LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Gl FT OF 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
EDGAR POE 
 
 AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 BY SARAH HELEN WHITMAN. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 RUDD & CARLETON, 130 GRAND STREET, 
 
 (BROOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY.) 
 
 M DCCC LX. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ( UNIVERSITY 
 
 ^ 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
 
 EUDD & CARLETON, 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 E. CBAIGHEAD, 
 
 Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, 
 
 CaiUm SuifiJing, 
 
 81, 83, ami 85 Centre Street, 
 
"Wild words wander here and there; 
 God s great gift of speech abused 
 Makes thy memory confused." 
 
 " We cannot see thy features right ; 
 They mix with hollow masks of night." 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 " With these keys we may partially unlock the mys 
 tery." POE S Marginalia. 
 
 172401 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 DR. GRISWOLD S Memoir of Edgar Poe has been exten 
 sively read and circulated ; its perverted facts and baseless 
 assumptions have been adopted into every subsequent 
 memoir and notice of the poet, and have been translated 
 into many languages. For ten years this great wrong to 
 the dead has passed unchallenged and unrebuked. 
 
 It has been assumed by a recent English critic, that 
 " Edgar Poe had no friends." As an index to a more 
 equitable and intelligible theory of the idiosyncrasies of 
 his life, and as an earnest protest against the spirit of Dr. 
 Griswold s unjust memoir, these pages are submitted to his 
 more candid readers and critics by 
 
 ONE OF HIS FRIENDS. 
 
EDGAR POE AND HIS CRITICS, 
 
 THE author of the " Original Memoir " prefixed to the 
 volume of Poe s Illustrated Poems, recently published by 
 Redfield, says, " Of all the poets, whose lives have been 
 a puzzle and a mystery to the world, there is not one 
 more difficult to be understood than Edgar Allan Poe." 
 The Rev. George Gilfillan, in his very imaginative por 
 traiture of the poet, admits that the moral anatomists 
 who have met and wondered over his life, have given 
 up all attempts at dissection and diagnosis, turning 
 away with the solemnly whispered warning to the 
 world, and especially to its more brilliant and gifted 
 intellects, " Beware ! " 
 
H Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 He confesses that a history so strange as that of 
 Edgar Poe should prompt us to new and more search 
 ing methods of critical as well as moral analysis. But 
 before such analysis can be institutecTwe must have 
 fuller, more dispassionate, and more authentic records 
 of the phenomena to be analysed. The well written, 
 but very brief memoir prefixed to the Illustrated Poems, 
 and the various sketches that have, from time to time, 
 appeared in the French and English periodicals, are all 
 based on the narrative of Dr. Griswold, a narrative 
 notoriously deficient in the great essentials of candor 
 and authenticity. " It is a rare accomplishment," says 
 one of our most original writers, " to hear a story as it 
 is told ; still rarer to remember it as heard, and rarest 
 of all to tell it as it is remembered." 
 
 If Dr. Griswold s Memoir of Edgar Poe betrays the 
 want of any, or all, of these accomplishments if its 
 remorseless violations of the trust confided to him are 
 such as to make the unhallowed act of Trelawney 
 towards the enshrouded form of the dead Byron seem 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 15 
 
 guiltless in comparison, we must nevertheless endeavour 
 to remember that the memorialist, himself, now claims 
 from us that tender grace of charity that he was 
 unwilling, or unable, to accord to the man who trusted 
 him as a friend. 
 
 It is not our purpose at present specially to review 
 Dr. Griswold s numerous misrepresentations, and mis- 
 statements. Some of the more injurious of these 
 anecdotes were disproved, during the life of Dr. 
 Griswold, in the New York Tribune, and other leading 
 journals, without eliciting from him any public state 
 ment in explanation or apology. Quite recently we 
 have had, through the columns of the Home Journal, 
 the refutation of another calumnious story, which for 
 ten years has been going the rounds of the English 
 and American periodicals. 
 
 We have authority for stating that many of the 
 disgraceful anecdotes, so industriously collected by Dr. 
 Griswold, are utterly fabulous, while others are perver 
 sions of the truth, more injurious in their effects than 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
16 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 unmitigated fiction. But, as we have said, it is not 
 our purpose at present to revert to these. We propose 
 simply to point out some unfounded critical estimates 
 which have obtained currency among readers who have 
 but a partial acquaintance with Mr. Poe s more ima 
 ginative writings, and to record our own impressions of 
 the character and genius of the poet, as derived from 
 personal observation, and from the testimony of those 
 who knew him. Although he had been connected 
 with some of the leading magazines of the day, and 
 had edited for a time with great ability several success 
 ful periodicals, Mr. Poe s literary reputation at the 
 North had been comparatively limited until his removal 
 to New York, in the autumn of 1847, when he became 
 personally known to a large circle of authors and 
 literary people, whose interest in his writings was 
 manifestly enhanced by the perplexing anomalies of his 
 character, and by the singular magnetism of his pre 
 sence. One who knew him at this period of his life 
 says, "Everything about him distinguished him as a 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 17 
 
 man of mark ; his countenance, person, and gait, were 
 alike characteristic. His features were regular, and 
 decidedly handsome. His complexion was clear and 
 dark ; the colour of his fine eyes seemingly a dark grey, 
 but on closer inspection they were seen to be of that 
 neutral, violet tint which is so difficult to define. His 
 forehead was, without exception, the finest, in propor 
 tion and expression, that we have ever seen. The 
 perceptive organs were not deficient, but seemed pressed 
 out of the way by causality, comparison, and construc- 
 tiveness. Close to these rose the proud arches of 
 ideality. The coronal region was very imperfect, 
 wanting in reverence and conscientiousness, and pre 
 senting a key to many of his literary characteristics. 
 The ideas of right and wrong are as feeble in his chains 
 of thought as in the literature of ancient Greece." We 
 quote this description for its general fidelity. Its esti 
 mate of literary characteristics conveyed in the closing 
 sentence we shall revert to in another place. 
 
 The engraved portraits of Mr. Poe have very little 
 2* 
 
i8 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 individuality; that prefixed to the volumes edited by 
 Dr. Griswold suggests, at first view, something of the 
 general contour of his face, but is utterly void of 
 character and expression ; it has no sub-surface. The 
 original painting, now in possession of the New York 
 Historical Society, has the same cold, automatic look 
 that makes the engraving so valueless as a portrait to 
 those who remember the unmatched glory of his face 
 when roused from its habitually introverted and ab 
 stracted look by some favorite theme, or profound 
 emotion. Perhaps, from its peculiarly changeful and 
 translucent character, any adequate transmission of its 
 variable and subtle moods was impossible. By writers 
 personally unacquainted with Mr. Poe this engraving 
 has often been favourably noticed. Mr. Hannay, in a 
 Memoir prefixed to the first London edition of Poe s 
 Poems, calls it an interesting and characteristic portrait, 
 "a fine, thoughtful face with lineaments of delicacy, 
 such as belong only to genius or high blood the 
 forehead grand and pale, the eye dark and gleaming 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 19 
 
 with sensibility and soul a face to inspire men with 
 interest and curiosity." 
 
 There is a quiet drawing-room in street, 
 
 New York a sort of fragrant and delicious " clover- 
 nook" in the heart of the noisy city where hung, 
 some three years ago, the original painting from which 
 this engraving is a copy. Happening to meet there at 
 the time a company of authors and poets, among 
 whom were Mary Forest, Alice and Phoebe Gary, the 
 Stoddards, T. B. Aldrich, and others, we heard one 
 of the party say, in speaking of the portrait, that its 
 aspect was that of a beautiful and desolate shrine 
 from which the Genius had departed, and that it 
 recalled certain lines to one of the antique marbles : 
 
 "Oh melancholy eyes! 
 
 Oh empty eyes, from which the soul has gone 
 To see the far-off countries ! " 
 
 Near this luminous but impassive face, with its sad 
 and soulless eyes, was a portrait of Poe s unrelenting 
 
2o Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 biographist. In a recess opposite hung a picture of 
 
 the fascinating Mrs. , whose genius both had so 
 
 fervently admired, and for whose coveted praise and 
 friendship both had been competitors. Looking at the 
 beautiful portrait of this lady the face so full of 
 enthusiasm, and dreamy, tropical sunshine remember 
 ing the eloquent words of her praise, as expressed in 
 the prodigal and passionate exaggerations of her verse, 
 one ceases to wonder at the rivalries and enmities 
 enkindled within the hearts of those who admired her 
 genius and her grace rivalries and enmities which the 
 grave itself could not cancel or appease. 
 
