EDGAR ALLAN POE.*

• Edgar Allan Poe: Ids Life and Writings. By 3.11. Ingrain. In Two Volumed. London: Julio uosg. Tim darker shadows that have rested on time memory of Pots may now be said to be thoroughly dissipated. Mr. Ingram has followed up the traces he so ably indicated in the short memoir which he affixed to the edition of the ll'em-ks of Poe, published by Messrs. A. and C. Black, in 1874; and in these two volumes WO have the results of many years' research, set forth with all the energy and skill of a practised and a conscientionl biographer. Never, perhaps, has there been a more paradoxical fate than that of Poe. In his character there was a mingled strain of weird and unearthly dreanduluess, and of the most practical and almost prosaic realism, and a rare power to cope. with the most intricate calculations. Ile combined a fertile and visionary fancy with a most exacting critical sense, lie was more proud of his skill in unravelling cyphers than of his poetic powers, or of his graceful prose style. With a temperament that doomed him t3 a cousta.ut aviration. after enjoyments beyond those of coinmou earth, and incessantly tempted him to those indulgences which make a wreck of the intellectual and moral powers, he passed a large part of his life. in well-governed abstinence and in intent mental labour, yet at the last he succumbed ; and though he had through life piqued himself on his knowledge of men, and the power of sounding- the depths of men's character and motives, he committed his literary remains and his fair fame to the hands of unman who de- ceived him in life, and who, after death, made the fulfilment of the most sacred promise in the letter, the means of the most dastardly and determined of revenges that history records. Griswold, who had felt his lash, became Poe's friend, gained his confidence, and no sooner was Poe dead than be poured out the pent-up hatred of years. lie bound Mrs. Chums], Poe's mother- in-law, in a sort of silence, by obtaining from her a preface for his work before it was written, a point which, imp to the publica- tion of Mr. Ingram's final Life, we never rightly understood ; and in this preface Mrs. Clemm is made to bestow the highest praise on the wretch who hail libelled her "darling Eddy." Griswold not only perverted—he invented, he forged, he actually manufactured documents wholesale to suit his purposes ; and though many of his statements were met at the time by those wi-o knew Poe, still Griswold triumphed in the authority of his more permanent memorial, when the protests printed only in newspapers and magazines had been forgotten. It is odd to

think that after all these years it was left for an Englishman to disinter buried testimony, to hunt up living persons who knew Poe, and, in a word, to present the author of "The Raven" in

-true and faithful colours to America, as well as to England. Not, certainly, that Americans have not been busy. At least, one " original" memoir of Poe has been published in America

since Mr. Ingram began his labours—that of Mr. R. H. Stod- dard—and articles manifold, in newspapers, magazines, and reviews have appeared, showing that interest in Poe is still keen among his countrymen. Only the other day, Mr. E. C. Stedman, the poet, published an elaborate sketch in Scribner's Magazine, to certain things in which we are sorry to see that Mr. Ingram was compelled to take exception—especially to the citing of one Briggs as a favourable and friendly authority, when Poe, it seems, had been compelled to drag this very Briggs into court for libel, and gained his case with con- siderable damages—another instance, surely, of the paradoxical fate that has pursued Poe, when, after all Mr. Ingram's labours,

Briggs is quoted as favourable, while Griswold is denounced !

Mr. Ingram's merits are very great, and his book is very welcome. He sifts everything to the bottom, leaving no stone unturned, with the result that Poe comes before us, on the whole, an upright, faithful, and affectionate man, struggling bravely to surmount the "taint of blood," the terrible inherit- ance, the demon which Baudelaire rather untowardly, and with too ready an acceptance of Griswold's facts, declares transformed his debauches into a necessary "mnemonic means of work," in direct opposition to all Poe's published sentiments on the effect of stimulants, and his own plain, personal confessions that he had no pleasure whatever in the stimulants in which he was tempted to indulge. The man who deliberately declared that "life in the open air, the love of a woman, and a congenial task" were the three main elements in happiness, was not very likely to have endorsed Baudelaire's theory of his case. Mr. Ingram's memoir is valuable for effectively disposing not only of Griswold's data, but also of this school, and of the wicked and mischievous theory they have built upon them, to the effect that the finest genius inevitably owes something to indulgence and excess; that it depends on "mnemonic processes" such as we have hinted at, and is unproductive indeed save through them.

