscriber cryptogram challenge 
 to the most startling short story and the 
 most provocative review. His skill in 
 the short literary forms begot his critical 
 beliefs in those forms, and theory and 
 the peculiarities of his own powers as a 
 writer combined to give him faith in the 
 
40 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 vehicle by which short pieces of litera 
 ture are most easily presented to the 
 public. He not only recognised the 
 magazine as a convenient instrument of 
 publication, but believed in its func 
 tion to express an editor s personality 
 and to realise and direct literary taste. 
 All his life he dreamed of a magazine of 
 his own which should be independent, 
 devoted to art, and fabulously profit 
 able. Under his individual touch al 
 most every magazine with which he was 
 connected promptly flourished. If he 
 sometimes betrays his confidence in him 
 self as a universal genius in letters, he is 
 somewhat justified by his really wonder 
 ful combination of literary versatility 
 and editorial skill. 
 
 Poe s first success as story- writer came 
 just in time, for in March, 1834, Mr. 
 Allan died intestate, thus cutting off 
 Poe s last hopes of inheriting money. 
 These hopes, however, must have been 
 slender, for there is little doubt that he 
 
EDGAR ALLAtf POE 41 
 
 had made himself obnoxious to the 
 Allans and their Richmond connection. 
 In the summer he sent his tales, sixteen 
 in number, to a Philadelphia publishing 
 house, which, after keeping them for a 
 long time, showed that it did not agree 
 with the obiter dictum of the Saturday 
 Visiter judges that the community would 
 be gratified by the publication of the 
 volume. Poe spent the rest of the year 
 and the beginning of the next on new 
 tales, including "The Unparalleled Ad 
 venture of one Hans Phaal," and on his 
 dramatic fragment, i Politian. ? 
 
 Kennedy diverted him from poetic 
 tragedy, and recommended him to T. W. 
 White, the printer-editor of the South 
 ern Literary Messenger, just started in 
 Richmond. White engaged him pro 
 visionally as assistant, and for the first 
 time in his life Poe had regular profita 
 ble occupation. Depending on that, he 
 married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a 
 child of thirteen. He had lived with 
 
42 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 Mrs. Clemm for some time, and the 
 alliance seems to have been a matter 
 of economy, to make the poor house 
 hold more easy to shift and re-estab 
 lish. 
 
 Mrs. Clemm and Virginia were tender 
 and loyal to him, and there is abundant 
 proof of his devotion to them. This un 
 happy man, who has been so blackly 
 drawn, certainly spent a great many 
 days at home, working hard. To his 
 mother-in-law he is more boyish, natural, 
 and frank than to any other person. 
 In their terms of endearment, " Mud- 
 die " and " my Eddie, " there is a human 
 tone none too common amid the strange 
 kinds of rhetoric which compose the 
 story of Poe. 
 
 The license for the marriage was taken 
 out in September, 1835, and there is 
 evidence of an unrecorded marriage in 
 Baltimore soon after. The reason for 
 haste may be found in the opposition 
 of Poe s cousin, Neilson, to Virginia s 
 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 43 
 marrying so young. The recorded mar 
 riage took place in Bichmond in May, 
 1836. 
 
 The family moved to Bichmond in the 
 fall of 1835, and by November Poe was 
 actual editor of the Messenger. His sal 
 ary, with extra allowances for original 
 contributions, was small, but enough. 
 He had prospects of soon raising the sum 
 to a thousand dollars a year, and he says 
 that his Bichmond friends received him 
 with open arms. Yet he was not con 
 tent. In September he wrote to Ken 
 nedy a letter full of undefined despairs, 
 to which Kennedy replied with the 
 good sense of a Dutch uncle. The mel 
 ancholy letter was written just before he 
 went up to Baltimore to get his bride, and 
 the difficulties of that episode may ac 
 count for his mood. Another explana 
 tion is found in the letter which White 
 wrote to him during his temporary ab 
 sence from Bichmond : "If you should 
 come to Bichmond again, and again 
 
44 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 should be an assistant in my office, it 
 must be expressly understood between 
 us that all engagements on my part 
 would be dissolved the moment you get 
 drunk." At the beginning of the year 
 he writes to Kennedy that he is fighting 
 the enemy manfully. The Messenger 
 prospered, and Poe published his tales as 
 the year went on, and republished many 
 of his verses. 
 
 At this time, 1837, he had not done 
 his best work in prose, but he had shown 
 the promise of his best, and, with the 
 exception of the detective story, he had 
 indicated the range of his genius. In 
 fiction he had produced adventure, such 
 as "Hans Phaal, 77 characterised by a 
 Defoe-like plausibility of detail and the 
 interest of a "Sunday supplement 77 
 writer in mechanics and science ; ro 
 mances laid in a European no- man 7 s- 
 land, such as "The Assignation 77 and 
 "Metzengerstein, 77 suggested by or bor 
 rowed from his reading in foreign litera- 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 45 
 
 ture 5 and the prose poetry of " Shadow : 
 A Parable," as remarkable in visionary 
 prose as something from Blake or De 
 Quincey. No argument as to literary 
 value is necessary to persuade any one 
 with feeling for language who reads 
 the last sentence of " Shadow " that 
 he is in the presence of a writer who 
 can write: "And then did we, the 
 seven, start from our seats in horror 
 and stand trembling and shuddering 
 and aghast, for the tones in the voice of 
 the shadow were not the tones of any 
 one being, but of a multitude of beings, 
 and, varying in their cadences from syl 
 lable to syllable, fell duskily upon our 
 ears in the well-remembered and famil 
 iar accents of many thousand departed 
 friends. " In such pieces and in the 
 tales of morbid terror, "Morella" and 
 " Berenice, " we discover, I think, the 
 poet compelled by the exigencies of the 
 market to turn into prose, with the 
 outward shape of narrative, visions, 
 
46 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 rhythms, and verbal magic to which his 
 genius unhindered would have given 
 form in verse. 
 
 The least successful kind of prose of 
 which Poe gave specimens in his experi 
 mental years is the tale of grotesque 
 humour. With his sure tact for words he 
 called it grotesque and not humorous. 
 He and some of his friends thought it 
 was funny, this nightmare grin. Poe 
 had sufficient literary cleverness to simu 
 late something that was not in him, but 
 nothing in his legends of wonder, of 
 physical and mental terror, makes the 
 hair stand on end as does his attempt to 
 write a funny piece. In criticism his 
 intellectual discernment led him some 
 times to a kind of sharp wisdom akin to 
 humour. But it is impossible to think 
 of Irving, Lincoln, Dickens, Mark 
 Twain, and find much left in the word 
 " humour " which can by any liter 
 ary or charitable function of mind be 
 stretched to apply to the writings of 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 47 
 Poe, or, indeed, to the motives which 
 guided his conduct as a man. 
 
 His tales of cold horror remain stimu 
 lating for the fine adaptation of language 
 to effect, the adaptation which he him 
 self, as every man must preach doctrines 
 to fit his own achievements, announced 
 as the object of the short story. But the 
 horror no longer makes us sit up after 
 midnight. We have lived through an 
 age which produced horror mightily 
 compounded of the facts of life, Dickens 
 and the Brontes and Hardy and the 
 Eussian novelists. Life, as one recog 
 nises it in one s fellows, Poe seldom 
 touched. Our generation has adjusted 
 itself comfortably to Wuthering Heights 
 and Bleak House, in which out of spon 
 taneous combustion, spooks, and other 
 superstitions leaps the human fact to 
 grasp one by the throat ; and we no longer 
 shiver, as the author intended, at the 
 posthumous dentistry of " Berenice. " 
 But Poe did develop a kind of terror 
 
48 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 of mind which few authors have dared 
 to approach. He looked within himself, 
 and gave us "William Wilson," "The 
 Man in the Crowd/ 7 the satanically true 
 "Imp of the Perverse. " These and 
 others of his maturer tales no change of 
 literary taste, no satiety of reading, can 
 outgrow. And, though he selected curi 
 ous, remote, hushed, and tiptoe themes 
 to play upon his instrument, the instru 
 ment is finely tuned, and it has a music 
 clear and masterly, which makes him 
 a member of the classic orchestra, an 
 adopted son of French literature, an 
 essential pure note in an age of English 
 writing too prone to mistake mere power 
 for excellence. 
 
