International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

"His changeable humors, his irregularities, his caprices, his total disregard of everything and body, save the fancy in his head, prevented him from doing well in the world. The evils and sufferings that poverty brought upon him, soured his nature, and deprived him of faith in human beings. This was evident to the eye—he believed in nobody, and cared for nobody. Such a mental condition of course drove away all those who would otherwise have stood by him in his hours of trial. He became, and was, an Ishmaelite."

After having, in no ungenerous spirit, presented the chief facts in Mr. Poe's history, not designedly exaggerating his genius, which none held in higher admiration, not bringing into bolder relief than was just and necessary his infirmities. I am glad to offer a portraiture of some of his social qualities, equally beautiful, and—so changeable and inconsistent was the man—as far as it goes, truthful. Speaking of him one day soon after his death, with the late Mrs. Osgood, the beauty of whose character had made upon Poe's mind that impression which it never failed to produce upon minds capable of the apprehension of the finest traits in human nature, she said she did not doubt that my view of Mr. Poe, which she knew indeed to be the common view, was perfectly just, as it regarded him in his relations with men; but to women he was different, and she would write for me some recollections of him, to be placed beside my harsher judgments in any notice of his life that the acceptance of the appointment to be his literary executor might render it necessary for me to give to the world. She was an invalid—dying of that consumption by which in a few weeks she was removed to heaven, and calling for pillows to support her while she wrote, she drew this sketch:

"You ask me, my friend, to write for you my reminiscences of Edgar Poe. For you, who knew and understood my affectionate interest in him, and my frank acknowledgment of that interest to all who had a claim upon my confidence, for you, I will willingly do so. I think no one could know him—no one has known him personally—certainly no woman-without feeling the same interest. I can sincerely say, that although I have frequently heard of aberrations on his part from the 'straight and narrow path,' I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and delicately-nurtured woman, there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, graceful, and almost tender reverence with which he invariably approached all women who won his respect. It was this which first commanded and always retained my regard for him.

"I have been told, that when his sorrows and pecuniary embarrassments had driven him to the use of stimulants, which a less delicate organization might have borne without injury, he was in the habit of speaking disrespectfully of the ladies of his acquaintance. It is difficult for me to believe this; for to me, to whom he came during the year of our acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defense; and though I rebuked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I could not but forgive the offense for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. Yet even were these sad rumors true of him, the wise and well-informed knew how to regard, as they would the impetuous anger of a spoiled infant, balked of its capricious will, the equally harmless and unmeaning phrensy of that stray child of Poetry and Passion. For the few unwomanly and slander-loving gossips who have injured him and themselves only by repeating his ravings, when in such moods they have accepted his society. I have only to vouchsafe my wonder and my pity. They cannot surely harm the true and pure, who, reverencing his genius, and pitying his misfortunes and his errors, endeavored, by their timely kindness and sympathy, to soothe his sad career.

"It was in his own simple yet poetical home, that to me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child-for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit, hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing, in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts—the 'rare and radiant' fancies as they flashed through his wonderful and ever-wakeful brain. I recollect, one morning, toward the close of his residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them; and I, who never could resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity-street. I found him just completing his series of papers entitled 'The Literati of New York.' 'See,' said he, displaying, in laughing triumph, several little rolls of narrow paper, (he always wrote thus for the press,) 'I am going to show you, by the difference of length in these, the different degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each of these, one of you is rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia, help me!' And one by one they unfolded them. At last they came to one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. 'And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?' said I. 'Hear her!' he cried, 'just as if her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself!'

"My first meeting with the poet was at the Astor House. A few days previous. Mr. Willis had handed me, at the table d'hote, that strange and thrilling poem entitled 'The Raven,' saying that the author wanted my opinion of it. Its effect upon me was so singular, so like that of 'weird unearthly music,' that it was with a feeling almost of dread, I heard he desired an introduction. Yet I could not refuse without seeming ungrateful, because I had just heard of his enthusiastic and partial eulogy of my writings, in his lecture on American Literature. I shall never forget the morning when I was summoned to the drawing-room by Mr. Willis to receive him. With his proud and beautiful head erect, his dark eyes flashing with the elective light of feeling and of thought, a peculiar, an inimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur in his expression and manner, he greeted me, calmly, gravely, almost coldly; yet with so marked an earnestness that I could not help being deeply impressed by it. From that moment until his death we were friends; although we met only during the first year of our acquaintance. And in his last words, ere reason had forever left her imperial throne in that overtasked brain, I have a touching memento of his undying faith and friendship.

