At that time, at the houses of Rev. Dr. Dewey, Miss Anna C. Lynch, Mr. James Lawson, and others of scarcely less celebrity, might be found some of the finest spirits of any age, whose brilliancy entitled them to all the homage they received. It was in these circles that I first met Edgar Poe. He had criticised myself and some others, who could well survive it, very severely, but not entirely ungenerously, and I harbored no malice against him. His wife was at this time much an invalid, and rarely went out, but he was fond of naming her, and dwelling upon her loveliness of character. His manners at these reunions were refined and pleasing, and his scope of conversation that of the gentleman and the scholar. Whatever may have been his previous career, there was nothing in his look or manner to indicate the debauchee. […]
Poe was an enigma to himself no less than to others, and was only happy in the few hours snatched from the actual, and irradiated by the ideal. He used to take his paper on which to write, and cut it into strips; these he would glue together as he wrote, and convert into rolls, often measuring many yards in length. His penmanship was fine, even to the utmost elegance — clear and distinct, as if from the hand of a graver. He was not an idle man. He studied much, and his contributions to the literary world comprised several volumes. They always were original and startling. His somber pictures and intricate machinery have a peculiar fascination which few can resist, while a weird, unearthly light, half angel, half devil, like his own poor self, wrought a wizard spell upon the mind. He obtained several prizes for these, and his articles generally were in demand. Indeed, we all recollect the interest felt in every thing emanating from his pen-the relief it was from the dullness of ordinary writers — the certainty of something fresh and suggestive.
His critiques were read with avidity, not that he convinced the judgment, but because people felt their ability and their courage; he took the public idols so by the beard and knocked them right and left, till people saw they were no gods at all but miserable shams. Sometimes he found the genuine, and attempted the same process with a cool hardihood; but he is a pigmy in giant’s armor who does not come out magnified by the blows of an assailant. These critiques of Edgar Poe were live productions; he did not play with his pen, but wielded it. Right or wrong, all was real at the time. He was terribly in earnest. He was carried away as by an avalanche of words and emotions. Men and women with their books under their arms marched in grand procession before him, and he discovered the rich goods of one, the thefts of another, the divine art, the heavenly beauty, the profound meanings of some, while others were totally enigmatical and unrevealed to him. […]
As a prose writer, his stories are finished in the highest artistic manner; they are so carefully and artistically completed, that they cease to be fictions, and not being facts, they assume the aspect of a lie. Indeed, Poe believed his own fictions for the time being, or he would have you think so; he became a part of them; he filled up incident, and iterated congruities like a man who is savagely intent upon making you believe him, while underneath he carries a Mephistophelean smile that can not be hidden. We have no sympathy with his characters or their surroundings, but he holds us, nevertheless, as the Ancient Mariner held his victim; we read on with a ghastly interest, we hurry on to the close, we can not escape him; we are not pleased but fascinated, and that is his power, a sort of serpent–holding which we can not resist. He was truly a demonized man — a man possessed: in other words, a man of genius. He will be remembered when better writers, healthier, and more beneficent, are forgotten, for though sometimes incoherent, always morbid, and reckless of results, he touched a vein to which all will more or less respond. […]