 While the public was no doubt enjoy 
 ing his stories, the literary world was 
 stirred by his criticism. In the Messenger 
 Poe began those attacks on mediocrity 
 which won him his dearest enemies 
 and made American literature bounden 
 to him forever. Like all fallible critics, 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 49 
 
 he sometimes hit the wrong head, he 
 was often bigoted, supercilious, and 
 misinformed. He was guilty of a kind 
 of uncritical chivalry in his treatment 
 of lady poets. He was also guilty of 
 currying favour with writers whose ma 
 terial help he needed, thereby sacrific 
 ing the literary honesty and indepen 
 dence which he boasted. But he had the 
 real gifts of criticism, courage, discern 
 ment, sensitiveness, method, rigidity of 
 standard. To learn his service, one has 
 only to read the names of the persons he 
 criticised, the forgotten favourites and 
 local heroes through whom his clear 
 brain and impoverished body had to 
 make their daily way. Except for one 
 or two established dignitaries, Cooper 
 and Irving, the persons who passed for 
 authors in Poe s time make one unpa 
 triotic. Most of them are unknown ex 
 cept for the mortuary inscription which 
 he carved upon their obscure graves. 
 He impaled scores of toy windmills on 
 
50 EDGAE ALLAN FOB 
 his lance, and produced jealous conster 
 nation among pious and sentimental 
 persons who, having no other possible 
 employment, regarded themselves as 
 "literary." Because he was unreason 
 ably hostile to the New England school, 
 we do not always give him credit for 
 recognising Hawthorne at a time when 
 Hawthorne called himself the obscurest 
 man of letters in America. Because he 
 was foolish in accusing Longfellow of 
 plagiarism, we do not remember that 
 he regarded Longfellow as the first of 
 American poets, and quoted from his 
 verse with approbation, and that the 
 seat of his antagonism to New England 
 writers and Carlyle was in a just instinct 
 that sermons should not be hung upon 
 the wings of visions. 
 
 In Poe s time American literature was 
 weak and strutting, and daily journalism 
 in its personalities and puffs was even 
 more contemptible than the modern 
 newspaper. We know Poe s journalis- 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 51 
 
 tic indignities, because lie is almost the 
 only one of his age and neighbourhood 
 whose complete works have survived, 
 for whose least scraps of book reviewing 
 the tangles of the daily press have been 
 combed through by editors and compil 
 ers. But he was head and shoulders ^ 
 above his contemporaries in his views of 
 literature, and he did much to awaken 
 critical consciousness. If he paid the 
 penalties of dishonesty and meanness, 
 he paid as heavy penalties for honesty, 
 courage, and devotion to his craft. He 
 might have rendered as effective and 
 courageous service with less arrogance 
 and more magnanimity, but it is to his 
 lasting credit that he remained, on the 
 whole, true to his literary faith and in 
 dustrious in his efforts to establish high 
 standards of criticism. 
 
52 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 IY. 
 
 In 1836 Poe wrote his longest story, 
 "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon 
 Pym," which appeared serially in the 
 Messenger and was published in 1838 by 
 the Harpers. The book is still good 
 reading after three generations of sea- 
 yarns. It swings through blood and 
 thunder, strange seas and gloomy scen 
 ery. It belongs not among the hearty 
 books from Cooper to Stevenson, full of 
 honest crime and yo-heave-ho, but 
 rather with the "Ancient Mariner" and 
 Mr. Joseph Conrad s Falk, for its draw 
 ing of the intellectual horrors of can 
 nibalism and sea loneliness. 
 
 Poe left the Messenger in January, 
 1837, apparently on good terms with 
 White. This is the first of several unac 
 countable departures on the part of Poe 
 from positions that gave him a living. 
 Kennedy s explanation answers for all. 
 "He was irregular, eccentric, andqueru- 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 53 
 
 lous, and soon gave up his place." He 
 went with his family to Baltimore, 
 Philadelphia, and finally to New York, 
 where Mrs. Clemm took boarders to 
 keep the household alive. Poe failed to 
 establish himself in New York, and in 
 the summer of 1838 settled in Philadel 
 phia. To this period belong the poem 
 "The Haunted Palace," "Silence," a 
 prose poem of great beauty, and a piece 
 of pot-boiling at which his fingers were 
 scorched. He was selected by the pub 
 lishers and apparently by the author 
 of a book on conchology to father The 
 Conchologisf s First Book. It is hard to 
 see just what harm he did to the 
 learned authorities on whom he levied 
 for information about a subject of which 
 he was obviously ignorant. If he had 
 not been so diligent in his quest for 
 plagiarism in others, he probably would 
 not have been censured for his moral in 
 direction in putting his name to a book 
 which he could not have written. 
 
54 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 In 1839 he became contributor to 
 Burton* s Gentleman s Magazine, pub- 
 lished in Philadelphia, and in July was 
 announced as associate editor. His con 
 tributions to this magazine gave it pros 
 perity, and so increased his reputation 
 that the hitherto doubtful publishers 
 ventured to print the best book of 
 short stories that America had produced. 
 Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque 
 appeared in two volumes at the end of 
 1839 or the beginning of 1840. These 
 volumes contain several of Poe s master 
 pieces, " The Fall of the House of 
 Usher, " " William Wilson, " Shadow, > > 
 " Silence," and "Ligeia." As Poe 
 matured, his tales of horror became less 
 physical, more intellectual, and dealt 
 with the mysteries of conscience, will, 
 life after death. He had a superstitious 
 rather than a scientific interest in the 
 shadowy problems of psychology, me 
 tempsychosis, the nature of personality, 
 hypnotism, and the rest. In this he is 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 55 
 like Hawthorne. One difference is that 
 Poe fetches the shadows out into the 
 open analysis of his brilliant, confident 
 style, whereas Hawthorne leaves them 
 dim, soft, in the distances of religious 
 and poetic wonder. Moreover, the 
 spectres in whom Hawthorne embodies 
 mesmeric suggestions, his victims of con 
 science, the spooks that appear and 
 disappear amid allegorical portents, now 
 and again step forward and speak with 
 human voices. Poe never contrived 
 a human being : the conversations of 
 his characters are but the vehicles of 
 expository ideas. Compared to the 
 dramatically real double person, Jekyll- 
 Hyde, William Wilson is a ghost. 
 "Morella," " Berenice, 7 "Ligeia," are 
 but the transparent images of revery 
 laid against the plane surface of a 
 mathematical plan. When Poe reached 
 out for a human being, one who might 
 come ready-made from the byways of 
 life into the particular course he was 
 
56 EDGAE ALLAK FOB 
 laying out for his story, he pressed 
 human truth out of the figure after 
 a minute of handling. For an instance, 
 the more important because it concerns 
 a minor character who had nothing un 
 natural to do in the interests of the 
 story, " The Gold Bug," written three 
 years later, contains a negro servant. 
 Foe had lived at the South and knew 
 negroes, but the talk of Jupiter is 
 more remote from negro talk than the 
 utmost devices of black- faced minstrelsy. 
 Foe found his material in himself and in 
 his reading rather than in his fellows. 
 The first person in one of the tales says: 
 " Feelings with me had never been of 
 the heart, and my passions always were 
 of the mind." 
 
 Foe s association with Burton lasted 
 until the summer of 1840, when Foe an 
 nounced the magazine which he always 
 hoped to found and never did. Ferhaps 
 Burton objected to a plan that meant a 
 loss to the Gentleman s Magazine, and 
 
EDGAB ALLAX POE 57 
 it may be that Poe, in new hope of in 
 dependence, became a troublesome em 
 ployee and made improper use of Bur 
 ton s subscription lists. Burton circu 
 lated abusive reports of Poe s habits, but 
 wished for business reasons to get him 
 back on the magazine. Poe called Bur 
 ton a scoundrel, and Poe s scoundrels 
 were often persons he had offended. 
 When in 1841 Graham took the Gentle 
 man s Magazine over, Burton stipulated 
 that his young editor was to be taken 
 care of. 
 
 In the magazine for June appeared 
 the last instalment of "The Journal of 
 Julius Bodman," in which Poe tried to 
 do with land adventure what he had 
 done with sea adventure in the story of 
 Pym. It was never brought to comple 
 tion on account of Poe s break with the 
 magazine ; but it is interesting in that 
 it was not remembered as Poe s work 
 until in 1880 the English biographer, 
 Ingram, discovered it in the files of Bur- 
 
58 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 tori s, and it illustrates the curious Eliza 
 bethan vagabondage of Poe 7 s writings, 
 unusual in modern literature. No fur 
 ther work of his is identified until the 
 December number, in which appeared 
 "The Man of the Crowd, 77 a parable of 
 conscience. Poe abandoned for the time 
 his plan for a magazine of his own, and 
 entered upon a period of relatively pros 
 perous writing and editing for the mag 
 azine which George Graham made out 
 of Burton s and another. He found time 
 for contributions to other magazines, 
 and was for two years industrious and 
 fairly well off under the friendly Gra 
 ham. 
 