In the course of Mr. Ingram's book we come on some fine and suggestive morsels of criticism, such as that embodied in the following passage, suggested by those boyish visits of Poe to the grave of Mrs. Stannard, the " Helen " of his early poem :—

"Those willing to study Poe's idiosyncrasies should not object to linger over this little-known epoch of his story, because we are, in- deed, convinced that in those solitary churchyard vigils, with all their associated memories,' Mrs. Whitman has found a key to much that seems strange and abnormal in the poet's after life.' There can be no doubt that those who will seek the clue to the psychological phenomena of hia strange exertions—that intellect,' as Poe himself remarked, which would try to reduce his 'phantasm to the common- place '—must know, and even analyse, this phase of his being. The mind which could so steadfastly trace, step by step, the gruesome gradations of sentjenee after death, as does Edgar Poe in his weird 4 Colloquy of Monos and Una,' must, indeed, have been one that had frequently sought to wrest its earthly secrets from the charnel-house. Throughout life Poo was haunted by the idea that the dead are not wholly dead to consciousness,—was haunted, as Mrs. Whitman says, • by ideas of terror and indescribable awe at the thought of that mysterious waking sleep, that powerless and dim vitality, in which ." the dead" are preserved, according to our popular theology, "to await the general resurrection of the last day " '—and it was this feeling, those who knew him believe, that constrained him more than once from contracting another marriage after his beloved wife's death."

One little point, we are fain to think, emerges here, which Mr. Ingram has not indicated. It is the remarkable contrast that is to be traced between Poe's fanciful or dream impressions and his real impressions of death. So far as his fancy was con- cerned, he laid but a light hold on death, and indeed on the future world. It was something which supplied to him a new field of images—a "limbo of lunary souls "—scarce anything more. The pictures of the fancy were not with him intruded on

-the field of faith, either to disturb or complete it. They were -two entirely unrelated worlds. In Eureka we have a serious

scheme of the most complete Pantheism, in which all personality proper completely vanishes, and where absorption in the world- soul is the final law,—an absorption more mechanical than anything elsewhere to be found. Several times besides, as in the Marginalia,we find him making such notes as these :—"Who ever saw anything but horror on the face of the dead ?"—a sentiment wholly out of keeping with the obtaining ideas of

such tales as Mows and Una, and even Ligeia ; and one which could never have been made the starting-point of any artistic exercise. The whole matter suggests a radical question about Poe's sincerity in certain lines of work, and those, too, where he seems most eerie and impressive ; but on that we cannot mean- while enter here.

Mr. Ingram is critically riglit, however, in tracing to such poems as "Ulalume," "The Bridal Ballad," and the article "Undine " in Marginalia, a recurrence of idea which may have influenced him with respect to some practical points. It must be added, however, that even from his own planes of conception he is never more apt to glide into false passages and false verses than when he touches this often-recurring idea. Mr. Ingram is right in agreeing with Mrs. Whitman in the rejection of this verse from " Ulalame," but why ?—

" Said we then—the two, then—' Ah ! can it Have been that the woodlandish ghouls— The pitiful, the merciful ghouls— To bar up our path, and to ban it

From the secret that lies in these woods, Had drawn up the spectre of a planet From the limbo of lunary souls; This sinfully seintillant planet From the hell of the planetary souls ?"

Mr. Ingram dwells much and rightly on the peculiar influence Poe has exercised in France, and his wide acceptance there. This fact is not utterly without relation to the critical point on which we have dwelt, but we must give a passage from Mr. Ingram :— "Probably the most important of the foreign reviews of these Tales was the appreciative critique by Monsieur E. D. Forgues, that appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The reviewer, after an analysis of the various stories, proceeds to comment upon their short- ness, and the greater probability of fame such writings possess over the wire-drawn inanities of our novelists, concluding, with real prescience, that'ii sera opportun de les comparer qnand le temps aura consolide la reputation naissante du conteur etranger, et—qui salt ?—elaranle quelque peu cellos de nos romanciers feconds.' This and other highly flattering notices of the young foreigner gave an impetus to his reputation in Europe, which may be deemed to have culminated in the vraisemblant translations of Bandelaire, who, indeed, spent many years of his life in an endeavour to thoroughly identify his mind with that of his favourite litterateur, Edgar Poe, and who has reproduced many of Poe's finest tales with but little, if any, loss of vigour and originality. Indeed, it is chiefly due to the efforts a Baudelaire—to the, in some respects, kindred genius of him to whom Victor Hugo wrote, Vous avez dote lo ciel de l'art d'on no salt quel rayon macabre,— -vons avez cre6 un frisson noveau,'—that Poe's works have become standard classics in France. Edgar Pee, it may be pointed out, is the on'y American writer really well known and popular in that country. In Spain, his Historias Extraordinarias speedily acquired fame, and have been thoroughly nationalised ; whilst in Germany, his poems and tales both have been frequently translated ; also in Italy three or four separate translations of the latter have been published. Poe forwarded a copy of his Tales to Mrs. Browning, then Miss Barrett, who, writing to a correspondent shortly afterwards, remarked, There is a tale of his which I do not find in this volume, but which is going the rounds of the newspapers, about mesmerism, throwing us all into most admired disorder, or dreadful doubts as to whether it can be true, as the children say of ghost-stories. The certain thing in the tale in question is the power of the writer, and the faculty he has of making horrible improbabilities seem near and familiar.' The story to which Miss Browning referred was The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,' not published until December of that year."

