University of Virginia Library

III

IN THE CHAPEL

SUNDAY evening Dr. William A. Barr,
of St. Paul's Church, Lynchburg, Va.,
preached in the University Chapel on the text
"Whosoever would become great among you
shall be your servant," his thesis being that a
man is great in proportion to his loyalty to his
highest visions. He made the following
reference to Poe:

I believe that the true Poe was an example
of the very kind of greatness I have described.
The possession of genius alone does not make
men great. It is the character back of genius.
And Poe was consecrated through all his life
to his vision of beauty and truth. He held to
it with a tenacity that would not be daunted
and much of the apparent vagabondage may be
of the kind that Christ enjoined upon his first
disciples when he told them that if one city

would not receive them, to shake its dust from
their feet and go to another. But after all,
wherein consists Poe's great moral delinquency?
From all that is known of his life
and work he was pure as the snow, and may
well stand as a rebuke to the modern literary
horde who appear to suppose that to be interesting
they must be salacious. Then as to his
relations in life, whether as ward, as husband,
or as son to the mother of his beautiful
Annabel Lee, he appears to have fulfilled these
relations with tenderness, fidelity and love. If
it be true that he had an infirmity of temper,
it is also true that some of the most illustrious
saints in history have spent their lives in a
struggle with the same infirmity. And so at
last his moral delinquency seems to be reduced
to a single failing and this but on occasions
when he indulged too freely in the cup.
According, however, to his own explanation,
this was the result of a nervous condition into
which his constitution at times fell. It is fair
to accept his explanation in the light of the
modern view that this failing is at times the
result of disease and for this to give him our
compassion.

We have a pen picture of Poe by N. P.
Willis, in whose employ he spent a number of
months. It concludes with these words:
"Through all this considerable period we had
seen but one presentment of the man: a quiet,
patient, industrious and most gentlemanly person,
commanding the utmost respect and good
feeling by his unvarying deportment and
ability."

I submit that a man who could have appeared
to Mr. Willis day after day and month after
month in this light could not have been so
bad. And yet we are obliged to admit an
unspeakable pathos in his short and checkered
life and above all in its end. Whether, as has
been maintained, he was drugged, or whether
found in a helpless condition through his own
failing, it is unspeakably sad that this fine
genius should have been used by a set of
political thugs and left to die like a dog.

In looking back upon Poe's career, I recall
the words of Carlyle, written with reference to
the poet Burns:

"Alas, his sun shone as through a tropical
tornado; and the pale shadow of Death eclipsed
it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful vapors,

the genius of Burns was never seen in clear
azure splendor, enlightening the world. But
some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through;
and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and
orient colours into a glory and stern grandeur,
which men silently gazed on with wonder and
tears."