editor—of the Penn.—Magazine—and you are—hiccup—a fool." Of course this ended his relations with the "Gentleman's."
In November, 1840, Burton's miscellany was merged in "The Casket," owned by Mr. George R. Graham, and the new series received the name of its proprietor, who encouraged Poe in its editorship. His connection with "Graham's Magazine" lasted about a year and a half, and this was one of the most active and brilliant periods of his literary life. He wrote in it several of his finest tales and most trenchant criticisms, and challenged attention by his papers entitled "Autography," and those on cryptology and ciphers. In the first, adopting a suggestion of Lavater, he attempted the illustration of character from handwriting; and in the second, he assumed that human ingenuity could construct no secret writing which human ingenuity could not resolve; a not very dangerous proposition, since it implied no capacity in himself to discover every riddle of this kind that should be invented. He however succeeded with several difficult cryptographs that were sent to him, and the direction of his mind to the subject led to the composition of some of the tales of ratiocination which so largely increased his reputation. The infirmities which induced his separation from Mr. White and Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to seek for another editor; but Poe still remained in Philadelphia, engaged from time to time in various literary occupations, and in the vain effort to establish a journal of his own to be called "The Stylus." Although it requires considerable capital to carry on a monthly of the description he proposed, I think it would not have been difficult, with his well-earned fame as a magazinist, for him to have found a competent and suitable publisher, but for the unfortunate notoriety of his habits, and the failure in succession of three persons who had admired him for his genius and pitied him for his misfortunes, by every means that tact or friendship could suggest, to induce the consistency and steadiness of application indispensable to success in such pursuits. It was in the spring of 1848—more than a year after his dissociation from Graham—that he wrote the story of "The Gold Bug," for which he was paid a prize of one hundred dollars. It has relation to Captain Kyd's treasure, and is one of the most remarkable illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety of reasoning. The interest depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher. In the autumn of 1844 Poe removed to New York.
It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with him. His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the center of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved him with more than maternal devotion and constancy.
He had now written his most acute criticisms and his most admirable tales. Of tales, beside those to which I have referred, he had produced "The Descent into the Maelström," "The Premature Burial," "The Purloined Letter," "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," and its sequel, "The Mystery of Marie Roget." The scenes of the last three are in Paris, where the author's friend, the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, is supposed to reveal to him the curiosities of his experience and observation in matters of police. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" was first published in the autumn of 1842, before an extraordinary excitement, occasioned by the murder of a young girl named Mary Rogers, in the vicinity of New York, had quite subsided, though several months after the tragedy. Under the pretense of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, Mr. Poe followed in minute detail the essential while merely paralleling the inessential facts of the real murder. His object appears to have been to reinvestigate the case and to settle his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. There is a great deal of hair-splitting in the incidental discussions by Dupin, throughout all these stories, but it is made effective. Much of their popularity, as well as that of other tales of ratiocination by Poe, arose from their being in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious; but they have been thought more ingenious than they are, on account of their method and air of method. In "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," for instance, what ingenuity is displayed in unraveling a web which has been woven for the express purpose of unraveling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story. These works brought the name of Poe himself somewhat conspicuously before the law courts of Paris. The journal, La Commerce, gave a feuilleton in which "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" appeared in translation. Afterward a writer for La Quotidienne served it for that paper under the title of "L'Orang-Otang." A third party accused La Quotidienne of plagiary from La Commerce, and in the course of the legal investigation which ensued, the feuilletoniste of La Commerce proved to the satisfaction of the tribunal that he had stolen the tale entirely from Mr. Poe,4 whose merits were soon after canvassed in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and whose best tales were upon this impulse translated by Mme. Isabelle Meunier for the Democratic Pacifique and other French gazettes.
In New York Poe entered upon a new sort of life. Heretofore, from the Commencement of his literary career, he had resided in provincial towns. Now he was in a metropolis, and with a reputation which might have served as a passport to any society he might desire. For the first time he was received into circles capable of both the appreciation and the production of literature. He added to his fame soon after he came to the city by the publication of that remarkable composition "The Raven," of which Mr. Willis has observed that in his opinion "it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift;" and by that of one of the most extraordinary instances of the naturalness of detail–the verisimilitude of minute narrative—for which lie was preeminently distinguished, his "Mesmeric Revelation," purporting to be the last conversation of a somnambule, held with his magnetizer just before his death, which was followed by the yet more striking exhibition of abilities in the same way, entitled "The Facts in the case of M. Vaklemar," in which the subject is represented as having been mesmerized in articulo mortis. These pieces were reprinted throughout the literary and philosophical world, in nearly all languages, everywhere causing sharp and curious speculation, and where readers could be persuaded that they were fables, challenging a reluctant but genuine admiration.
He had not been long in New York before he was engaged by Mr. Willis and General Morris as a critic and assistant editor of The Mirror. He remained in this situation about six months, when he became associated with Mr. Briggs in the conduct of The Broadway Journal, which, in October 1845, passed entirely into his possession. He had now the long sought but never before enjoyed absolute control of a literary gazette, and, with much friendly assistance, he maintained it long enough to show, that whatever his genius, he had not the kind or degree of talent necessary to such a position. His chief critical writing in The Broadway Journal, were a paper on Miss Barrett's Poems, and a long discussion of the subject of plagiarism, with especial reference to Mr. Longfellow. In March, 1845, he had given a lecture at the Society Library upon the American poets, composed, for the most part, of fragments of his previously published reviewals; and in the autumn he accepted an invitation to read a poem before the Boston Lyceum. A week after the event, he printed in The Broadway Journal the following account of it, in reply to a paragraph in one of the city papers, founded upon a statement in the Boston Transcript.
"Our excellent friend, Major Noah, has suffered himself to be cajoled by that most beguiling of all beguiling little divinities, Miss Walter, of The Transcript. We have been looking all over her article with the aid of a taper, to see if we could discover a single syllable of truth in it—and really blush to acknowledge that we cannot. The adorable creature has been telling a parcel of fibs about us, by way of revenge for something that we did to Mr. Longfellow (who admires her very much) and for calling her 'a pretty little witch' into the bargain. The facts of the case seem to be these: We were invited
The controversy is wittily described in the following extract from a Parisian journal,
"Un grand journal accusait l'autre jour M. Old-Nick d'avoir volé un orang-outang. Cet intéressant animal flânait dans le feuilleton de
