PARTISAN REVIEW
whole in orderly form, Mr. Stewart has produced the most useful biog–
raphy yet to appear. And one can make one's own reservations about
the last chapter, in which, having postponed it till then, Mr. Stewart
deals with Hawthorne's thought and his artistry.
One note, however, on this last chapter.
It
used to be assumed
that people who kill other people are guilty of murder and/ or other
crimes. But this strange idea never occurs to the progressive critics who
discuss such a story as "The Birthmark," in which a scientist kills his
wife in the process of trying to remove a blemish from her face. Mr.
Stewart, who is approximately Mr. Cowley's equal in seeing through
the fallacies of modern progressivism and yet falling victim to them,
regards the scientist in "The Birthmark" as too exclusively intellectual
and as a man who wishes to exercise power over another human being.
In short, the scientist is not guilty of murder, fraud, or any other heinous
crime. His real offense is that he is undemocratic. Mr. Stewart thus mis–
takenly intimates that Hawthorne was suspicious of too much intelli–
gence and thought that all men should be "common men." I doubt if
Mr. Stewart
wants
to intimate this. It remains, however, an unexamined
assumption of his work on Hawthorne.
Richard Chase
POE 'S LETTERS AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
THE LETTERS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Edited by John Weed Ostrom.
Horvard Un iversity Press. $10.00.
Poe's reputation as a writer has never been distinct from his
personal reputation as a difficult character. "Difficult," of course, is a
mild word to describe the immediate reaction of m.any of his contem–
poraries. Two years after Poe's death the Rev. George Gilfillan graciously
closed a slanderous article on him by wishing for "peace even to the
well-nigh putrid dust of Edgar Poe." But the Rev. Gilfillan had ex–
tenuating circumstances in his favor. He was basing his charity on the
infamous "Memoir" by Rufus W. Griswold, concerning whom Baude–
laire enquired: "Are there no regulations in America to keep curs out
of cemeteries?" A little decency and a good deal of scholarship have
long since dispelled most of the Griswoldian fog-in time to have left
Poe a well documented and enticing landmark for the curiosity of
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