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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 1 of the Raven Edition

E >> Edgar Allan Poe >> The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 1 of the Raven Edition



The Raven Edition

THE WORKS OF
EDGAR ALLAN POE

IN FIVE VOLUMES




VOLUME I Contents

Edgar Allan Poe, An Appreciation
Life of Poe, by James Russell Lowell
Death of Poe, by N. P. Willis
The Unparalled Adventures of One Hans Pfall
The Gold Bug
Four Beasts in One
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
The Balloon Hoax
MS. Found in a Bottle
The Oval Portrait




EDGAR ALLAN POE

AN APPRECIATION


Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "never--never more!"

THIS stanza from "The Raven" was recommended by James Russell Lowell
as an inscription upon the Baltimore monument which marks the resting
place of Edgar Allan Poe, the most interesting and original figure in
American letters. And, to signify that peculiar musical quality of
Poe's genius which inthralls every reader, Mr. Lowell suggested this
additional verse, from the "Haunted Palace":

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling ever more,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.


Born in poverty at Boston, January 19 1809, dying under painful
circumstances at Baltimore, October 7, 1849, his whole literary
career of scarcely fifteen years a pitiful struggle for mere
subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented by his earliest
biographer, Griswold, how completely has truth at last routed
falsehood and how magnificently has Poe come into his own, For "The
Raven," first published in 1845, and, within a few months, read,
recited and parodied wherever the English language was spoken, the
half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year later his brother
poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal to the admirers of
genius on behalf of the neglected author, his dying wife and her
devoted mother, then living under very straitened circumstances in a
little cottage at Fordham, N. Y.:

"Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of
genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of
our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from bodily
illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of
public charity. There is no intermediate stopping-place, no
respectful shelter, where, with the delicacy due to genius and
culture, he might secure aid, till, with returning health, he would
resume his labors, and his unmortified sense of independence."

And this was the tribute paid by the American public to the master
who had given to it such tales of conjuring charm, of witchery and
mystery as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia"; such
fascinating hoaxes as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall,"
"MSS. Found in a Bottle," "A Descent Into a Maelstrom" and "The
Balloon Hoax"; such tales of conscience as "William Wilson," "The
Black Cat" and "The Tell-tale Heart," wherein the retributions of
remorse are portrayed with an awful fidelity; such tales of natural
beauty as "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim"; such
marvellous studies in ratiocination as the "Gold-bug," "The Murders
in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter" and "The Mystery of Marie
Roget," the latter, a recital of fact, demonstrating the author's
wonderful capability of correctly analyzing the mysteries of the
human mind; such tales of illusion and banter as "The Premature
Burial" and "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether"; such bits
of extravaganza as "The Devil in the Belfry" and "The Angel of the
Odd"; such tales of adventure as "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym"; such papers of keen criticism and review as won for Poe the
enthusiastic admiration of Charles Dickens, although they made him
many enemies among the over-puffed minor American writers so
mercilessly exposed by him; such poems of beauty and melody as "The
Bells," "The Haunted Palace," "Tamerlane," "The City in the Sea" and
"The Raven." What delight for the jaded senses of the reader is this
enchanted domain of wonder-pieces! What an atmosphere of beauty,
music, color! What resources of imagination, construction, analysis
and absolute art! One might almost sympathize with Sarah Helen
Whitman, who, confessing to a half faith in the old superstition of
the significance of anagrams, found, in the transposed letters of
Edgar Poe's name, the words "a God-peer." His mind, she says, was
indeed a "Haunted Palace," echoing to the footfalls of angels and
demons.

"No man," Poe himself wrote, "has recorded, no man has dared to
record, the wonders of his inner life."

In these twentieth century days -of lavish recognition-artistic,
popular and material-of genius, what rewards might not a Poe claim!

Edgar's father, a son of General David Poe, the American
revolutionary patriot and friend of Lafayette, had married Mrs.
Hopkins, an English actress, and, the match meeting with parental
disapproval, had himself taken to the stage as a profession.
Notwithstanding Mrs. Poe's beauty and talent the young couple had a
sorry struggle for existence. When Edgar, at the age of two years,
was orphaned, the family was in the utmost destitution. Apparently
the future poet was to be cast upon the world homeless and
friendless. But fate decreed that a few glimmers of sunshine were to
illumine his life, for the little fellow was adopted by John Allan, a
wealthy merchant of Richmond, Va. A brother and sister, the remaining
children, were cared for by others.

In his new home Edgar found all the luxury and advantages money could
provide. He was petted, spoiled and shown off to strangers. In Mrs.
Allan he found all the affection a childless wife could bestow. Mr.
Allan took much pride in the captivating, precocious lad. At the age
of five the boy recited, with fine effect, passages of English poetry
to the visitors at the Allan house.

