Edgar Poe And His Critics

ght. TENNYSON. With these keys we may partially unlock the mys- tery-PoEs Marginalia. DR. GRISWOLDS Memoir of Edgar Poe has been exten- sively read and circulated its perverted facts and baseless assumptions have been adopted into every subsequent mernoir 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. A3 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. Griswolds unjust memoir, these pages are submitted to his more candid readers and critics by ONE OF HI3 FRIENDS. TFIE author of thc Original Xernoir prefixcd to thc 1-olume, of Poes Illustrated Poems, rcceutly published by Kedficld, says, Of all the poets, whose lives havo been s puzzle oncl a mnstery to thc world, thcrc is not one more di5cult 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 ancl wondered over his lifc, have given up a11 attempts at dissection and diagnosis, turniug sv.rty with the solemnly whispel-ed warnjng to the world, and especially to its more brilliant and gifted intellccta, Beware 14 Edgar Poe and his Critics. He confesses that a history so htrange as that of Edgar Ioe should prompt us to new and nore search- ing methods of critical as well as moral analsis. But beforc such analysis can be institiltcd we must have filller, more dispassionate, and more authentic rccorda of the phenomena to be analysed. Thc m-ell n-rittcn, but vcq- brief mcmoir prefixed to thc Illustratcd Poems, and the I-arious slcctcllcs that have, from timc to timc, appearcd in the French and English periodicals, are all based on the narrative of Dr. Glismold, n narrative notoriously deficient in the great essentials of carrdor and authenticity. It is a rare accomplihment, PaFs onc of our most original writers, to hear a fitory as it is told still rarer to remcmbcr it aa heard, and rarest of all to tell it as it is remembered If Dr. Griswolds Memoir of Edgar Poc betrays the want of any, or 012, of these accomplislmcnts-if its remorseless iolations of the trust canfidcd to him arc such as to make the unhallowed act of Trelamcy towards the enshrouded form of the dead Byron stem Edgar Poe and his Critics. l5 guiltless in comparison, me must nerertheless encleaour to remember that the memorialist, himsclf, now claims from us that tender gracc of charity that he was unwilling, or unable, to accord to the man who trusted him as a fXend. It is not our puipose at prcscnt specially to review Dr. Grismolds numerous misrepresentations, and mis- statements. Some of the more injurious of these anccdotcs mcre disproved, during thc lifc of Dr. Griswold, in the Sew York Tribune, and other leading journals, without eliciting from him any public state- mcnt in explanation or apology. Quite recently me have had, through the coumns of thc Eomc Journal, the refutation of another calumnious story, which for ten years has been going the rounds of the English and Amcrican periodicals. We have authority for stating that many of the disgraceful ttnc.cdotcs, so industriously collected by Dr... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.