 His chief intellectual development in 
 this time was his new turn for analysis and 
 detection. In May, 1841, he published 
 in another magazine of Graham 7 s a con 
 struction, from the first chapters which 
 had recently appeared, of the plot of 
 Barndby Rudge. Dickens is said to 
 have asked if Poe was the devil. He 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 59 
 
 was devilish only in knowing how other 
 men s minds must work under given 
 conditions; and the conjuror s tricks of 
 another plot-maker did not baffle him. 
 He himself delighted to explain care 
 fully how the conjuror performs, and 
 after the explanation to startle the 
 audience more than ever. He was busy 
 about this time with his challenge to the 
 world to send him cryptograms which 
 he could not solve. He mastered all 
 that came, and there is a curious impli 
 cation in the terms of his challenge that 
 any one who can use his brain can de 
 cipher a cryptogram that any other 
 brain can conceive, but that there is no 
 one in the world but Poe who can use 
 his brain. In this he was relatively 
 right. Poe inevitably discovered that, 
 compared with his own, the mental proc 
 esses of humanity are feeble operations, 
 and he loved to set the silly mouth of the 
 world agape. But he laid up bitterness 
 for himself in the unavoidable reflection 
 
60 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 that simpletons and dullards get on very 
 well in the world, that they like each 
 other and prosper, while he of the supe 
 rior brain is marked for unsuccess and 
 galling friction with the sluggard proc 
 esses of common life. 
 
 His work as puzzle editor was tiring, 
 and the records of it are of no literary 
 value except to reveal Poe s inexhaust 
 ible brain power. In April appeared 
 the first of his detective stories, "The 
 Murders of the Eue Morgue, " which 
 fixed at the very inception of the form 
 an ultimate standard of excellence. 
 These detective stories are the emer 
 gence of Poe s intellect from confusing 
 practical conditions. The man delighted 
 to think, and in this period of compara 
 tive ease he indulged in the exercise of 
 ratiocination. i The Murders of the Eue 
 Morgue 7 is connected in its physical 
 horror with his other weird tales 5 but 
 in "The Purloined Letter " he came to 
 the purest example of the tale of reason, 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 61 
 
 for this, without sensational terror, holds 
 the interest in the question how a 
 mind thinks and how another mind 
 should set to work to guess at the prob 
 able plottings of the first. "The Mys 
 tery of Marie Roget " is the boldest and 
 most spectacular of the detective stories. 
 In others, as Poe himself was the first to 
 point out, the author invents both solu 
 tion and problem, or follows a story of 
 life which has been brought to conclu 
 sion. In " Marie Eoget" Poe undertook 
 to solve by thinly disguised parallel 
 a murder plot which was being un 
 folded in contemporaneous newspapers, 
 and which his conclusion forestalled 
 in the ultimate development of the 
 event. 
 
 Poe seems to have tried all the direc 
 tions which the detective story will 
 take, except one which he was temper 
 amentally unable to follow. In later 
 writers the detective story has merged 
 with the novel of human life, in which 
 
62 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 our interests are engaged by other 
 things than the sheer process of detec 
 tion. To take a current example, the 
 world can find human interest in the 
 death and the love affairs and the pallid 
 addiction to cocaine of Mr. Sherlock 
 Holmes. Poe s persons, out of plot, are 
 out of mind. 
 
 Poe added to his tales of horror " The 
 Pit and the Pendulum 7 and "The 
 Black Cat," and in "The Masque of the 
 Bed Death" revealed his luxurious 
 sense of color. This sense in his crude 
 age and surroundings was easily per 
 verted to a kind of riot in plush and 
 tinsel magnificence which shows not so 
 much his lack of taste as the yearnings 
 of an impoverished man for warmth and 
 splendour. He also wrote for Graham s 
 some of his soundest criticisms, on Haw 
 thorne, Longfellow, Dickens, Bulwer, 
 Goldsmith, John Wilson, Macaulay, 
 Lever, Marryat. 
 
 It is no wonder that in a year the sub- 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 63 
 scribers to the magazine increased from 
 eight thousand to forty thousand. But 
 Poe was still restless. In 1841 he tried 
 unsuccessfully to get a sinecure at "Wash 
 ington, a course suggested to him by a 
 friend. He still dreamed of an inde 
 pendent magazine. He hailed Lowell s 
 short-lived Pioneer, and began with 
 Lowell the most disinterested literary 
 acquaintance which graces his corre 
 spondence. When Lowell 7 s eyes failed 
 and his magazine fell into debt and died, 
 Poe wrote to him : " As for the few dollars 
 you owe me, give yourself not one 
 moment s concern about them." The 
 decease of the Pioneer, said Poe, would 
 be a blow to the cause of Pure Taste. 
 
 For all Poe s increasing reputation he 
 could not induce the publishers to un 
 dertake a new edition of those tales 
 which modern publishers in every coun 
 try reprint many times. And it was at 
 this period that tragedy, which the ar 
 tist had pursued with haunting specula- 
 
64 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 tion, entered the house of the man. 
 Virginia ruptured a blood-vessel, and 
 for several years lived on the verge of 
 death. Poe suffered actual or imagina 
 tive sorrow for her death a dozen times 
 before she was finally taken, and under 
 the strain his will showed all its weak 
 nesses. One may say that for ten years 
 his fight upward had been not unsuc 
 cessful, and from now on he showed 
 more and more his infirmities of charac 
 ter and body. The artistic record of 
 his sorrow may be found in the story 
 of Eleanora s death in "The Valley of 
 the Many Colored Grass." The som 
 bre beauty and melancholy rhythm of 
 the prose bring us nearer than most of 
 Poe s writings to the affectionate in 
 terests of the heart. It was written 
 before Virginia s death, and was pub 
 lished in 1842. The analysis of the 
 dreamer s mind is in some degree auto 
 biographic, and the opening sentence of 
 the narrative is close to fact: "She 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 65 
 whom I loved in youth and of whom I 
 now pen calmly and distinctly these re 
 miniscences was the sole daughter of 
 the only sister of my mother, long de 
 parted. " 
 
 In April, 1842, Poe ceased to be edi 
 tor of Graham s. The story goes that, 
 while Poe was away for a short time, 
 Graham put in his place the Eev. Dr. 
 Eufus W. Griswold. Poe, coming back, 
 found Griswold in his chair, waited not 
 for explanation, but left the office for 
 ever. This is said to be Grahamjs ac 
 count, given thirty years later. Graham 
 remained faithful to Poe, and wrote one 
 of the warmest defences of him. 
 
 This Eev. Mr. Griswold has an impor 
 tant place in Poe s life and in his 
 " Lives. " The nub of the matter is 
 that biography is usually born in eulogy. 
 A man dies, friends and family issue the 
 long funeral sermon called the official 
 life and letters. Later biographers ex 
 amine, criticise, and finally shave the 
 
66 EDGAB ALLAN POE 
 sermon down to facts, from which each 
 biographer constructs a new essay in in 
 terpretation. It was Poe s lot to have, 
 by his own appointment, an official bio 
 grapher who by training and temper was 
 incapable of understanding him in a large 
 way, but who had most of the facts in 
 document. Griswold was a Baptist min 
 ister turned litterateur, and was a tire 
 less compiler of anthologies which might 
 have been called " Who s Who in Liter 
 ature." Poe, like many other true 
 poets, was a zealous advertiser of his lit 
 erary wares, and kept on good terms 
 with Griswold in order to get a place in 
 Griswold s popular compendiums of 
 Parnassus. He furnished Griswold 
 with a mendacious biographical sketch, 
 and he pretends that Griswold asked 
 him to review the book and offered to 
 " place" the review, and that this was, 
 of course, a bribe from Griswold for a 
 puff. In a lecture Poe riddled Gris 
 wold s book, and probably expressed his 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 67 
 
 real opinion of the compiler and of most 
 mounters of Pegasus in the American 
 riding school exhibit of amateur poets. 
 The reports of the lecture angered Gris 
 wold, but Poe deprecated the severity of 
 the lecture, and was not above borrow 
 ing five dollars from the man he of 
 fended. When Griswold turned to his 
 next compilation, "The Prose Writers 
 of America, " Poe, desirous to appear in 
 that, wrote apologetically to Griswold 
 and made light of having spoken ill of 
 him. To the end he seems to have 
 thought that he was on good terms with 
 Griswold, and so made him his literary 
 executor. 
 
