Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/40

20 From England came the first biography of Poe characterized by fairness, by wide investigation, by unwearied collection of facts and manuscripts, and by an ardent though not intemperate admiration of the man and his work. From 1862 till his death in 1916 the central interest of John H. Ingram was the vindication of Poe's memory from the slanders of Griswold and the establishment of the poet's fame on the secure basis of an accurate and adequate text. Ingram has been called "the discourager of Poe biographies." It is true that he soon came to regard Poe as preempted territory but only when some luckless biographer had assailed Ingram himself or given evidence of ineptitude in recording or interpreting the facts of Poe's life. Ingram was a tactless man as his correspondence with Mrs. Whitman shows; but with those whom he knew personally, with Swinburne, Morris, Rossetti, Mallarmé, and Mourey, Ingram was an enthusiastic crusader in a cause that he regarded as sacred. He had a right to say as he did say a few years before his death: "I have labored for the glory of Poe and I have defended his reputation better than he himself would have done, for I knew better than he who were his friends and who his enemies. My effort has borne fruit, and the halo of glory about the poet has not ceased to grow brighter."

Ingram's first vindicatory Memoir appeared in 1874; but from Swinburne two years before had come the first clear note of authoritative lyric recognition of