From his eighth to his thirteenth year he attended the Manor House
school, at Stoke-Newington, a suburb of London. It was the Rev. Dr.
Bransby, head of the school, whom Poe so quaintly portrayed in
"William Wilson." Returning to Richmond in 1820 Edgar was sent to the
school of Professor Joseph H. Clarke. He proved an apt pupil. Years
afterward Professor Clarke thus wrote:

"While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine
poetry; the boy was a born poet. As a scholar he was ambitious to
excel. He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness. He
had a sensitive and tender heart and would do anything for a friend.
His nature was entirely free from selfishness."

At the age of seventeen Poe entered the University of Virginia at
Charlottesville. He left that institution after one session. Official
records prove that he was not expelled. On the contrary, he gained a
creditable record as a student, although it is admitted that he
contracted debts and had "an ungovernable passion for card-playing."
These debts may have led to his quarrel with Mr. Allan which
eventually compelled him to make his own way in the world.

Early in 1827 Poe made his first literary venture. He induced Calvin
Thomas, a poor and youthful printer, to publish a small volume of his
verses under the title "Tamerlane and Other Poems." In 1829 we find
Poe in Baltimore with another manuscript volume of verses, which was
soon published. Its title was "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Other Poems."
Neither of these ventures seems to have attracted much attention.

Soon after Mrs. Allan's death, which occurred in 1829, Poe, through
the aid of Mr. Allan, secured admission to the United States Military
Academy at West Point. Any glamour which may have attached to cadet
life in Poe's eyes was speedily lost, for discipline at West Point
was never so severe nor were the accommodations ever so poor. Poe's
bent was more and more toward literature. Life at the academy daily
became increasingly distasteful. Soon he began to purposely neglect
his studies and to disregard his duties, his aim being to secure his
dismissal from the United States service. In this he succeeded. On
March 7, 1831, Poe found himself free. Mr. Allan's second marriage
had thrown the lad on his own resources. His literary career was to
begin.

Poe's first genuine victory was won in 1833, when he was the
successful competitor for a prize of $100 offered by a Baltimore
periodical for the best prose story. "A MSS. Found in a Bottle" was
the winning tale. Poe had submitted six stories in a volume. "Our
only difficulty," says Mr. Latrobe, one of the judges, "was in
selecting from the rich contents of the volume."

During the fifteen years of his literary life Poe was connected with
various newspapers and magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia and New
York. He was faithful, punctual, industrious, thorough. N. P. Willis,
who for some time employed Poe as critic and sub-editor on the
"Evening Mirror," wrote thus:

"With the highest admiration for Poe's genius, and a willingness to
let it alone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by
common report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties,
and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on,
however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. We saw but
one presentiment of the man-a quiet, patient, industrious and most
gentlemanly person.

"We heard, from one who knew him well (what should be stated in all
mention of his lamentable irregularities), that with a single glass
of wine his whole nature was reversed, the demon became uppermost,
and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his
will was palpably insane. In this reversed character, we repeat, it
was never our chance to meet him."

On September 22, 1835, Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in
Baltimore. She had barely turned thirteen years, Poe himself was but
twenty-six. He then was a resident of Richmond and a regular
contributor to the "Southern Literary Messenger." It was not until a
year later that the bride and her widowed mother followed him thither.

Poe's devotion to his child-wife was one of the most beautiful
features of his life. Many of his famous poetic productions were
inspired by her beauty and charm. Consumption had marked her for its
victim, and the constant efforts of husband and mother were to secure
for her all the comfort and happiness their slender means permitted.
Virginia died January 30, 1847, when but twenty-five years of age. A
friend of the family pictures the death-bed scene--mother and husband
trying to impart warmth to her by chafing her hands and her feet,
while her pet cat was suffered to nestle upon her bosom for the sake
of added warmth.

These verses from "Annabel Lee," written by Poe in 1849, the last
year of his life, tell of his sorrow at the loss of his child-wife:

I was a child and _she_ was a child,
In a kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with _a _love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago;
In this kingdom by the sea.
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea,


Poe was connected at various times and in various capacities with the
"Southern Literary Messenger" in Richmond, Va.; "Graham's Magazine"
and the "Gentleman's Magazine" in Philadelphia.; the "Evening
Mirror," the "Broadway journal," and "Godey's Lady's Book" in New
York. Everywhere Poe's life was one of unremitting toil. No tales and
poems were ever produced at a greater cost of brain and spirit.