 Immediately upon Poe s death Gris 
 wold took the course which has given 
 both a black reputation. He printed a 
 powerful article in the New York Trib 
 une, which underrates Poe s work, if it 
 does not overrate his vices. Aside from 
 the suspicious anonymity of the article, 
 it was unfriendly and ill-advised at the 
 
68 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 moment when Poe had slipped out of 
 a clouded and unhappy life, leaving a 
 multitude of enemies. It would have 
 been better had the key to Poe s posthu 
 mous reputation been struck at the be 
 ginning in a different manner and by a 
 man of larger understanding. Friends 
 rushed to Poe s defence, not always ef 
 fectual and too often giving prominence 
 by their denials to inessentials. Gris- 
 wold did not learn his lesson from the 
 trouble which the Tribune article caused, 
 but prefixed to the third volume of 
 Poe s works the "Memoir," which was 
 afterward suppressed. It is no longer 
 acceptable as a view of Poe. It is un 
 sympathetic. The author is engaged in 
 justifying himself and not in finding out 
 what in Poe s work and life really mat 
 tered to make a biography of him worth 
 writing at all. Where a crack shows in 
 Poe s character, Griswold inserts a keen 
 instrument, and drives it in with the 
 weight of damning evidence of which he 
 
EDGAE ALLAtf POE 69 
 owned a large collection. His " Me 
 moir " is not the monstrosity of slander 
 which it has been called, and as a collec 
 tion of testimony has not, as a whole, 
 been invalidated. There was plenty of 
 substantial documentary relic to show to 
 the satisfaction of a person like Griswold 
 that Poe s character was compounded of 
 poor stuff. Griswold wrote to Mrs. 
 Whitman just after the Tribune article : 
 "I was not his [Poe s] friend, nor was he 
 mine. ... I cannot refrain from beg 
 ging you to be careful what you say or 
 write to Mrs. Clemm, who is not your 
 friend, nor anybody s friend, and who 
 has no element of goodness or kindness 
 in her nature, but whose heart and un 
 derstanding are full of malice and wick 
 edness. " Mrs. Clemm did not deserve to 
 be thus undermined along with her son- 
 in-law, to whom she was in his life and 
 his death unfailingly loyal. 
 
 Griswold did harm because the re 
 action against him has added confusions. 
 
70 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 The pendulum has swung back and 
 forth, and, in spite of Mr. George E. 
 Woodberry s attempt more than twenty 
 years ago to stop it on centre, it con 
 tinues to swing up to the present day. 
 
 Poe says in one of his letters that 
 Graham made him a good offer to 
 return to the magazine. It is not likely 
 that White or Burton or Graham ever 
 willingly gave up Poe s services. Diffi 
 cult as he was to get along with, he was 
 the best editor in the country and put 
 money in the pockets of his employers. 
 Perhaps the reason he did not return to 
 Graham, who remained friendly to him, 
 is that he still had hopes of getting 
 a clerkship in Washington and was out 
 again with a prospectus of his will-o - 
 the-wisp magazine. This time he went 
 so far as to find a partner and make 
 a contract with Darley for illustrations. 
 The scheme came to naught, and he did 
 not get the appointment to the sinecure 
 under the government. When he went 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 71 
 
 to Washington to see about it, he fell by 
 the wayside and caused his friends em- 
 barrasment and anxiety. An attempt 
 to issue his prose romances in a series of 
 volumes failed with the first number. 
 His only good luck about this time was 
 to win a hundred dollars for " The Gold 
 Bug, 7 which was published in the 
 Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper in June, 
 1843. The other publications of this 
 year include "The Conqueror Worm," 
 "Lenore," and the stories "The Tell 
 tale Heart" and "The Black Cat," 
 gloomy parables on the theme that 
 murder will out. Toward the end of 
 the year he gave his lecture on poetry, 
 which contained the substance of the 
 "Notes on English Verse" and the 
 offensive remarks, whatever they were, 
 about Griswold. 
 
 The essay on "Mr. Griswold and the 
 Poets," as it remains in Poe s work, 
 will repay the reading of it to which 
 one is led by its peculiar biographical 
 
72 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 interest. It is cool, discerning, and just, 
 and it shows the larger philosophical 
 principles with which Poe surrounded 
 his remarks about now forgotten books. 
 In an age when many things are being 
 written about America, the opening 
 paragraphs of Poe s essay are fresh after 
 sixty years. The first tells the truth 
 about Poe s mind, the second the truth 
 about American literature, although the 
 faith which Poe then expressed has been 
 delayed in fulfilment. The passage 
 serves, too, to show the point, balance, 
 and ease of Poe s writing. 
 
 "That we are not a poetical people 
 has been asserted so often and so 
 roundly, both at home and abroad, that 
 the slander, through mere dint of repeti 
 tion, has come to be received as truth. 
 Yet nothing can be farther removed 
 from it. The mistake is but a portion, 
 or corollary, of the old dogma, that the 
 calculating faculties are at war with the 
 ideal ; while, in fact, it may be demon- 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 73 
 
 strated that the two divisions of mental 
 power are never to be found in perfection 
 apart. The highest order of the imagi 
 native intellect is always pre-eminently 
 mathematical ; and the converse. 
 
 "The idiosyncrasy of our political 
 position has stimulated into early action 
 whatever practical talent we possessed. 
 Even in our national infancy we 
 evinced a degree of utilitarian ability 
 which put to shame the mature skill of 
 our forefathers. While yet in leading- 
 strings, we proved ourselves adepts in all 
 the arts and sciences which promote the 
 comfort of the animal man. But the 
 arena of exertion, and of consequent 
 distinction, into which our first and 
 most obvious wants impelled us has 
 been regarded as the field of our 
 deliberate choice. Our necessities have 
 been mistaken for our propensities. 
 Having been forced to make railroads, 
 it has been deemed impossible that we 
 should make verse. Because it suited 
 
74 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 us to construct an engine in the first 
 instance, it has been denied that we 
 could compose an epic in the second. 
 Because we were not Homers in the 
 beginning, it has been somewhat too 
 rashly taken for granted that we shall 
 be all Jeremy Benthams to the end. 
 
 "But this is the purest insanity. 
 The principles of the poetic sentiment 
 lie deep within the immortal nature of 
 man, and have little necessary reference 
 to the worldly circumstances which sur 
 round him. The poet of Arcady is, in 
 Kamschatka, the poet still. The self 
 same Saxon current animates the British 
 and the American heart; nor can any 
 social or political or moral or physical 
 conditions do more than momentarily 
 repress the impulses which glow in our 
 own bosoms as fervently as in those of 
 our progenitors." 
 
 Poe continued to be in the last years 
 of his life a privileged contributor to 
 magazines, in that he was allowed to 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 75 
 
 express his opinions freely. His intel 
 lectual independence was not thwarted 
 by editorial policies, and he was rather 
 encouraged than discouraged to speak 
 out his mind. His quarrel, aside from 
 questions of money, seems not to have 
 been so much resentment for what the 
 editors did not accept from him as a 
 more disinterested contempt for what 
 they accepted from others. It was at 
 this period that his dream of an inde 
 pendent magazine assumed its most 
 magnificent and impossible form. He 
 wrote to Lowell, proposing that the 
 dozen ilite of our men of letters should 
 form a company to make the irresistible 
 magazine, which should mount in two 
 years to a hundred thousand copies, 
 make them all rich, and reform literary 
 taste. There is a naive enthusiasm in 
 this oldish young man for a form of pub 
 lication which has persistently refused to 
 do much for the cause of pure letters, 
 except to pay the butchers 7 bills of 
 
76 EDGAR ALLAN FOB 
 authors while they devote their off-time 
 to productions not suited to the maga 
 zines. In Poe s case the facts are in 
 verted : his best productions were suited 
 to the magazines, but they did not pay 
 his butcher s bills. 
 
 Poe s letter to Lowell about the maga 
 zine which should be independent, sin 
 cere, and original, was written in March, 
 1844. The next month he moved to 
 New York, and attached himself to 
 a metropolitan press, less dignified, 
 less literary in its traditions than the 
 press of Philadelphia. In his first 
 week in New York he perpetrated his 
 " Balloon Hoax" through the columns of 
 the New York Sun. Poe s account, in 
 a convincing reportorial style, of the 
 passage of a balloon from England to 
 America was successful in fooling many 
 persons. The only humour in this sort 
 of thing is the Swift-like contempt, of 
 which Poe had a touch, for the gullibility 
 of man. 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 77 
 In New York Poe had every kind 
 of success but that to which as an indus 
 trious writer he was most entitled, rea 
 sonable prosperity. A letter to Lowell 
 about the biographical sketch of Poe 
 which Lowell was to furnish to Graham s 
 Magazine shows that six of Poe s tales 
 were in the hands of publishers, unpaid 
 for. During this year Poe was ill, and 
 his wife s illness was no doubt aggravated 
 by their poverty. In the fall he found 
 employment on the Evening Mirror, 
 edited by K P. Willis. 
 
 Willis says that Poe did steadily and 
 patiently all kinds of editorial work from, 
 mechanical paragraphing to literary re 
 views. One of his reviews is that of 
 Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning). Mrs. 
 Browning testified to Poe s conscientious 
 workmanship by saying, "The reviewer 
 has so obviously and thoroughly read 
 my poems as to be a wonder among 
 critics. 77 
 
 At the beginning of 1845 Poe pub- 
 
78 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 lished "The Baven," which made a 
 sensation in America and later in Eng 
 land and France. "The Baven" and 
 "Annabel Lee" have been abundantly 
 parodied. In a way this is a test of their 
 distinction. "No one with serious or 
 mocking intention can try these rhythms 
 without reminding the whole English- 
 speaking race of Poe. Personally, I can 
 not read "The Baven" without more 
 than ever liking Calverley, and I enjoy 
 the spectacle of one English magazine 
 ascribing to Poe Mr. James Whitcomb 
 Biley s "Leonainie," about the time 
 that another English magazine asks super 
 ciliously, "Who is Biley?" But Poe s 
 rhythms and word arrangements have 
 stamped themselves forever upon the ear 
 of his race ; they have marked out for 
 him a little realm of wonder verse where 
 no other poet can enter without a chal 
 lenge from the original occupant. The 
 same persons will be haunted by "The 
 Baven" and all Poe s best poems who 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 79 
 
 respond to the divine insanities of Blake, 
 the sometimes hollow enchantments of 
 Mr. Swinburne, and who are fain to 
 worship the painted lady leaning out 
 from Bossetti s painted heaven. For the 
 rest, as Neal said, "Why waste words 
 upon them?" 
 