 Of the portrait prefixed to the illustrated poems, 
 recently published by Redfield, Mr. Willis says, " The 
 reader who has the volume in his hand turns back 
 musingly to look upon the features of the poet, in 
 whom resided such inspiration. But, though well 
 engraved and useful as recalling his features to those 
 who knew them, with the angel shining through, the 
 picture is from a daguerreotype, and gives no idea of 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 21 
 
 the beauty of Edgar Poe. The exquisitely chiselled 
 features, the habitual but intellectual melancholy, the 
 clear pallor of the complexion, and the calm eye like 
 the molten stillness of a slumbering volcano, composed 
 a countenance of which this portrait is but the skeleton. 
 After reading the Raven, Ulalume, Lenore, and Annabel 
 Lee, the luxuriast in poetry will better conceive what 
 his face might have been." 
 
 It was soon after his removal to New York that Mr. 
 Poe became acquainted with the editors of the Mirror, 
 and was employed by them as a writer for that Journal. 
 Mr. Willis, in a recent notice of the illustrated poems, 
 has paid an eloquent tribute to his memory, expressed 
 in a spirit of rare kindliness and generosity. 
 
 From March 1845, to January 1846, he was asso 
 ciated with Mr. C. F. Briggs in editing the Broadway 
 Journal. In the autumn of 1845 he was often seen at 
 the brilliant literary circles in Waverley Place, where 
 weekly reunions of noted artists and men of letters, at 
 the house of an accomplished poetess, attracted some 
 
22 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 of the best intellectual society of the city. At the 
 request of his hostess, Mr. Poe one evening electrified 
 the gay company, assembled there, by the recitation of 
 the wierd poem to whose sad, strange burden so many 
 hearts have since echoed. This was a few weeks pre 
 vious to the publication of the Kaven in the American 
 Review. Mrs. Browning, in a private letter, written a 
 few weeks after its publication in England, says, " This 
 vivid writing this power which is felt has produced 
 a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are 
 taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I 
 hear of persons who are haunted by the Nevermore, 
 and an acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of 
 possessing a bust of Pallas, cannot bear to look at it in 
 the twilight. Then there is a tale going the rounds of 
 the newspapers, about mesmerism, which is throwing 
 us all into most admired disorder dreadful doubts as 
 to whether it can be true, as the children say of ghost 
 stories. The certain thing about it is the power of the 
 writer." 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 23 
 
 A woman of fine genius, who at this time made his 
 acquaintance, says, in some recently published com 
 ments on his writings : " It was in the brilliant circles 
 that assembled in the winter of 1845-6 at the houses 
 of Dr. Dewey, Miss Anna C. Lynch, Mr. Lawson, and 
 others, that we first met Edgar Poe. His manners 
 were at these re-unions refined and pleasing, and his 
 style and scope of conversation that of a gentleman and 
 a scholar. Whatever may have been his previous 
 career, there was nothing in his appearance or manner 
 to indicate his excesses. He delighted in the society 
 of superior women, and had an exquisite perception of 
 all graces of manner, and shades of expression. He 
 was an admiring listener, and an unobtrusive observer. 
 "We all recollect the interest felt at the time in every 
 thing emanating from his pen the relief it was from 
 the dulness of ordinary writers the certainty of some 
 thing fresh and suggestive. His critiques were read 
 with avidity ; not that he convinced the judgment, but 
 that people felt their ability and their courage. Right 
 
24 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 or wrong lie was terribly in earnest." Like De Quincey, 
 he never supposed anything, he always knew. 
 
 The peculiar character of his intellect seemed with 
 out a prototype in literature. He had more than 
 De Quincey s power of analysis, with a constructive 
 unity and completeness of which the great English 
 essayist has given no indication. His pre-eminence 
 in constructive and analytical skill was beginning to 
 be universally admitted, and the fame and prestige of 
 his genius were rapidly increasing. But the dangerous 
 censorship he soon after assumed, as the author of a 
 series of sketches, some of which have been since 
 published as the "Literati," exposed him to frequent 
 indignant criticism, while, by his personal errors and 
 indiscretions, he drew upon himself much social censure 
 and espionage, and became the victim of dishonoring 
 accusations from which honor itself had forbidden him 
 to exculpate himself. 
 
 It has been said, in allusion to the severity of his 
 literary strictures, that a most fitting escutcheon for 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 25 
 
 Mr. Poe might have been found in the crest of Walter 
 Scott s puissant Templar, Bois Guilbert, a raven in 
 full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the 
 motto, " Gfare le Corbeau" 
 
 Mr. Longfellow has very generously said, in a letter 
 to the editor of the Literary Messenger : " The harsh 
 ness of his criticism I have always attributed to the 
 irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some inde 
 finite sense of wrong." 
 
 A recent and not too lenient critic tells us that " it 
 was his sensitiveness to artistic imperfections, rather 
 than any malignity of feeling, that made his criticisms 
 so severe, and procured him a host of enemies among 
 persons towards whom he entertained no personal ill- 
 will." 
 
 In evidence of the habitual courtesy and good 
 nature noticeable to all who best knew him in domestic 
 and social life, we remember an incident that occurred 
 at one of the soirees to which we have alluded. A 
 
 lady, noted for her great lingual attainments, wishing 
 3 
 
26 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 to apply a wholesome check to the vanity of a young 
 author, proposed inviting him to translate for the com 
 pany a difficult passage in Greek, of which language 
 she knew him to be profoundly ignorant, although * 
 given to a rather pretentious display of Greek quota 
 tions in his published writings. Poe s earnest ajul 
 persistent remonstrance against this piece of mechancete 
 alone averted the embarrassing test. 
 
 Sometimes his fair young wife was seen with him at 
 these weekly assemblages in Waverley Place. She sel 
 dom took part in the conversation, but the memory of 
 her sweet and girlish face, always animated and viva 
 cious, repels the assertion, afterwards so cruelly and 
 recklessly made, that she died a victim to the neglect 
 and unkindness of her husband, " who," as it has been 
 said, "deliberately sought her death that he might 
 embalm her memory in immortal dirges. 1 An article 
 in Eraser s Magazine, published some two years ago, 
 repeats the assertion that Poe was the murderer of his 
 wife, " causing her to die of starvation and a broken 
 
OF 
 
 i UNIVERSITY 
 
 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 27 
 
 heart." GiJfillan, ascribing to him "passions controlled 
 by the presence of art until they resembled sculptured 
 flame," tells us that he caused the death of his wife 
 that he might have a fitting theme for the Raven. A 
 serious objection to this ingenious theory may perhaps 
 be found in the "refractory fact" that the poem was 
 published more than a year before the event which 
 these persons assume it was intended to commemorate. 
 
 We might cite the testimony alike of friends and 
 enemies to Foe s unvarying kindness towards his young 
 wife and cousin, if other testimony were needed than 
 that of the tender love still cherished for his memory 
 by one whose life was made doubly desolate by his 
 death the sister of his father, and the mother of his 
 Virginia. 
 
 It is well known to those acquainted with the parties 
 that the young wife of Edgar Poe died of lingering 
 consumption, which manifested itself even in her girl 
 hood. All who have had opportunities for observation 
 in the matter have noticed her husband s tender devotion 
 
28 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 to her during her prolonged illnesses. Even Dr. Gris- 
 wold speaks of having visited him during a period of 
 illness caused by protracted anxiety and watching by 
 the side of his sick wife. It is true that notwithstanding 
 her vivacity and cheerfulness at the time we have 
 alluded to, her health was, even then, rapidly sinking ; 
 and it was for her dear sake and for the recovery of 
 that peace which had been so fatally perilled amid the 
 irritations and anxieties of his New York life, that Poe 
 left the city and removed to the little Dutch cottage in 
 Fordham, where he passed the three remaining years of 
 his life. It was to this quiet haven in the beautiful 
 spring of 1846, when the fruit trees were all in bloom 
 and the grass in its freshest verdure, that he brought 
 his Virginia to die. Here he watched her failing 
 breath in loneliness and privation through many solitary 
 moons, until, on a desolate, dreary day of the ensuing 
 winter, he saw her remains borne from beneath its lowly 
 roof to a neighbouring cemetery. It was towards the 
 close of the year following her death his "most 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 29 
 
 immemorial year " that he wrote the strange threnody 
 of " Ulalume." This poem, perhaps the most original 
 and wierdly suggestive of all his poems, resembles at 
 first sight some of Turner s landscapes, being apparently 
 " without form and void, and having darkness on the 
 face of it." It is, nevertheless, in its basis, although not 
 in the precise correspondence of time, simply historical. 
 Such was the poet s lonely midnight walk such, amid 
 the desolate memories and sceneries of the hour, was 
 the new-born hope enkindled within his heart at sight 
 of the morning star 
 
 " Astarte s bediamonded crescent " 
 
 coming up as the beautiful harbinger of love and 
 happiness yet awaiting him in the untried future, and 
 such the sudden transition of feeling, the boding dread, 
 that supervened on discovering that which had at first 
 been unnoted, that it shone, as if in mockery or in 
 warning, directly over the sepulchre of the lost "Ula 
 lume." A writer in the London Critic, after quoting 
 3* 
 
30 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 the opening stanzas of Ulalume, says, " These to many 
 will appear only words, but what wondrous words ! 
 What a spell they wield ! What a withered unity there 
 is in them! The instant they are uttered a misty 
 picture with a tarn, dark as a murderer s eye, below, 
 and the thin yellow leaves of October fluttering above, 
 exponents of a misery which scorns the name of sorrow, 
 is hung up in the chambers of your soul for ever." 
 