"During that year, while traveling for my health, I maintained a correspondence with Mr. Poe, in accordance with the earnest entreaties of his wife, who imagined that my influence over him had a restraining and beneficial effect. It had, as far as this—that having solemnly promised me to give up the use of stimulants, he so firmly respected his promise and me, as never once, during our whole acquaintance, to appear in my presence when in the slightest degree affected by them. Of the charming love and confidence that existed between his wife and himself, always delightfully apparent to me, in spite of the many little poetical episodes, in which the impassioned romance of his temperament impelled him to indulge; of this I cannot speak too earnestly—too warmly. I believe she was the only woman whom he ever truly loved; and this is evinced by the exquisite pathos of the little poem lately written, called Annabel Lee, of which she was the subject, and which is by far the most natural, simple, tender and touchingly beautiful of all his songs. I have heard it said that it was intended to illustrate a late love affair of the author; but they who believe this, have in their dullness evidently misunderstood or missed the beautiful meaning latent in the most lovely of all its verses—where he says,

  "'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.'

"There seems a strange and almost profane disregard of the sacred purity and spiritual tenderness of this delicious ballad, in thus overlooking the allusion to the kindred angels and the heavenly Father of the lost and loved and unforgotten wife.

"But it was in his conversations and his letters, far more than in his published poetry and prose writings, that the genius of Poe was most gloriously revealed. His letters were divinely beautiful, and for hours I have listened to him, entranced by strains of such pure and almost celestial eloquence as I have never read or heard elsewhere. Alas! in the thrilling words of Stoddard,

  "'He might have soared in the morning light,  But he built his nest with the birds of night;  But he lie in dust, and the stone is rolled  Over the sepulcher dim and cold;  He has canceled the ill he has done or said,  And gone to the dear and holy dead.  Let us forget the path he trod,  And leave him now to his Maker, God.'"

The influence of Mr. Poe's aims and vicissitudes upon his literature, was more conspicuous in his later than in his earlier writings. Nearly all that he wrote in the last two or three years—including much of his best poetry,—was in some sense biographical: in draperies of his imagination, those who take the trouble to trace his steps, will perceive, but slightly concealed, the figure of himself. The lineaments here disclosed, I think, are not different from those displayed in his biography, which is but a filling up of the picture. Thus far the few criticisms of his life or works that I have ventured have been suggested by the immediate examination of the points to which they referred. I add but a few words of more general description.

In person he was below the middle height, slenderly but compactly formed, and in his better moments he had in an eminent degree that air of gentlemanliness which men of a lower order seldom succeed in acquiring.

His conversation was at times almost supramortal in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with astonishing skill, and his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart. His imagery was from the worlds which no mortals can see but with the vision of genius. Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty—so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his wonderful creations—till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers back to common and base existence, by vulgar fancies or exhibitions of the ignoblest passion.

He was at all times a dreamer—dwelling in ideal realms—in heaven or hell—peopled with the creatures and the accidents of his brain. He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer, (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned, but) for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry;—or, with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms; and all night, with drenched garments and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitution subjected him—close by the Aidenn which were those he loved—the Aidenn which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death. He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjugated his will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of "The Raven" was probably much more nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were very intimate with him, a reflection and an echo of his own history. He was that bird's

  "–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.'"

Every genuine author, in a greater or less degree, leaves in his works, whatever their design, traces of his personal character; elements of his immortal being, in which the individual survives the person. While we read the pages of the "Fall of the House of Usher," or of "Mesmeric Revelations," we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests one, and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indications of the idiosyncracies—of what was most remarkable and peculiar—in the author's intellectual nature. But we see here only the better phases of his nature, only the symbols of his juster action, for his harsh experience had deprived him of all faith, in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities of the social world, and the whole system with him was an imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with villany, while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the success of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian, in Bulwer's novel of "The Caxtons." Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy—his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere—had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed—not shine, not serve—succeed, that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit.