 Poe tempted his new popularity by 
 lecturing. His subject was poetry. He ^ 
 was developing those theories of criti 
 cism and verse structure which are valu 
 able because an artist s comment on his 
 craft is always valuable, and also because 
 Poe s ideas on verse are true and complete. 
 Many of his scientific and philosophi 
 cal ideas have been rendered obsolete, 
 like many of the dearest prose convic 
 tions of poets. But most essays on the 
 science of prosody have been put forth 
 by grammarians who could not make a 
 line of verse, by scholars in Greek and 
 Latin who could not read Horace out 
 loud and make him sound like a poet. 
 Poe once for all set down the aural facts 
 
80 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 of prosody, and phrased the truth that 
 poetry is simply, line for line, beautiful 
 sounds which convey interesting ideas. 
 When his dictum that a long poem is a 
 contradiction of terms is brought up 
 against the schemes of other philosophic 
 critics whereby the epic is the great 
 thing because of its religious scope, and 
 "Hamlet, 77 as a whole, is greater than its 
 parts, we find that as a matter of ex 
 perience we like epics for their lovely 
 passages. " Hamlet, 77 as a whole, is a 
 melodrama, but in pieces is a series of 
 fine poems, and has so been remem 
 bered and enjoyed by readers of poetry. 
 Whether Poe s ideas be true or not, they 
 are beautifully and convincingly phrased. 
 They were most necessary in an age 
 of tuneless bards, of metrical religiosity 
 which passed for having the spirit of 
 poetry because it praised God. 
 
 The Evening Mirror did not satisfy 
 Poe. Perhaps, as Briggs wrote to Low 
 ell, "Willis was too Willisy 77 for Poe, 
 
EDGAR ALLAK POE 81 
 
 though it is one of the ironies of life 
 that Willis was never more Willisy 
 than in his defence and eulogy of 
 Poe. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1845 
 Briggs and Briscoe had founded the 
 Broadway Journal, and Poe contributed 
 to it. In March he became a sort of co- 
 editor. Briggs liked Poe less and less 
 as time went on, and his letters to Low 
 ell swing from doubt of Griswold s 
 " shocking stories" to admiration of 
 Poe, then to dislike, then to violent 
 animosity. 
 
 Poe s good work at this time includes 
 "The Imp of the Perverse, 77 the nearest 
 of all Poe ? s work to something like a 
 discovery in human nature, wonder 
 ful for its clear expression of shadowy 
 things that every one else has dimly felt 
 and no one else been able to say. To 
 this year belongs also " The Facts in the 
 Case of M. Valdemar." This revolting 
 and fascinating tale has historical in- 
 
82 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 terest in that it became matter of solemn 
 discussion among men of scientific pre 
 tensions and excited the shivering, 
 whimsical admiration of Mrs. Brown 
 ing. Poe paid tribute to her by dedi 
 cating to her his "Raven" volume and 
 by putting her above all her contempo 
 raries except Tennyson. In return she 
 left in a brief letter one of the few utter 
 ances of great writers, during Poe s life, 
 which seem to modern taste to assess him 
 justly. 
 
 As for the scientific interest of "M. 
 Valdemar," let us recall that the whole 
 weight of science and philosophy and 
 scholarship has been gravely massed to 
 prove that Poe was no man of science, 
 no philosopher, no scholar. Yet he 
 made whatever in his time passed for 
 science look very silly by his baitings of 
 its credulity. He had no difficulty in 
 deceiving scholarship on its own grounds 
 until after forty years it found him 
 out. As for philosophy, he produced 
 
EDGAK ALLAN POE 83 
 " Eureka," of which I shall say more 
 presently. 
 
 In June Briggs prepared "to haul 
 down Poe s name 77 from the Broadway 
 Journal. He accuses Poe of having 
 been on a spree. Poe seems, however, 
 to have kept his head well enough: he 
 played the other partner, Briscoe, against 
 Briggs, kept his " third interest" until 
 autumn, and then became sole proprie 
 tor. Now, if ever, he could prove what 
 was in his dreams of independent jour 
 nalism, and how much dreams depend 
 on dollars. 
 
 During the year Wiley & Putnam 
 published a volume of selections from 
 Poe s tales. It is a curious fact that dur 
 ing Poe s life his books did not sell well. 
 The reason may be that his repeated 
 publication of his poems and stories in 
 the magazines satisfied the demand. It 
 is difficult now to know just what the 
 public did like him for. The reading 
 public does not directly record itself. 
 
84 EDGAE ALLAN" POE 
 Literary persons make the records, and 
 literary persons are likely to be mis 
 taken. Some writers think he was in 
 his life more celebrated as critic than as 
 poet or romancer. There was, true, a 
 spice even in his minor criticisms which 
 preserves the journals of his time ; his 
 attacks on Lowell as an abolitionist and 
 Longfellow as a plagiarist have been car 
 ried along in the tedious momentum of 
 sectional prejudice, and so given undue 
 prominence ; but the people must have 
 been buying his magazines for the stories 
 he wrote. 
 
 It is strange that with so many parlour 
 poets about him Poe should have se 
 lected Longfellow, whom he justly ad 
 mired, for abuse. The u Longfellow 
 War 7 seems now a petty conflict, and 
 the echoes of it no longer alarm. " The 
 Village Blacksmith and "The Con 
 queror Worm 77 subsist together in a 
 broad country. But, in those queer 
 provincial days, Poe and Longfellow 7 s 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 85 
 
 champions flew at each other as if lit 
 erature had learned its manners from 
 politics. Longfellow refused to be led 
 into the conflict, and was reserved and 
 magnanimous whenever the matter was 
 brought up. Poe was wrong in point of 
 fact and wrong in the spirit which led 
 him to assail the least presumptuous, most 
 catholic and tolerant of the New Eng- 
 landers. He should have contented him 
 self with his entertaining derisions of 
 Transcendentalism. 
 
 By taking in too many New Eng- 
 landers, even Hawthorne he later de 
 preciated, he showed himself provin 
 cial, and just at the time when he should 
 have justified creative literature and 
 criticism he did a foolish thing. 
 
 In October, 1845, he gave a reading 
 before the Boston Lyceum. He could 
 not, or did not, produce a new poem for 
 the occasion, but delivered the juvenile 
 "Al Aaraaf" and the already familiar 
 "Baven." The Boston press handled 
 
86 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 him severely, and Poe replied from New 
 York that he had intended a hoax. 
 There was no hoax, and he had intended 
 nothing except to read poetry. The 
 whole episode recalls Holmes 7 s fooling 
 in The Professor at the Breakfast Table : 
 " After a man begins to attack the State 
 House, when he gets bitter about the 
 Frog Pond, you may be sure there is not 
 much left in him. Poor Edgar Poe died 
 in the hospital soon after he got into this 
 way of talking ; and, so sure as you find 
 an unfortunate fellow reduced to this 
 pass, you had better begin praying for 
 him and stop lending him money, for 
 he is on his last legs. Eemember poor 
 Edgar ! He is dead and gone , but the 
 State House has its cupola fresh-gilded, 
 and the Frog Pond has got a fountain 
 that squirts up a hundred feet into the 
 air and glorifies that humble sheet with 
 a fine display of provincial rainbows. 77 
 
 Poe did not have sufficient capital or 
 enough business ability to conduct the 
 
EDGAE ALLAtf POE 87 
 
 Broadway Journal. He left the note for 
 fifty dollars, by which he bought out 
 Briscoe, to be paid for by the indorser, 
 no less likely a person than Horace 
 Greeley, whose humorous record of the 
 transaction seems to have caused um 
 brage among Poe s biographers. Poe 
 also borrowed from Griswold and tried 
 to borrow from his relatives. The Jour 
 nal was apparently in vigorous condition 
 both as to its literary content and its ad 
 vertising matter, but it died gracefully 
 the day after Christmas, 1845. 
 
