Killis Campbell

“ And all the world knows that he sometimes drank to excess. But it is also clear—contrary to the popular assumption—that Poe was not a confirmed inebriate: the volume and the quality of his writings sufficiently demonstrate this; and it is not to be denied that he made repeated and manful efforts to shake off the tyranny of drink. Nor can we read his letters—in which we see the true Poe more plainly than elsewhere—without being convinced that he also possessed amiable traits and noble impulses. ”

“ Poe’s influence has been far-reaching. As poet, he has had many imitators both in his own country and abroad, but especially in France and England. [16] As romancer he has probably wielded a larger influence than any English writer since Scott. And as critic it is doubtful whether any other of his countrymen has contributed so much toward keeping the balance right between art-for-art’s-sake and didacticism. His fame abroad is admittedly larger than that of any other American writer, and his vogue has been steadily growing among his own people. ”

“ And despite the arrogance charged against him by Griswold and others, it is to be set down to his credit that he ungrudgingly conceded to Longfellow and Lowell the primacy among the American poets of his time and that he generously proclaimed Hawthorne to be without a peer in his peculiar field. His chief hobbies as critic were originality—and, per contra, imitation and plagiarism—“unity or totality of effect,” consistency and “keeping,” verisimilitude, “the heresy of the didactic,” provinciality, metrical imperfections of whatever sort, and verbal inaccuracies and infelicities ”

“ The bulk of his work in this field is journalistic in style and of ephemeral interest, much of it being the merest hack-writing; but there remains a small body of critical matter that possesses genuine worth and distinction, and that entitles Poe to an honourable place among the literary critics of America. [8] Assuredly no other American critic of his day, save Lowell, may take rank above him. This residue of good work comprises a score of masterly book-reviews, including the memorable notices of Longfellow's Ballads, Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, and Dickens's Barnaby Rudge ”

“ Hawthorne alone may be thought of as vying with him for this distinction; but although the New Englander is infinitely Poe’s superior in some respects—as in the creation of character and in wholesomeness and sanity—he must yield place to him in the creation of incident, in the construction of plot, and in the depicting of an intensely vivid situation. Whether or not we allow Poe the distinction of having invented the short story will depend on our interpretation of terms ”

“ As to Poe’s character and personality the most divergent views have been expressed. According to Griswold, whom he chose as his literary executor, Poe was a “naturally unamiable character,” arrogant, “irascible, envious,” without “moral susceptibility” or sense of gratitude, and exhibiting “scarcely any virtue in either his life or his writings.” According to the Richmond editor, John M. Daniel, who saw him frequently during the summer of 1849, he was sour of nature, capricious, selfish, a misanthrope, possessing “little moral sense.” ”

“ His most constant theme—if we exclude the poet himself, for few writers have so constantly reflected themselves in their work—is either the death of a beautiful woman and the grief occasioned thereby, or the realm of shades—the spirit-world—a subject to which he was strongly attracted, especially in his middle years. ”

“ By reason of his fondness for the terrible and for the outré, he is to be classed with the Gothic romancers: he makes constant use of Gothic machinery, of apparitions, cataleptic attacks, premature burial, and life after death. In several of his stories—as also in his long poems, Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf—he follows in the steps of the Orientalists. On the other hand, in some of his tales of incident he achieves a realism and a minuteness of detail that betray unmistakably the influence of Defoe. ”

“ He lies buried in the churchyard of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Baltimore.
Such are the leading facts that have been established concerning Poe’s life. But despite the labours of his biographers—and no American writer has had more and abler biographers—there are still certain periods of his life for which our knowledge is exceedingly meagre and unsatisfactory. We have, for instance, no specific knowledge as to how or where he spent the two months intervening between his departure from Richmond in March, 1827, and his mustering into the army at the end of May. ”

“ In the preceding December he had published at Baltimore a second volume of poems, made up largely of his earlier pieces revised, but containing his long poem Al Aaraaf, the most ambitious and the most promising of his earlier productions. At West Point he took high rank in his classes; but in October, 1830, John Allan had married a second time, and Poe, concluding that there was no longer any prospect of succeeding to a fortune, determined with the beginning of the new year to bring about his dismissal from the Academy. ”

“ In 1816 Allan described him as “thin as a razor,” but in 1819 he wrote that he was “growing wonderfully.”
§ 2. Education. On his return to Richmond in the summer of 1820, Poe entered an academy kept, first, by Joseph H. Clarke and, later, by William Burke, under whom he continued his work in the languages, earning the admiration of his fellows by his readiness at “capping verses” from the Latin and by his skill in declamation. He also wrote verses of his own, and it is said that a sheaf of his juvenilia was collected in 1822 or 1823 in the hope that they might be published in volume form. ”

“ But it is not to be denied that some of his best-known poems—as Lenore and The Raven—exhibit too much of artifice; that The Conqueror Worm and passages in still other poems approach too near to the melodramatic; and that, with many readers, his verses must suffer by reason of their sombreness of tone.
§ 13. Tales. Poe’s tales, which exceed in number his fully authenticated poems, have been held by some of the most judicious of his critics to constitute his chief claim to our attention. ”

“ Among the best known of his critical dicta is his characterization of the short story in his notice of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (1842) . Probably no other passage in American literary criticism has been quoted so often as the following extract from this review:
A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents ”

“ It is idle to complain that his best verses—as Israfel or The Haunted Palace—are superficial; and it is futile to contend that such poems as Annabel Lee or the sonnet To My Mother are not sincere, or that his poems, one and all, lack spontaneity. ”

“ In May, 1839, he became associate editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, but a year later he quarrelled with Burton and lost his place. From April, 1841, to May, 1842, he edited Graham’s Magazine. And in 1843 he had for a while some tacit connection with a Philadelphia weekly, The Saturday Museum. In Burton’s and in Graham’s he published a number of the ablest of his book-reviews and some of the most striking of his tales. At the end of 1839 he brought out at Philadelphia a collection of his tales, in two volumes ”