* * * * *

"LAUGH AND GET FAT!"

BY JOHN KENYON

Lack we motives to laugh? Are not all things, anything, everything, to be laughed at? And if nothing were to be seen, felt, heard, or understood, we would laugh at it too! Merry Beggars.

  I  There's nothing here on earth deserves    Half of the thought we waste about it,  And thinking but destroys the nerves,    When we could do so well without it:  If folks would let the world go round,    And pay their tithes, and eat their dinners,  Such doleful looks would not be found,    To frighten us poor laughing sinners.  Never sigh when you can sing,  But laugh, like me, at everything!II  One plagues himself about the sun,    And puzzles on, through every weather,  What time he'll rise,—how long he'll run,—    And when he'll leave us altogether;  Now matters it a pebble-stone,    Whether he shines at six or seven?  If they don't leave the sun alone,    At last they'll plague him out of heaven!  Never sigh when you can sing  But laugh, like me, at everything!III  Another spins from out his brains    Fine cobweb, to amuse his neighbors,  And gets, for all his toils and pains,    Reviewed, and laughed at for his labors:  Fame is his star! and fame is sweet;    And praise is pleasanter than honey,—  I write at just so much a sheet,    And Messrs Longman pay the money!  Never sigh when you can sing,  But laugh, like me, at everything!IV  My brother gave his heart away    To Mercandests[*illegible], when he met her,  She married Mr. Ball one day—    He's gone to Sweden to forget her  I had a charmer, too—and sighed,    And raved all day and night about her;  She caught a cold, poor thing! and died,    And I—am just as fat without her  Never sigh when you can sing,  But laugh, like me, at everything!V  For tears are vastly pretty things,    But make one very thin and taper;  And sighs are music's sweetest strings,    But sound most beautiful—on paper!  "Thought" is the Sage's brightest star,    Her gems alone are worth his finding;  But as I'm not particular,    Please God! I'll keep on "never minding."  Never sigh when you can sing,  But laugh, like me, at everything!VI  Oh! in this troubled world of ours,    A laughter-mine's a glorious treasure;  And separating thorns from flowers,    Is half a pain and half a pleasure:  And why be grave instead of gay?    Why feel a-thirst while folks are quaffing?—  Oh! trust me, whatsoe'er they say,    There's nothing half so good as laughing!  Never sigh when you can sing,  But laugh, like me, at everything!* * * * *

FROM THE GERMAN OF LENAU

  Over that ancient story grass has grown;    Myself, I scarce recall my own transgression;  Yet, when at twilight hour, I stray alone,    At times I feel as I could make confession.  But turning from the Past as all unknown.    I harbor in the Present! Such opression  Of futile sad remorse by me be flown!    Why summon bootless woes to Memory's session?  When Death, that scythesman stern, thy frame destroyeth,    He'll lop the grass, too, which thing actions covers.  And that forgotten deed shall cling about thee!  Back to the Past! Not vainly Care employeth  Labor and pain to pierce where Darkness hovers;  Till sin is slain within, it cannot die without thee!THE LEADER* * * * *

EBBA: OR THE EMIGRANTS IN SWEDEN

TRANSLATION FOR THE INTERNATIONAL, FROM THE FRENCH OF X. MARMIERBY FAYETTE ROBINSON

Toward the end of November, in the year 1831, one of those rude sleighs, met with in winter on all the roads of Sweden, passed rapidly along the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. For several hours the pale winter sun had been like a lamp extinguished beneath the horizon. The skies, however, had that transparent clearness which is one of the charms of the nights of the north. Myriads of stars covered its surface with a network of gold, and glittered again on the snow which covered the surface of the earth. The wind was calm: space was silent. Nothing was heard but the sounds of the hoofs of two horses attached to a light vehicle, and occasionally the voice of the Swedish postillion, who from time to time urged them on by a word of affectionate reproach, or a joyous eulogium. A traveler sat in the sleigh, wrapped up in heavy furs, and from time to time cast aside the folds of the cloak which covered him, to take a thoughtful glance around him. A stranger in Sweden, he was traveling through it, and during the last month had experienced a multitude of emotions, altogether unexpected, and which seemed to increase as he drew near the north. After having crossed the southern provinces of that kingdom bounded by the Baltic, and those on the vast silver basin of Lake Milar, seen Stockholm in all its pride, Upsal, the city of the ancient gods, and Gébel, the active and industrious, he found himself amid a region entirely silent, inanimate, and wrapped in a snowy pall. Soon he penetrated the bosom of a long pine forest, the shafts of which seemed, as it were, giants wrapped in cloaks of white. Now he ascended steep hills, then rapidly hurried to the Gulf, the shores of which the waves had made to look like point-lace, and looked up at the immense rocks on which the waters broke.