 On the last day of the year appeared 
 Poe s fourth volume of verse, The Eaven 
 and Other Poems. This volume contains 
 the final revisions of the fugitive poems 
 which had flitted here and there among 
 the pages of the magazines, and to them 
 he added only three or four pieces in the 
 brief remaining years of his life. He 
 entered the company of the immortals, 
 as Dickens said of Gray, with a small 
 volume of verse under his arm. In 
 
88 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 the patience and skill of his revisions he 
 is like another modern poet, Tennyson, 
 whom he called the best of all poets, and 
 who said of one perfect line that it cost 
 him three days and a box of cigars. We 
 come, I think, to regard our poets less 
 as mysterious monks inspired by visions, 
 and more as human beings sitting at 
 tables making good or bad verse. As 
 we view them so, we have greater re 
 spect for their extraordinary powers. A 
 poet, specially endowed to take at dicta 
 tion the word of heaven, is not interest 
 ing because he is not responsible. Poe 
 producing amid the known difficulties 
 of his life on earth that volume of poems 
 is a remarkable human creature. 
 
 About this time he was a personage in 
 America and in Europe. By a strange 
 accident he was introduced to France 
 amid the dust of controversy. Nothing 
 in this man s life ran smooth except his 
 poetry and prose. A French journal 
 published one of his stories. Another 
 
EDGAE ALLAtf POE 89 
 
 French journal published the same story. 
 There was a legal process in which it 
 appears that both journals were indebted 
 to Mr. Poe, of America. This episode 
 (quite Yankee in its squabble and its 
 disregard of copyright) drew attention 
 to Poe. Some of his other tales were 
 translated, he became the life study of 
 Baudelaire and Mallarm6. Poe 7 s genius 
 received the additional polish of French 
 literary competence, and his fame flew 
 upon French wings. Edgdr Poe, or Poe, 
 belongs to unholy Paris quite as much as 
 to the holy city of New York. Paris 
 was the literary centre of the world. It 
 is not quite determinable whether the 
 interest of Englishmen in Poe is not due 
 rather to Paris than to New York. The 
 ties of blood and language have been 
 broken on their long course across the 
 seas ; but London has, in spite of insular 
 fears and memories, been vassal to Paris 
 in critical matters since the age of Dry- 
 den. Through France Edgdr Poe be- 
 
90 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 came the forerunner of pre-Baphaelites 
 and decadents and other minor singers, 
 and so he raises the question where New 
 World barbarism begins and Old World 
 sophistication leaves off. 
 
 In New York Poe was a lion in liter 
 ary circles, those feeble concourses of per 
 sons who could not write. In these meet 
 ings he comported himself with quiet 
 courtesy. He was a fine talker, and in 
 the drawing-room a gallant, sensible man. 
 He here began some of his many amours 
 with literary ladies. It was his luck and 
 nature to leave behind him a multitude 
 of suspicious clews and circumstances for 
 every sin which he had time and capac 
 ity to commit. It is not necessary now 
 to throw up virtuous hands at the tender 
 exchanges of perfervid rhetoric between 
 the female poets of America and this 
 real poet of the glowing eyes, the soft 
 voice, and the winning manners. Ap 
 parently, the only ladies who objected 
 to him at the time or after his death 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 91 
 were those upon whom he did not be 
 stow the flatteries of his social presence 
 and his critical approbation. His wife 
 was a child broken by the disease of 
 which she was soon to die. He naturally 
 found intellectual companionship with 
 other women 5 and his eyes, his oratory, 
 and a touch of alcohol no doubt melted 
 the cool restraints of literary commun 
 ion. The first lady poet to whom he 
 proved irresistible was Frances Sargent 
 Osgood, with whom he exchanged verses. 
 This relation roused the jealous virtues 
 of another poetess, a Mrs. Ellett, who 
 enlisted the Transcendental ethics of 
 Margaret Fuller. The choice pair went 
 to Poe s house to intercede in behalf 
 of Virginia. Later, when Virginia was 
 dying, Mrs. Ellett thoughtfully saw to 
 it that the girl should hear all the scan 
 dal that was fouling Poe s name. 
 
 Meanwhile he was making copy out 
 of his New York acquaintances, and 
 he served them up to the public in 
 
92 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 a series of articles called "The Lit 
 erati. 7 He spoke well of most of them, 
 and by any standards possible in writ 
 ing seriously about such a crew he 
 drew sharp plain lines between good and 
 bad work. His worst attack was on 
 Thomas -Dunn English. This man was 
 the author of "Ben Bolt" (to which 
 Du Maurier indiscreetly gave renewed 
 life in Trilby) : he later became a mem 
 ber of Congress. As late as 1895 Thomas 
 Dunn Brown, as Poe called him, had 
 not forgiven Poe or his more friendly 
 biographers. He and Poe exchanged 
 Billingsgate in print, and Poe sued him 
 for slander and recovered damages. 
 
 In the spring of 1846, while the " Lit 
 erati " papers were stirring up a variety 
 of hard and soft feelings, the Poes moved 
 to Fordham to the cottage now pre 
 served in the poet s memory. He was 
 ill, and wrote little. In November ap 
 peared the last of his best-known tales, 
 "The Cask of Amontillado." As his 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 93 
 
 work fell off in quantity, his poverty 
 grew worse. The condition of the family 
 was discovered by one of the literati, 
 Mrs. Gove. She sought help of Maria 
 Louise Shew, and the two friends caused 
 Poe s needs to be advertised. Willis 
 enlarged the theme, and a little money 
 was raised for the starving family. 
 
 On January 29, 1847, Poe wrote to 
 Mrs. Shew : 
 
 "Kindest, dearest Friend, My poor 
 Virginia still lives, although failing fast 
 and now suffering much pain. May God 
 grant her life until she sees you and 
 thanks you once again ! Her bosom is full 
 to overflowing like my own with 
 a boundless, inexpressible gratitude to 
 you. Lest she may never see you more, 
 she bids me say that she sends you her 
 sweetest kiss of love and will die bless 
 ing you. But coine oh, come to-mor 
 row ! Yes, I will be calm everything 
 you so nobly wish to see me. My mother 
 sends you, also, her warmest love and 
 thanks. She begs me to ask you, if 
 possible, to make arrangements at home 
 
94 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 so that you may stay with us to-morrow 
 night. 
 
 The next day Virginia died. The 
 story of their hardship is told once for 
 all in Mrs. Gove s account of Virginia s 
 bed of suffering. 
 
 " There was no clothing on the bed, 
 which was only straw, but the snow- 
 white counterpane and sheets. The 
 weather was cold, and the sick lady had 
 the dreadful chills that accompany the 
 hectic fever of consumption. She lay on 
 the straw bed, wrapped in her husband s 
 great- coat with a large tortoise-shell cat 
 in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed 
 conscious of her great usefulness. The 
 coat and the cat were the sufferer s only 
 means of warmth, except as her husband 
 held her hands and her mother her 
 feet." 
 
 The only surviving letter which Poe 
 wrote to his wife is touching and gen 
 uine : 
 
EDGAE ALLAN FOB 95 
 
 June 12, 1846. 
 
 " My dear Heart, my dear Virginia, 
 Our mother will explain to you why I 
 stay away from you this night. I trust 
 the interview I am promised will result 
 in some substantial good for me for your 
 dear sake and hers keep up your heart 
 in all hopefulness, and trust yet a little 
 longer. On my last great disappoint 
 ment I should have lost my courage but 
 for you, my darling little wife. You are 
 my greatest and only stimulus now to 
 battle with this uncongenial, unsatis 
 factory and ungrateful life. 
 
 "I shall be with you to-morrow . . . 
 P.M., and be assured that until I see you 
 I will keep in loving remembrance your 
 last words and your fervent prayer ! 
 
 " Sleep well, and may God grant you 
 a peaceful summer with your devoted 
 Edgar. 
 
 After Virginia s death he was broken 
 and irresponsible, and there were only 
 two sane persons in his acquaintance to 
 steady and support him, Mrs. Clemm 
 and Mrs. Shew. Mrs. Shew had a phy 
 sician s education, and she understood 
 
96 EDGAR ALLAN FOB 
 Poe s condition. She had a physician 
 examine him as he slept, and they knew 
 that the man had not many years to live. 
 In her house Poe wrote the first draft oi 
 The Bells. ? Unfortunately, he lost her 
 more intimate help by clinging to her 
 too closely, and she thought it wise to 
 keep him at a distance. But she re 
 mained his friend. 
 
 Mrs. Shew advised Poe to marry a 
 sensible woman, apparently with more 
 eye to his happiness than to that of the 
 woman. Poe in his broken, overwrought 
 condition made two pitiful attempts to 
 attach himself to women, but neither 
 woman was notable for good sense. 
 
