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

proprietary right, the objects of their very worthy owners, too, being in many respects at variance with my own, I found it not only impossible to effect anything on the score of taste for their mechanical or external appearance, but difficult to stamp upon them internally that individuality which I believed essential to their success. In regard to the extensive and permanent influence of such publications, it appears to me that continuity, distinctness, and a marked certainty of purpose, are requisites of vital importance; but attainable only when one mind alone has at least the general direction and control. Experience, to be brief, has shown me that in finding a journal wherein my interest should not be merely editorial, lies my sole chance of carrying out to completion whatever peculiar intentions I may have entertained.” Despite the wide diffusion of the prospectus contininb these paragraphs, and the exertions of the poet, sufficient number of subscribers to start the projected publication on a sound basis could not be obtained, end the scheme fell through, or, rather, was deferred — or a time. It has been stated that some numbers of The Stylus were, indeed, published; but this assertion, it is believed, was only founded on the fact of a “dummy” copy having been printed as a specimen of what it was intended to offer the public. Notwithstanding the failure of the magazine project, Mr. Clarke and Poe remained on a very amicable footing, the former doing all his limited powers permitted to befriend the latter, and assist him in his literary plans. In a vindication of the poet from the slanders of his first biographer, Mr. Clarke says, with reference to “Poe and the wife he so tenderly loved . . . I have some singular revelations which throw a strong light on the causes that darkened the life, and made most unhappy the death, of one of the most remarkable of all our literary men.” “During his engagement in my office,” continues this authority, “I published a life of Mr. Poe, with a portrait from a daguerreotype. Both the life and the portrait are utterly unlike the gross caricatures manufactured since his death; . . . the portrait prefixed to a recent volume of Poe’s poems bears no resemblance to the fine, intellectual head of Poe.” “Why,” indignantly demands Mr. Clarke — “why are such wrongs perpetrated upon the dead? why are they permitted?” The life published by Mr. Clarke is stated by Griswold to have been prepared “in Philadelphia, in 1843,” by Poe himself, for a paper called The Museum, and he pretends to quote from it in order to prove that “many parts of it are untrue.” The second paragraph is assumed to be a citation from a letter of Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning), referring to “The Raven,” a poem not then written, much less published! During 1843 Poe continued contributing, chiefly critiques, to Graham’s Magazine. Amongst other writings he completed the tale of “The Gold Bug,” and sold it to Mr. Graham for fifty-two dollars. The Dollar newspaper, a publication edited by N. P. Willis, offering a premium of $100 for the best tale, Poe obtained his manuscript back from Mr. Graham, submitted it to the adjudicators, and, for it, was awarded the prize. The history of this practical illustration of the poet’s cipher theory that human ingenuity cannot construct an enigma human ingenuity cannot resolve, is a further proof of the frequent inability of publishers to gauge the pecuniary value of literary works. In an unpublished letter, Poe, referring to this-in America-most popular of his productions, says, The Gold Bug’ was originally sent to Graham; but he not liking it, I got him to take some critical papers instead, and sent it to ‘The Dollar Newspaper,’ which bad offered $100 for the best story. It obtained the premium, and made a Great noise.” This tale, although founded upon trite and threadbare worn incidents, has an air of freshness and originality from the novelty of the scientific theory by which it is permeated: Poe may not have been the first to discover, but he certainly was the first to popularise, the discovery of the mathematical ratio in which the letters of the alphabet recur. In enshrining this technicality in the story of a hidden treasure, he adopted the very best method of fascinating the attention “of the greatest number.” In his two favourite and, apparently, contradictory styles of art, simplicity and suggestiveness, this tale is decidedly its author’s chef d’œuvre. Despite the timely aid of the one hundred dollar prize, Poe’s pecuniary affairs appear to have reached a very trying stage by this period, and nothing but incessant labour enabled him to keep himself and family from utter destitution. For The Pioneer, a monthly magazine edited by Mr. J. R. Lowell, and which Poe says “was an excellent work, but had limited circulation,” he wrote some reviews, of Griswold’s compilations, the of which were subsequently a very including one on one principal paragraphs embodied in an article on the “Rationale of Verse.” During the year he also contributed various critiques to Graham’s Magazine on “Channing” (a nephew of Dr. Channing), “Halleck,” “Cooper,” and other somewhat forgotten celebrities. In his article on Channing Poe thus alluded to Tennyson, a not very “popular” poet at that time: — “For Tennyson, as for a man imbued with the richest and rarest poetic impulses, we have an admiration — a reverence unbounded. His ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ his ‘Locksley Hall,’ his ’Sleeping Beauty,’ his ‘Lady of Shalott,’ his ‘Lotos Eaters,’ his ‘Œnone,’ and many other poems, are not surpassed, in all that gives to Poetry its distinctive value, by the compositions of any one living or dead. And his leading error — that error which renders him unpopular — a point, to be sure, of no particular importance — that very error, we say, is founded in truth — in a keen perception of the elements of poetic beauty. We allude to his quaintness — to what the world chooses to term his affectation. No true poet — no critic whose approbation is worth even a copy of the volume we now hold in our hand — will deny that he feels impressed, sometimes even to tears, by many of those very affectations which he is impelled by the prejudice of his education, or by the cant of his reason, to condemn. He should thus be led to examine the extent of the one, and to be wary of the deductions of the other. In fact, the profound intuition of Lord Bacon has supplied, in one of his immortal apothegms, the whole philosophy of the point at issue. ‘There is no exquisite beauty,’ he truly says, ‘without some strangeness in its proportions.’ We maintain, then, that Tennyson errs, not in his occasional quaintness, but in its continual and obtrusive excess. And, in accusing Mr. Channing of having been inoculated with virus from Tennyson, we merely mean to say that he has adopted and exaggerated that noble poet’s characteristic defect, having mistaken it for his principal merit!” The article on “Fitz-Greene Halleck” contained some very pertinent remarks on the adventitious reputations acquired by the pioneers of a country’s literature. “Those rank first who were first known,” declares Poe, adding that among the literary pioneers of America “there is not one whose productions have not been grossly overrated by his countrymen.” Such home truths were scarcely calculated to gain the poet “golden opinions” from his contemporaries, nor increase his popularity with his brother journalists. But he dared all published opinion, and in the very teeth of Cooper’s supreme popularity ventured upon saying, in reviewing one of that author’s forest stories: — “The interest, as usual, has no reference to plot, of which, indeed, our novelist seems altogether regardless, or incapable, but depends, first, upon the nature of the theme; secondly, upon a Robinson-Crusoe-like detail in its management; and thirdly, upon the frequently repeated portraiture of the half-civilised Indian. In saying that the interest depends, first, upon the nature of the theme, we mean to suggest that this theme — life in the wilderness — is one of intrinsic and universal interest, appealing to the heart of man in all phases; a theme, like that of life upon the ocean, so unfailingly omniprevalent in its power of arresting and absorbing attention, that while success or popularity is, with such a subject, expected as a matter of course, a failure might be properly regarded as conclusive evidence of imbecility on the part of the author. The two theses in question have been handled usque ad nauseam — and this through the instinctive perception of the universal interest which appertains to them. A writer, distrustful of his powers, can scarcely do better than discuss either one or the other. A man of genius will rarely, and should never, undertake either; first, because both are excessively hackneyed; and, secondly, because the reader never fails, in forming his opinion of a book, to make discount, either wittingly or unwittingly, for that intrinsic interest which is inseparable from the subject and independent of the manner in which it is treated. Very few, and very dull indeed, are those who do not instantaneously perceive the distinction; and thus there are two great classes of fictions — a popular and widely-circulated class, read with pleasure, but without admiration — in which the author is lost or forgotten; or remembered, if at all, with something very nearly akin to contempt; and then, a class, not so popular, nor so widely diffused, in which, at every paragraph, arises a distinctive and highly pleasurable interest, springing from our perception and appreciation of the skill employed, or the genius evinced in the composition. After perusal of the one class, we think solely of the book; after reading the other, chiefly of the author. The former class leads to popularity; the latter to fame. In the former case, the books sometimes live, while the authors usually die; in the latter, even when the works perish, the man survives. Among American writers of the less generally circulated, but more worthy and more artistic fictions, we may mention Mr. Brockden Brown, Mr. John Neal, Mr. Simms, Mr. Hawthorne; at the head of the more popular division we may place Mr. Cooper.” These caustic critiques notwithstanding, Poe’s literary labours for 1843 and the following year, taken altogether, were poorer in quality and quantity, and, doubtless, in remuneration, than in any succeeding, or preceding, year since his first adoption of literature as a profession. But these years were, it must be remembered, those in which the poet was first awakened to the fell certainty of his darling wife’s mortal illness — the dreadful years in which he first really succumbed to the temptations of temporary oblivion proffered by drugs and stimulants. In speaking of the “quantity” of his writings referable to this melancholy epoch of the poet’s career, original matter only must be considered as alluded to. In his mental incapacity to produce anything of his own, Poe appears to have resorted to translating from the French. From April 1843, until the beginning of 1845, a constant, an almost weekly, supply of translated tales and sketches appear over his initials in the pages of the New York New Mirror, and its successor, the Evening Mirror. This bread-and-butter work, executed under high pressure, must have been a most terrible infliction for Poe’s morbidly sensitive temperament, and, despite the few reviews taken by Graham’s, have barely sufficed to maintain the unfortunate man and his household above veritable starvation. Among the various schemes he endeavoured to plan during his leisure — his lucid — intervals, was the republication of his tales in periodic parts, but we have no evidence that anything more appeared than number one of “The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe,” containing “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Man that was Used Up.” In the winter of 1843, he