 An English writer, now living in Paris, the author 
 of some valuable contributions to our American period 
 icals, passed several weeks at the little cottage in Ford- 
 ham, in the early autumn of 1847, and described to us, 
 with a truly English appreciativeness, its unrivalled 
 neatness and the quaint simplicity of its interior and 
 surroundings. It was at the time bordered by a flower- 
 garden, whose clumps of rare dahlias and brilliant beds 
 of fall flowers showed, in the careful culture bestowed 
 upon them, the fine floral taste of the inmates. 
 
 An American writer, who visited the cottage during 
 the summer of the same year, described it as half 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 31 
 
 buried in fruit trees, and as Laving a thick grove of 
 
 pines in its immediate neighbourhood. The proximity 
 
 of the railroad, and the increasing population of the 
 
 little village, have since wrought great changes in the 
 
 place. Round an old cherry-tree, near the door, was a 
 
 broad bank of greenest turf. The neighbouring beds of 
 
 mignonette and heliotrope, and the pleasant shade above, 
 
 made this a favourite seat. Rising at four o clock in 
 
 the morning, for a walk to the magnificent Aqueduct 
 
 bridge over Harlem river, our informant found the poet, 
 
 with his mother, standing on the turf beneath the 
 
 cherry-tree, eagerly watching the movements of two 
 
 beautiful birds that seemed contemplating a settlement 
 
 in its branches. He had some rare tropical birds in 
 
 cao-es, which he cherished and petted with assiduous 
 
 care. Our English friend described him as giving to 
 
 his birds and his flowers a delighted attention that 
 
 seemed quite inconsistent with the gloomy and grotesque 
 
 character of his writings. A favourite cat, too, enjoyed 
 
 his friendly patronage, and often when he was engaged 
 
32 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 in composition it seated itself on his shoulder, purring 
 as in complacent approval of the work proceeding under 
 its supervision. 
 
 During Mr. Poe s residence at Fordham a walk to 
 High Bridge was one of his favourite and habitual 
 recreations. The water of the Aqueduct is conveyed 
 across the river on a range of lofty granite arches, 
 which rise to the height of a hundred and forty-five 
 feet above high-water level. On the top a turfed and 
 grassy road, used only by foot-passengers, and flanked 
 on either side by a low parapet of granite, makes one 
 of the finest promenades imaginable. 
 
 The winding river and the high rocky shores at 
 the western extremity of the bridge are seen to great 
 advantage from this lofty avenue. In the last melan 
 choly years of his life " the lonesome latter years" 
 Poe was accustomed to walk there at all times of the 
 day and night; often pacing the then solitary path 
 way for hours without meeting a human being. A lit 
 tle to the east of the cottage rises a ledge of rocky 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 33 
 
 ground, partly covered with pines and cedars, command 
 ing a fine view of the surrounding country and of the 
 picturesque college of St. John s, which had at that time 
 in its neighbourhood an avenue of venerable old trees. 
 This rocky ledge was also one of the poet s favourite 
 resorts. Here through long summer days and through 
 solitary, star-lit nights he loved to sit, dreaming his gor 
 geous waking dreams, or pondering the deep problems 
 of "The Universe," that grand "prose-poem" to which 
 he devoted the last and maturest energies of his won 
 derful intellect. The abstracted enthusiasm with which 
 he pursued his great quest into the cosmogony of the 
 universe is an earnest of the passionate intellectual sin 
 cerity which we shall presently take occasion to illus 
 trate. 
 
 Wanting in that supreme central force or faculty of 
 the mind, whose function is a God-conscious and God- 
 adoring faith, Edgar Poe sought earnestly and conscien 
 tiously for such solution of the great problems of 
 thought as were alone attainable to an intellect hurled 
 
34 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 from its balance by the abnormal preponderance of the 
 analytical and imaginative faculties. It was to this 
 very disproportion that we are indebted for some of 
 those marvellous intellectual creations, which, as we 
 shall hope to prove, had an important significance and 
 an especial adaptation to the time. 
 
 A very intolerant article on Mr. Poe has recently 
 been republished in this country from the Edinburgh 
 Review for April 1858, in which the most injurious 
 anecdotes of Dr. Grisw old s memoir have been patiently 
 copied and italicised, and their enormities enhanced by 
 the gratuitous suppositions and assumptions of the 
 writer. 
 
 As an instance of the inconsequent reasoning in 
 which the reviewer sometimes indulges, we quote a 
 single passage from the article in question. "It is," 
 says the Edinburgh critic, "a curious example of Poe s 
 superficial acquaintance with the literature of other 
 lands, that in recapitulating the titles of a mysterious 
 library of books in the House of Usher he quotes 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 35 
 
 among a list of cabalistical volumes Gresset s Vertvert, 
 evidently in complete ignorance of what he is talking 
 about. Gressefs Vertverf is the antipodes of Poe s 
 ^ Raven] though the comic interest of the former and 
 the tragic interest of the latter turn alike on the 
 reiteration of bird-language." 
 
 The process of reasoning by which Mr. Poe s " super 
 ficial acquaintance with the literature of other lands" is 
 deducible from the fact that "Gresset s Vertvert is 
 the antipodes of Poe s Raven, " may be very apparent 
 to the learned reviewer, but is certainly not quite clear 
 to the common reader. 
 
 We are not aware that any of the works cited in this 
 catalogue bear a resemblance to the Raven. Mr. Poe 
 must certainly be acquitted of intending to suggest such 
 a resemblance, since the Raven was at the time unwrit 
 ten. The Edinburgh critic, after admitting that Poe s 
 Raven belongs to "that rare and remarkable class of 
 productions that suffice, singly, to make a reputation," 
 assumes, oddly enough, that "the originality apparent 
 
36 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 in Mr. Poe s writings is due rather to the deformity of 
 his moral character than to the vigor or freshness of 
 his intellect," and, finding himself "profoundly im 
 pressed by Poe s wonderful solutions of the most diffi 
 cult problems," suspects that "it is after all, an easy 
 thing for man to solve the riddles which he himself hae 
 fabricated." 
 
 There is a prevalent impression among critics and 
 readers who have never felt the magnetism of Poe s 
 wierd imagination, nor come into full rapport with his 
 genius, that his intellectual creations were always the 
 result of deliberate effort and artistic skill ; that they 
 were not genuine outgrowths of the inward life but 
 arbitrary creations of the will and the intellect. 
 
 This opinion, founded in part upon the subtlety and 
 refinement of his analytical faculty, has been seemingly 
 guaranteed by some of his own statements in regard to 
 his methods of composition. A writer in the "North 
 American" characterizes his poetry as "word-maneu 
 vering," and one of his critics, sitting at the time in 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 37 
 
 Harper s "Easy-chair," says, " Such curious and beautiful 
 performances as Poe s Raven and Sleigh-bells are 
 not poems ; they are, simply, ingenious experiments 
 upon the sound of words." Were this grand lyric of 
 " The Bells " simply a lyric of " Sleigh-bells " as the 
 " Easy-chair" pleasantly calls it, when were Sleigh-bells 
 ever heard to ring so merrily before ? Listen ! 
 