The following may be taken as sufficient proof of his appli- cation and industry during one period of his career, his pro- prietorship of the Broadway Journal—for the outcome of which Griswold could only account by the falsehood that he was helped by a large body of friends—though elsewhere, and not far off, Griswold makes a point against Poe by saying that he had no friends :— "Week after week this work of reviewing books, authors, drama, and fine arts, and attacking or defending people and opinions, went on, with more or less skill, as if the poet were aided by some hundred- handed demon. Much parade was made in editorial notes of the literary help received from well-known litterateurs, but, beyond a few verses, little was contributed by any of the persons named. In the last week of October, Poe became proprietor as well as editor of the Journal, and inaugurated his assumption of the sole control of the publication by the commencement of an absurd disputation with some Boston newspapers. This petty, but lengthy journalistic war- fara arose thus :—In consequence of the furore excited by the lecture the poet gave in New York, in the early part of the year, he was invited to Boston to deliver a poem in the Lyceum of that city. It is stated that the lecture-course of this institution was waning in popu- larity, and that, Poe's fame being at its zenith, he was invited as a great attraction for the opening of tilt) winter session. Unfortunately, the poet accepted the invitation, having the intention, his earliest bio- grapher avers, of writing an original poem for the occasion, upon a

subject which had haunted his imagination for years; but his manifold cares and anxieties prevented the accomplishment of the purpose—if such he had—and he contented himself with the recitation of his juvenile poem of Al Aaraaf."

This refers to another period, about which there has been the same kind of misstatement :—

"During this period of mental incubation the poet published little, and that little had been chiefly written previous to 1847. Eureka greatly engaged his mind, but, so he frequently alleged, its publica- tion was only to be regarded as the stepping-stone to the furtherance of starting a magazine of his own, on a safe and certain basis. This life-long dream gradually began to assume a more definite shape than it had hitherto worn ; the name of the Stylus was permanently adopted for the projected publication, and a well-arranged plan de- vised for setting it afloat. Besides his 'prose-poem' few literary compositions were attempted, and of these the weird monody of " Malume " was the only one important. It was towards the close of this most immemorial year '—this year in which he had lost his cousin-bride—that this most musical, most melancholy' dirge was written. Like so much of his poetry, it was autobiographical, and on his own authority we have it, was in its basis, although not in the pre- cise correspondence of time, simply historical. Such was the poet's lonely midnight walk,' says Mrs. Whitman ; '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 bediarnonded 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 111alume.' "

Of the happy life which Poe lived at Fordham we have the fullest proof. In place of his having killed his young cousin and wife by cruel neglect, he was assiduous in his attentions, being himself prostrated by devoted nursing. The evidence of Mrs. Whitman and others amply proves that Mrs. Clemm was within the truth when she wrote :—

" Oh, how supremely happy we were in our dear cottage home ; We three lived only for each other. Eddie rarely left his beautiful home. I attended to his literary business, for he, poor fellow ! knew nothing about money transactions. How should he, brought up in luxury and extravagance ? He passed the greater part of the morning in his study, and, after he had finished his task for the day, he worked in our beautiful flower-garden, or read and recited poetry to us, Every one who knew him intimately loved him. Judges pronounced him the best conversationalist living. We had very little society except among the literati, but this was exceedingly pleasant."

It may be said that a fine study in heredity is suggested by the portraits given with these volumes. Poe's mother reveals the traits that stood for so much in the life of the son. Over- developed intellect, a kind of hectic intensity of apprehension, a super-subtlety and almost morbid refinement of feeling, are all indicated in the large luminous eyes, the wide brow and the dreamy lips, of the girlish mother's face, as we see it here. In Poe's portrait, we must in frankness say, there is added a vague and suspicious shadow—a possibility of dark and incommuni- cable secrets—some would even say a sinister glance, not improbably derived from the father, whose portrait, had it been also furnished, would have gone to form a most interesting trio.

Mr. Ingram has performed his self-chosen task with not a little skill. Whilst he is resolute to make an end of the vile calum- nies by which Poe's biography has been enveloped, he is ready to admit Poe's faults and lapses. We thus feel that we are brought into contact with a real man, and not with a shadow, and, though it is evident that Mr. Ingram aimed at a close statement of facts rather than at constructing an artistic pic- ture, our sympathy is commanded from first to last. Not only are the Griswold lies and forgeries disposed of, but the position taken by writers like Ba.udelaire, James Hannay, and Mr. Cnrwen, is conclusively shown to be as untenable as it is unsound.