Poe's initial salary with the "Southern Literary Messenger," to which
he contributed the first drafts of a number of his best-known tales,
was $10 a week! Two years later his salary was but $600 a year. Even
in 1844, when his literary reputation was established securely, he
wrote to a friend expressing his pleasure because a magazine to which
he was to contribute had agreed to pay him $20 monthly for two pages
of criticism.

Those were discouraging times in American literature, but Poe never
lost faith. He was finally to triumph wherever pre-eminent talents
win admirers. His genius has had no better description than in this
stanza from William Winter's poem, read at the dedication exercises
of the Actors' Monument to Poe, May 4, 1885, in New York:

He was the voice of beauty and of woe,
Passion and mystery and the dread unknown;
Pure as the mountains of perpetual snow,
Cold as the icy winds that round them moan,
Dark as the eaves wherein earth's thunders groan,
Wild as the tempests of the upper sky,
Sweet as the faint, far-off celestial tone of angel
whispers, fluttering from on high,
And tender as love's tear when youth and beauty die.


In the two and a half score years that have elapsed since Poe's death
he has come fully into his own. For a while Griswold's malignant
misrepresentations colored the public estimate of Poe as man and as
writer. But, thanks to J. H. Ingram, W. F. Gill, Eugene Didier, Sarah
Helen Whitman and others these scandals have been dispelled and Poe
is seen as he actually was-not as a man without failings, it is true,
but as the finest and most original genius in American letters. As
the years go on his fame increases. His works have been translated
into many foreign languages. His is a household name in France and
England-in fact, the latter nation has often uttered the reproach
that Poe's own country has been slow to appreciate him. But that
reproach, if it ever was warranted, certainly is untrue.