 " How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle 
 
 In the icy air of night ! 
 "While the stars that oversprinkle 
 All the heavens seem to twinkle 
 
 With a crystalline delight ; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
 
 From the bells, bells, bells, beUs, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells 
 From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells." 
 
 It cannot indeed be denied that the mere artistic treat 
 ment of this poem is truly marvellous. The metallic 
 4 
 
38 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 ring and resonance the vibration and reverberation of 
 the rhythm is such that one of its admirers says, "We 
 can never read it without pausing after every verse to 
 let the peals of sound die away on the bosom of the 
 palpitating air, that we may commence the succeeding 
 stanza in silence." Another, who appreciates its ideal 
 truth of conception not less than its high rhythmical art, 
 says, " I was astonished one night in watching a con 
 flagration, and repeating, amid the clash and clang of 
 the alarm-bells, the third stanza of the poem, to find how 
 marvellously the movement of the verse timed with the 
 peals of sound, and how truly the poem reproduced the 
 sense-of danger which the sound of the bells, and the 
 glare and mad ascension of the flames, and the pallor of 
 the moonlight conveyed. All the poetry of a confla 
 gration is in that stanza, both in sound and sense, and 
 Dante himself could not have rendered it more truly." 
 So many faculties were brought into play in the 
 expression of Poe s poetical compositions that readers in 
 whom the critical intellect prevails over the imaginative 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 39 
 
 often acknowledge the refined art, the tact, the subtlety, 
 the faultless method, while the potent magnetism of his 
 genius utterly escapes them. There are persons whom 
 nature has made non-conductors to this sort of elec 
 tricity. 
 
 The critic of the "North American" to whose 
 strictures we have alluded, charges him with overlooking 
 moral and spiritual ideas, and calls his works " rich and 
 elaborate pieces of art," wanting in " the vis vitea which 
 alone can make of words living things." Bayne, on the 
 other hand, in his fine essay on "Tennyson and his 
 Teachers," alludes to the "Haunted Palace" of "the 
 great American poet," and contrasts its wonderfully 
 spiritual, subjective, and ideal character with the rich 
 and accurate detail of Tennyson s "Palace of Art." 
 He classes the American poet with those who have 
 scattered imaginative spells rather than finished elabo 
 rate imaginative pictures. A greater mistake in literary 
 criticism could not well be made than that which is 
 evinced in the frequent application of the word " sensu- 
 
40 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 ous" to the singularly ideal and subjective character of 
 Poe s imaginative creations. We do not of course 
 intend to include among these, his stories of a purely 
 inventive or grotesque character. 
 
 It is not to be questioned that Poe was a consummate 
 master of language that he had sounded all the secrets 
 of rhythm that he understood and availed himself of 
 all its resources ; the balance and poise of syllables 
 the alternations of emphasis and cadence of vowel- 
 sounds and consonants and all the metrical sweetness 
 of "phrase and metaphrase." Yet this consummate art 
 was in him united with a rare simplicity. He was the 
 most genuine of enthusiasts, as we think we shall pre 
 sently show. His genius would follow no leadings 
 but those of his own imperial intellect. With all his 
 vast mental resources he could never write an occasional 
 poem, or adapt himself to the taste of a popular audi 
 ence. His graver narratives and fantasies are often 
 related with an earnest simplicity, solemnity, and appa 
 rent fidelity, attributable, not so much to a deliberate 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 41 
 artistic purpose, as to that power of vivid and intense 
 
 conception that made his dreams realities,, and his life a 
 dream. > . -*> 
 
 The strange fascination the unmatched charm of his 
 conversation consisted in its genuineness. Even Dr. 
 Griswold, who has studiously represented him as cold, 
 passionless, and perfidious, admits that his conversation 
 was at times almost "supra-mortal in its eloquence;" 
 that "his large and variably expressive eyes looked 
 repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, 
 while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, 
 as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back 
 frozen to his heart." 
 
 These traits are not the possible accompaniments of 
 attributes which Dr. Griswold has elsewhere ascribed to 
 him. As a conversationist we do not remember his 
 equal. We have heard the veteran Landor (called by 
 high authority the best talker in England) discuss with 
 scathing sarcasm the popular writers of the day, convey 
 his political animosities by fierce invectives on the "pre- 
 
42 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 tentious coxcomb, Albert," and "the cunning knave, Na 
 poleon," or describe, in words of strange depth and ten 
 derness, the peerless charm of goodness and the naive 
 social graces in the beautiful mistress of Gore House, 
 " the most gorgeous Lady Blessington." We have heard 
 the Howadji talk of the gardens of Damascus till the air 
 seemed purpled and perfumed with its roses. We have 
 listened to the trenchant and vivid talk of the Autocrat ; 
 to the brilliant and exhaustless colloquial resources of 
 John Neal, and Margaret Fuller. We have heard the 
 racy talk of Orestes Brownson in the old days of his 
 freedom and power, have listened to the serene wis 
 dom of Alcott, and treasured up memorable sentences 
 from the golden lips of Emerson. Unlike the conversa 
 tional power evinced by any of these was the earnest, 
 opulent, unpremeditated speech of Edgar Poe. 
 
 Like his writings it presented a combination of quali 
 ties rarely met with in the same person ; a cool, deci 
 sive judgment, a wholly unconventional courtesy and 
 sincere grace of manner, and an imperious enthusiasm 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 43 
 
 which brought all hearers within the circle of its influ 
 ence. 
 
 J. M. Daniel, Esq., United States Minister at Turin, 
 who knew Poe well during the last years of his life, 
 says of him, " His conversation was the very best we 
 have ever listened to. We have never heard any so 
 suggestive of thought, or any from which one gained so 
 much. On literary subjects it was the essence of correct 
 and profound criticism divested of all formal pedantries 
 and introductory ideas the kernel clear of the shell. 
 He was not a brilliant talker in the common, after-dinner 
 sense of the word ; he was not a maker of fine points, 
 or a frequent sayer of funny things. What he said was 
 prompted entirely by the moment, and seemed uttered 
 for the pleasure of uttering it. In his animated moods 
 he talked with an abstracted earnestness as if he were 
 dictating to an amanuensis, and, if he spoke of individu 
 als, his ideas ran upon their moral and intellectual quali 
 ties rather than upon the idiosyncrasies of their active 
 visible phenomena, or the peculiarities of their manner." 
 
44 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 We have said that the charm of his conversation 
 consisted in its genuineness its wonderful directness 
 and sincerity. We believe, too, that in the artistic 
 utterance of poetic emotion he was at all times passion 
 ately genuine. His proud reserve, his profound melan 
 choly, his unworldliness may we not say his unearth- 
 liness of nature made his character one very difficult 
 of comprehension to the casual observer. The complex 
 ity of his intellect, its incalculable resources, and his 
 masterly control of those resources when brought into 
 requisition for the illustration of some favorite theme, or 
 cherished creation, led to the current belief that its 
 action was purely arbitrary that he could write with 
 out emotion or earnestness at the deliberate dictation of 
 the will. A certain class of his writings undeniably 
 exhibits the faculties of ingenuity and invention in a 
 prominent and distinctive light. But it must not be 
 forgotten that there was another phase of his mind 
 one not less distinctive and characteristic of his genius 
 which manifested itself in creations of a totally different 
 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 45 
 
 order and expression. ^ It can hardly have escaped the 
 notice of the most careless reader that certain ideas 
 exercised over him the power of fascination. They 
 return, again and again, in his stories and poems and 
 seem like the utterances of a mind possessed with 
 thoughts, emotions, and images of which the will and 
 the understanding take little cognizance. In the deline 
 ation of these, his language often acquires a power and 
 pregnancy eluding all attempts at analysis. It is then 
 that by a few miraculous words he evokes emotional 
 states or commands pictorial effects which live for ever 
 in the memory and from a part of its eternal inheritance. 
 No analysis can dissect no criticism can disenchant 
 them. 
 
 As specimens of the class we have indicated read 
 "Ligeia," "Morella," "Eleanora." Observe in them 
 the prevailing and dominant thoughts of his inner 
 life ideas of "fate and metaphysical aid" of psy- 
 chal and spiritual agencies, energies and potences. 
 See in them intimations of mysterious phenomena 
 
46 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 which, at the time when these fantasies were indited, 
 were regarded as fables and dreams, but which have 
 since (in their phenomenal aspect simply) been recog 
 nised as matters of popular experience and scientific 
 research. 
 
