Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions — John H. Ingram, 1880, volume I — reading text

fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them allow — what they cannot refrain from allowing — that although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least, tempted before?” The usual exaggerations of boyhood’s reminiscences — those days all deem they remember so distinctly, yet as a rule describe so indefinitely — are well marked in the portrayal of the old Stoke Newington house and its accessories; but it is in the shadowy suggestiveness of the two “William Wilsons’ ” similarity that the author’s power is displayed. The “singular whisper” of the one boy which grew to be “the very echo“of his namesake’s; the coincidence of birthdays and of names; the non-observance of the resemblance by the other pupils; the gradually increasing aversion for the wise monitions proffered by his alter ego, and the terrible signification of the one “William Wilson” being asleep, when his bedside was visited by the other, on the last night of his stay in the Academy, are all strokes of a master’s hand — of a master who stands alone and incomparable in the realm he has himself constructed. To the Museum for January and February Poe contributed “Literary Small Talk,” and to the April number his much-admired lyric, “The Haunted Palace.” With respect to this latter arose a controversy similar to that suggested by “Howe’s Masquerade:” as with that, so with this, Poe, it is alleged, deemed he had been copied, and that Longfellow’s “Beleaguered City” was a plagiarism of his idea, and is stated to have referred I the undeniable fact that his poem appeared first, Longfellow’s not being published until November 1839, when it appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. Of all men literati should be the first to recognise the fact that human invention is not infinite, and that similar ideas frequently occur almost simultaneously to different persons, it is, therefore, both rational and just to assume the resemblance between the poems of Poe and Longfellow to have been accidental. At all events, a similar fantasy to theirs had been embodied in Tennyson’s “Deserted House,” published as early as 1830. “The House of Usher,” another of the poet’s chefs d’œuvre, illustrative of belief-a belief shared by many of the good and great — in the sentience of all matter, was published in the September number of the Gentleman’s Magazine, to which publication, as already remarked, Poe had been appointed editor. Mr. White, of the Literary Messenger, alluding in his October issue to the tale and its author, remarks“We are pleased to find that our old assistant, Edgar A. Poe, is connected with Burton in the editorial management of the Gentleman’s Magazine. Mr. Poe is favourably known to the readers of the Messenger as a gentleman of fine endowment; possessing a taste classical and refined. . . We always predicted that Mr. Poe would reach a high grade in American literature;” only, adds his former employer, “we wish Mr. Poe would stick to the department of criticism; there, he is an able professor.” It was this “sticking to criticism,” to oblige publishers, instead of following the true bent of his genius, that ruined Poe’s personal reputation, and lost the world many a priceless poem and wondrous tale. In the “Fall of the House of Usher,” is developed one of its author’s favourite methods of riveting his reader’s attention. As in so many of his stories, instead of soliciting sympathy for himself as the hero, he the rather would appear to repel it, by assuming the rôle, in his person of narrator, of a somewhat matter-of-fact, even commonplace, practical character, in no way en rapport with the eccentric or visionary friend who is the real hero. He, Poe, pretends to come before the stage, or to remain on it only in the minor character of “Chorus,” and thus casts a further air of reality on the personages he introduces, by deluding his readers into the belief that they are but fellow spectators with him. Nevertheless, in the character of “Roderick Usher” — a character upon which the poet lavished his most consummate art, and upon whose surroundings he bestowed the wealth of his own desires — is sought to be depictured what Poe wished the world to believe he resembled, as Byron did with his “Corsairs” and “Laras.” The opium-eating hypochondriac, the Fear-fearing monomaniac, is less unlike the veritable author of “Ulalume” than is the friend of “Usher;” the mesmeriser of “Valdemar;” the associate of “Legrand” of “the Gold Bug;” the cool man of the world, who only represents the conventional half — the side turned to the public. Poe’s other contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine, during the remainder of 1839, were not of an important character, consisting chiefly of short book notices, slight sketches to accompany engravings, and reprints of his shorter poems. “William Wilson” and “Morello” were also republished in its pages, and in the December number appeared “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion.” This tale, in some respects resembling one entitled “The Comet,” which had appeared in The Token for 1839, describes the history of this earth’s destruction by a comet, and is supposed to be told in Aidenn by Eiros to Charmion. The final catastrophe is assumed to take place through the total extraction of the nitrogen from our atmosphere, and the consequent immediate and omnipresent combustion of the world. The whole story is most weirdly suggestive, and the climax startling in the extreme. Under the title of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Poe now published a collection of his stories, in two volumes. These tales were copyrighted in 1839, but the title-page is dated 1840, and bears upon it motto from Goethe: — “Seltsamen Tochter Jovis, Seinem