W. H. R.

~~~~~~ End of Text ~~~~~~

==========

EDGAR ALLAN POE{*1}

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL


THE situation of American literature is anomalous. It has no centre,
or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes. It is,
divided into many systems, each revolving round its several suns, and
often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a
milk-and-water way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not
a great central heart from which life and vigor radiate to the
extremities, but resembles more an isolated umbilicus stuck down as
near a's may be to the centre of the land, and seeming rather to tell
a legend of former usefulness than to serve any present need. Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, each has its literature almost more distinct
than those of the different dialects of Germany; and the Young Queen
of the West has also one of her own, of which some articulate rumor
barely has reached us dwellers by the Atlantic.

Perhaps there is no task more difficult than the just criticism of
contemporary literature. It is even more grateful to give praise
where it is needed than where it is deserved, and friendship so often
seduces the iron stylus of justice into a vague flourish, that she
writes what seems rather like an epitaph than a criticism. Yet if
praise be given as an alms, we could not drop so poisonous a one into
any man's hat. The critic's ink may suffer equally from too large an
infusion of nutgalls or of sugar. But it is easier to be generous
than to be just, and we might readily put faith in that fabulous
direction to the hiding place of truth, did we judge from the amount
of water which we usually find mixed with it.

Remarkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life of
imaginative men, but Mr. Poe's biography displays a vicissitude and
peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with. The offspring of
a romantic marriage, and left an orphan at an early age, he was
adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whose barren marriage-bed
seemed the warranty of a large estate to the young poet.

Having received a classical education in England, he returned home
and entered the University of Virginia, where, after an extravagant
course, followed by reformation at the last extremity, he was
graduated with the highest honors of his class. Then came a boyish
attempt to join the fortunes of the insurgent Greeks, which ended at
St. Petersburg, where he got into difficulties through want of a
passport, from which he was rescued by the American consul and sent
home. He now entered the military academy at West Point, from which
he obtained a dismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his
adopted father, by a second marriage, an event which cut off his
expectations as an heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his
name was not mentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this
regard, and he committed himself at once to authorship for a support.
Previously to this, however, he had published (in 1827) a small
volume of poems, which soon ran through three editions, and excited
high expectations of its author's future distinction in the minds of
many competent judges.

That no certain augury can be drawn from a poet's earliest lispings
there are instances enough to prove. Shakespeare's first poems,
though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness, give but a
very faint promise of the directness, condensation and overflowing
moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however, Shakespeare is hardly a
case in point, his "Venus and Adonis" having been published, we
believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton's Latin verses show
tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of
classic models, but give no hint of the author of a new style in
poetry. Pope's youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly
unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his
later productions. Collins' callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign
of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We
have never thought that the world lost more in the "marvellous boy,"
Chatterton, than a very ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated
dulness. Where he becomes original (as it is called), the interest of
ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White's promises were
indorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but surely with no
authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditional piety,
which to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less objectionable in
the retired closet of a diary, and in the sober raiment of prose.
They do not clutch hold of the memory with the drowning pertinacity of
Watts; neither have they the interest of his occasional simple, lucky
beauty. Burns having fortunately been rescued by his humble station
from the contaminating society of the "Best models," wrote well and
naturally from the first. Had he been unfortunate enough to have had
an educated taste, we should have had a series of poems from which, as
from his letters, we could sift here and there a kernel from the mass
of chaff. Coleridge's youthful efforts give no promise whatever of
that poetical genius which produced at once the wildest, tenderest,
most original and most purely imaginative poems of modem times.
Byron's "Hours of Idleness" would never find a reader except from an
intrepid and indefatigable curiosity. In Wordsworth's first preludings
there is but a dim foreboding of the creator of an era. From Southey's
early poems, a safer augury might have been drawn. They show the
patient investigator, the close student of history, and the unwearied
explorer of the beauties of predecessors, but they give no assurances
of a man who should add aught to stock of household words, or to the
rarer and more sacred delights of the fireside or the arbor. The
earliest specimens of Shelley's poetic mind already, also, give tokens
of that ethereal sublimation in which the spirit seems to soar above
the regions of words, but leaves its body, the verse, to be entombed,
without hope of resurrection, in a mass of them. Cowley is generally
instanced as a wonder of precocity. But his early insipidities show
only a capacity for rhyming and for the metrical arrangement of
certain conventional combinations of words, a capacity wholly
dependent on a delicate physical organization, and an unhappy memory.
An early poem is only remarkable when it displays an effort of
_reason, _and the rudest verses in which we can trace some conception
of the ends of poetry, are worth all the miracles of smooth juvenile
versification. A school-boy, one would say, might acquire the regular
see-saw of Pope merely by an association with the motion of the
play-ground tilt.

Mr. Poe's early productions show that he could see through the verse
to the spirit beneath, and that he already had a feeling that all the
life and grace of the one must depend on and be modulated by the will
of the other. We call them the most remarkable boyish poems that we
have ever read. We know of none that can compare with them for
maturity of purpose, and a nice understanding of the effects of
language and metre. Such pieces are only valuable when they display
what we can only express by the contradictory phrase of _innate
experience. _We copy one of the shorter poems, written when the
author was only fourteen. There is a little dimness in the filling
up, but the grace and symmetry of the outline are such as few poets
ever attain. There is a smack of ambrosia about it.

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!


It is the tendency of the young poet that impresses us. Here is no
"withering scorn," no heart "blighted" ere it has safely got into its
teens, none of the drawing-room sansculottism which Byron had brought
into vogue. All is limpid and serene, with a pleasant dash of the
Greek Helicon in it. The melody of the whole, too, is remarkable. It
is not of that kind which can be demonstrated arithmetically upon the
tips of the fingers. It is of that finer sort which the inner ear
alone _can _estimate. It seems simple, like a Greek column, because
of its perfection. In a poem named "Ligeia," under which title he
intended to personify the music of nature, our boy-poet gives us the
following exquisite picture:

Ligeia! Ligeia!
My beautiful one,
Whose harshest idea
Will to melody run,
Say, is it thy will,
On the breezes to toss,
Or, capriciously still,
Like the lone albatross,
Incumbent on night,
As she on the air,
To keep watch with delight
On the harmony there?

John Neal, himself a man of genius, and whose lyre has been too
long capriciously silent, appreciated the high merit of these and
similar passages, and drew a proud horoscope for their author.

Mr. Poe had that indescribable something which men have agreed to
call _genius_. No man could ever tell us precisely what it is, and
yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its presence and its
power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has no such
magnetism. Larger of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are
wanting. Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works have
still one- foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the very workings
of Nature herself, so that a sunset shall seem like a quotation from
Dante, and if Shakespeare be read in the very presence of the sea
itself, his verses shall but seem nobler for the sublime criticism of
ocean. Talent may make friends for itself, but only genius can give
to its creations the divine power of winning love and veneration.
Enthusiasm cannot cling to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he
ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a
disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are
possessed and carried away by their demon, While talent keeps him, as
Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of his sword. To the
eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder
that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil who throng
continually around it. No man of mere talent ever flung his inkstand
at the devil.

When we say that Mr. Poe had genius, we do not mean to say that he
has produced evidence of the highest. But to say that he possesses it
at all is to say that he needs only zeal, industry, and a reverence
for the trust reposed in him, to achieve the proudest triumphs and
the greenest laurels. If we may believe the Longinuses; and
Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the
loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether
for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of
our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most
thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must
make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical
temperament, if love of solitude be, as immemorial tradition asserts,
a necessary part of their idiosyncrasy.

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