 The first was Mrs. Whitman, the 
 poetess of Providence, Ehode Island. 
 The story is rather complex, and the 
 letters and printed recollections that re 
 late and cross-relate it even scandal has 
 failed to vitalise. The fantastic pair 
 were guilty of nothing but lyric ecsta 
 sies and sentimentalities. It is a pity 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 97 
 that this private business was ever opened 
 ito the eye of the world, which, in point 
 of fact, does not love lovers in their 
 (crudest expressions of themselves. Keal 
 love letters are usually poor literature. 
 ilf they are good literature, they are 
 poor love letters. Poe and Mrs. Whit 
 man did not make literature in their 
 prose correspondence. The poems they 
 interchanged and her defence of Poe 
 published ten years after his death are 
 tolerable. The rest might go into the 
 fire along with Keats s letters to Fanny 
 Brawne. 
 
 The story is, in brief, that Mrs. Whit 
 man published verses to Poe. He fell 
 in love with the idea of her, and played 
 upon their common poetical superstition 
 by sending her his verses "To Helen, " 
 which by momentous coincidence was 
 her name ! In the coincidence his pro 
 phetic soul saw, according to his own 
 queer statement, the workings of the 
 algebraic law of chance. In 1848 he 
 
98 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 met her, and pressed Ms suit. She re 
 fused him on account of her age and ill 
 health and his bad habits. He protested 
 that his habits had been misrepresented, 
 promised to reform, tried to kill himsel: 
 with laudanum, and finally persuadec 
 her to accept him. He went to hei 
 house showing signs of having broker 
 his pledge of abstinence, and she dis 
 missed him with a final confession thai 
 she loved him. 
 
 Entangled with the story of Mrs. Whit 
 man is that of his acquaintance with 
 Mrs. Annie Eichmond, of Lowell, tc 
 whom he wrote ardent letters. The 
 reality of his feeling of kinship with 
 " Annie " and his lack of a sense of fit 
 ness are shown by the fact that, when he 
 was engaged to marry Mrs. Elmira Eoy- 
 ster Shelton, he wrote his mother-in-la^ 
 that they must plan to be near " Annie, " 
 for he could not live without her. After 
 Poe s death Mrs. Clemm spent sometime 
 with " Annie. " Mrs. Clemm must have 
 
EDGAE ALLAtf FOB 99 
 
 been bewildered by Poe s shifting affec 
 tions, but she took several of the ladies 
 into her confidence, and they wrote af 
 fectionate letters to her after Poe died. 
 
 Mrs. Boyster, to whom after so many 
 tender poetical bonds he prosaically en 
 gaged himself, was the Elmira of his 
 boyhood, now a widow with a fortune. 
 She went into mourning after his death. 
 
 In the last two years of his life Poe 
 did not produce enough manuscript to 
 get a living out of the magazines, and 
 he was not well or promptly paid for 
 what he did send them. The story of 
 Mrs. Clemm going about among the edi 
 tors trying to collect money for work 
 already accepted shows what a preca 
 rious hold the great magazinist had upon 
 the institution for which he had done so 
 much and of which he had such high 
 hopes. 
 
 During 1847 he remained at Fordham, 
 and he is imaged to us as a melancholy, 
 lonely man walking out at night, brood- 
 
100 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 ing upon life and the stars. His mind 
 in its lucid intervals still worked finely, 
 and he dreamed a prose poem which 
 was to explain the riddle of the uni 
 verse and set him higher in its unhappy 
 daily destinies. This metaphysical essay, 
 "Eureka," was published in 1848. It 
 is the culmination of the half-scientific, 
 half- poetic meditations which show in 
 many of his fictions and criticisms. Poe 
 had always been an independent and 
 original thinker about God and man. 
 He was a combination of rationalist and 
 poetic pagan. Though he was not a 
 profound metaphysician, he saw things 
 from his own corner of mind in his own 
 way. In a sense he was uninstructed, 
 he had not read systematically in phi 
 losophy. But a good deal of the thought 
 of the world is turned over year by year 
 in the magazines and current books, and 
 Poe read magazines and books sent for 
 review as part of his professional work. 
 Learning has been brought to bear upon 
 
EDGAE ALLAtf POE 101 
 
 Poe s guess at the great riddles. Lit 
 erary persons have called in their scien 
 tific and philosophical friends to help 
 them find the flaws in a piece of work 
 which was made by a literary man more 
 independent and confident than they. 
 
 To know just where " Eureka" be 
 longs in thought, one needs to know not 
 what science is now, but where it was in 
 1848. Since Poe s scientific argument 
 has been severely measured by the stand 
 ards of science, as they had developed 
 up to about 1880, it may be worth not 
 ing that a recent scientific hypothesis, 
 that matter is negative electricity, 
 agrees well enough with Poe s theory 
 that substance is attraction and repul 
 sion. The essay in English which dis 
 cusses most competently the various sides 
 of Poe s mind is that by the Scotch 
 rationalist, Mr. John M. Eobertson, who 
 combines literary gifts with the peculiar 
 knowledge he has amassed as historian 
 of certain phases of philosophy. He is 
 
102 EDGAB ALLAN POE 
 not so ready as some of Poe s critics to 
 dismiss u Eureka" as a piece of think 
 ing. Poe s guess is as good as many 
 which have been seriously accepted as 
 philosophy. Solutions of the eternal 
 riddles are valid less for what they offer 
 in explanation than for their own per 
 fection of structure; and most writers in 
 English upon philosophical matters fall 
 far short of Poe in clarity and beauty of 
 exposition. The introduction is a poem 
 in itself: "To the few who love me and 
 whom I love, to those who feel rather 
 than to those who think, to the dreamers 
 and those who put faith in dreams as 
 the only realities, I offer this book of 
 truths, not in its character of truth- 
 teller, but for the beauty that abounds 
 in its truth, constituting it true. To 
 these I present the composition as an 
 art-product alone let us say as a ro 
 mance ; or, if I be not urging too lofty 
 a claim, as a poem. 
 
 "What I here propound is true: 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 103 
 
 therefore, it cannot die 5 or, if by any 
 means it be now trodden down so that it 
 die, it will rise again to the Life Ever 
 lasting. Nevertheless, it is as a poem 
 only that I wish this work to be judged 
 after I am dead." 
 
 Obviously, an easy request to grant. 
 It is pathetic, though, to learn what con 
 fidence Poe had in his theory of cos 
 mogony. He believed that it would rev 
 olutionise thought and give him new 
 prosperity, and that Putnam should pub 
 lish fifty thousand copies. Putnam con 
 tented himself with five hundred copies, 
 and the world refused to be revolution 
 ised or even to give Poe prosperity. 
 
 During the last years of his life Poe 
 lectured in several cities on poetry and 
 on the universe, and with the proceeds 
 of the lectures and what money he could 
 borrow from his friends, whose help he 
 now vigorously solicited, he again hoped 
 to give shape to his nebulous magazine. 
 Before his death he found a promising 
 
104 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 partner in a Mr. Patterson, of Oquawka, 
 Illinois. They arranged to publish the 
 first number in July, 1850. The great 
 magazine seemed ready to emerge at last 
 from shadow when the darker shadow 
 intervened. 
 
 Poe was a poet to the end. In "Ula- 
 lume" of 1847 he shows his peculiar 
 characteristics in their extremest form. 
 It is hard to feel sure from one day s 
 reading of it to another whether he has 
 here crossed the line into nonsense or 
 whether he has come to ultimate per 
 fection. To the final year belong the 
 third version of "The Bells, " "Annabel 
 Lee," and "For Annie." 
 
 In this memorable poem "For Annie," 
 Poe seems to speak out of the real ter 
 rors of his life. 
 
 " And the fever called Living 
 Is conquered at last." 
 
 Haply, it was conquered by the death 
 that came soon after, m-luck pursued 
 
EDGAE ALLAN POE 105 
 
 him to the end. The financial panic sent 
 into insolvency some of the magazines 
 which owed him money or had accepted 
 manuscripts or promised to accept them. 
 The only bright spot was his success in 
 Eichmond, where society seems to have 
 done him honour and put money in his 
 purse. He paid two visits to Eichmond. 
 For the second he left New York in 
 June, 1849. Before he went, he seems to 
 have known that his life hung by slender 
 strands, for he directed Mrs. Lewis 
 (" Stella, 7 another of his lady poets) to 
 write his life, and he wrote to Griswold, 
 asking him to undertake the editing of 
 his works. Gris wold s reply came while 
 he was in Eichmond, and the pleasure it 
 gave Poe, as witnessed by one of his 
 friends, indicates that the man who 
 wrote it should not have written after 
 Poe s death that he was not Poe s friend. 
 On his way to Eichmond through 
 Philadelphia, Poe was enforced guest in 
 the house of John Sartain, the publisher 
 
106 EDGAE ALLAN POE 
 
 of the magazine in which "The Bells 7 
 appeared. Poe was ill and crazed, pos 
 sessed with the hallucination that his 
 enemies were pursuing him. His jour 
 ney to Eichmond was delayed many 
 days, during which Mrs. Clemm, in 
 New York, was frantic with anxiety. 
 Poe explained to the Oquawka partner 
 that he had had cholera. Cholera was 
 not the name of the disease. 
 