 In "Ligeia," the sad and stately symmetry of the sen 
 tences, their rhythmical cadence, the Moresque sumptu- 
 ousness of imagery with which the story is invested, and 
 the wierd metempsychosis which it records, produce an 
 effect on the reader altogether peculiar in character 
 and, as we think, quite inexplicable without a reference 
 to the supernatural inspiration which seems to pervade 
 them. | In the moods of mind and phases of passion 
 which this story represents we have no laboured artistic 
 effects;! we look into the haunted chambers of the 
 poet s own mind and see, as through a veil, the strange 
 experiences of his inner life ; while, in the dusk magnifi 
 cence of its imagery, we have the true heraldic blazonry 
 of an imagination royally dowered and descended. In 
 this, as in all that class of stories we have named, the 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 47 
 
 author s mind seems struggling desperately and vainly 
 with the awful mystery of Death. J 
 
 In "Morella," as in "Ligeia," the parties are occupied 
 with the same mystic philosophies engrossed in the 
 same recondite questions of " life and death and spiritual 
 unity," questions of " that identity which, at death, is, 
 or is not, lost forever." Each commemorates a psychal 
 attraction which transcends the dissolution of the mortal 
 body and oversweeps the grave ; the passionate soul of 
 the departed transfusing itself through the organism of 
 another to manifest its deathless love. Who does not 
 remember as a strain of Ionian melody the story of 
 "Eleanora?" Who does not lapse into a dream as he 
 remembers the "River of Silence" and "The Valley of 
 the many-colored Grass?" 
 
 In this story the purport, though less apparent to the 
 general reader, and differently interpreted by a writer in 
 the "North American Review," is still the same as in 
 the preceding. Read the closing sentences, so eloquent 
 with a tender and mysterious meaning, which record, 
 
48 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 after the death of the beloved Eleanora, the appearance 
 "from a far, far distant and unknown land" of the 
 Seraph Ermengarde. Observe, too, in these closing 
 lines the indication, so often manifest in Poe s poems 
 and stories, of a lingering pity and sorrow for the dead ; 
 an ever-recurring pang of remorse in the fear of 
 having grieved them by some involuntary wrong of 
 desertion or forgetfulness. 
 
 This haunting remembrance this sad, remorseful pity 
 for the departed, is everywhere a distinguishing feature 
 in his prose and poetry. 
 
 The existence of such a feeling as a prevalent mood 
 of his mind, of which we have abundant evidence, is 
 altogether incompatible with that cold sensualism with 
 which he has been so ignorantly charged. So far from 
 being selfish or heartless his devotional fidelity to the 
 memory of those he loved would by the world be 
 regarded as fanatical. A characteristic incident of his 
 boyhood will illustrate the passionate fidelity which we 
 have ascribed to him. While at the academy in 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 49 
 
 Richmond, which he entered in his twelfth year, he one 
 da} 7 accompanied a schoolmate to his home, where he 
 
 saw for the first time Mrs. II S , the 
 
 mother of his young friend. This lady, on entering the 
 room, took his hand and spoke some gentle and gracious 
 words of welcome, which so penetrated the sensitive 
 heart of the orphan boy as to deprive him of the power 
 of speech, and, for a time, almost of consciousness itself. 
 He returned home in a dream, with but one thought, 
 one hope in life to hear again the sweet and gracious 
 words that had made the desolate world so beautiful to 
 him, and filled his lonely heart with the oppression 
 of a new joy. This lady afterwards became the confi 
 dant of all his boyish sorrows, and her s was the one 
 redeeming influence that saved and guided him in the 
 earlier days of his turbulent and passionate youth. 
 After the visitation of strange and peculiar sorrows she 
 died, and for months after her decease it was his habit 
 to visit nightly the cemetery where the object of his 
 boyish idolatry lay entombed. The thought of her 
 
50 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 sleeping there in her loneliness filled his heart with a 
 profound, incommunicable sorrow. When the nights 
 were very dreary and cold, when the autumnal rains fell 
 and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he 
 lingered longest and came away most regretfully. 
 
 It was the image of this lady, long and tenderly, and 
 sorrowfully cherished, that suggested the stanzas " to 
 Helen," published among the poems written in his 
 youth, which Russell Lowell says have in them a grace 
 and symmetry of outline such as few poets ever attain, 
 and which are valuable as displaying " what can only 
 be expressed by the contradictory phrase of innate 
 experience" 
 
 As the lines do not appear in the latest editions of 
 his poems we give them here. 
 
 " Helen, thy beauty is to me 
 
 Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
 That gently, o er a perfumed sea, 
 
 The weary, wayworn wanderer bore 
 To his own native shore. 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 51 
 
 On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
 
 To the glory that was Greece, 
 To the grandeur that was Eome. 
 
 Lo ! in yon brilliant window niche, 
 
 How statue-like I see thee stand, 
 
 The agate lamp within thy hand ! 
 Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
 
 Are Holy Land! " 
 
 f 
 
 In a letter now before us, written within a twelve 
 month of his death, Edgar Poe speaks of the love 
 which inspired these verses as " the one, idolatrous, and 
 purely ideal love " of his passionate boyhood. 
 
 In one of the numbers of Russell s Magazine there is 
 a transcript of the first published version of the exquisite 
 poem entitled "Lenore," commencing 
 
 " Ah broken is the golden bowl 1 the spirit flown forever, 
 Let the bell toll ! a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river." 
 
52 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 It is remarkable that, in this earlier version, instead of 
 LENORE we have the name of HELEN. The lines were 
 
 afterwards greatly altered and improved in structure 
 
 
 
 and expression, and the name of Lenore was introduced, 
 apparently for its adaptation to rhythmical effect. What 
 ever may be the meaning that underlies this strange 
 funeral anthem it will always be admired for the trium 
 phant music of its sorrow and for its sombre pomp of 
 words. We may trust that the " Sabbath Song " did 
 indeed 
 
 " Go up to God so solemnly the dead could feel no wrong." 
 
 The ideas which haunted the brain of the young poet 
 during his watch in the lonely church-yard the shape 
 less fears and phantasms, 
 
 "Flapping from out their Condor wings 
 Invisible "Woel" 
 
 were the same which overwhelmed Be Quincey at the 
 burial of his sweet sister and playmate, as described by 
 him in the "Suspiria De Profundis" ideas of terror 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 53 
 
 and indescribable awe at the thought of that mysterious 
 waking sleep, that powerless and dim vitality, in which 
 "the dead" are presumed, according to our popular 
 theology, to await " the general resurrection at the last 
 day." What wonder that the phantoms of " Shadow" 
 and "Silence," once evoked there, could never be exor 
 cised! What wonder that "the fable which the Demon 
 told in the shadow of the tomb" haunted him for ever! 
 "Now there are strange tales in the volumes of the 
 Magi in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the 
 Magi glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the 
 Earth, and of the mighty Sea and of the Genii that 
 overruled the sea and the earth and the lofty heaven ; 
 there was much lore, too, in the sayings of the Sybils. 
 and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim 
 leaves that trembled around Dodona but, as Allah 
 liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by 
 my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most 
 wonderful of all ! And as the Demon made an end of 
 his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and 
 
54 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and 
 he cursed me because / could not laugh. And the lynx 
 which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out and sat 
 at the feet of the Demon and looked him steadily in 
 the face." 
 
 These solitary church-yard vigils, with all their asso 
 ciated memories, present a key to much that seems 
 strange and abnormal in the poet s after life. Questions 
 which no human tongue could answer, no human know 
 ledge satisfy or silence, then found an utterance in the 
 vast and desolate chambers of his imagination, and their 
 mournful echoes are heard again and again in the 
 magic cadences of his verse. In the "Colloquy of 
 Monos and Una" he has imagined all the phases of 
 sentient life in the grave, and in the " Bridal Ballad 
 are stanzas which, as read by the author, were full of a 
 wild, sad pathos not easily forgotten. "We will instance 
 only two of the stanzas although their rhythmical effect 
 is injured by their separation from those which precede 
 and accompany them. 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 55 
 
 "And my lord lie loves me well ; 
 
 But when first he breathed his vow 
 The words rang as a knell, 
 And the voice seemed his who fell 
 In the battle down the dell, 
 And who is happy now. 
 ***** 
 Would God I could awaken ! 
 
 For I dream I know not how, 
 * And my soul is sorely shaken 
 
 Lest an evil step be taken 
 Lest the dead, who is forsaken, 
 May not be happy now." 
 
 The thought which informs so many of his tales and 
 poems betrays its sad sincerity even in his critical writ 
 ings, as, for instance, in a notice of "Undine" in the 
 " Marginalia. 5 Yet it has been said of him that " he 
 had no touch of human feeling or of human pity," that 
 "he loved no one but himself" that "he was an 
 abnormal and monstrous creation," "possessed by 
 legions of devils." The most injurious epithets have 
 
56 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 been heaped upon his name and the most improbable 
 and calumnious stories recorded as veritable histories. 
 Ten years have passed since his death, and while the 
 popular interest in his writings and the popular estimate 
 of his genius increases from year to year, these acknow 
 ledged calumnies are still going the round of the foreign 
 periodicals and are still being republished at home. 
 
 We believe that with the exception of Mr. Willis s 
 generous tributes to his memory, some candid and 
 friendly articles by the Editor of the Literary Messen 
 ger, and an eloquent and vigorous article in Russell s 
 Magazine by Mr. J. Wood Davidson, of Columbia, S.C. 
 ( who has appreciated his genius and his sorrow more 
 justly perhaps, than any of his American critics) this 
 great and acknowledged wrong to the dead has been 
 permitted to pass without public rebuke or protest. 
 
 In the memoir prefixed to the Illustrated Poems, it 
 is said of him that " his religion was a worship of the 
 beautiful," which is emphatically true, and that "he 
 knew no beauty but that which is purely sensuous," 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 57 
 
 which is, as emphatically, untrue. We appeal from 
 this last assertion to Mr. Poe s own exposition of his 
 poetic theory. He recognises the elements of poetic 
 emotion the emotion of the beautiful "in all noble 
 thoughts, in all holy impulses, in all chivalrous, generous, 
 and self-sacrificing deeds" His "aesthetic religion," 
 which has been so strangely misapprehended was simply 
 a recognition of the divine and inseparable harmonies of 
 the supremely Beautiful and the supremely Good. 
 
 The author of the very able and systematic critique 
 in the North American Review (which is, nevertheless, 
 essentially false in all its estimates of intellectual and 
 moral character) tells us that he " repudiated moral uses 
 in his prose fictions as in his poetry, and that if moral 
 or spiritual truths are found in them they must have 
 got there accidentally, without the author s permission 
 or knowledge." This is very unjust. To prove its 
 injustice we have only once more to quote the author s 
 own words. " Taste," the sense of the beautiful, "holds 
 intimate relations with the intellect and the moral sense ; 
 
58 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 from the moral sense it is separated by so faint a 
 difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some 
 of its operations among the virtues themselves." Again, 
 "The poetic sense is strictly and simply the human 
 aspiration for supernal beauty. It is no mere apprecia 
 tion of the beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach 
 the beauty above a prescience of that loveliness whose 
 very elements, perhaps, appertain to Eternity alone." 
 
 The current strictures on Foe s sinful worship of 
 J^eauty remind us of the satirist, Shoppe, in Jean Paul s 
 "Titan," who says, "In one respect we Germans are far 
 in advance of the Greeks and Italians. We never seek 
 the Beautiful without looking for collateral advantages ; 
 our caryatides must uphold pulpits, and our angels bear 
 baptismal fonts." 
 
 We are ready to admit, with the severe critic of the 
 North American, that a very large proportion of Foe s 
 stories are filled w ith monstrous and appalling images 
 that many of them oppress the reader like frightful 
 incubi, from whose influence he vainly tries to escape. 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 59 
 
 Ruskin tells us, in his treatise on the Grotesque, that 
 it is the trembling of the human soul in the presence 
 of Death which most of all disturbs the images on the 
 intellectual mirror, investing them with the grotesque 
 ghastliness of fitful dreams. "If the mind be not 
 healthful and serene the wider the scope of its glance 
 and the grander the truths of which it obtains an insight 
 the more fantastic and fearful are these distorted 
 images." 
 
 Yet, as out of mighty and terrific discords noblest 
 harmonies are sometimes evolved, so through the pur 
 gatorial ministries of awe and terror, and through the 
 haunting Nemesis of doubt, Poe s restless and unap- 
 peased soul was urged on to the fulfilment of its 
 appointed work groping out blindly towards the light, 
 and marking the approach of great spiritual truths by 
 the very depth f the shadow it projected against 
 them. 
 
 It would seem that the true point of view from which 
 his genius should be regarded has yet to be sought. 
 
60 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 We are not of those who believe that any order of 
 genius is revealed to us in vain ; nor do we believe that 
 the age would have gained anything if the author of the 
 Raven had proved another Wordsworth, or another 
 Longfellow. These far-wandering comets, not less than 
 "the regular, calm stars," obey a law and follow a 
 pathway that has been marked out for them by infinite 
 Wisdom and essential Love. That the genius of Toe 
 had its peculiar mission and significance in relation to 
 the age we cannot doubt. Every man of electric tem 
 perament and prophetic genius represents, or rather 
 anticipates, with more or less of consciousness and direct 
 volition, those latent ideas which are about to unfold 
 themselves in humanity. It is thus that Miiller accounts 
 for the origin of the Greek My thus, the simple invention 
 of which he pronounces to be impossible, if by invention 
 is meant a free and deliberate treatment of something 
 known to be untrue. He regards the originators of the 
 Greek Mythus merely as the more passive recipients and 
 skilful exponents who first gave form and expression to 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 6l 
 
 those spiritual ideas which, were tending to organic 
 development at that particular stage of the world s 
 progress " the foci in which the scattered rays of 
 spiritual consciousness were concentrating themselves 
 to be radiated forth with new intensity." When Poe s 
 genius began to unfold itself the age was moving 
 feverously and restlessly through processes of transition 
 and development which seemed about to unsettle all 
 things, yet, gave no clear indication of whither they 
 were leading us. 
 
 In our own country, Mr. Emerson s assertion of the 
 transcendental side of the ever-recurring question 
 between idealism and materialism marked the reaction 
 of intellectual and spiritual tendencies against the 
 materialism and literalism of the churches. Through 
 him the fine idealism of the German Mystics penetrated 
 our literature and spiritualized our philosophies. His 
 novel statements of truth had in them a strange force 
 and directness, startling the sleepers like the naive 
 
 cadences of a child s voice heard amid the falsetto tones 
 6 
 
62 Edgar Foe and his Critics. 
 
 of the conventicle or the theatre. What a sovran 
 grace of sincerity in his chapter on Experience. What 
 noble ethics in his statement of spiritual laws. Yet, if 
 we turn to the pages of Emerson and look for the 
 evidences of his belief in the soul s individual immor 
 tality, we shall find that the words he has uttered on the 
 subject express, for the most part, either a purely 
 Oriental indifference or an aimless and anxious ques 
 tioning. In his lecture to the Divinity Students of 
 Cambridge, protesting against the formalism and famine 
 of the churches, he told them that the faith of the 
 Puritans was dying out and none arising in its stead 
 that the eye of youth was not lighted by the hope of 
 other worlds that literature had become frivolous and 
 science cold. In his lecture on " The Times " he says, 
 " We drift like white sail across the wide ocean, now 
 bright on the wave, now darkling in the trough of the 
 sea ; but from what port did we sail ? Who knows ? 
 Or to what port are we bound ? Who knows ? There 
 is no one to tell us but such poor weather-tossed 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 63 
 
 mariners as ourselves, whom we speak as we pass, or 
 who have hoisted some signal from afar, or floated to as 
 some letter in a bottle. But what know they more 
 than we ? " In another of his essays he says, " I cannot 
 tell if these wonderful qualities which now house 
 together in this mortal frame shall ever reassemble in 
 equal activity in a similar frame, but this one thing I 
 know, that the law which clothes us with humanity 
 remains new. We are immortal with the immortality 
 of this law." 
 
 These expressions indicate the pervading scepticism 
 of the time. Coming, as they do, from a man who had 
 been educated as a clergyman a man for whose large 
 culture and liberal faith in humanity the pulpits of the 
 existing church seemed to offer no sufficient platform 
 they have an emphasis which no added word could 
 heighten. 
 
 The negation of Carlyle, and the boundless affirma 
 tion of Emerson, served but to stimulate without satisfy 
 ing the intellect. The liberal ethics of Fourier, with his 
 
6zj Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 elaborate social economies and systems of petrified 
 harmony, were leading his disciples through forlorn 
 enterprises to hopeless failures. A divine dissatis 
 faction" was everywhere apparent. De Quincey saw 
 something fearful and portentous in the vast accessions 
 to man s physical resources that marked the time, 
 unaccompanied by any improvement in psychal and 
 spiritual knowledge. Goethe had made his great dra 
 matic poem an expression of the soul s craving for a 
 knowledge of spiritual existences 
 
 " giebt es geister in der luft 
 Die zwischen Erd und Himmel weben, 
 So steiget nieder aus den golden duft, 
 Und furht mich weg zu neuem bunten leben." 
 
 Wordsworth, in his finest imaginative poem, "Laoda- 
 mia," represents and half reproves this longing. Byron 
 iterates it with a proud and passionate vehemence in 
 "Manfred." Shelley s sad heart of unbelief, finding 
 refuge in a despair too deep for aspiration, stands 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 6_J 
 
 apart, as Elizabeth Browning has so finely sculptured 
 him, 
 
 " In his white ideal 
 
 All statue-blind," 
 
 while Keats lies sleeping, like his own "Endymion," lost 
 in dreams of the " dead Past." Then, sadder, and lone 
 lier, and more unbelieving than any of these, Edgar 
 Poe came to sound the very depths of the abyss. 
 The unrest and faithlessness of the age culminated in 
 him. Nothing so solitary, nothing so hopeless, nothing 
 so desolate as his spirit in its darker moods has been 
 instanced in the literary history of the nineteenth cen 
 tury. 
 
 It has been said that his theory, as expressed in 
 "Eureka," of the universal diffusion of Deity in and 
 through all things, is identical with the Brahminical 
 faith as expressed in the Bagvat Gita. But those who 
 will patiently follow the vast reaches of his thought in 
 this sublime poem of the "Universe" will find that he 
 
 6* 
 
66 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 arrives at a form of unbelief far more appalling than 
 that expressed in the gloomy Pantheism of India, since 
 it assumes that the central, creative Soul is, alternately, 
 not diffused only, but merged and lost in the universe, 
 and the universe in it : "A new universe swelling into 
 existence or subsiding into nothingness at every throb 
 of the Heart Divine." The creative Energy, therefore, 
 "now exists solely in the diffused matter and spirit, of 
 the existing universe." The author assumes, moreover, 
 that each individual soul retains in its youth a dim 
 consciousness of vast dooms and destinies far distant in 
 the bygone time, and infinitely awful ; from which 
 inherent consciousness the conventional "World-Rea 
 son" at last awakens it as from a dream. "It says 
 you live, and the time was when you lived not. You 
 have been created. An Intelligence exists greater than 
 your own. and it is only through this Intelligence that 
 you live at all." "These things," he says, "we struggle 
 to comprehend and cannot: cannot, because being untrue, 
 they are of necessity incomprehensible. 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 67 
 
 "No thinking man lives who, at some luminous point 
 of his life, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of 
 futile efforts at understanding or believing that any 
 thing exists greater than his own soul. The intense, 
 overwhelming dissatisfaction and rebellion at the 
 thought, together with the omniprevalent aspirations 
 at perfection are but the spiritual, coincident with the 
 material, struggles towards the original Unity. The 
 material and spiritual God now exists solely in the 
 diffused matter and Spirit of the Universe, and the 
 regathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be 
 but the reconstitution of the purely Spiritual and 
 Individual God." 
 
 In a copy of the original edition of Eureka, pur 
 chased at the recent sale of Dr Griswold s library, the 
 following note was found inscribed in the handwriting 
 of the author on the half blank page at the end of the 
 volume. It is singularly ingenious and characteristic. 
 
 "Note. The pain of the consideration that we shall lose our 
 
 >*m 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
68 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 individual identity, ceases at once when we further reflect that 
 the process, as above described, is neither more nor less than that 
 of the absorption by each individual intelligence, of all other 
 intelligences (that is of the Universe) into its own. That God 
 may be all in all, each must become God." 
 
 This proud self-assertion betrays a mysterious isolation 
 from the "Heart Divine" which fills us with sadness 
 and awe. 
 
 We confess to a half faith in the old superstition of 
 the significance of anagrams when we find, in the trans 
 posed letters of Edgar Poe s name, the words a God- 
 peer ; words which, taken in connexion with his daring 
 speculations, seem to have in them a mocking and 
 malign import "which is not man s nor angel s." 
 
 Yet, while the author of Eureka, like Lucretius, 
 
 " dropped his plummet down the broad, 
 
 Deep Universe and found no God," 
 
 his works are, as if unconsciously, filled with an over 
 whelming sense of the power and majesty of Deity ; 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 69 
 
 they are even dark with reverential awe. His proud 
 intellectual assumption of the supremacy of the indivi 
 dual soul was but an expression of its imperious longings 
 for immortality and its recoil from the haunting 
 phantasms of death and annihilation; while the theme 
 of all his more imaginative writings is, as we have said, 
 a love that survives the dissolution of the mortal body 
 and oversweeps the grave. His mental and tempera 
 mental idiosyncrasies fitted him to come readily into 
 rapport with psychal and spiritual influences. Many of 
 his strange narratives had a degree of truth in them 
 which he was unwilling to avow. In one of this class 
 he makes the narrator say, " I cannot even now regard 
 these experiences as a dream, yet it is difficult to say 
 how otherwise they should be termed. Let us suppose 
 only that the soul of man, to-day, is on the brink of 
 stupendous psychal discoveries" 
 Dante tells us that 
 
 "minds dreaming near the dawn 
 
 Are of the truth presageful." 
 
70 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 Edgar Poe s dreams were assuredly often presageful and 
 significant, and while he but dimly apprehended through 
 the higher reason the truths which they foreshadowed, 
 he riveted public attention upon them by the strange 
 fascination of his style, the fine analytical temper of his 
 intellect, and, above all, by the wierd splendors of his 
 imagination, compelling men to read and to accredit as 
 possible truths his most marvellous conceptions. He 
 often spoke of the imageries and incidents of his inner 
 life as more vivid and veritable than those of his outer 
 experience. We find in some pencilled notes appended 
 to a manuscript copy of one of his later poems the 
 words, " All that I have here expressed was actually 
 present to me. Remember the mental condition which 
 gave rise to Ligeia recall the passage of which I 
 spoke, and observe the coincidence." With all the fine 
 alchymy of his subtle intellect he sought to analyze the 
 character and conditions of this introverted life. "I 
 regard these visions," he says, "even as they arise, with 
 an awe which in some measure moderates or tranquil- 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 71 
 
 lizes the ecstacy I so regard them through a conviction 
 that this ecstacy, in itself, is of a character supernal to 
 the human nature is a glimpse of the spirit s outer 
 world." He had that constitutional determination to 
 reverie which, according to De Quincey, alone enables 
 a man to dream magnificently, and which, as we have 
 said, made his dreams realities and his life a dream. 
 His mind was indeed a "Haunted Palace," echoing to 
 the footfalls of angels and demons. "No man," he 
 says, "has recorded, no man has dared to record, the 
 wonders of his inner life." 
 
 Ts there, then, no significance in this " supernatural 
 soliciting?" Is there no evidence of a wise purpose, an 
 epochal fitness, in the appearance, at this precise era, of 
 a mind so rarely gifted, and accessible from peculiarities 
 of psychal and physical organization to the subtle 
 vibrations of an ethereal medium conveying but feeble 
 impressions to the senses of ordinary persons ; a mind 
 which, "following darkness like a dream," wandered 
 for ever with insatiate curiosity on the confines of that 
 
72 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 "wild, wierd clime, that lieth sublime 
 Out of Space, out of Time ! 
 By each spot the most unholy, 
 En each nook most melancholy," 
 
 seeking to solve the problem of that phantasmal Shadow- 
 Land, which, through a class of phenomena unprece 
 dented in the world s history, was about to attest itself 
 as an actual plane of conscious and progressive life, the 
 mode and measure of whose relations with our own are 
 already recognised as legitimate objects of scientific 
 research by the most candid and competent thinkers of 
 our time ? We assume that, in the abnormal manifes 
 tations of a genius so imperative and so controlling, this 
 epochal significance is most strikingly apparent. Jean 
 Paul says truly that " there is more poetic fitness, more 
 method, a more intelligible purpose in the biographies 
 which God Almighty writes than in all the inventions 
 of poets and novelists." 
 
 The peculiarities of Edgar Poe s organization and 
 temperament doubtless exposed him to peculiar infir- 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 73 
 
 mities. We need not discuss them here. They have 
 been already too elaborately and painfully illustrated 
 elsewhere to need further comment. How fearfully he 
 expiated them only those who best knew and loved him 
 can ever know. We are told that ideas of right and 
 wrong are wholly ignored by him that " no recognitions 
 of conscience or remorse are to be found on his pages." 
 If not there where, then, shall we look for them ? In 
 William Wilson, in " The Man of the Crowd," and in 
 " The Tell-Tale Heart," the retributions of conscience 
 are portrayed with a terrible fidelity. In yet another 
 of his stories, which we will not name, the fearful 
 fatality of crime the dreadful fascination consequent on 
 the indulgence of a perverse will is portrayed with a 
 relentless and awful reality. May none ever read it 
 who do not need the fearful lesson which it brands on 
 the memory in characters of fire ! In the relation of 
 this remarkable story we recognise the power of a 
 genius like that which sustains us in traversing the 
 lowest depths of Dante s "Inferno." The rapid descent 
 
74 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 in crime which it delineates, and which becomes at last 
 involuntary, reminds us of the subterranean staircase by 
 which Yathek and Nouronihar reached the Hall of 
 Eblis, where, as they descended, they felt their steps 
 frightfully accelerated till they seemed falling from a 
 precipice. 
 
 Poe s private letters to his friends offer abundant 
 evidence that he was not insensible to the keenest 
 pangs of remorse. Again and again did he say to the 
 Demon that tracked his path, "Anathema Maranatha," 
 but again and again did it return to torture and subdue. 
 He saw the handwriting on the wall but had no power 
 to avert the impending doom. 
 
 In relation to this, the fatal temptation of his life, he 
 says, in a letter written within a year of his death, "The - 
 agonies which I have lately endured have passed my 
 soul through fire. Henceforth I am strong. This 
 those who love me shall know as well as those who 
 have so relentlessly sought to ruin me. * * * * 
 I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 75 
 
 which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not 
 been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have perilled 
 life and reputation and reason. It has been in the 
 desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories 
 memories of wrong and injustice and imputed dishonor 
 from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread 
 of some strange impending doom." We believe these 
 statements to have been sincerely uttered, and we would 
 record here the testimony of a gentleman who, having 
 for years known him intimately, and having been near 
 him in his states of utter mental desolation and insanity, 
 assured us that he had never heard from his lips a word 
 that would have disgraced his heart or brought reproach 
 upon his honor. 
 
 Could we believe that any plea we may have urged 
 in extenuation of Edgar Poe s infirmities and errors 
 would make the fatal path he trod less abhorrent to 
 others, such would never have been proffered. No 
 human sympathy, no human charity could avert the 
 penalties of that erring life. One clear glance into its 
 
76 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 mournful corridors its " halls of tragedy and chambers 
 of retribution," would appal the boldest heart. 
 
 Theodore Parker has nobly said that " every man of 
 genius has to hew out for himself, from the hard 
 marbles of life, the white statue of Tranquillity." 
 Those who have best succeeded in this sublime work 
 will best know how to look with pity and reverent awe 
 upon the melancholy torso which alone remains to us 
 of Edgar Poe s misguided efforts to achieve that beau 
 tiful, and august statue of Peace. 
 

 
 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 77 
 
 rilHOSE who are curious in tracing the effects of country and 
 lineage in the mental and constitutional peculiarities of 
 men of genius may be interested in such facts as we have been 
 enabled to gather in relation to the ancestry of the Poet. The 
 awakening interest in genealogical researches will make them 
 acceptable to many readers, and in their possible influence on a 
 character so anomalous as that of Edgar Poe they are certainly 
 worthy of note. - 
 
 John Poe, the great-grandfather of Edgar Poe, left Ireland for 
 America about the. middle of the last century.- He was of the 
 old Norman family of Le Poer, a name conspicuous in Irish 
 annals. Sir Roger le Poer went to Ireland, as marshal to Prince 
 John, in the reign of Henry II., and became there the founder 
 of a race connected with some of the most romantic and chival 
 rous incidents of Irish history. The heroic daring of Arnold 
 le Poer, seneschal of Kilkenny Castle, who interposed, at the 
 ultimate sacrifice of his liberty and his life, to save a noble lady 
 from an ecclesiastical trial for witchcraft, the first ever instituted 
 in the kingdom, was chronicled by Geraldus Cambrensis, and 
 has been commemorated by recent historians. 
 
78 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 A transcript of the story, as told by Geraldus, may be found in 
 " Ennemoser s Magic" and in "White s History of Sorcery." 
 The bitter feuds and troubled fortunes of the Anglo-Norman set 
 tlers in Ireland are well illustrated in a recent genealogical 
 history of the Geraldines by the Marquis of Kildare, noticed in 
 the Edinburgh Quarterly for October 1858. The disastrous civil 
 war of 1327, in which all the great barons of the country were 
 involved, was occasioned by a personal feud between Arnold le 
 Poer and Maurice of Desmond, the former having offended the 
 dignity of the Desmond by calling him a rhymer. 
 
 The characteristics of the le Poers were ma/ked and distinc 
 tive. They were improvident, adventurous, and recklessly brave. 
 They were deeply involved in the Irish troubles of 1641, and 
 when Cromwell invaded Ireland he pursued them with a special 
 and relentless animosity. Their families were dispersed, their 
 estates ravaged, and their lands forfeited. Of the three leading 
 branches of the family at the time of Cromwell s invasion, 
 Kilmaedon, Don Isle, and Curraghmore, the last only escaped his 
 vengeance. The present representative of Curraghmore is the 
 Marquis of Waterford. Cromwell s siege of the sea-girt castle 
 and fortress of Don Isle, which was heroically defended by a 
 female descendant of Nicholas le Poer, Baron of Don Isle, is, as 
 represented by Sir Bernard Burke in his "Romance of the 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 79 
 
 Aristocracy," full of legendary interest. The beautiful domain 
 of Powerscourt took its name from the le Poers, and was for 
 centuries in the possession of the family. Lady Blessington, 
 through her father, Edmund Power, claimed descent from the 
 same old Norman family. The fact is not mentioned in Mad- 
 den s memoir of the Countess, but is stated in a notice of her 
 death published in the London Illustrated News for June 9th, 
 1849. The family of the le Poers, like that of the G-eraldines 
 and other Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland, passed from Italy 
 into the north of France, and from France through England and 
 Wales into Ireland, where, from their isolated position and other 
 causes, they retained for a long period their hereditary traits 
 with far less modification from intermarriage and consociation 
 with other races than did their English compeers. Meantime 
 the name underwent various changes in accent and orthography. 
 A few branches of the family still bore in Ireland the old Italian 
 name of De la Poe. 
 
 John Poe, the great-grandfather of Edgar Poe, married a 
 daughter of Admiral McBride, distinguished for his naval achieve 
 ments and connected with some of the most illustrious families 
 of England. From genealogical records transmitted by him to 
 his son, David Poe, the grandfather of the poet, who was but 
 two years of age when his parents left Ireland, it appears that 
 
80 Edgar Poe and his Critics. 
 
 different modes of spelling the name were adopted by different 
 members of the same family. David Poe was accustomed to 
 speak of the Chevalier le Poer, a friend of the Marquis de 
 Grammont, as having been of his father s family. The grand 
 father of Edgar Poe was an officer in the Maryland line during 
 the war of the revolution, and, as Dr Griswold has told us, the 
 intimate friend of La Fayette. He married a lady of Pennsyl 
 vania, by the name of Cairnes, who- is still remembered as having 
 been a woman of singular beauty. The father of Edgar Poe, 
 while a law student in the office of Win. Gwynn, Esq.. of Balti 
 more, married, at the age of eighteen, Elizabeth Arnold, a young 
 English actress who was herself but a child. He first saw her 
 at Norfolk, w r here he was sent on professional business, and in a 
 few months they were married. Indignant at so imprudent a 
 union, his parents refused their countenance to the marriage, and 
 it was only after the birth of a child that he was forgiven and 
 received back into the paternal mansion. During the period of 
 his estrangement from his family he had joined his wife in a 
 theatrical engagement. Edgar Poe was the offspring of this 
 romantic and improvident union. 
 
 Having recorded our earnest protest against the 
 misapprehension of his critics and the misstatements of 
 
Edgar Poe and his Critics. 81 
 
 his biographists, we leave the subject for the present, in 
 the belief that a more impartial memoir of the poet 
 will yet be given to the world, and the story of his sad 
 strange life, when contemplated from a new point of 
 view, be found like the shield of bronze whose color 
 was so long contested by the knights of fable to 
 present, at least, a silver lining. 
 
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