Everywhere the same silence existed. Far in the distance a light was seen to shine, either the glitter of a woodman's fire, or the midnight torch kindled by some invalid. This light, fixed like a point in space, was but another evidence of the isolation of man in these regions.

In this inanimateness of nature, in this sad uniformity of plains of snow, in this desert of fields and woods, such sadness, such distress was evident, that the heart of the traveler, who however was young and brave, was filled with a kind of mysterious fear. Before him, among all the other stars, shone that of the pole, that faithful light which is nightly kindled like a pharos, and in the seasons of storm, smiles on the pilgrim who has gone astray, and guides the navigator's steps. The stranger, for a few instants, kept his eyes fixed on this benevolent light, as if to find some relief to the impressions he had received from the melancholy appearance of the earth. He then tapped the postillion on the shoulder, and said to him, with the laconism compulsory on him from his knowledge of the Swedish tongue, "Aland?" This was the name of the halting-place. "Intet tu," (not yet,) replied the postillion, as he took his arm from the sheepskin which surrounded his shoulders. At the same time he cracked his whip, as if to show how impatient he was to reach his halting-place. The animals, thus excited, set forth at a long gallop across that portion of the Gulf where the frequent passage of the fishermen had to a degree leveled the snow, and ascended with much difficulty a hill covered by trees at least a hundred years old. At the extremity of this forest, the postillion turned toward the traveler, and with his finger pointed out to him a spot so distant that it could be distinguished with difficulty. "Aland!" said he; and with his voice and gestures he encouraged his horses, who doubled their ardor, as if they comprehended that this was the last effort which would be required of them before they reached their destination.

The sleigh soon halted at the foot of a vast wooden house. When the driver cracked his whip, when the sound of the bells was heard, the door opened, and the stranger, it was evident to see, was expected. A servant advanced to meet him, with a lantern in his hand, and led him through a long corridor, introducing him into a room where a man with gray hair sat in an arm-chair.

"My uncle!" said the traveler, rushing toward him.

"Ireneus, my dear child!" said the old man. They stood in silence, clasped in each other's arms, until the old man, taking the young one by the hand, led him to a table on which two lights were burning, looked at him with complaisance, and said, "It is indeed yourself—it is the likeness of my poor brother: the same eyes, the same proud and resolute air. You look as he did thirty years ago, when he was about to cast himself amid the dangers of war; when, unfortunately, he embraced me for the last time."

"My dear uncle," said Ireneus, "instead of the brother you have lost, a son comes to you. In my early youth, my mother taught me to love you. That duty I shall be glad to discharge."

"The very sound of his voice!" continued the old man, who still looked at him; "the very sparkle of his eye! No painter could have made a more exact portrait. May you, however, have a far different destiny. Fatality weighs on the family of Vermondans. May you, the only vigorous offshoot of that old race of soldiers, already stricken by misfortune, already an exile from your country, never learn, as your father and I did, how bitter is the bread of the stranger—how difficult it is to go up and down the stranger's staircase. But what do I say? You are in another father's house. You come to it like a long-expected child, and you meet with two sisters." Then going toward the door of another room, he said, "Ebba, Alete, come to welcome your cousin."

Two young girls entered immediately. One of them was lively and active, with black eyes and a ruddy complexion; the other pale, fair, and delicate. The first gave her hand gaily to Ireneus, and kissed him on both cheeks; the other advanced timidly, and with downcast eyes, leaning her brow forward to be kissed.