Schosskinde, der Phantasie.” The volumes are inscribed to “Colonel William Drayton, of Philadelphia, with every sentiment of respect, gratitude, and esteem,” and contain this Preface: — “The epithets ‘Grotesque ’ and ‘Arabesque’ will be found to indicate, with sufficient precision, the prevalent tenor of the tales here published. But from the fact that, during a period of some two or three years, I have written five-and-twenty short stories, whose general character may be so briefly defined, it cannot be fairly inferred — at all events it is not truly inferred — that I have for this species of writing any inordinate, or indeed any peculiar, taste or prepossession. I may have written with an eye to this republication in volume form, and may, therefore, have desired to preserve, as far as a certain point, a certain unity of design. This is, indeed, the fact; and it may even happen that, in this manner, I shall never compose anything again. I speak of these things here, because I am led to think it is the prevalence of the ‘Arabesque’ in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what they have been pleased to term ‘Germanism’ and gloom. The charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of the accusation have not been sufficiently considered. Let us admit, for the moment, that the ‘phantasy-pieces’ now given are Germanic, or what not. Then ‘Germanism’ is the vein for the time being. Tomorrow I may be anything but German, as yesterday I was everything else. These many pieces are yet one book. My friends would be quite as wise in taxing an astronomer with too much astronomy, or an ethical author with treating too largely of morals. But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognise the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul, — that I have deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate results. “There are one or two of the articles here [conceived and executed in the purest spirit of extravaganza], to which I expect no serious attention, and of which I shall speak no farther. But for the rest I cannot conscientiously claim indulgence on the score of hasty effort. I think it best becomes me to say, therefore, that if I have sinned, I have deliberately sinned. These brief compositions are, in chief past, the results of matured purpose and very careful elaboration.” Besides the tales already referred to in these pages, this two volume collection contains the inferior humoristic pieces, “The man that was used up,” “The Devil in the Belfry,” “Von Jung” — now known as “Mystification” — and “Why the little Frenchman wears his hand in a sling.” This collection does not appear to have received much notice from the press, or to have made any impression upon the public: the edition, which was probably very small, disappeared, and copies of it are of the most extreme rarity. Among the various publications Poe was now writing for may be mentioned Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, in which he was airing his theory respecting cryptology, to the effect that human ingenuity could not construct any cryptograph human ingenuity could not decipher. Tested by several correspondents with specimens of their skill in the art of secret writing, the poet actually took the trouble to examine and solve them in triumphant proof, apparently, of the truth of his theory. Another, and scarcely more literary, labour in which he engaged at this time, in the ceaseless effort “to keep the wolf from the door,” was the production of a conchological manual for the use of schools. Anent this work slander and malice have said their worst; an enemy, evidently he whose calumnies, under the guise of “a Memoir,” have overclouded the poet’s memory ever since his death, spoke these words in the columns of the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post: — ‘One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe. . . . This gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia, published a work on Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, nearly verbatim, of ‘The Text-Book of Conchology,’ by Captain Thomas Brown, printed in Glasgow in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library. Mr. Poe actually took out a copyright for the American edition of Captain Brown’s work, and, omitting all mention of the English original, pretended, in the preface, to have been under great obligations to several scientific gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second edition of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr. Poe is withdrawn from the title-page, and his initials only affixed to the preface. But the affair is one of the most curious on record.” Having allowed the slanderer his say, the poet’s own response, not included in the above-mentioned “Memoir,” shall be given; but it may be stated that Poe’s work is not a plagiarism of Captain Brown’s; that he alluded to obligations to two persons only, one at least of whom, Professor Wyatt, a Scotchman — unaware that the calumny had ever reached Poe’s eyes, and not hearing of it himself until ten years after the poet’s death — gave an independent, but similar explanatory denial of the accusation in the Home Journal; that Poe’s name was not withdrawn from the title-page of the second edition, which was called for immediately after the publication of the first, and not after an interval of several years as suggested by the paragraphist. The poet’s letter reads thus: — “NEW YORK, Feb.16, ‘47. “MY DEAR SIR, — Some weeks ago I mailed you two newspapers which, from what you say in your last letter, I see you have not received. I now enclose some slips which will save me the necessity of writing on painful topics. By and by I will write you more at length. “Please reinclose the slips when read. “What you tell me about the accusation of plagiarism made by the Phil. Sat. Ev. Post