 From Eichmond he wrote hopefully 
 to Mrs. Clemm ; he engaged himself to 
 marry Mrs. Shelton ; and he left with 
 many Eichmond people the memory of 
 a sad, sober man. Among these was 
 Mrs. Susan Archer Weiss, who later 
 wrote a pleasant account of him. The 
 other side of his life in Eichmond is 
 given by J. E. Thompson, the editor of 
 the Messenger, in whom Poe found a 
 good friend. Thompson says that in the 
 earlier visit of Poe to Eichmond, in 1848, 
 he had been found befuddled and ragged 
 in the lowest haunts of the city, and that 
 
EDGAB ALLAN POE 107 
 "his entire residence in Bichmond of 
 late was but a succession of disgraceful 
 follies. " Yet Poe left Bichmond this 
 second time, full of hope, with money 
 he had received from Thompson in ad 
 vance for an article, and perhaps with 
 money from his lectures and from friends 
 who were helping him with his magazine 
 project. 
 
 He took steamer from Bichmond the 
 last of September. The possibility that 
 he had money may account for the dis 
 aster in Baltimore. On October 3 he was 
 found in one of the ward polls by a 
 printer, who wrote to Dr. J. E. Snod- 
 grass that Poe was " the worse for wear " 
 and "in need of immediate assistance. ? 
 He may have been robbed all trace of 
 his baggage had been lost or he may 
 have come to the end of his strength or 
 suffered from exposure after drinking. 
 It may be that he was victim of the po 
 litical habit of the time to "coop" 
 strangers on the eve of election, drug 
 
108 EDGAE ALLAK POE 
 
 them, and then send them obediently 
 dazed to the polls to vote. If he was 
 thus treated, his captors had tampered 
 with a delicate subject, a body at the 
 end of its slender power to resist drugs. 
 He was taken to the Washington Hospital 
 in Baltimore, and died there early Sun 
 day morning, the 7th of October, 1849. 
 
 One hears again the voice of Carlyle 
 as he looked at De Quincey, that other 
 drug-shadowed waif of the magazines : 
 "Eccovi, this child has been in hell 1 " 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 Biographies, criticisms, and other 
 printed sources of information and mis 
 information about Poe form a consider 
 able library. The following list in 
 cludes some important books to which 
 the reader may care to turn for detailed 
 accounts of Poe s life or for illuminating 
 literary criticism : 
 
 I. MEMOIR. By Eufus Wilmot Gris- 
 wold (New York, 1858: Eedfield). 
 Originally prefixed to the third volume 
 of the first collected edition of Poe s 
 works (1850). Since suppressed, but to 
 be found in public libraries. Under cor 
 rection of other works it affords evi 
 dence which cannot be disregarded. 
 
 II. PASSAGES FROM THE CORRESPOND 
 ENCE AND OTHER PAPERS OF EUFUS 
 W. GRISWOLD (Cambridge, Mass., 1898 : 
 William M. Griswold). Contains many 
 complete letters and documents relating 
 
110 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 to Poe. The editor s comments are the 
 son s justification of the father. The 
 manuscripts of many Griswold papers 
 are in the possession of the Boston Pub 
 lic Library. 
 
 HI. MEMOIR. By E. L. Didier. Pre 
 fixed to an edition of Poe s poems (New 
 York, 1877 : Widdleton). 
 
 IY. LIFE. By William F. Gill (New 
 York, 1877 : Dillingham). The first ex 
 tended account of Poe in counterblast of 
 Griswold. 
 
 V. MEMOIR. By E. H. Stoddard. Pre 
 fixed to Select Works of Poe (New York, 
 1880 : Widdleton). Now to be found in 
 the edition of 1884 published by A. C. 
 Armstrong & Son. This memoir is an 
 nounced by the author, who knew Poe 
 and his times, as the first dispassionate 
 account. 
 
 VI. LIFE, LETTERS AND OPINIONS OF 
 
 ALLAN POE. By John H. In- 
 
BIBLIOGEAPHY 111 
 
 gram (London, 1880 : J. Hogg). A care 
 ful rehabilitation of Poe s character, 
 based on painstaking stndy of original 
 sources. Pleasantly biassed in Poe s 
 favour, and illustrative of British solici 
 tude for Poe s good name and works. 
 
 VII. EDGAR ALLAN POE. By George 
 E. Woodberry. American Men of Letters 
 Series (Boston, 1884: Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co.). The best compact life of 
 Poe in point of good sense, readability, 
 and critical competence. 
 
 VIII. LIFE AND LETTERS OF POE. By 
 James A. Harrison, of the University of 
 Virginia (New York, 1904 : Crowell & 
 Co.). The most complete available col 
 lection of documents and reprints of 
 important opinions and reminiscence. 
 Pleasantly biassed in Poe s favour, and 
 illustrative of Virginian solicitude for 
 Poe s good name and works. 
 
 IX. EDGAR POE: SA VIE ET SON 
 (EuvRE. By I^mile Louvriere (Paris, 
 
112 BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 1904 : Alcan). An interesting example 
 
 of French psycho-pathological criticism. 
 
 X. For critical essays of value see 
 jficrivains Francises, by fimile Henne- 
 quin 5 Essays toward a Critical Method, 
 by John M. Bobertson ; an Introduction 
 to the poetical works of Poe, by James 
 Hannay ; Poe Ideologue, by Camille 
 Mauclair; Les Nevroses, by Mme. 
 Charles Yincens (Arvede Barine) ; essay 
 by Andrew Lang introductory to edi 
 tion of Poe s Poems published by Kegan 
 Paul, Trench & Co. in 1883. 
 
THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE, Editor. 
 
 The aim of this series is to furnish brief, read 
 able, and authentic accounts of the lives of those 
 Americans whose personalities have impressed 
 themselves most deeply on the character and 
 history of their country. On account of the 
 length of the more formal lives, often running 
 into large volumes, the average busy man and 
 woman have not the time or hardly the inclina 
 tion to acquaint themselves with American bi 
 ography. In the present series everything that 
 such a reader would ordinarily care to know is 
 given by writers of special competence, who 
 possess in full measure the best contemporary 
 point of view. Each volume is equipped with 
 a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important 
 dates, and a brief bibliography for further read 
 ing. Finally, the volumes are printed in a form 
 convenient for reading and for carrying handily 
 in the pocket. 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY, Publisheri. 
 
THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 The following volumes are issued: 
 
 Louis Agassiz, by ALICE BACHE GOULD. 
 
 John James Audubon, by JOHN BURROUGHS. 
 
 Edwin Booth, by CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND. 
 
 Phillips Brooks, by M. A. DE\VOLFE HOWE. 
 
 John Brown, by JOSEPH EDGAR CHAMBERLIN. 
 
 Aaron Burr, by HENRY CHILDS MERWIN. 
 
 James Fenimore Cooper, by W. B. SHUBRICK CLYMER. 
 
 Stephen Decatur, by CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY. 
 
 Frederick Douglass, by CHARLES W. CHESNUTT. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, by FRANK B. SANBORN. 
 
 David G. Farragut, by JAMES BARNES. 
 
 John Fiske, by THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY. 
 
 Ulysses S. Grant, by OWEN WISTER. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, by JAMES SCHOULER. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Mrs. JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 Father Hecker, by HENRY D. SEDGWICK, Jr. 
 
 Sam Houston, by SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT. 
 
 " Stonewall " Jackson, by CARL HOVEY. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, by THOMAS E. WATSON. 
 
 Robert E. Lee, by WILLIAM P. TRENT. 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow, by GEORGE RICE CARPENTER. 
 
 James Russell Lowell, by EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr. 
 
 Samuel F. B. Morse, by JOHN TROWBRIDGE. 
 
 Thomas Paine, by ELLERY SEDGWICK. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe, by JOHN ALBERT MACY. 
 
 Daniel Webster, by NORMAN HAPGOOD. 
 
 Walt Whitman, by ISAAC HULL PLATT. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier, by RICHARD BURTON. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON 1 
 STAMPED BE 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE < 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FA 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE C 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENT 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON T 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 APR 5 1934 
 
 
 
 
 APR 6 1934 
 
 HPT 4 : r - f 
 
 
 _ _ __ 
 
 
 JM-A-O 1 c\ 4A4s> 
 
 
 WAI! iy 1940 
 
 
 
 
 DEC Q 1ai:r 
 
 
 u IW2 
 
 
 SEP 14 ,^43 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 &M A.V/ >f% 4 D 4 LT 
 
 
 MAY 9 1945 
 
 
tfacy, Joh: 
 
 i Albert 
 
 MJL77 
 
 Edgar Ai: 
 
 Lan Poe 
 
 
 
 
 ^^r*** 
 
 }ftp,1443 
 
 Mercer 
 
 
 
 SEP 21 
 
 464613 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY