EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES 
 
 Published and in Preparation 
 Edited by WILL D. HOWE 
 
 ARNOLD Stuart P. Sherman 
 
 BROWNING William Lyon Phelps 
 
 BURNS William Allan Neilson 
 
 CARLYLE Bliss Perry 
 
 DANTE Alfred M. Brooks 
 
 DEFOE William P. Trent 
 
 DICKENS Richard Burton 
 
 EMERSON SamuelMcChordCr others 
 
 HAWTHORNE . . . George Edward Woodberry 
 
 THE BIBLE George Hodges 
 
 IBSEN Archibald Henderson 
 
 LAMB Will D. Howe 
 
 STEVENSON Richard A. Rice 
 
 TENNYSON .... Raymond Macdonald Alden 
 
 WHITMAN Brand Whitlock 
 
 WORDSWORTH C. T. Winchester 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 
 By 
 C. ALPHONSO SMITH 
 
 Head of the Department of English 
 
 in the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland 
 
 Former Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English 
 
 in the University of Virginia 
 
 ^Author of 
 
 WHAT CAN LITERATURK DO FOR MK? 
 O. HFNRY BIOGRAPHY, ETC. 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
COPYRIGHT 1921 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 or 
 
 MAUNWORTH IL CO. 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
To 
 
 ARCHIBALD HENDERSON SCALES, REAR ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES 
 
 NAVY, SUPERINTENDENT OP THE UNITED 
 
 STATES NAVAL ACADEMY 
 
 and 
 
 ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT 
 
 OF MATHEMATICS, UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN TOKEN OF SINCERE FRIENDSHIP 
 AND IN MEMORY OP STIMULATING COMRADESHIP 
 
 C18833 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE WORLD-AUTHOR 1 
 
 Biography Centennial Russia Germany 
 Italy Spain Latin-America France England 
 Retrospect and Prospect. 
 
 II THE MAN 26 
 
 Relation to Time and Place Accurate Observer 
 Interest in Public Education Slavery Alleged 
 Sectionalism Americanism Humor At Home 
 Religion Intemperance Not the Poet Laureate 
 of Darkness. 
 
 Ill THE CRITIC INTRODUCTION 73 
 
 "The Faculty of Identification" 76 
 
 "The Novel as History and Philosophy" ... 78 
 "An Omen of Better Days for Southern Litera 
 ture" 80 
 
 "Comparison vs. Ideality" 82 
 
 "A Present Tense Wrongly Used" 93 
 
 "The Spirit of Research in Our Navy" ... 94 
 
 "Government and the Forms of Government" . 97 
 
 "William Cullen Bryant" 98 
 
 "Indefinitiveness in Song" 106 
 
 "Fancy and Imagination" 110 
 
 "The Nature and Interest of Plot" 116 
 
 "Defects in the Technique of Barnaby Rudge" . 124 
 
 "Longfellow s Ballads" 142 
 
 "The Technique of the Short Story" .... 149 
 
 "Repetition an Aid to Quaintness" 158 
 
 "Shelley and After" 160 
 
 "Plagiarism" 163 
 
 "How to Improve Our Drama" 166 
 
 "German Criticism" 171 
 
CONTENTS Continued 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 "The Technique of The Raven" 173 
 
 "A Long Poem a Contradiction in Terms" . . 190 
 
 "The Heresy of the Didactic" 194 
 
 "Poetical Themes" 199 
 
 IV THE POET INTRODUCTION 202 
 
 "To Helen" 210 
 
 "Israfel" 211 
 
 "The City in the Sea" 212 
 
 "The Coliseum" 214 
 
 "To One in Paradise" 215 
 
 "The Haunted Palace" 216 
 
 "The Conqueror Worm" 217 
 
 "The Raven" 220 
 
 "Ulalume A Ballad" 225 
 
 "The Bells" 228 
 
 "For Annie" 231 
 
 "Annabel Lee" 234 
 
 "Eldorado" 236 
 
 V THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES INTRODUCTION . . 238 
 
 "Ligeia" 245 
 
 "The Purloined Letter" 266 
 
 VI THE FRONTIERSMAN INTRODUCTION 293 
 
 "Shadow A Parable" 2% 
 
 "Silence A Fable" 299 
 
 "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion" . . 305 
 
 "The Island of the Fay" 313 
 
 "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" 320 
 
 "The PowejUaf. Wards" - 333 
 
 INDEX 343 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Poe has suffered a strange fate. Nobody ever 
 doubted his genius, but his genius has clouded and 
 rendered spectral and remote his personality. He is 
 popularly regarded as a manufacturer of cold creeps 
 and a maker of shivers, a wizened, self-centered ex 
 otic, un-American and semi-insane, who, between 
 sprees or in them, wrote his autobiography in The 
 Raven and a few haunting detective stories. This 
 book is an attempt to substitute for the travesty the 
 real Poe, to suggest at least the diversity of his inter 
 ests, his future-mindedness, his sanity, and his hu 
 manity. Old-world voices are requisitioned to speak 
 for him, and he in turn through the wide gamut of his 
 work is permitted to speak for himself. 
 
 C. A. S. 
 
 United States Naval Academy, 
 Annapolis, Maryland 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE WORLD-AUTHOR 
 
 IT is peculiarly true in the case of Edgar Allan Poe 
 that to know him you must know more than the bare 
 facts and dates of his life. These may be summar 
 ized as follows: 
 
 He was born in Boston, at what is now 62 Carver 
 Street, on January 19, 1809, the triangle at Carver 
 and Broadway having been recently named the Edgar 
 Allan Poe Square. His mother, Elizabeth Arnold, a 
 talented and beautiful English actress, had been early 
 left a widow and in 1806 at the age of nineteen had 
 married David Poe, Jr., a native of Baltimore. David 
 Poe was also an actor but does not seem to have 
 shared the rare gifts of his wife or to have inherited 
 the sturdier qualities of his father, a hero of the 
 American Revolution. "My father David died/ 
 writes Poe, "when I was in the second year of my 
 age, and when my sister Rosalie was an infant in 
 arms. Our mother died a few weeks before him. 
 Thus we were left orphans at an age when the hand 
 of a parent is so peculiarly requisite. At this period 
 my grandfather s circumstances were at a low ebb, he 
 from great wealth having been reduced to poverty. It 
 was therefore in his power to do but little for us. My 
 brother Henry he took, however, under his charge, 
 while myself and Rosalie were adopted by gentlemen 
 in Richmond, where we were at the period of our 
 
2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 parents death. I was adopted by Mr. John Allan of 
 Richmond, Virginia, and she by Mr. William McKen- 
 zie of the same place." When Mr. Allan died, in 
 1834, he had given Poe five years of schooling in 
 England, from 1815 to 1820; he had sent him for 
 one session, that of 1826, to the University of Vir 
 ginia ; he had placed him in his counting-house in 
 Richmond ; he had obtained his discharge from the 
 army, in which Poe had enlisted at Boston in 1827; 
 he had secured his appointment as a cadet at West 
 Point, where he remained from July, 1830, to March, 
 1831 ; and he had continued to send a large enough 
 remittance for his protege to live on. It is to be hoped 
 also that he had read with proper pride The Ms, Found 
 in a Bottle with which his namesake had astonished 
 the reading public of Baltimore the year before and 
 won the hundred-dollar prize, this being the first pub 
 lic recognition of Poe s narrative skill. 
 
 Had Mr. Allan lived a year longer he would have 
 seen Poe back in Richmond on a salary of eight hun 
 dred dollars a year as the editor of the great Southern 
 Literary Messenger. Never again was his salary to be 
 so large ; but in 1837, Poe and his child- wife, Virginia 
 Clemm, shepherded by Mrs. Clemm, 
 
 "Dearer than the mother I knew 
 
 By that infinity with which my wife 
 
 Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life," 
 
 begin their pilgrimage to New York. From now till 
 the end it was to be only a checkered Grub Street 
 trail for Poe. He did not make his living by his stor 
 ies or by his poems ; he made it, such as it was, by 
 critical hackwork done at odd times for journals and 
 newspapers. He toiled terribly, for the cult of per- 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 3 
 
 fectfon drove or drew him in every task. After a 
 year in New York they move to Philadelphia where 
 they remain from 1838 to 1844. The last move was 
 back again to New York. Here in 1845, on tne 
 appearance of The Raven, Poe found himself famous. 
 But Virginia s death in 1847 and his own desperate 
 illness dashed whatever hopes he may have had of 
 ultimate happiness in the little Fordham home and 
 another move is planned, that to Richmond. But the 
 end came midway on October 7, 1849. After the har 
 rowing 1 termination of his engagement to Sarah Helen 
 Whitman, of Providence, he had paid a happy visit 
 of renewal to Richmond and was soon engaged to 
 Mrs. Sarah E. Shelton, the Miss Royster of his uni 
 versity days. He was on his way to New York to 
 bring Mrs. Clemm back to Richmond to attend the 
 wedding and to share the joy of a settled home at 
 last, when he was found unconscious at Ryan s Fourth 
 Ward Polls in Baltimore and taken at once to the 
 Washington Medical College. Early Sunday morn 
 ing, wrote Doctor J. J. Moran, "A very decided change 
 began to affect him. Having become enfeebled from 
 exertion, he became quiet and seemed to rest for a 
 short time ; then gently moving his head, he said, 
 Lord, help my poor soul, and expired." 
 
 II 
 
 The story is pitiful enough if we end it, as men 
 thought it was ended, on that October afternoon that 
 saw Poe laid beside his grandfather at the corner of 
 Fayette and Greene Streets. But to know Poe we 
 must follow him not to his death but to his coronation 
 
 
 
4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 in 1909. That year marked his centennial, as it 
 marked the centennial of Lincoln, Holmes, Darwin, 
 Gladstone, Tennyson, Chopin, and Gogol. It was 
 then that historians looked back over the century and 
 attempted a fresh appraisal of the men who had now 
 rounded out their first hundred years. If the name 
 of Poe did not lead all the rest, it was surpassed by 
 none in the interest awakened, in the international 
 acclaim rendered, and in a certain recognized indebted 
 ness for thought and vision and craftsmanship. At 
 the University of Virginia, in Baltimore, in New 
 York, in London, in Paris, in Madrid, and in Berlin, 
 Poe s birthyear was celebrated by memorial meetings 
 and centennial articles as the birthyear of no other 
 American poet or prose-writer had ever been celebrated 
 before. 
 
 "It is surely a somewhat striking fact," said The 
 Edinburgh Reviezv, for January, 1910, "that, of 
 authors born in America, Poe is the only one to whom 
 the term world-author can with any propriety be 
 applied." No, there are others. Franklin, Cooper, 
 Emerson, Longfellow, and Mark Twain are world- 
 authors; and Walt Whitman, Joel Chandler Harris, 
 William James in a narrower sense, and O. Henry 
 are fast becoming world-authors. But it is none the 
 less true that the title belongs preeminently to Poe, 
 His appeal as poet and story-teller, the universality of 
 his themes, the purity of his style, his studied avoid 
 ance of slang and localism, his wealth of sheer intellect 
 and his equal dowry of constructive imagination, to 
 gether with his almost uncanny feeling for form and 
 color, for the fitting melody and the enhancing back 
 ground, these put him in a class alone, and these have 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 5 
 
 given him a recognition in foreign lands not equalled 
 by any other American writer. 
 
 The story of his conquest of world opinion can be 
 told only in outline. It is a story, however, more 
 dramatic in interest than any that he himself wrote. 
 The American is not to be envied who does not feel a 
 patriotic pride in the career of an author who, if he 
 could not lift himself above the handicaps of habit and 
 ill health and poverty, yet drove through them, and 
 gave to the outside world its first and most lasting 
 conception of Americanism as literature. To know 
 Poe one must know this larger story. 
 
 It was Russia, not France, that took the initiative 
 in Europeanizing Poe s fame. "Casual translations 
 from Poe," says Abraham Yarmolinsky, 1 "began to 
 appear in leading Russian periodicals as early as the 
 late thirties." But Poe knew nothing of this. Several 
 years later he was called "an unknown writer" even 
 in England. He had questioned Dickens about the 
 prospects of republication in London, and Dickens had 
 written as late as 1842: "The only consolation I can 
 give you is that I do not believe any collection of de 
 tached pieces by an unknown writer, even though he 
 were an Englishman, would be at all likely to find a 
 publisher in this metropolis just now." 
 
 The popularity of Poe in Russia seems to have 
 been continuous and cumulative. "The first name a 
 Russian is most likely to mention," continues Yar 
 molinsky, "when the conversation turns to American 
 literature, is that of mad Edgar/ It is Poe that has 
 come to be popularly identified in Russia with the 
 American literary genius in its highest achievements. 
 
 1 See The Bookman, N. Y., September, 1916. 
 
6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Poe s popularity in Russia is hard to overrate. He is 
 known not only as a teller of strange, unforgettable 
 tales and of what a Russian critic calls philosophical 
 fables, which hypnotise both our senses and our mind/ 
 but also as a poet who has discovered new islands of 
 beauty. Russian literature possesses a truly remark 
 able translation of Poe s complete poetical works, 
 which closely follows the metre of the original. This 
 is perhaps the most adequate transposition of Poe s 
 poetry yet produced in any language. 
 
 The translator thus referred to is Constantine Bal- 
 mont, 2 the poet, who has also translated Whitman s 
 Leaves of Grass into Russian. Whitman, says Bal- 
 mont, is the South Pole. "But Edgar Poe is the 
 North Pole and all the southern lands which one 
 passes on one s way to the North Pole. Edgar Poe 
 is the sweetest sound of the lute and the most pas 
 sionate sob of the violin. He is sensation exalted to 
 the state of crystal serenity, an enchanted gorgeous 
 
 hall ending with a magical mirror Edgar Poe 
 
 is the furnace of self-knowledge. He is our elder 
 brother the beloved Solitary One, and we sorely 
 grieve that we are not able to sail up the river ot 
 years and join him, all of us, a faithful band, now so 
 numerous, him, our king, who at that time was de 
 serted, in the dreadful moment of his great struggle. 
 Peace, peace be with him, our fair angel of sorrow. 
 He lives among us, in our most delicate sensations, 
 in the mad outcries of our sorrow, in the sonorous 
 
 2 It will be remembered that Rachmaninoff s symphony, 
 "The Bells," heard in New York and Philadelphia in Feb 
 ruary, 1920, was based on Balmont s translation of Poe s 
 poem. 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 7 
 
 rhythms of our songs, in rhymes final and initial, in 
 the beautiful gestures of the young girl who thinks 
 of him." 
 
 Toe is regarded in Germany," says Doctor Georg 
 Edward, 3 himself a distinguished German poet and 
 critic, "as the typical and characteristic American 
 author." If the German attitude has been less devo 
 tional than that of France or Russia it has at least 
 been more dissertational, the number of special studies 
 that appeared in 1909 far surpassing those that ap 
 peared in any other country. Five years after Poe s 
 death a leading German review declared that his 
 name "was bound to live in the annals of American 
 literature." Since then Poe s stories have been trans 
 lated into all the German popular collections of world 
 literature Reclam, Hendcl, Cotta, Spemann, Meyer, 
 and others ; and his poems have had an almost equal 
 vogue. It was in 1860 that Friedrich Spielhagen, the 
 German Balmont as Balmont was the Russian Baude 
 laire and Baudelaire the French Ingram, published in 
 Euro pa a notable study of Poe whom he called "the 
 greatest lyric singer that America has produced." 
 There has been no diminution of German interest in 
 Poe since 1860, and the German contention that Poe 
 is representatively American rather than distinctively 
 un-American seems to me one of the most valid con 
 tributions to Poe criticism: yet made. 
 
 But German criticism errs, I think, in its insistence 
 on the supposed debt that Poe owed to German litera 
 ture and especially to Hoffmann. No indebtedness 
 
 3 See The Book of the Poe Centenary, University of Vir 
 ginia, 1909, p. 74- 
 

 8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 can be traced. Poe could not read German and, if 
 he could, the native temper of his mind was such as 
 to make him independent of Hoffmann and the Hoff 
 mann school. Nor is there the analogy that the Ger 
 mans assert between Poe, the writer, and Bocklin, the 
 Swiss painter. Their ideals were different, their 
 methods divergent, their results antipodal. Compari 
 son between the two leads only to contrast. 
 
 An undesigned tribute to Poe s vogue in Germany 
 may be mentioned in passing. It was my privilege to 
 conduct a Poe Seminar at the University of Berlin 
 during the winter of 19101911. "Whom do you con 
 sider the most famous woman born in America?" 
 asked a German woman who was also a student of 
 American history. After some hesitation I replied 
 that in my judgment the choice would lie between 
 Pocahontas and Dolly Madison. "But what would 
 your answer be?" I asked. "Why, she replied, "I 
 should have said Annabel Lee." Another uninten 
 tional tribute to Poe, to the haunting but elusive 
 melody of one of his refrains, is found in Theodor 
 Etzel s centennial translation of The Raven. 41 The 
 translator was determined to preserve the long o 
 sound which reappears four times in each stanza and 
 culminates in the sonorous recurrence of "Nevermore." 
 But "Nevermore" is not German and "Nimmermehr," 
 which is German, is short, jerky, and unrelated to the 
 coveted long o sound. The reader will hardly believe 
 that the translator solves the difficulty by making the 
 raven say "Nie du Thor," "Never, you fool," in answer 
 to every question put to him by the disconsolate lover. 
 
 4 See Edgar Allan Poes Gedichte, uebertragen von Theo 
 dor Etzel, Mnnchen und Leipzig, 1909. 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 9 
 
 Is there in all the literature of translation a more 
 dolorous example of the sacrifice of sense to sound, 
 of mood to melody, of reason to rime, than these words 
 furnish? But Poe would have enjoyed it, for it meant 
 the triumph of his favorite vowel over obstacles that 
 might well have daunted the master himself. 5 
 
 Among the Latin countries, Italy seems to have 
 been tardiest in translating Poe, though his influence 
 had already pervaded Italy through the French trans 
 lations of Baudelaire. "My guess is rather uncer 
 tain," writes Professor C. H. Grandgent, of Harvard, 
 "as such guesses must be ; but I should be inclined to 
 rank Poe as third in Italy, preceded by Cooper and 
 Longfellow." Professor Ernest H. Wilkins, of the 
 University of Chicago, would substitute Whitman for 
 Cooper: "It may fairly be said, I think, that Poe and 
 Longfellow are the two American writers best known 
 to Italian readers in general and that they are equally 
 well known. In Italian critical opinion Poe and Whit 
 man are regarded as being the two most important 
 American writers and as being of equal importance." 
 Felice Ferrero, the brother of the great historian, 
 puts Poe first: "It is probably correct, in a certain 
 sense, to say that Poe is more widely known in Italy 
 than any other American writer ; but I doubt whether 
 one could say that he is a much read author. Amer 
 ican literature is a terra incognita to the Italian reader. 
 Knowledge of English is not sufficiently spread in 
 
 5 Etzel s translation of The Raven is picked out for spec 
 ial commendation by Fritz Hippe in his Edgar Allan Poes 
 Lyrik in Dcutschland (1913). "He has succeeded/ says 
 Hippe, "as no one else has succeeded, in reproducing almost 
 completely in German the refrain Nevermore through the 
 German Nie du Thor. " 
 
io EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Italy to enable people of culture to enjoy the American 
 authors in the original text, and very few translations 
 had been published before the War. Most of the 
 Italian acquaintance with American literature has 
 been made indirectly through French translations. 
 The popularity of Poe in France, therefore, explains 
 why Poe is better known in Italy than other American 
 writers. My first reading of Poe s Conies extraord m- 
 aires was in a French translation, there being at that 
 time no Italian translation at all." 
 
 But Poe did not lack for translators after the start 
 was once made. An Italian version of his stories, 
 Stone incredibili di Ed gar do Poe, appeared in 1869, 
 another in 1876, and two in 1885. The Narrative of 
 A. Gordon Pym followed in 1887. The Raven was 
 translated into Italian verse in 1890 by Guido Menasci, 
 and in 1892 Ulysse Ortensi, heeding the desire 
 rather than the warning of Baudelaire, translated all 
 of Poe s major poems into musical Italian prose. 6 
 
 Italian art has also felt the impress of Poe s genius. 
 It is well known that Gaetano Previati, whose influ 
 ence has been potent on the modern school of Italian 
 painters, found more inspiration for his brush in the 
 
 6 Among the more important treatments of Poe by Italian 
 scholars may be mentioned "I poeti americani," by Enrico 
 Nencioni (Nuova Antologia, August 16, 1885) ; "L estetica 
 di Edgardo Poe," by P. Jannaccone (Nuova Antologia, July 
 15, 1895) ; "II vero Edgardo Poe" with translations of many 
 of the poems, by Raffaele Bresciano (Palermo-Roma, 1904) ; 
 and an unsigned article on the Poe centenary that appeared 
 in Nuova Antologia for February I, 1909. "America and 
 England," says the latter, "are celebrating the centenary of a 
 writer whose fame is growing more and more, Edgar Allan 
 Poe. The country of the great poet has already several times 
 revised its opinion of this son who highly honors it, and each 
 revision represents an approach to truth and justice." 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR n 
 
 writings of Poe than in the pages of any other genius, 
 ancient or modern. Though Poe s works are, as we 
 have seen, everywhere accessible in Italian, Previati 
 prefers "the author s native language to the uncer 
 tainties that might arise in translation." In fact the 
 purity and vividness of Poe s language are such that 
 he is often used in foreign lands as the standard of 
 classic English. "Are you familiar with the works of 
 Edgar Allan Poe?" Doctor Inazo Nitobe, the famous 
 Japanese scholar, was asked. "Familiar with them !" 
 he replied. "We learn English in Japan from The 
 Raven and The Gold-Bug." 
 
 It is by no means certain that Poe is better known 
 in Spain than in Italy but the facts are more accessible. 
 The distinguished Spanish novelist, Vicente Blasco 
 Ibanez, when visiting the Poe Cottage at Fordham in 
 November, 1919, said : "Poe is my spiritual and liter 
 ary father. His name is as famous in Europe as Lin 
 coln s." In Spain it is probably more famous. "Of 
 all the American writers whose works have reached 
 Spain," says John DeLancey Ferguson, 7 "Poe is 
 probably the most significant. Though in mere num 
 ber of translations he is surpassed by Cooper, he has 
 received far more respectful treatment than has ever 
 been accorded to the older man, and from the time of 
 his first introduction to the present day the Spaniards 
 have shown a persistent and steadily increasing inter 
 est in his work." It may be added that in Doctor 
 Ferguson s appended bibliography of Spanish transla 
 tions and critical articles Poe occupies as much space 
 
 7 See Doctor Ferguson s American Literature in Spain 
 (1916), New York. 
 
12 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 as Cooper and Hawthorne combined and more than 
 twice the number of pages filled by Longfellow. 
 
 The first Spanish edition of Poe s tales appeared 
 in Madrid in 1858. The introduction is by Doctor 
 Nicasio Landa who, amid much that is bizarre in 
 biography and comment, declares rightly enough that 
 Poe "was the first to exploit the marvelous in the field 
 of science." There is as much difference, Doctor 
 Landa holds, between Poe s tales and ordinary tales 
 of witchcraft as there is between chemistry and 
 alchemy not a bad comparison. He also contests 
 Baudelaire s statement that Poe s wretchedness was 
 due to the crudeness of American democracy. No, 
 says Doctor Landa, there "never was a country in 
 which freedom of thought was permitted to carry it 
 self to such extremes as in America," and he cites in 
 triumphant illustration the unimpeded preachments of 
 "Mistress Bloummer" and the popular vagaries of 
 "the saints of last day." 
 
 Of Poe s command of English a later Spanish 
 critic, D. A. H. Cata, writes as follows: "Never 
 since Shakespeare has the English language been 
 handled with such art. Poe had the secret of euphony 
 and fine phrase ; between his thoughts and his sen 
 tences there is always an indissoluble connection. He 
 knew the inevitable word, the mitigating word, the 
 consoling word. He knew what things make us laugh 
 or weep and, master of inspiration and of language, he 
 could always dominate our will, making our spirit run 
 the whole gamut of emotion from grotesque merri 
 ment and vaguely sad placidity up to the brutal and 
 agonizing horror of intolerable fear. He has made us 
 yearn with his heroes, weep with their misfortunes, 
 
THE WORLD- AUTHOR 13 
 
 and fear with their forebodings. His work will endure 
 forever, because it is the child of beauty and of grief." 
 Still more acute and illuminating is the remark of 
 Jose de Castro y Serrano, the Spanish novelist. "Not 
 long ago," he writes in 1871, "a great New- World 
 genius (the Anglo-American Poe) astonished the 
 present generation with his extraordinary tales (His- 
 torias extraord inarias) . These were based on a 
 philosophical principle, the sublimation, that is, of the 
 marvelous, a principle which the human heart never 
 has abandoned and never will abandon ; and the skilful 
 narrator was able to stir and to terrify the literary 
 world despite the fact that Hoffmann had written 
 many years before. The reason is that Hoffmann 
 started from the fantastic in order to arrive naturally 
 at the marvelous, while Poe starts in search of the 
 marvelous from the threshold of the real and actual. 
 
 The Spanish centennial article is contributed by 
 Angel Guerra 8 , who has been rated as "one of the 
 four greatest living Spanish critics." He finds the 
 same stubborn hostility to Poe in America that has 
 existed from the beginning. In his native land "Poe 
 has had to conquer a renown inch by inch which our 
 old Europe would have sowed on all the winds of 
 fame." He remains solitary, unrelated, un-American, 
 not reached by influences from the writers of his own 
 land or from, those of England. "When they buried 
 the remains of that unfortunate man, the Yankees 
 thought they had buried in oblivion the talent of their 
 greatest, their most original, their most profound poet, 
 
 8 See "El centenario de Edgard Allan Poe" (La Espana 
 Moderna, April, 1909). 
 
14 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 not excluding Longfellow and Whitman. A huge 
 silence enveloped the name of Edgar Poe in the United 
 
 States But the glory of the final rehabilitation 
 
 of the poet was reserved for a European, for Baude 
 laire, his spiritual brother. Edgar Poe s native land 
 is America ; his spiritual birth must be sought in Ger 
 many; his elevation to immortality, with justice ren 
 dered to his supreme merits, is the gift of generous 
 France." 
 
 Whether Poe s popularity in Latin-American coun 
 tries is a derivative of his popularity in Spain or harks 
 back for its original impulse to Baudelaire s work, it 
 would be hazardous to say. Certain it is, however, 
 that no other American author has so fertilized the 
 intellect and imagination of Central and South Amer 
 ica as has Poe. This was the prompt testimony of 
 Ruben Dario, Nicaragua s greatest poet, if not the 
 greatest poet of Latin America, during his visit to the 
 United States in the spring of 1915. Dario, by the 
 way, prefixed a promising though fragmentary study 
 to the volume of Poe s poems published in Madrid in 
 1909, the best translation in the volume being that of 
 The Raven by the Venezuelan poet, Perez Bonalde. 
 "Poe is very well known in our Latin-American 
 countries," writes from Buenos Aires the distinguished 
 South American scholar, A. Abeledo, "The Raven and 
 The Bells having passed into our school textbooks." 
 
 But, as Guerra has said, Poe s elevation to immor 
 tality is in a way "the gift of generous France," and it 
 was the gift of France chiefly through Baudelaire and 
 Mallarme. "It would be too much to say," writes 
 Henri Potez, 9 "that Edgar Poe begat Baudelaire and 
 
 9 See "Edgar Poe et Jules Verne" (La Revue, Paris, May 
 1909). 
 
THE WORLD- AUTHOR 15 
 
 that Baudelaire begat almost all contemporary poetry ; 
 but the statement would contain much truth." When 
 Remy de Gourmont was asked what external influ 
 ences he deemed paramount in French literature, he 
 replied: "Browning and Pater but, above all, Poe, 
 Poe, through his son, Mallarme." No closer or more 
 interesting literary affinity has ever existed than that 
 between Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire. 
 The chief difference was expressed by Baudelaire 
 himself: "There is not in all of Poe s work a single 
 passage that tends to lubricity or even to sensual pleas 
 ure." Barring this difference, which is fundamental, 
 Baudelaire adopted all of Poe s critical dicta and de 
 fended them to the last with a loyalty that would 
 brook not the slightest disagreement ; he translated 
 Poe s stories into French "with an identification of 
 style and thought so exact," says Gautier, "that they 
 seem original works rather than translations ;" he lived 
 to see Poe enthroned as one of the sovereigns of 
 European literature ; and, when nearing his own end, 
 he made a solemn resolve "to pray to God every 
 morning, to God who is the receptacle of all strength 
 and all justice, to my father, to Marietta, and to Poe, 
 as intercessors." 
 
 "It was in 1846 or 1847," Baudelaire wrote to 
 Armarid Fraisse, "that I became acquainted with a 
 few fragments of Edgar Poe. 10 I experienced a 
 peculiar emotion. As his complete works were not 
 
 10 These fragments were probably, in part at least, The 
 Murders in the Rue Morgue, translated by his intimate friend, 
 Felix Tournachon, better known as "Nadar." Tournachon 
 died in 1910 leaving unpublished memoirs. He was an inter 
 esting man. In the early fifties he broached the idea of a 
 heavier-than-air flying machine, and in 1863 he carried his 
 wife and friends in a balloon from Paris to Hanover. 
 
16 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 collected till after his death, I had the patience to make 
 friends with some Americans living in Paris so as to 
 borrow from them collections of Journals that had 
 been edited by Poe. And then I found believe me 
 or not, as you will poems and tales of which I had 
 already a vague, confused, and ill-ordered idea and 
 which Poe had known how to arrange and bring to 
 perfection." Six years later he writes : "I am accused 
 of imitating Edgar Poe. Do you know why I trans 
 lated Poe with such patience? Because he was like 
 me. The first time that I opened a book of his, I saw 
 with terror and delight not only subjects I had dreamed 
 of, but sentences that I had thought of and that he had 
 written twenty years before." 
 
 Baudelaire s first volume of translations from Poe, 
 Histoires extraordinaires, appeared in 1856. Others 
 followed till two years before his death in 1867. 
 Many competitors have entered the lists against him 
 but he has had no rivals. Baudelaire has, in fact, ele 
 vated and standardized the art of putting the prose of 
 one language into the prose of another. One curious 
 minor mistake may be mentioned. Jupiter, the negro 
 in The Gold-Bug, says that his master was "as white 
 as a gose [ghost]." Baudelaire makes him "as white 
 as a goose," "pale comme une oie." Also in The 
 Raven, almost the only poem of Poe s that Baudelaire 
 translated, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven" is 
 rendered, awkwardly, "Bien que ta tete soit sans 
 huppe et sans cimier." 
 
 What Baudelaire did for Poe s prose, Stephana 
 Mallarme and Gabriel Mourey did, though not with 
 equal finality, for his verse. 11 In a letter written to 
 
 "Mourey s Potsies completes d Edgar Poe, 1889, re- 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 17 
 
 Sarah Helen Whitman on April 4, 1876, Mallarme 
 says : "Whatever is done to honor the memory of a 
 genius the most truly divine the world has seen, ought 
 it not at first to obtain your sanction ? Such of Poe s 
 works as our great Baudelaire has left untranslated, 
 that is to say, the poems and many of the critical frag 
 ments, I hope to make known to France." Mallarme 
 was a symbolist and the prince of symbolists. His 
 motto was, "To name is to destroy, to suggest is to 
 create." He was spokesman for the subconscious. 
 Every clear idea, he thought, had long ago been ex 
 pressed ; what remained was to give utterance to the 
 subliminal. Edmund Gosse said of him : "Language 
 was given to Mallarme to conceal definite thought, to 
 draw the eye away from the object. He aims at il 
 lusion and wraps mystery around his simplest utter 
 ance." Mallarme s passion for perfection, in other 
 words, brought its own defeat ; it splintered his effort 
 into fragments, shining fragments but fragments none 
 the less. In his quest for symbolism the word rather 
 than the idea became the unit. 
 
 These qualities of style are necessarily kept in 
 check to a degree in Mallarme s prose versions of Poe s 
 poems ; but, with all their perfection of word equiva 
 lence, these rimeless and rhythmless lines, these stanzas 
 that lack the old integrations, seem almost a parody to 
 
 mained the only complete translation of Poe s poems into 
 French until the appearance in 1908 of Victor Orban s 
 Poesies completes d Edgar Poe. Mourey s later edition of 
 1910 is prefaced by a letter from J. H. Ingram. It contains 
 also the Philosophy of Composition as well as biographical 
 and bibliographical notes. 
 
 Excellent translations of Poe s poems have also been 
 made by mile Lauvriere. 
 
i8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the reader whose ear has long been accustomed to the 
 haunting melodies of the original. But that Mal 
 larme s translations are read and enjoyed in France is 
 in itself a testimony to the innate beauty, the residual 
 charm, of Poe s poetic structures, when bereft of those 
 formal elements in which their beauty and charm have 
 hitherto been thought so largely to consist. It is hard 
 to think of The Raven or of Ulalume without those 
 interreticulations of sound and form, those reciproc 
 ities of repetition and parallelism, which in Poe s 
 hands fused them into artistic unity ; but in Mallarme s 
 versions, however exquisite the prose, it is prose still. 
 That Poe has stood the test is a noteworthy tribute to 
 the intrinsic worth and fundamental texture of his 
 poetic material. One unexpected result of Mallarme s 
 work has been to put Poe, in the eyes of Frenchmen at 
 least, side by side with Whitman in the ranks of the 
 vers librists. Strange bedfellows, these! "Yet it is 
 true, * says Caroline Ticknor, 12 "that Mallarme s trans 
 lations of Poe set the pace for the new school from 
 which the exponents of vers libre assuredly derive 
 their inspiration." 
 
 Of the many French biographies of Poe the most 
 elaborate is that by Lauvriere. 13 But it is a study in 
 pathology. Scholarly, painstaking, accurate, and even 
 sympathetic in its statement of facts, its inferences do 
 not carry conviction. Morbidite, alienisme, degener- 
 escence, decadence these do not belong to Poe. 
 They can be read into his life and genius only by a 
 studied selection of incidents and an equally studied 
 
 12 Poe s Helen (1916), New York, p. 276. 
 Edgar Poe, sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris, 1904. The 
 book contains 732 pages. 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 19 
 
 rejection of those that do not fit. More of this in the 
 next chapter but let it be said here that the French 
 pendulum has already begun to swing in the opposite 
 direction. The latest French life of Poe, that by 
 Andre Fontainas, 14 takes issue squarely with Lauv- 
 riere and pleads eloquently and justly for a fairer and 
 more comprehensive judgment of all the facts. 
 
 Whatever may be the verdict of the future on the 
 nature of genius in general and of Poe s genius in par 
 ticular and we confidently believe that literature as 
 pathology has had its day no one can question Poe s 
 primacy in France. "His verse," says Teodor de Wy- 
 zewa, "is the most magnificent which the English lan 
 guage possesses." When George Brandes was asked 
 more than twenty years ago to name the foreign 
 writers who had done most to mould French lit 
 erature, he mentioned first Edgar Allan Poe, adding 
 as secondary influences Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky, Heine, 
 and Shelley. Summing up his centennial survey of 
 Poe s position in France, Curtis Hidden Page 15 writes : 
 "Poe is the one American writer who has been ac 
 cepted and acclaimed by the majority of intelligent 
 Frenchmen." The last word is from Andre Fon 
 tainas, 16 poet, essayist, historian, biographer, and trans 
 lator: "No writer of the English language has pene 
 trated so profoundly the consciousness of the writers 
 of all lands as has Edgar Allan Poe. In France he is 
 as truly alive today as the most living of French 
 poets." 
 
 14 La vie d Edgar A. Poe, Paris, 1919. Of its 290 pages 
 27 are given over to a translation of the poems of Mrs. Whit 
 man that were inspired by admiration for Poe. 
 
 15 The Evening Post, N. Y., Jan. 16, 1909. 
 
 lQ La vie d Edgar A. Poe, Paris, 1919, p. 247. 
 
20 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 From England came the first biography of Poe 
 characterized by fairness, by wide investigation, by un 
 wearied 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 17 "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 inept 
 itude in recording or interpreting the facts of Poe s 
 life. Ingram was a tactless man as his correspond 
 ence with Mrs. Whitman shows ; but with those whom 
 he knew personally, with Swinburne, Morris, Rossetti, 
 Mallarme, 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 18 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 
 
 17 See the article by Caroline Ticknor in The Bookman, 
 N. Y., Sept, 1916. 
 
 18 See his Lettre-Preface in Mourey s Poesies completes 
 d Edgar Poe (1910). 
 
THE WORLD- AUTHOR 21 
 
 Poe that had been heard from England. And, to the 
 last, Swinburne was always ready to take up the cud 
 gels for the American poet and to give a reason for his 
 championship. "Once as yet, and once only," he 
 wrote, 19 "has there sounded out of it all [American 
 literature] one pure note of original song worth 
 singing, and echoed from the singing of no other man ; 
 a note of song neither wide nor deep, but utterly true, 
 rich, clear, and native to the singer; the short, ex 
 quisite music, subtle and simple and somber and sweet, 
 of Edgar Poe." According to Swinburne, the com 
 parison of Poe with Hawthorne is the comparison of 
 the complete with the half man of genius. "I was 
 nearly tempted the other day," he declares, 20 "to write 
 a rapid parallel or contrast between Hawthorne the 
 half man of genius who never could carry out an idea 
 or work it through to the full result and Poe, the 
 complete man of genius (however flawed and clouded 
 at times) who always worked out his ideas thoroughly, 
 and made something solid, rounded, and durable of 
 them not a mist wreath or a waterfall." 
 
 In a later letter to Edmund Clarence Stedman, 
 Swinburne refuses to put Thanatopsis or The Com 
 memoration Ode in quite the same class with Poe s 
 verse, and gives his reasons. "I believe you know my 
 theory," he says, "that nothing which can possibly be 
 as well said in prose ought ever to be said in verse." 
 August meditation and grave patriotic feeling are 
 good in their way, he contends, but it is not the way of 
 song. "I must say that while I appreciate (I hope) 
 
 lg Under the Microscope (1872). 
 
 20 See The Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 2 
 vols., edited by Edmund Gosse and Thomas Tames Wise 
 
 et, 
 m- / 
 
 * f , 
 
 ite . 
 * \ 
 
22 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the respective excellence of Mr. Bryant s Thanatopsls 
 and of Mr. Lowell s Commemoration Ode, I can not 
 say that either of them leaves in my ear the echo of a 
 single note of song. It is excellent good speech, but 
 if given us as song, its first and last duty is to sing. 
 The one is most august meditation, the other a noble 
 expression of deep and grave patriotic feeling on a 
 supreme national occasion; but the thing more neces 
 sary, though it may be less noble than these, is the 
 pulse, the fire, the passion of music the quality of a 
 singer, not of a solititary philosopher or a patriotic 
 orator. Now, when Whitman is not speaking bad 
 prose he sings, and when he sings at all he sings well. 
 Mr. Longfellow has a pretty little pipe of his own, but 
 surely it is very thin and reedy. Again, whatever may 
 be Mr. Emerson s merits, to talk of his Poetry seems 
 to me like talking of the scholarship of a child who has 
 not learned its letters." 
 
 But the praise that would have meant most to the 
 living Poe came from Tennyson. Poe s admiration 
 for Tennyson knew no bounds, though he did not live 
 to read the poems on which the laureate s fame is now 
 seen to rest most securely. "I am not sure," he once 
 wrote, "that Tennyson is not the greatest of poets. . . . 
 By the enjoyment or non-enjoyment of the Morte d 
 Arthur or of the (Enone I would test any man s ideal 
 sense." He loved to recite from The Princess the 
 song beginning, 
 
 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
 and used to say that the words, 
 
 When unto dying eyes 
 The casement slowly grows a glimmering square, 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 23 
 
 were "unsurpassed by any image expressed in writ 
 ing." But when Tennyson was asked in 1875 to write 
 an epitaph of one line for Poe s monument in West 
 minster Churchyard, Baltimore, he said to his son: 
 "How can so strange and so fine a genius, and so sad 
 a life, be exprest and comprest in one line ?" He wrote, 
 how r ever, to the committee : "I have long been acquaint 
 ed with Poe s works, and am an admirer of them." But 
 when later he came to pass a more matured judgment 
 on Poe as poet and prose-writer, he said: 21 "I know 
 several striking poems by American poets, but I think 
 that Edgar Poe is (taking his poetry and prose to 
 gether) the most original American genius." 
 
 Tennyson s opinion is shared by the representative 
 English critics. "Poe is the greatest writer in prose 
 fiction whom America has produced," wrote Andrew 
 Lang. 22 "He has left a body of widely various criti 
 cism which, as such, will better stand critical examina 
 tion today," writes J. M. Robertson, 23 "than any simi 
 lar work produced in England or America in his time." 
 And Edmund Gosse 24 in his centennial article says of 
 Poe, the poet : "He was the pioneer of a school which 
 has spread its influence to the confines of the civilised 
 world, and is now revolutionising literature." 
 
 ^Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his son, vol. II, pp. 
 292-293 (1897). This was said in 1883. 
 
 22 In his edition of The Poems of Poe (1881). 
 
 23 Robertson s essay on Poe, first published in Our Cor^- 
 ner, London, 1885, and republished in New Essays To-war ds 
 a Critical Method, London and New York, 1897, seems to me 
 on the whole the ablest brief treatment of Poe (fifty-four 
 pages) yet published in any language. It has been /epro- 
 duced in Specimens of Modern English Literary Criticism, 
 edited by William T. Brewster, New York, 1907. 
 
 ^Contemporary Review, February, 1909. 
 
24 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 III 
 
 This survey of Poe as an international influence is 
 not meant to anticipate your own opinion or to coerce 
 your own judgment, but to free it. It is meant to fur 
 nish perspective and background for the study of a 
 writer who in American criticism has been tradi 
 tionally represented not as a world-author but as nar 
 row and even sectional in his appeal. It is an attempt 
 to let 1849 near tne voices of 1909. 
 
 It was an evil day for American literary criticism, 
 for what we call Americanism in the larger sense, 
 when the great Emerson curtly dismissed Poe as "the 
 jingle man." He was biting on granite, as was Poe 
 when he dubbed Emerson a "mystic for mysticism s 
 sake/ Both would have retracted gladly could they 
 have re-weighed their verdicts in the scales of the im 
 partial years. Jingles can not be translated into po 
 tent and radiating inspirations in other tongues; and 
 the mystic for mysticism s sake can not enrich the eth 
 ical standards of a reading world. 
 
 When we hear that Henry James pronounced Poe s 
 poems "very valueless verse," it is surely worth while 
 to know that the world at large does not think so; 
 when John Burroughs calls Poe s verse "empty of 
 thought," it is worth asking if the defect may not lie 
 in the critic rather than in the poet; when Brownell 
 asserts that Poe s writings, whether prose or verse, 
 "lack the elements not only of great but of real litera 
 ture," when he pleads that Poe should be denied a 
 place in the American Hall of Fame, it is well to hear 
 the multitudinous laughter of a world that has already 
 enthroned him in its own more exclusive Hall of Fame. 
 
THE WORLD-AUTHOR 25 
 
 Poe has been studied as an effect, the effect of un 
 fortunate inheritance, of cramping poverty, of uncon 
 genial environment. But let us study him as a cause. 
 A voice is studied backward from its reach and re 
 sonance. A projectile force is studied not merely in 
 its constituents but by its power to project. "By their 
 fruits ye shall know them," not by their roots. Doc 
 tor Samuel Johnson once said that he never knew that 
 he had succeeded "until he felt the rebound." We 
 have tried to estimate, though very cursorily, the re 
 bound of Poe s effort. Ben Jonson phrased it bet 
 ter still : "Men, and almost all sorts of creatures, have 
 their reputation by distance; rivers, the farther they 
 run and the more from their spring, the broader they 
 are, and the greater." Poe has traveled far from his 
 spring. Are we wrong in approaching the study of 
 him with at least the provisional supposition that there 
 is a certain breadth, even a certain greatness in him? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 I 
 
 IF, to know Poe, we must know him as a world- 
 author, it is equally necessary that we know him as a 
 man. His world-fame is, after all, but the reach of 
 his genius ; it is not its source or matrix. These are 
 to be sought in the man himself, in his reaction to the 
 life about him, in the temper and quality of his thought 
 about things unliterary as well as literary. In a word, 
 Poe s personality is not only essential in the interpre 
 tation of his work ; it is, unfortunately, that part of the 
 man that has been consistently ignored or as consist 
 ently misrepresented. The common view of Poe is 
 that he had no personality. He had temperament ; he 
 had genius ; he had individuality. But that richer 
 combination that we call personality, that coordination 
 of thought and mood and conduct, of social action and 
 reaction, of daily interest and aim, this finds no por 
 trayal in the biographies of Poe. Instead, we are told 
 that Poe alone among American writers was utterly 
 unrelated to time and place ; that he saw only through 
 a telescope ; that for him the contemporary did not ex 
 ist ; that, like the lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror 
 with her back to the realities of life, Poe was a 
 dreamer and nothing but a dreamer. 
 
 Let us try to break away from the stereotyped bi 
 ographies of Poe. They confuse the exceptional with 
 the characteristic in his life, and they exalt particular 
 
 26 
 
THE MAN 37 
 
 moments and moods into fixed crystallizations of habit 
 or impulse. Gestures are regarded as attitudes, and a 
 single incident is made the scales in which an entire 
 life is weighed. Let us take Poe s great phrase, "to 
 tality of effect," and look at his life as a whole. 
 
 So far from being unrelated to the problems and 
 interests of his time, Poe seems to me the one man in 
 American literature from whose writings a history of 
 the essential thought-currents of the time could be 
 garnered. But by his writings I do not mean pri 
 marily his poems or his stories; in these he deliber 
 ately turned away from the things of every-day life 
 or so subtly transfused them as to make the distillation 
 not easily identifiable as concrete incident or personal 
 experience. I mean, above all, the criticisms that he 
 passed on the men and women and things and themes 
 that made up the life round about him. In the only 
 complete edition of his works, the Virginia Edition, 1 
 containing seventeen volumes, only one volume con 
 tains Poe s poetry, five volumes his stories, while nine 
 volumes contain his criticisms, his essays, his miscel 
 lanies, his marginalia, and his letters. In these nine 
 volumes lie scattered the elements which combined 
 will summon back to us Poe, the man, as he can not 
 be recalled from the volumes that reveal him as the 
 self-conscious and creative artist. 
 
 II 
 
 All the information that we have about Poe goes to 
 show that he observed closely and accurately. Mere 
 dreamers do not. If he saw through a telescope it was 
 
 1 By James A, Harrison, New York, 1902, 
 
28 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 only that he might extend the knowledge already 
 gained through a microscope. Lowell said of him : 
 
 "He combines in a very remarkable manner two 
 faculties which are seldom found united; a power of 
 influencing the mind of the reader by the impalpable 
 shadows of mystery, and a minuteness of detail which 
 does not leave a pin or a button unnoticed." 
 
 But Lowell was speaking of Poe, the artist ; he did 
 not know that Poe, the man, was as minutely ob 
 servant and retentive as Poe, the weaver of narrative 
 spells. In a letter to Mrs. M. L. Shew, who had asked 
 him to make some art purchases for her, Poe writes : 
 
 "During my first call at your house after my Vir 
 ginia s death, I noticed with so much pleasure the 
 large painting over the piano, which is a masterpiece 
 indeed; and I noticed the size of all your paintings, 
 the scrolls instead of set figures of the drawing-room 
 carpet, the soft effect of the window shades, also the 
 
 crimson and gold I was charmed to see the 
 
 harp and piano uncovered. The pictures of Raphael 
 and the The Cavalier I shall never forget their soft 
 ness and beauty ! The guitar with the blue ribbon, 
 music-stand and antique jars!" 
 
 There are two room interiors that always recur to 
 me as I try to make clear in my own mind the dif 
 ference between Poe, the artist, and Poe, the man. It 
 must be remembered that Poe s philosophy of art im 
 pelled him to beauty plus strangeness. This element 
 of the strange, the eerie, the arrestive-because-not- 
 seen-before, is present in all of his art creations. It is 
 
THE MAN 29 
 
 not accidental ; it is a part of a studied and predeter 
 mined effect. Bacon had said, "There is no excellent 
 beauty that hath not some strangeness in the propor 
 tion," and Poe quotes and re-quotes the saying both as 
 defense and as goal of his own practise. The readeF""! 
 is justified in saying of Poe s studied descriptions and 
 of his fictive characters that they are not accurate 
 transcripts from real life, but he is not justified in say 
 ing that Poe was not an accurate observer. Sensi 
 tiveness to the abnormal presupposes an even greater 
 sensitiveness to the normal. Everything that is 
 strange to us in Poe s creations was strange first to 
 him. There is never for a moment in his work any 
 suggestion of inability to distinguish between the nor 
 mal and the abnormal, between the natural and the bi 
 zarre. Toe was not a victim of delusions," says Curtis 
 Hidden Page, "but a creature of illusions." He loved 
 mystery and mystification but he was not a mystic. ^J 
 
 Note now the studied strangeness that haunts the 
 interior of Roderick Usher s room in The Fall of the 
 House Usher : 
 
 "The room in which I found myself was very large 
 and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and 
 pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black 
 oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from with 
 in. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their 
 way through the trellised panes, and served to render 
 sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects 
 around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach 
 the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of 
 the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung 
 upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, 
 
30 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and 
 musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to 
 give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed 
 an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and 
 irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all." 
 
 If Poe, the conscious artist, speaks in Usher s 
 room, surely Poe, the man, the observer, the lover of 
 beauty without strangeness, speaks in the description 
 of the parlor of Landor s Cottage: 
 
 "Nothing could be more rigorously simple than the 
 furniture of the parlour. On the floor was an ingrain 
 carpet, of excellent texture a white ground, spotted 
 with small circular green figures. At the windows 
 were curtains of snowy white jaconet muslin; they 
 were tolerably full, and hung decisively, perhaps 
 rather formally, in sharp parallel plaits to the floor. 
 The walls were papered with a French paper of great 
 delicacy a silver ground, with a faint green cord 
 running zigzag throughout. Its expanse was relieved 
 merely by three of Julien s exquisite lithographs a 
 trois crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. 
 One of these drawings was a scene of Oriental luxury, 
 or rather voluptuousness ; another was a carnival 
 piece spirited beyond compare ; the third was a Greek 
 female head ; a face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an 
 expression so provokingly indeterminate, never before 
 arrested my attention. 
 
 "The more substantial furniture consisted of a 
 round table, a few chairs (including a large rocking- 
 chair) and a sofa, or rather settee ; its material was 
 plain maple painted a creamy white, slightly inter- 
 
THE MAN 31 
 
 striped with green the seat of cane. The chairs and 
 table were to match ; but the forms of all had evi 
 dently been designed by the same brain which planned 
 the grounds ; it is impossible to imagine anything 
 more graceful. 
 
 "On the table were a few books ; a large, square 
 crystal bottle of some novel perfume ; a plain, ground- 
 glass astral (not solar) lamp, with an Italian shade ; 
 and a large vase of resplendently-blooming flowers. 
 Flowers indeed, of gorgeous colours and delicate 
 odour, formed the sole mere decoration of the apart 
 ment. The fireplace was nearly filled with a vase of 
 brilliant geranium. On a triangular shelf in each 
 angle of the room stood also a similar vase, varied only 
 as to its lovely contents. One or two smaller bou 
 quets adorned the mantel; and late violets clustered 
 about the opened windows." 
 
 The same contrast is seen between the characters 
 that drift or shimmer through Poe s poems and sto 
 ries and those photographic portraits that he has lefF") 
 us of the men and women that he had actually met. 
 These show a clearness of instant vision, an ability to 
 see the object as in itself it really is, that critics have 
 denied to the creator of Ligeia, Morella, Annabel Lee, 
 Usher, and others. But in the latter Poe s purpose 
 was to make an artistic use of indefinitiveness, "a sug 
 gestive indefinitiveness," as he said of The Lady of 
 Shalott, "with a view of bringing about a definitive- 
 ness of vague and therefore of spiritual effect." TurnJ 
 now to The Literati of New York and note the clear- 
 cut pen-pictures that Poe made of the writers that he 
 had seen and met. William Cullen Bryant he had not 
 
32 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 met but he had passed him on the street and had heard 
 him speak. Is there anywhere such a picture of Bry 
 ant as Poe has drawn in this sketch? 
 
 "He is now fifty-two years of age. In height, he is 
 perhaps five feet nine. His frame is rather robust. 
 His features are large but thin. His countenance is 
 sallow, nearly bloodless. His eyes are piercing gray, 
 deep set, with large projecting eyebrows. His mouth 
 is wide and massive, the expression of the smile hard, 
 cold even sardonic. The forehead is broad, with 
 prominent organs of ideality ; a good deal bald ; the 
 hair thin and grayish, as are also the whiskers, which 
 he wears in a simple style. His bearing is quite dis 
 tinguished, full of the aristocracy of intellect. In gen 
 eral, he looks in better health than before his last visit 
 to England. He seems active physically and morally 
 energetic. His dress is plain to the extreme of sim 
 plicity, although of late there is a certain degree of 
 Anglicism about it. 
 
 "In character no man stands more loftily than 
 Bryant. The peculiarly melancholy expression of his 
 countenance has caused him to be accused of harsh 
 ness, or coldness of heart. Never was there a greater 
 mistake. His soul is charity itself, in all respects 
 generous and noble. His manners are undoubtedly 
 reserved." 
 
 In the letter that Poe wrote to Mrs. Clemm as soon 
 as he and Virginia had arrived in New York from 
 Philadelphia there is a solicitous affection that can not 
 be paraphrased. There is a pathos, too, beyond the 
 reach of conscious art. But is there not also a mi- 
 
THE MAN 33 
 
 nuteness of detail, an eager, loving, childlike recording 
 of little things that nothing seems to escape? The 
 author of The Raven and Ulalume and The Sleeper 
 may have been a dreamer but it was not a dreamer 
 that penned these lines : 
 
 "New York, Sunday Morning, 
 "April 7, [1844], just after breakfast. 
 
 "MY DEAR MUDDY We have just this minute 
 done breakfast, and I now sit down to write you 
 about everything. I can t pay for the letter, because 
 the P. O. won t be open to-day. In the first place 
 we arrived safe at Walnut St. wharf. The driver 
 wanted to make me pay a dollar, but I wouldn t. 
 Then I had to pay a boy a levy to put the trunks in the 
 baggage car. In the meantime I took Sis [Virginia] 
 in the Depot Hotel. It was only a quarter past six, 
 and we had to wait till seven. We saw the Ledger 
 and Times nothing in either a few words of no 
 account in the Chronicle/ We started in good spir 
 its, but did not get here until nearly three o clock. 
 We went in the cars to Amboy, about forty miles from 
 N. York, and then took the steamboat the rest of the 
 way. Sissy coughed none at all. When we got to the 
 wharf it was raining hard. I left her on board the 
 boat, after putting the trunks in the Ladies cabin, and 
 set off to buy an umbrella and look for a boarding- 
 house. I met a man selling umbrellas, and bought 
 one for twenty- five cents. 
 
 "Then I went up Greenwich St. and soon found a 
 boarding-house. It was just before you get to Cedar 
 St., on the west side going up left-hand side. It has 
 brown stone steps, with a porch with brown pillars. 
 
34 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Morrison is the name on the door. I made a bargain 
 in a few minutes and then got a hack and went for Sis. 
 I was not gone more than half an hour, and she was 
 quite astonished to see me back so soon. She didn t 
 expect me for an hour. There were two other ladies 
 waiting on board so she wasn t very lonely. When 
 we got to the house we had to wait about half an hour 
 before the room was ready. The house is old and 
 looks buggy [The letter is cut here for the signature 
 on the other side.] the cheapest board I ever knew, 
 taking into consideration the central situation and the 
 living. I wish Kate [Catterina, the cat] could see it 
 she would faint. Last night, for supper, we had the 
 nicest tea you ever drank, strong and hot, wheat 
 bread, rye bread cheese tea-cakes (elegant), a great 
 dish (two dishes) of elegant ham and two of cold veal, 
 piled up like a mountain and large slices three dishes 
 of the cakes and everything in the greatest profusion. 
 No fear of starving here. The landlady seemed as if she 
 couldn t press us enough, and we were at home di 
 rectly. Her husband is living with her a fat, good- 
 natured old soul. There are eight or ten boarders 
 two or three of them ladies two servants. For 
 breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and 
 strong not very clear and no great deal of cream 
 veal cutlets, elegant ham and eggs and nice bread and 
 butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a 
 nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the eggs 
 and the great dishes of meat. I ate the first hearty 
 breakfast I have eaten since I left our little home. Sis 
 is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She 
 has coughed hardly any and had no night sweat. She 
 is now busy mending my pants which I tore against a 
 nail. 
 
THE MAN 35 
 
 "I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a 
 skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a 
 tin pan for the stove. The fire kept in all night. We 
 have now got four dollars and a half left. To-mor 
 row I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that 
 I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in excellent 
 spirits, and haven t drank a drop so that I hope soon 
 to get out of trouble. The very instant I scrape to 
 gether enough money I will sent it on. You can t 
 imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy had 
 a hearty cry last night, because you and Catterina 
 weren t here. We are resolved to get two rooms the 
 first moment we can. In the meantime it is impos 
 sible we could be more comfortable or more at home 
 than we are. It looks as if it were going to clear up 
 now. Be sure and go to the P. O. and have my let 
 ters forwarded. As soon as I write Lowell s article, 
 I will send it to you, and get you to get the money 
 from Graham. Give our best love to C." 
 
 But Poe the man is seen not merely in the un 
 clouded clearness with which he saw and reproduced 
 the men and things of his time but more especially in 
 his reaction to the ideas and institutions that environed 
 him. So far from holding himself apart and aloof, 
 he fronted the old and the new of his day with an 
 eager philosophic interest that would have kept his 
 name afloat, if not alive, even though he had written 
 no work of creative genius. "Poe had no sweep of 
 intellectual outlook," says Brander Matthews, "no in 
 terest in the world of ideas, as he had no interest in 
 the world of affairs." A verdict of this sort can be 
 accounted for only on the supposition that its author 
 
36 EDGAR ALLAN POK 
 
 had not read that part of Poe s writing which, if not 
 destined for immortality, is peculiarly freighted with 
 autobiography. 
 
 One of the larger questions that pressed for solu 
 tion in Poe s lifetime was that of public education in 
 the South. Poe had himself applied for a position as 
 teacher in a public school of Baltimore early in 1835. 
 "In my present circumstances," he writes to his friend, 
 J. P. Kennedy, "such a position would be most desir 
 able, and if your interest could obtain it for me, I 
 would always remember your kindness with the 
 deepest gratitude." He was unsuccessful in his appli 
 cation but, what is far more important, he became a 
 resolute champion of a public school system for every 
 southern state, a system that should have as its pin 
 nacle a state university. This was Jefferson s plan, 
 though many years were to pass before it was to find 
 even partial fulfillment. Poe had hardly moved to 
 Richmond before we find him urging upon Virginians 
 "the establishment throughout the country of district 
 schools upon a plan of organization similar to that of 
 our New England friends." He does not believe, as 
 William Wirt believed, that as need arises rich men 
 will establish universities without the aid of state gov 
 ernments, and he points proudly to Virginia, "where, 
 notwithstanding the extent of private opulence and the 
 disadvantages under which the community so long 
 labored from a want of regular and systematic in 
 struction, it was the government which was finally 
 compelled, and not private societies which were in 
 duced, to provide establishments for effecting the 
 great end." 
 
 At times Poe suggests new subjects for the school 
 
THE MAN 37 
 
 curriculum. After proving, by his own amazing pow 
 ers of analysis, that "human ingenuity cannot concoct 
 a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve," he 
 adds: 
 
 "It may be observed, generally, that in such investi 
 gations the analytic ability is very forcibly called into 
 action; and, for this reason, cryptographical solutions 
 might with great propriety be introduced into acade 
 mies as the means of giving tone to the most important 
 of the powers of the mind." 
 
 The time may come, he thinks, when the student 
 will be taught to read not by words or paragraphs but 
 by pages : 
 
 "A deep-rooted and strictly continuous habit of 
 reading will, with certain classes of intellect, result in 
 an instinctive and seemingly magnetic appreciation of 
 a thing written ; and now the student reads by pages 
 just as other men by words. Long years to come, 
 with a careful analysis of the mental process, may 
 even render this species of appreciation a common 
 thing. It may be taught in the schools of our de 
 scendants of the tenth or twentieth generation." 
 
 Poe s own habit of reading page by page was that of 
 Theodore Roosevelt. "The child," says Lawrence F. 
 Abbott, 2 "reads laboriously syllable by syllable or 
 word by word ; the practised adult reads line by line ; 
 Roosevelt read almost page by page and yet remem 
 bered what he read." 
 
 ^Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (1919), p. 183. 
 
38 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Another problem, more menacing and insistent 
 than that of education, was the problem of slavery. 
 Poe was reared in a slave-holding community ; he was 
 one of the first American writers to introduce a slave 
 and his dialect into a short story ; and his thought on 
 the great issue itself is characteristically matured and 
 original. In 1836 he writes : 
 
 "There is a view of the subject most deeply inter 
 esting to us, which we do not think has ever been pre 
 sented by any writer in as high relief as it deserves. 
 We speak of the moral influences flowing from the re 
 lation of master and slave, and the moral feelings en 
 gendered and cultivated by it. ... We shall take leave 
 to speak, as of things in esse, of a degree of loyal de 
 votion on the part of the slave to which the white 
 man s heart is a stranger, and of the master s recipro 
 cal feeling of parental attachment to his humble de 
 pendent, equally incomprehensible to him who drives a 
 bargain with the cook who prepares his food, the ser 
 vant who waits at his table, and the nurse who dozes 
 over his sick bed. That these sentiments in the breast 
 of the negro and his master are stronger than they 
 would be under like circumstances between individ 
 uals of the white race, we believe. That they belong 
 to the class of feelings by which the heart is made 
 better/ we know. How come they? They have 
 their rise in the relation between the infant and the 
 nurse. They are cultivated between him and his fos 
 ter brother. They are cherished by the parents of 
 both. They are fostered by the habit of affording 
 protection and favors to the younger offspring of the 
 same nurse. They grow by the habitual use of the 
 
THE MAN 39 
 
 word my/ used in the language of affectionate ap 
 propriation, long before any idea of value mixes with 
 it. It is a term of endearment. That is an easy tran 
 sition by which he who is taught to call the little negro 
 his, in this sense and because he loves him, shall 
 love him because he is his. The idea is not new, that 
 our habits and affections are reciprocally cause and 
 effect of each other. 
 
 "But the great teacher in this school of feeling is 
 sickness. In this school we have witnessed scenes at 
 which even the hard heart of a thorough bred philan 
 thropist would melt. But here, we shall be told, it is 
 not humanity, but interest that prompts. Be it so. 
 Our business is not with the cause but the effect. 
 But is it interest, which, with assiduous care, prolongs 
 the life of the aged and decrepid negro, who has been, 
 for years, a burthen? Is it interest which labors to 
 rear the crippled or deformed urchin, who can never 
 be anything but a burthen which carefully feeds the 
 feeble lamp of life that, without any appearance of 
 neglect, might be permitted to expire ? Is not the feel 
 ing more akin to that parental aiopifiQ which, in 
 defiance of reason, is most careful of the life which is, 
 all the time, felt to be a curse to the possessor? Are 
 such cases rare? They are as rare as the occasions; 
 but let the occasion occur, and you will see the case. 
 How else is the longevity of the negro proverbial? 
 A negro who does no work for thirty years! (and we 
 know such examples) is it interest which has length 
 ened out his existence?" 
 
 The argument does credit to Poe s heart, if not to 
 his head; and the instances that he later adduces, in- 
 
40 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 stances that he had himself witnessed, of love and de 
 votion at the sick bed of master and slave, evince a 
 native sympathy and susceptibility of which Poe s 
 stories give only scattered hints. Though abolition 
 had made but little headway at this time, Poe seemed 
 to have an intuitive conviction that slavery was 
 doomed. "It is a sort of boding," he says, "that may 
 belong to the family of superstitions. All vague and 
 undefined fears, from causes the nature of which we 
 know not, the operations of which we cannot stay, are 
 of that character." 
 
 Partly because of his defense of slavery and partly 
 because of his views on southern literature, the 
 charge has often been made that Poe was partisan and 
 sectional. But he was neither. His loyalty to certain 
 definite principles of criticism is evident in all that he 
 wrote. It was not men or parties or sections of the 
 country that Poe defended ; it was rather those bases 
 of thought and feeling which had come to have for 
 him the authority of ultimate truth. If a southerner 
 violates these principles Poe s blade pierces his armor 
 as surely as though he were a New England tran- 
 scendentalist or incorrigible abolitionist. Take the case 
 of William Gilmore Simms, the novelist and poet, of 
 South Carolina. Poe is constantly complaining that 
 Simms and other writers not born in New England 
 are omitted in popular compencliums of American lit 
 erature, but he is unsparing in pointing out the defects 
 of Simms as a writer, defects which no one questions 
 to-day. Poe s contention is not that southern writers 
 are better than others but that they at least deserve 
 consideration in every survey of American literature 
 that claims to be representative. Totality rather than 
 
THE MAN 41 
 
 personality is the real issue. If New England writers 
 are omitted from such surveys or inadequately repre 
 sented, Poe is prompt to note the defect. When Gris- 
 wold published his famous Poets and Poetry of 
 America, in 1842, Poe wrote of it: "Perhaps the au 
 thor, without being aware of it himself, has unduly 
 favored the writers of New England," but he adds 
 that injustice has also been done to two New Eng- 
 landers, Lowell and Holmes : "A few years hence Mr. 
 Griswold himself will be amazed that he assigned no 
 more space to Lowell than to McLellan, Tuckerman, 
 and others." It is in prophecies of this sort, by the 
 way, that Poe s critical sagacity is seen at its best. 
 Lowell had written hardly anything when this fore 
 cast was made but in that little Poe had detected un 
 erringly the coming poet. 
 
 Of Griswold s Female Poets of America, Poe 
 writes : 
 
 "We are glad, for Mr. Griswold s sake, as well as 
 for the interests of our literature generally, to perceive 
 that he has been at the pains of doing what Northern 
 critics seem to be at great pains never to do that is to 
 say, he has been at the trouble of doing justice, in 
 great measure, to several poetesses who have not had 
 the good fortune to be born in the North. The no 
 tices of the Misses Gary, of the Misses Fuller, of the 
 sisters Mrs. Warfield and Mrs. Lee, of Mrs. Nichols, 
 of Mrs. Welby, and of Miss Susan Archer Talley, re 
 flect credit upon Mr. Griswold, and show him to be a 
 man not more of taste than shall we say it? of 
 courage. Let our readers be assured that, (as matters 
 are managed among the four or five different cliques 
 

 42 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 who control our whole literature in controlling the 
 larger portion of our critical journals,) it requires no 
 small amount of courage, in an author whose subsist 
 ence lies in his pen, to hint, even, that anything good, 
 in a literary way, can, by any possibility, exist out of 
 the limits of a certain narrow territory." 
 
 Everything that Poe said about southern literature 
 and western literature was said not with the view of 
 unduly exalting either but of giving to both a place of 
 impartial representation beside the literature of New 
 England. When Whitman a generation later pleaded 
 for a literature that should be commensurate with 
 American life, he was only transmitting the torch 
 lighted by Poe. 
 
 But the charge of intemperate sectionalism is 
 brought most frequently against Poe s criticism of 
 Lowell s Fable for Critics. "Mr. Lowell," he writes, "is 
 one of the most rabid of the Abolition fanatics ; and no 
 southerner who does not wish to be insulted, and at 
 the same time revolted by a bigotry the most obsti 
 nately blind and deaf, should ever touch a volume by 
 this author." One may well ask, What has this to do 
 with Lowell, the poet, or Lowell, the literary critic? 
 Nothing whatever. But Lowell had called his Fable 
 only "a slight jcu d esprif and yet had introduced 
 into it such lines as, 
 
 Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred 
 Their sons for the rice swamps at so much a head, 
 And their daughters for faugh! 
 
 Surely one can not blame Poe for abdicating the role 
 of literary critic for a moment and warning the read 
 ers of the Southern Literary Messenger of what they 
 
THE MAN 43 
 
 may expect in a poem which presumably was to deal 
 only with matters literary. He is not striking beneath 
 the belt: he is warding off a blow already aimed be 
 neath the belt. But the omission of the anti-southern 
 lines from the college editions of Lowell s poem makes 
 Poe s reference seem an irrelevant and unwarranted 
 intrusion of sectionalism. Is it not unfair and un- 
 American to cite Poe s outburst of indignation without 
 citing at the same time the lines that called it into 
 being? Poe s review of the Fable for Critics, read as 
 a whole, does credit to his impartiality and to his de 
 sire to see North, South, East, and West justly repre 
 sented in a national American literature. He begins 
 with a discussion of the reasons for the absence of 
 satire in our literature : 
 
 "It seems to us that, in America, we have refused to 
 encourage satire not because what we have had 
 touches us too nearly but because it has been too 
 pointless to touch us at all. Its namby-pambyism has 
 arisen, in part, from the general want, among our men 
 of letters, of that minute polish of that skill in details 
 which, in combination with natural sarcastic power, 
 satire, more than any other form of literature, so im 
 peratively demands. In part, also, we may attribute 
 our failure to the colonial sin of imitation. We con 
 tent ourselves at this point not less supinely than at 
 all others with doing what not only has been done 
 before, but what, however well done, has yet been 
 done ad nauseam. We should not be able to endure 
 infinite repetitions of even absolute excellence ; but 
 what is McFingal more than a faint echo from 
 Hudibras ? and what is The Vision of Rubeta 
 
44 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 more than a vast gilded swill-trough overflowing with 
 Dunciad and water? Although we are not all Archi- 
 lochuses, however although we have few pretensions 
 to the Yjx,ifcvT<; Tqi$oe although, in short, we are no 
 satirists ourselves there can be no question that we 
 answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire." 
 
 When Poe comes to the lines about himself, 
 
 Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge 
 Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge; 
 Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 
 
 In a way to make all men of common sense d n metres; 
 
 Who has written some things far the best of their kind ; 
 But somehow the heart seems squeezed out by the mind, 
 
 his objection is not to Lowell s fractional distribu 
 tion of "genius" and "fudge" but to the omission of 
 all other southerners save himself : 
 
 "It is a fashion among Mr. Lowell s set to affect a 
 belief that there is no such thing as Southern Litera 
 ture. Northerners people who have really nothing 
 to speak of as men of letters, are cited by the dozen, 
 and lauded by this candid critic without stint, while 
 Legare, Simms, Longstreet, and others of equal note 
 are passed by in contemptuous silence. Mr. L. can 
 not carry his frail honesty of opinion even so far 
 south as New York. All whom he praises are Bos- 
 tonians. Other writers are barbarians, and satirized 
 accordingly if mentioned at all." 
 
 Yet in this same review, one of the last that Poe 
 wrote, he defends Longfellow and Lowell against the 
 attack of Margaret Fuller : 
 
THE MAN 45 
 
 "Messrs. Longfellow and Lowell, so pointedly 
 picked out fcr abuse [by Miss Fuller] as the worst of 
 our poets, are, upon the whole, perhaps, our best al 
 though Bryant and one or two others are scarcely 
 inferior." 3 
 
 The more Poe s Americanism is studied the less 
 restricted it will be seen to be. "You are almost the 
 only fearless American critic," Lowell wrote him in 
 1842, and, when inviting him to address the Boston 
 Lyceum, he added: "The Boston people want a little 
 independent criticism vastly." Poe was not only 
 fearless and independent ; he was untrammeled by lo 
 cal prejudice and he was singularly future-minded. 
 Our cause, he says, is "the cause of a national as dis 
 tinguished from a sectional literature." He saw 
 clearly that America would not always be hemmed 
 within its present boundaries, and he looked to the 
 Pacific as the arena of our future exploits and to "a 
 hardy, effective, and well disciplined national navy" 
 as "the main prop of our national power." Comment 
 ing on the "Report of the Committee on Naval Af 
 fairs," of March 21, 1836, he writes : 
 
 3 Stedman s reference to the clash between Poe and 
 Lowell is amusing: "A speck of reservation spoiled for him 
 [Poe] the fullest cup of esteem, even when tendered by the 
 most knightly and authoritative hands. Lowell s Fable for 
 Critics, declaring three-fifths of him genius/ gave him an 
 award which ought to content even an unreasonable man. As 
 it was, the good-natured thrusts of one whose scholarship was 
 unassailable, at his metrical and other hobbies, drew from 
 him a somewhat coarse and vindictive review of the whole 
 satire." Poe, it must be remembered, did not happen to be 
 long to the "Sweet Alice" type, so affectingly portrayed by 
 Thomas Dunn English : 
 
 "She wept with delight when you gave her a smile, 
 And trembled with grief at your frown." 
 
46 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "Our pride as a vigorous commercial empire sfiould 
 stimulate us to become our own pioneers in that vast 
 island-studded ocean, destined, it may be, to become, 
 not only the chief theatre of our traffic, but the arena 
 of our future naval conflicts. Who can say, viewing 
 the present rapid growth of our population, that the 
 Rocky Mountains shall forever constitute the western 
 boundary of our republic, or that it shall not stretch 
 its dominion from sea to sea? This may not be desir 
 able, but signs of the times render it an event by no 
 means without the pale of possibility." 
 
 Realizing that America had followed in the rear of 
 scientific discovery when she ought to have led the 
 van, he pleads eloquently for national aid to scientific 
 research : 
 
 "It is our duty, holding as we do a high rank in the 
 scale of nations, to contribute a large share to that ag 
 gregate of useful knowledge, which is the common 
 property of all. We have astronomers, mathemati 
 cians, geologists, botanists, eminent professors in 
 every branch of physical science we are unincum- 
 bered by the oppression of a national debt, and are 
 free from many other drawbacks which fetter and 
 control the measures of the trans-Atlantic govern 
 ments. We possess, as a people, the mental elasticity 
 which liberal institutions inspire, and a treasury which 
 can afford to remunerate scientific research. Ought 
 we not, therefore, to be foremost in the race of philan 
 thropic discovery, in every department embraced by 
 this comprehensive term? Our national honor and 
 glory which, be it remembered, are to be transmitted 
 
THE MAN 47 
 
 as well as enjoyed/ are involved. In building up the 
 fabric of our commercial prosperity, let us not filch 
 the corner-stone. Let it not be said of us, in future 
 ages, that we ingloriously availed ourselves of a stock 
 of scientific knowledge, to which we had not con 
 tributed our quota that we shunned as a people to 
 put our shoulder to the wheel that we reaped where 
 we had never sown. It is not to be controverted that 
 such has been hitherto the case. We have followed 
 in the rear of discovery, when a sense of our moral 
 and political responsibility should have impelled us in 
 its van." 
 
 But his strictures on America and Americans were 
 equally bold and outspoken. When James Fenimore 
 Cooper was being attacked with a malignity and scur 
 rility without parallel in our history merely because he 
 had made some tactless but essentially sound com 
 ments on American democracy, Poe, almost alone 
 among American critics, hurried to the aid of the elder 
 novelist. "We are a bull-headed and prejudiced peo 
 ple, and it were well if we had a few more of the 
 stamp of Mr. Cooper who would feel themselves at 
 liberty to tell us so to our teeth." The American 
 fondness for glitter, glare, and show found in Poe 
 its most consistent contemporary satirist: 
 
 "We have no aristocracy of blood, and having there 
 fore as a natural, and indeed as an inevitable thing, 
 fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the 
 display of wealth has here to take the place and per 
 form the office of the heraldic display in monarchical 
 countries. By a transition readily understood, and 
 
48 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 which might have been as readily foreseen, we have 
 been brought to merge in simple show our notions of 
 taste itself/ 
 
 While his Americanism resented "the disgusting 
 spectacle of our subserviency to British criticism," it 
 resented equally the inverted patriotism that commends 
 a bad book because an American wrote it: 
 
 "There was a time, it is true, when we cringed to 
 foreign opinion let us even say when we paid a 
 most servile deference to British critical dicta. That 
 an American book could, by any possibility, be 
 worthy perusal, was an idea by no means extensively 
 prevalent in the land ; and if we were induced to read 
 at all the productions of our native writers, it was 
 only after repeated assurances from England that such 
 
 productions were not altogether contemptible 
 
 The excess of our subserviency was blamable but, as 
 we have before said, this very excess might have found 
 a shadow of excuse in the strict justice, if properly 
 regulated, of the principle from which it issued. Not 
 so, however, with our present follies. We are becom 
 ing boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a too 
 speedily assumed literary freedom. We throw off, 
 with the most presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, 
 all deference whatever to foreign opinion we forget, 
 in the puerile inflation of vanity, that the world is the 
 true theatre of the biblical histrio we get up a hue 
 and cry about the necessity of encouraging native 
 writers of merit we blindly fancy that we can accom 
 plish this by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and 
 indifferent, without taking the trouble to consider that 
 
THE MAN" 49 
 
 what we choose to denominate encouragement is thus, 
 by its general application, rendered precisely the re 
 verse. In a word, so far from being ashamed of the 
 many disgraceful literary failures to which our own 
 inordinate vanities and misapplied patriotism have 
 lately given birth, and so far from deeply lamenting that 
 these daily puerilities are of home manufacture, we 
 adhere pertinaciously to our original blindly conceived 
 idea, and thus often find ourselves involved in the 
 gross paradox of liking a stupid book the better, be 
 cause, sure enough, its stupidity is American." 
 
 But subserviency to mere rank, to inherited wealth 
 or social position, was an outrage to Poe s Ameri 
 canism more deeply resented than subserviency to 
 foreign criticism. Deploring the popularity of Charles 
 O Malley s Irish Dragoon, Poe pays his respects to the 
 base sycophancy of the book in words that still flame 
 and warn: 
 
 "There is a disgusting vulgarism of thought which 
 pervades and contaminates this whole production, and 
 from which a delicate or lofty mind will shrink as 
 from a pestilence. Not the least repulsive manifesta 
 tion of this leprosy is to be found in the author s blind 
 and grovelling worship of mere rank. Of the Prince 
 Regent, that filthy compound of all that is bestial 
 that lazarhouse of all moral corruption he scruples 
 not to speak in terms of the grossest adulation sneer 
 ing at Edmund Burke in the same villainous breath in 
 which he extols the talents, the graces, and the virtues 
 of George the Fourth ! That any man, to-day, can be 
 found so degraded in heart as to style this reprobate, 
 
50 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 one who, in every feeling of his nature, and in every 
 feature of his deportment was every inch a prince 
 is matter for grave reflection and sorrowful debate. 
 The American, at least, who shall peruse the conclud 
 ing pages of the book now under review, and not turn 
 in disgust from the base sycophancy which infects 
 them, is unworthy of his country and his name." 
 
 Poe s Americanism was not the robust, genial, con 
 fident Americanism of Lowell. But it was less con 
 ventional ; it was also more searching, more interroga 
 tive, more constructive. Its base was not so broad, 
 but its summit was higher. Poe was essentially a 
 frontiersman, Lowell a dweller in the more settled 
 interior. 
 
 A quality inseparable from personality and almost 
 inseparable from Americanism is humor. Did Poe 
 ^r\ have a sense of humor? Did he ever smile or make 
 others smile? There is little evidence of it in his 
 poems and better known stories. Hence we find 
 James Hannay 4 saying and others saying with him, 
 "Poe has no humor." But Poe s best work did not 
 call for humor ; it excluded it. "Humor," he says, 
 "with an exception to be made hereafter, is directly 
 antagonistical to that which is the soul of the Muse 
 proper ; and the omni-prevalent belief, that melancholy 
 is inseparable from the higher manifestations of the 
 beautiful, is not without a firm basis in nature and in 
 reason. But it so happens that humor and that quality 
 which we have termed the soul of the Muse (imagi 
 nation) are both essentially aided in their develop- 
 
 *The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, London, 1863. 
 
THE MAN 51 
 
 ment by the same adventitious assistance that of 
 rhythm and of rhyme. Thus the only bond between 
 humorous verse and poetry, properly so called, is that 
 they employ in common a certain tool." 
 
 Others point as evidence to the stories in which 
 Poe tried to be funny and failed, to A Tale of Jeru 
 salem, How to Write a Blackwood Article, The Devil 
 in the Belfry, The Man That Was Used Up, Never 
 Bet the Devil Your Head, The Spectacles, The Lit 
 erary Life of Thin gum Bob, Esq., and X-ing a Para- 
 grab. That these are flat and irredeemable failures 
 if weighed in the scales of laughter I for one should 
 admit without hesitation. If laughter is heard in 
 them or caused by them it is surely a falsetto cackle. 
 It is not the laughter of Shakespeare or Lamb or 
 Mark Twain or O. Henry. But these futile efforts 
 do not prove that Poe had no sense of humor. They 
 prove only that, if he did, he could not put it into lit 
 erature. He could not fuse it with his other con 
 structive qualities. He could not make it merchant 
 able as a social commodity. 
 
 But he could make it felt in his criticisms of foolish 
 books. When he was asked by Griswold to name cer 
 tain selections from his writings that might be consid 
 ered fairly representative, he replied that among his 
 "funny" pieces the review of Flaccus would do as well 
 as anything else. Flaccus was Thomas Ward, whom 
 Griswold had praised in his Poets and Poetry of 
 America and characterized as "a gentleman of elegant 
 leisure." "The sum of his [Ward s] deserts," says 
 Poe, "has been footed up by a clique who are in the 
 habit of reckoning units as tens in all cases where 
 champagne and elegant leisure are concerned." 
 
52 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Then follows an extract from Ward s Worth of 
 Beauty with characteristic comment: 
 
 "Can we venture to present our readers with a 
 specimen ? 
 
 Now roses blush, and violets eyes, 
 And seas reflect the glance of skies; 
 And now that frolic pencil streaks 
 With quaintest tints the tulips cheeks; 
 Now jewels bloom in secret worth 
 Like blossoms of the inner earth ; 
 Now painted birds are pouring round 
 The beauty and the wealth of sound ; 
 Now sea-shells glance with quivering ray, 
 Too rare to seize, too fleet to stay, 
 And hues outdazzling all the rest 
 Are dashed profusely on the west, 
 While rainbows seem to palettes changed, 
 Whereon the motley tints are ranged. 
 But soft the moon that pencil tipped, 
 As though, in liquid radiance dipped, 
 A likeness of the sun it drew, 
 But flattered him with pearlier hue; 
 Which haply spilling runs astray, 
 And blots with light the milky way; 
 While stars besprinkle all the air 
 Like spatterings of that pencil there. 
 
 "All this by the way of exalting the subject. The 
 moon is made a painter and the rainbow a palette. 
 And the moon has a pencil (that pencil!) which she 
 dips, by way of a brush, in the liquid radiance, (the 
 colors on a palette are not liquid,) and then draivs 
 (not paints) a likeness of the sun ; but, in the attempt, 
 plasters him too pearly/ puts it on too thick; the 
 consequence of which is that some of the paint is spilt, 
 and runs astray and besmears the milky way, and 
 spatters the rest of the sky with stars! We can 
 only say that a very singular picture was spoilt in the 
 making." 
 
THE MAN 53 
 
 This is Poe s method in all of the "funny" reviews. 
 He probably took his cue from Macaulay whom he 
 greatly admired though with qualifications. But Poe 
 made the method his own. Instead of denouncing ab 
 extra, he places a specimen before the reader, punc 
 tures it, and lets the nonsense and impropriety drib 
 ble out. 
 
 Of Rufus Dawes, author of Geraldine, Griswold 
 had written, "As a poet the standing of Mr. Dawes is 
 as yet unsettled." Poe thought otherwise : 
 
 He laid her gently down, of sense bereft, 
 And sunk his picture on her bosom s snow, 
 
 And close beside these lines in blood he left: 
 "Farewell forever, Geraldine, I go 
 
 Another woman s victim dare I tell? 
 Tis Alice! curse us, Geraldine! farewell!" 
 
 "There is no possibility of denying the fact : this is a 
 droll piece of business. The lover brings forth a min 
 iature, (Mr. Dawes has a passion for miniatures,) 
 sinks it in the bosom of the lady, cuts his finger, and 
 writes with the blood an epistle, (where is not speci 
 fied, but we presume he indites it upon the bosom as 
 it is close beside the picture,) in which epistle he an 
 nounces that he is another woman s victim/ giving 
 us to understand that he himself is a woman after all, 
 and concluding with the delicious bit of Billingsgate 
 
 dare I tell? 
 Tis Alice! curse us, Geraldine! farewell! 
 
 We suppose, however, that curse us is a misprint; 
 for why should Geraldine curse both herself and her 
 lover? it should have been curse it! no doubt 
 The whole passage, perhaps, would have read better 
 
 thus oh, my eye! 
 
 Tis Alice! d n it, Geraldine ! good bye!" 
 
54 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 In his review of The Sacred Mountains, by J. T. 
 Headley, a prose work, Poe satirizes by calling at 
 tention to the familiar omniscience that Headley dis 
 plays in regard to events in which, thinks Poe, more 
 reverence and more reserve should have been shown. 
 Headley s long passage about the Crucifixion begins: 
 "How heaven regarded this disaster, and the Universe 
 felt at the sight, I cannot tell." Upon which Poe 
 comments thus : 
 
 "Mr. Headley is a mathematical man. Moreover 
 he is a modest man; for he confesses (no doubt with 
 tears in his eyes) that really there is one thing that he 
 does not know. How Heaven regarded this disaster, 
 and the Universe felt at the sight, I cannot tell.* 
 Only think of that! / cannot! I, Headley, really 
 cannot tell how the Universe felt once upon a time! 
 This is downright bashfulness on the part of Mr. 
 Headley. He could tell if he would only try. Why 
 did he not inquire? Had he demanded of the Uni 
 verse how it felt, can any one doubt that the answer 
 would have been Tretty well, I thank you, my dear 
 Headley ; how do you feel yourself ? " 
 
 The trail of Poe s humor may be interestingly 
 traced in his comments on poems modeled upon his 
 own. He has often been accused, and justly, of see 
 ing plagiarism where no one else could see it; but in 
 the following excerpt no reader will question that his 
 scent was true or that the plagiarist got any less than 
 his deserts: 
 
 "Here is a passage from another little ballad of 
 mine, called Lenorc, first published in 1830: 
 
THE MAN 55 
 
 How shall the ritual, then, be read the requiem how 
 be sung 
 
 By you by yours, the evil eye by yours, the slan 
 derous tongue 
 
 That did to death the innocence that died, and died 
 so young? 
 
 "And here is a passage from The Penance of Ro 
 land, by Henry B. Hirst, published in Graham s 
 Magazine for January, 1848 : 
 
 Mine the tongue that wrought this evil mine the false 
 
 and slanderous tongue 
 That done to death the Lady Gwineth Oh, my soul is 
 
 sadly wrung ! 
 "Demon ! devil/ groaned the warrior, "devil of the evil 
 
 eye!" 
 
 I do not object [concludes Poe] to his stealing my 
 verses ; but I do object to his stealing them in bad 
 grammar. My quarrel with him is not, in short, that 
 he did this thing, but that he has went and done did it," 
 
 Scores of passages like these, together with his in 
 stant recognition and loyal defense of the first efforts 
 of a young English writer known then only as "Boz," 
 are evidence that Poe was very far from being the 
 stark, solemn, unsmiling figure that so many picture 
 him. He could even laugh at himself. When he had 
 won the hundred-dollar prize in 1833 and Mr. Latrobe, 
 one of the committee of award, asked the unknown 
 young writer what else he had for publication, he re 
 plied that he was engaged on a voyage to the moon. 
 "And at once," says Mr. Latrobe, "he began to de 
 scribe the journey with so much animation that for all 
 I now remember, I may have fancied myself the com 
 panion of his aeri-al journey. When he had finished 
 his description, he apologized for his excitability, wkio\\ 
 
56 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 he laughed at himself." Indeed Poe s smile it is not 
 likely that he ever laughed boisterously was a notice 
 able and memorable characteristic of his manner and 
 expression. "I meet Mr. Poe very often at the recep 
 tions," wrote a friend to Mrs. Whitman, when Poe 
 was living in New York. "He is the observed of all 
 observers. His stories are thought wonderful, and to 
 hear him repeat The Raven, which he does very qui 
 etly, is an event in one s life. People seem to think 
 there is something uncanny about him, and the strang 
 est stories are told, and, what is more, believed, about 
 his mesmeric experiences, 5 at the mention of which he 
 always smiles. His smile is captivating." 
 
 Captivating, too, was the genial, affectionate, play 
 ful manner of Poe in the privacy of his own home. 
 After 1842 there was, it is true, the deepening and sad 
 dening solicitude for Virginia s health ; but there was 
 also a love, a sympathy, an unselfishness that wrought 
 expansively upon all who dwelt within. Mrs. Frances 
 Sargent Osgood, the writer, knew Poe in the little 
 home at 85 Amity Street, New York, and has left a 
 sketch that should lay forever the specter of brooding 
 and habitual melancholy that still parades itself as 
 Edgar Allan Poe. On her deathbed, a few months 
 after Poe s death, Mrs. Osgood wrote: 
 
 "It was in his own simple yet poetical home tHat to 
 me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most 
 
 B Poe refers to these "experiences" in his Marginalia: 
 "The Swedenborgians inform me that they have discovered 
 all that I said in a magazine article, entitled Mesmeric Reve 
 lation, to be absolutely true, although at first they were very 
 strongly inclined to doubt my veracity a thing which, in that 
 particular instance, I never dreamed of not doubting myself. 
 The story is a pure fiction from beginning to end." 
 
THE MAN 57 
 
 beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alter 
 nately 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 lit 
 erary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful 
 and courteous attention. At his desk beneath the ro 
 mantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would 
 sit, hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncom 
 plaining, 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 resi 
 dence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and 
 lighthearted. 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 Lit 
 erati 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 dif 
 ferent 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! " 
 
58 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 But no appraisal of Poe s personality or of his re- 
 latedness to his age would be at all complete without 
 some mention of his attitude to religion. Here again 
 the poems and stories leave us in the dark ; but there 
 is abundant evidence from other sources that from 
 childhood, when he went regularly to church with 
 Mrs. Allan, 6 to that last hour when he asked Mrs. 
 Moran if she thought there was any hope for him 
 hereafter, God and the Bible were fundamental in his 
 thinking. It is equally evident that, though living in 
 a sceptical age, an age in which science seemed to be 
 weakening the foundations of long cherished beliefs, 
 and being himself enamored of scientific hypothesis 
 and speculative forecast, Poe remained untouched by 
 current forms of unbelief. It is hard to understand 
 what Mr. Woodberry means when he records the fact 
 that Mrs. Moran read to the dying poet the fourteenth 
 chapter of St. John s Gospel and adds : "It is the only 
 mention of religion in his entire life." 7 If the mere 
 reading of the Bible to Poe, not by him, be construed 
 as a "mention of religion" in his life, what shall be 
 said of his own familiarity with the Bible, of his keen 
 interest in biblical research, of his oft-expressed belief 
 in the truth of the Bible, or of his final and impas 
 sioned defense, in Eureka, of the sovereignty of the 
 God of the Bible? 
 
 Poe s intimate knowledge of the Bible might be 
 traced in the many allusions that he makes to Bible 
 history and Bible imagery, but more than mere knowl 
 edge is seen in the conscious and vivid imitation of 
 
 See The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by T. H. 
 Whitty, 1917, p. XXIV. 
 
 iThe Life of Edgar Allan Poe (1909), vol. II, p. 345. 
 
THE MAN 59 
 
 Bible style that he achieves in many of his greatest 
 prose passages. No one could have written Shadow, a 
 Parable or Silence, a Fable unless he had so com 
 muned with the Old Testament prophets as to catch 
 both the form and the spirit of their utterance. In 
 dignity and elevation of thought, in faultlessness of 
 keeping, in utter simplicity of style and structure, 
 Poe s workmanship in these two selections alone would 
 place him not only among the masters of English prose 
 but among the still smaller number of those whose 
 mastery seems not so much a homage to ancient mod 
 els as an illumination from the same central sun. 
 
 Poe s interest in the discoveries that were begin 
 ning to throw new light upon many perplexing prob 
 lems in the Bible was not the interest of the anti 
 quarian. There was little of the antiquarian in his 
 nature. It was the interest of one who feels an in 
 stinctive fellowship with all forms of progressive 
 thought. "I read all the time," says Edison, 8 "on as 
 tronomy, chemistry, biology, physics, music, meta 
 physics, mechanics, and other branches political 
 economy, electricity, and, in fact, all things that are 
 making for progress in the world." Poe might have 
 said the same. It was the forward movement, the wid 
 ening horizon, the latent possibilities of a subject that 
 interested Poe, rather than the elemental nature of the 
 subject itself. Landscape gardening, mesmerism, 
 cryptography, metaphysical speculation, the nebular 
 hypothesis, the new science or pseudo-science of aero 
 nautics, the explorations then making in the Pacific 
 Ocean and the South Seas, Maury s additions to ma- 
 
 8 Life of Edison, by Dyer and Martin, vol. II, p. 764. 
 
60 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 rine lore, the latent results of the gold-excitement in 
 California, these appealed to Poe not so much in them 
 selves as through the enfolded sense of something 
 greater yet to be. They were open doors rather than 
 reservoirs. They were frontier subjects and out of 
 each of them he wrought literature. 
 
 If he did not make literature out of the results of 
 Bible discovery in Oriental lands, he at least left on 
 record his familiarity with the subject and his prompt 
 recognition of the part that such discoveries were des 
 tined to play in the interpretation of the Old and the 
 New Testament. Though he did not live to greet any 
 of the discoveries of Sir Henry Rawlinson, "the fa 
 ther of Assyriology," Poe s review of Incidents of 
 Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petrcca, and the Holy Land, 
 by John Lloyd Stephens, the New Jersey lawyer, 
 shows the spirit in which he would have welcomed the 
 work of the great English Orientalist : 
 
 "Viewed only as one of a class of writings whose di 
 rect tendency is to throw light upon the Book of 
 Books, it has strong claim upon the attention of all 
 who read. While the vast importance of critical and 
 philological research in dissipating the obscurities and 
 determining the exact sense of the Scriptures cannot 
 be too readily conceded, it may be doubted whether the 
 collateral illustration derivable from records of travel 
 be not deserving at least equal consideration. Cer 
 tainly the evidence thus afforded, exerting an enkin 
 dling influence upon the popular imagination, and so 
 taking palpable hold upon the popular understanding, 
 will not fail to become in time a most powerful because 
 easily available instrument in the downfall of unbelief. 
 
THE MAN 61 
 
 Infidelity itself has often afforded unwilling and un 
 witting testimony to the truth. It is surprising to find 
 with what unintentional precision both Gibbon and 
 Volney (among others) have used, for the purpose of 
 description, in their accounts of nations and countries, 
 the identical phraseology employed by the inspired 
 writers when foretelling the most improbable event. 
 In this manner scepticism has been made the root of 
 belief, and the providence of the Deity has been no less 
 remarkable in the extent and nature of the means for 
 bringing to light the evidence of his accomplished 
 word, than in working the accomplishment itself." 
 
 Later on in this review Poe avows his belief in the 
 literal meaning and literal fulfilment of Bible predic 
 tions. The italics are of course Poe s : 
 
 "We look upon the literalness of the understanding 
 of the Bible predictions as an essential feature in 
 prophecy conceiving minuteness of detail to have 
 been but a portion of the providential plan of the* Deity 
 for bringing more visibly to light, in after-ages, the 
 evidence of the fulfilment of his word. No general 
 meaning attached to a prediction, no general fulfil 
 ment of such prediction, could carry, to the reason of 
 mankind, inferences so unquestionable, as its particu 
 lar and minutely incidental accomplishment. General 
 statements, except in rare instances, are susceptible of 
 misinterpretation or misapplication: details admit no 
 shadow of ambiguity. That, in many striking cases, 
 the words of the prophets have been brought to pass in 
 every particular of a series of minutiae, whose very 
 meaning was unintelligible before the period of fulfil- 
 
62 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ment, is a truth that few are so utterly stubborn as to 
 deny. We mean to say that, in all instances, the most 
 strictly literal interpretation will apply." 
 
 He inserts also in the same review his proffered 
 emendation of Isaiah XXXIV, 10, quoting the original 
 Hebrew in Hebrew letters. Poe was very proud of 
 this achievement and repeats his newly acquired Ori 
 ental lore several times in later years, though one must 
 sympathize with him in his repetitions because the 
 typographical outfit was not again equal to the repro 
 duction of the awesome and erudite Hebrew originals. 
 Of course he has been called a charlatan and worse for 
 intimating a knowledge of Hebrew which he did not 
 possess. But surely his pride in the matter is pardon 
 able. It was a very small hoax. Doctor Charles An- 
 thon, of New York, had given him in a letter (June I, 
 1837) all the information that was needed, and Poe 
 used it, making much of the Hebrew characters that 
 Doctor Anthon had furnished. But Doctor Anthon s 
 letter was in answer to one from Poe, asking whether 
 the emendation was borne out by the Hebrew text. 
 Poe nowhere claims familiarity with Hebrew or even 
 originality in his proffered reading of the text. 
 
 Poe s belief in the Bible, his aversion to scepticism, 
 and his assurance of the immortality of the soul find 
 frequent assertion in his less known works. He com 
 mends the inaugural address of the President of 
 Hampden-Sidney College because it shows "a vein of 
 that truest of all philosophy, the philosophy of the 
 Christian." He believed that the lines, 
 
 Trifles, like straws, upon the surface flow, 
 
 He who would search for pearls must dive below, 
 
THE MAN 63 
 
 embodied a false philosophy : "Witness the principles 
 of our divine faith that moral mechanism by which 
 the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom 
 of a man." In reviewing Zanoni he says: "All that 
 is truly noble in Bulwer s imaginary doctrines of the 
 Rosicrucians is stolen from the pure precepts of our 
 holy religion." Knowledge of nature, says Poe, adds 
 to our knowledge of God, and Macaulay s assertion 
 that theology is not a progressive science is declared 
 to be false and misleading : 
 
 "Were the indications we derive from science, of the 
 nature and designs of Deity, and thence, by inference, 
 of man s destiny, were these indications proof direct, 
 it is then very true that no advance in science could 
 strengthen them ; for, as the essayist justly observes, 
 nothing can be added to the force of the argument 
 which the mind finds in every beast, bird and flower ; 
 but, since these indications are rigidly analogical, 
 every step in human knowledge, every astronomical 
 discovery, in especial, throws additional light upon 
 the august subject, by extending the range of analogy. 
 That we know no more, to-day, of the nature of Deity, 
 of its purposes, and thus of man himself, than we did 
 even a dozen years ago, is a proposition disgracefully 
 absurd. If Natural Philosophy/ says a greater than 
 Macaulay, should continue to be improved in its va 
 rious branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would 
 be enlarged also/ These words of the prophetic New 
 ton are felt to be true, and will be fulfilled." 
 
 It was the scepticism of Lord Bolingbroke which, 
 according to Poe, rendered nearly half of the vis 
 count s work comparatively worthless : 
 
64 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "The philosophical essays, occupying two of the 
 volumes on our table, are comparatively valueless, and 
 inferior, both in style and matter, to the political 
 tracts. They are deeply imbued with the sceptical 
 opinions of the author, and we should have willingly 
 seen them omitted in this edition, if it were possible to 
 get a complete one, with nearly one half of the author s 
 works left out. Little, therefore, as we value the phil 
 osophical works of Bolingbroke, we commend the pub 
 lishers for not expunging them as too many others 
 have done." 
 
 "Twenty years ago/ says Poe, writing in 1844, 
 "credulity was the characteristic trait of the mob, in 
 credulity the distinctive feature of the philosophic ; 
 nozv the case is conversed. The wise are wisely averse 
 from disbelief. To be sceptical is no longer evidence 
 either of information or of wit." 
 
 "No man doubts the immortality of the soul," de 
 clares Poe, "yet of all truths this truth of immortality 
 is the most difficult to prove by any mere series of 
 syllogisms." And later: "However well a man may 
 reason on the great topics of God and immortality, he 
 will be forced to admit tacitly in the end, that God 
 and immortality are things to be felt rather than dem 
 onstrated." There was a time, however, when Poe 
 believed that man s immortality could be proved : 
 
 "Indeed, to our own mind, the only irrefutable argu 
 ment in support of the soul s immortality or, rather, 
 the only conclusive proof of man s alternate dissolution 
 and rejuvenescence ad infinitum is to be found in an 
 alogies deduced from the modern established theory of 
 
THE MAN 65 
 
 the nebular cosmogony. This cosmogony demonstrates 
 that all existing bodies in the universe are formed of a 
 nebular matter, a rare ethereal medium, pervading 
 space; shows the mode and laws of formation, and 
 proves that all things are in a perpetual state of prog 
 ress; that nothing in nature is perfected" 
 
 Not a proof but an indication of immortality, "a 
 forethought of the loveliness to come," "a prescient 
 ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave," Poe found in 
 poetry : 
 
 "He who shall merely sing with whatever rapture, 
 in however harmonious strains, or with however vivid 
 a truth of imitation, of the sights and sounds which 
 greet him in common with all mankind he, we say, 
 has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a 
 longing unsatisfied, which he has been impotent to 
 fulfill. There is still a thirst unquenchable, which to 
 allay he has shown us no crystal springs. This burn 
 ing thirst belongs to the immortal essence of man s na 
 ture. It is equally a consequence and an indication of 
 his perennial life. It is the desire of the moth for the 
 star. It is not the mere appreciation of the beauty be 
 fore us. It is a wild effort to reach the beauty above. 
 It is a forethought of the loveliness to come. It is a 
 passion to be satisfied by no sublunary sights, or 
 sounds, or sentiments, and the soul thus athirst strives 
 to allay its fever in futile efforts at creation. Inspired 
 with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the 
 grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combina 
 tion among the things and thoughts of Time, to antici 
 pate some portion of that loveliness whose very ele- 
 
66 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ments, perhaps, appertain solely to Eternity. And the 
 result of such effort, on the part of souls fittingly con 
 stituted, is alone what mankind have agreed to denom 
 inate Poetry." 
 
 But Eureka, published in 1848, contains more of 
 Foe s matured personality, more of his spiritual auto 
 biography, than any other product of his pen. For 
 seven years at least the main conception of this prose- 
 poem absorbed Poe as no other constructive thought 
 had ever absorbed him before. He seemed consciously 
 in the grip not of a marginal truth but of a central and 
 star-ypointing truth. "What I here profound" he 
 writes in his brief preface, "is true : therefore it can 
 not die : or if by any means it be now trodden down 
 so that it die, it will rise again to the Life Everlast 
 ing. " Virginia s death with its long but foreseen ap 
 proach had thrown him starkly back upon the problem 
 of life here and its expansion or extinction hereafter. 
 The companionship that he needed in these tense hours 
 of composition was now furnished by Mrs. Clemm. 
 "When he was composing Eureka," she wrote, "we 
 used to walk up and down the garden, his arm around 
 me, mine around him, until I was so tired I could not 
 walk. He would stop every few minutes and explain 
 his ideas to me, and ask if I understood him." 
 
 Eureka is more than a demonstration that Poe s in 
 tellect and imagination were functioning at their maxi 
 mum during those lonesome latter years ; it reveals 
 that, above all the doubt and darkness and decay that 
 seem to glimmer through his poems and stories, there 
 shone at last the clear light of an abiding conviction 
 that 
 
THE MAN 67 
 
 God s in his heaven 
 All s right with the world. 
 
 Two passages must suffice. The echo of the first 
 seems heard in a line of Tennyson s In Memoriam, 
 
 One God, one law, one element. 
 Poe writes : 
 
 "That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, 
 no thinking being can long doubt. By the former we 
 imply merely the laws of the latter. But with the very 
 idea of God, omnipotent, omniscient, we entertain, also, 
 the idea of the infallibility of his laws. With Him 
 there being neither Past nor Future with Him all be 
 ing Nozv do we not insult him in supposing his laws 
 so contrived as not to provide for every possible con 
 tingency? or, rather, what idea can we have of any 
 possible contingency, except that it is at once a result 
 and a manifestation of his laws? He who, divesting 
 himself of prejudice, shall have the rare courage to 
 think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in 
 the end, at the condensation of laws into Law cannot 
 fail of reaching the conclusion that each law of Nature 
 is dependent at all points upon all other lazvs, and that 
 all are but consequences of one primary exercise of the 
 Divine Volition. Such is the principle of the Cos 
 mogony which, with all necessary deference, I here 
 venture to suggest and to maintain." 
 
 Just as Tennyson asked that Crossing the Bar be 
 placed last in all editions of his poems, so Poe might 
 well have asked that the close of Eureka his swan 
 song be viewed as the terminus of all that he had 
 
68 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 thought or dreamed or hoped or suffered. If "Never 
 more" seem at times the refrain of all of his singing, 
 "Evermore" was the note on which he closed ; if de 
 spair seem the companion of his more solitary moods, 
 it was only that faith and hope might abide with him 
 at the end ; if death seem to loom too large and men 
 acing in his visions, it was over and beyond its vanish 
 ing rim that he saw rise the beckoning and unclouded 
 life: 
 
 "These creatures [animate and inanimate] are all, 
 too, more or less conscious Intelligences ; conscious, 
 first, of a proper identity ; conscious, secondly and by 
 faint indeterminate glimpses, of an identity with the 
 Divine Being of whom we speak of an identity with 
 God. Of the two classes of consciousness, fancy that 
 the former will grow weaker, the latter stronger, dur 
 ing the long succession of ages which must elapse be 
 fore these myriads of individual Intelligences become 
 blended when the bright stars become blended into 
 One. Think that the sense of individual identity will 
 be gradually merged in the general consciousness 
 that Man, for example, ceasing imperceptibly to feel 
 himself Man, will at length attain that awfully tri 
 umphant epoch when he shall recognize his existence 
 as that of Jehovah. In the meantime bear in mind 
 that all is Life Life Life within Life the less with 
 in the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine" 
 
 III 
 
 And this is the man they call detached from the life 
 about him, unaligned with the problems of his day, 
 uninterested in the things that interested all others, "an 
 
THE MAN 69 
 
 exotic with no roots in the soil of his nativity," neither 
 a person nor a personality but a " fantastically disem 
 bodied" spirit. If Hawthorne, the man, were similarly 
 interpreted, if he were judged solely from his greatest 
 works, we should think of him as tortured day and 
 night by a brooding sense of guilt ; we should picture 
 him as living under the shadow of a curse, merited or 
 inherited, that left no peace to his stricken conscience. 
 It would be a false conception, however, because we 
 know from other sources that Hawthorne was not ab 
 normal in the pathological sense. But in the case of 
 Poe there have been no other sources. The stories and 
 poems have been requisitioned as autobiography, as 
 the only autobiography. They are the autobiography 
 of the artist, an artist who has again and again record 
 ed his conviction that art is concerned primarily with 
 beauty, and that beauty, to be appealing, must be gar 
 mented in strangeness. 
 
 But Poe s personality has also been interpreted in 
 terms not of his art but of a habit that clung to him 
 to the last. It is needless to go into the old sifted and 
 re-sifted question of the exact amount of alcohol neces 
 sary to render Poe irresponsible. There is no doubt 
 that he drank to excess and more frequently than his 
 defenders have admitted. There is no doubt also that 
 he fought the habit, fostered by inheritance and en 
 vironment, with every power of will and every prompt 
 ing of duty that he could muster. The evidence is 
 plain that the temptation to drink was strongest dur 
 ing those quick descents from confident hope and 
 exaltation to pitiless and intolerable dejection. George 
 Eliot writes of "the still melancholy that I love." Poe 
 did not love it, nor was it habitual with him. His tern- 
 
70 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 perament was mercurial, and to break the fall from 
 elation to hopelessness he drank. Indulgence was fol 
 lowed not by angry retort to those that sought to coun 
 sel him but by profound humiliation and by promise of 
 reform. To assert that Poe found poetic inspiration 
 in drink is to fly in the face of all the known facts. 
 Drink did not help him ; it hurt him, and he fought it 
 as a foe of art, of thought, of personality, and of self- 
 respect. The very nature of his work, with its metic 
 ulous care in details, its orderliness, its niceties of 
 analysis, its interplay of reason and logic, its symmetry 
 of construction, makes impossible the conjecture that 
 he could have wrought it or any part of it while ex 
 cited by drink. Poe drank but he was not a drunkard ; 
 he was dissipated but not dissolute. 
 
 No one has stated the case better than his friend, 
 F. W. Thomas: 
 
 "If he took but one glass of weak wine or beer or 
 cider the Rubicon of the cup was passed with him, and 
 it almost always ended in excess and sickness. But he 
 fought against the propensity as hard as ever Cole 
 ridge fought against it, and I am inclined to believe, 
 after his sad experience and suffering, if he could have 
 gotten office with a fixed salary, beyond the need of 
 literary labour, that he would have redeemed himself 
 at least at this time. The accounts of his derelic 
 tions in this respect when I knew him were very much 
 exaggerated. I have seen men who drank bottles of 
 wine to Poe s wine glasses who yet escaped all imputa 
 tion of intemperance. His was one of those tempera 
 ments whose only safety is in total abstinence. He 
 suffered terribly after any indiscretion. And after all 
 what Byron said of Sheridan was true of Poe 
 
THE MAN Jri 
 
 Ah little do they know 
 That what to them seemed vice might be but woe." 
 
 The poems that Poe wrote after the death of Vir 
 ginia, the addresses that he delivered to applauding 
 audiences, and the unexceptional testimony of the men 
 and women who knew him most intimately during the 
 last three months in Richmond show that there was 
 no bankruptcy of intellect, no collapse of character, no 
 disintegration of personality. "With all his reckless 
 ness," says Stedman, warning the reader against mak 
 ing Poe and the unheroic hero of William Wilson one 
 and the same, "he was neither vicious nor criminal, 
 and he never succeeded or wished to succeed in put 
 ting down his conscience. That stayed by him to the 
 bitter end, and perhaps the end was speedier for its 
 companionship." 
 
 Summing up, may we not say that Poe s work will 
 enter upon a still wider stage of influence when it is , 
 regarded not as allurement to doubt and despair but/ 
 as an outcry against them? Is is not unjust to call* 
 him the poet laureate of death and decay in the sense 
 in which we call Shelley the poet laureate of love, 
 Wordsworth of nature, Tennyson of trust, or Brown 
 ing of resolute faith ? Poe did not love death ; he di 
 not celebrate the charms of doubt or of darkness or 
 separation. He abhorred them. The desolate lover 
 in The Raven does not acquiesce in "Nevermore." It 
 flouts and belies every instinct and intuition of his 
 heart. And in every poem and story of Poe s over 
 which blackness seems to brood, there is the unmistak 
 able note of spiritual protest ; there is the evidence of 
 a nature so attuned to love and light, to beauty and 
 harmony, that denial of them or separation from them 
 
 ii- 
 lid 
 
 ,:: 
 
72 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 is a veritable death-in-life. Poe fathomed darkness 
 but climbed to the light ; he became the world s spokes 
 man for those dwelling within the shadow but his feet 
 were already upon the upward slope. Out of it all 
 he emerged victor, not victim. 
 
 When I remember that Poe resented the charge of 
 pantheism as keenly as that of atheism, when I re 
 call that he ended his career as thinker and prophet 
 with the chant, "All is Life Life Life within Life 
 the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit 
 Divine," the sunlight seems to fall upon "the misty mid 
 region of Weir," even "the ghoul-haunted woodland of 
 Weir;" and Edgar Allan Poe seems no longer our 
 great autumnal genius, heralding an early winter, but 
 the genius of winter itself, a late winter, with spring 
 already at its heart. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE CRITIC 
 
 OUR ultimate knowledge of Poe, however, must 
 rest neither upon his fame nor upon his personality. 
 These are only subsidiary to the deeper knowledge 
 that comes from a first-hand acquaintance with his 
 works. In mere bulk Poe s literary output was not 
 large but it was singularly varied. No other writer 
 of English has attained an equal eminence in literary 
 genres as different as criticism, poetry, and the short 
 story. To these must also be added a fourth type for 
 which Stedman 1 has suggested the name "Pastels," or 
 "Impressions," or "Petits Poemes en Prose." Criti 
 cism, however, should come first, for it was through 
 criticism that Poe first made a national reputation ; 
 and it is in his criticism that we find the clearest expo 
 sition of the literary principles to which, from first to 
 last, he was consistently loyal in the production of his 
 own creative work. 
 
 But Poe s criticisms are more than introductions to 
 his own works. They have also a value as historical 
 material in the evolution of American literature. 
 They serve as contemporary witnesses to the suprem 
 acy of Cooper, Bryant and Irving, and as heralds of 
 the greater group represented by Longfellow, Lowell, 
 
 ~*-The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman and George Edward Woodberry, New York, 1914, 
 vol. I, p. 94. 
 
 73 
 
74 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Whittier, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Holmes. Poe 
 lived in a transition age, when New York was yielding 
 its literary hegemony to New England, and when the 
 South and the West were sounding the first notes in 
 a great regional chorus which, after 1870, was to mark 
 the advent at last of a regionally representative Ameri 
 can literature. These movements were noted and re 
 corded by Poe as by no other contemporary critic. 
 
 But Poe s critiques have an independent value 
 apart from the time and place that called them forth. 
 They are the comments of one whose genius was pre 
 eminently structural. The architecture of prose and 
 verse, especially of the short story and the short poem, 
 appealed to Poe far more than they appealed to any 
 other English or American critic. He did not neglect 
 content, but he was distinctively the builder. His 
 most characteristic reviews are not mere appraisals; 
 they are answers to the question, How might this have 
 been better done? This kind of criticism might easily 
 have degenerated into the analysis of the purely ex 
 ternal and comparatively irrelevant. In fact, Gris- 
 wold said of Poe: "As a critic, he was more remark 
 able as a dissector of sentences than as a commenter on 
 ideas." But Poe was primarily neither a dissector of 
 sentences nor a commenter on ideas. He dissects sen 
 tences and he comments on ideas but only as these 
 make or mar the structural unity, the wholeness of 
 effect, of the piece that he is criticizing. "Totality of 
 effect" became Poe s touchstone at the beginning of 
 his critical career; and words, sounds, rhythms, sen 
 tences, paragraphs, stanzas, plot, and background are 
 held to a strict stewardship not on their own account 
 but as joint agents in carrying out the predetermined 
 design. 
 
THE CRITIC 75 
 
 To compare Poe as a critic with Coleridge or Mat 
 thew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve or Taine or Lowell is 
 to compare him with men who wore, it is true, the 
 same livery, but who served under other banners. 
 His criticism was different from theirs because his 
 purpose was different. When I read them, I feel 
 more than I feel in Poe the impact of philosophical 
 suggestions, of wide historical relationships, of litera 
 ture interpreted as life, and life seen anew through 
 literature. Whether you call their method judicial in 
 the Aristotelian sense, or purely impressionistic, or 
 learnedly historical, the man whose work they are 
 criticizing seems in certain vital ways to live again. 
 I seem to know him as a man and as a thinker, but not 
 as a craftsman. How he succeeded in bodying forth 
 his conceptions, how the man became for the time 
 being the literary artist, how he made an ally of that 
 tested body of truth known as technique, how he dif 
 fers from me who now think as he thought but am as 
 powerless as before to write as he wrote, this re 
 mains in its original obscurity. But it is this niche 
 in criticism that Poe has come nearer filling than any 
 one else. It is this quality in his critical work that 
 makes him a living force wherever men are "stung by 
 the splendor of a sudden thought" but impotent to 
 impart it. It is this radiation from his criticisms that 
 makes them permanently serviceable not merely to the 
 creative artist in letters but to all those who wish to 
 write or to speak more convergently and thus more 
 effectively. 
 
 II 
 
 The following extracts are chosen to exemplify the 
 more important aspects of Poe s criticism but espec- 
 
;6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ially the last mentioned. Only one selection, Poe s 
 analysis of The Raven, is given complete. 
 
 THE FACULTY OF IDENTIFICATION 
 
 [A new edition of Robinson Crusoe, reviewed in 
 The Southern Literary Messenger, January, 1836. The 
 review has an autobiographical significance. It shows 
 also that Poe could admire whole-heartedly a work 
 that has neither plot nor stylistic beauty. The Narra 
 tive of A. Gordon Pym (1838) is Poe s Robinson 
 Crusoe.] 
 
 How fondly do we recur, in memory, to those en 
 chanted days of our boyhood when we first learned to 
 grow serious over "Robinson Crusoe" ! when we first 
 found the spirit of wild adventure enkindling within 
 us ; as by the dim fire light, we labored out, line by 
 line, the marvellous import of those pages, and hung 
 breathless and trembling with eagerness over their ab 
 sorbing over their enchaining interest! "Nothing 
 farther," as Vapid says, "can be done in that line." 
 Wo, henceforward, to the Defoe who shall prate to us 
 of "undiscovered bournes." There is positively not 
 a square inch of new ground for any future Selkirk. 
 Neither in the Indian, in the Pacific, nor in the At 
 lantic, has he a shadow of hope. The Southern 
 Ocean has been incontinently ransacked, and in the 
 North Scoresby, Franklin, Parry, Ross & Co. have 
 been little better than so many salt water Paul Prys. 
 
 While Defoe would have been fairly entitled to im 
 mortality had he never written "Robinson Crusoe," 
 yet his many other very excellent writings have nearlv 
 
THE CRITIC 77 
 
 faded from our attention, in the superior lustre of the 
 Adventures of the Mariner of York. What better 
 possible species of reputation could the author have 
 desired for that book than the species which it has so 
 long enjoyed? It has become a household thing in 
 nearly every family in Christendom. Yet never was 
 admiration of any work universal admiration more 
 indiscriminately or more inappropriately bestowed. 
 Not one person in ten nay, not one person in five 
 hundred, has, during the perusal of "Robinson Cru 
 soe," the most remote conception that any particle of 
 genius, or even of common talent, has been employed 
 in its creation ! Men do not look upon it in the light 
 of a literary performance. Defoe has none of their 
 thoughts Robinson all. The powers which have 
 wrought the wonder have been thrown into obscurity 
 by the very stupendousness of the wonder they have 
 wrought ! We read, and become perfect abstractions 
 in the intensity of our interest we close the book, and 
 are quite satisfied that we could have written as well 
 ourselves ! All this is effected by the potent magic of 
 verisimilitude. Indeed the author of "Crusoe" must 
 have possessed, above all other faculties, what has been 
 termed the faculty of identification that dominion 
 exercised by volition over imagination which enables 
 the mind to lose its own, in a, fictitious, individuality. 
 This includes, in a very great degree, the power of ab 
 straction ; and with these keys we may partially unlock 
 the mystery of that spell which has so long invested 
 the volume before us. 
 
 But a complete analysis of our interest in it can 
 not be thus afforded. Defoe is largely indebted to his 
 subject. The idea of man in a state of perfect isola- 
 
;8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 tion, although often entertained, was never before so 
 comprehensively carried out. Indeed the frequency 
 of its occurrence to the thoughts of mankind argued 
 the extent of its influence on their sympathies, while 
 the fact of no attempt having been made to give an 
 embodied form to the conception, went to prove the 
 difficulty of the undertaking. But the true narrative 
 of Selkirk in 1711, with the powerful impression it 
 then made upon the public mind, sufficed to inspire 
 Defoe with both the necessary courage for his work, 
 and entire confidence in its success. How wonderful 
 has been the result! 
 
 THE NOVEL AS HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 [Bulwer s Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes, reviewed 
 in The Southern Literary Messenger, February, 1836. 
 The last sentence of this extract is Poe s clearest state 
 ment of his adherence to a fundamental principle of 
 democracy.] 
 
 But as was said before, we should err radically if 
 we regard "Rienzi" altogether in the light of Ro 
 mance. Undoubtedly as such as a fiction, and com 
 ing under the title of a novel, it is a glorious, a won 
 derful conception, and not the less wonderfully and 
 gloriously carried out. What else could we say of a 
 book over which the mind so delightedly lingers in pe 
 rusal ? In its delineations of passion and character in 
 the fine blending and contrasting of its incidents 
 in the rich and brilliant tints of its feudal paintings in 
 a pervading air of chivalry, and grace, and senti 
 ment in all that can throw a charm over the pages of 
 Romance, the last novel of Bulwer is equal, if not su- 
 
THE CRITIC 79 
 
 perior, to any of his former productions. Still we 
 would look at the work in a different point of view. 
 It is History. We hesitate not to say that it is His 
 tory in its truest in its only true, proper, and philo 
 sophical garb. Sismondi s works were not. There is 
 no greater error than dignifying with the name of His 
 tory a tissue of dates and details, though the dates be 
 ordinarily correct, and the details indisputably true. 
 Not even with the aid of acute comment will such a 
 tissue satisfy our individual notions of History. To 
 the effect let us look to the impression rather than to 
 the seal. And how very seldom is any definite im 
 pression left upon the mind of the historical reader ! 
 How few bear away even from the pages of Gibbon 
 Rome and the Romans. Vastly different was the 
 genius of Niebuhr than whom no man possessed a 
 more discriminative understanding of the uses and the 
 purposes of the pen of the historiographer. But we 
 digress. Bearing in mind that "to contemplate" 
 luTOpsTv 2 should and must be allowed a more noble 
 and a more expansive acceptation than has been 
 usually given it, w r e shall often discover in Fiction the 
 essential spirit and vitality of Historic Truth while 
 Truth itself, in many a dull and lumbering Archive, 
 shall be found guilty of all the inefficiency of Fiction. 
 "Rienzi," then, is History. But there are other 
 aspects in which it may be regarded with advantage. 
 Let us survey it as a profound and lucid exposition of 
 
 2 History, from UJTOQEIV, to contemplate, seems, among 
 the Greeks, to have embraced not only the knowledge of past 
 events, but also Mythology, Esopian and Milesian fables, 
 Romance, Tragedy and Comedy. But our business is with 
 things, not words. (Poe s Note.) 
 
8o EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the morale of Government of the Philosophies of 
 Rule and Misrule of the absolute incompatibility of 
 Freedom and Ignorance Tyranny in the few and 
 Virtue in the many. Let us consider it as something 
 akin to direct evidence that a people is not a mob, nor 
 a mob a people, nor a mob s idol the idol of a people 
 that in a nation s self is the only security for a nation 
 and that it is absolutely necessary to model upon the 
 character of the governed, the machinery, whether 
 simple or complex, of the governmental legislation. 
 
 AN OMEN OF BETTER DAYS FOR SOUTHERN LITERATURE 
 
 [Georgia Scenes, by Judge Augustus Baldwin Long- 
 street, reviewed in The Southern Literary Messenger, 
 March, 1836. The book has proved a sort of classic 
 of provincial literature. Poe closes his review of 
 about ten pages by saying: "Altogether this very hu 
 morous and very clever book forms an era in our read 
 ing. It has reached us per mail, and without a cover. 
 We will have it bound forthwith, and give it a niche 
 in our library as a sure omen of better days for the 
 literature of the South."] 
 
 This book has reached us anonymously not to say 
 anomalously yet it is most heartily welcome. The 
 author, whoever he is, is a clever fellow, imbued with 
 a spirit of the truest humor, and endowed, moreover, 
 with an exquisitely discriminative and penetrating un 
 derstanding of character in general, and of Southern 
 character in particular. And we do not mean to speak 
 of human character exclusively. To be sure, our 
 Georgian is an fait here too he is learned in all things 
 appertaining to the biped without feathers. In re- 
 
THE CRITIC 81 
 
 gard, especially, to that class of southwestern mam 
 malia who come under the generic appellation of 
 "savagerous wild cats," he is a very Theophrastus in 
 duodecimo. But he is not the less at home in other 
 matters. Of geese and ganders he is the La Bruyere, 
 and of good-for-nothing horses the Rochefoucault. 
 
 Seriously if this book were printed in England it 
 would make the fortune of its author. We positively 
 mean what we say and are quite sure of being sus 
 tained in our opinion by all proper judges who may be 
 so fortunate as to obtain a copy of the "Georgia 
 Scenes," and who will be at the trouble of sifting their 
 peculiar merits from amid the gaucheries of a South 
 ern publication. Seldom perhaps never in our lives 
 have we laughed as immoderately over any book as 
 over the one now before us. If these scenes have pro 
 duced such effect upon our cachinnatory nerves upon 
 us who are not "of the merry mood," and, moreover, 
 have not been used to the perusal of somewhat similar 
 things we are at no loss to imagine what a hubbub 
 they would occasion in the uninitiated regions of 
 Cockaigne. And what would Christopher North say 
 to them? ah, what would Christopher North say? 
 that is the question. Certainly not a word. But we 
 can fancy the pursing up of his lips, and the long, loud, 
 and jovial resonation of his wicked, uproarious ha! 
 ha s ! 
 
 From the Preface to the Sketches before us we 
 learn that although they are, generally, nothing more 
 than fanciful combinations of real incidents and char 
 acters, still, in some instances, the narratives are lit 
 erally true. We are told also that the publication of 
 these pieces was commenced, rather more than a year 
 
82 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ago, in one of the Gazettes of the State, and that they 
 were favorably received. "For the last six months," 
 says the author, "I have been importuned by persons 
 from all quarters of the State to give them to the pub 
 lic in the present form." This speaks well for the 
 Georgian taste. But that the publication will succeed, 
 in the bookselling sense of the word, is problematical. 
 Thanks to the long-indulged literary supineness of the 
 South, her presses are not as apt in putting forth a 
 saleable book as her sons are in concocting a wise one. 
 
 COMPARISON VS. IDEALITY 
 
 [The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, by Joseph 
 Rodman Drake, reviewed in The Southern Literary 
 Messenger, April, 1836. The suggestive distinction 
 here made is not that of Coleridge between fancy and 
 imagination. See page no. Note that Poe s construc 
 tive sense leads him to rewrite a passage from The 
 Culprit Fay, a striking illustration of the propinquity 
 of theory and practice, of thought and expression, in 
 his own art.] 
 
 It is only lately that we have read the "Culprit 
 Fay." This is a poem of six hundred and forty irreg 
 ular lines, generally iambic, and divided into thirty- 
 six stanzas, of unequal length. The scene of the nar 
 rative, as we ascertain from the single line, 
 
 The moon looks down on old Cronest, 
 
 is principally in the vicinity of West Point on the 
 
 Hudson 
 
 It is more than probable that from ten readers of 
 the "Culprit Fay," nine would immediately pronounce 
 
THE CRITIC 83 
 
 it a poem betokening the most extraordinary powers 
 of imagination, and of these nine, perhaps five or six, 
 poets themselves, and fully impressed with the truth 
 of what we have already assumed, that Ideality is in 
 deed the soul of the Poetic Sentiment, would feel em 
 barrassed between a half-consciousness that they 
 ought to admire the production, and a wonder that 
 they do not. This embarrassment would then arise 
 from an indistinct conception of the results in which 
 Ideality is rendered manifest. Of these results some 
 few are seen in the "Culprit Fay," but the greater part 
 of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of imagination 
 whatever. The general character of the poem will, 
 we think, be sufficiently understood by any one who 
 may have taken the trouble to read our foregoing com 
 pendium of the narrative. It will be there seen that 
 what is so frequently termed the imaginative power of 
 this story, lies especially we should have rather said 
 is thought to lie in the passages we have quoted, or 
 in others of a precisely similar nature. These pas 
 sages embody, principally, mere specifications of 
 qualities, of habiliments, of punishments, of occupa 
 tions, of circumstances, &c., which the poet has be 
 lieved in unison with the size, firstly, and sec6ndly 
 with the nature of his Fairies. To all which may be 
 added specifications of other animal existences (such 
 as the toad, the beetle, the lance-fly, the fire-fly and 
 the like) supposed also to be in accordance. An ex 
 ample will best illustrate our meaning upon this point 
 we take it from page 20. 
 
 He put his acorn helmet on ; 
 It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down : 
 The corslet plate that guarded his breast 
 Was once the wild bee s golden vest; 
 
84 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 His cloak of a thousand mingled dyes, 
 
 Was formed of the wings of butterflies; 
 
 His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, 
 
 Studs of gold on a ground of green; 3 
 
 And the quivering lance which he brandished bright 
 
 Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. 
 
 We shall now be understood. Were any of the ad 
 mirers of the "Culprit Fay" asked their opinion of 
 these lines, they would most probably speak in high 
 terms of the imagination they display. Yet let the 
 most stolid and the most confessedly unpoetical of 
 these admirers only try the experiment, and he will 
 find, possibly to his extreme surprise, that he himself 
 will have no difficulty whatever in substituting for the 
 equipments of the Fairy, as assigned by the poet, other 
 equipments equally comfortable, no doubt, and equally 
 in unison with the preconceived size, character, and 
 other qualities of the equipped. Why, we could ac 
 coutre him as well ourselves let us see. 
 
 His blue-bell helmet, we have heard 
 
 Was plumed with the down of the humming-bird, 
 
 The corslet on his bosom bold 
 
 Was once the locust s coat of gold, 
 
 His cloak, of a thousand mingled hues, 
 
 Was the velvet violet, wet with dews, 
 
 His target was the crescent shell 
 
 Of the small sea Sidrophel, 
 
 And a glittering beam from a maiden s eye 
 
 Was the lance which he proudly wav d on high. 
 
 The truth is, that the only requisite for writing 
 verses of this nature, ad libitum, is a tolerable ac 
 quaintance with the qualities of the objects to be de 
 tailed, and a very moderate endowment of the faculty 
 of Comparison which is the chief constituent of 
 
 8 Chestnut color, or more slack, 
 Gold upon a ground of black. 
 
 Ben Jonson. (Poe s Note.) 
 
THE CRITIC 85 
 
 Fancy or the powers of combination. A thousand 
 such lines may be composed without exercising in the 
 least degree the Poetic Sentiment, which is Ideality, 
 Imagination, or the creative ability. And, as we have 
 before said, the greater portion of the "Culprit Fay" 
 is occupied with these, or similar things, and upon 
 such, depends very nearly, if not altogether, its reputa 
 tion. We select another example from page 25. 
 
 But oh ! how fair the shape that p lay 
 
 Beneath a rainbow bending bright, 
 She seem d to the entranced Fay 
 
 The loveliest of the forms of light; 
 Her mantle was the purple rolled 
 
 At twilight in the west afar; 
 Twas tied with threads of dawning gold. 
 
 And button d with a sparkling star. 
 Her face was like the lily roon 
 
 That veils the vestal planet s hue ; 
 Her eyes, two beamlets from the moon 
 
 Set floating in the welkin blue. 
 Her hair is like the sunny beam, 
 And the diamond gems which round it gleam 
 Are the pure drops of dewy even, 
 That ne er have left their native heaven. 
 
 Here again the faculty of Comparison is alone ex 
 ercised, and no mind possessing the faculty in any or 
 dinary degree would find a difficulty in substituting 
 for the materials employed by the poet other materials 
 equally as good. But viewed as mere efforts of the 
 Fancy and without reference to Ideality, the lines just 
 quoted are much worse than those which were taken 
 from page 20. A congruity was observed in the ac 
 coutrements of the Ouphe, and we had no trouble in 
 forming a distinct conception of his appearance when 
 so accoutred. But the most vivid powers of Compari 
 son can attach no definite idea to even "the loveliest 
 form of light," when habited in a mantle of "rolled 
 
86 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 purple tied with threads of dawn and buttoned with a 
 star," and sitting at the same time under a rainbow 
 with "beamlet" eyes and a visage of "lily roon." 
 
 But if these things evince no Ideality in their au 
 thor, do they not excite it in others? if so, we must 
 conclude, that without being himself imbued with the 
 Poetic Sentiment, he has still succeeded in writing a 
 fine poem a supposition as we have before endeav 
 ored to show, not altogether paradoxical. Most as 
 suredly we think not. In the case of a great majority 
 of readers the only sentiment aroused by compositions 
 of this order is a species of vague wonder at the 
 writer s ingenuity, and it is this indeterminate sense of 
 wonder which passes but too frequently current for 
 the proper influence of the Poetic power. For our 
 own part we plead guilty to a predominant sense of 
 the ludicrous while occupied in the perusal of the poem 
 before us a sense whose promptings we sincerely and 
 honestly endeavored to quell, perhaps not altogether 
 successfully, while penning our compend of the narra 
 tive. That a feeling of this nature is utterly at war 
 with the Poetic Sentiment, will not be disputed by 
 those who comprehend the character of the sentiment 
 itself. This character is finely shadowed out in that 
 popular although vague idea so prevalent throughout 
 all time, that a species of melancholy is inseparably 
 connected with the higher manifestations of the beau 
 tiful. But with the numerous and seriously-adduced 
 incongruities of the "Culprit Fay/ we find it generally 
 impossible to connect other ideas than those of the 
 ridiculous. We are bidden, in the first place, and in 
 a tone of sentiment and language adapted to the lofti 
 est breathings of the Muse, to imagine a race of Fair- 
 
THE CRITIC 87 
 
 ies in the vicinity of West Point. We are told, with 
 a grave air, of their camp, of their king, and especially 
 of their sentry, who is a woodtick. We are informed 
 that an Ouphe of about an inch in height has commit 
 ted a deadly sin in falling in love with a mortal maid 
 en, who may, very possibly, be six feet in her stock 
 ings. The consequence to the Ouphe is what? 
 Why, that he has "dyed his wings," "broken his elfin 
 chain," and "quenched his flame-wood lamp." And 
 he is therefore sentenced to what? To catch a spark 
 from the tail of a falling star, and a drop of water 1 
 from the belly of a sturgeon. What are his equip 
 ments for the first adventure? An acorn-helmet, a 
 thistle-down plume, a butterfly cloak, a ladybug 
 shield, cockle-seed spurs, and a fire-fly horse. How 
 does he ride to the second? On the back of a bull 
 frog. What are his opponents in the one ? "Drizzly- 
 mists," "sulphur and smoke," "shadowy hands and 
 flame-shot tongues." What in the other? "Mailed 
 shrimps," "prickly prongs," "blood-red leeches," "jel 
 lied quarls," "stony star fishes," "lancing squabs" and 
 "soldier crabs." Is that all? No Although only an 
 inch high he is in imminent danger of seduction from 
 a "sylphid queen," dressed in a mantle of "rolled pur 
 ple," "tied with threads of dawning gold," "buttoned 
 with a sparkling star," and sitting under a rainbow 
 with "beamlet eyes" and a countenance of "lily roon." 
 In our account of all this matter we have had refer 
 ence to the book and to the book alone. It will be 
 difficult to prove us guilty in any degree of distortion 
 or exaggeration. Yet such are the puerilities we daily 
 find ourselves called upon to admire, as among the 
 loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to 
 
88 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 assign a rank with the proud trophies of the matured 
 and vigorous genius of England, is to prove ourselves 
 at once a fool, a maligner, and no patriot. 4 
 
 As an instance of what may be termed the sub 
 limely ridiculous we quote the following lines from 
 page 17. 
 
 With sweeping tail and quivering fin, 
 Through the wave the sturgeon flew, 
 
 And like the heaven-shot javelin, 
 He sprung above the waters blue. 
 
 Instant as the star-fall light, 
 
 He plunged into the deep again, 
 But left an arch of silver bright 
 
 The rainbow of the moony main. 
 
 It "was a strange and lovely sight 
 To see the puny goblin there; 
 
 He seemed an angel form of light 
 With azure wing and sunny hair, 
 Throned on a cloud of purple fair 
 
 Circled with blue and edged with white 
 And sitting at the fall of even 
 Beneath the bow of summer heaven. 
 
 The verses here italicized, if considered without 
 their context, have a certain air of dignity, elegance, 
 and chastity of thought. If however we apply the 
 context, we are immediately overwhelmed with the 
 grotesque. It is impossible to read without laughing, 
 such expressions as "It was a strange and lovely 
 sight" "He seemed an angel form of light" 
 
 4 A review of Drake s poems, emanating from one of our 
 proudest Universities, does not scruple to make use of the 
 following language in relation to the Culprit Fay. "It is, to 
 say the least, an elegant production, the purest specimen of 
 Ideality we have ever met with, sustaining in each incident a 
 most bewitching interest. Its very title is enough, 3 &c. &c. 
 We quote these expressions as a fair specimen of the general 
 unphilosophical and adulatory tenor of our criticism. (Poe s 
 Note.) 
 
THE CRITIC 89 
 
 "And sitting at the fall of even, beneath the bow of 
 summer heaven" applied to a Fairy a goblin an 
 Ouphe half an inch high, dressed in an acorn helmet 
 and butterfly-cloak, and sitting on the water in a 
 muscle-shell, with a "brown-backed sturgeon" turning 
 somersets over his head. 
 
 In a world where evil is a mere consequence of 
 good, and good a mere consequence of evil in short 
 where all of which we have any conception is good or 
 bad only by comparison we have never yet been fully 
 able to appreciate the validity of that decision which 
 would debar the critic from enforcing upon his read 
 ers the merits or demerits of a work by placing it in 
 juxtaposition with another. It seems to us that an 
 adage based in the purest ignorance has had more to 
 do with this popular feeling than any just reason 
 founded upon common sense. Thinking thus, we 
 shall have no scruple in illustrating our opinion in re 
 gard to what is not Ideality or the Poetic Power, by 
 an example of what is. 5 
 
 We have already given the description of the Syl- 
 phid Queen in the "Culprit Fay." In the "Queen 
 Mab" of Shelley a Fairy is thus introduced 
 
 Those who had looked upon the sight 
 
 Passing all human glory, 
 Saw not the yellow moon, 
 Saw not the mortal scene, 
 
 5 As examples of entire poems of the purest ideality, we 
 would cite the Prometheus Vinctus of ^Eschylus, the Inferno 
 of Dante, Cervantes Destruction of Numantia, the Comus of 
 Milton, Pope s Rape of the Lock, Burns Tarn O Shanter, the 
 Auncient Mariner, the Christabel, and the Kubla Khan of 
 Coleridge ; and most especially the Sensitive Plant of Shelley, 
 and the Nightingale of Keats. We have seen American 
 poems evincing the faculty in the highest degree. (Poe s 
 Note.) 
 
90 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Heard not the night wind s rush, 
 Heard not an earthly sound, 
 Saw but the fairy pageant, 
 Heard but the heavenly strains 
 That filled the lonely dwelling 
 
 and thus described 
 
 The Fairy s frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud 
 That catches but the faintest tinge of even, 
 And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
 When melting into eastern twilight s shadow, 
 Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
 That gems the glittering coronet of morn, 
 Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 
 As that which, bursting from the Fairy s form, 
 Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 
 Yet with an undulating motion, 
 Swayed to her outline gracefully. 
 
 In these exquisite lines the Faculty of mere Com 
 parison is but little exercised that of Ideality in a 
 wonderful degree. It is probable that in a similar 
 case the poet we are now reviewing would have 
 formed the face of the Fairy of the fibrous cloud," 
 her arms of the "pale tinge of even," her eyes of the 
 "fair stars," and her body of the "twilight shadow." 
 Having so done, his admirers would have congratu 
 lated him upon his imagination, not taking the trouble 
 to think that they themselves could at any moment 
 imagine a Fairy of materials equally as good, and con 
 veying an equally distinct idea. Their mistake would 
 be precisely analogous to that of many a schoolboy 
 who admires the imagination displayed in "Jack the 
 Giant-Killer," and is finalty rejoiced at discovering 
 his own imagination to surpass that of the author, 
 since the monsters destroyed by Jack are only about 
 forty feet in height, and he himself has no trouble in 
 imagining some of one hundred and forty. It will be 
 
THE CRITIC 91 
 
 seen that the Fairy of Shelley is not a mere compound 
 of incongruous natural objects, inartificially put to 
 gether, and unaccompanied by any moral sentiment 
 but a being, in the illustration of whose nature some 
 physical elements are used collaterally as adjuncts, 
 while the main conception springs immediately or thus 
 apparently springs, from the brain of the poet, envel 
 oped in the moral sentiments of grace, of color, of 
 motion of the beautiful, of the mystical, of the au 
 gust in short of the ideal* 
 
 It is by no means our intention to deny that in the 
 "Culprit Fay" are passages of a different order from 
 those to which we have objected passages evincing a 
 degree of imagination not to be discovered in the plot, 
 conception, or general execution of the poem. The 
 opening stanza will afford us a tolerable example. 
 
 Tis the middle watch of a summer s night 
 
 The earth is dark but the heavens are bright 
 
 Naught is seen in the vault on high 
 
 But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, 
 
 And the flood which rolls its milky hue 
 
 A river of light on the welkin blue. 
 
 The moon looks down on old Cronest, 
 
 She mellows the shades of his shaggy breast, 
 
 And seems his huge gray form to throw 
 
 In a silver cone on the wave below ; 
 
 His sides are broken by spots of shade, 
 
 By the walnut bow and the cedar made, 
 
 And through their clustering branches dark 
 
 Glimmers and dies the fire-fly s spark 
 
 Like starry twinkles that momently break 
 
 Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack. 
 
 6 Among things, which not only in our opinion, but in the 
 opinion of far wiser and better men, are to be ranked with 
 the mere prettinesses of the Muse, are the positive similes so 
 abundant in the writings of antiquity, and so much insisted 
 upon by the critics of the reign of Queen Anne. (Poe s Note.) 
 
92 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 There is Ideality in these lines but except in the 
 case of the words italicized it is Ideality not of a high 
 order. We have, it is true, a collection of natural ob 
 jects, each individually of great beauty, and, if actu 
 ally seen as in nature, capable of exciting in any mind, 
 through the means of the Poetic Sentiment more or 
 less inherent in all, a certain sense of the beautiful. 
 But to view such natural objects as they exist, and to 
 behold them through the medium of words, are differ 
 ent things. Let us pursue the idea that such a col 
 lection as we have here will produce, of necessity, the 
 Poetic Sentiment, and we may as well make up our 
 minds to believe that a catalogue of such expressions 
 as moon, sky, trees, rivers, mountains, &c., shall be 
 capable of exciting it, it is merely an extension of the 
 principle. But in the line "the earth is dark, but the 
 heavens are bright" besides the simple mention of the 
 "dark earth" "and the bright heavens," we have, di 
 rectly, the moral sentiment of the brightness of the 
 sky compensating for the darkness of the earth and 
 thus, indirectly, of the happiness of a future state com 
 pensating for the miseries of the present. All this is 
 effected by the simple introduction of the word but be 
 tween the "dark earth" and the "bright heavens" this 
 introduction, however, was prompted by the Poetic 
 Sentiment, and by the Poetic Sentiment alone. The 
 case is analogous in the expression "glimmers and 
 dies," where the imagination is exalted by the moral 
 sentiment of beauty heightened in dissolution. 
 
 In one or two shorter passages of the "Culprit 
 Fay" the poet will recognize the purely ideal, and be 
 able at a glance to distinguish it from that baser alloy 
 upon which we have descanted. We give them with 
 out farther comment. 
 
THE CRITIC 93 
 
 The winds are whist, and the owl is still, 
 
 The bat in the shelvy rock is hid 
 And naught is heard on the lonely hill 
 But the cricket s chirp and the answer shrill 
 
 Of the gauze-winged katydid; _ 
 And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill 
 
 Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings 
 Ever a note of wail and wo 
 
 Up to the vaulted firmament 
 His path the fire-fly courser bent, 
 And at every gallop on the wind 
 He flung a glittering spark behind. 
 
 He blessed the force of the charmed line 
 And he banned the water-goblins spite.^ 
 For he saw around in the sweet moonshine, 
 Their little wee faces above the brine, 
 Giggling and laughing with all their might 
 At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight. 
 
 A PRESENT TENSE WRONGLY USED 
 
 [Notices of the War of 1812, by John Armstrong, 
 reviewed in The Southern Literary Messenger, June, 
 1836. The extract is a good example of Poe s method 
 of criticizing a mere word but a word that embodies 
 the spirit of an entire book. The review is as timely 
 now as when it was written.] 
 
 These "Notices," by the former Secretary of War, 
 are a valuable addition to our history, and to our his 
 torical literature embracing a variety of details which 
 should not have been so long kept from the cognizance 
 of the public. We are grieved, however, to see, even 
 in the opening passages of the work, a piquancy and 
 freedom of expression, in regard to the unhappy 
 sources of animosity between America and the parent 
 land, which can neither to-day nor hereafter answer 
 any possible good end, and may prove an individual 
 
94 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 grain in a future mountain of mischief. At page 12, 
 for example: 
 
 "Still her abuse of power did not stop here : it was 
 not enough that she thus outraged her rights on the 
 ocean ; the bosoms of our bays, the mouths of our 
 rivers, and even the wharves of our harbors, were 
 made the theatres of the most flagitious abuse ; and as 
 if determined to leave no cause of provocation untried, 
 the personal rights of our seamen were invaded: and 
 men, owing her no allegiance, nor having any connec 
 tion with her policy or arms, were forcibly seized, 
 dragged on board her ships of war and made to fight 
 her battles, under the scourge of tyrants and slaves, 
 with whom submission, whether right or wrong, 
 forms the whole duty of man." 
 
 We object, particularly here to the use of the verb 
 forms in the present tense. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF RESEARCH IN OUR NAVY 
 
 [Navigation, by Matthew Fontaine Maury, reviewed 
 in The Southern Literary Messenger, June, 1836. Poe s 
 interest in naval affairs is shown in many passages of 
 his works, and his familiarity with nautical terms is 
 equally evident in the Narrative of A. Gordon Pyrn. 
 In his reviews of Lieutenant Alexander Slidell s 
 books, he comments upon a naval officer now almost 
 forgotten, while in the present review he commends 
 the first publication of one who in later years was to 
 be honored in all lands where naval science is held in 
 esteem.] 
 
 This volume, from an officer of our Navy, and a 
 Virginian, strongly commends itself to notice. The 
 
THE CRITIC 95 
 
 works at present used by our navy and general ma 
 rine, though in many respects not devoid of merit, 
 have always struck us as faulty in two particulars. 
 They aim at comprising a great multiplicity of details, 
 many of which relate to matters only remotely bearing 
 upon the main objects of the treatise and they are de 
 ficient in that clearness of arrangement, without 
 which, the numerous facts and formulae composing 
 the body of such works are little else than a mass of 
 confusion. The extraction of the really useful rules 
 and principles from the multifarious matters with 
 which they are thus encumbered, is a task for which 
 seamen are little likely to have either time or inclina 
 tion, and it is therefore not surprising that our highly 
 intelligent navy exhibits so many instances of imper 
 fect knowledge upon points which are elementary and 
 fundamental in the science of navigation. 
 
 We think that Mr. Maury has, to a considerable 
 degree, avoided the errors referred to ; and while his 
 work comprises a sufficient and even copious state 
 ment of the rules and facts important to be known in 
 the direction of a ship, he has succeeded, by a judicious 
 arrangement of particulars and by clearly wrought 
 numerical examples, in presenting them in a disem 
 barrassed and very intelligible form. With great 
 propriety he has rejected many statements and rules 
 which in the progress of nautical science have fallen 
 into disuse, and in his selection of methods of compu 
 tation, has, in general, kept in view those modern im 
 provements in this branch of practical mathematics in 
 which simplicity and accuracy are most happily com 
 bined. Much attention to numerical correctness seems 
 to pervade the work. Its style is concise without 
 
96 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 being obscure. The diagrams are selected with taste, 
 and the engraving and typography, especially that of 
 the tables, are worthy of the highest praise. 
 
 Such, we think, are the merits of the work before 
 us merits which, it must be admitted, are of the first 
 importance in a book designed for a practical manual. 
 To attain them required the exercise of a discriminat 
 ing judgment, guided by a thorough acquaintance 
 with all the points in natural science which are of in 
 terest to seamen. 
 
 There are particulars in the work which we think 
 objectionable, but they are of minor importance, and 
 would probably be regarded as scarcely deserving 
 criticism. 
 
 The spirit of literary improvement has been awak 
 ened among the officers of our gallant navy. We are 
 pleased to see that science also is gaining votaries 
 from its ranks. Hitherto how little have they im 
 proved the golden opportunities of knowledge which 
 their distant voyages held forth, and how little have 
 they enjoyed the rich banquet which nature spreads 
 for them in every clime they visit! But the time is 
 coming when, imbued with a taste for science and a 
 spirit of research, they will become ardent explorers of 
 the regions in which they sojourn. Freighted with 
 the knowledge which observation only can impart, and 
 enriched with collections of objects precious to the 
 student of nature, their return after the perils of a dis 
 tant voyage will then be doubly joyful. The enthusiast 
 in science will anxiously await their coming, and add 
 his cordial welcome to the warm greetings of relatives 
 and friends. 
 
THE CRITIC 97 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND THE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 
 
 [England in 1835, by Frederick von Raumer, trans 
 lated from the German by Sarah Austin and H. E. 
 Lloyd, reviewed in The Southern Literary Messenger, 
 July, 1836. Poe touches on an old theme here but the 
 years have only accentuated the validity of his 
 warning.] 
 
 This work will form an era in the reading annals of 
 the more contemplative portions of Americans while 
 its peculiar merits will be overlooked by the multitude. 
 The broad and solid basis of its superstructure the 
 scrupulous accuracy of its data the disdain of mere 
 logic in its deductions the generalizing, calm, com 
 prehensive in a word, the German character of its 
 philosophy, will insure it an enthusiastic welcome 
 among all the nobler spirits of our land. What though 
 its general tenor be opposed at least apparently to 
 many of our long-cherished opinions and deeply- 
 rooted prejudices? Shall we less welcome the truth, 
 or glory in its advancement because of its laying bare 
 our own individual errors? But the England of Von 
 Raumer will be sadly and wickedly misconceived if it 
 be really conceived as militating against a Republi 
 canism here, which it opposes with absolute justice, in 
 Great Britain, and Prussia. It will be sadly miscon 
 ceived if it be regarded as embracing one single sen 
 tence with which the most bigoted lover of abstract 
 democracy can have occasion to find fault. At the 
 same time we cannot help believing that it will, in 
 some measure, be effectual in diverting the minds of 
 our countrymen, and of all who read it, from that per- 
 
98 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 petual and unhealthy excitement about the forms and 
 machinery of governmental action which have within 
 the last century so absorbed their attention as to ex 
 clude in a strange degree all care of the proper results 
 of good government the happiness of a people im 
 provement in the condition of mankind practicable 
 under a thousand forms and without which all forms 
 are valueless and shadowy phantoms. It will serve 
 also as an auxiliary in convincing mankind that the 
 origin of the principal social evils of any given land is 
 not to be found (except in a much less degree than we 
 usually suppose) either in republicanism or monarchy 
 or any especial method of government that we must 
 look for the source of our greatest defects in a variety 
 of causes totally distinct from any such action in love 
 of gain, for example, whose direct tendency to social 
 evil was vividly shown in an essay on American So 
 cial Elevation lately published in the "Messenger." 
 In a word, let this book of Von Raumer s be read with 
 attention, as a study and as a whole. If this thing be 
 done which is but too seldom done (here at least) in 
 regard .to works of a like character and cast and we 
 will answer for the result as far as that result de 
 pends upon the deliberate and unprejudiced declara 
 tion of any well-educated man. 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
 
 [Fourth edition of Poems, by William Culler* 
 Bryant, reviewed in The Southern Literary Messenger, 
 January, 1837. In a later review Poe says: "Mr. 
 Longfellow is not as thorough a versifier within Mr. 
 Bryant s limits, but a far better one upon the whole, 
 on account of his greater range."] 
 
THE CRITIC 99 
 
 The "Waterfowl" is very beautiful, but still not en 
 titled to the admiration which it has occasionally 
 elicited. There is a fidelity and force in the picture of 
 the fowl as brought before the eye of the mind, and a 
 fine sense of effect in throwing its figure on the back 
 ground of the "crimson sky/ amid "falling dew," 
 "while glow the heavens with the last steps of day." 
 But the merits which possibly have had most weight in 
 the public estimation of the poem, are the melody and 
 strength of its versification, (which is indeed excel 
 lent) and more particularly its completeness. Its 
 rounded and didactic termination has done wonders : 
 
 .... on my heart, 
 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou has given 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 He, who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight 
 In the long way that I must tread alone 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 There are, however, points of more sterling merit. 
 We fully recognize the poet in 
 
 Thou rt gone the abyss of heaven 
 Hath swallowed up thy form. 
 
 There is a power whose care 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast 
 The desert, and illimitable air- 
 
 Lone, wandering, but not lost. 
 
 "The Forest Hymn" consists of about a hundred 
 and twenty blank Pentameters of whose great rhyth 
 mical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly. 
 With the exception of the line 
 
 The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 
 
ioo EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 no fault, in this respect, can be found, while excellen 
 cies are frequent of a rare order, and evincing the 
 greatest delicacy of ear. We might, perhaps, suggest, 
 that the two concluding* verses, beautiful as they 
 stand, would be slightly improved by transferring to 
 the last the metrical excess of the one immediately pre 
 ceding. For the appreciation of this, it is necessary to 
 quote six or seven lines in succession. 
 
 Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face 
 Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath 
 Of the mad unchained elements, to teach 
 Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate 
 In these calm shades thy milder majesty, 
 And to the beautiful order of thy works 
 Learn to conform the order of our lives t 
 
 There is an excess of one syllable in the first of the 
 lines italicized. If we discard this syllable here, and 
 adopt it in the final line, the close will acquire; 
 strength, we think, in acquiring a fuller volume. 
 
 Be it ours to meditate 
 In these calm shades thy milder majesty, 
 And to the perfect order of thy works 
 Conform, if we can, the order of our lives. 
 
 Directness, boldness, and simplicity of expression, 
 are main features in the poem. 
 
 Oh God ! when thoti 
 
 Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire 
 The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill 
 With all the waters of the firmament 
 The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods, 
 And drowns the villages. 
 
 Here an ordinary writer would have preferred the 
 word fright to scare, and omitted the definite article 
 before woods and villages. 
 
THE CRITIC ioi 
 
 "To the Evening Wind" has been justly admired. 
 It is the best specimen of that completeness which we 
 have before spoken of as a characteristic feature in the 
 poems of Mr. Bryant. It has a beginning, middle, 
 and end, each depending upon the other, and each 
 beautiful. Here are three lines breathing all the spirit 
 of Shelley. 
 
 Pleasant shall be thy way, where meekly bows 
 The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, 
 And tvjixt the o er shadowing branches and the grass. 
 
 The conclusion is admirable 
 
 Go but the circle of eternal change, 
 Which is the life of Nature, shall restore, 
 With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, 
 Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more; 
 Sweet odors in the sea air, szucet and strange, 
 SJiall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore, 
 And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 
 He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. 
 
 "Thanatopsis" is somewhat more than half the 
 length of "The Forest Hymn," and of a character pre 
 cisely similar. It is, however, the finer poem. Like 
 "The Waterfowl," it owes much to the point, force, 
 and general beauty of its didactic conclusion. In the 
 commencement, the lines 
 
 To him who, in the love of nature, holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, &c. 
 
 belong to a class of vague phrases, which, since the 
 days of Byron, have obtained too universal a currency. 
 The verse 
 
 Go forth under the open sky and list 
 
 is sadly out of place amid the forcible and even Mil- 
 tonic rhythm of such lines as 
 
ir,2 SBGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Take the wings 
 
 Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce, 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 Where rolls the Oregon, 
 
 But these are trivial faults indeed and the poem 
 embodies a great degree of the most elevated beauty. 
 Two of its passages, passages of the purest ideality, 
 would alone render it worthy of the general commen 
 dation it has received. 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan that moves 
 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
 The hills 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun the vales 
 Stretching in pensive quietude between 
 The venerable woods rivers that move 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green and, poured round all, 
 Old Ocean s gray and melancholy waste 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great tomb of man. 
 
 "Oh, fairest of the Rural Maids!" is a gem, of 
 which we cannot sufficiently express our admiration. 
 We quote in full. 
 
 Oh, fairest of the rural maids! 
 Thy birth was in the forest shades; 
 Green boughs and glimpses of the sky 
 Were all that met thine infant eye. 
 
 Thy sports, thy wanderings when a child 
 Were ever in the sylvan wild ; 
 And all the beauty of the place 
 Is in thy heart and on thy face. 
 
THE CRITIC 103 
 
 The twilight of the trees and rocks 
 Is in the light shade of thy locks, 
 Thy step is as the wind that weaves 
 Its playful way among the leaves. 
 
 Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene 
 And silent waters Heaven is seen ; 
 Their lashes are the herbs that look 
 On their young figures in the brook. 
 
 The forest depths by foot impressed 
 Are not more sinless than thy breast; 
 The holy peace that fills the air 
 Of those calm solitudes, is there. 
 
 A rich simplicity is a main feature in this poem sim 
 plicity of design and execution. This is strikingly per 
 ceptible in the opening and concluding lines, and in 
 expression throughout. But there is a far higher and 
 more strictly ideal beauty, which it is less easy to ana 
 lyze. The original conception is of the very loftiest 
 order of true Poesy. A maiden is born in the forest 
 
 Green boughs and glimpses of the sky 
 Are all which meet her infant eye 
 
 She is not merely modelled In character by the associa 
 tion of her childhood this were the thought of an or 
 dinary poet an idea that we meet with every day in 
 rhyme but she imbibes, in her physical as well as 
 moral being, the traits, the very features of the deli 
 cious scenery around her its loveliness becomes a 
 portion of her own 
 
 The twilight of the trees and rocks 
 Is in the light shade of her locks, 
 And all the beauty of the place 
 Is in her heart and on her face. 
 
 It would have been a highly poetical idea to imagine 
 the tints in the locks of the maiden deducing a resem- 
 
io 4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 blance to the "twilight of the trees and rocks," from the 
 constancy of her associations but the spirit of Ideal 
 ity is immeasurably more apparent when the "twi 
 light" is represented as becoming identified with the 
 shadows of her hair. 
 
 The twilight of the trees and rocks 
 Is in the light shade of her locks, 
 And all the beauty of the place 
 Is in her heart and on her face. 
 
 Feeling thus, we did not, in copying the poem, italicize 
 the lines, although beautiful, 
 
 Thy step is as the wind that weaves 
 Its playful way among the leaves, 
 
 nor those which immediately follow. The two con 
 cluding verses, however, are again of the most ele 
 vated species of poetical merit. 
 
 The forest depths by foot impressed 
 Are not more sinless than thy breast 
 The holy peace that fills the air 
 Of those calm solitudes, is there. 
 
 The image contained in the lines 
 
 Thine eyes are springs in whose serene 
 And silent waters Heaven is seen 
 
 is one which, we think, for appropriateness, complete 
 ness, and every perfect beauty of which imagery is 
 susceptible, has never been surpassed but imagery is 
 susceptible of no beauty like that we have designated 
 in the sentences above. The latter idea, moreover, is 
 not original with our poet. 
 
 In all the rhapsodies of Mr. Bryant, which have 
 reference to the beauty or the majesty of nature, is a 
 most audible and thrilling tone of love and exultation. 
 
THE CRITIC 105 
 
 As far as he appreciates her loveliness or her august- 
 ness, no appreciation can be more ardent, more full of 
 heart, more replete with the glowing soul of adoration. 
 Nor, either in the moral or physical universe coming 
 within the periphery of his vision, does he at any time 
 fail to perceive and designate, at once, the legitimate 
 items of the beautiful. Therefore, could we consider 
 (as some have considered) the mere enjoyment of the 
 beautiful when perceived, or even this enjoyment when 
 combined with the readiest and truest perception and 
 discrimination in regard to beauty presented, as a suf 
 ficient test of the poetical sentiment, we could have no 
 hesitation in according to Mr. Bryant the very highest 
 poetical rank. But something more, we have else 
 where presumed to say, is demanded. Just above, we 
 spoke of "objects in the moral or physical universe 
 coming within the periphery of his vision." We now 
 mean to say, that the relative extent of these periphe 
 ries of poetical vision must ever be a primary consid 
 eration in our classification of poets. Judging Mr. B. 
 in this manner, and by a general estimate of the vol 
 ume before us, we should, of course, pause long before 
 assigning him a place with the spiritual Shelleys, or 
 Coleridges, or Wordsworths, or with Keats, or even 
 Tennyson, or Wilson, or with some other burning 
 lights of our own day, to be valued in a day to come. 
 Yet if his poems, as a whole, will not warrant us in as 
 signing him this grade, one such poem as the last upon 
 which we have commented, is enough to assure us that 
 he may attain it. 
 
 The writings of our author, as we find them here, 
 are characterized by an air of calm and elevated con 
 templation more than by any other individual feature. 
 
io6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 In their mere didactics, however, they err essentially 
 and primitively, inasmuch as such things are the prov 
 ince rather of Minerva than of the Camense. Of im* 
 agination, we discover much but more of its rich and 
 certain evidences, than of its ripened fruit. In all the 
 minor merits Mr. Bryant is pre-eminent. His ars 
 celare artem is most efficient. Of his "completeness," 
 unity, and finish of style we have already spoken. As 
 a versifier, we know of no writer, living or dead, who 
 can be said greatly to surpass him. A Frenchman 
 would assuredly call him "un poete des plus correctes" 
 Between Cowper and Young, perhaps, (with both 
 of whom he has many points of analogy,) would be the 
 post assigned him by an examination at once general 
 and superficial. Even in this view, however, he has a 
 juster appreciation of the beautiful than the one, of the 
 sublime than the other a finer taste than Cowper 
 an equally vigorous, and far more delicate imagination 
 than Young. In regard to his proper rank among 
 American poets there should be no question whatever. 
 Few at least few who are fairly before the public, 
 have more than very shallow claims to a rivalry with 
 the author of "Thanatopsis." 
 
 INDEFINITIVENESS IN SONG 
 
 [National Melodies of America, by George P. Mor 
 ris, reviewed in Burton s Gentleman s Magazine, 
 December, 1839. Pe came later to consider "indefini- 
 tiveness" an essential of poetry whether wedded to 
 song or not. Of Tennyson he writes in 1844: "There 
 are passages in his works which rivet a conviction I 
 had long entertained, that the indefinite is an element 
 
THE CRITIC 107 
 
 in the true Troths If the author did not de 
 liberately propose to himself [in the Lady of Shalott] 
 a suggestive indefinitiveness of meaning, with the 
 view of bringing about a definitiveness of vague and 
 therefore of spiritual effect this, at least, arose from 
 the silent analytical promptings of that poetic genius 
 which, in its supreme development, embodies all orders 
 of intellectual capacity."] 
 
 There are few cases in which mere popularity 
 should be considered a proper test of merit; but the 
 case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few. In 
 speaking of song-writing, I mean, of course, the com 
 position of brief poems with an eye to their adapta 
 tion for music in the vulgar sense. In this ultimate 
 destination of the song proper, lies its essence its 
 genius. It is the strict reference to music it is the 
 dependence upon modulated expression which gives 
 to this branch of letters a character altogether unique, 
 and separates it, in great measure and in a manner not 
 sufficiently considered, from ordinary literature; ren 
 dering it independent of merely ordinary proprieties ; 
 allowing it, and in fact demanding for it, a wide lati 
 tude of Law ; absolutely insisting upon a certain wild 
 license and indefinitiveness an indefinitiveness recog 
 nized by every musician who is not a mere fiddler, as 
 an important point in the philosophy of his science 
 as the soul, indeed, of the sensations derivable from its 
 practice sensations which bewilder while they enthrall 
 and which would not so enthrall if they did not so 
 bewilder. 
 
 The sentiments deducible from the conception of 
 sweet sound simply are out of the reach of analysis 
 
io8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 although referable, possibly, in their last result, to that 
 merely mathematical recognition of equality which 
 seems to be the root of all Beauty. Our impressions 
 of harmony and melody in conjunction are more read 
 ily analyzed; but one thing is certain that the senti 
 mental pleasure derivable from music, is nearly in the 
 ratio of its indefinitiveness. Give to music any undue 
 decision imbue it with any very determinate tone 
 and you deprive it, at once, of its ethereal, its ideal, 
 and, I sincerely believe, of its intrinsic and essential 
 character. You dispel its dream-like luxury: you 
 dissolve the atmosphere of the mystic in which its 
 whole nature is bound up: you exhaust it of its 
 breath of faery. It then becomes a tangible and easily 
 appreciable thing a conception of the earth, earthy. 
 It will not, to be sure, lose all its power to please, but 
 all that I consider the distinctiveness of that power. 
 And to the oz^r-cultivated talent, or to the unimagina 
 tive apprehension, this deprivation of its most delicate 
 nare will be, not unfrequently, a recommendation. A 
 determinant eness of expression is sought and some 
 times by composers who should know better is 
 sought as a beauty, rather than rejected as a blemish. 
 Thus we have, even from high authorities, attempts at 
 absolute imitation in musical sounds. Who can for 
 get, or cease to regret, the many errors of this kind 
 into which some great minds have fallen, simply 
 through over-estimating the triumphs of skill. Who 
 can help lamenting the Battle of Prague? What man 
 of taste is not ready to laugh, or to weep, over their 
 guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbusses and thunder?" 
 " Vocal music/ says L Abbate Gravina, "ought to 
 imitate the natural language of the human feelings and 
 
THE CRITIC 109 
 
 passions, rather than the warbling of Canary birds, 
 which our singers, now-a-days, affect so vastly to 
 inimic with their quaverings and boasted cadences." 
 This is true only so far as the "rather" is concerned. 
 If any music must imitate anything, it were, undoubt 
 edly, better that the imitation should be limited as 
 Gravina suggests. 
 
 That indefinitiveness which is, at least, one of the 
 essentials of true music, must, of course, be kept in 
 view by the song-writer ; while, by the critic, it should 
 always be considered in his estimate of the song. It 
 is, in the author, a consciousness sometimes merely 
 an instinctive appreciation, of this necessity for the 
 indefinite, which imparts to all songs, richly conceived, 
 that free, affluent, and hearty manner, little scrupulous 
 about niceties of phrase, which cannot be better ex 
 pressed than by the hackneyed French word abandonne- 
 ment, and which is so strikingly exemplified in both 
 the serious and joyous ballads and carols of our old 
 English progenitors. Wherever verse has been found 
 most strictly married to music, this feature prevails. 
 It is thus the essence of all antique song. It is the soul 
 of Homer. It is the spirit of Anacreon. It is even the 
 genius of JEschylus. Coming down to our own times, 
 it is the vital principle in De Beranger. Wanting this 
 quality, no song-writer was ever truly popular, and, 
 for the reasons assigned, no song-writer need ever 
 expect to be so. 
 
 These views properly understood, it will be seen 
 how baseless are the ordinary objections to songs 
 proper, on the score of "conceit" (to use Johnson s 
 word), or of hyperbole, or on various other grounds 
 tenable enough in respect to poetry not designed for 
 
no EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 music. The "conceit," for example, which some 
 envious rivals of Morris have so much objected to 
 
 Her heart and morning broke together 
 In the storm 
 
 this "conceit" is merely in keeping with the essential 
 spirit of the song proper. To all reasonable persons it 
 will be sufficient to say that the fervid, hearty, free- 
 spoken songs of Cowley and of Donne more especially 
 of Cunningham, of Harrington, and of Carew abound 
 in precisely similar things ; and that they are to be met 
 with, plentifully, in the polished pages of Moore and 
 of Beranger, who introduce them with thought and 
 retain them after mature deliberation. 
 
 Morris is, very decidedly, our best writer of songs 
 and, in saying this, I mean to assign him a high 
 rank as poet. For my own part, I would much rather 
 have written the best song of a nation than its noblest 
 epic. 
 
 FANCY AND IMAGINATION 
 
 [Alciphron, by Thomas Moore, reviewed in Bur 
 ton s Gentleman s Magazine, January, 1840. Compare 
 the review of The Culprit Fay, pages 82-93. The 
 subject is discussed in chapter XIII of Coleridge s 
 Biographia Liter aria and in the latter half of Words 
 worth s Preface of 1815. Poe further elaborates the 
 theme in The Broadway Journal, January 18, 1845. 
 "The fact seems to be," he says, "that Imagination, 
 Fancy, Fantasy, and Humor have in common the ele 
 ments Combination and Novelty. The Imagination is 
 the artist of the four."] 
 
 A new poem from Moore calls to mind that critical 
 opinion respecting him which had its origin, we be- 
 
THE CRITIC in 
 
 lieve, in the dogmatism of Coleridge we mean the 
 opinion that he is essentially the poet of fancy the 
 term being employed in contradistinction to imagina 
 tion. "The fancy," says the author of the "Auncient 
 Mariner," in his "Biographia Literaria," "the fancy 
 combines, the imagination creates." And this was in 
 tended, and has been received, as a distinction. If so 
 at all, it is one without a difference ; without even a 
 difference of degree. The fancy as nearly creates as 
 the imagination; and neither creates in any respect. 
 All novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations. 
 The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not 
 really existed ; and this point is susceptible of the most 
 positive demonstration see the Baron de Bielfeld, in 
 his "Premiers Traits de L Erudition Universelle," 
 1767. It will be said, perhaps, that we can imagine a 
 griffin, and that a griffin does not exist. Not the 
 griffin certainly, but its component parts. It is a mere 
 compendium of known limbs and features of known 
 qualities. Thus with all which seems to be new 
 which appears to be a creation of intellect. It is resol 
 uble into the old. The wildest and most vigorous ef 
 fort of mind cannot stand the test of this analysis. 
 
 We might make a distinction, of degree, between 
 the fancy and the imagination, in saying that the latter 
 is the former loftily employed. But experience proves 
 this distinction to be unsatisfactory. What we feel and 
 know to be fancy, will be found still only fanciful, 
 whatever be the theme which engages it. It retains 
 its idiosyncrasy under all circumstances. No subject 
 exalts it into the ideal. We might exemplify this by 
 reference to the writings of one whom our patriotism, 
 rather than our judgment, has elevated to a niche in 
 
H2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the Poetic Temple which he does not becomingly fill, 
 and which he cannot long uninterruptedly hold. We 
 allude to the late Dr. Rodman Drake, whose puerile 
 abortion, "The Culprit Fay," we examined, at some 
 length, in a critique elsewhere; proving it, we think, 
 beyond all question, to belong to that class of the 
 pseudo-ideal, in dealing with which we find ourselves 
 embarrassed between a kind of half-consciousness that 
 we ought to admire, and the certainty that we do not. 
 Dr. Drake was employed upon a good subject at 
 least it is a subject precisely identical with those which 
 Shakespeare was wont so happily to treat, and in 
 which, especially, the author of Lilian" has so won 
 derfully succeeded. But the American has brought to 
 his task a mere fancy, and has grossly failed in doing 
 what many suppose him to have done in writing an 
 ideal or imaginative poem. There is not one particle 
 of the true rcoiVS about "The Culprit Fay." We 
 say that the subject, even at its best points, did not aid 
 Dr. Drake in the slightest degree. He was never more 
 
 than fanciful 
 
 The .truth is that the just distinction between the 
 fancy and the imagination (and which is still but a 
 distinction of degree) is involved in the consideration 
 of the mystic. We give this as an idea of our own, 
 altogether. We have no authority for our opinion 
 but do not the less firmly hold it. The term mystic 
 is here employed in the sense of Augustus William 
 Schlegel, and of most other German critics. It is ap 
 plied by them to that class of composition in which 
 there lies beneath the transparent upper current of 
 meaning, an under or suggestive one. What we 
 vaguely term the moral of any sentiment is its mystic 
 
THE CRITIC 113 
 
 or secondary expression. It has the vast force of an 
 accompaniment in music. This vivifies the air ; that 
 spiritualizes the fanciful conception, and lifts it into 
 the ideal. 
 
 This theory will bear, we think, the most rigorous 
 tests which can be made applicable to it, and will be 
 acknowledged as tenable by all who are themselves 
 imaginative. If we carefully examine those poems, 
 or portions of poems, or those prose romances, w 7 hich 
 mankind have been accustomed to designate as 
 imaginative, (for an instinctive feeling leads us to em 
 ploy properly the term whose full import we have still 
 never been able to define,) it will be seen that all so 
 designated are remarkable for the suggestive character 
 which we have discussed. They are strongly mystic 
 in the proper sense of the word. We will here only 
 call to the reader s mind the "Prometheus Vinctus" of 
 ^Eschylus; the "Inferno" of Dante; the "Destruc 
 tion of Numantia" by Cervantes ; the "Comus" of Mil 
 ton; the "Auncient Mariner," the "Christabel," and 
 the "Kubla Khan" of Coleridge ; the "Nightingale" of 
 Keats ; and, most especially, the "Sensitive Plant" of 
 Shelley, and the "Undine" of De La Motte Fouque. 
 These two latter poems (for we call them both such) 
 are the finest possible examples of the purely ideal. 
 There is little of fancy here, and everything of imagin 
 ation. With each note of the lyre is heard a ghostly, 
 and not always a distinct, but an august and soul- 
 exalting echo. In every glimpse of beauty presented, 
 we catch, through long and wild vistas, dim bewilder 
 ing visions of a far more ethereal beauty beyond. But 
 not so in poems which the world has always persisted 
 in terming fanciful. Here the upper current is often 
 
ii 4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 exceedingly brilliant and beautiful; but then men feel 
 that this upper current is all. No Naiad voice addresses 
 them from below. The notes of the air of the song do 
 not tremble with the according tones of the 
 accompaniment. 
 
 It is the failure to perceive these truths which has 
 occasioned that embarrassment which our critics ex 
 perience while discussing the topic of Moore s station 
 in the poetic world that hesitation with which we are 
 obliged to refuse him the loftiest rank among the most 
 noble. The popular voice, and the popular heart, have 
 denied him that happiest quality, imagination and 
 here the popular voice (because for once it has gone 
 with the popular heart) is right, but yet only relatively 
 so. Imagination is not the leading feature of the 
 poetry of Moore; but he possesses it in no little 
 degree. 
 
 We will quote a few instances from the poem now 
 before us instances which will serve to exemplify the 
 distinctive features which we have attributed to 
 ideality. 
 
 It is the suggestive force which exalts and ethere- 
 alizes the passages we copy. 
 
 Or is it that there lurks, indeed, 
 Some truth in man s prevailing creed, 
 And that our guardians from on high 
 
 Come, in that pause from toil and sin, 
 To put the senses curtain by, 
 
 And on the wakeful soul look in ! 
 
 Again 
 
 The eternal pyramids of Memphis burst 
 
 Awfully on my sight standing sublime 
 
 Twixt earth and heaven, the watch-towers of time, 
 
 From whose lone summit, when his reign hath past, 
 
 From earth for ever, he will look his last. 
 
THE CRITIC 115 
 
 And again 
 
 Is there for man no hope but this which dooms 
 
 His only lasting trophies to be tombs ! 
 
 But tis not so earth, heaven, all nature shows 
 
 He may become immortal, may unclose 
 
 The wings within him wrapt, and proudly rise 
 
 Redeemed from earth a creature of the skies ! 
 
 And here 
 
 The pyramid shadows, stretching from the light, 
 Look like the first colossal steps of night, 
 Stalking across the valley to invade 
 The distant hills of prophyry with their shade! 
 
 And once more 
 
 Their Silence, thoughtful God, who loves 
 The neighbourhood of Death, in groves 
 Of asphodel lies hid, and weaves 
 His hushing spell among the leaves. 
 
 Such lines as these, we must admit, however, are 
 not of frequent occurrence in the poem the sum of 
 whose great beauty is composed of the several sums 
 of a world of minor excellencies. 
 
 Moore has always been renowned for the number 
 and appositeness, as well as novelty, of his similes ; 
 and the renown thus acquired is strongly indicial of 
 his deficiency in that nobler merit the noblest of 
 them all. No poet thus distinguished was ever richly 
 ideal. Pope and Cowper are remarkable instances in 
 point. Similes (so much insisted upon by the critics 
 of the reign of Queen Anne) are never, in our opinion, 
 strictly in good taste, whatever may be said to the con 
 trary, and certainly can never be made to accord with 
 other high qualities, except when naturally arising 
 from the subject in the way of illustration and, when 
 thus arising, they have seldom the merit of novelty. 
 
ii6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 To be novel, they must fail in essential particulars. 
 The higher minds will avoid their frequent use. They 
 form no portion of the ideal, and appertain to the 
 fancy alone. 
 
 THE NATURE AND INTEREST OF PLOT 
 
 [Bulwer s Night and Morning, reviewed in Gra 
 ham s Magazine, April, 1841. In his Marginalia (1844) 
 and again in Eureka (1848), Poe calls attention to the 
 "mutuality" or adaptation in nature, or the "reciproc 
 ity between cause and effect." He thus summarizes 
 and applies : "The pleasure which we derive from 
 any exertion of human ingenuity is in the direct ratio 
 of the approach to this species of reciprocity between 
 cause and effect. In the construction of plot, for ex 
 ample, in fictitious literature, we should aim at so ar 
 ranging the points, or incidents, that we cannot dis 
 tinctly see, in respect to any one of them, whether that 
 one depends upon any one other, or upholds it. In 
 this sense, of course, perfection of plot is unattainable 
 in fact, because Man is the constructor. The plots 
 of God are perfect. The Universe is a Plot of God."] 
 
 We do not give this as the plot of "Night and 
 Morning," but as the groundwork of the plot ; which 
 latter, woven from the incidents above mentioned, is in 
 itself exceedingly complex. The groundwork, as will 
 be seen, is of no original character it is even absurdly 
 commonplace. We are not asserting too much when 
 we say that every second novel since the flood has 
 turned upon some series of hopeless efforts, either to 
 establish legitimacy, or to prove a will, or to get pos 
 session of a great sum of money most unjustly with 
 held, or to find a ragamuffin of a father, who had been 
 
THE CRITIC 117 
 
 much better left unfound. But, saying nothing of the 
 basis upon which this story has been erected, the story 
 itself is, in many respects, worthy its contriver. 
 
 The word plot, as commonly accepted, conveys but 
 an indefinite meaning. Most persons think of it as a 
 simple complexity; and into this error even so fine a 
 critic as Augustus William Schlegel has obviously fall 
 en, when he confounds its idea with that of the mere 
 intrigue in which the Spanish dramas of Cervantes 
 and Calderon abound. But the greatest involution of 
 incident will not result in plot; which, properly de 
 fined, is that in which no part can be displaced zvithout 
 ruin to the whole. It may be described as a building 
 so dependently constructed, that to change the position 
 of a single brick is to overthrow the entire fabric. In 
 this definition and description, we of course refer only 
 to that infinite perfection which the true artist bears 
 ever in mind that unattainable goal to which his eyes 
 are always directed, but of the possibility of attaining 
 which he still endeavours, if wise, to cheat himself into 
 the belief. The reading world, however, is satisfied 
 with a less rigid construction of the term. It is con 
 tent to think that plot a good one, in which none of the 
 leading incidents can be removed without detriment to 
 the mass. Here indeed is a material difference ; and 
 in this view of the case the plot of "Night and Morn 
 ing" is decidedly excellent. Speaking comparatively, 
 and in regard to stories similarly composed, it is one of 
 the best. This the author has evidently designed to 
 make it. For this purpose he has taxed his powers to 
 the utmost. Every page bears marks of excessive 
 elaboration, all tending to one point a perfect adap 
 tation of the very numerous atoms of a very unusually 
 
ii8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 involute story. The better to attain his object he has 
 resorted to the expedient of writing his book back 
 wards. This is a simple thing in itself, but may not 
 be generally understood. An example will best con 
 vey the idea. Drawing near the denouement of his 
 *tale, our novelist had proceeded so far as to render it 
 necessary that means should be devised for the dis 
 covery of the missing marriage record. This record 
 is in the old bureau this bureau is at Fernside, origi 
 nally the seat of Philip s father, but now in possession 
 of one Lord Lilburne, a member of Robert Beaufort s 
 family. Two things now strike the writer first, that 
 the retrieval of the hero s fortune should be brought 
 about by no less a personage than the heroine by 
 some lady who should in the end be his bride and, 
 secondly, that this lady must procure access to Fern- 
 side. Up to this period in the narrative, it had been 
 the design to make Camilla Beaufort, Philip s cousin, 
 the heroine ; but in such case, the cousin and Lord Lil 
 burne being friends, the document must have been ob 
 tained by fair means ; whereas foul means are the most 
 dramatic. There would have been no difficulties to 
 overcome in introducing Camilla into the house in 
 question. She would have merely rung the bell and 
 walked in. Moreover, in getting the paper, she would 
 have had no chance of getting up a scene. This lady 
 is therefore dropped as the heroine ; Mr. Bulwer re 
 traces his steps, creates Fanny, brings Philip to love 
 her, and employs Lilburne (a courtly villain, invented 
 for all the high dirty work, as De Burgh Smith for all 
 the low dirty work of the story) employs Lilburne to 
 abduct her to Fernside, where the capture of the docu 
 ment is at length (more dramatically than naturally) 
 
THE CRITIC 119 
 
 contrived. In short, the latter incidents were emenda 
 tions, and their really episodical character is easily 
 traced by the critic. What appears first in the pub 
 lished book, was last in the original MS. Many of the 
 most striking portions of the novel were interleaved in 
 the same manner thus giving to afterthought that air 
 of premeditation which is so pleasing. Effect seems 
 to follow cause in the most natural and in the most 
 provident manner, but, in the true construction, the 
 cause (and here we commit no bull) is absolutely 
 brought about by effect. The many brief, and seem 
 ingly insulated chapters met with in the course of the 
 narrative are the interposed afterthoughts in question. 
 
 We have defined the word plot in a definition of 
 our own to be sure, but in one which we do not the less 
 consider substantially correct ; and we have said that 
 it has been a main point with Mr. Bulwer in his last 
 novel, "Night and Morning," to work up his plot as 
 near perfection as possible. We have asserted, too, 
 that his design is well accomplished ; but we do not the 
 less assert that it has been conceived and executed in 
 error. 
 
 The interest of plot, referring, as it does, to culti 
 vated thought in the reader, and appealing to consid 
 erations analogous with those which are the essence 
 of sculptural taste, is by no means a popular interest ; 
 although it has the peculiarity of being appreciated in 
 its atoms by all, while in its totality of beauty it is com 
 prehended but by the few. The pleasure which the 
 many derive from it is disjointed, ineffective, and 
 evanescent ; and even in the case of the critical reader 
 it is a pleasure which may be purchased too dearly. 
 
120 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 A- good tale may be written without it. Some of the 
 finest fictions in the world have neglected it alto 
 gether. We see nothing of it in "Gil Bias," in the 
 "Pilgrim s Progress," or in "Robinson Crusoe." Thus it 
 is not an essential in story-telling at all ; although, well 
 managed, within proper limits, it is a thing to be de 
 sired. At best it is but a secondary and rigidly artis- 
 tical merit, for which no merit of a higher class no 
 merit founded in nature should be sacrificed. But 
 in the book before us much is sacrificed for its sake, 
 and every thing is rendered subservient to its pur 
 poses. So excessive is, here, the involution of circum 
 stances, that it has been found impossible to dwell for 
 more than a brief period upon any particular one. 
 The writer seems in a perpetual hurry to accomplish 
 what, in autorial parlance, is called "bringing up one s 
 time." He flounders in the vain attempt to keep all 
 his multitudinous incidents at one and the same mo 
 ment before the eye. His ability has been sadly taxed 
 in the effort but more sadly the time and temper of 
 the reader. No sooner do we begin to take some 
 slight degree of interest in some cursorily-sketched 
 event, than we are hurried off to some other, for which 
 a new feeling is to be built up, only to be tumbled 
 down, forthwith, as before. And thus, since there is 
 no sufficiently continuous scene in the whole novel, it 
 results that there is no strongly effective one. Time 
 not being given us in which to become absorbed, we 
 are only permitted to admire, while we are not the less 
 chilled, tantalized, weaned, and displeased. Nature, 
 with natural interest, has been given up a bond-maiden 
 to an elaborate but still to a misconceived, perverted, 
 and most unsatisfactory Art. 
 
THE CRITIC 121 
 
 Very little reflection might have sufficed to con 
 vince Mr. Bulwer that narratives, even one fourth as 
 long as the one now lying upon our table, are essen 
 tially inadapted to that nice and complex adjustment 
 of incident at which he has made this desperate at 
 tempt. In the wire-drawn romances which have been 
 so long fashionable (God only knows how or why) the 
 pleasure we derive (if any) is a composite one, and 
 made- up of the respective sums of the various pleas 
 urable sentiments experienced in perusal. Without 
 excessive and fatiguing exertion, inconsistent with le 
 gitimate interest, the mind cannot comprehend at one 
 time and in one survey the numerous individual items 
 which go to establish the whole. Thus the high ideal 
 sense of the unique is sure to be wanting ; for, how 
 ever absolute in itself be the unity of the novel, it must 
 inevitably fail of appreciation. We speak now of that 
 species of unity which is alone worth the attention of 
 the critic the unity or totality of effect. 
 
 But we could never bring ourselves to attach any 
 idea of merit to mere length in the abstract. A long 
 btory does not appear to us necessarily twice as good 
 as one only half so long. The ordinary talk about 
 "continuous and sustained effort" is pure twaddle and 
 nothing more. Perseverance is one thing and genius 
 is another, whatever Buffon or Hogarth may assert 
 to the contrary, and notwithstanding that, in many 
 passages of the dogmatical literature of old Rome, 
 such phrases as "diligentia maxima," "diligentia mi- 
 rabilis" can be construed only as "great talent" or 
 "wonderful ability." Now if the author of "Ernest 
 Maltravers," implicitly following authority like les 
 moutons de Panurge, will persist in writing long ro- 
 
122 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 mances, because long romances have been written be- 
 f orej if ; i n short, he cannot be satisfied with the brief 
 tale (a species of composition which admits of the 
 highest development of artistical power in alliance 
 with the wildest vigour of imagination), he must 
 then content himself, perforce, with a more simply and 
 more rigidly narrative form. 
 
 And here, could he see these comments upon a 
 work which (estimating it, as is the wont of all artists 
 of his calibre, by the labour which it has cost him) he 
 considers his chef d oewvre, he would assure us, with 
 a smile, that it is precisely because the book is not nar 
 rative and is dramatic that he holds it in so lofty an es 
 teem. Now in regard to its being dramatic, we should 
 reply that, so far as the radical and ineradicable defi 
 ciencies of the drama go, it is. This continual and 
 vexatious shifting of scene, with a view of bringing up 
 events to the time being, originated at a period when 
 books were not ; and in fact, had the drama not pre 
 ceded books, it might never have succeeded them we 
 might, and probably should, never have had a drama 
 at all. By the frequent "bringing up" of his events the 
 dramatist strove to supply, as well as he could, the 
 want of the combining, arranging, and especially of 
 the commenting power, now in possession of the nar 
 rative author. No doubt it was a deep but vague 
 sense of this want which brought into birth the Greek 
 chorus a thing altogether apart from the drama it 
 self, never upon the stage and representing or per 
 sonifying the expression of the sympathy of the audi 
 ence in the matters transacted. 
 
 In brief, while the drama of colloquy, vivacious and 
 breathing of life, is well adapted to narration, the 
 
THE CRITIC 123 
 
 drama of action and passion will always prove, when 
 employed beyond due limits, a source of embarrass 
 ment to the narrator, and it can afford him, at best, 
 nothing which he does not already possess in full force. 
 We have spoken upon this head much at length ; for 
 we remember that, in some preface to one of his pre 
 vious novels (some preface in which he endeavoured 
 to pre-reason and pre-coax us into admiration of what 
 was to follow a bad practice), Mr. Bulwer was at 
 great pains to insist upon the peculiar merits of what 
 he even then termed the dramatic conduct of his story. 
 The simple truth was that, then, as now, he had merely 
 concentrated into his book all the necessary evils of the 
 stage. 
 
 Giving up his attention to the one point upon which 
 we have commented, our novelist has failed to do him 
 self justice in others. The overstrained effort at per 
 fection of plot has seduced him into absurd sacrifices 
 of verisimilitude, as regards the connexion of his dra 
 matis persona each with each and each with the main 
 events. However incidental be the appearance of any 
 personage upon the stage, this personage is sure to be 
 linked in, will I nill I, with the matters in hand. 
 Philip, on the stage coach, for example, converses with 
 but one individual, William Gawtrey ; yet this man s 
 fate (not subsequently but previously) is interwoven 
 into that of Philip himself, through the latter s rela 
 tionship to Lilburne. The hero goes to his mother s 
 grave, and there comes into contact with this Gaw- 
 trey s father. He meets Fanny, and Fanny happens 
 to be also involved in his destiny (a pet word, conveying 
 a pet idea of the author s) through her relationship to 
 Lilburne. The witness in the case of his mother s 
 
124 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 marriage is missing, and this individual turns up at 
 last in the brother of that very Charles De Burgh 
 Smith, with whom so perfectly accidental an intimacy 
 has already been established. The wronged heir pro 
 ceeds at random to look for a lawyer, and stumbles at 
 once upon the precise one who had figured before in 
 the story, and who knows all about previous investigar 
 tions. Setting out in search of Liancourt, the first 
 person he sees is that gentleman himself. Entering a 
 horse-bazaar in a remote portion of the country, the 
 steed up for sale at the exact moment of his entrance 
 is recognized as the pet of his better days. Now our 
 quarrel with these coincidences is not that they some 
 times, but that they everlastingly, occur, and that noth 
 ing occurs besides. We find no fault with Philip for 
 chancing, at the identically proper moment, upon the 
 identical men, women, and horses necessary for his 
 own ends and the ends of the story, but we do think it 
 excessively hard that he should never happen upon 
 any thing else. 
 
 DEFECTS IN THE TECHNIQUE OF BARNABY RUDGE 
 
 [Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, reviewed in 
 Graham s Magazine, February, 1842. If this penetrat 
 ing review is not creative criticism, it is re-creative in 
 a unique sense. In all that pertains to plot, to structure, 
 to suspense, to the masterly handling of convergent de 
 tails, Poe shows here a genius far beyond that of Dick 
 ens. Sir Robertson Nicoll, in The Problem of Edwin 
 Drood, doubts whether Poe or any one else wrote for 
 The Saturday Evening Post, of Philadelphia, May I, 
 1841, the "prospective notice" of Barnaby Rudge 
 
THE CRITIC 125 
 
 which Poe here quotes twice. "If Poe wrote that ar 
 ticle," so runs the indictment, "he wrote it after having 
 read the fifth chapter of Dickens s novel." The pros 
 pective notice, however, has since been discovered and 
 Poe s self-quotations are accurate, I find, to the mi 
 nutest detail. But of course he had read the fifth 
 chapter. When he says that "the secret" was discov 
 ered as soon as he had read Solomon Daisy s story 
 that is, chapter one he means the secret of the real 
 murderer, not the secret of the blood-smeared wrist 
 which is mentioned for the first time in chapter five. 
 And when Poe adds that he wrote his prospective no 
 tice after the novel had been only begun," he does 
 not mean that this beginning stopped with chapter one. 
 In fact the prospective notice proves to be a notice of 
 "Nos. i, 2, and 3" of the 19 numbers or parts that 
 were to contain the entire novel. Number I is known 
 to have contained the first three chapters. Is it con 
 ceivable that numbers 2 and 3 stopped short of chapter 
 five ? Poe did not attempt to deceive anybody. Dick 
 ens is said to have expressed astonishment at the de 
 tective ability shown in the prospective notice, but the 
 prospective notice is not equal to the retrospective no 
 tice that follows. You will observe, by the way, that 
 the next to the last paragraph of our extract contains 
 the egg from which three years later was hatched The 
 Raven."] 
 
 We have given, as may well be supposed, but a 
 very meagre outline of the story, and we have given it 
 in the simple or natural sequence. That is to say, we 
 have related the events, as nearly as might be, in the 
 order of their occurrence. But this order would by 
 
126 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 no means have suited the purpose of the novelist, 
 whose design has been to maintain the secret of the 
 murder, and the consequent mystery which encircles 
 Rudge, and the actions of his wife, until the catastro 
 phe of his discovery by Haredale. The thesis of the 
 novel may thus be regarded as based upon curiosity. 
 Every point is so arranged as to perplex the reader, 
 and whet his desire for elucidation : for example, the 
 first appearance of Rudge at the Maypole; his ques 
 tions ; his persecution of Mrs. R. ; the ghost seen by 
 the frequenter of the Maypole ; and Haredale s impres 
 sive conduct in consequence. What we have told, in 
 the very beginning of our digest, in regard to the shift 
 ing of the gardener s dress, is sedulously kept from the 
 reader s knowledge until he learns it from Rudge s 
 own confession in jail. We say seduluously; for, the 
 intention once known, the traces of the design can be 
 found upon every page. There is an amusing and ex 
 ceedingly ingenious instance at page 145, where Sol 
 omon Daisy describes his adventure with the ghost. 
 
 " It was a ghost a spirit, cried Daisy. 
 
 " Whose? they all three asked together. 
 
 "In the excess of his emotion (for he fell back 
 trembling in his chair, and waved his hand as if en^ 
 treating them to question him no farther) his answer 
 was lost upon all but old John Willet, who happened 
 to be seated close beside him. 
 
 " Who! cried Parkes and Tom Cob Who was it?* 
 
 ;< Gentlemen, said Mr. Willet, after a long pause, 
 you needn t ask. The likeness of a murdered man. 
 This is the nineteenth of March/ 
 
 "A profound silence ensued." 
 
THE CRITIC 
 
 The impression here skilfully conveyed is, that the 
 ghost seen is that of Reuben Haredale ; and the mind 
 of the not-too-acute reader is at once averted from the 
 true state of the case from the murderer, Rudge, liv 
 ing in the body. 
 
 Now there can be no question that, by such means 
 as these, many points which are comparatively insipid 
 in the natural sequence of our digest, and which would 
 have been comparatively insipid even if given in full 
 detail in a natural sequence, are endued with the inter 
 est of mystery ; but neither can it be denied that a vast 
 many more points are at the same time deprived of all 
 effect, and become null, through the impossibility of 
 comprehending them without the key. The author, 
 who, cognizant of his plot, writes with this cognizance 
 continually operating upon him, and thus writes to 
 himself in spite of himself, does not, of course, feel 
 that much of what is effective to his own informed 
 perception, must necessarily be lost upon his unin 
 formed readers ; and he himself is never in condition, 
 as regards his own work, to bring the matter to test. 
 But the reader may easily satisfy himself of the valid 
 ity of our objection. Let him re-peruse "Barnaby 
 Rudge," and with a pre-comprehension of the mys 
 tery, these points of which we speak break out in all 
 directions like stars, and throw quadruple brilliance 
 over the narrative a brilliance which a correct taste 
 will at once declare unprofitably sacrificed at the 
 shrine of the keenest interest of mere mystery. 
 
 The design of mystery, however, being once deter 
 mined upon by an author, it becomes imperative, first, 
 that no undue or inartistical means be employed to 
 conceal the secret of the plot ; and, secondly, that the 
 
128 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 secret be well kept. Now, when, at page 16, we read 
 that "the body of poor Mr. Rudge, the steward, was 
 found" months after the outrage, etc., we see that Mr. 
 Dickens has been guilty of no misdemeanour against 
 Art in stating what was not the fact ; since the false 
 hood is put into the mouth of Solomon Daisy, and 
 given merely as the impression of this individual and 
 of the public. The writer has not asserted it in his 
 own person, but ingeniously conveyed an idea (false 
 in itself, yet a belief in which is necessary for the ef 
 fect of the tale) by the mouth of /one of his characters. 
 The case is different, however, when Mrs. Rudge is 
 repeatedly denominated "the widow." It is the author 
 who, himself, frequently so terms her. This is disin 
 genuous and inartistical : accidentally so, of course. 
 (We speak of the matter merely by way of illustrating 
 our point, and as an oversight on the part of Mr. 
 Dickens. 
 
 That the secret be well kept is obviously necessary. 
 A failure to preserve it until the proper moment of de 
 nouement, throws all into confusion, so far as regards 
 the eff-ect intended. If the mystery leak out, against 
 the author s will, his purposes are immediately at odds 
 and, ends ; for he proceeds upon the supposition that 
 certain impressions do exist, which do not exist, in the 
 mind of his readers. We are not prepared to say, so 
 positively as we could wish, whether, by the public at 
 large, the whole mystery of the murder committed by 
 Rudge, with the identity of the Maypole ruffian with 
 Rudge himself, was fathomed at any period previous 
 to the period intended, or, if so, whether at a period 
 so early as materially to interfere with the interest de 
 signed ; but we are forced, through sheer modesty, to 
 
THE CRITIC 129 
 
 suppose this the case ; since, by ourselves individually, 
 the secret was distinctly understood immediately upon 
 the perusal of the story of Solomon Daisy, which oc 
 curs at the seventh page of this volume of three hun 
 dred and twenty-three. In the number of the "Phil 
 adelphia Saturday Evening Post," for May the 1st, 
 1841, (the tale having then only begun) will be found 
 a prospective notice of some length, in which we made 
 use of the following words : 
 
 "That Barnaby is the son of the murderer may not 
 appear evident to our readers but we will explain. 
 The person murdered is Mr. Reuben Haredale. He 
 was found assassinated in his bed-chamber. His stew 
 ard (Mr. Rudge, senior) and his gardener (name not 
 mentioned) are missing. At first both are suspected. 
 Some months afterward here we use the words of 
 the story the steward s body, scarcely to be recog 
 nised but by his clothes, and the watch and ring he 
 wore was found at the bottom of a piece of water in 
 the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he 
 had been stabbed by a knife. He was only partly 
 dressed; and all people agreed that he had been sit 
 ting up reading in his own room, where there were 
 many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon 
 and killed, before his master/ 
 
 "Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself 
 who asserts that the steward s body was found; he has 
 put the words in the mouth of one of his characters. 
 His design is to make it appear, in the denouement, 
 that the steward, Rudge, first murdered the gardener, 
 then went to his master s chamber, murdered him, was 
 interrupted by his (Rudge s) wife, whom he seized 
 
130 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 and held by the twist, to prevent her giving the alarm 
 that he then, after possessing himself of the booty 
 desired, returned to the gardener s room, exchanged 
 clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch 
 and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards dis 
 covered at so late a period that the features could not 
 be identified." 
 
 The differences between our pre-conceived ideas, 
 as here stated, and the actual facts of the story, will be 
 found immaterial. The gardener was murdered, not 
 before but after his master ; and that Rudge s wife 
 seized him by the wrist, instead of his seizing her, has 
 so much the air of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dick 
 ens, that we can scarcely speak of our own version as 
 erroneous. The grasp of a murderer s bloody hand 
 on the wrist of a woman enceinte, would have been 
 more likely to produce the effect described (and this 
 every one will allow) than the grasp of the hand of 
 the woman, upon the wrist of the assassin. We may 
 therefore say of our supposition as Talleyrand said of 
 some cockney s bad French que s il n est pas Fran- 
 $ais, assurement done il le doit etre that if we did not 
 rightly prophesy, yet, at least, our prophecy should 
 have been right. 
 
 We are informed in the Preface to "Barnaby 
 Rudge" that "no account of the Gordon Riots having 
 been introduced into any work of fiction, and the sub 
 ject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable 
 features," our author "was led to project this tale." 
 But for this distinct announcement (for Mr. Dickens 
 can scarcely have deceived himself) we should have 
 looked upon the Riots as altogether an afterthought. 
 
THE CRITIC 131 
 
 It is evident that they have no necessary connexion! 
 with the story. In our digest, which carefully in 
 cludes all essentials of the plot, we have dismissed the 
 doings of the mob in a paragraph. The whole event 
 of the drama would have proceeded as well without as 
 with them. They have even the appearance of being 
 forcibly introduced. In our compendium above, it 
 will be seen that we emphasized* several allusions to an 
 interval of five years. The action is brought up to a 
 certain point. The train of events is, so far, uninter 
 rupted nor is there any apparent need of interrup 
 tion yet all the characters are now thrown forward 
 for a period of five years. And why? We ask in 
 vain. It is not to bestow upon the lovers a more de 
 corous maturity of age for this is the only possible 
 idea which suggests itself Edward Chester is already 
 eight-and-twenty, and Emma Haredale would, in 
 America at least, be upon the list of old maids. No 
 there is no such reason; nor does there appear to foe 
 any one more plausible than that, as it is now the year 
 of our Lord 1775, an advance of five years, will bring 
 the dramatis persons up to a very remarkable period, 
 affording an admirable opportunity for their display 
 the period, in short, of the "No Popery" riots. This 
 was the idea with which we were forcibly impressed in 
 perusal, and which nothing less than Mr. Dickens 
 positive assurance to the contrary would have been 
 sufficient to eradicate. 
 
 It is, perhaps, but one of a thousand instances of 
 the disadvantages, both to the author and the public, of 
 the present absurd fashion of periodical novel-writing, 
 that our author had not sufficiently considered or de 
 termined upon any particular plot when he began the 
 
132 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 story now under review. In fact, we see, or fancy 
 that we see, numerous traces of indecision traces 
 which a dexterous supervision of the complete work 
 might have enabled him to erase. We have already 
 spoken of the intermission of a lustrum. The open 
 ing speeches of old Chester are by far too truly gentle 
 manly for his subsequent character. The wife of 
 Varden, also, is too wholesale a shrew to be converted 
 into the quiet wife the original design was to punish 
 her. At page 16, we read thus Solomon Daisy is 
 telling his story : 
 
 " I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muf 
 fling myself up, started out with a lighted lantern in 
 one hand and the key of the church in the other at 
 this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange 
 man rustled as if he had turned to hear more distinctly." 
 
 Here the design is to call the reader s attention to 
 a point in the tale ; but no subsequent explanation is 
 made. Again, a few lines below 
 
 "The houses were all shut up, and the folks in 
 doors, and perhaps there is only one man in the world 
 who knows how dark it really was." 
 
 Here the intention is still more evident, but there 
 is no result. Again, at page 54, the idiot draws Mr. 
 Chester to the window, and directs his attention to the 
 clothes hanging upon the lines in the yard : 
 
 Look down, he said softly ; do you mark how 
 they whisper in each other s ears, then dance and leap 
 
THE CRITIC 133 
 
 to make believe they are in sport? Do you see how 
 they stop for a moment, when they think there is no 
 one looking, and mutter among themselves again ; and 
 then how they roll and gambol, delighted with the 
 mischief they ve been plotting? Look at em now! 
 See how they whirl and plunge. And now they stop 
 again, and whisper cautiously together little think 
 ing, mind, how often I have lain upon the ground and 
 watched them. I say what is it that they plot and 
 hatch ? Do you know ? " 
 
 Upon perusal of these ravings, we at once sup 
 posed them to have allusions to some real plotting ; and 
 even now we cannot force ourselves to believe them 
 not so intended. They suggested the opinion that 
 Haredale himself would be implicated in the murder, 
 and that the counsellings alluded to might be those of 
 that gentleman with Rudge. It is by no means impos 
 sible that some such conception wavered in the mind 
 of the author. At page 32 we have a confirmation of 
 our idea, when Varden endeavours to arrest the mur 
 derer in the house of his wife 
 
 " Come back come back ! exclaimed the woman, 
 wrestling with and clasping him. Do not touch him 
 on your life. He carries other lives besides his own. 
 
 The denouement fails to account for this 
 exclamation. 
 
 In the beginning of the story much emphasis is 
 placed upon the two female servants of Haredale, and 
 upon his journey to and from London, as well as upon 
 his wife. We have merely said, in our digest, that he 
 
134 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 was a widower, italicizing 1 the remark. All these 
 other points are, in fact, singularly irrelevant, in the 
 supposition that the original design has not undergone 
 modification. 
 
 Again, at page 57, when Haredale talks of "his 
 dismantled and beggared hearth," we cannot help fan 
 cying that the author had in view some different 
 wrong, or series of wrongs, perpetrated by Chester, 
 than any which appear in the end. This gentleman, 
 too, takes extreme and frequent pains to acquire do 
 minion over the rough Hugh this matter is particu 
 larly insisted upon by the novelist we look, of course, 
 for some important result but the filching of a letter 
 is nearly all that is accomplished. That Barnaby s de 
 light in the desperate scenes of the rebellion, is incon 
 sistent with his horror of blood, will strike every 
 reader; and this inconsistency seems to be the conse 
 quence of the afterthought upon which we have al 
 ready commented. In fact the title of the work, the 
 elaborate and pointed manner of the commencement, 
 the impressive description of The Warren, and espec 
 ially of Mrs. Rudge, go far to show that Mr. Dickens 
 has really deceived himself that the soul of the plot, 
 as originally conceived, was the murder of Haredale, 
 with the subsequent discovery of the murderer in 
 Rudge but that this idea was afterwards abandoned, 
 or rather suffered to be merged in that of the Popish 
 Riots. The result has been most unfavourable. That 
 which, of itself, would have proved highly effective, 
 has been rendered nearly null by its situation. In the 
 multitudinous outrage and horror of the Rebellion, 
 the one atrocity is utterly whelmed and extinguished. 
 
 The reasons of this deflection from the first pur- 
 
THE CRITIC 135 
 
 pose appear to us self-evident. One of them we have 
 already mentioned. The other is that our author dis 
 covered, when too late, that he had anticipated, and 
 thus rendered valueless, his chief effect. This will be 
 readily understood. The particulars of the assassina 
 tion being withheld, the strength of the narrator is put 
 forth, in the beginning of the story, to whet curiosity 
 in respect to these particulars ; and, so far, he is but in 
 proper pursuance of his main design. But from this 
 intention he unwittingly passes into the error of exag 
 gerating anticipation. And error though it be, it is an 
 error wrought with consummate skill. What, for ex 
 ample, could more vividly enhance our impression of 
 the unknown horror enacted, than the deep and endur 
 ing gloom of Haredale than the Pilot s inborn awe of 
 blood or, especially, than the expression of counte 
 nance so imaginatively attributed to Mrs. Rudge 
 "the capacity for expressing terror something only 
 dimly seen, but never absent for a moment the 
 shadow of some look to which an instant of intense 
 and most unutterable horror only could have given 
 rise"? But it is a condition of the human fancy that 
 the promises of such words are irredeemable. In the 
 notice before mentioned we thus spoke upon this 
 topic : 
 
 "This is a conception admirably adapted to whet curi 
 osity in respect to the character of that event which is 
 hinted at as forming the basis of the story. But this 
 observation should not fail to be made that the anti 
 cipation must surpass the reality ; that no matter how 
 terrific be the circumstances which, in the denouement 
 shall appear to have occasioned the expression of 
 
136 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 countenance worn habitually by Mrs. Rudge, still they 
 will not be able to satisfy the mind of the reader. He 
 will surely be disappointed. The skilful intimation of 
 horror held out by the artist, produces an effect which 
 will deprive his conclusion of all. These intimations 
 these dark hints of some uncertain evil are often 
 rhetorically praised as effective but are only justly 
 so praised where there is no denouement whatever 
 where the reader s imagination is left to clear up the 
 mystery for itself and this is not the design of Mr. 
 Dickens." 
 
 And, in fact, our author was not long in seeing his 
 precipitancy. He had placed himself in a dilemma from 
 which even his high genius could not extricate him. 
 He at once shifts the main interest and in truth we 
 do not see what better he could have done. The 
 reader s attention becomes absorbed in the riots, and 
 he fails to observe that what should have been the true 
 catastrophe of the novel, is exceedingly feeble and 
 ineffective. 
 
 A few cursory remarks: Mr. Dickens fails pecul 
 iarly in pure narration. See, for example, page 296, 
 where the connexion of Hugh and Chester is detailed 
 by Varden. See also in "The Curiosity Shop," where, 
 when the result is fully known, so many words are 
 occupied in explaining the relationship of the 
 brothers. 
 
 The effect of the present narrative might have been 
 materially increased by confining the action within the 
 limits of London. The "Notre Dame" of Hugo af 
 fords a fine example of the force which can be gained 
 by concentration, or unity of place. The unity of time 
 
THE CRITIC 137 
 
 is also sadly neglected, to no purpose, in "Barnaby 
 Rudge." 
 
 That Rudge should so long and so deeply feel the 
 sting of conscience is inconsistent with his brutality. 
 
 On page 15, the interval elapsing between the mur 
 der and Rudge s return, is variously stated at twenty- 
 two and twenty-four years. It may be asked why the 
 inmates of The Warren failed to hear the alarm-bell 
 which was heard by Solomon Daisy. 
 
 The idea of persecution by being tracked, as by 
 bloodhounds, from one spot of quietude to another, is 
 a favourite one with Mr. Dickens. Its effect cannot 
 be denied. 
 
 The stain upon Barnaby s wrist, caused by fright 
 in the mother at so late a period of gestation as one 
 day before mature parturition, is shockingly at war 
 with all medical experience. 
 
 When Rudge, escaped from prison, unshackled, 
 with money at command, is in agony at his wife s re 
 fusal to perjure herself for his salvation is it not 
 queer that he should demand any other salvation than 
 lay in his heels ? 
 
 Some of the conclusions of chapters see pages 40 
 and 100 seem to have been written for the mere pur 
 pose of illustrating tail-pieces. 
 
 The leading idiosyncrasy of Mr. Dickens remark 
 able humour, is to be found in his translating the lan 
 guage of gesture, or action, or tone. For example 
 
 "The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr. Parkes 
 remarked in an undertone, shaking his head mean 
 while, as who should say let no man contradict me, 
 for I wont believe him that Willet was in amazing 
 force to-night." 
 
138 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 The riots form a series of vivid pictures never sur 
 passed. At page 17, the road between London and 
 the Maypole is described as a horribly rough and dan 
 gerous, and at page 97, as an uncommonly smooth and 
 convenient one. At page 116, how comes Chester in 
 possession of the key of Mrs. Rudge s vacated house ? 
 
 Mr. Dickens English is usually pure. His most 
 remarkable error is that of employing the adverb "di 
 rectly" in the sense of "as soon as/ For example 
 Directly he arrived, Rudge said/ etc. Bulwer is uni 
 formly guilty of the same blunder. 
 
 It is observable that so original a stylist as our au 
 thor should occasionally lapse into a gross imitation of 
 what, itself, is a gross imitation. We mean the man 
 ner of Lamb a manner based in the Latin construc 
 tion. For example 
 
 "In summer time its pumps suggest to thirsty idlers 
 springs cooler and more sparkling and deeper than 
 other wells; and as they trace the spillings of full 
 pitchers on the heated ground, they snuff the fresh 
 ness, and, sighing, cast sad looks towards the Thames, 
 and think of baths and boats, and saunter on 
 despondent." 
 
 There are many coincidences wrought into the nar 
 rative those, for example, which relate to the nine 
 teenth of March ; the dream of Barnaby, respecting his 
 father, at the very period when his father is actually in 
 the house ; and the dream of Haredale previous to his 
 final meeting with Chester. These things are meant 
 to insinuate a fatality which, very properly, is not ex 
 pressed in plain terms but it is questionable whether 
 
THE CRITIC 139 
 
 the story derives more in ideality from their introduc 
 tion, than it might have gained of verisimilitude from 
 their omission. 
 
 The dramatis persona sustain the high fame of 
 Mr. Dickens as a delineator of character. Miggs, the 
 disconsolate handmaiden of Varden; Tappertit, his 
 chivalrous apprentice; Mrs. Varden, herself; and 
 Dennis, a hangman may be regarded as original cari 
 catures, of the highest merit as such. Their traits are 
 founded in acute observation of nature, but are exag 
 gerated to the utmost admissible extent. Miss Hare- 
 dale and Edward Chester are commonplaces no ef 
 fort has been made in their behalf. Joe Willet is a 
 naturally drawn country youth. Stagg is a mere 
 make-weight. Gashford and Gordon are truthfully 
 copied. Dolly Varden is truth itself. Haredale, 
 Rudge and Mrs. Rudge, are impressive only through 
 the circumstances which surround them. Sir John 
 Chester, is, of course, not original, but is a vast im 
 provement upon all his predecessors his heartlessness 
 is rendered somewhat too amusing, and his end too 
 much that of a man of honour. Hugh is a noble con 
 ception. His fierce exultation in his animal powers ; 
 his subserviency to the smooth Chester; his mirthful 
 contempt and patronage of Tappertit, and his brutal 
 yet firm courage in the hour of death form a picture 
 to be set in diamonds. Old Willet is not surpassed by 
 any character even among those of Dickens. He is 
 nature itself yet a step farther would have placed him 
 in the class of caricatures. His combined conceit and 
 obtusity are indescribably droll, and his peculiar mis 
 directed energy when aroused, is one of the most ex 
 quisite touches in all humorous painting. We shall 
 
140 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 never forget how heartily we laughed at his shaking 
 Solomon Daisy and threatening to put him behind the 
 fire, because the unfortunate little man was too much 
 frightened to articulate. Varden is one of those free, 
 jovial, honest fellows at charity with all mankind, 
 whom our author is so fond of depicting. And lastly, 
 Barnaby, the hero of the tale in him we have been 
 somewhat disappointed. We have already said that 
 his delight in the atrocities of the Rebellion is at vari 
 ance with his horror of blood. But this horror of 
 blood is inconsequential; and of this we complain. 
 Strongly insisted upon in the beginning of the narra 
 tive, it produces no adequate result. And here how 
 fine an opportunity has Mr. Dickens missed! The 
 conviction of the assassin, after the lapse of twenty- 
 two years, might easily have been brought about 
 through his son s mysterious awe of blood an awe 
 created in the unborn by the assassination itself and 
 this would have been one of the finest possible embod 
 iments of the idea which we are accustomed to attach 
 to "poetical justice/ The raven, too, intensely amus 
 ing as it is, might have been made, more than we now 
 see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Bar 
 naby. Its croakings might have been prophetically 
 heard in the course of the drama. Its character might 
 have performed, in regard to that of the idiot, much 
 the same part as does, in music, the accompaniment in 
 respect to the air. Each might have been distinct. 
 Each might have differed remarkably from the other. 
 Yet between them there might have been wrought an 
 analogical resemblance, and although each might have 
 existed apart, they might have formed together a 
 whole which would have been imperfect in the absence 
 of either. 
 
THE CRITIC 141 
 
 From what we have here said and, perhaps, said 
 without due deliberation (for alas! the hurried du 
 ties of the journalist preclude it) there will not be 
 wanting those who will accuse us of a mad design to 
 detract from the pure fame of the novelist. But to 
 such we merely say in the language of heraldry "ye 
 should wear a plain point sanguine in your arms." If 
 this be understood, well ; if not, well again. There 
 lives no man feeling a deeper reverence for genius 
 than ourself. If we have not dwelt so especially upon 
 the high merits as upon the trivial defects of "Barnaby 
 Rudge" we have already given our reasons for the 
 omission, and these reasons will be sufficiently under 
 stood by all whom we care to understand them. The 
 work before us is not, we think, equal to the tale which 
 immediately preceded it ; but there are few very few 
 others to which we consider it inferior. Our chief ob 
 jection has not, perhaps, been so distinctly stated as we 
 could wish. That this fiction, or indeed that any fic 
 tion written by Mr. Dickens, should be based in the ex 
 citement and maintenance of curiosity we look upon as 
 a misconception, on the part of the writer, of his own 
 very great yet very peculiar powers. He has done 
 this thing well, to be sure he would do any thing well 
 in comparison with the herd of his contemporaries 
 but he has not done it so thoroughly well as his high 
 and just reputation would demand. We think that 
 the whole book has been an effort to him solely 
 through the nature of its design. He has been smit 
 ten with an untimely desire for a novel path. The 
 idiosyncrasy of his intellect would lead him, naturally, 
 into the most fluent and simple style of narration. In 
 tales of ordinary sequence he may and will long reign 
 
142 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 triumphant. He has a talent for all things, but no 
 positive genius for adaptation, and still less for that 
 metaphysical art in which the souls of all mysteries lie. 
 "Caleb Williams" is a far less noble work than "The 
 Old Curiosity Shop" ; but Mr. Dickens could no more 
 have constructed the one than Mr. Godwin could have 
 dreamed of the other. 
 
 LONGFELLOW S BALLADS 
 
 [Ballads and Other Poems, by Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow, reviewed in Graham s Magazine, April, 
 1842. In the first part of the review Poe states his 
 objections to Longfellow s themes : they are concerned 
 too much with didacticism and too little with pure 
 beauty. In the following extract Poe applies his 
 thesis to individual poems. We omit the strictures on 
 Longfellow s hexameters.] 
 
 We have thus shown our ground of objection to 
 the general themes of Professor Longfellow. In com 
 mon with all who claim the sacred title of poet, he 
 should limit his endeavors to the creation of novel 
 moods of beauty, in form, in color, in sound, in senti 
 ment; for over all this wide range has the poetry of 
 words dominion. To what the world terms prose may 
 be safely and properly left all else. The artist who 
 doubts of his thesis, may always resolve his doubt by 
 the single question "might not this matter be as well 
 or better handled in prose?" If it may, then is it no 
 subject for the Muse. In the general acceptation of 
 the term Beauty we are content to rest ; being careful 
 only to suggest that, in our peculiar views, it must be 
 understood as inclusive of the sublime. 
 
THE CRITIC 143 
 
 Of the pieces which constitute the present volume, 
 there are not more than one or two thoroughly ful 
 filling the idea above proposed ; although the volume 
 as a whole is by no means so chargeable with didacti 
 cism as Mr. Longfellow s previous book. We would 
 mention as poems nearly true, "The Village Black 
 smith," The Wreck of the Hesperus," and especially 
 The Skeleton in Armor." In the first-mentioned 
 we have the beauty of simple-mindedness as a gen 
 uine thesis ; and this thesis is inimitably handled until 
 the concluding stanza, where the spirit of legitimate 
 poesy is aggrieved in the pointed antithetical deduc 
 tion of a moral from what has gone before. In The 
 Wreck of the Hesperus" we have the beauty of child 
 like confidence and innocence, with that of the father s 
 stern courage and affection. But, with slight excep 
 tion, those particulars of the storm here detailed are 
 not poetic subjects. Their thrilling horror belongs to 
 prose, in which it could be far more effectively dis 
 cussed, as Professor Longfellow may assure himself 
 at any moment by experiment. There are points of a 
 tempest which afford the loftiest and truest poetical 
 themes points in which pure beauty is found, or, bet 
 ter still, beauty heightened into the sublime, by terror. 
 But when we read, among other similar things, that 
 
 The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 
 The salt tears in her eyes, 
 
 we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense 
 of the inappropriate. In the "Skeleton in Armor" we 
 find a pure and perfect thesis artistically treated. We 
 find the beauty of bold courage and self-confidence, 
 of love and maiden devotion, of reckless adventure, 
 
144 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 and finally of life-contemning grief. Combined with 
 all this we have numerous points of beauty apparently 
 insulated, but all aiding the main effect or impres 
 sion. The heart is stirred, and the mind does not la 
 ment its mal-instruction. The metre is simple, sonor 
 ous, well-balanced, and fully adapted to the subject. 
 Upon the whole, there are few truer poems than this. 
 It has but one defect an important one. The prose 
 remarks prefacing the narrative are really necessary. 
 But every work of art should contain within itself all 
 that is requisite for its own comprehension. And this 
 remark is especially true of the ballad. In poems of 
 magnitude the mind of the reader is not, at all times, 
 enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey, the 
 proportions and proper adjustment of the whole. He 
 is pleased, if at all, with particular passages ; and the 
 sum of his pleasure is compounded of the sums of the 
 pleasurable sentiments inspired by these individual 
 passages in the progress of perusal. But, in pieces 
 of less extent, the pleasure is unique, in the proper 
 acceptation of this term the understanding is em 
 ployed, without difficulty, in the contemplation of the 
 picture as a whole ; and thus its effect will depend, in 
 great measure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon 
 the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and 
 especially, upon what is rightly termed by Schlegel 
 the unity or totality of interest. But the practice of 
 prefixing explanatory passages is utterly at variance 
 with such unity. By the prefix, we are either put in 
 possession of the subject of the poem; or some hint, 
 historic fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not 
 included in the body of the piece, which, without the 
 hint, is incomprehensible. In the latter case, while 
 
THE CRITIC 145 
 
 perusing the poem, the reader must revert, in mind at 
 least, to the prefix, for the necessary explanation. In 
 the former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of the 
 prefix, the interest is divided between the prefix and 
 the paraphrase. In either instance the totality of 
 effect is destroyed. 
 
 Of the other original poems in the volume before 
 us, there is none in which the aim of instruction, or 
 truth, has not been too obviously substituted for the 
 legitimate aim, beauty. In our last number, we took 
 occasion to say that a didactic moral might be happily 
 made the under-current of a poetical theme, and, in 
 Burton s Magazine," some two years since, we treated 
 this point at length, in a review of Moore s 
 "Alciphron" but the moral thus conveyed is invariably 
 an ill effect when obtruding beyond the upper cur 
 rent of the thesis itself. Perhaps the worst specimen 
 of this obtrusion is given us by our poet in "Blind 
 Bartimeus" and the "Goblet of Life," where, it will be 
 observed that the sole interest of the upper current of 
 meaning depends upon its relation or reference to the 
 under. What we read upon the surface would be vox 
 et prceterea nihil in default of the moral beneath. The 
 Greek finales of "Blind Bartimeus" are an affectation 
 altogether inexcusable. What the small, second-hand, 
 Gibbon-ish pedantry of Byron introduced, is unworthy 
 the imitation of Longfellow. 
 
 Of the translations we scarcely think it necessary 
 to speak at all. We regret that our poet will persist 
 in busying himself about such matters. His time 
 might be better employed in original conception. Most 
 of these versions are marked with the error upon 
 which we have commented. This error is in fact, e3- 
 
146 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 scntially Germanic. "The Luck of Edenhall," how 
 ever, is a truly beautiful poem ; and we say this with 
 all that deference which the opinion of the "Democratic 
 Review" demands. This composition appears to us 
 one of the very finest. It has all the free, hearty, 
 obvious movement of the true ballad-legend. The 
 greatest force of language is combined in it with the 
 richest imagination, acting in its most legitimate 
 province. L^pon the whole, we prefer it even to the 
 "Sword-Song" of Korner. The pointed moral with 
 which it terminates is so exceedingly natural so per 
 fectly fluent from the incidents that we have hardly 
 heart to pronounce it in ill taste. We may observe of 
 this ballad, in conclusion, that its subject is more 
 physical than is usual in Germany. Its images are 
 rich rather in physical than in moral beauty. And 
 this tendency, in Song, is the true one. It is chiefly, 
 if we are not mistaken it is chiefly amid forms of 
 physical loveliness (we use the word forms in its wid 
 est sense as embracing modifications of sound and 
 color) that the soul seeks the realization of its dreams 
 of BEAUTY. It is to her demand in this sense 
 especially, that the poet, who is wise, will most fre 
 quently and most earnestly respond 
 
 As we have already alluded, in one or two re 
 gards, to a notice of these poems which appeared in 
 the "Democratic Review," we may as well here pro 
 ceed with some few further comments upon the article 
 in question with whose general tenor we are happy 
 to agree. 
 
 The Review speaks of "Maidenhood" as a poem, 
 "not to be understood but at the expense of more 
 time and trouble than a song can justly claim." We 
 
THE CRITIC 147 
 
 are scarcely less surprised at this opinion from Mr. 
 Langtree than we were at the condemnation of "The 
 Luck of Edenhall." 
 
 "Maidenhood" is faulty, it appears to us, only on 
 the score of its theme, which is somewhat didactic. Its 
 meaning seems simplicity itself. A maiden on the verge 
 of womanhood, hesitating to enjoy life (for which 
 she has a strong appetite) through a false idea of 
 duty, is bidden to fear nothing, having purity of heart 
 as her lion of Una. 
 
 What Mr. Langtree styles "an unfortunate pecu 
 liarity" in Mr. Longfellow, resulting from "adherence 
 to a false system" has really been always regarded 
 by us as one of his idiosyncratic merits. "In each 
 poem," says the critic, "he has but one idea which, in 
 the progress of his song, is gradually unfolded, and at 
 last reaches its full development in the concluding 
 lines ; this singleness of thought might lead a harsh 
 critic to suspect intellectual barrenness." It leads us, 
 individually, only to a full sense of the artistical power 
 and knowledge of the poet. We confess that now, 
 for the first time, we hear unity of conception ob 
 jected to as a defect. But Mr. Langtree seems to have 
 fallen into the singular error of supposing the poet to 
 have absolutely but one idea in each of his ballads. 
 Yet how "one idea" can be "gradually unfolded" with 
 out other ideas, is, to us, a mystery of mysteries. Mr. 
 Longfellow, very properly, has but one leading idea 
 which forms the basis of his poem ; but to the aid and 
 development of this one there are innumerable others, 
 of which the rare excellence is, that all are in keeping, 
 that none could be well omitted, that each tends to the 
 
148 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 one general effect. It is unnecessary to say another 
 word upon this topic. 
 
 In speaking of Excelsior," Mr. Langtree (are we 
 wrong in attributing the notice to his very forcible 
 pen ?) seems to labor under some similar misconcep 
 tion. "It carries along with it," says he, "a false 
 moral which greatly diminishes its merit in our eyes. 
 The great merit of a picture, whether made with the 
 pencil or pen, is its truth ; and this merit does not be 
 long to Mr. Longfellow s sketch. Men of genius may 
 and probably do, meet with greater difficulties in their 
 struggles with the world than their fellow-men who 
 are less highly gifted ; but their power of overcoming 
 obstacles is proportionably greater, and the result of 
 their laborious suffering is not death but immortality." 
 
 That the chief merit of a picture is its truih, is an 
 assertion deplorably erroneous. Even in Painting, 
 which is, more essentially than Poetry, a mimetic art, 
 the proposition cannot be sustained. Truth is not 
 even the aim. Indeed it is curious to observe how 
 very slight a degree of truth is sufficient to satisfy the 
 mind, which acquiesces in the absence of numerous 
 essentials in the thing depicted. An outline frequently 
 stirs the spirit more pleasantly than the most elaborate 
 picture. We need only refer to the compositions of 
 Flaxman and of Retzsch. Here all details are omitted 
 nothing can be farther from truth. Without even 
 color the most thrilling effects are produced. In 
 statues we are rather pleased than disgusted with the 
 want of the eyeball The hair of the Venus de Medici 
 u>as gilded. Truth indeed ! The grapes of Zeuxis as 
 well as the curtain of Parrhasius were received as in 
 disputable evidence of the truthful ability of these 
 
THE CRITIC 149 
 
 artists but they are not even classed among their pic 
 tures. If truth is the highest aim of either Painting 
 or Poesy, then Jan Steen was a greater artist than 
 Angelo, and Crabbe is a more noble poet than Milton. 
 But we kave not quoted the observation of Mr. 
 Langtree to deny its philosophy ; our design was sim 
 ply to show that he has misunderstood the poet. 
 "Excelsior" has not even a remote tendency to the 
 interpretation assigned it by the critic. It depicts the 
 earnest upward impulse of the soul an impulse not 
 to be subdued even in Death. Despising danger, re 
 sisting pleasure, the youth, bearing the banner in 
 scribed "Excelsior I" (higher still!) struggles through 
 all difficulties to an Alpine summit. Warned to be 
 content with the elevation attained, his cry is still 
 "Excelsior !" And, even in falling dead on the highest 
 pinnacle, his cry is still "Excelsior!" There is yet an 
 immortal height to be surmounted an ascent in 
 Eternity. The poet holds in view the idea of never- 
 ending progress. That he is misunderstood is rather 9* .-> J 
 the misfortune of Mr. Langtree than the fault of Mr. <V 
 Longfellow. There is an old adage about the diffi- ( *^* ( x* 
 culty of one s furnishing an auditor both with matter I JZ*^ / 
 to be comprehended and brains for its comprehension. <t ae ^ tt ^^ 
 
 THE TECHNIQUE OF THE SHORT STORY *"* ( ^ 6 *^ 
 
 * S^ )4 > 
 
 [Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, re- <^^> 
 viewed in Graham s Magazine, May, 1842. Judged by 
 
 its effect, the paragraph beginning, "A skilful literary ^ 
 
 artist has constructed a tale," is probably the most ^ 
 
 significant in the annals of American literary criticism. c 
 It heralded the birth of the American short story as 
 
 distinct literary type.] y -^^-^-^^ 
 
 "f~ 
 
ISO EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 But it is of his tales that we desire principally to 
 speak. The tale proper, in our opinion, affords un 
 questionably the fairest field for the exercise of the 
 loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide 
 domains of mere prose. Were we bidden to say how 
 the highest genius could be most advantageously em 
 ployed for the best display of its own powers, we 
 should answer, without hesitation in the composi 
 tion of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what 
 might be perused in an hour. Within this limit alone 
 can the highest order of true poetry exist. We need 
 only here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all 
 classes of composition, the unity of effect or impres 
 sion is a point of the greatest importance. It is 
 clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly 
 preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be 
 completed at one sitting. We may continue the read 
 ing of a prose composition, from the very nature of 
 prose itself, much longer than we can persevere, to 
 any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. This lat 
 ter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic senti 
 ment, induces an exaltation of the soul which cannot 
 be long sustained. All high excitements are neces 
 sarily transient. Thus a long poem is a paradox. 
 And, without unity of impression, the deepest effects 
 cannot be brought about. Epics were the offspring 
 of an imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no 
 more. A poem too brief may produce a vivid, but 
 never an intense or enduring impression. Without a 
 certain continuity of effort without a certain dura 
 tion or repetition of purpose the soul is never deeply 
 moved. There must be the dropping of the water upon 
 the rock. De Beranger has wrought brilliant things 
 
THE CRITIC 151 
 
 pungent and spirit-stirring but, like all immassive 
 bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy 
 the Poetic Sentiment. They sparkle and excite, but, 
 from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Ex 
 treme brevity will degenerate into epigrarnmatism ; but 
 the sin of extreme length is even more unpardonable. 
 In media tutissimus ibis. 
 
 Were we called upon, however, to designate that 
 class of composition which, next to such a poem as 
 we have suggested, should best fulfil the demands of 
 high genius should offer it the most advantageous 
 field of exertion we should unhesitatingly speak of 
 the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified 
 it. We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring 
 from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal. 
 The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, 
 for reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot 
 be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of 
 the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly 
 interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, 
 modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less de 
 gree, the impressions of the book. But simple cessa 
 tion in reading, would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy 
 the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author 
 is enabled to carry out the fulness of his intention, 
 be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the 
 soul of the reader is at the writer s control. There 
 are no external or extrinsic influences resulting from 
 weariness or interruption. 
 
 A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If 
 wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommo 
 date his incidents ; but having conceived, with deliber 
 ate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought 
 
152 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 cut, He then invents such incidents he then combines 
 such events as may best aid him in establishing this 
 preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend 
 not to the out-bringing of this effect, then he has 
 failed in his first step. In the whole composition there 
 should be no word written, of which the tendency, di 
 rect or indirect, is not to the one pre-established 
 design. And by such means, with such care and skill, 
 a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind 
 of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense 
 of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has 
 been presented unblemished, because undisturbed ; and 
 this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue 
 brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem ; 
 but undue length is yet more to be avoided. 
 
 We have said that the tale has a point of superiority 
 even over the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this 
 latter is an essential aid in the development of the 
 poem s highest idea the idea of the Beautiful the 
 artificialities of this rhythm are an inseparable bar 
 to the development of all points of thought or expres 
 sion which have their basis in Truth. But Truth is 
 often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale. 
 Some of the finest tales are tales of ratiocination. 
 Thus the field of this species of composition, if not in 
 so elevated a region on the mountain of Mind, is a 
 table-land of far vaster extent than the domain of the 
 mere poem. Its products are never so rich, but in 
 finitely more numerous, and more appreciable by the 
 mass of mankind. The writer of the prose tale, in 
 short, may bring to his theme a vast variety of modes 
 or inflections of thought and expression (the ra- 
 tiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the humorous} 
 
THE CRITIC 153 
 
 which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the 
 poem, but absolutely forbidden by one of its most 
 peculiar and indispensable adjuncts; we allude, of 
 course, to rhythm. It may be added, here, par 
 par enthuse, that the author who aims at the purely 
 beautiful in a prose tale is laboring- at great disad 
 vantage. For Beauty can be better treated in the 
 poem. Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a 
 multitude of such other points. And here it will be 
 seen how full of prejudice are the usual animadver 
 sions against those tales of effect, many fine examples 
 of which were found in the earlier numbers of Black- 
 wood. The impressions produced were wrought in a 
 legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legiti 
 mate although sometimes an exaggerated interest. 
 They were relished by every man of genius : although 
 there were found many men of genius who condemned 
 them without just ground. The true critic will but 
 demand that the design intended be accomplished, 
 to the fullest extent, by the means most advantageously 
 applicable. 
 
 We have very few American tales of real merit 
 we may say, indeed, none, with the exception of "The 
 Tales of a Traveller" of Washington Irving, and 
 these "Twice-Told Tales" of Mr. Hawthorne. Some 
 of the pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in vigor and 
 originality ; but in general, his compositions of this 
 class are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and indica 
 tive of an imperfect sentiment of Art. Articles at 
 random are, now and then, met with in our periodicals 
 which might be advantageously compared with the 
 best effusions of the British Magazines ; but, upon the 
 whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this de 
 partment of literature. 
 
154 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Of Mr. Hawthorne s Tales we would say, emphati 
 cally, that they belong to the highest region of Art 
 an Art subservient to genius of a very lofty order. 
 We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, 
 that he had been thrust into his present position by 
 one of the impudent cliques which beset our literature, 
 and whose pretensions it is our full purpose to ex 
 pose at the earliest opportunity ; but we have been most 
 agreeably mistaken. We know of few compositions 
 which the critic can more honestly commend than these 
 "Twice-Told Tales." As Americans, we feel proud 
 of the book. 
 
 Mr. Hawthorne s distinctive trait is invention, 
 creation, imagination, originality a trait which, in 
 the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. 
 But the nature of originality, so far as regards its 
 manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly understood. 
 The inventive or original mind as frequently displays 
 itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of manner. Mr. 
 Hawthorne is original at all points. 
 
 It would be a matter of some difficulty to desig 
 nate the best of these tales ; we repeat that, without 
 exception, they are beautiful. "Wakefield" is remark 
 able for the skill with which an old idea a well- 
 known incident is worked up or discussed. A man of 
 whims conceives the purpose of quitting his wife and 
 residing incognito, for twenty years, in her immediate 
 neighborhood. Something of this kind actually hap 
 pened in London. The force of Mr. Hawthorne s tale 
 lies in the analysis of the motives which must or 
 might have impelled the husband to such folly, in the 
 first instance, with the possible causes of his persever- 
 
THE CRITIC 155 
 
 ance. Upon this thesis a sketch of singular power has 
 been constructed. 
 
 "The Wedding Knell" is full of the boldest imagin 
 ation an imagination fully controlled by taste. The 
 most captious critic could find no flaw in this 
 production. 
 
 "The Minister s Black Veil is a masterly composi 
 tion of which the sole defect is that to the rabble its 
 exquisite skill will be caviare. The obvious meaning of 
 this article will be found to smother its insinuated one. 
 The moral put into the mouth of the dying minister 
 will be supposed to convey the true import of the nar 
 rative ; and that a crime of dark dye, (having refer 
 ence to the "young lady") has been committed, is a 
 point which only minds congenial with that of the 
 author will perceive. 
 
 "Mr. Higginbotham s Catastrophe" is vividly 
 original and managed most dexterously. 
 
 "Dr. Heidegger s Experiment" is exceedingly well 
 imagined, and executed with surpassing ability. The 
 artist breathes in every line of it. 
 
 "The White Old Maid" is objectionable, even more 
 than the "Minister s Black Veil," on the score of its 
 mysticism. Even with the thoughtful and analytic, 
 there will be much trouble in penetrating its entire 
 import. 
 
 "The Hollow of the Three Hills" we would quote 
 in full, had we space ; not as evincing higher talent 
 than any of the other pieces, but as affording an ex 
 cellent example of the author s peculiar ability. The 
 subject is commonplace. A witch subjects the Distant 
 and the Past to the view of a mourner. It has been 
 the fashion to describe, in such cases, a mirror in 
 
156 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 which the images of the absent appear; or a cloud of 
 smoke is made to arise, and thence the figures are 
 gradually unfolded. Mr. Hawthorne has wonderfully 
 heightened his effect by making the ear, in place of 
 the eye, the medium by which the fantasy is conveyed. 
 The head of the mourner is enveloped in the cloak of 
 the witch, and within its magic folds there arise 
 sounds which have an all-sufficient intelligence. 
 Throughout this article also, the artist is conspicuous 
 not more in positive than in negative merits. Not 
 only is all done that should be done, but (what per 
 haps is an end with more difficulty attained) there is 
 nothing else done which should not be. Every word 
 tells, and there is not a word which does not tell. 
 
 In "Howe s Masquerade" we observe something 
 which resembles a plagiarism but which may be a 
 very flattering coincidence of thought. We quote the 
 passage in question. 
 
 "With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they 
 saw the general drazv his sword and advance to meet 
 the figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped one 
 pace upon the floor. 
 
 Villain, unmuffle yourself cried he, you pass 
 no farther! 
 
 "The figure, without blanching a hair s breadth 
 from the sword which was pointed at his breast, made 
 a solemn pause, and lowered the cape of the cloak 
 from his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators 
 to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had 
 evidently seen enough. The sternness of his counte 
 nance gave place to a look of wild amazement, if not 
 
THE CRITIC 157 
 
 horror, while he recoiled several steps from the figure, 
 and let fall his sword upon the floor." 
 
 The idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is the 
 phantom or reduplication of Sir William Howe ; but 
 in. an article called "William Wilson," one of the 
 "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," we have not 
 only the same idea, but the same idea similarly pre 
 sented in several respects. We quote two paragraphs, 
 which our readers may compare with what has been 
 already given. We have italicized, above, the imme 
 diate particulars of resemblance. 
 
 "The brief moment in which I averted my eyes 
 had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material 
 change in the arrangement at the upper or farther end 
 of the room. A large mirror, it appeared to me, now 
 stood where none had been perceptible before : and as 
 I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own 
 image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, 
 advanced with a feeble and tottering gait to meet me. 
 
 "Thus it appeared I say, but was not. It was Wil 
 son, who then stood before me in the agonies of dis 
 solution. Not a line in all the marked and singular 
 lineaments of that face which was not even identically 
 mine own. His mask and cloak lay where he had 
 thrown them, upon the floor." 
 
 Here it will be observed that, not only are the two 
 general conceptions identical, but there are various 
 points of similarity. In each case the figure seen is 
 the wraith or duplication of the beholder. In each 
 case the scene is a masquerade. In each case the fig- 
 
158 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ure is cloaked. In each, there is a quarrel that is to 
 say, angry words pass between the parties. In each 
 the beholder is enraged. In each the cloak and sword 
 fall upon the floor. The "villain, unmuffle yourself," 
 cf Mr. H. is precisely paralleled by a passage at page 
 56 of "William Wilson." 
 
 In the way of objection we have scarcely a word to 
 say of these tales. There is, perhaps, a somewhat too 
 general or prevalent tone a tone of melancholy and 
 mysticism. The subjects are insufficiently varied. 
 There is not so much of versatility evinced as we might 
 well be warranted in expecting from the high powers 
 of Mr. Hawthorne. But beyond these trivial excep 
 tions we have really none to make. The style is purity 
 itself. Force abounds. High imagination gleams 
 from every page. Mr. Hawthorne is a man of the 
 truest genius. We only regret that the limits of our 
 Magazine will not permit us to pay him that full 
 tribute of commendation, which, under other circum 
 stances, we should be so eager to pay. 
 
 REPETITION AN AID TO QUAINTNESS 
 
 [The Drama of Exile and Other Poems, by Eliza 
 beth Barrett Barrett, reviewed in The Broadway 
 Journal, January 4 and n, 1845. Poe s poems are so 
 instinct with rhythmical repetitions that every refer 
 ence to the subject in his critical reviews is an aid in 
 the interpretation of his own art. In Ralph Hoyt s 
 Old, Poe thought the repetition overdone: "In his 
 continuous and absolutely uniform repetition of the 
 first line in the last of each stanza, he has by much ex 
 ceeded the legitimate limits of the quaint, and im- 
 
THE CRITIC 159 
 
 pinged upon the simply ludicrous." But of Hood s 
 Haunted House, Poe writes : "The metre and rhythm 
 are not only, in themselves, admirably adapted to the 
 whole design, but with a true artistic feeling, the poet 
 has preserved a thorough monotone throughout, and 
 renders its effect more impressive by the repetition 
 (gradually increasing in frequency towards the finale] 
 of one of the most pregnant and effective of the 
 stanzas."] 
 
 We have already said, however, that mere quaint- 
 ness within reasonable limit, is not only not to be re 
 garded as affectation, but has its proper artistic uses 
 in aiding a fantastic effect. We quote, from the lines 
 "To my dog Flush," a passage in exemplification : 
 
 Leap! thy broad tail waves a light! 
 Leap ! thy slender feet are bright, 
 
 Canopied in fringes ! 
 Leap! those tasselled ears of thine 
 Flicker strangely, fair and fine, 
 
 Down their golden inches ! 
 
 And again from the song of a tree-spirit, in the 
 "Drama of Exile:" 
 
 The Divine impulsion cleaves 
 In dim movements to the leaves 
 Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted, 
 In the sun-light greenly sifted, 
 In the sun-light and the moon-light 
 Greenly sifted through the trees. 
 Ever wave the Eden trees, 
 In the night-light and the noon-light, 
 With a ruffling of green branches, 
 Shaded off to resonances, 
 Never stirred by rain or breeze. 
 
 The thoughts, here, belong to the highest order of 
 poetry, but they could not have been wrought into ef- 
 
160 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 fective expression, without the instrumentality of those 
 repetitions those unusual phrases in a word, those 
 quaintnesses, which it has been too long the fashion to 
 censure, indiscriminately, under the one general head 
 of "affectation." No true poet will fail to be enrap 
 tured with the two extracts above quoted but we be 
 lieve there are few who would not find a difficulty in 
 reconciling the psychal impossibility of refraining 
 from admiration, with the too-hastily attained mental 
 conviction that, critically, there is nothing to admire. 
 
 SHELLEY AND AFTER 
 
 [This is the concluding part of Poe s review of Miss 
 Barrett s Drama of Exile. See the preceding selec 
 tion. It is well to compare with this bit of evolu 
 tionary criticism of Shelley Poe s only appraisal of 
 Keats: "He is the sole British poet who has never 
 erred in his themes. Beauty is always his aim."] 
 
 If ever mortal "wreaked his thoughts upon expres 
 sion" it was Shelley. If ever poet sang (as a bird 
 sings) impulsively earnestly with utter abandon 
 ment to himself solely and for the mere joy of his 
 own song that poet was the author of the "Sensitive 
 Plant." Of Art beyond that which is the inalienable 
 instinct of Genius he either had little or disdained all. 
 TTc really disdained that Rule which is the emanation 
 from Law, because his own soul was law in itself. 
 His rhapsodies are but the rough notes the stenog 
 raphic memoranda of poems memoranda which, be 
 cause they were all-sufficient for his own intelligence, 
 he cared not to be at the trouble of transcribing in full 
 
THE CRITIC 161 
 
 for mankind. In his whole life he wrought not thor 
 oughly out a single conception. For this reason it is 
 that he is the most fatiguing of poets. Yet he wear 
 ies in having done too little, rather than too much ; 
 what seems in him the diffuseness of one idea, is the 
 conglomerate concision of many; and this concision 
 it is which renders him obscure. With such a man, to 
 imitate was out of the question; it would have an 
 swered no purpose for he spoke to his own spirit 
 alone, which would have comprehended no alien 
 tongue; he was, therefore, profoundly original. His 
 quaintness arose from intuitive perception of that 
 truth to which Lord Verulam alone has given distinct 
 voice: "There is no exquisite beauty which has not 
 some strangeness in its proportion." But whether ob 
 scure, original, or quaint, he was at all times sincere. 
 He had no affectations. 
 
 From the ruins of Shelley there sprang into exis 
 tence, affronting the Heavens, a tottering and fantas 
 tic pagoda, in which the salient angles, tipped with 
 mad jangling bells, were the idiosyncratic faults of the 
 great original faults which cannot be called such in 
 view of his purposes, but which are monstrous when 
 we regard his works as addressed to mankind. A 
 "school" arose if that absurd term must still be em 
 ployed a school a system of rules upon the basis 
 of the Shelley who had none. Young men innumer 
 able, dazzled with the glare and bewildered with the 
 bizarrerie of the divine lighting that flickered through 
 the clouds of the "Prometheus," had no trouble what 
 ever in heaping up imitative vapors, but, for the light 
 ning, were content, perforce, with its spectrum, in 
 which the bizarrerie appeared without the fire. Nor 
 
162 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 were great and mature minds unimpressed by the con 
 templation of a greater and more mature; and thus 
 gradually were interwoven into this school of all Law 
 lessness of obscurity, quaintness, exaggeration the 
 misplaced didacticism of Wordsworth, and even more 
 preposterously anomalous metaphysicianism of Cole 
 ridge. Matters were now fast verging to their worst, 
 and at length in Tennyson, poetic inconsistency at 
 tained its extreme. But it was precisely this extreme 
 (for the greatest error and the greatest truth are 
 scarcely two points in a circle) it was this extreme 
 which, following the law of all extremes, wrought in 
 him in Tennyson a natural and inevitable revul 
 sion, leading him first to contemn and secondly to in 
 vestigate his early manner, and, finally, to winnow 
 from its magnificent elements the truest and purest of 
 all poetical styles. But not even yet is the process 
 complete; and for this reason in part, but chiefly on 
 account of the mere fortuitousness of that mental and 
 moral combination which shall unite in one person (if 
 ever it shall) the Shelleyan abandon, the Tennysonian 
 poetic sense, the most profound instinct of Art, and 
 the sternest Will properly to blend and vigorously to 
 control all; chiefly, we say, because such combina 
 tion of antagonisms must be purely fortuitous, has the 
 world never yet seen the noblest of the poems of which 
 it is possible that it may be put in possession. 
 
 And yet Miss Barrett has narrowly missed the ful 
 filment of these conditions. Her poetic inspiration is 
 the highest we can conceive nothing more august. 
 Her sense of Art is pure in itself, but has been con 
 taminated by pedantic study of false models a study 
 which has the more easily led her astray, because she 
 
THE CRITIC 163 
 
 placed an undue value upon it as rare as alien to her 
 character of woman. The accident of having been 
 long secluded by ill health from the world has effected, 
 moreover, in her behalf, what an innate recklessness 
 did for Shelley has imparted to her, if not precisely 
 that abandon to which I have referred, at least a some 
 thing that stands well in its stead a comparative inde 
 pendence of men and opinions with which she did not 
 come personally in contact a happy audacity of 
 thought and expression never before known in one of 
 her sex. It is, however, this same accident of ill 
 health, perhaps, which has invalidated her original 
 Will diverted her from proper individuality of pur 
 pose and seduced her into the sin of imitation. 
 Thus, what she might have done, we cannot alto 
 gether determine. What she has actually accom 
 plished is before us. With Tennyson s works beside 
 her, and a keen appreciation of them in her soul 
 appreciation too keen to be discriminative ; with an 
 imagination ethereally delicate ; with inferior art and 
 more feeble volition ; she has written poems such as he 
 could not write, but such as he, under her conditions 
 of ill health and seclusion, would have written during 
 the epoch of his pupildom in that school which arose 
 out of Shelley, and from which, over a disgustful 
 gulf of utter incongruity and absurdity, lit only by 
 miasmatic flashes, into the broad open meadows of 
 Natural Art and Divine Genius, he Tennyson is at 
 once the bridge and the transition. 
 
 PLAGIARISM 
 
 [This selection, from The Broadway Journal, April 
 5, 1845, closed the so-called "Longfellow War," a war 
 
164 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 about plagiarism, in which Longfellow took no part. 
 The mystery of "Outis," who entered the lists in be 
 half of Longfellow, remains still unsolved ; but he was 
 a foeman worthy of Poe s steel.] 
 
 It should not be supposed that I feel myself indi 
 vidually aggrieved in the letter of Outis. He has 
 praised me even more than he has blamed. In reply 
 ing to him, my design has been to place fairly and dis 
 tinctly before the literary public certain principles of 
 criticism for which I have been long contending, and 
 which through sheer misrepresentation, were in dan 
 ger of being misunderstood. 
 
 Having brought the subject, in this view, to a 
 close in the last "Journal," I now feel at liberty to add 
 a few words of postscript, by way of freeing myself of 
 any suspicion of malevolence or discourtesy. The 
 thesis of my argument, in general, has been the defini 
 tion of the grounds on which a charge of plagiarism 
 may be based, and of the species of ratiocination by 
 which it is to be established : that is all. It will be 
 seen by any one who shall take the trouble to read 
 what I have written, that I make no charge of moral 
 delinquency against either Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Al- 
 drich, or Mr. Hood : indeed, lest in the heat of argu 
 ment, I may have uttered any words which may admit 
 of being tortured into such an interpretation, I here 
 fully disclaim them upon the spot. 
 
 In fact, the one strong point of defence for his 
 friends has been unaccountably neglected by Outis. 
 To attempt the rebutting of a charge of plagiarism by 
 the broad assertion that no such thing as plagiarism 
 exists, is a sotticism, and no more but there would 
 
THE CRITIC 165 
 
 have been nothing of unreason in rebutting the charge 
 as urged either against Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Aldrich, 
 or Mr. Hood, by the proposition that no true poet can 
 be guilty of a meanness that the converse of the pro 
 position is a contradiction in terms. Should there be 
 found any one willing to dispute with me this point, I 
 would decline the disputation on the ground that my 
 arguments are no arguments to him. 
 
 It appears to me that what seems to be the gross 
 inconsistency of plagiarism as perpetrated by a poet, 
 is very easily thus resolved : the poetic sentiment 
 (even without reference to the poetic power) implies a 
 peculiarly, perhaps abnormally keen appreciation of 
 the beautiful, with a longing for its assimilation, or ab 
 sorption, into poetic identity. What the poet intensely 
 admires, becomes thus, in very fact, although only par 
 tially, a portion of his own intellect. It has secondary 
 origination within his own soul an origination al 
 together apart, although springing from its primary 
 origination from without. The poet is thus possessed 
 by another s thought, and cannot be said to take of it, 
 possession. But, in either view, he thoroughly feels 
 it as his own and this feeling is counteracted only by 
 the sensible presence of its true, palpable origin in the 
 volume from which he has derived it an origin 
 which, in the long lapse of years it is almost impossible 
 not to forget for in the meantime the thought itself 
 is forgotten. But the frailest association will regen 
 erate it it springs up with all the vigor of a new 
 birth its absolute originality is not even a matter of 
 suspicion and when the poet has written it and 
 printed it, and on its account is charged with plagiar 
 ism, there will be no one in the world more entirely 
 
166 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 astounded than himself. Now from what I have said 
 it will be evident that the liability to accidents of this 
 character is in the direct ratio of the poetic sentiment 
 of the susceptibility to the poetic impressions ; and 
 in fact all literary history demonstrates that, for the 
 most frequent and palpable plagiarisms, we must 
 search the works of the most eminent poets. 
 
 HOW TO IMPROVE OUR DRAMA 
 
 [From The American Whig Rcineiv, August, 1845. 
 The greater part of Poe s article on The American 
 Drama is devoted to a detailed criticism of N. P. Wil 
 lis s Tortesa and Longfellow s Spanish Student. In 
 the July preceding he had written : "The writer of this 
 article is hiniself the son of an actress has invariably 
 made it his boast and no earl was ever prouder of his 
 earldom than he of the descent from a woman who, al 
 though well-born, hesitated not to consecrate to the 
 drama her brief career of genius and beauty." The 
 keynote of the following extract is struck by Poe in 
 his Marginalia: "We must neglect our models and 
 study our capabilities."] 
 
 A biographist of Berryer calls him "I homme qui, 
 dans sa description, demande la plus grande quantite 
 possible d antithese" but that ever recurring topic, 
 the decline of the drama, seems to have consumed, of 
 late, more of the material in question than would have 
 sufficed for a dozen prime ministers even admitting 
 them to be French. Every trick of thought and every 
 harlequinade of phrase has been put in operation for 
 the purpose "de nier ce qui est, et d expliquer ce qui 
 n est pas/ 
 
THE CRITIC 167 
 
 Ce qui n est pas: for the drama has not declined. 
 The facts and the philosophy of the case seem to be 
 these. The great opponent to Progress is Conser 
 vatism. In other words the great adversary of In 
 vention is Imitation : the propositions are in spirit 
 identical. Just as an art is imitative, it is stationary. 
 The most imitative arts are the most prone to repose 
 and the converse. Upon the utilitarian upon the 
 business arts, where necessity impels, Invention, Ne 
 cessity s well-understood offspring, is ever in attend 
 ance. And the less we see of the mother the less we 
 behold of the child. No one complains of the decline 
 of the art of Engineering. Here the Reason, which 
 never retrogrades, or reposes, is called into play. But 
 let us glance at Sculpture. We are not worse, here, 
 than the ancients, let pedantry say what it may (the 
 Venus of Canova is worth at any time two of that of 
 Cleomenes), but it is equally certain that we have 
 made, in general, no advances ; and Sculpture, prop 
 erly considered, is perhaps the most imitative of all 
 arts which have a right to the title of Art at all. Look 
 ing next at Painting, we find that we have to boast of 
 progress only in the ratio of the inferior imitativeness 
 of Painting when compared with Sculpture. As far 
 indeed as we have any means of judging, our improve 
 ment has been exceedingly little, and did we know any 
 thing of ancient Art in this department, we might be 
 astonished at discovering that we had advanced even 
 far less than we suppose. As regards Architecture, 
 whatever progress we have made, has been precisely in 
 those particulars which have no reference to imitation : 
 that is to say we have improved the utilitarian and 
 not the ornamental provinces of the art. Where Rea- 
 
i68 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 son predominated, we advanced; where mere Feeling 
 or Taste was the guide, we remained as we were. 
 
 Coming to the Drama, we shall see that in its 
 mechanism we have made progress, while in its spirit 
 uality we have done little or nothing for centuries cer 
 tainly and, perhaps, little or nothing for thousands 
 of years. And this is because what we term the spir 
 ituality of the drama is precisely its imitative portion 
 is exactly that portion which distinguishes it as one of 
 the principal of the imitative arts. 
 
 Sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the very 
 nature of their material, their spiritual material 
 imitators conservatists prone to repose in old Feel 
 ing and in antique Taste. For this reason and for 
 this reason only the arts of Sculpture, Painting, and 
 the Drama have not advanced or have advanced 
 feebly, and inversely in the ratio of their imitativeness. 
 
 But it by no means follows that either has declined. 
 All seem to have declined, because they have remained 
 stationary while the multitudinous other arts (of rea 
 son) have flitted so rapidly by them. In the same 
 manner the traveller by railroad can imagine that the 
 trees by the wayside are retrograding. The trees in 
 this case are absolutely stationary but the Drama has 
 not been altogether so, although its progress has been 
 so slight as not to interfere with, the general effect 
 that of seeming retrogradation or decline. 
 
 This seeming retrogradation, however, is to all 
 practical intents an absolute one. Whether the drama 
 has declined, or whether it has merely remained sta 
 tionary, is a point of no importance, so far as concerns 
 the public encouragement of the drama. It is unsup 
 ported, in either case, because it does not deserve 
 support. 
 
THE CRITIC 169 
 
 But if this stagnation, or deterioration, grows out 
 of the very idiosyncrasy of the drama itself, as one of 
 the principal of the imitative arts, how is it possible 
 that a remedy shall be applied since it is clearly im 
 possible to alter the nature of the art, and yet leave it 
 the art which it now is ? 
 
 We have already spoken of the improvements ef 
 fected, in Architecture, in all its utilitarian depart 
 ments, and in the Drama, at all the points of its 
 mechanism. "Wherever Reason predominates we ad 
 vance; where mere Feeling or Taste is the guide, we 
 remain as we are." We wish now to suggest that, by 
 the engrafting of Reason upon Feeling and Taste, we 
 shall be able, and thus alone shall be able, to force the 
 modern Drama into the production of any profitable 
 fruit. 
 
 At present, what is it we do ? We are content if, 
 with Feeling and Taste, a dramatist does as other dra 
 matists have done. The most successful of the more 
 immediately modern playwrights has been Sheridan 
 Knowles and to play Sheridan Knowles seems to be 
 the highest ambition of our writers for the stage. 
 Now the author of "The Hunchback," possesses what 
 we are weak enough to term the true "dramatic feel 
 ing," and this true dramatic feeling he has manifested 
 in the most preposterous series of imitations of the 
 Elizabethan drama, by which ever mankind were in 
 sulted and beguiled. Not only did he adhere to the 
 old plots, the old characters, the old stage convention 
 alities throughout ; but, he went even so far as to per 
 sist in the obsolete phraseologies of the Elizabethan 
 period and just in proportion to his obstinacy and 
 absurdity at all points, did we pretend to like him the 
 better, and pretend to consider him a great dramatist. 
 
170 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Pretend for every particle of it was pretense. 
 Never was enthusiasm more utterly false than that 
 which so many "respectable audiences" endeavored to 
 get up for these plays endeavored to get up, first, 
 because there was a general desire to see the drama 
 revive, and secondly, because we had been all along 
 entertaining the fancy that "the decline of the drama" 
 meant little, if anything, else than its deviation from 
 the Elizabethan routine and that, consequently, the 
 return to the Elizabethan routine was, and of neces 
 sity must be, the revival of the drama. 
 
 But if the principles we have been at some trouble 
 in explaining, are true and most profoundly do we 
 feel them to be so if the spirit of imitation is, in fact, 
 the real source of the drama s stagnation and if it is 
 so because of the tendency in all imitation to render 
 Reason subservient to Feeling and to Taste it is clear 
 that only by deliberate counteracting of the spirit, and 
 of the tendency of the spirit, we can hope to succeed 
 in the drama s revival. 
 
 The first thing necessary is to burn or bury the "old 
 models," and to forget, as quickly as possible, that ever 
 a play has been penned. The second thing is to con 
 sider de novo what are the capabilities of the drama 
 not merely what hitherto have been its conventional 
 purposes. The third and last point has reference to 
 the composition of a play (showing to the fullest ex 
 tent these capabilities), conceived and constructed 
 with Feeling and with Taste, but with Feeling and 
 Taste guided and controlled in every particular by the 
 details of Reason of Common Sense in a word, of 
 a Natural Art. 
 
 It is obvious, in the meantime, that towards the 
 
THE CRITIC 171 
 
 good end in view, much may be effected by discrim 
 inative criticism on what has already been done. The 
 field, thus stated, is of course, practically illimitable 
 and to Americans the American drama is the special 
 point of interest. We propose therefore, in a series of 
 papers, to take a somewhat deliberate survey of some 
 few of the most noticeable American plays. We shall 
 do this without reference either to the date of the com 
 position, or its adaptation for the closet or the stage. 
 We shall speak with absolute frankness both of merits 
 and defects our principal object being understood 
 not as that of mere commentary on the individual 
 play but on the drama in general, and on the Ameri 
 can drama in especial, of which each individual play 
 is a constituent part. 
 
 GERMAN CRITICISM 
 
 [Thiodolf, by Baron de la Motte Fouque, reviewed 
 in Graham s Magazine, December, 1846. Fouque s 
 Undine (1811) Poe considered almost faultless: "It 
 is a model of models in regard to the high artistical 
 talent which it evinces." His only objection was that, 
 though not an allegory, "it has too close an affinity to 
 that most indefensible species of writing." The fol 
 lowing review barely mentions Thiodolf but contains a 
 sort of summary of Poe s scattered comments on Ger 
 man literature and literary criticism. Of course both 
 works had been translated before Poe wrote about 
 them.] 
 
 This book could never have been popular out of 
 Germany. It is too simple too direct too obvious 
 too bald not sufficiently complex to be relished by 
 
172 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 any people who have thoroughly passed the first (or 
 impulsive) epoch of literary civilization. The Ger 
 mans have not yet passed this first epoch. It must be 
 remembered that during the whole of the middle ages 
 they lived in utter ignorance of the art of tvriting. 
 From so total a darkness, of so late a date, they could 
 not, as a nation, have as yet fully emerged into the sec 
 ond or critical epoch. Individual Germans have been 
 critical in the best sense but the masses are unleav 
 ened. Literary Germany thus presents the singular 
 spectacle of the impulsive spirit surrounded by the 
 critical, and, of course, in some measure influenced 
 thereby. England, for example, has advanced far, 
 and France much farther, into the critical epoch ; and 
 their effect on the German mind is seen in the wildly 
 anomalous condition of the German literature at large. 
 That this latter will be improved by age, however, 
 should never be maintained. As the impulsive spirit 
 subsides, and the critical uprises, there will appear the 
 polished insipidity of the later England, or that ulti 
 mate throe of taste which has found its best exemplifi 
 cation in Sue. At present the German literature re 
 sembles no other on the face of the earth for it is the 
 result of certain conditions which, before this individ 
 ual instance of their fulfillment, have never been ful 
 filled. And this anomalous state to which I refer is 
 the source of our anomalous criticism upon what that 
 state produces is the source of the grossly conflict 
 ing opinions about German letters. For my own part, 
 I admit the German vigor, the German directness, 
 boldness, imagination, and some other qualities of im 
 pulse, just as I am willing to admit and admire these 
 qualities in the first (or impulsive) epochs of British 
 
THE CRITIC 173 
 
 and French letters. At the German criticism, how 
 ever, I cannot refrain from laughing all the more 
 heartily, all the more seriously I hear it praised. Not 
 that, in detail, it affects me as an absurdity but in the 
 adaptation of its details. It abounds in brilliant bub 
 bles of suggestion, but these rise and sink and jostle 
 each other, until the whole vortex of thought in which 
 they originate is one indistinguishable chaos of froth. 
 The German criticism is unsettled, and can only be 
 settled by time. At present it suggests without dem 
 onstrating, or convincing, or effecting any definite 
 purpose under the sun. We read it, rub our fore 
 heads, and ask "What then?" I am not ashamed to 
 say that I prefer even Voltaire to Goethe, and hold 
 Macaulay to possess more of the true critical spirit 
 than Augustus William and Frederick Schlegel 
 combined. 
 
 THE TECHNIQUE OF THE RAVEN 
 
 [Poe s Philosophy of Composition, first published 
 in Graham s Magazine, April, 1846, and here repro 
 duced entire, has been called a hoax by most foreign 
 critics. Even Baudelaire thinks that "un peu de char- 
 latanerie" is to be detected in it. On the contrary, it is 
 nothing more than a summarized application of Poe s 
 most characteristic principles of criticism. It does not 
 deal with creation but with formal adaptation. Every 
 point made may be found, explicit or implicit, in what 
 Poe had already said about poetry in general or poems 
 in particular. The reason that it gives offense to 
 many Poe admirers is because its import is misunder 
 stood. The article does not attempt to define genius, 
 
174 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 far less to reduce genius to the level of the mechanical 
 and mathematical. Its theme is neither genius nor the 
 pathway by which genius arrives at its conceptions* 
 Its sole and central question is, Given genius, given 
 the original inspiration, given the pre-determined con 
 ception, how does the poet go about embodying this 
 conception in word, stanza, and melody? How does 
 craftsmanship come to the aid of vision ? Composition 
 is the theme, not creation.] 
 
 Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, 
 alluding to an examination I once made of the mechan 
 ism of "Barnaby Rudge," says "By the way, are you 
 aware that Godwin wrote his Caleb Williams back 
 wards? He first involved his hero in a web of dif 
 ficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for 
 the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting 
 for what had been done." 
 
 I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure 
 on the part of Godwin and indeed what he himself 
 acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. 
 Dickens idea but the author of "Caleb Williams" 
 was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage 
 derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. 
 Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the 
 name, must be elaborated to its denouement before any 
 thing be attempted with the pen. It is only with the 
 denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot 
 its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by 
 making the incidents, and especially the tone at all 
 points, tend to the development of the intention. 
 
 There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode 
 of constructing a story. Either history affords a 
 
THE CRITIC 175 
 
 thesis or one is suggested by an incident of the day 
 or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the 
 combination of striking events to form merely the 
 basis of his narrative designing, generally, to fill in 
 with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, what 
 ever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to 
 page, render themselves apparent. 
 
 I prefer commencing with the consideration of an 
 effect. Keeping originality always in view for he is 
 false to himself who ventures to dispense with so 
 obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest 
 I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumer 
 able effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the 
 intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, 
 what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" 
 Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid ef 
 fect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by 
 incident or tone whether by ordinary incidents and 
 peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both 
 of incident and tone afterward looking about me (or 
 rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, 
 as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect. 
 
 I have often thought how interesting a magazine 
 paper might be written by any author who would 
 that is to say, who could detail, step by step, the pro 
 cesses by which any one of his compositions attained 
 its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper 
 has never been given to the world, I am much at a 
 loss to say but, perhaps, the autorial vanity has had 
 more to do with the omission than any one other cause. 
 Most writers poets in especial prefer having it un 
 derstood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy 
 an ecstatic intuition and would positively shudder 
 
176 EDGAR ALLAN EOE 
 
 at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at 
 the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought at 
 the true purposes seized only at the last moment at 
 the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at 
 the maturity of full view at the fully matured fancies 
 discarded in despair as unmanageable at the cautious 
 selections and rejections at the painful erasures and 
 interpolations in a word, at the wheels and pinions 
 the tackle for scene-shifting the step-ladders and 
 demon-traps the cock s feathers, the red paint and the 
 black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the 
 hundred, constitute the properties of the literary 
 histrlo. 
 
 I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by 
 no means common, in which an author is at all in con 
 dition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions 
 have been attained. In general, suggestions, having 
 arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar 
 manner. 
 
 For my own part, I have neither sympathy with 
 the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the least 
 difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of 
 any of my compositions ; and, since the interest of an 
 analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have considered 
 a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or 
 fancied interest in the thing analyzed, it will not be 
 regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show 
 the modus operandi by which some one of my own 
 works was put together. I select "The Raven," as the 
 most generally known. It is my design to render it 
 manifest that no one point in its composition is refer 
 able either to accident or intuition that the work pro- 
 
THE CRITIC 177 
 
 ceeded, step by step, to its completion with the preci 
 sion and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem. 
 
 Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, 
 the circumstance or say the necessity which, in the 
 first place, gave rjse to the intention of composing a 
 poem that should suit at once the popular and the 
 critical taste. 
 
 We commence, then, with this intention. 
 
 The initial consideration was that of extent. If any 
 literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we 
 must be content to dispense with the immensely impor 
 tant effect derivable from unity of impression for, if 
 two sittings be required, the affairs of the world in 
 terfere, and everything like totality is at once de 
 stroyed. But since, ceteris paribns, no poet can afford 
 to dispense with anything that may advance his design, 
 it but remains to be seen whether there is, in extent, 
 any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity 
 which attends it. Here I say no, at once. What we 
 term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of 
 brief ones that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It 
 is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such, only 
 inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul ; 
 and all intense excitements are, through a psychal ne 
 cessity, brief. For this reason, at least one half of 
 the "Paradise Lost" is essentially prose a succession 
 of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with 
 corresponding depressions the whole being deprived, 
 through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly 
 important artistic element, totality, or unity, of effect. 
 
 It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct 
 limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art 
 the limit of a single sitting and that, although in cer- 
 
178 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 tain classes of prose composition, such as "Robinson 
 Crusoe," (demanding no unity,) this limit may be 
 advantageously overpassed, it can never properly be 
 overpassed in a poem. Within this limit, the extent of 
 a poem may be made to bear mathematical relation to 
 its merit in other words, to the excitement or eleva 
 tion again in other words, to the degree of the true 
 poetical effect which it is capable of inducing ; for it is 
 clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the 
 intensity of the intended effect: this, with one 
 proviso that a certain degree of duration is abso 
 lutely requisite for the production of any effect at all. 
 
 Holding in view these considerations, as well as 
 that degree of excitement which I deemed not above 
 the popular, while not below the critical, taste, I 
 reached at once what I conceived the proper length for 
 my intended poem a length of about one hundred 
 lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight. 
 
 My next thought concerned the choice of an im 
 pression, or effect, to be conveyed : and here I may as 
 well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept 
 steadily in view the design of rendering the work 
 universally appreciable. I should be carried too far 
 cut of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate 
 a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and 
 which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest 
 need of demonstration the point, I mean, that Beauty 
 is the sole legitimate province of the poem. A few 
 words, however, in elucidation of my real meaningj 
 v/hich some of my friends have evinced a disposition 
 to misrepresent. That pleasure which is at once the 
 most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, 
 J believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. 
 
THE CRITIC 179 
 
 When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, pre 
 cisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect 
 they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure eleva 
 tion of soul not- of intellect, or of heart upon which 
 I have commented, and which is experienced in con 
 sequence of contemplating "the beautiful." Now I 
 designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely 
 because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should 
 be made to spring from direct causes that objects 
 should be attained through means best adapted for 
 their attainment no one as yet having been weak 
 enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to 
 is most readily attained in the poem. Now the ob 
 ject, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the 
 object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, 
 although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far 
 more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, de 
 mands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly 
 passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely 
 antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the 
 excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. It 
 by no means follows from anything here said, that 
 passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even 
 profitably introduced, into a poem for they may 
 serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do 
 discords in music, by contrast but the true artist will 
 always contrive, first, to tone them into proper sub 
 servience to the predominant aim, and, secondly, to 
 enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which 
 is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem. 
 
 Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next 
 question referred to the tone of its highest manifesta 
 tion and all experience has shown that this tone is 
 
i8o EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its su 
 preme development, invariably excites the sensitive 
 soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate 
 of all the poetical tones. 
 
 The length, the province, and the tone, being thus 
 determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with 
 the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which 
 might serve me as a key-note in the construction of 
 the poem some pivot upon which the whole structure 
 might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual 
 artistic effects or more properly points, in the theatri 
 cal sense I did not fail to perceive immediately that 
 no one had been so universally employed as that of 
 the refrain. The universality of its employment suf 
 ficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared 
 me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I con 
 sidered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility 
 of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive 
 condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, 
 not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its 
 impression upon the force of monotone both in 
 sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely 
 from the sense of identity of repetition. I resolved 
 to diversify, and so vastly heighten, the effect, by ad 
 hering, in general, to the monotone of sound, while I 
 continually varied that of thought : that is to say, I de 
 termined to produce continuously novel effects, by the 
 variation of the application of the refrain the refrain 
 itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried. 
 
 These points being settled, I next bethought me 
 of the nature of my refrain. Since its application was 
 to be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the refrain 
 itself must be brief, for there would have been an in- 
 
THE CRITIC 181 
 
 surmountable difficulty in frequent variations of appli 
 cation in any sentence of length. In proportion to the 
 brevity of the sentence, would, of course, be the facil 
 ity of the variation. This led me at once to a single 
 word as the best refrain. 
 
 The question now arose as to the character of the 
 word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the 
 division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a 
 corollary : the refrain forming the close to each stanza. 
 That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and 
 susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt : 
 and these considerations inevitably led me to the long 
 o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as 
 the most producible consonant. 
 
 The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it 
 became necessary to select a word embodying this 
 sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible 
 keeping with that melancholy which I had predeter 
 mined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it 
 would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the 
 word "Nevermore." In fact, it was the very first 
 which presented itself. 
 
 The next desideratum was a pretext for the contin 
 uous use of the one word "nevermore." In observing 
 the difficulty which I at once found in inventing a 
 sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repeti 
 tion, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty arose 
 solely from the pre-assumption that the word was to 
 be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human 
 being I did not fail to perceive, in short, that the dif 
 ficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with 
 the exercise of reason on the part of the creature re 
 peating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the 
 
182 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 idea of a wow-reasoning creature capable of speech ; 
 and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, sug 
 gested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, 
 as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in 
 keeping with the intended tone. 
 
 I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven 
 the bird of ill omen monotonously repeating the 
 one word, "Nevermore," at the conclusion of each 
 stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length 
 about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of 
 the object siipremeness, or perfection, at all points, I 
 asked myself "Of all melancholy topics, what, ac 
 cording to the universal understanding of mankind, is 
 the most melancholy ?" Death was the obvious reply. 
 "And when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics 
 most poetical?" From what I have already explained 
 at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious 
 "When it most closely allies itself to Beauty : the death, 
 then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most 
 poetical topic in the world and equally is it beyond 
 doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those 
 of a bereaved lover." 
 
 I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover la 
 menting his deceased mistress and a Raven continu 
 ously repeating the word "Nevermore" I had to com 
 bine these, bearing in mind my design of varying, at 
 every turn, the application of the word repeated ; but 
 the only intelligible mode of such combination is that 
 of imagining the Raven employing the word in answer 
 to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I 
 saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on 
 which I had been depending that is to say, the effect 
 of the variation of application. I saw that I could 
 
THE CRITIC 183 
 
 make the first query propounded by the lover the 
 first query to which the Raven should reply "Never 
 more" that I could make this first query a common 
 place one the second less so the third still less, and 
 so on until at length the lover, startled from his 
 original nonchalance by the melancholy character of 
 the word itself by its frequent repetition and by a 
 consideration of the ominous reputation of the fowl 
 that uttered it is at length excited to superstition, 
 and wildly propounds queries of a far different char 
 acter queries whose solution he has passionately at 
 heart propounds them half in superstition and half 
 in that species of despair which delights in self-torture 
 propounds them not altogether because he believes 
 in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird 
 (which, reason assures him, is merely repeating a les 
 son learned by rote) but because he experiences a 
 phrenzied pleasure in so modeling his questions as to 
 receive from the expected "Nevermore" the most deli 
 cious because the most intolerable of sorrow. Per 
 ceiving the opportunity thus afforded me or, more 
 strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of the 
 construction I first established in mind the climax ; 
 or concluding query that to which "Nevermore 7 
 should be in the last place an answer that in re 
 ply to which this word "Nevermore" should involve 
 the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and 
 despair. 
 
 Here then the poem may be said to have its be 
 ginning at the end, where all works of art should 
 begin for it was here, at this point of my preconsid- 
 erations, that I first put pen to paper in the composi 
 tion of the stanza : 
 
184 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil ! prophet still if bird or devil ! 
 By that heaven that bends above us by that God we both 
 
 adore, 
 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore." 
 
 Quoth the raven "Nevermore." 
 
 I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by 
 establishing the climax, I might the better vary and 
 graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the 
 preceding queries of the lover and, secondly, that I 
 might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the 
 length and general arrangement of the stanza as well 
 as graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that 
 none of them might surpass this in rhythmical effect. 
 Had I been able, in the subsequent composition, to 
 construct more vigorous stanzas, I should, without 
 scruple, have purposely enfeebled them, so as not to 
 interfere with the climacteric effect. 
 
 And here I may as well say a few words of the 
 versification. My first object (as usual) was 
 originality. The extent to which this has been neg 
 lected, in versification, is one of the most unaccount 
 able things in the world. Admitting that there is little 
 possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear 
 that the possible varieties of metre and stanza are 
 absolutely infinite and yet, for centuries, no man, in 
 verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, 
 an original thing. The fact is, originality (unless in 
 minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, 
 as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, 
 to be found, it must be elaborately sought, and al- 
 
THE CRITIC 185 
 
 though a positive merit of the highest class, demands 
 in its attainment less of invention than negation. 
 
 Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the 
 rhythm or metre of the "Raven." The former is 
 trochaic the latter is octameter acatalectic, alternat 
 ing with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain 
 of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter 
 catalectic. Less pedantically the feet employed 
 throughout (trochees) consist of a long syllable fol 
 lowed by a short: the first line of the stanza consists 
 of eight of these feet the second of seven and a half 
 (in effect two-thirds) the third of eight the fourth 
 of seven and a half the fifth the same the sixth 
 three and a half. Now, each of these lines, taken in 
 dividually, has been employed before, and what 
 originality the "Raven" has, is in their combination 
 into stanza; nothing even remotely approaching this 
 combination has ever been attempted. The effect of 
 this originality of combination is aided by other un 
 usual, and some altogether novel effects, arising from 
 an extension of the application of the principles of 
 rhyme and alliteration. 
 
 The next point to be considered was the mode of 
 bringing together the lover and the Raven and the 
 first branch of this consideration was the locale. For 
 this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a 
 forest, or the fields but it has always appeared to 
 me that a close circumscription of space is absolutely 
 necessary to the effect of insulated incident: it has 
 the force of a frame to a picture. It has an indisput 
 able moral power in keeping concentrated the atten 
 tion, and, of course, must not be confounded with 
 mere unity of place. 
 
1 86 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 I determined, then, to place the lover in his cham 
 ber in a chamber rendered sacred to him by 
 memories of her who had frequented it. The room is 
 represented as richly furnished this in mere pursu 
 ance of the ideas I have already explained on the sub 
 ject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis. 
 
 The locale being thus determined, I had now to 
 introduce the bird and the thought of introducing 
 him through the window, was inevitable. The idea of 
 making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that 
 the flapping of the wings of the bird against the 
 shutter, is a "tapping" at the door, originated in a 
 wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader s curiosity, 
 and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising 
 from the lover s throwing open the door, finding all 
 dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy that it was 
 the spirit of his mistress that knocked. 
 
 I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for 
 the Raven s seeking admission, and secondly, for the 
 effect of contrast with the (physical) serenity within 
 the chamber. 
 
 I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also 
 for the effect of contrast between the marble and the 
 plumage it being understood that the bust was ab 
 solutely suggested by the bird the bust of Pallas 
 being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the schol 
 arship of the lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness 
 of the word, Pallas, itself. 
 
 About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed 
 myself of the force of contrast, with a view of deepen 
 ing the ultimate impression. For example, an air of 
 the fantastic approaching as nearly to the ludicrous 
 
THE CRITIC 187 
 
 as was admissible is given to the Raven s entrance. 
 He comes in "with many a flirt and flutter." 
 
 Not the least obeisance made he not a moment stopped or 
 
 stayed he, 
 But "with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber 
 
 door. 
 
 In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more 
 obviously carried out: 
 
 Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
 "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art 
 
 sure no craven, 
 Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly 
 
 shore 
 Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night s Plutonian 
 
 shore !" 
 
 Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." 
 
 Much I marvelled this ungainly fozvl to hear discourse so 
 
 plainly, 
 
 Though its answer little meaning little relevancy bore; 
 For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 
 Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber 
 
 door 
 Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber 
 
 door, 
 
 With such name as "Nevermore." 
 
 The effect of the denouement being thus provided 
 for, I immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the 
 most profound seriousness : this tone commencing in 
 the stanza directly following the one last quoted, with 
 the line, 
 
 But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, 
 etc. 
 
 From this epoch the lover no longer jests no 
 longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the 
 Raven s demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim, 
 
1 88 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," 
 and feels the "fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom s 
 core." This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the 
 lover s part, is intended to induce a similar one on the 
 part of the reader to bring the mind into a proper 
 frame for the denouement which is now brought about 
 as rapidly and as directly as possible. 
 
 With the denouement proper with the Raven s re 
 ply, "Nevermore," to the lover s final demand if he 
 shall meet his mistress in another world the poem, in 
 its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may be 
 said to have its completion. So far, everything is 
 within the limits of the accountable of the real. A 
 raven, having learned by rote the single word "Never 
 more," and having escaped from the custody of its 
 owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of 
 a storm, to seek admission at a window from which a 
 light still gleams the chamber-window of a student, 
 occupied half in poring over a volume, half in dream 
 ing of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement be 
 ing thrown open at the fluttering of the bird s wings, 
 the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out 
 of the immediate reach of the student, who, amused by 
 the incident and the oddity of the visitor s demeanor, 
 demands of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, 
 its name. The raven addressed, answers with its cus 
 tomary word, "Nevermore" a word which finds im 
 mediate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, 
 who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts sug 
 gested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl s 
 repetition of "Nevermore." The student now guesses 
 the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before 
 explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in 
 
THE CRITIC 189 
 
 part by superstition, to propound such queries to the 
 bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the lux 
 ury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer "Never 
 more." With the indulgence, to the utmost extreme, 
 of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have 
 termed its first or obvious phase, has a natural ter 
 mination, and so far there has been no overstepping 
 of the limits of the real. 
 
 But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or 
 with however vivid an array of incident, there is al 
 ways a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels the 
 artistical eye. Two things are invariably required 
 first, some amount of complexity, or more properly, 
 adaptation ; and, secondly, some amount of sugges- 
 tiveness some undercurrent, however indefinite, of 
 meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts 
 to a work of art so much of that richness (to borrow 
 from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond 
 of confounding with the ideal. It is the excess of the 
 suggested meaning it is the rendering this the upper 
 instead of the undercurrent of the theme which turns 
 into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so- 
 called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists. 
 
 Holding these opinions, I added the two conclud 
 ing stanzas of the poem their suggestiveness being 
 thus made to pervade all the narrative which has pre 
 ceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is ren 
 dered first apparent in the lines 
 
 "Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from 
 off my door !" 
 
 Quoth the Raven "Nevermore !" 
 
 It will be observed that the words, "from out my 
 heart," involve the first metaphorical expression in 
 
190 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore," dis 
 pose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been 
 previously narrated. The reader begins now to re 
 gard the Raven as emblematical but it is not until 
 the very last line of the very last stanza, that the 
 intention of making him emblematical of Mournful 
 and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted dis 
 tinctly to be seen : 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon s that is 
 
 dreaming, 
 And the lamplight o er him streaming throws his shadow on 
 
 the floor; 
 And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the 
 
 floor 
 
 Shall be lifted nevermore. 
 
 A LONG POEM A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS 
 
 [From The Poetic Principle, first published in Sar- 
 tain s Union Magazine, October, 1850, but delivered 
 in public addresses as early as 1848 and embodied in 
 still earlier literary criticisms. Bryant, by the way, 
 adopted or at least held and practised Poe s doctrine 
 of the short poem. "It seems to me," he says in the 
 Introduction to his Library of Poetry and Song 
 (1871), "that it is only poems of a moderate length, or 
 else portions of the greater work to which I refer, that 
 produce the effect upon the mind and heart which 
 make the charm of this kind of writing." Of Bryant s 
 one hundred and sixty poems the average length is 
 seventy-five lines.] 
 
 In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no de 
 sign to be either thorough, or profound. While dis 
 cussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what 
 
THE CRITIC 191 
 
 we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite for 
 consideration, some few of those minor English or 
 American poems which best suit my own taste, or 
 which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite 
 impression. By "minor poems" I mean, of course, 
 poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, 
 permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat 
 peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrong 
 fully, has always had its influence in my own critical 
 estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does 
 not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," 
 is simply a flat contradiction in terms. 
 
 I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its 
 title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. 
 The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevatirig 
 excitement. But all excitements are, through a psy- 
 chal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement 
 which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, can 
 not be sustained throughout a composition of any 
 great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the 
 very utmost, it flags fails a revulsion ensues and 
 then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such. 
 
 There are, no doubt, many who have found diffi 
 culty in reconciling the critical dictum that the "Para 
 dise Lost" is to be devoutly admired throughout, with 
 the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during 
 perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical 
 dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to 
 be regarded as poetical, only when, losing sight of that 
 vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it 
 merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its 
 Unity its totality of effect or impression we read it 
 (as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result 
 
193 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 is but a constant alternation of excitement and depres 
 sion. After a passage of what we feel to be true 
 poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude 
 which no critical pre-judgment can force us to admire ; 
 but if, upon completing the work, we read it again, 
 omitting the first book that is to say, commencing 
 with the second we shall be surprised at now finding 
 that admirable which we before condemned that 
 damnable which we had previously so much admired. 
 It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or 
 absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a 
 nullity : and this is precisely the fact. 
 
 In regard to the "Iliad," we have, if not positive 
 proof, at least very good reason for believing it in 
 tended as a series of lyrics: but, granting the epic 
 intention, I can say only that the work is based in an 
 imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is, of the sup 
 posititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and 
 blind imitation. But the day of these artistic anom 
 alies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem 
 were popular in reality, which I doubt, it is at least 
 clear that no very long poem will ever be popular 
 again. 
 
 That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris part- 
 bus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when 
 we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently absurd yet 
 we are indebted for it to the Quarterly Reviews. 
 Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly 
 considered there can be nothing in mere bulk, so far 
 as a volume is concerned, which has so continuously 
 elicited admiration from these saturnine pamphlets! 
 A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentijnent of phy 
 sical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us 
 
THE CRITIC 193 
 
 with a sense of the sublime but no inan is impressed 
 after this fashion by the material grandeur of even 
 "The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies have not in 
 structed us to be so impressed by it. As yet, they have 
 not insisted on our estimating Lamartine by the cubic 
 foot, or Pollok by the pound but what else are we to 
 infer from their continual prating about "sustained ef 
 fort?" If, by "sustained effort," any little gentleman 
 has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him 
 for the effort if this indeed be a thing commendable 
 but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort s 
 account. It is to be hoped that common sense, in the 
 time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of art, 
 rather by the impression it makes, by the effect it pro 
 duces, than by the time it took to impress the effect, 
 or by the amount of "sustained effort" which had been 
 found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact 
 is, that perseverance is one thing, and genius quite 
 another; nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom 
 confound them, By and by, this proposition, with 
 many which I have been just urging, will be received 
 as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally 
 condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially 
 damaged as truths. 
 
 On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may bei 
 improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into 
 mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now 
 and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces 
 a profound or enduring effect. There must be the 
 steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. 
 De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pun 
 gent and spirit-stirring ; but, in general, they have been 
 too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the 
 
194 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 public attention; and thus, as so many feathers of 
 fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down 
 the wind. 
 
 THE HERESY OF THE DIDACTIC 
 
 [From The Poetic Principle. See the preceding ex 
 tract. It must be understood that Poe uses "truth" in 
 its moral or prudential or purely factual sense. No 
 poem deserves the name that is not founded and 
 arched in truth. But what kind of truth? Poe an- 
 s\vers in Eureka: "The sense of the symmetrical is an 
 instinct which may be depended upon with an almost 
 blindfold reliance. It is the poetical essence of the 
 Universe of the Universe which, in the supremeness 
 of its symmetry, is but the most sublime of poems. 
 Now symmetry and consistency are convertible terms : 
 thus Poetry and Truth are one." See also the first 
 paragraph of the third extract from The Poetic Prin 
 ciple, page 200.] 
 
 While the epic mania while the idea that, to merit 
 in poetry, prolixity is indispensable has, for some 
 years past, been gradually dying out of the public 
 mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity we find it 
 succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tol 
 erated, but one which, in the brief period it has already 
 endured, may be said to have accomplished more in 
 the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its 
 other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of 
 The Didactic. It has been assumed, tacitly and avow 
 edly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of 
 all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should in 
 culcate a moral ; and by this moral is the poetical merit 
 
THE CRITIC 195 
 
 of the work to be adjudged. We Americans, espec 
 ially, have patronized this happy idea ; and we Boston- 
 ians, very especially, have developed it in full. We 
 have taken it into our heads that to write a poem sim 
 ply for the poem s sake, and to acknowledge such to 
 have been our design, would be to confess ourselves 
 radically wanting in the true Poetic dignity and force : 
 but the simple fact is, that, would we but permit our 
 selves to look into our own souls, we should immedi 
 ately there discover that under the sun there neither 
 exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly digni 
 fied more supremely noble than this very poem 
 this poem per sc this poem w r hich is a poem and noth 
 ing more this poem written solely for the poem s 
 sake. 
 
 With as deep a reverence for the True as ever in 
 spired the bosom of man, I would, nevertheless, limit, 
 in some measure, its modes of inculcation. I would 
 limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by 
 dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She 
 has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is 
 so indispensable in Song, is precisely all that with 
 which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but mak 
 ing her a flaunting paradox, to wreathe her in gems 
 and flowers. In enforcing a truth, we need severity 
 rather than efflorescence of language. We must be 
 simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unim- 
 passioned. In a word, we must be in that mood 
 which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse o 
 the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not 
 perceive the radical and chasmal differences between 
 the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He 
 must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite 
 
196 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to 
 reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and 
 Truth. 
 
 Dividing the world of mind into its three most 
 immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure 
 Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place Taste 
 in the middle, because it is just this position, which, in 
 the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate relations with 
 either extreme ; but from the Moral Sense is separated 
 by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not hesitated 
 to place some of its operations among the virtues them 
 selves. Nevertheless, we find the offices of the trio 
 marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the In 
 tellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us 
 of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of 
 Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the ob 
 ligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents 
 herself with displaying the charms: waging war 
 upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity her 
 disproportion her animosity to the fitting, to the ap 
 propriate, to the harmonious in a word, to Beauty. 
 
 An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, 
 is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is 
 which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, 
 and sounds, and odors, and sentiments amid which he 
 exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or 
 the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral 
 or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and 
 colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source 
 of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. 
 He who shall simply sing, with however glowing en 
 thusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, 
 of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and 
 
THE CRITIC 197 
 
 sentiments, which greet him in common with all man 
 kind he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. 
 There is still a something in the distance which he has 
 been unable to attain. We have still a thirst un 
 quenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the 
 crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immor 
 tality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an in 
 dication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of 
 the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of 
 the Beauty before us but a wild effort to reach the 
 Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic pre-science of 
 the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multi 
 form combinations among the things and thoughts of 
 Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very 
 elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. And 
 thus when by Poetry or when by Music, the most 
 entrancing of the Poetic moods we find ourselves 
 melted into tears we weep then not as the Abbate 
 Gravina supposes through excess of pleasure, but 
 through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our 
 inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once 
 and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of 
 which through the poem, or through the music, we at 
 tain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. 
 
 The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness 
 this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly consti 
 tuted has given to the world all that which it (the 
 world) has ever been enabled at once to understand 
 and to feel as poetic. 
 
 The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself 
 in various modes in Painting, in Sculpture, in Archi 
 tecture, in the Dance very especially in Music and 
 very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the compo- 
 
198 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 sition of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, 
 however, has regard only to its manifestation in 
 words. And here let me speak briefly on the topic of 
 rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that 
 Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and 
 rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be 
 wisely rejected is so vitally important an adjunct, 
 that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will 
 not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It 
 is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains 
 the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic 
 Sentiment, it struggles the creation of supernal 
 Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end 
 is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made 
 to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly 
 harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfa 
 miliar to the angels. And thus there can be little 
 doubt that in the union, of Poetry with Music in its 
 popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the 
 Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesing 
 ers had advantages which we do not possess and 
 Thomas Moore, singing his own songs, was, in the 
 most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems. 
 
 To recapitulate, then: I would define, in brief, 
 the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of 
 Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect 
 or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. 
 Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either 
 with Duty or with Truth. 
 
 A few words, however, in explanation. That 
 pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most ele 
 vating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, 
 from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the con- 
 
THE CRITIC 199 
 
 templation of Beauty we alone find it possible to at 
 tain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the 
 soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and 
 which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is 
 the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which 
 is the excitement of the heart. 1 make Beauty, there 
 fore using the word as inclusive of the sublime I 
 make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because 
 it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made 
 to spring as directly as possible from their causes : 
 no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that 
 the peculiar elevation in question is at least most 
 readily attainable in the poem. It by no means fol 
 lows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the 
 precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may 
 not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; 
 for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, 
 the general purposes of the work : but the true artist 
 will always contrive to tone them down in proper sub 
 jection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the 
 real essence of the poem. 
 
 POETICAL THEMES 
 
 [From The Poetic Principle. See the two preceding 
 extracts. Note in the last paragraph how Poe analyzes 
 beauty into the five-fold appeal of sight, sound, odor, 
 character, and woman. The two paragraphs form a 
 model of effective conclusion. Both are recapitula 
 tory; but the first is abstract the second concrete. 
 The second, moreover, not only recapitulates and ex 
 pands, but enforces the main thesis by an appeal that 
 is itself a culminating example of the beauty and 
 psychic elevation with which the essay deals.] 
 
200 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect 
 manner, I have endeavored to convey to you my con 
 ception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my pur 
 pose to suggest that, while this Principle itself is, 
 strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Super 
 nal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is 
 always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul 
 quite independent of that passion which is the intox 
 ication of the Heart or of that Truth which is the 
 satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, 
 alas ! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate 
 the Soul. Love, on the contrary Love the true, the 
 divine Eros the Uranian, as distinguished from the 
 Dionsean Venus is unquestionably the purest and 
 truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth 
 if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth, we 
 are led to perceive a harmony where none was appar 
 ent before, we experience, at once, the true poetical 
 effect but this effect is referable to the harmony 
 alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which 
 merely served to render the harmony manifest. 
 
 We shall reach, however, more immediately a dis 
 tinct conception of what the true Poetry is, by mere 
 reference to a few of the simple elements which induce 
 in the Poet himself the true poetical effect. He rec 
 ognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in the 
 bright orbs that shine in Heaven in the volutes of 
 the flower in the clustering of low shrubberies in 
 the waving of the grain-fields in the slanting of tall, 
 Eastern trees in the blue distance of mountains in 
 the grouping of clouds in the twinkling of half- 
 hidden brooks in the gleaming of silver rivers in 
 the repose of sequestered lakes in the star-mirroring 
 
THE CRITIC 201 
 
 depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of 
 birds in the harp of sEolus in the sighing of the 
 night-wind in the repining voice of the forest in 
 the surf that complains to the shore in the fresh 
 breath of the woods in the scent of the violet in the 
 voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth in the suggestive 
 odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, 
 undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and 
 unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts in 
 all unworldly motives in all holy impulses in all 
 chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He 
 feels it in the beauty of woman in the grace of her 
 step in the lustre of her eye in the melody of her 
 voice in her soft laughter in her sigh in the har 
 mony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels 
 it in her winning endearments in her burning en 
 thusiasms in her gentle charities in her meek and 
 devotional endurances but above all ah, far above 
 all he kneels to it he worships it in the faith, in the 
 purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine ma 
 jesty of her love. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE POET 
 
 IN Poe s Philosophy of Composition he barely 
 mentions two details of technique that are as central 
 in his art as, any two that he discusses. You remem 
 ber that the lover in The Raven first hears a rapping, 
 that he thinks it is at the door, that he throws open 
 the door, that he then thinks the rapping is at his 
 window, and that only in the seventh stanza is the 
 mystery solved and the Raven admitted. This delay, 
 says Poe, "originated in a wish to increase, by pro 
 longing, the reader s curiosity." He might have added 
 that in every story that he had written the same 
 psychology is in evidence. A mystery is about to be 
 cleared up, a discovery is about to be made, a crime 
 is about to be committed, but the final happening is 
 preceded by a skilfully laid series of approximations. 
 Not only does Poe thus "increase, by prolonging, the 
 reader s curiosity ;" he so intensifies the reader s sus 
 pense that the ultimate happening is not only a satis 
 faction to the intellect but a balm to the feelings. In 
 A Descent Into the Maelstrom Poe says: "We 
 careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying 
 rather than floating, getting gradually more and more 
 into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and 
 nearer to its horrible inner edge." Poe is the artist of 
 the proximate on its way to the ultimate. 
 
 202 
 
THE POET 203 
 
 He is also and equally the artist of repetition in 
 the service of melody and rhythm, but the subject is 
 almost ignored in The Philosophy of Composition ex 
 cept in the brief references made to the refrain. In 
 the selection that we have called Repetition An Aid to 
 Quaintness Poe at least makes it clear that his own 
 employment of repetition must have been conscious 
 and studied. As early as 1827 he published a Song 
 which begins, 
 
 I saw thee on thy bridal day, 
 When a burning blush came o er thee, 
 
 Though happiness around thee lay, 
 The world all love before thee, 
 
 and ends, 
 
 Who saw thee on that bridal day, 
 
 When that deep blush would come o er thee, 
 Though happiness around thee lay, 
 
 The world all love before thee. 
 
 But Poe s distinctive employment of repetition, the 
 use of it which he has made peculiarly his own, is 
 exemplified neither in the refrain nor in the recurrence 
 of an initial stanza in the terminal stanza. There are 
 few lyric poets of any time who have not freely em 
 ployed both of these devices. Nor does Poe s insist 
 ence on "quaintness" make his own practice any the 
 clearer. No one has ever found quaintness a marked 
 characteristic of Poe s poetry, though repetition is 
 plainly the chief characteristic of the form of his 
 verse. I can detect no quaintness in these wonderful 
 lines : 
 
 To the glory that was Greece, 
 
 And the grandeur that was Rome, 
 
 or in the magic of this stanza : 
 
204 EDGAR ALLAN TOE 
 
 And all my days are trances, 
 
 And all my nightly dreams 
 Are where thy grey eye glances, 
 
 And where thy footstep gleams^ 
 In what ethereal dances, 
 
 By what eternal streams. 
 
 I find instead a parallelism of structure which is a 
 kind of repetition, a kind that Poe summoned to his 
 service whenever harmony demanded it. 
 
 But repetition of structural units is not the distinc 
 tive note of Poe s verse. Structural repetition is a 
 form of balanced and ordered utterance that is as old 
 as song itself. The ultimate Poe differential is seen 
 not in the repetition of clausal or phrasal patterns but 
 In the repetition of the same or nearly the same 
 thought in the same or nearly the same words. These 
 lines are illustrations, but there is no quaintness in 
 them: 
 
 For no ripples curl, alas ! 
 
 Along that wilderness of glass 
 
 No swellings tell that winds may be 
 
 Upon some far-off happier sea 
 
 No heavings hint that winds have been 
 
 On seas less hideously serene. 
 
 Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-y 
 Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride. 
 
 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 
 " Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber 
 door 
 
 Only this and nothing more." 
 
 The skies they were ashen and sober; 
 The leaves they were crisped and sere 
 The leaves they were withering and sere. 
 
 It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
 
 In the misty mid region of Weir 
 It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
 
 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
THE POET 205 
 
 Whatever the effect aimed at, the effect actually 
 produced is that of a subtler melody, a richer har 
 mony, a more centralized rhythm. Repetition in Poe s 
 hands is not a means of emphasizing thought ; it is a 
 means rather of lulling thought asleep to music. 
 Crooning takes the place of creating. The thought as 
 thought seems to pause, the repetition throbbing on 
 like the accompaniment to a song heard between the 
 pauses of the singer. Unity of mood, totality of ef 
 fect, a dreamy sort of "indefinitiveness," wrought out 
 by means perfectly definite and adapted, these con 
 stitute the Poe differential. Others had used the 
 same sort of repetition but not as Poe used it. With 
 him it was less an occasional artifice than an habitual 
 art. 
 
 After all, however, repetition is of the very essence 
 of rhythm and harmony. It is not an eddy in the cur 
 rent; it is the current itself deepened and less ob 
 structed. It is not something added from without; it 
 is an enlargement and enrichment from within. All 
 rhythm is repetition. In poetry there is first the re 
 currence of definitely numbered and definitely ordered 
 feet, then of lines, then of terminal or interior rimes, 
 till the stanza, a symphony of antiphonal repetitions, 
 emerges complete. Then the march begins, stanza fol 
 lowing stanza, line-length playing to line-length, rime 
 answering to rime, and perhaps a terminal refrain 
 summarizing and projecting the melody of the whole. 
 But to Poe s ear this was not enough. He diffused 
 other repetitions through his stanzas, and these repeti 
 tions not only made each stanza a more musical unit 
 in itself but linked stanza to stanza in an unbroken 
 strain of marching music unheard till then but heard 
 
206 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 continuously since then. "Poe has proved himself," 
 says Gosse, "to be the Piper of Hamelin to all later 
 English poets. From Tennyson to Austin Dobson 
 there is hardly one whose verse music does not show 
 traces of Poe s influence." Saintsbury calls him "the 
 greatest master of original prosodic effects that the 
 United States has produced." No extraneous element 
 was added, however, rhythmic repetition being only a 
 continuation and multiplication of the central prin 
 ciple of verse in all languages. Poe did not manufac 
 ture a new artifice ; he discovered and released an old 
 resource. 
 
 Where did he get the suggestion for this kind of 
 repetition? Not from Coleridge, not from any author 
 or authors, but more probably from the ballad. The 
 ballad is the product of communal composition and its 
 distinctive formal characteristic is repetition. No 
 other type of literature, ancient or modern, approaches 
 the old English and Scottish folk-song in the consist 
 ent and effective use of repetition not only as a binde- 
 tnittel within the stanza but as a pontoon from stanza 
 to stanza. Poe s best known poems, Goethe s Erl- 
 kdnig, Burger s Lenore, Coleridge s Ancient Mariner, 
 and Longfellow s Wreck of the Hesperus belong to 
 gether. The same kind of repetition is employed in 
 each, the same tone gives unity to each, the same air 
 of mystery broods about each, and the same effect, 
 though not to the same degree, is produced by each. 
 They are all ballads and they all hark back to the ballad 
 revival signalized by the appearance, in I775 ^ 
 Bishop Percy s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. 
 But more of the three hundred and five English and 
 Scottish ballads have been found surviving by oral 
 
THE POET 207 
 
 tradition in Virginia than in any other state. And it 
 is not improbable that Poe heard some of these bal 
 lads sung during his more impressionable years in 
 Richmond, and in Albemarle County, for they are still 
 sung by white and black, by old and young, and with 
 all the old haunting refrains and reduplicate repeti 
 tions that make them unforgettable when once heard. 
 
 But if he did not hear them sung, he at least knew 
 them from books and from the imitations that were 
 built upon them or woven around them. The only 
 other kind of song that shares with the ballad the re 
 sources of multiform repetition is the religious folk 
 song of the negro as sung on the plantations, in the 
 homes, and in the tobacco factories of the South. A 
 southerner can hardly help believing that the croon 
 ing lullabies, the plantation melodies, the labor songs 
 of the negro slaves were at least subsidiary sources of 
 Poe s lyrical technique. In matter and manner, in 
 the waning of thought and the correspondent waxing 
 of music, in the willingness of each sentence to merge 
 its individuality into the larger life of the stanza and 
 the self-sacrifice of the stanza in behalf of a still larger 
 and more exigent totality, the resemblance between 
 the two is insistently close. But whatever the source, 
 Poe s poems are not to be construed as isolated and 
 unrelated products. They are ballads in form, in 
 spirit, and in effect, though the form has been diversi 
 fied, the spirit etherealized, and the effect heightened. 
 To know them, the best avenue of approach is the bal 
 lad ; and to enrich your knowledge of the ballad, the 
 best angle of retrospect is the poetry of Poe. 
 
 Another problem relates not to the form or source 
 of Poe s verse but to the themes that he elected to 
 
208 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 treat. Are his poems consistent exemplars of the 
 beauty which, as a critic, Poe held to be the only true 
 goal of the poet ? Woodberry, speaking of our greater 
 writers, says: 1 "They were concerned not with the 
 apparent, but the real ; not with the transitory, but 
 the eternal ; and, excepting Poe, they were all artists 
 of the beautiful." This is a grave and strange indict 
 ment. If it is true, Poe preached one thing and prac 
 tised another. The consensus of world opinion, more 
 over, has been unaccountably at fault if through all 
 the years it has thought that it saw beauty and heard 
 beauty and felt beauty where there was no beauty but 
 only a sham pretense. If Poe was not an artist of 
 the beautiful, what was he an artist of? The prompt 
 and superficial answer is, He was an artist of death. 
 Does he not say, "The death of a beautiful woman is, 
 unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world"? 
 And are not his poems uniform illustrations of this 
 thesis ? Yes ; but whatever his topic, Poe s theme is 
 none the less beauty. Death, decay, separation are not 
 his themes. They are only the occasions when beauty, 
 in flight or about to take its flight, is felt to be most 
 beautiful ; when love, looking upon us for the last 
 time, turns our love into adoration. "Nevermore" is 
 not only the refrain of The Raven, it was not only a 
 word that loomed terrible and menacing in Poe s 
 thought, it was a doom under the shadow of which 
 beauty and love seemed suddenly not of this world but 
 visitants recalled. 
 
 If Poe s central theme needs any defence, it may 
 be found in Browning: 
 
 1 America in Literature (1903), p. 220. 
 
THE POET 209 
 
 Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels 
 Reveal themselves to you ; they sit all day 
 Beside you, and lie down at night by you 
 Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep, 
 And all at once they leave you, and you know them ! 
 
 If Browning needs reenforcement, it may be found 
 in Shakespeare: 
 
 The setting sun, and music at the close, 
 As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, 
 Writ in remembrance more than things long past. 
 
 II 
 
 In his famous Preface to the Poems of 1845 Poe 
 writes : 
 
 "These trifles are collected and republished chiefly 
 with a view to their redemption from the many im 
 provements to which they have been subjected while 
 going the rounds of the press." I am naturally 
 anxious that if what I have written is to circulate at 
 all, it should circulate as I wrote it. In defence of my 
 own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent on me to say 
 that I think nothing in this volume of much value to 
 the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to 
 be controlled have prevented me from making, at any 
 time, any serious effort in what, under happier cir 
 cumstances, would have been the field of my choice. 
 With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion ; 
 and the passions should be held in reverence ; they 
 must not they cannot at will be excited with an eye 
 to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry com 
 mendations, of mankind." 
 
 Poe, it may be added, was a ceaseless reviser of 
 the text of his poems, and his revisions were uniformly 
 
210 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 improvements. 2 The texts that follow are those that 
 seem to have received the poet s latest authorization. 
 
 TO HELEN (1831) 
 
 ["The grace and symmetry of the outline," wrote 
 Lowell, "are such as few poets ever attain. There is 
 a smack of ambrosia about it." Hardly a note of dis 
 sent breaks the chorus of praise that has greeted this 
 crystalline lyric. Of all Poe s poems, this, I think, 
 would receive the vote for first place among English- 
 speaking critics, while Ulalume would receive first 
 award among French critics. It has been said that 
 the highest praise ever paid a woman by a litterateur 
 was Steele s tribute to Lady Elizabeth Hastings : "To 
 love her was a liberal education." Against this I 
 should confidently pit Poe s second stanza with the 
 wide vistas that open in its two concluding lines. 
 "Nicean" is probably a vague reference to Milton s 
 "Nyseian isle" (Paradise Lost, IV, I, 275). -We 
 know what Poe meant by "hyacinth hair" from a pas 
 sage in Ligeia: see page 248.] 
 
 Helen, thy beauty is to me 
 
 Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
 That gently, o er a perfumed sea, 
 
 The weary, way-worn wanderer bore 
 
 To his own native shore. 
 
 On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 
 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
 To the glory that was Greece, 
 And the grandeur that was Rome. 
 
 Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche 
 
 How statue-like I see thee stand, 
 The agate lamp within thy hand! 
 
 Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
 
 Are Holy-Land! 
 
 a The number and minuteness of these revisions were not 
 realized until Killis Campbell tracked and recorded them in 
 his standard edition of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe 
 
THE POET 
 
 ISRAFEL (1831) 
 
 And the angel Israfel [whose heart-strings are a lute, 
 and] who has the sweetest voice of all God s creatures. 
 KORAN. But the bracketed words are Poe s insertion to make 
 the text fit the poem. 
 
 [The sub-title might well be phrased "The Influ 
 ence of Environment on the Poet/ The last stanza is 
 Poe s apologia. Certainly this stanza would make a 
 better epitaph for a Poe monument than that suggested 
 by Longfellow, 
 
 And the fever called "Living" 
 Is conquered at last, 
 
 from the poem For Annie. Nowhere else in Poe s 
 writings is there so violent an inversion of the normal 
 order of words as in 
 
 But the skies that angel trod, 
 for 
 
 But that angel trod the skies.] 
 
 In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 
 
 Whose heart-strings are a lute; 
 None sing so wildly well 
 As the angel Israfel, 
 And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 
 Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
 
 Of his voice, all mute. 
 
 Tottering above 
 
 In her highest noon, 
 
 The enamoured moon 
 Blushes with love, 
 
 While, to listen, the red levin 
 
 (With the rapid Pleiads, even, 
 
 Which were seven) 
 
 Pauses in Heaven. 
 
 And they say (the starry choir 
 
 And the other listening things) 
 That Israfeli s fire 
 Is owing to that lyre 
 
 By which he sits and sings 
 The trembling living wire 
 
 Of those unusual strings. 
 
212 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 But the skies that angel trod, 
 
 Where deep thoughts are a duty 
 Where Love s a grown-up God 
 
 Where the Houri glances are 
 Imbued with all the beauty 
 
 Which we worship in a star. 
 
 Therefore, thou art not wrong, 
 
 Israfeli, who despisest 
 An unimpassioned song; 
 To thee the laurels belong, 
 
 Best bard, because the wisest! 
 Merrily live, and long! 
 
 The ecstasies above 
 
 With thy burning measures suit 
 Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, 
 
 With the fervour of thy lute 
 
 Well may the stars be mute ! 
 
 [Yes, Heaven is thine; but this 
 
 Is a world of sweets and sours ; 
 
 Our flowers are merely flowers, 
 And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 
 
 Is the sunshine of ours. 
 
 If I could dwell 
 Where Israfel 
 
 Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
 He might not sing so wildly well 
 
 A mortal melody, 
 While a bolder note than this might swell 
 
 From my lyre within the sky. 
 
 THE CITY IN THE SEA (1831) 
 
 [This is the beginning in Poe s verse of ruin from 
 within, and also of the kind of repetition that was to 
 become increasingly characteristic. The doom of 
 Babylon has influenced the picture: see Revelation 
 XVI, XVII, XVIII, XX, and Isaiah XIV. I do not 
 think, however, that in its present final form the poem 
 was meant to express the damnation of the wicked but 
 rather the dethronement of Death himself and the 
 passing of his kingdom. See Revelation XX, 14.] 
 
THE POET 213 
 
 Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne 
 
 In a strange city lying alone 
 
 Far down within the dim West, 
 
 Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best 
 
 Have gone to their eternal rest. 
 
 There shrines and palaces and towers 
 
 (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) 
 
 Resemble nothing that is ours. 
 
 Around, by lifting winds forgot, 
 
 Resignedly beneath the sky 
 
 The melancholy waters lie. 
 
 No rays from the holy heaven come down 
 On the long night-time of that town ; 
 But light from out the lurid sea 
 Streams up the turrets silently 
 Gleams up the pinnacles far and free 
 Up domes up spires up kingly halls 
 Up fanes up Babylon-like walls 
 Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 
 Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers 
 Up many and many a marvellous shrine 
 Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
 The viol, the violet, and the vine. 
 Resignedly beneath the sky 
 The melancholy waters lie. 
 So blend the turrets and shadows there 
 That all seem pendulous in air, 
 While from a proud tower in the town 
 Death looks gigantically down. 
 
 There open fanes and gaping graves 
 
 Yawn level with the luminous waves; 
 
 But not the riches there that lie 
 
 In each idol s diamond eye, 
 
 Not the gaily-jeweled dead, 
 
 Tempt the waters from their bed; 
 
 For no ripples curl, alas, 
 
 Along that wilderness of glass ; 
 
 No swellings tell that winds may be 
 
 Upon some far-off happier sea; 
 
 No heavings hint that winds have been 
 
 On seas less hideously serene! 
 
 But lo, a stir is in the air! 
 The wave there is a movement there! 
 As if the towers had thrust aside, 
 In slightly sinking, the dull tide 
 As if their tops had feebly given 
 A void within the filmy Heaven. 
 
214 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 The waves have now a redder glow 
 The hours are breathing faint and low 
 And when, amid no earthly moans, 
 Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
 Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
 Shall do it reverence. 
 
 THE COLISEUM (1833) 
 
 [If the judges had not been unwilling to award both 
 honors to the same contestant, this poem would have 
 won the fifty dollar prize when The MS. Found in a 
 Bottle won the hundred dollar prize offered by the Bal 
 timore Saturday Morning Visitor. See page 2. 
 Though written in blank verse a meter used only 
 three times by Poe as a lyric measure the poem is di 
 vided into sections that correspond to the paragraphs 
 of prose. In the last section, ruin, vanished power, and 
 departed glory find their elect interpreter.] 
 
 Type of the antique Rome ! Rich reliquary 
 
 Of lofty contemplation left to Time 
 
 By buried centuries of pomp and power ! 
 
 At length at length after so many days 
 
 Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst 
 
 (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie), 
 
 I kneel, an altered and an humble man, 
 
 Amid thy shadows, and so drink within 
 
 My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory! 
 
 Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld! 
 Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! 
 I feel ye now I feel ye in your strength 
 O spells more sure than e er Judsean king 
 Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! 
 O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee 
 Ever drew down from out the quiet stars ! 
 
 Here, where a hero fell, a column falls ! 
 
 Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, 
 
 A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! 
 
 Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair 
 
 Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle ! 
 
THE POET 215 
 
 Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, 
 Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, 
 Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, 
 The swift and silent lizard of the stones ! 
 
 But stay! these walls these ivy-clad arcades 
 
 These mouldering plinths these sad and blackened shafts 
 
 These vague entablatures this crumbling frieze 
 
 These shattered cornices this wreck this ruin 
 
 These stones alas ! these grey stones are they all 
 
 All of the famed and the colossal left 
 
 By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me? 
 
 "Not all" the Echoes answer me "not all ! 
 
 Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever 
 
 From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise, 
 
 As melody from Memnon to the Sun. 
 
 We rule the hearts of mightiest men we rule 
 
 With a despotic sway all giant minds. 
 
 We are not impotent we pallid stones. 
 
 Not all our power is gone not all our fame 
 
 Not all the magic of our high renown 
 
 Not all the wonder that encircles us 
 
 Not all the mysteries that in us lie 
 
 Not all the memories that hang upon 
 
 And cling around about us as a garment, 
 
 Clothing us in a robe of more than glory." 
 
 TO ONE IN PARADISE (1834) 
 
 [The refrain of The Raven may be glimpsed 
 through a translucent rather than transparent veil in 
 the thrice repeated "no more" of these lines and in the 
 recurrence of the same words in the Sonnet To Zante 
 (1837) and the Sonnet Silence (1840). The poem 
 occurs in the short story called The Assignation. Four 
 years after Poe s death, he was accused of purloining 
 the lines from Tennyson, but the laureate promptly set 
 the matter right.] 
 
 Thou wast all that to me, love, 
 
 For which my soul did pine 
 A green isle in the sea, love, 
 
 A fountain and a shrine, 
 All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 
 
 And all the flowers were mine. 
 
216 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Ah, dream too bright to last ! 
 
 Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
 But to be overcast ! 
 
 A voice from out the Future cries, 
 "On ! on !" but o er the Past 
 
 (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies 
 Mute, motionless, aghast. 
 
 For, alas ! alas ! with me 
 
 The light of Life is o er ! 
 
 "No more no more no more " 
 (Such language holds the solemn sea 
 
 To the sands upon the shore) 
 Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 
 
 Or the stricken eagle soar ! 
 
 And all my days are trances, 
 
 And all my nightly dreams 
 Are where thy grey eye glances, 
 
 And where thy footstep gleams 
 In what ethereal dances, 
 
 By what eternal streams. 
 
 THE HAUNTED PALACE (1839) 
 
 [This poem, called by Poe a ballad, was an im 
 promptu of the hero in The Fall of the House of Usher 
 and, as Lowell says, "loses greatly by being taken out 
 of its rich and appropriate setting." To call it a self- 
 portraiture of Poe is to deal flagrantly with both liter 
 ature and life. "By The Haunted Palace said Poe, 
 "I mean to imply a mind haunted by phantoms a dis 
 ordered brain." Poe s poem was published in April, 
 1839, an< 3 Longfellow s Beleaguered City in the fol 
 lowing November. The charge of plagiarism which 
 Poe promptly brought is not borne out by a comparison 
 of the form or content of the two poems.] 
 
 In the greenest of our valleys 
 By good angels tenanted, 
 
 Once a fair and stately palace- 
 Radiant palace reared its head. 
 
 In the monarch Thought s dominion 
 It stood there ! 
 
 Never seraph spread a pinion 
 Over fabric half so fair ! 
 
THE POET 217 
 
 Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 
 
 On its roof did float and flow 
 (This all this was in the olden 
 
 Time long ago), 
 And every gentle air that dallied, 
 
 In that sweet day, 
 Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 
 
 A winged odour went away. 
 
 Wanderers in that happy valley, 
 
 Through two luminous windows, saw 
 Spirits moving musically, 
 
 To a lute s well-tuned law, 
 Round about a throne where, sitting, 
 
 (Porphyrogene!) 
 In state his glory well befitting, 
 
 The ruler of the realm was seen. 
 
 And all with pearl and ruby glowing 
 
 Was the fair palace door, 
 Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing 
 
 And sparkling evermore, 
 A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 
 
 Was but to sing, 
 In voices of surpassing beauty, 
 
 The wit and wisdom of their king. 
 
 But evil things, in robes of sorrow, 
 
 Assailed the monarch s high estate. 
 (Ah, let us mourn ! for never morrow 
 
 Shall dawn upon him desolate!) 
 And round about his home the glory 
 
 That blushed and bloomed, 
 Is but a dim-remembered story 
 
 Of the old time entombed. 
 
 And travellers, now, within that valley, 
 
 Through the red-litten windows see 
 Vast forms, that move fantastically 
 
 To a discordant melody, 
 While, like a ghastly rapid river, 
 
 Through the pale door 
 A hideous throng rush out forever 
 
 And laugh but smile no more. 
 
 THE CONQUEROR WORM (1843) 
 
 [Before interpreting this tragedy in five acts as 
 Poe s philosophy of life, recall the circumstances of its 
 
2i8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 composition. It was published in 1843 an< ^ incorpo 
 rated in Ligeia when the latter story was republished 
 in The Broadway Journal of September 27, 1845. 
 The first edition of Ligeia, that of 1838, contained , 
 instead of The Conqueror Worm and the paragraph 
 that precedes it as well as the two paragraphs that fol 
 low it, these words: "Methinks I again behold the 
 terrible struggles of her lofty, her nearly idealized na 
 ture, with the might and the terror and the majesty of 
 the great Shadow. But she perished. The giant 
 will succumbed to a power more stern. And I 
 thought, as I gazed upon the corpse, of the wild pas 
 sage in Joseph Glanvill. The will therein lieth, which 
 dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, 
 with its vigor ? For God is but a great will pervading 
 all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not 
 yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save 
 only through the weakness of his feeble will. " This 
 is not a strong passage, not strong enough for the 
 strategic position that it occupies in the story. Poe 
 determines to remodel it. Instead of representing 
 Ligeia s .enemy, death, as a shadow, he will represent it 
 as the worm that dieth not. Both symbols are bibli 
 cal but the latter is far more concrete and poignant. 
 And poetry is better suited to its vivid and immemo 
 rial staging than prose. In the meanwhile Poe had 
 read and commended, in June, 1840, a poem by one 
 Spencer Wallace Cone, containing the lines, 
 
 Spread o er his rigid form 
 
 The banner of his pride, 
 And let him meet the conqueror worm 
 
 With his good sword by his side. 
 
 He now builds his substitute poem around the new 
 symbol but builds it as the work of Ligeia, "composed 
 
THE POET 5219 
 
 by herself not many days before." The poem repre 
 sents Ligeia s nadir of hopelessness, against which she 
 protests in impassioned prayer and with unconquer 
 able will. The whole story is planned to give the lie 
 to the materialism and hopeless finality of The Con 
 queror Worm. See Ligeia, page 254.] 
 
 Lo! tis a gala night 
 
 Within the lonesome latter years ! 
 An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
 
 In veils, and drowned in tears, 
 Sit in a theatre, to see 
 
 A play of hopes and fears, 
 While the orchestra breathes fitfully 
 
 The music of the spheres. 
 
 Mimes, in the form of God on high, 
 
 Mutter and mumble low, 
 And hither and thither fly 
 
 Mere puppets they, who come and go 
 At bidding of vast formless things 
 
 That shift the scenery to and fro, 
 Flapping from out their Condor wings 
 
 Invisible Woe ! 
 
 That motley drama oh, be sure 
 
 It shall not be forgot ! 
 With its Phantom chased for evermore, 
 
 By a crowd that seize it not, 
 Through a circle that ever returneth in 
 
 To the self-same spot, 
 And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 
 
 And Horror the soul of the plot. 
 
 But see, amid the mimic rout 
 
 A crawling shape intrude! 
 A blood-red thing that writhes from out 
 
 The scenic solitude ! 
 It writhes ! it writhes ! with mortal pangs 
 
 The mimes become its food, 
 And seraphs sob at vermin fangs 
 
 In human gore imbued. 
 
 Out out are the lights out all! 
 
 And, over each quivering form, 
 The curtain, a funeral pall, 
 
 Comes down with the rush of a storm, 
 
220 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 While the angels, all pallid and wan, 
 
 Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
 That the play is the tragedy. "Man," 
 
 And its hero the Conqueror Worm. 
 
 THE RAVEN (1845) 
 
 [When The Raven was first published in the New 
 York Evening Mirror for January 29, 1845, from ad 
 vance sheets of The American Whig Review, N. P. 
 Willis, the editor, introduced it by the following note : 
 "We are permitted to copy (in advance of publica 
 tion), from the second number of the American Re 
 view/ the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. 
 In our opinion, it is the most effective single example 
 of fugitive poetry ever published in this country ; and 
 unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, 
 masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sus 
 taining of imaginative lift . . . It is one of 
 those dainties bred in a book/ which we feed on. It 
 will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it." 
 J. H. Ingram, Poe s English biographer, summarizes 
 the later consensus of opinion when he calls The 
 Raven "the most popular lyrical poem in the world." 
 The charge of mere artifice will not hold. "Que 1 on 
 ne dise pas trop haut, toutefois," says Lauvriere, "que 
 T art T emporte ici sur 1 inspiration et V artifice meme 1 
 sur 1 art. Non, il suffit de lire la traduction, si im- 
 putssante qu elle soit, pour voir qu a la magie des 
 mots survit pleinement le sens pathetique" (Edgar Poe 
 in Ecrivains Strangers, 1911, p. 217). But beware of 
 reading "remorse" into The Raven, as so many plat 
 form interpreters have done. Even Gosse speaks of 
 Poe s "remorseful passion for the irrecoverable dead." 
 There is not a scintilla of remorse in Poe s poetry. 
 
THE POET 221 
 
 The Raven embodies not remorse but the universal 
 protest of the soul against the denial of immortality. 
 As Poe sometimes celebrates beauty via decay, so here 
 he celebrates faith via doubt. For the other side of 
 the shield, see I Corinthians 15. That Poe believed 
 in the immortality of the soul is evident from many 
 assertions made during his lifetime and especially 
 from the final and victorious affirmation of Eureka: 
 see pages 68, 72. Turn also to The Conversation 
 of Eiros and Charmion (pages 305-312), The Colloquy 
 of Monos and Una (pages 320-333), and The Power of 
 Words (pages 333, 339), in each of which the dead 
 lovers are happily re-united in the other world. For 
 The Raven in prospect and retrospect, read again De 
 fects in the Technique of Barnaby Rudge (page 140) 
 and The Technique of the Raven (pages 173-190). You 
 will find an interesting analogy to the ascending 
 questions put by the lover in The Raven but nothing 
 more than an analogy in the two famous ballads, 
 Lord Randal and Edward.} 
 
 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and 
 
 weary, 
 
 Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore 
 While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a 
 
 tapping, 
 
 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 
 " Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber 
 
 door 
 
 Only this and nothing more." 
 
 Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December ; 
 And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the 
 
 floor. 
 Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to 
 
 borrow 
 From my books surcease of sorrow sorrow for the lost 
 
 Lenore 
 For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore 
 
 Nameless here for evermore. 
 
222 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 
 Thrilled me filled me with fantastic terrors never felt 
 
 before ; 
 So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood 
 
 repeating 
 
 " Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door 
 Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door ; 
 
 This it is and nothing more." 
 
 Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 
 "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore ; 
 But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came 
 
 rapping, 
 And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber 
 
 door, 
 That I scarce was sure I heard you" here I opened wide the 
 
 door ; 
 
 Darkness there and nothing more. 
 
 Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wonder 
 ing, fearing, 
 
 Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream 
 before ; 
 
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, 
 
 And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, 
 "Lenore !" 
 
 This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word 
 "Lenore!" 
 
 Merely this and nothing more. 
 
 Back into, the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, 
 Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. 
 "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window 
 
 lattice; 
 
 Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore 
 
 Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; 
 
 Tis the wind and nothing more !" 
 
 Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and 
 
 flutter 
 
 In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. 
 Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute stopped or 
 
 stayed he; 
 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber 
 
 door 
 
 Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door- 
 Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 
 
THE POET 223 
 
 Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
 "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art 
 
 sure no craven, 
 Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly 
 
 shore 
 Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night s Plutonian 
 
 shore 1" 
 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 
 
 Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so 
 
 plainly, 
 
 Though its answer little meaning little relevancy bore; 
 For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 
 Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber 
 
 door 
 Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber 
 
 door, 
 
 With such name as "Nevermore." 
 
 But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only 
 That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did 
 
 outpour. 
 Nothing farther then he uttered not a feather then he 
 
 fluttered 
 Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have 
 
 flown before 
 On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown 
 
 before." 
 
 Then the bird said "Nevermore." 
 
 Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, 
 "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store 
 Caught from some 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 nevermore. " 
 
 But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, 
 Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust 
 
 and door ; 
 
 Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking 
 Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore 
 What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird 
 
 of yore 
 
 Meant in croaking "Nevermore." 
 
224 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing 
 To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom s 
 
 core ; 
 
 This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining 
 On the cushion s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o er, 
 But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating 
 
 o er, 
 
 She shall press, ah, nevermore! 
 
 Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an 
 
 unseen censer 
 Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted 
 
 floor. 
 "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee by these angels 
 
 f he hath sent thee 
 
 Respite respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore ; 
 Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost 
 
 Lenore !" 
 
 Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." 
 
 "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or 
 
 devil ! 
 Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here 
 
 ashore, 
 
 Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted 
 On this home by Horror haunted tell me truly, I implore 
 Is there is there balm in Gilead? tell me tell me, I 
 
 implore !" 
 
 Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." 
 
 "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or 
 
 devil ! 
 By that Heaven that bends above us by that God we both 
 
 adore 
 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 
 
 Lenore." 
 
 Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." 
 
 "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend !" I shrieked, 
 
 upstarting 
 "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night s Plutonian 
 
 shore ! 
 Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath 
 
 spoken ! 
 
 Leave my loneliness unbroken ! quit the bust above my door ! 
 Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from 
 
 off my door!" 
 
 Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." 
 
THE POET 225 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon s that is 
 
 dreaming, 
 And the lamp-light o er him streaming throws his shadow on 
 
 the floor ; 
 And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the 
 
 floor 
 
 Shall be lifted nevermore ! 
 
 ULALUME A BALLAD (1847) 
 
 ["It is not, however, in The Bells or in The Raven, 
 marvellous as are these tours de force, that we see the 
 essential greatness of Poe revealed," says Gosse. 
 "The best of his poems are those in which he deals 
 less boisterously with the sentiment of mystery. 
 During the last months of his unhappy life, he com 
 posed three lyrics which, from a technical point of 
 view, must be regarded not only as the most interest 
 ing which he wrote, but as those which have had the 
 most permanent effect upon subsequent literature, not 
 only in England merely ^ but in France. These are 
 Ulalume, Annabel Lee, For Annie" (Contemporary 
 Review, February, 1909. The article is reprinted in 
 Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, 1919) . "Ula 
 lume" says Louis P. Betz, one of the best German 
 students of Poe, "is nothing less than the masterpiece 
 of the new symbolic poetry, especially to the younger 
 generation opposed to Zola" (Studien zur vergleich- 
 enden Literatur-geschichte der neueren Zeit, 1902). 
 The simplest interpretation of the poem is the best: 
 It is the anniversary night of the burial of Mrs. Poe. 
 The poet is in communion with himself, with his sub 
 conscious or subliminal self. He wanders along the 
 well-worn pathway to the grave and, momentarily 
 forgetful of his grief, feels the call of peace and 
 
226 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 morning. But Psyche, his deeper soul-nature, sees an 
 omen of ill. Hardly has he allayed the foreboding of 
 Psyche when he comes abruptly upon the grave. 
 Memory returns now with an added pang because of 
 the interim of forgetfulness. A stanza from Alfred 
 Noyes Iron Crown touches upon the psychology of 
 Ulalume : 
 
 Not memory of vanished bliss, 
 
 But suddenly to know 
 I had forgotten! This, O this 
 
 With iron crowned my woe. 
 
 Compare also Wordsworth s sonnet Desideria, and the 
 tenth stanza of The Portrait, written by Rossetti in 
 
 1847.1 
 
 The skies they were ashen and sober; 
 
 The leaves they were crisped and sere 
 
 The leaves they were withering and sere; 
 It was night in the lonesome October 
 
 Of my most immemorial year ; 
 It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
 
 In the misty mid region of Weir 
 It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
 
 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 Here once, through an alley Titanic, 
 
 Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul 
 
 Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
 These were days when my heart was volcanic 
 
 As the scoriae rivers that roll 
 
 As the lavas that restlessly roll 
 Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 
 
 In the ultimate climes of the pole 
 That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
 
 In the realms of the boreal pole. 
 
 Our talk had been serious and sober, 
 But our thoughts they were palsied and sere 
 Our memories were treacherous and sere 
 
 For we knew not the month was October, 
 And we marked not the night of the year 
 (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) 
 
THE POET 227 
 
 We noted not the dim lake of Auber 
 
 (Though once we had journeyed down here) 
 
 Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 
 Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 And now, as the night was senescent 
 
 And star-dials pointed to morn 
 
 As the star-dials hinted of morn 
 At the end of our path a liquescent 
 
 And nebulous lustre was born, 
 Out of which a miraculous crescent 
 
 Arose with a duplicate horn 
 Astarte s bediamonded crescent 
 
 Distinct with its duplicate horn. 
 
 And I said "She is warmer than Dian: 
 
 She rolls through an ether of sighs 
 
 She revels in a region of sighs : 
 She has seen that the tears are not dry on 
 
 These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
 And has > come past the stars of the Lion 
 
 To point us the path to the skies 
 
 To the Lethean peace of the skies 
 Come up, in despite of the Lion, 
 
 To shine on us with her bright eyes 
 Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
 
 With love in her luminous eyes." 
 
 But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 
 
 Said "Sadly this star I mistrust 
 
 Her pallor I strangely mistrust : 
 Oh, hasten ! oh, let us not linger ! 
 
 Oh, fly ! let us fly ! f or we must." 
 In terror she spoke, letting sink her 
 
 Wings until they trailed in the dust 
 In agony sobbed, letting sink her 
 
 Plumes till they trailed in the dust 
 
 Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 
 
 I replied "This is nothing but dreaming: 
 
 Let us on by this tremulous light ! 
 
 Let us bathe in this crystalline light! 
 Its Sibyllic splendour is beaming 
 
 With Hope and in Beauty to-night : 
 
 See! it flickers up the sky through the night! 
 Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 
 
 And be sure it will lead us aright 
 We safely may trust to a gleaming 
 
 That cannot but guide us aright, 
 
 Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 
 
228 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
 
 And tempted her out of her gloom 
 
 And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 
 And we passed to the end of the vista, 
 
 But were stopped by the door of a tomb 
 
 By the door of a legended tomb ; 
 And I said "What is written, sweet sister, 
 
 On the door of this legended tomb?" 
 
 She replied "Ulalume Ulalume 
 
 Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" 
 
 Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 
 As the leaves that were crisped and sere 
 As the leaves that were withering and sere, 
 
 And I cried "It was surely October 
 On this very night of last year 
 That I journeyed I journeyed down here 
 That I brought a dread burden down here 
 On this night of all nights in the year, 
 Ah, what demon has tempted me here? 
 
 Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber 
 This misty mid region of Weir 
 
 Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
 This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 
 
 THE BELLS (1849) 
 
 [Echoic verse is not at best a high order of poetry 
 but by common consent The Bells is, as Edwin Mark- 
 ham calls it, "the finest example in our language of the 
 suggestive power of rhyme and of the echo of sound 
 to sense." The poem grew by many revisions and 
 augmentations from a slight thing of two unequal 
 stanzas, celebrating, respectively, wedding bells and 
 funeral bells.] 
 
 I 
 
 Hear the sledges with the bells 
 
 Silver bells ! 
 
 What a world of merriment their melody foretells I 
 How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
 
 In the icy air of night ! 
 While the stars that oversprinkle 
 All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
 With a crystalline delight; 
 
THE POET 229 
 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
 From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells 
 From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 
 
 II 
 
 Hear the mellow wedding bells, 
 
 Golden bells! 
 
 What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! 
 Through the balmy air of night 
 How they ring out their delight! 
 From the molten-golden notes, 
 
 And all in tune, 
 What a liquid ditty floats 
 To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
 
 On the moon! 
 
 Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
 What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! 
 How it swells ! 
 How it dwells 
 
 On the Future ! how it tells 
 Of the rapture that impels 
 To the swinging and the ringing 
 
 Of the bells, bells, bells 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 Bells, bells, bells 
 To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Hear the loud alarum bells 
 
 Brazen bells! 
 
 What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! 
 In the startled ear of night 
 How they scream out their affright! 
 Too much horrified to speak, 
 They can only shriek, shriek, 
 
 Out of tune, 
 
 In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
 In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, 
 Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
 With a desperate desire, 
 And a resolute endeavour 
 Now now to sit, or never, 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 By the side of the pale-faced moon, 
 Oh, the bells, bells, bells! 
 What a tale their terror tells 
 
 Of Despair! 
 
 How they clang, and clash, and roar! 
 What a horror they outpour 
 On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
 Yet the ear, it fully knows, 
 By the twanging, 
 And the clanging, 
 How the danger ebbs and flows; 
 Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
 In the jangling, 
 And the wrangling, 
 How the danger sinks and swells, 
 By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells 
 
 Of the bells 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells 
 In the clamour and the clangour of the bells ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Hear the tolling of the bells- 
 Iron bells! 
 
 What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! 
 In the silence of the night, 
 How we shiver with affright 
 At the melancholy menace of their tone! 
 For every sound that floats 
 From the rust within their throats 
 
 Is a groan. 
 
 And the people ah, the people 
 They that dwell up in the steeple, 
 
 All alone, 
 And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, 
 
 In that muffled monotone, 
 Feel a glory in so rolling 
 
 On the human heart a stone 
 They are neither man nor woman 
 They are neither brute nor human 
 
 They are Ghouls: 
 And their king it is who tolls ; 
 And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
 Rolls 
 
 A paean from the bells! 
 And his merry bosom swells 
 
 With the paean of the bells! 
 And he dances, and he yells; 
 
THE POET 231 
 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 To the paean of the bells : 
 
 Of the bells: 
 Keeping time, time, time 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the throbbing of the bells 
 Of the bells, bells, bells 
 
 To the sobbing of the bells : 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 
 As he knells, knells, knells, 
 In a happy Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the rolling of the bells 
 Of the bells, bells, bells: 
 
 To the tolling of the bells 
 Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
 
 Bells, bells, bells 
 To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 
 
 FOR ANNIE (1849) 
 
 [The poem is named for Mrs. Annie Richmond, 
 of Lowell, Massachusetts, who with her husband was 
 a devoted and helpful friend of the Poe family. It 
 is a tribute to love. That at least survives death. 
 The dead lover speaks here from the grave as the sur 
 viving lover speaks in The Raven, Ulalume, and An 
 nabel Lee. In The Blessed Damosel of Rossetti, 
 which was suggested by The Raven, the condition is 
 reversed: the loved one speaks from heaven to her 
 lover on earth. Killis Campbell cites in explanation a 
 passage from Poe s Mesmeric Revelation: "There are 
 two bodies the rudimental and the complete; corre 
 sponding with the two conditions of the worm and the 
 butterfly. What we call death is but the painful 
 metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progress 
 ive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, 
 ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full de 
 sign." See also The Colloquy of Monos and Una. 
 
232 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 The first part of the concluding speech of Monos 
 (pages 327-332) is a sort of prose For Annie. Mal- 
 larme considered this the best of Poe s poems, but he 
 did not understand it: he thought the speaker was a 
 convalescent.] 
 
 Thank Heaven! the crisis 
 
 The danger is past, 
 And the lingering illness 
 
 Is over at last 
 And the fever called "Living" 
 
 Is conquered at last. 
 
 Sadly, I know 
 
 I am shorn of my strength, 
 And no muscle I move 
 
 As I lie at full length 
 But no matter ! I feel 
 
 1 am better at length. 
 
 And I rest so composedly 
 
 Now, in my bed, 
 That any beholder 
 
 Might fancy me dead 
 Might start at beholding me, 
 
 Thinking me dead. 
 
 The moaning and groaning, 
 
 The sighing and sobbing, 
 Are quieted now, 
 
 With that horrible throbbing 
 At heart: ah that horrible, 
 
 Horrible throbbing! 
 
 The sickness the nausea 
 
 The pitiless pain 
 Have ceased with the fever 
 
 That maddened my brain 
 With the fever called "Living" 
 
 That burned in my brain. 
 
 And oh! of all tortures 
 
 That torture the worst 
 Has abated the terrible 
 
 Torture of thirst 
 For the naphthaline river 
 
 Of Passion accurst: 
 I have drank of a water 
 
 That quenches all thirst: 
 
THE POET 233 
 
 Of a water that flows, 
 
 With a lullaby sound, 
 From a spring but a very few 
 
 Feet under ground 
 From a cavern not very far 
 
 Down under ground. 
 
 And ah! let it never 
 
 Be foolishly said 
 That my room it is gloomy 
 
 And narrow my bed; 
 For man never slept 
 
 In a different bed 
 And, to sleep, you must slumber 
 
 In just such a bed. 
 
 My tantalized spirit 
 
 Here blandly reposes, 
 Forgetting, or never 
 
 Regretting, its roses- 
 Its old agitations 
 
 Of myrtles and roses: 
 
 For now, while so quietly 
 
 Lying, it fancies 
 A holier odour 
 
 About it, of pansies 
 A rosemary odour, 
 
 Commingled with pansies 
 With rue and the beautiful 
 
 Puritan pansies. 
 
 And so it lies happily, 
 
 Bathing in many 
 A dream of the truth 
 
 And the beauty of Annie 
 Drowned in a bath 
 
 Of the tresses of Annie. 
 
 She tenderly kissed me, 
 
 She fondly caressed, 
 And then I fell gently 
 
 To sleep on her breast 
 Deeply to sleep 
 
 From the heaven of her breast. 
 
 When the light was extinguished 
 
 She covered me warm, 
 And she prayed to the angels 
 
 To keep me from harm 
 
234 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 To the queen of the angels 
 To shield me from harm. 
 
 And I lie so composedly, 
 
 Now, in my bed, 
 (Knowing her love) 
 
 That you fancy me dead 
 And I rest so contentedly, 
 
 Now, in my bed, 
 (With her love at my breast) 
 
 That you fancy me dead 
 That you shudder to look at me, 
 
 Thinking me dead : 
 
 But my heart it is brighter 
 
 Than all of the many 
 Stars of the sky, 
 
 For it sparkles with Annie 
 It glows with the light 
 
 Of the love of my Annie 
 With the thought of the light 
 
 Of the eyes of my Annie. 
 
 ANNABEL LEE (1849) 
 
 [The reference is of course to Poe s wife and the 
 poem ought to lay forever the absurd contention that 
 Poe never really loved her, that his devotion was 
 "rather of the nature of family affection than of wed 
 ded love." Love is here associated not with a rare 
 flower, a strain of music, a familiar haunt, etc., but 
 with the elemental, the universal, the rhythmically re 
 current with moon and stars. The Scotch critic, 
 John Nichol, in his American Literature (1882), says 
 of that part of Lowell s Biglow Papers, second series, 
 beginning, 
 
 Under the yailer-pines I house, 
 
 "This [to the close], not the Commemoration Ode, is 
 the author s masterpiece. I set it beside Annabel Lee, 
 and regard these two poems, totally different though 
 
THE POET 235 
 
 they are, as the two high-water marks of Transatlantic 
 verse." Do not read "kinsman" instead of "kinsmen" 
 in the line, 
 
 So that her high-born kinsmen came. 
 Poe meant the angels, not death.] 
 
 It was many and many a year ago, 
 
 In a kingdom by the sea 
 That a maiden there lived whom you may know 
 
 By the name of ANNABEL LEE; 
 And this maiden she lived with no other thought 
 
 Than to love and be loved by me. 
 
 7 was a child and she was a child, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea, 
 But we loved with a love that was more than love 
 
 I and my ANNABEL LEE 
 With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven 
 
 Coveted her and me. 
 
 And this was the reason that, long ago, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea, 
 A wind blew put of a cloud, chilling 
 
 My beautiful ANNABEL LEE; 
 So that her highborn kinsmen came 
 
 And bore her away from me, 
 To shut her up in a sepulchre 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea. 
 
 The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 
 
 Went envying her and me 
 Yes ! that was the reason (as all men know, 
 
 In this kingdom by the sea) 
 That the wind came put of the cloud by night, 
 
 Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE. 
 
 But our love it was stronger by far than the love 
 
 Of those who were older than we 
 
 Of many far wiser than we 
 And neither the angels in heaven above, 
 
 Nor the demons down under the sea, 
 Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 
 
 Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: 
 
 For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams 
 
 Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; 
 And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes 
 
 Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: 
 
236 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
 
 Of my darling my darling my life and my bride, 
 
 In the sepulchre there by the sea 
 
 In her tomb by the sounding sea. 
 
 ELDORADO (1849) 
 
 ["This poem," says Killis Campbell, "like the tale 
 Von Kempelen and his Discovery, is a product of the 
 gold-excitement of 49 and one of many evidences of 
 Poe s interest in contemporary matters." It is com 
 pact of high idealism and urgent resolve, and forms a 
 fitting close to the life of one who, however the feet 
 faltered, kept the vision always in front. Read it in 
 the light of these words, written by Poe to F. W. 
 Thomas on February 14, 1849: "Depend upon it after 
 all, Thomas, literature is the most noble of profes 
 sions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. 
 For my own part there is no seducing me from the 
 path. I shall be a litterateur at least, all my life ; nor 
 would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for 
 all the gold in California. Talking of gold and of the 
 temptation at present held out to poor-devil authors/ 
 did it ever occur to you that all that is really valuable 
 to a man of letters to a poet in especial is abso 
 lutely unpurchasable ? Love, fame, the dominion of 
 intellect, the consciousness of power, the thrilling sense 
 of beauty, the free air of Heaven, exercise of body and 
 mind, with the physical and moral health which result 
 these and such as these are really all that a poet 
 cares for : then answer me this why should he go to 
 California?"] 
 
 Gayly bedight, 
 
 A gallant knight, 
 In sunshine and in shadow, 
 
 Had journeyed long, 
 
 Singing a song, 
 In search of Eldorado. 
 
THE POET 237 
 
 But he grew old 
 
 This knight so bold 
 And o er his heart a shadow 
 
 Fell as he found 
 
 No spot of ground 
 That looked like Eldorado. 
 
 And, as his strength 
 
 Failed him at length, 
 He met a pilgrim shadow 
 
 "Shadow," said he, 
 
 "Where c^n it be 
 This land of Eldorado?" 
 
 "Over the Mountains 
 
 Of the Moon, 
 Down the Valley of the Shadow, 
 
 Ride, boldly ride," 
 
 The shade replied, 
 "If you seek for Eldorado !" 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 
 
 THE short story is recognized as the most distinc 
 tive contribution that Americans have made to na 
 tional and international literature. Here if anywhere 
 we have achieved a prestige that European critics 
 neither deny nor begrudge. The type is the newest of 
 all literary types and in its creation the masters are 
 easily recognized. They are, in the order of their con 
 tributions, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Na 
 thaniel Hawthorne, Bret Harte, Joel Chandler Harris, 
 and O. Henry. 
 
 Irving legendized the new type, making it a means 
 of storing legendary material in more permanent and 
 attractive form. Hawthorne allegorized it, convert 
 ing it into a sort of miniature Pilgrim s Progress. 
 Harte localized it, and California became the first ro 
 mantic region that was lifted into literature on the 
 shoulders of the short story. Harris folklorized it, 
 the Uncle Remus stories not only bringing the folk 
 tales of the negro into literature but making possible 
 at the same time the scientific study of negro folklore. 
 O. Henry socialized it, leaving it the most flexible and 
 responsive organon of social reaction that American 
 literature has to its credit. Poe s contribution was un 
 like any of these. He retold no legends, he looked 
 askance at allegory, he brought no locality into litera 
 ture, he saw no career for art in folklore, and he found 
 
 238 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 239 
 
 his creative inspiration not in the changing moods and 
 whims of society about him but in the unchanging vi 
 sions and questionings within. His central contribution 
 to the new form was not content but structure. Poe 
 standardized the short story. 
 
 This distinction, if just, invalidates to a degree the 
 usual classification of Poe s stories according to top 
 ical content, or at least renders such classification less 
 helpful than the classification based on structure. 
 Irving, Hawthorne, Harte, Harris and O. Henry are 
 rightly studied in their themes, for they not only iden 
 tified themselves with these themes but illuminated each 
 theme with a new popular interest and a steadily en 
 larging significance. Poe did not do this. It is well 
 to know his themes but better still to know the prin 
 ciples of his architecture. 
 
 "Poe s tales," says Nettleton, 1 taking his cue from 
 topic, "are usually divided into classes. Of the Tales 
 of Death, The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia 
 are, in unity of tone and intensifying force toward the 
 climax, almost flawless. Poe strove not so much to 
 tell a story as to produce an effect in one* of utter 
 desolation, in the other, of despair. Of the Old 
 World Romances/ the most noteworthy are The 
 Masque of the Red Death, The Cask of Amontillado, 
 and The Assignation. Terror is the note of the first, 
 vengeance of the second, and of the third sensuous- 
 ness. Of the Tales of Conscience/ Poe preferred 
 William Wilson and The Black Cat. While Haw 
 thorne turned to the spiritual allegory of the con 
 science, Poe turned rather to physical horrors. In the 
 
 ^-Specimens of the Short Story, by George Henry Net 
 tleton (1001), p. 80. 
 
240 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Tales of Pseudo-Science, Poe sought the verisimil 
 itude of Defoe and Swift. Perhaps his greatest suc 
 cesses are The MS. Found in a Bottle and A Descent 
 into the Maelstrom. In these and many other similar 
 tales Poe furnished the inspiration for Jules Verne s 
 probable impossibilities. In the Tales of Ratiocina 
 tion/ Poe laid the foundation for the modern school of 
 detective stories/ In The Murders in the Rue 
 Morgue f The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Gold Bug, 
 and The Purloined Letter, Poe solved mysteries by the 
 detective s process of analysis." 
 
 These divisions are also those made in the schol 
 arly edition of Stedman and Woodberry, though Net- 
 tleton omits the "Tales of Illusion," such as The Pre 
 mature Burial, and the "Tales of Extravaganza and 
 Caprice/ beginning with The Due de L Omelette and 
 ending with Mellonta Tauta. He also omits, as not 
 belonging to the short story, "Tales of Adventure and 
 Exploration," which contain Poe s two longest narra 
 tive efforts, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym and 
 The Journal of Julius Rodman. But a simpler classi 
 fication is that of Leon Kellner. "Three species of 
 stories," he says, 2 "are to be distinguished: Psycho 
 logical Problems for Their Own Sake/ (Ligeia), 
 Pseudo-Scientific Phantasies (A Descent into the 
 Maelstrom), and Ingenious Disentanglements (The 
 Purloined Letter). An unparalleled boldness of in 
 vention, a masterly structure, and a compelling logic 
 are common to all." 
 
 What, then, is the nature of the masterly struc 
 ture, the compelling logic, common to the three spe- 
 
 z Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Literatur, II, n, 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 241 
 
 cies? Read again Poe s appraisal of Hawthorne, 
 which we have entitled The Technique of the Short 
 Story (pages 149-158). It was this review together 
 with his consistent practice of its principles that gave 
 Poe his priority and his primacy in the building 1 of the 
 new type. "Poe first laid down the principles," says 
 Brander Matthews, 3 "which governed his own con 
 struction and which have been quoted very often, be 
 cause they have been accepted by the masters of the 
 short story in every modern language." Poe was the 
 first to recognize in the sketchy tales of his day the 
 possibilities of a type of literature as distinctive in its 
 role and as exigent in its form as the novel or the 
 drama or any other genre, however ancient and hon 
 orable its lineage. His influence on the new type was 
 legislative, executive, and judicial: he framed the 
 laws of its structure, he carried out these laws in his 
 own stories, and he passed authoritative judgment on 
 those who obeyed or disobeyed the code which he had 
 himself enacted. 
 
 Making no attempt to circumscribe the topics 
 amenable to short story treatment, Poe devoted his 
 genius to the form of the new type. It must converge 
 cumulatively and undeviatingly upon one and only one 
 effect. This effect being the goal, the writer must see 
 it and move straight toward it from the beginning. 
 The old way was to begin with background or setting, 
 with character or characters, with plot or plan. Poe 
 saw at a glance that these three essentials of a short 
 story might all be excellent in their separate kind and 
 yet the story prove unappealing and ineffective. The 
 
 *The Short-Story: Specimens Illustrating Its Develop 
 ment, 1907, p. 25. 
 
242 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 triumph of the story was to inhere not in the individ 
 ual artistry of its three elements but in the higher ar 
 tistry that, in blending the trinity, should make it il 
 lustrative of and convergent upon an irresistible unity. 
 "In the presence of every question, considered inde 
 pendently and by itself," says General Foch, 4 "ask 
 yourselves first, What is the objective?" It was pre 
 cisely this question that Poe made central and con 
 trolling in the technique of the short story, and the 
 history of the short story has ever since been divided 
 into just two stages of development, before Poe and 
 after. 
 
 To feel the full import of Poe s doctrine of con 
 vergence, think once more through the old traditional 
 "laws" or "rules" of the drama, the epic, the novel, the 
 essay, and especially the public address, anciently 
 called the oration. Would not these forms be vitalized 
 by the same fusing and re-creating process? Has 
 there not grown up about each of them a corpus of 
 rules that has become an end in itself? Confront 
 them with the question, "What effect, what objective, 
 what impassioned purpose, what vision and what vis 
 ualized audience called you into being?" and the com 
 placent answer would be, "None at all. We are 
 conformists. We point backward to the canons of a 
 long-perfected art, not forward to a merely projected 
 effect." The time is coming when, even if the short 
 story as a separate type of literature should perish, 
 Poe s distinction will live in the energized life that it 
 will have imparted to every form of human effort that 
 seeks a definite and progressive goal. So far from 
 making technique disproportionately controlling, Poe s 
 
 *The Principles of War (1918), p. 23. 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 243 
 
 special distinction is that he deprived it of all authority 
 in itself and made it the humble servitor of previ- 
 sioned effect. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that while Poe s stories 
 fall into many topical divisions, he exemplified only 
 two structural types. He began with the story in which 
 the last paragraph is the key. The suspense is cumu 
 lative from the beginning and is relieved only at the 
 end. This is the type of story that O. Henry has il 
 lustrated with a brilliancy and resourcefulness that 
 have led not a few critics to see in his work the discov 
 ery of a new territory rather than the happy coloniza 
 tion of an old. This kind of story is necessarily short 
 because suspense, especially the tragic kind that Poe 
 frequently imposes, becomes burdensome if the finale 
 is needlessly or heedlessly delayed. Masterpieces of 
 this type are The MS. Found in a Bottle, Berenice, 
 Morella, The Assignation, A Descent into the Mael- 
 strom, Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, Wil 
 liam Wilson, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit 
 and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black 
 Cat, and The Cask of Amontillado. The first was 
 written in 1833, the last in 1846. We may call this the 
 cuneiform type because it is wedge-shaped, coming to 
 a point or edge at the end. Perhaps, if we think of 
 background, plot, and character as narrowing upward 
 to the apex or point of culminating effect, a better 
 name would be the A type. 
 
 The second type preserves suspense and illustrates 
 totality of effect as successfully as the A type; but 
 there is a pause in the middle of the story : a part of 
 the denouement has been glimpsed but not the whole. 
 Curiosity is not relaxed but released for a more in- 
 
244 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 tense effort. If a murder has been committee!, par? 
 one of the story ends with the mystery apparently in 
 soluble but with curiosity projected over to part two in 
 which there is a progressive and satisfying solution. 
 If a buried treasure or a stolen letter is sought, part 
 one ends with its finding; part two tells how it was 
 found. You may bend back the second part over the 
 first part and the two will be found to correspond in 
 structure about as an itemized letter of inquiry corre 
 sponds to the similarly itemized reply. Stories of this 
 kind are longer than those of the A type because there 
 are two processes, tying and untying, complication and 
 explication, enciphering and deciphering. If the A 
 type is more artistic in the accepted sense, the second 
 type is more ingenious, more intellectual, appealing as 
 it does to the puzzle-solving instinct that every reader 
 has to a degree. Poe called the second type "Tales 
 of Ratiocination" (see page 240) and from them 
 sprang the modern detective story. The first master 
 piece of this type, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 
 was written in 1841 ; the last The Purloined Letter, in 
 1845. If we call the first type cuneiform, we may call 
 this type insectiform, because, as in insects, there is an 
 apparent cut or dip inward near the middle of the 
 body. But if A represent the structure of the first 
 type, B may well represent the structure of the second 
 type, the two semicircles of the letter picturing the 
 two movements of the story toward its preordained 
 conclusion. The meeting of the two semicircles is 
 where complication ends and explication begins. The 
 poems, by the way, belong prevailingly to the A type, 
 The Haunted Palace alone suggesting the B type. 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 245 
 
 II 
 
 The two stories that follow represent respectively 
 the A type and the B type. To the prospective writer 
 of short stories as well as to the general reader, a 
 study of Poe s two structural routes climbing to a 
 common peak of effect will prove a constant quicken 
 ing and enlargement of narrative power. 
 
 LIGEIA (1838) 
 
 And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who know- 
 eth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but 
 a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. 
 Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death 
 utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will. 
 JOSEPH GLANVILL. 
 
 [The text is found in the introductory quotation 
 from Joseph Glanvill. Charles F. Richardson, in the 
 Arnheim Edition of Poe, says : "The limner of death 
 [Poe] was what he was because he insisted that death 
 must yield to the forceful self-assertion of a quenchless 
 soul ... In one thing his name must rank high 
 in the spiritual movements of his time and of all time : 
 his insistence upon the earned perpetuity of personal 
 assertion. The individual will live because it wills to 
 live; that is his gospel from first to last." It is cer 
 tainly, his gospel in Ligeia and its prototype, Morella 
 (1835). These two stories make an interesting com 
 parative study, both developing the same theme of will 
 victorious over death and both being perfect examples 
 of the A type of structure. Philip Pendleton Cooke 
 wrote Poe that Ligeia would have been a better story 
 if the reader had been made more gradually aware of 
 the change from Rowena to Ligeia and "if Rowena s 
 bodily form had been retained as a shell or case for 
 
246 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the disembodied Lady Ligeia." Poe replied: "You 
 are right and this idea was mine had I never writ 
 ten before I should have adopted it but then there is 
 Morella. . . Since Morella is upon record I will suffer 
 Ligeia to remain as it is." Seven years later he writes 
 to Cooke : "The loftiest kind [of tale] is that of the 
 highest imagination and, for this reason only, Ligeia 
 may be called my best tale. I have much improved 
 this last since you saw it and I mail you a copy, as well 
 as a copy of my best specimen of analysis The Phi 
 losophy of Composition" The edition of Ligeia that 
 Poe sent to Cooke is the one here reproduced. See 
 also the note introducing The Conqueror Worm, 
 pages 217-219.] 
 
 I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or 
 even precisely where, I first became acquainted with 
 the Lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and 
 my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, 
 perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, be 
 cause in truth the character of my beloved, her rare 
 learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the 
 thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical 
 language, made their way into my heart by paces so 
 steadily and stealthily progressive that they have been 
 unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her 
 first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying 
 city near the Rhine. Of her family I have surely 
 heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date 
 cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in 
 studies of a nature more than all else adapted to 
 deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that 
 sweet word alone by Ligeia that I bring before 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 247 
 
 mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. 
 And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me 
 that I have never known the paternal name of her who 
 was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the 
 partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my 
 bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my 
 Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, 
 that I should institute no inquiries upon this point ? or 
 was it rather a caprice of my own a wildly romantic 
 offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion ? 
 I but indistinctly recall the fact itself what wonder 
 that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which 
 originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that 
 spirit which is entitled Romance if ever she, the wan 
 and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, 
 presided, as they tell, over marriage ill-omened, then 
 most surely she presided over mine. 
 
 There is one dear topic, however, on which my 
 memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In 
 stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her lat 
 ter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to 
 portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, 
 or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her 
 footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was 
 never made aware of her entrance into my closed 
 study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, 
 as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In 
 beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was 
 the radiance of an opium-dream an airy and spirit- 
 lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies 
 which hovered about the slumbering souls of the 
 daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of 
 that regular mould which we have been falsely taught 
 
248 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. 
 "There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord 
 Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera 
 of beauty, "without some strangeness in the propor 
 tion." Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia 
 were not of a classic regularity although I perceived 
 that her loveliness was indeed "exquisite," and felt 
 that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, 
 yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to 
 trace home my own perception of "the strange." I 
 examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead : 
 it was faultless how cold indeed that word when ap 
 plied to a majesty so divine! the skin rivalling the 
 purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the 
 gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; 
 and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and 
 naturally curling tresses, setting forth the full force 
 of the Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine !" I looked at the 
 delicate outline of the nose and nowhere but in the 
 graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a 
 similar perfection. There were the same luxurious 
 smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible 
 tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously 
 curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded 
 the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all 
 things heavenly the magnificent turn of the short up 
 per lip the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under 
 the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke 
 the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost 
 startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon 
 them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly ra 
 diant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the 
 chin : and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 249 
 
 the softness and the majesty, the fulness and the spir 
 ituality, of the Greek the contour which the god 
 Apollo revealed but in a dream to Cleomenes, the son 
 of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large 
 eyes of Ligeia. 
 
 For eyes we have no models in the remotely an 
 tique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of 
 my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam al 
 ludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the 
 ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller 
 than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the 
 valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals 
 in moments of intense excitement that this peculiarity 
 became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And 
 at such moments was her beauty in my heated fancy 
 thus it appeared perhaps the beauty of beings either 
 above or apart from the earth, the beauty of the fabu 
 lous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the 
 most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty 
 lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular 
 in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," 
 however, which I found in the eyes, was of a nature 
 distinct from the formation, or the color, or the bril 
 liancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred 
 to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind 
 whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ig 
 norance of so much of the spiritual. The expression 
 of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I 
 pondered upon it ! How have I, through the whole of 
 a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it ! What was 
 it that something more profound than the well of 
 Democritus which lay far within the pupils of my 
 beloved ? What was it ? I was possessed with a pas- 
 
250 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 sion to discover. Those eyes ! those large, those shin 
 ing, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars 
 of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers. 
 
 There is no point, among the many incomprehen 
 sible anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly 
 exciting than the fact never, I believe, noticed in the 
 schools that in our endeavors to recall to memory 
 something long forgotten, we often find ourselves 
 upon the very verge of remembrance, without being 
 able, in the end, to remember. And thus how |fre- 
 quently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia s eyes, have 
 I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expres 
 sion felt it approaching, yet not quite be mine, and so 
 at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strange- 
 est mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects 
 of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. 
 I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when 
 Ligeia s beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling 
 as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the 
 material world, a sentiment such as I felt always 
 around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs* 
 Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or 
 analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let 
 me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly grow 
 ing vine in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, 
 a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it 
 in the ocean ; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it 
 in the glances of unusually aged people. And there 
 are one or two stars in heaven, (one especially, a star 
 of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be 
 found near the large star in Lyra,) in a telescopic 
 scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feel 
 ing. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 251 
 
 stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by pas 
 sages from books. Among innumerable other in 
 stances, I well remember something in a volume of 
 Joseph Glanvill s, which (perhaps merely from its 
 quaintness who shall say?) never failed to inspire 
 me with the sentiment: "And the will therein lieth, 
 which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the 
 will, with its vigor ? For God is but a great will per 
 vading all things by nature of its intentness. Man 
 doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death 
 utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble 
 will." 
 
 Length of years and subsequent reflection have 
 enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection 
 between this passage in the English moralist and a 
 portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in 
 thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a re 
 sult, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition 
 which, during our long intercourse, failed to give 
 other and more immediate evidence of its existence. 
 Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the 
 outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most 
 violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern 
 passion. And of such passion I could form no esti 
 mate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes 
 which at once so delighted and appalled me by the al 
 most magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and 
 placidity of her very low voice and by the fierce 
 energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her 
 manner of utterance) of the wild words which she 
 habitually uttered. 
 
 I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia : it was im 
 mense such as I have never known in woman. In 
 
252 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as 
 far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the 
 modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at 
 fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, 
 because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudi 
 tion of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault ? 
 How singularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the 
 nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period 
 only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was 
 such as I have never known in woman but where 
 breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, 
 all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical 
 science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, 
 that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were as 
 tounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite 
 supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confi 
 dence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of 
 metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily 
 occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. 
 With how vast a triumph, with how vivid a delight, 
 with how much of all that is ethereal in hope, did I feel, 
 as she bent over me in studies but little sought but 
 less known that delicious vista by slow degrees ex 
 panding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and 
 all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to 
 the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be 
 forbidden ! 
 
 How poignant, then, must have been the grief with 
 which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded 
 expectations take wings to themselves and fly away ! 
 Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. 
 Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly 
 luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 253 
 
 in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant 
 lustre of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew 
 duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone 
 less and less frequently upon the pages over which I 
 pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a 
 too too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became 
 of the transparent waxen hue of the grave ; and the 
 blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank 
 impetuously with the tides of the most gentle emotion. 
 I saw that she must die and I struggled desperately 
 in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of 
 the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even 
 more energetic than my own. There had been much 
 in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that 
 to her, death would have come without its terrors; 
 but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just 
 idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she 
 wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at 
 the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed I would 
 have reasoned ; but, in the intensity of her wild desire 
 for life for life but for life solace and reason 
 were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the 
 last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of 
 her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of 
 her demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle grew 
 more low yet I would not wish to dwell upon the 
 wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain 
 reeled as I hearkened, entranced, to a melody more 
 than mortal to assumptions and aspirations which 
 mortality had never before known. 
 
 That she loved me I should not have doubted ; and 
 I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such 
 as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. 
 
254 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 But in death only was I fully impressed with the 
 strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining 
 my hand, would she pour out before me the over 
 flowing of a heart whose more than passionate devo 
 tion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be 
 so blessed by such confessions? how had I deserved 
 to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the 
 hour of her making them? But upon this subject I 
 cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Li- 
 geia s more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas ! 
 all unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length 
 recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly 
 earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing 
 so rapidly away. It is this \vild longing, it is this 
 eager vehemence of desire for life but for life, that 
 I have no power to portray, no utterance capable of 
 expressing. 
 
 At high noon of the night in which she departed, 
 beckoning me peremptorily to her side, she bade me 
 repeat certain verses composed by herself not many 
 days before. I obeyed her. They were these: [See 
 The Conqueror Worm, pages 219-220.] 
 
 "O God !" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet 
 and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic move 
 ment, as I made an end of these lines "O God! O 
 Divine Father! shall these things be undeviatingly 
 so? shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are 
 we not part and parcel in Thee? Who who know- 
 eth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man 
 doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death 
 utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble 
 will/ " 
 
 And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suf- 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 255 
 
 fered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to 
 her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, 
 there came mingled with them a low murmur from her 
 lips. I bent to them my ear, and distinguished, again, 
 the concluding words of the passage in Glanvill: 
 "Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death 
 utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble 
 will" 
 
 She died: and I, crushed into the very dust with 
 sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation 
 of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the 
 Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. 
 Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more, than 
 ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few 
 months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I 
 purchased, and put in some repair, an abbey, which I 
 shall not name, in one of the wildest and least fre 
 quented portions of fair England. The gloomy and 
 dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage 
 aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time- 
 honored memories connected with both, had much in 
 unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which 
 had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of 
 the country. Yet although the external abbey, with 
 its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little 
 alteration, I gave way with a child-like perversity, and 
 perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, 
 to a display of more than regal magnificence within. 
 For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a 
 taste, and now they came back to me as if in the 
 dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipi 
 ent madness might have been discovered in the gor 
 geous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings 
 
256 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the 
 Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold ! I had 
 become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, 
 and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring 
 from my dreams. But these absurdities I must not 
 pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one cham 
 ber ever accursed, whither, in a moment of mental 
 alienation, I led from the altar as my bride as the 
 successor of the unforgotten Ligeia the fair-haired 
 and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine. 
 There is no individual portion of the architecture 
 and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not 
 now visibly before me. Where were the souls of the 
 haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of 
 gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an apart 
 ment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so be 
 loved? I have said that I minutely remember the 
 details of the chamber yet I am sadly forgetful on 
 topics of deep moment ; and here there was no system, 
 no keeping, in the fantastic display, to take hold upon 
 the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the 
 castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of 
 capacious size. Occupying the whole southern face of 
 the pentagon was the sole window an immense sheet 
 of unbroken glass from Venice a single pane, and 
 tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the 
 sun or moon, passing through it, fell with a ghastly 
 lustre on the objects within. Over the upper portion 
 of this huge window extended the trellis-work of an 
 aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the 
 turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was ex 
 cessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with 
 the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi- 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 257 
 
 Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most 
 central recess of this melancholy vaulting depended, 
 by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge 
 censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and 
 with many perforations so contrived that there writhed 
 in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, 
 a continual succession of parti-colored fires. 
 
 Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of East 
 ern figure, were in various stations about; and there 
 was the couch, too the bridal couch of an Indian 
 model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a 
 pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the 
 chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black 
 granite, from the tombs of the kings over against 
 Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculp 
 ture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! 
 the chief fantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic 
 in height, even unproportionably so, were hung from 
 summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and 
 massive-looking tapestry tapestry of a material 
 which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as 
 a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as 
 a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of 
 the curtains which partially^ shaded the window. The 
 material was the richest cloth of gold. It was 
 spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque 
 figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon 
 the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But 
 these figures partook of the true character of the 
 arabesque only when regarded from a single point of 
 view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed 
 traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they 
 were made changeable in aspect. To one entering the 
 
258 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosi 
 ties; but upon a farther advance, this appearance 
 gradually departed; and, step by step, as the visitor 
 moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself 
 surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly 
 forms which belong to the superstition of the Nor 
 man, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. 
 The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by 
 the artificial introduction of a strong continual cur 
 rent of wind behind the draperies, giving a hideous 
 and uneasy animation to the whole. 
 
 In halls such as these, in a bridal chamber such as 
 this, I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhal 
 lowed hours of the first month of our marriage 
 passed them with but little disquietude. That my 
 wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper 
 that she shunned me, and loved me but little I 
 could not help perceiving ; but it gave me rather pleas 
 ure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred 
 belonging more to demon than to man. My memory 
 flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to 
 Ligeia,. the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the 
 entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, 
 of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of 
 her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did 
 my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all 
 the fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium 
 dreams, (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles 
 of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, dur 
 ing the silence of the night, or among the sheltered re 
 cesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild 
 eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of 
 my longing for the departed, I could restore her to 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 259 
 
 the pathway she had abandoned ah, could it be for 
 ever? upon the earth. 
 
 About the commencement of the second month of 
 the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked with 
 sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. 
 The fever which consumed her rendered her nights 
 uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, 
 she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the 
 chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no 
 origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps 
 in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. 
 She became at length convalescent finally, well. 
 Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more 
 violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffer 
 ing; and from this attack her frame, at all times 
 feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were, 
 after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more 
 alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and 
 the great exertions of her physicians. With the 
 increase of the chronic disease, which had thus appar 
 ently taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be 
 eradicated by human means, I could not fail to ob 
 serve a similar increase in the nervous irritation of 
 her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial 
 causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more fre 
 quently and pertinaciously, of the sounds of the slight 
 sounds and of the unusual motions among the tapes 
 tries, to which she had formerly alluded. 
 
 One night, near the closing in of September, she 
 pressed this distressing subject with more than usual 
 emphasis upon my attention. She had just awak 
 ened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watch 
 ing, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, 
 
2<5o EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by 
 the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans 
 of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest 
 low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but 
 which I could not hear of motions which she then 
 saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was 
 rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished 
 to show her (what, let me confess it, I could not all 
 believe) that those almost inarticulate breathings, and 
 those very gentle variations of the figures upon the 
 wall, were but the natural effects of that customary 
 rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspread 
 ing her face, had proved to me that my exertions to 
 reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be 
 fainting, and no attendants were within call. I re 
 membered where was deposited a decanter of light 
 wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and 
 hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I 
 stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circum 
 stances of a startling nature attracted my attention. 
 I had felt that some palpable although invisible object 
 had passed lightly by my person ; and I saw that there 
 lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the 
 rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow a faint, 
 indefinite shadow of angelic aspect such as might 
 be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild 
 with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, 
 and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them 
 to Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed the 
 chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which I held to 
 the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially 
 recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while 
 I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fas- 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 261 
 
 tened upon her person. It was then that I became dis 
 tinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet, and 
 near the couch ; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena 
 was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw, 
 or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the goblet, 
 as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of 
 the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and 
 ruby-colored fluid. If this I saw not so Rowena. She 
 swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I forbore to 
 speak to her of a circumstance which must after all, I 
 considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid 
 imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of 
 the lady, by the opium, and by the hour. 
 
 Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception 
 that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby- 
 drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the 
 disorder of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent 
 night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the 
 tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her shrouded 
 body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her 
 as my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted 
 shadow-like before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon 
 the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the 
 varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing 
 of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My 
 eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances 
 of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the 
 censer where I had seen the faint traces of the shadow. 
 It was there, however, no longer ; and breathing with 
 greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid and 
 rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a 
 thousand memories of Ligeia and then came back 
 upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, 
 
262 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had 
 regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned ; and 
 still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one 
 only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon 
 the body of Rowena. 
 
 It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or 
 later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, 
 gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. 
 I felt that it came from the bed of ebony the bed of 
 death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror 
 but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained 
 my vision to detect any motion in the corpse but 
 there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could 
 not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, how 
 ever faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I 
 resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted 
 upon the body. Many minutes elapsed before any cir 
 cumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the 
 mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, 
 a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had 
 flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken 
 small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of un 
 utterable horror and awe, for which the language of 
 mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I 
 felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid 
 where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to 
 restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt 
 that we had been precipitate in our preparations 
 that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some 
 immediate exertion be made ; yet the turret was alto 
 gether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted 
 by the servants there were none within call I had 
 no means of summoning them to my aid without leav- 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 263 
 
 ing the room for many minutes and this I could not 
 venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my en 
 deavors to call back the spirit still hovering. In a 
 short period it was certain, however, that a relapse 
 had taken place ; the color disappeared from both eye 
 lid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that 
 of marble ; the lips became doubly shrivelled and 
 pinched up in the ghastly expression of death ; a re 
 pulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly 
 the surface of the body ; and all the usual rigorous 
 stiffness immediately supervened. I fell back with a 
 shudder upon the couch from which I had been so 
 startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to pas 
 sionate waking visions of Ligeia. 
 
 An hour thus elapsed, when (could it be possible?) 
 I was a second time aware of some vague sound issu 
 ing from the region of the bed. I listened in ex 
 tremity of horror. The sound came again it was a 
 sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw distinctly saw 
 a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterwards they 
 relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. 
 Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the pro 
 found awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. 
 I felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason wan 
 dered ; and it was only by a violent effort that I at 
 length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which 
 duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now 
 a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek 
 and throat ; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole 
 frame ; there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. 
 The lady lived , and with redoubled ardor I betook 
 myself to the task of restoration. I chafed and bathed 
 the temples and the hands, and used every exertion 
 
264 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 which experience, and no little medical reading, could 
 suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the 
 pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of 
 the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body 
 took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the 
 intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loath 
 some peculiarities of that which has been, for many 
 days, a tenant of the tomb. 
 
 And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia and 
 again, (what marvel that I shudder while I write?) 
 again there reached my ears a low sob from the region 
 of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely detail 
 the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I 
 pause to relate how, time after time, until near the 
 period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivi 
 fication was repeated ; how each terrific relapse was 
 only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable 
 death ; how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle 
 with some invisible foe ; and how each struggle was 
 succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the 
 personal appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to 
 a conclusion. 
 
 The greater part of the fearful night had worn 
 away, and she who had been dead, once again stirred 
 and now more vigorously than hitherto, although 
 arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter 
 helplessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle 
 or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the otto 
 man, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of 
 which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible, the 
 least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and 
 now more vigorously than before. The hues of life 
 flushed up with unwonted energy into the counte- 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 265 
 
 nance the limbs relaxed and, save that the eyelids 
 were yet pressed heavily together, and that the band 
 ages and draperies of the grave still imparted their 
 charnel character to the figure, I might have dreamed 
 that Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters 
 of Death. But if this idea was not, even then, alto 
 gether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, 
 arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with 
 closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered 
 in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced 
 bodily and palpably into the middle of the apartment. 
 
 I trembled not I stirred not for a crowd of un 
 utterable fancies connected with the air, the stature, 
 the demeanor of the figure, rushing hurriedly through 
 my brain, had paralyzed had chilled me into stone. 
 J stirred not but gazed upon the apparition. There 
 was a mad disorder in my thoughts a tumult un 
 appeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena 
 who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at 
 all the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena 
 Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, zvhy should I doubt 
 it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth but 
 then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady 
 of Tremaine? And the cheeks there were the roses 
 as in her noon of life yes, these might indeed be 
 the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. 
 And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might 
 it not be hers ? but Jiad she then grown taller since her 
 malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with 
 that thought ? One bound, and I had reached her feet ! 
 Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head 
 the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and 
 there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of 
 
266 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled 
 hair; it -was blacker than the wings of midnight! And 
 now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood 
 before me. "Here then, at least," I shrieked aloud, 
 "can I never can I never be mistaken these are the 
 full, and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost love 
 of the Lady of the LADY LIGEIA." 
 
 THE PURLOINED LETTER (1845) 
 Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. SENECA. 
 
 [The sub-title or enveloping theme might well be 
 called "The Elusiveness of the Obvious." The story 
 is the last of the tales of ratiocination and, like all of 
 Poe s stories of this type, is poured from the B mould. 
 There is an unmistakable note of autobiography in 
 Poe s masterly defense of the poetical and mathema 
 tical faculties conjoined. "As poet and mathema 
 tician," says Dupin, "he [the Minister] would reason 
 well ; as mere mathematician, he could not have rea 
 soned at all." Dupin, more fully portrayed in The 
 Murders in the Rue Morgue, is Poe s best known 
 character. He is the original of Doctor Conan Doyle s 
 Sherlock Holmes and of all the other notable detec 
 tives in recent literature, though it is hardly true, as 
 Leon Kellner puts it, that "Conan Doyle s copy of 
 Poe s Dupin, the now ubiquitous detective genius, 
 Sherlock Holmes, has crowded his prototype out of 
 the memory of the world." It is one of the curiosities 
 of literature that this story is partly responsible for 
 the phrase, "a scrap of paper," which assumed so 
 sinister a significance at the beginning of the World 
 [War. The phrase emerged as the name of a play put 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 267 
 
 together by Sardou in 1861 and produced in New 
 York by Lester Wallack. Sardou called his play Lcs 
 pattes de mouche but it was a blend of The Gold-Bug 
 and The Purloined Letter. As "a scrap of paper" fig 
 ures prominently in the former story, the pnrase 
 became the title of Sardou s play when translated into 
 English.] 
 
 At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the 
 autumn of 18 , I was enjoying the twofold luxury of 
 meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my 
 friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or 
 book closet, au troiswme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Fau 
 bourg St. Germain. For one hour at least we had 
 maintained a profound silence; while each, to any 
 casual observer, might have seemed intently and ex 
 clusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke 
 that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For 
 myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain 
 topics which had formed matter for conversation be 
 tween us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean 
 the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attend 
 ing the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, 
 therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the 
 door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted 
 
 our old acquaintance, Monsieur G , the Prefect of 
 
 the Parisian police. 
 
 We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was 
 nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the con 
 temptible about the man, and we had not seen him 
 for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, 
 and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a 
 lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon 
 
268 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 G s saying that he had called to consult us, or 
 
 rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some 
 official business which had occasioned a great deal of 
 trouble. 
 
 "If it is any point requiring reflection," observed 
 Dupin, as he forebore to enkindle the wick, "we shall 
 examine it to better purpose in the dark." 
 
 "That is another of your odd notions," said the 
 Prefect, who had a fashion of calling everything "odd" 
 that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived 
 amid an absolute legion of "oddities." 
 
 "Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor 
 with a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable chair. 
 
 "And what is the difficulty now ?" I asked. "Noth 
 ing more in the assassination way, I hope?" 
 
 "Oh, no ; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the 
 business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt 
 that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves ; but 
 then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details 
 of it, because it is so excessively odd" 
 
 "Simple and odd," said Dupin. 
 
 "Why, yes ; and not exactly that, either. The fact 
 is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the 
 affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether." 
 
 "Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing 
 which puts you at fault," said my friend. 
 
 "What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, 
 laughing heartily. 
 
 "Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said 
 Dupin. 
 
 "Oh, good Heavens! who ever heard of such an 
 idea?" 
 
 "A little too self-evident." 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 269 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!" roared 
 our visitor, profoundly amused. "O Dupin, you will 
 be the death of me yet !" 
 
 "And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he 
 gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and set 
 tled himself in his chair. "I will tell you in a few 
 words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that 
 this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and 
 that I should most probably lose the position I now 
 hold were it known that I confided it to any one." 
 
 "Proceed," said I. 
 
 "Or not," said Dupin. 
 
 "Well, then ; I have received personal information, 
 from a very high quarter, that a certain document of 
 the last importance has been purloined from the royal 
 apartments. The individual who purloined it is 
 known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. 
 It is known, also, that it still remains in his 
 possession." 
 
 "How is this known ?" asked Dupin. 
 
 "It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect, "from 
 the nature of the document, and from the non-appear 
 ance of certain results which would at once arise from 
 its passing out of the robber s possession ; that is to 
 say, from his employing it as he must design in the 
 end to employ it." 
 
 "Be a little more explicit," I said. 
 
 "Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper 
 gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter 
 where such power is immensely valuable." The Pre 
 fect was fond of the cant of diplomacy. 
 
2/o EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin. 
 
 "No ? well ; the disclosure of the document to a 
 third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in 
 question the honor of a personage of most exalted 
 station ; and this fact gives the holder of the document 
 an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose 
 honor and peace are so jeopardized." 
 
 "But this ascendancy," I interposed, "would de 
 pend upon the robber s knowledge of the loser s knowl 
 edge of the robber. Who would dare " 
 
 "The thief," said G , "is the Minister D , 
 
 who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as 
 those becoming a man. The method of the theft was 
 not less ingenious than bold. The document in ques 
 tion a letter, to be frank had been received by the 
 personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. 
 During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by 
 the entrance of the other exalted personage, from 
 whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After 
 a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, 
 she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. 
 The address, however, was uppermost, and, the con 
 tents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At 
 
 this juncture enters the Minister D . His lynx eye 
 
 immediately perceives the paper, recognizes the hand 
 writing of the address, observes the confusion of the 
 personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After 
 some business transaction, hurried through in his or 
 dinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar 
 to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, 
 and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. 
 Again he converses for some fifteen minutes upon 
 the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he takes 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 271 
 
 also from the table the letter to which he had no 
 claim. Its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared 
 not call attention to the act, in the presence of the 
 third personage, who stood at her elbow. The Min 
 ister decamped, leaving his own letter one of no im 
 portance upon the table." 
 
 "Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have pre 
 cisely what you demand to make the ascendancy 
 complete the robber s knowledge of the loser s 
 knowledge of the robber." 
 
 "Yes," replied the Prefect, "and the power thus 
 attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for 
 political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The 
 personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every 
 day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But 
 this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven 
 to despair, she has committed the matter to me." 
 
 "Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirl 
 wind of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I 
 suppose, be desired, or even imagined." 
 
 "You flatter me," replied the Prefect, "but it is-, 
 possible that some such opinion may have been, 
 entertained." 
 
 "It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the letter- 
 is still in possession of the Minister; since it is this: 
 possession, and not any employment of the letter,, 
 which bestows the power. With the employment the; 
 power departs." 
 
 "True," said G ; "and upon this conviction I 
 
 proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search 
 of the Minister s Hotel ; and here my chief embarrass 
 ment lay in the necessity of searching without his 
 knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned 
 
272 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of the danger which would result from giving him 
 reason to suspect our design." 
 
 "But," said I, "you are quite au fait- in these in 
 vestigations. The Parisian police have done this thing 
 often before." 
 
 "Oh, yes; and for this reason I did not despair. 
 The habits of the Minister gave me, too, a great ad 
 vantage. He is frequently absent from home all night. 
 His servants are by no means numerous. They sleep 
 at a distance from their master s apartment, and, being 
 chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have 
 keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber 
 or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not 
 passed, during the greater part of which I have not 
 
 been engaged, personally, in ransacking the D 
 
 Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a 
 great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not 
 abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied 
 that the thief is a more astute man than myself. I 
 fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner 
 of the premises in which it is possible that the paper 
 can be concealed." 
 
 "But is it not possible," I suggested, "that although 
 the letter may be in possession of the Minister, as it 
 unquestionably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere 
 than upon his own premises?" 
 
 "This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The pres 
 ent peculiar condition of affairs at court, and 
 
 especially of those intrigues in which D is known 
 
 to be involved, would render the instant availability of 
 the document its susceptibility of being produced at 
 a moment s notice a point of nearly equal importance 
 with its possession." 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 273 
 
 "Its susceptibility of being produced?" said I. 
 
 "That is to say, of being destroyed! said Dupin. 
 
 "True," I observed ; "the paper is clearly then 
 upon the premises. As for its being upon the person 
 of the Minister, we may consider that as out of the 
 question." 
 
 "Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice 
 waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person rigorously 
 searched under my own inspection." 
 
 "You might have spared yourself this trouble," 
 
 said Dupin. "D , I presume, is not altogether a 
 
 fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these waylay- 
 ings, as a matter of course." 
 
 "Not altogether a fool," said G , "but then he s 
 
 a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a 
 fool." 
 
 "True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful 
 whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been 
 guilty of certain doggerel myself." 
 
 "Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of 
 your search." 
 
 "Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we 
 searched everywhere. I have had long experience in 
 these affairs. I took the entire building, room by 
 room, devoting the nights of a whole week to each. 
 We examined, first, the furniture of each apartment. 
 We opened every possible drawer ; and I presume you 
 know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a 
 thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any man is a 
 dolt who permits a secret drawer to escape him in a 
 search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There is 
 a certain amount of bulk of space to be accounted 
 for in every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. 
 
274 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 The fiftieth part of a line could not escape us. After 
 the cabinets we took the chairs. The cushions we 
 probed with fine long needles you have seen me em 
 ploy. From the tables we removed the tops." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 "Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly 
 arranged piece of furniture, is removed by the person 
 wishing to conceal an article ; then the leg is excavated, 
 the article deposited within the cavity, and the top 
 replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts are em 
 ployed in the same way." 
 
 "But could not the cavity be detected by sound 
 ing?" I asked. 
 
 "By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a 
 sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it. Be 
 sides, in our case we were obliged to proceed without 
 noise." 
 
 "But you could not have removed you could not 
 have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which 
 it would have been possible to make a deposit in the 
 manner you mention. A letter may be compressed 
 into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or 
 bulk from a large knitting needle, and in this form it 
 might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. 
 You did not take to pieces all the chairs ?" 
 
 "Certainly not ; but we did better we examined 
 the rungs of every chair in the Hotel, and indeed, the 
 jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid 
 of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any 
 traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed 
 to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, 
 for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. 
 Any disorder in the gluing any unusual gaping in 
 the joints would have sufficed to insure detection," 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 275 
 
 "I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the 
 boards and the plates, and you probed the beds and the 
 bedclothes, as well as the curtains and carpets?" 
 
 "That, of course ; and when we had absolutely 
 completed every particle of the furniture in this way, 
 then we examined the house itself. We divided its 
 entire surface into compartments, which we numbered, 
 so that none might be missed ; then we scrutinized each 
 individual square inch throughout the premises, in 
 cluding the two houses immediately adjoining, with 
 the microscope, as before." 
 
 "The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed; "you 
 must have had a great deal of trouble." 
 
 "We had ; but the reward offered is prodigious." 
 "You include the grounds about the houses?" 
 "All the grounds are paved with bricks. They 
 gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined 
 the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed." 
 
 "You looked among D s papers, of course, 
 
 and into the books of the library ?" 
 
 "Certainly ; we opened every package and parcel ; 
 we not only opened every book, but we turned over 
 every leaf in each volume, not contenting ourselves 
 with a mere shake, according to the fashion of some 
 of our police officers. We also measured the thick 
 ness of every book-coz^r, with the most accurate 
 admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous 
 scrutiny of the miscroscope. Had any of the bindings 
 been recently meddled with, it would have been utterly 
 impossible that the fact should have escaped observa 
 tion. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands 
 of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with 
 the needles." 
 
276 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "You explored the floors beneath the carpets?" 
 
 "Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and 
 examined the boards with the microscope." 
 
 "And the paper on the walls?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You looked into the cellars?" 
 
 "We did." 
 
 "Then," I said, "you have been making a miscal 
 culation, and the letter is not upon the premises, as you 
 suppose." 
 
 "I fear you are right there," said the Prefect. 
 "And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to do?" 
 
 "To make a thorough re-search of the premises." 
 
 "That is absolutely needless," replied G . "I 
 
 am not more sure that I breathe than I am that the 
 letter is not at the Hotel." 
 
 "I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin. 
 
 "You have, of course, an accurate description of 
 the letter?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" And here the Prefect, producing a 
 memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud a minute 
 account of the internal, and especially of the external 
 appearance of the missing document. Soon after 
 finishing the perusal of this description, he took his 
 departure, more entirely depressed in spirits than I 
 had ever known the good gentleman before. 
 
 In about a month afterwards he paid us another 
 visit, and found us occupied very nearly as before. 
 He took a pipe and a chair and entered into some or 
 dinary conversation. At length I said, 
 
 "Well, but, G , what of the purloined letter? I 
 
 presume you have at last made up your mind that 
 there is no such thing as overreaching the Minister?" 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 277 
 
 "Confound him, say I yes ; I made the re-exami 
 nation, however, as Dupin suggested but it was all 
 labor lost, as I knew it would be." 
 
 "How much was the reward offered, did you say ?" 
 asked Dupin. 
 
 "Why, a very great deal a very liberal reward I 
 don t like to say how much, precisely ; but one thing I 
 will say, that I wouldn t mind giving my individual 
 check for fifty thousand francs to any one who could 
 obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming of 
 more and more importance every day ; and the reward 
 has been lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, 
 I could do no more than I have done." 
 
 "Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the 
 
 whiffs of his meerschaum, "I really think, G -, 
 
 you have not exerted yourself to the utmost in this 
 matter. You might do a little more, I think, eh?" 
 
 "How? in what way?" 
 
 "Why puff, puff you might puff, puff em 
 ploy counsel in the matter, eh ? puff, puff, puff. Do 
 you remember the story they tell of Abernethy ?" 
 
 "No ; hang Abernethy !" 
 
 "To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once 
 upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design 
 of sponging upon this Abernethy for a medical 
 opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary 
 conversation in a private company, he insinuated his 
 case to the physician, as that of an imaginary 
 individual. 
 
 We will suppose/ said the miser, that his symp 
 toms are such and such ; now, doctor, what would you 
 have directed him to take? 
 
 " Take ! said Abernethy, why, take advice, to be 
 
278 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 "But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I am 
 perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I 
 would really give fifty thousand francs to any one who 
 would aid me in the matter." 
 
 "In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer, 
 and producing a check-book, "you may as well fill me 
 up a check for the amount mentioned. When you 
 have signed it, I will hand you the letter." 
 
 I was astounded. The Prefect appeared abso 
 lutely thunder-stricken. For some minutes he re 
 mained speechless and motionless, looking incredu 
 lously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that 
 seemed starting from their sockets ; then, apparently 
 recovering himself in some measure, he seized a pen, 
 and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally 
 filled up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs, 
 and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter 
 examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocket- 
 book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a let 
 ter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary 
 grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a 
 trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and 
 then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at 
 length unceremoniously from the room and from the 
 house, without having uttered a syllable since Dupin 
 had requested him to fill up the check. 
 
 When he had gone, my friend entered into some 
 explanations. 
 
 "The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly 
 able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, 
 cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge 
 which their duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, 
 when G detailed to us his mode of searching the 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 279 
 
 premises at the Hotel D , I felt entire confidence in 
 
 his having made a satisfactory investigation so far as 
 his labors extended." 
 
 "So far as his labors extended?" said I. 
 
 "Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were 
 not only the best of their kind, but carried out to ab 
 solute perfection. Had the letter been deposited 
 within the range of their search, these fellows would, 
 beyond a question, have found it." 
 
 I merely laughed but he seemed quite serious in 
 all that he said. 
 
 "The measures, then," he continued, "were good in 
 their kind, and well executed ; their defect lay in their 
 being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A cer 
 tain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the 
 Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed to which he forc 
 ibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by 
 being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand ; 
 and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I 
 knew one about eight years of age, whose success at 
 guessing in the game of even and odd attracted uni 
 versal admiration. This game is simple, and is played 
 with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number 
 of these toys, and demands of another whether that 
 number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the 
 guesser wins one ; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to 
 whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of 
 course he had some principle of guessing ; and this lay 
 in mere observation and admeasurement of the astute 
 ness of his opponents. For example, an arrant sim 
 pleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand 
 asks, Are they even or odd ? Our schoolboy replies, 
 odd/ and loses ; but upon the second trial he wins, for 
 
280 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even 
 upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just 
 sufficient to make him have them odd upon the sec 
 ond ; I will therefore guess odd ; he guesses odd, and 
 wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first 
 he would have reasoned thus : This fellow finds that 
 in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, 
 he will propose to himself, upon the first impulse, a 
 simple variation from even to odd, as did the first sim 
 pleton; but then a second thought will suggest that 
 this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide 
 upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess 
 even ; he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of 
 reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows term 
 lucky, what, in its last analysis, is it?" 
 
 "It is merely," I said, "an indentification of the 
 reasoner s intellect with that of his opponent." 
 
 "It is," said Dupin; "and, upon inquiring of the 
 boy by what means he effected the thorough identifi 
 cation in which his success consisted, I received answer 
 as follows : When I wish to find out how wise, or how 
 stupid, .or how good, or how wicked is any one, or 
 what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the 
 expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in ac 
 cordance w r ith the expression of his, and then wait to 
 see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or 
 heart, as if to match or correspond with the expres 
 sion/ This response of the schoolboy lies at the bot 
 tom of all the spurious profundity which has been 
 attributed to Rochefoucauld, to La Bruyere, to Mach- 
 iavelli, and to Campanella." 
 
 "And the identification," I said, "of the reasoner s 
 intellect with that of his opponent, depends, if I un- 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 281 
 
 derstand you aright, upon the accuracy with which 
 the opponent s intellect is admeasured." 
 
 Tor its practical value it depends upon this," re 
 plied Dupin, "and the Prefect and his cohort fail so 
 frequently, first, by default of this identification, and, 
 secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through 
 non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they 
 are engaged. They consider only their own ideas of 
 ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden, ad 
 vert only to the modes in which they would have hid 
 den it. They are right in this much that their own 
 ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the 
 mass : but when the cunning of the individual felon is 
 diverse in character from their own, the felon foils 
 them, of course. This always happens when it is 
 above their own, and very usually when it is below. 
 They have no variation of principle in their investiga 
 tions; at best, when urged by some unusual emer 
 gency by some extraordinary reward they extend 
 or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without 
 touching their principles. What, for example, in this 
 
 case of D , has been done to vary the principle of 
 
 action? What is all this boring, and probing, and 
 sounding, and scrutinizing with the miscrocope, and 
 dividing the surface of the building into registered 
 square inches what is it all but an exaggeration of 
 the application of the one principle or set of principles 
 of search, which are based upon the one set of notions 
 regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect, in 
 the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? 
 Do you not see he has taken it for granted that all men 
 proceed to conceal a letter, not exactly in a gimlet- 
 hole in a chair leg but, at least, in soiine out-of-the- 
 
282 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of 
 thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter in 
 a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg? And do you not 
 see, also, that such recherchcs nooks for concealment 
 are adapted only for ordinary occasions and would be 
 adopted only by ordinary intellects ; for, in all cases of 
 concealment, a disposal of the article concealed a dis 
 posal of it in this recherche manner is, in the very 
 first instance, presumable and presumed ; and thus its 
 discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but al 
 together upon the mere care, patience, and determina 
 tion of the seekers ; and where the case is of import 
 ance or, what amounts to the same thing in policial 
 eyes, when the reward is of magnitude the qualities 
 in question have ncz er been known to fail. You will 
 now understand what I meant in suggesting that, had 
 the purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the 
 limits of the Prefect s examination in other words, 
 had the principle . of its concealment been compre 
 hended within the principles of the Prefect its dis 
 covery would have been a matter altogether beyond 
 question. This functionary, however, has been thor 
 oughly mystified ; and the remote source of his defeat 
 lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool, be 
 cause he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are 
 poets ; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of 
 a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all 
 poets are fools." 
 
 "But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are 
 two brothers, I know ; and both have attained reputa 
 tion in letters. The Minister, I believe, has written 
 learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a 
 mathematician, and no poet." 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 283 
 
 "You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. 
 As poet and mathematician, he would reason well ; as 
 mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, 
 and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect." 
 
 "You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, 
 which have been contradicted by the voice of the 
 world. You do not mean to set at naught the well- 
 digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason 
 has long been regarded as the reason par excellence." 
 
 " II y a parier, " replied Dupin, quoting from 
 Chamfort, " ( que toute idee publique, toute convention 
 regue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand 
 nombre! The mathematicians, I grant you, have done 
 their best to promulgate the popular error to which 
 you allude, and which is none the less an error for its 
 promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better 
 cause, for example, they have insinuated the term 
 analysis into application to algebra. The French are 
 the originators of this particular deception; but if a 
 term is of any importance if words derive any value 
 from applicability then analysis conveys algebra/ 
 as much as, in Latin, ambitus implies ambition/ re- 
 ligio religion/ or homines honesti* a set of honorable 
 men." 
 
 "You have a quarrel on hand, I see/ said I, "with 
 some of the algebraists of Paris ; but proceed." 
 
 "I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of 
 that reason which is cultivated in any especial form 
 other than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in par 
 ticular, the reason educed by mathematical study. The 
 mathematics are the science of form and quantity ; 
 mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to ob 
 servation upon form and quantity. The great error 
 
284 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called 
 pure algebra are abstract or general truths. And this 
 error is so egregious that I am confounded at the uni 
 versality with which it has been received. Mathe 
 matical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What 
 is true of relation of form and quantity is often 
 grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In 
 this latter science it is very usually untrue that the ag 
 gregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry 
 also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive 
 it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have 
 not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum 
 of their values apart. There are numerous other 
 mathematical truths which are only truths within the 
 limits of relation. But the mathematician argues, 
 from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of 
 an absolutely general applicability as the world in 
 deed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned 
 Mythology/ mentions an analogous source of error, 
 when he says that although the Pagan fables are not 
 believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make 
 inferences from them as existing realities/ With the 
 algebraists, however, who are Pagans themselves, the 
 Pagan fables are believed, and the inferences are 
 made, not so much through lapse of memory, as 
 through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In 
 short, I never yet encountered the mere mathemati 
 cian who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one 
 who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith 
 that .r 2 ~\-p.v was absolutely and unconditionally equal 
 to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of expe 
 riment, if you please, that you believe occasions may 
 occur where x*-\-px is not altogether equal to q, and, 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 285 
 
 having made him understand what you mean, get out 
 of his reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond 
 doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down. 
 
 "I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely 
 laughed at his last observations, "that if the Minister 
 had been no more than a mathematician, the Prefect 
 would have been under no necessity of giving me this 
 check. I knew him, however, as both mathematician 
 and poet, and my measures were adapted to his ca 
 pacity, with reference to the circumstances by which 
 he was surrounded. I knew him as courtier, too, and 
 as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could 
 not fail to be aware of the ordinary politicial modes of 
 action. He could not have failed to anticipate and 
 events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate 
 the way lay ings to which he was subjected. He must 
 have foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations of 
 his premises. His frequent absences from home at 
 night, which were hailed by the Prefect as certain aids 
 to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford op 
 portunity for thorough search to the police, and thus 
 the sooner to impress them with the conviction to 
 which G , in fact, did finally arrive the convic 
 tion that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, 
 also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at 
 some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the 
 invariable principle of policial action in searches for 
 articles concealed I felt that this whole train of 
 thought would necessarily pass through the mind of 
 the Minister. It would imperatively lead him to de 
 spise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. He could 
 not, I reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most 
 intricate and remote recess of his Hotel would be as 
 
286 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the 
 probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the 
 Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a 
 matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately in 
 duced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, 
 perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I 
 suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just 
 possible this mystery troubled him so much on account 
 of its being so very self-evident." 
 
 "Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I 
 really thought he would have fallen into convulsions." 
 
 "The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds 
 with very strict analogies to the immaterial ; and thus 
 some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical 
 dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to 
 strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a de 
 scription. The principle of the vis inertice for exam 
 ple, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. 
 It is not more true in the former, that a large body is 
 with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, 
 and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate 
 with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intel 
 lects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more 
 constant, and more eventful in their movements than 
 those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, 
 and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the 
 first few steps of their progress. Again: have you 
 ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop- 
 doors, are the most attractive of attention ?" 
 
 "I have never given the matter a thought," I said. 
 
 "There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which 
 is played upon a map. One party playing requires 
 another to find a given word the name of town, 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 287 
 
 river, state, or empire any word, in short, upon the 
 motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice 
 in the game generally seeks to embarrass his oppo 
 nents by giving them the most minutely lettered 
 names ; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in 
 large characters, from one end of the chart to the 
 other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and 
 placards of the street, escape observation by dint of 
 being excessively obvious ; and here the physical over 
 sight is precisely analogous with the moral inappre- 
 hension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed 
 those considerations which are too obtrusively and 
 too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it ap 
 pears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding 
 of the Prefect. He never once thought it probable, or 
 possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter im 
 mediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way 
 of best preventing any portion of that world from per 
 ceiving it. 
 
 "But the more I reflected upon the daring, dash 
 ing, and discriminating ingenuity of D ; upon the 
 
 fact that the document must always have been at hand, 
 if he intended to use it to good purpose ; and upon the 
 decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was 
 not hidden within the limits of that dignitary s ordi 
 nary search the more satisfied I became that, to con 
 ceal this letter, the Minister had resorted to the com 
 prehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting 
 to conceal it at all. 
 
 "Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair 
 of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite 
 
 by accident, at the Ministerial Hotel. I found D 
 
 at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, 
 
288 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. 
 He is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being 
 now alive but that is only when nobody sees him. 
 
 "To be even with him, I complained of my weak 
 eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, 
 under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly sur 
 veyed the apartment, while seemingly intent only upon 
 the conversation of my host. 
 
 "I paid especial attention to a large writing-table 
 near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly 
 some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one 
 or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, 
 however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I 
 saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. 
 
 "At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the 
 room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste 
 board, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from 
 a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the man- 
 tlepiece. In this rack, which had three or four com 
 partments, were five or six visiting cards and a soli 
 tary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. 
 It was torn nearly in two, across the middle as if a 
 design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as 
 worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. 
 
 It had a large black seal, bearing the D cipher 
 
 very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminu 
 tive female hand, to D , the Minister himself. It 
 
 was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemp 
 tuously, into one of the upper divisions of the rack. 
 
 "No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I con 
 cluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be 
 sure, it was, to all appearance, radically different from 
 the one of which the Prefect had read us so minute a 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 289 
 
 description. Here the seal was large and black, with 
 
 the D cipher ; there it was small and red, with the 
 
 ducal arms of the S family. Here the address, to 
 
 the Minister, was diminutive and feminine; there the 
 superscription, to a certain royal personage, was 
 markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a 
 point of correspondence. But then, the radicalness 
 of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; 
 the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so incon 
 sistent with the true methodical habits of D , and 
 
 so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into 
 an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these 
 things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of 
 this document, full in the view of every visitor, and 
 thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to 
 which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, 
 were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who 
 came with the intention to suspect. 
 
 "I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, 
 while I maintained a most animated discussion with 
 the Minister, upon a topic which I knew well had 
 never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my at 
 tention really riveted upon the letter. In this exami 
 nation, I committed to memory its external appearance 
 and arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, 
 upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial 
 doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the 
 edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chafed 
 than seemed necessary. They presented the broken 
 appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, 
 having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is 
 refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or 
 edges which had formed the original fold. This dis- 
 
290 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 covery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the 
 letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-di 
 rected, and resealed. I bade the Minister good-morn 
 ing, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold 
 snuff-box upon the table. 
 
 "The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when 
 we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the 
 preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud 
 report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath 
 the windows of the Hotel, and was succeeded by a 
 series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a mob. 
 
 D rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked 
 
 out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack, took 
 the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a 
 facsimile (so far as regards externals), which I had 
 carefully prepared at my lodgings imitating the 
 
 D cipher, very readily, by means of a seal formed 
 
 of bread. 
 
 "The disturbance in the street had been occasioned 
 by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He 
 had fired it among a crowd of women and children! 
 It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the 
 fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a 
 
 drunkard. When he had gone, D came from the 
 
 window, whither I had followed him immediately upon 
 securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade 
 him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my 
 own pay." 
 
 "But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing 
 the letter by a facsimile ? Would it not have been bet 
 ter, at the first visit, to have seized it openly, and 
 departed?" 
 
 "D ," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a 
 
THE WRITER OF SHORT STORIES 291 
 
 man of nerve. His Hotel, too, is not without attend 
 ants devoted to his interest. Had I made the wild at 
 tempt you suggest, I might never have left the Minis 
 terial presence alive. The good people of Paris might 
 have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart 
 from these considerations. You know my political 
 prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a partisan of 
 the lady concerned. For eighteen months the Minis 
 ter has had her in his power. She has now him in 
 hers since, being unaware that the letter is not in his 
 possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it 
 was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, 
 to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will 
 not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very 
 well to talk about the facilis des census Averni; but in 
 all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is 
 far more easy to get up than to come down. In the 
 present instance I have no sympathy at least no pity 
 for him who descends. He is that monstrum hor- 
 rendwn, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, 
 however, that I should like very well to know the pre 
 cise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by 
 her whom the Prefect terms a certain personage/ he 
 is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in 
 the card-rack?" 
 
 "How? Did you put anything particular in it?" 
 
 "Why it did not seem altogether right to leave 
 
 the interior blank that would have been insulting. 
 
 D , at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I 
 
 told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remem 
 ber. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in 
 regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted 
 him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clew. He 
 
292 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into 
 the middle of the blank sheet the words 
 
 Un dessein si funeste, 
 
 S il n est digne d Atree, est digne de Thyeste. 
 They are to be found in Crebillon s Atree." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE FRONTIERSMAN 
 
 EVERY one must have noticed in Poe s stones a 
 tendency at times to become essays. Narration and 
 exposition play hide-and-seek. O. Henry, in one of 
 the last discussions that he had about his art, told of 
 his perplexity in deciding whether to place his exposi 
 tory matter first or last in his stories. Poe has writ 
 ten a few masterpieces that it is customary to call 
 "Tales" or "Essays." But while there is much narra 
 tion in them, there is no plot ; and the exposition that 
 runs through them is hardly of the essay kind. It is 
 in fact illumination rather than exposition. Though, 
 this chapter might be called "The Prose Poet" or "The 
 Seer" or "The Philosopher," I prefer to entitle it "The 
 Frontiersman." Each selection represents Poe as seek 
 ing for truth along those vast borderlands of specula 
 tion in which vision and intuition tread with firmer 
 footing than smug logic or traditional philosophy. 
 
 There is more pure beauty in these sketches than 
 is found in the majority of the short stories but not 
 enough to justify metrical form or stanzaic division. 
 In length, too, these poems in prose are midway be 
 tween the poem proper and the recognized short story. 
 Whatever you call them, you can not know Poe with 
 out knowing that he was more than a literary critic, a 
 lyric poet, and the father of the short story. He was 
 a frontiersman who found the old boundary lines of 
 
 293 
 
294 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 type and form too restricted for the teeming visions 
 and insistent questionings that pushed onward and up 
 ward for ampler spaces and keener winds. Came 
 
 One everlasting Whisper day and night repeated so : 
 "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the 
 
 Ranges 
 Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. 
 
 Go !" 
 
 Poe tried to "find it" and has left to us, if not the 
 attained treasure behind the Ranges, at least the vision 
 and the urge that sped him on the way. 
 
 "In reading and re-reading his collected works," 
 says Arthur Ransome, 1 "I learnt that, perfect as his 
 best things are, he has another title to immortality. It 
 became clear that Poe s brain was more stimulating 
 than his art, and that the tales and poems by which he 
 is known were but the by-products of an unconcluded 
 search. Throughout Poe s life he sought a philosophy 
 of beauty that should also be a philosophy of life. He 
 did not find it, and the unconcluded nature of his 
 search is itself sufficient to explain his present vitality. 
 Seekers rather than finders stimulate the imagination." 
 In The Power of Words Poe makes Agathos say : "Ah, 
 not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition 
 of knowledge ! In forever knowing, we are forever 
 blessed ; but to know all were the curse of a fiend" a 
 thought in which Browning and Poe clasp hands. 
 
 Poe s mastery of English is more evident, I think, 
 in his prose than in his poetry, and more evident in 
 the selections that follow than in his stories. His 
 tales of ratiocination, for example, his masterpieces of 
 
 1 See his Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Study (London, 
 I 9 IO )> P- IX, a book of rare insight and knowledge. 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 295 
 
 the B type, show chiefly the logical side of the man 
 and illustrate a zest and acumen in intellectual pro 
 cesses that have rarely formed any part of the dowry 
 of poetic genius. The style, moreover, is sculptural. 
 In his stories of the A type, the style is richer, being 
 more plastic and more pictorial. But in these frontier 
 sketches there is a blend of the sculptural and plastic 
 and pictorial not equaled because not called for in the 
 more purely narrative prose. There is the residuum of 
 intellectual activity but the activity itself is kept in the 
 background. We are distantly encompassed rather 
 than immediately neighbored by it. Imagination takes 
 the lead, and the language assumes a gravity, a somber 
 beauty, a hymnic cadence, an utter identification with 
 mood and thought that one finds heralded only in the 
 purple patches of a Bacon, a Milton, a Jeremy Taylor, 
 or a Sir Thomas Browne. If style be, as Lowell de 
 fines it, "the establishment of a perfect mutual under 
 standing between the worker and his material," P oe 
 found it at last in these soaring meditations that com 
 pass not only life and death, not only the natural and 
 the supernatural, but also the dizzy arches that span 
 the spaces between. 
 
 II 
 
 Let the main effort be as before to find the pivotal 
 thought in each selection, and then to recognize and 
 enjoy the art by which the central thought is illumin 
 ated rather than expounded. Separate passages will, 
 better repay study here than in the stories. But if a 
 passage is taken out of its setting for any purpose, let 
 it be put back and re-appraised as a part of a larger 
 
296 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 whole before making the attempt to pass final judg 
 ment or to measure the intended effect. 
 
 SHADOW A PARABLE (1835) 
 
 Yea ! though I walk through the valley of the Shadow. 
 
 PSALM OF DAVID. 
 
 [The conclusion of this meditation on death has 
 been universally recognized as one of Poe s master 
 pieces of blended harmony. Brownell, who considers 
 Shadow only a bit of "elaborate and hollow solemnity," 
 concedes in the ending "a note of real pith and dig 
 nity." But to concede pith and dignity at the end is, 
 in the case of Poe, to concede pith and dignity through 
 out ; for the texture of the ending is the texture of the 
 whole, and the form of the ending is only the whole 
 massed and made convergent.] 
 
 Ye who read are still among the living ; but I who 
 write shall have long since gone my way into the 
 region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall 
 happen, and secret things be known, and many cen 
 turies shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of 
 men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbe 
 lieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find 
 much to ponder upon in the characters here graven 
 with a stylus of iron. 
 
 The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings 
 more intense than terror for which there is no name 
 upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had 
 taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the 
 black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To 
 those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 297 
 
 unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill ; and 
 to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident 
 that now had arrived the alternation of that seven 
 hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance 
 of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red 
 ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of 
 the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself mani 
 fest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in 
 the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind. 
 
 Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the 
 walls of a noble hall in a dim city called Ptolemais, 
 we sat at night, a company of seven. And to our 
 chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door 
 of brass ; and the door was fashioned by the artisan 
 Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fas 
 tened from within. Black draperies likewise, in the 
 gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the 
 lurid stars, and the peopleless streets ; but the boding 
 and the memory of Evil, they would not be so ex 
 cluded. There were things around us and about of 
 which I can render no distinct account, things ma 
 terial and spiritual ; heaviness in the atmosphere, a 
 sense of suffocation, anxiety, and, above all, that ter 
 rible state of existence which the nervous experience 
 when the senses are keenly living and awake, and 
 meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead 
 weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs, upon 
 the household furniture, upon the goblets from which 
 we drank; and all things were depressed and borne 
 down thereby, all things save only the flames of the 
 seven iron lamps which illumined our revel. Uprear- 
 ing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus 
 remained burning, all pallid and motionless ; and in 
 
298 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round 
 table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there 
 assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, 
 and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his com 
 panions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our 
 proper way, which was hysterical, and sang the 
 songs of Anacreon, which are madness, and drank 
 deeply, although the purple wine reminded us of 
 blood. For there was yet another tenant of our cham 
 ber in the person of young Zo ilus. Dead and at full 
 length he lay, enshrouded, the genius and the demon 
 of the scene. Alas ! he bore no portion in our mirth, 
 save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, 
 and his eyes, in which Death had but half extinguished 
 the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest 
 in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the 
 merriment of those who are to die. But although I, 
 Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, 
 still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of 
 their expression, and, gazing down steadily into the 
 depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and 
 sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But 
 gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, 
 rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the cham 
 ber, became weak and undistinguishable, and so faded 
 away. And, lo! from among those sable draperies 
 where the sounds of the song departed, there came 
 forth a dark and undefined shadow, a shadow sucTi 
 as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion from 
 the figure of a man ; but it was the shadow neither of 
 man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And, 
 quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it 
 at length rested in full view upon the surface of the 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 299 
 
 door of brass. But the shadow was vague and form 
 less and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of 
 man nor of God neither God of Greece, nor God of 
 Chaldsea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow 
 rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of 
 the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke 
 any word, but there became stationary and remained. 
 And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I 
 remember aright, over against the feet of the young 
 Zoi lus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, 
 having seen the shadow as it came out from among 
 the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast 
 down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths 
 of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speak 
 ing some low words, demanded of the shadow its 
 dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow 
 answered, "I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near 
 to the catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim 
 plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Char- 
 onian canal." And then did we, the seven, start from 
 our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shudder 
 ing, and aghast: for the tones in the voice of the 
 shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a 
 multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences 
 from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in 
 the well-remembered and familiar accents of many 
 thousand departed friends. 
 
 SILENCE - A FABLE (1839) 
 
 Ev8pvatv 8 OQECOV xoQuqxxi TE xai 
 riQcooveg TE y.al xagafiQau 
 
 ALCMAN: 60 [10] 646. 
 
 The mountain pinnacles slumber ; valleys, crags, and caves 
 are silent. 
 
300 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 [The trend of the thought will be better understood 
 if you call the selection "Desolation and Silence," for 
 the fable is a dirge of noisy desolation succeeded by 
 brooding and illimitable silence. As "the curse of 
 tumult" marks the culmination of desolation, so "the 
 curse of silence" heralds the coming of unbroken still 
 ness. A phrase from The Coliseum, "Silence! and 
 Desolation !", contains the stepping-stones of the fable, 
 though in reversed order. The introduction of a single 
 character "in the toga of old Rome" shows that Poe, 
 as in The Coliseum, was thinking of desolation and si 
 lence against the background of Rome that was. He 
 pictures here, however, not "the grandeur that was 
 Rome" nor Roman memories. 
 
 Clothing us in a robe of more than glory. 
 
 The theme now is "the abomination of desolation - 
 (Matthew 24:15). Ruin, in other words, is etched not 
 as we see it through enhancing centuries of retrospect 
 but "as an incubus upon our hearts, and a shadow upon 
 our brain." The lynx mentioned in the last sentence 
 is not a part of the Demon s story : he is a symbol of 
 the persistent but futile questioning with which hu 
 manity has always fronted the silences of history.] 
 
 "Listen to me" said the Demon, as he placed his 
 hand upon my head. "The region of which I speak 
 is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river 
 Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence. 
 
 "The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly 
 hue ; and they flow not onward to the sea, but palpi 
 tate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the 
 sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 301 
 
 many miles on either side of the river s oozy bed is 
 a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one 
 unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards 
 the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to 
 and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an in 
 distinct murmur which cometh out from among them 
 like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh 
 one unto the other. 
 
 "But there is a boundary to their realm the boun 
 dary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. There, like 
 the waves about the Hebrides, the low underwood is 
 agitated continually. But there is no wind throughout 
 the heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally 
 hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. 
 And from their high summits, one by one, drop ever 
 lasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous flow 
 ers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And over 
 head, with a rustling and loud noise, the gray clouds 
 rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, 
 over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no wind 
 throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the 
 river Zaire there is neither quiet nor silence. 
 
 "It was night, and the rain fell ; and, falling, it was 
 rain, but having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in 
 the morass among the tall lilies, and the rain fell upon 
 my head and the lilies sighed one unto the other in 
 the solemnity of their desolation. 
 
 "And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin 
 ghastly mist, and was crimson in color. And mine 
 eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by the 
 shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the 
 moon. And the rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall, 
 and the rock was gray. Upon its front were char- 
 
302 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 acters engraven in the stone; and I walked through 
 the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the 
 shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone. 
 But I could not decipher them. And I was going 
 back into the morass, when the moon shone with a 
 fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the 
 rock, and upon the characters; and the characters 
 were DESOLATION. 
 
 "And I looked upwards, and there stood a man 
 upon the summit of the rock ; and I hid myself among 
 the water-lilies that I might discover the actions of the 
 man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and 
 was wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the 
 toga of old Rome. And the outlines of his figure 
 were indistinct but his features were the features of 
 a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the 
 mist, and of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncov 
 ered the features of his face. And his brow was lofty 
 with thought, and his eye wild with care ; and in the 
 few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sor 
 row, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a 
 longing after solitude. 
 
 "And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his 
 head upon his hand, and looked out upon the desola 
 tion. He looked down into the low, unquiet shrub 
 bery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher 
 at the rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. 
 And I lay close within shelter of the lilies, and ob 
 served the actions of the man. And the man trembled 
 in the solitude; but the night waned, and he sat upon 
 the rock. 
 
 "And the man turned his attention from the heaven, 
 and looked out upon the dreary river Zaire, and upon 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 303 
 
 the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions 
 of the water-lilies. And the man listened to the sighs 
 o the water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up 
 from among them. And I lay close within my covert 
 and observed the actions of the man. And the man 
 trembled in the solitude: but the night waned, and 
 he sat upon the rock. 
 
 "Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, 
 and waded afar in among the wilderness of the lilies 
 and called unto the hippopotami which dwelt among 
 the fens in the recesses of the morass. And the hip 
 popotami heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, 
 unto the foot of the rock, and roared loudly and fear 
 fully beneath the moon. And I lay close within my 
 covert and observed the actions of the man. And the 
 man trembled in the solitude: but the night waned 
 and he sat upon the rock. 
 
 "Then I cursed the elements with the curse of 
 tumult; and a frightful tempest gathered in the 
 heaven, where before there had been no wind. And 
 the heaven became livid with the violence of the tem 
 pest and the rain beat upon the head of the man 
 and the floods of the river came down and the river 
 was tormented into foam and the water-lilies shrieked 
 within their beds and the forest crumbled before the 
 wind and the thunder rolled and the lightning 
 fell and the rock rocked to its foundation. And I 
 lay close within my covert and observed the actions of 
 the man. And the man trembled in the solitude: 
 but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock. 
 
 "Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of 
 silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the 
 forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs 
 
304 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and 
 were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its path 
 way to heaven and the thunder died away and the 
 lightning did not flash and the clouds hung motion 
 less and the waters sunk to their level and remained 
 and the trees ceased to rock and the water-lilies 
 sighed no more and the murmur was heard no longer 
 from among them, nor any shadow of sound through 
 out the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the 
 characters of the rock, and they were changed ; and 
 the characters were SILENCE. 
 
 "And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the 
 man, and his countenance was wan with terror. And, 
 hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood 
 forth upon the rock and listened. But there was no 
 voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the 
 characters upon the rock were SILENCE. And the man 
 shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, 
 
 in haste, so that I beheld him no more." 
 
 ******* 
 
 Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi 
 in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. 
 Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, 
 and of the Earth, and of the mighty Sea and of the 
 Genii that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the 
 lofty heaven. There was much lore too in the sayings 
 which were said by the Sybils; and holy, holy things 
 were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled 
 around Dodona but, as Allah liveth, that fable which 
 the Demon told me, as he sat by my side in the 
 shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonder 
 ful of all ! And as the Demon made an end of his 
 story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 305 
 
 laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, 
 and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And 
 the lynx, which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came 
 out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, 
 and looked at him steadily in the face. 
 
 THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION (1839) 
 HVQ ooi jtpoaouTG). 
 
 I will bring fire to thee. 
 
 EURIPIDES, Androm. [257.] 
 
 [The conversation pre-supposes the fulfillment of 
 those "passages in the most holy writings which speak 
 of the final destruction of all things by fire." Char- 
 mion and Eiros meet in the other world. Charmion 
 has been an immortal for ten years but Eiros is new- 
 fledged with immortality, having met death only a 
 few days before in the universal conflagration. Char 
 mion knows only the bare fact of the catastrophe and 
 is eager to learn the details. Eiros s description seems 
 to me unparalleled even in Poe s works for a certain 
 lurid vividness and sense of flame-licked intensity. 
 The best touches are the increased "elasticity of frame 
 and vivacity of mind" as the comet approached and 
 "the wild luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown 
 before."] 
 
 Eiros. Why do you call me Eiros? 
 
 Charmion. So henceforward will you always be 
 called. You must forget, too, my earthly name, and 
 speak to me as Charmion. 
 
 Eiros. This is indeed no dream ! 
 
 Clia-rmion. Dreams are with us no more ; but of 
 
306 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 these mysteries anon. I rejoice to see you looking life 
 like and rational. The film of the shadow has already 
 passed from off your eyes. Be of heart, and fear noth 
 ing. Your allotted days of stupor have expired ; and, 
 to-morrow, I will myself induct you into the full joys 
 and wonders of your novel existence. 
 
 Eiros. True I feel no stupor none at all. The 
 wild sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, 
 and I hear no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, 
 like the "voice of many waters." Yet my senses are 
 bewildered, Charmion, with the keenness of their per 
 ception of the new. 
 
 Charmion. A few days will remove all this ; but 
 I fully understand you, and feel for you. It is now ten 
 earthly years since I underwent what you undergo 
 yet the remembrance of it hangs by me still. You have 
 now suffered all of pain, however, which you will suf 
 fer in Aidenn. 
 
 Eiros. In Aidenn? 
 
 Charmion. In Aidenn. 
 
 Eiros. Oh God ! pity me, Charmion ! I am over- 
 burthened with the majesty of all things of the un 
 known now known of the speculative Future merged 
 in the august and certain Present. 
 
 Charmion. Grapple not now with such thoughts. 
 To-morrow we will speak of this. Your mind wavers, 
 and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of sim 
 ple memories. Look not around, nor forward but 
 back. I am burning with anxiety to hear the details 
 of that stupendous event which threw you among us. 
 Tell me of it. Let us converse of familiar things, in 
 the old familiar language of the world which has so 
 fearfully perished. 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 307 
 
 Eiros. Most fearfully, fearfully! this in indeed 
 no dream. 
 
 Charmion. Dreams are no more. Was I much 
 mourned, my Eiros? 
 
 Eiros. Mourned, Charmion? oh deeply. To that 
 last hour of all, there hung a cloud of intense gloom 
 and devout sorrow over your household. 
 
 Charmion. And that last hour speak of it. Re 
 member that, beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe 
 itself, I know nothing. When, coming out from among 
 mankind, I passed into Night through the Grave at 
 that period, if I remember aright, the calamity which 
 overwhelmed you was utterly unanticipated. But, in 
 deed, I knew little of the speculative philosophy of the 
 day. 
 
 Eiros. The individual calamity was, as you say, 
 entirely unanticipated ; but analogous misfortunes had 
 been long a subject of discussion with astronomers. I 
 need scarce tell you, my friend, that, even when you 
 left us, men had agreed to understand those passages 
 in the most holy writings which speak of the final 
 destruction of all things by fire, as having reference 
 to the orb of the earth alone. But in regard to the 
 immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been 
 at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge in 
 which the comets were divested of the terrors of 
 flame. The very moderate density of these bodies had 
 been well establishd. They had been observed to pass 
 among the satellites of Jupiter, without bringing about 
 any sensible alteration either in the masses or in the 
 orbits of these secondary planets. We had long re 
 garded the wanderers as vapoury creations of incon 
 ceivable tenuity, and as altogether incapable of doing 
 
3 o8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 injury to our substantial globe, even in the event of 
 contact. But contact was not in any degree dreaded ; 
 for the elements of all the comets were accurately 
 known. That among them we should look for the 
 agency of the threatened fiery destruction had been for 
 many years considered an inadmissible idea. But won 
 ders and wild fancies had been, of late days, strangely 
 rife among mankind; and, although it was only with 
 a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension pre 
 vailed, upon the announcement by astronomers of a 
 new comet, yet this announcement was generally re 
 ceived with I know not what of agitation and 
 mistrust. 
 
 The elements of the strange orb were immediately 
 calculated, and it was at once conceded by all ob 
 servers, that its path, at perihelion, would bring it 
 into very close proximity with the earth. There were 
 two or three astronomers, of secondary note, who 
 resolutely maintained that a contact was inevitable. I 
 cannot very well express to you the effect of this in 
 telligence upon the people. For a few short days they 
 would not believe an assertion which their intellect, so 
 long employed among worldly considerations, could 
 not in any manner grasp. But the truth of a vitally 
 important fact soon makes its way into the under 
 standing of even the most stolid. Finally, all men 
 saw that astronomical knowledge lied not, and they 
 awaited the comet. Its approach was not, at first, 
 seemingly rapid; nor was its appearance of very un 
 usual character. It was of a dull red, and had little 
 perceptible train. For seven or eight days we saw no 
 material increase in its apparent diameter, and but a 
 partial alteration in its colour. Meantime, the ordinary 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 309 
 
 affairs of men were discarded, and all interests ab 
 sorbed in a growing discussion, instituted by the phil 
 osophic, in respect to the cometary nature. Even the 
 grossly ignorant aroused their sluggish capacities to 
 such considerations. The learned now gave their in 
 tellect their soul to no such points as the allaying 
 of fear, or to the sustenance of loved theory. They 
 sought they panted for right views. They groaned 
 for perfected knowledge. Truth arose in the purity of 
 her strength and exceeding majesty, and the wise 
 bowed down and adored. 
 
 That material injury to our globe or to its inhabi 
 tants would result from the apprehended contact, was 
 an opinion which hourly lost ground among the wise ; 
 and the wise were now freely permitted to rule the 
 reason and the fancy of the crowd. It was demon 
 strated, that the density of the comet s nucleus was far 
 less than that of our rarest gas ; and the harmless pas 
 sage of a similar visitor among the satellites of Jupiter 
 was a point strongly insisted upon, and which served 
 greatly to allay terror. Theologists, with an earnest 
 ness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical prophecies, 
 and expounded them to the people with a directness 
 and simplicity of which no previous instance had been 
 known. That the final destruction of the earth must 
 be brought about by the agency of fire, was urged with 
 a spirit that enforced everywhere conviction ; and that 
 the comets were of no fiery nature (as all men now 
 knew) was a truth which relieved all, in a great 
 measure, from the apprehension of the great calamity 
 foretold. It is noticeable that the popular prejudices 
 and vulgar errors in regard to pestilence and wars 
 errors which were wont to prevail upon every appear- 
 
3io EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ance of a comet were now altogether unknown. As 
 if by some sudden convulsive exertion, reason had at 
 once hurled superstition from her throne. The 
 feeblest intellect had derived vigour from excessive 
 interest. 
 
 What minor evils might arise from the contact were 
 points of elaborate question. The learned spoke of 
 slight geological disturbances, of probable alterations 
 in climate, and consequently in vegetation ; of possible 
 magnetic and electric influences. Many held that no 
 visible or perceptible effect would in a ny manner be 
 produced. While such discussions were going on, their 
 subject gradually approached, growing larger in ap 
 parent diameter, and of a more brilliant lustre. Man 
 kind grew paler as it came. All human operations 
 were suspended. 
 
 There was an epoch in the course of the general 
 sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, a 
 size surpassing that of any previously recorded visita 
 tion. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope 
 that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the 
 certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their ter 
 ror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race 
 beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days 
 sufficed, however, to merge even such feelings in sen 
 timents more unendurable. We could no longer apply 
 to the strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its his 
 torical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us with 
 a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as an 
 astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an in 
 cubus upon our hearts, and a shadow upon our brains. 
 It had taken, with inconceivable rapidity, the character 
 of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from 
 horizon to horizon. 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 311 
 
 Yet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. 
 It was clear that we were already within the influence 
 of the comet ; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual 
 elasticity of frame and vivacity of mind. The exceed 
 ing tenuity of the object of our dread was apparent; 
 for all heavenly objects were plainly visible through it. 
 Meantime, our vegetation had perceptibly altered ; and 
 we gained faith, from this predicted circumstance, in 
 the foresight of the wise. A wild luxuriance of fol 
 iage, utterly unknown before, burst out upon every 
 vegetable thing. 
 
 Yet another day and the evil was not altogether 
 upon us. It was now evident that its nucleus would 
 first reach us. A wild change had come over all men ; 
 and the first sense of pain was the wild signal for 
 general lamentation and horror. This first sense of 
 pain lay in a rigorous constriction of the breast and 
 lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the skin. It 
 could not be denied that our atmosphere was radically 
 affected ; the conformation of this atmosphere and the 
 possible modifications to which it might be subjected, 
 were now the topics of discussion. The result of in 
 vestigation sent an electric thrill of the intensest 
 terror through the universal heart of man. 
 
 It had been long known that the air which encircled 
 us was a compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in 
 the proportion of twenty-one measures of oxygen, and 
 seventy-nine of nitrogen, in every one hundred of the 
 atmosphere. Oxygen, which was the principle of com 
 bustion, and the vehicle of heat, was absolutely neces 
 sary to the support of animal life, and w r as the most 
 powerful and energetic agent in nature. Nitrogen, on 
 the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal 
 
312 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 life or flame. An unnatural excess of oxygen would 
 result, it had been ascertained, in just such an eleva 
 tion of the animal spirits as we had latterly experi 
 enced. It was the pursuit, the extension of the idea, 
 which had engendered awe. What would be the re 
 sult of a total extraction of the nitrogen ? A combus 
 tion irresistible, all-devouring, omni-prevalent, imme 
 diate ; the entire fulfilment, in all their minute and 
 terrible details, of the fiery and horror-inspiring de 
 nunciations of the prophecies of the Holy Book. 
 
 Why need I paint, Charmion, the now disenchained 
 phrenzy of mankind ? That tenuity in the comet which 
 had previously inspired us with hope, was now the 
 source of the bitterness of despair. In its impalpable 
 gaseous character we clearly perceived the consumma 
 tion of Fate. Meantime a day again passed bearing 
 away with it the last shadow of Hope. We gasped in 
 the rapid modification of the air. The red blood 
 bounded tumultuously through its strict channels. A 
 furious delirium possessed all men; and, with arms 
 rigidly outstretched towards the threatening heavens, 
 they trembled and shrieked aloud. But the nucleus of 
 the destroyer was now upon us ; even here in Aidenn, 
 I shudder while I speak. Let me be brief brief as 
 the ruin that overwhelmed. For a moment there was 
 a wild lurid light alone, visiting and penetrating all 
 things. Then let us bow down, Charmion, before the 
 excessive majesty of the great God! then, there came 
 a shouting and pervading sound, as if from the mouth 
 itself of HIM ; while the whole incumbent mass of 
 ether in which we existed, burst at once into a species 
 of intense flame, for whose surpassing brilliancy and 
 all-fervid heat even the angels in the high Heaven 
 pf pure knowledge have no name. Thus ended all. 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 313 
 
 THE ISLAND OF THE FAY (1841) 
 Nullus enim locus sine genio est. SERVIUS. 
 
 [In his Sonnet To Science (1829), Poe had 
 asked : 
 
 Hast thoti not torn the Naiad from her flood, 
 The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
 The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? 
 
 But here is a dream beneath the tamarind tree and a 
 vision of a Naiad on her flood, in spite of science. 
 Every passing of a Fay, every incursion of science into 
 the domain of nature-worship, every victory won by 
 knowledge over beauty and the shaping imagination is 
 a diminution of the light of life and an enlargement of 
 the encompassing shadow. "Is it dream or reality?" 
 asks Lauvriere. It is both. The second paragraph 
 shows its author s nature-piety at its best.] 
 
 "La musique" says Marmontel, in those "Contes 
 Moraux" 2 which, in all our translations, we have 
 insisted upon calling "Moral Tales" as if in mockery 
 of their spirit "la musique est le seul des talens qui 
 fouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des 
 temoins." He here confounds the pleasure derivable 
 from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. 
 No more than any other talent, is that for music sus 
 ceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no sec 
 ond party to appreciate its exercise. And it is only in 
 common with other talents that it produces effects 
 which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea 
 which the raconteur has either failed to entertain 
 
 z Moraux is here derived from mocurs and its meaning is 
 "fashionable" or, more strictly, "of manners." (Poe s Note.) 
 
314 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his na 
 tional love of point, is, doubtless, the very tenable one 
 that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly 
 estimated when we are exclusively alone. The prop 
 osition in this form will be admitted at once by 
 those who love the lyre for its own sake, and for its 
 spiritual uses. 
 
 But there is one pleasure still within the reach of 
 fallen mortality and perhaps only one which owes 
 even more than does music to the accessory sentiment 
 of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the 
 contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man 
 who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth 
 must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, 
 the presence not of human life only but of life in 
 any other form than that of the green things which 
 grow upon the soil and are voiceless is a stain upon 
 the landscape is at war with the genius of the scene. 
 I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the 
 grey rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the 
 forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud 
 watchful mountains that look down upon all I love 
 to regard these as themselves but the colossal members 
 of one vast animate and sentient whole a whole 
 whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect 
 and most inclusive of all ; whose path is among asso 
 ciate planets ; whose meek handmaiden is the moon ; 
 whose mediate sovereign is the sun ; whose life is 
 eternity; whose thought is that of a God; whose en 
 joyment is knowledge ; whose destinies are lost in im 
 mensity ; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with 
 our own cognizance of the animalcule? which infest 
 the brain a being which we, in consequence, regard 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 315 
 
 as purely inanimate and material, much in the same 
 manner as these animalcule? must thus regard us. 
 
 Our telescopes and our mathematical investiga 
 tions assure us on every hand notwithstanding the 
 cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood that 
 space, and therefore that bulk, is an important con 
 sideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles 
 in which the stars move are those best adapted for the 
 evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible 
 number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are 
 accurately such as, within a given surface, to 
 include the greatest possible amount of matter; 
 while the surfaces themselves are so disposed 
 as to accommodate a denser population than 
 could be accommodated on the same surfaces other 
 wise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk 
 being an object with God, that space itself is infinite ; 
 for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. And 
 since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with 
 vitality is a principle indeed as far as our judgments 
 extend, the leading principle in the operations of Deity 
 it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the 
 regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and not 
 extending to those of the august. As we find cycle 
 within cycle without end yet all revolving around one 
 far-distant centre which is the Godhead, may we not 
 analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within 
 life, the less within the greater, and all within the 
 Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring, 
 through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his 
 temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in 
 the universe than that vast "clod of the valley" which 
 he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul 
 
3 i6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 for no more profound reason than that he does not be 
 hold it in operation. 3 
 
 These fancies, and such as these, have always given 
 to my meditations among the mountains, and the for 
 ests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the 
 every-day world would not fail to term the fantastic. 
 My wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and 
 far-searching, and often solitary ; and the interest with 
 which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley, 
 or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a bright 
 lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the 
 thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What 
 flippant Frenchman 4 was it who said, in allusion to 
 the well-known w r ork of Zimmerman, that, "la solitude 
 est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu un pour vous 
 dire que la solitude est une belle chose." The epigram 
 cannot be gainsaid; but the necessity is a thing that 
 does not exist. 
 
 It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid 
 a far-distant region of mountain locked within moun 
 tain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or 
 sleeping within all that I chanced upon a certain 
 rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the 
 leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath 
 the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I 
 might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that 
 thus only should I look upon it such was the char 
 acter of phantasm which it wore. 
 
 On all sides save to the west, where the sun was 
 
 8 Speaking of the tides, Pomponius Mela, in his treatise 
 "De Situ Orbis," says "either the world is a great animal, 
 or" etc. (Poe s Note.) 
 
 4 Balzac in substance T do not remember the words, 
 (Poe s Note.) 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 317 
 
 about sinking arose the verdant walls of the forest. 
 The little river which turned sharply in its course, and 
 was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no 
 exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep 
 green foliage of the trees to the east while in the op 
 posite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length 
 and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly 
 and continuously into the valley, a rich golden and 
 crimson water- fall from the sunset fountains of the sky. 
 About midway in the short vista which my dreamy 
 vision took in, one small circular island, profusely ver- 
 dured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream. 
 
 So blended bank and shadow there, 
 That each seemed pendulous in air 
 
 so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was 
 scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope 
 of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. 
 
 My position enabled me to include in a single view 
 both the eastern and western extremities of the islet; 
 and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their 
 aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of gar 
 den beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye 
 of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. 
 The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and As 
 phodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, 
 erect bright, slender and graceful of eastern figure 
 and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-col 
 ored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about 
 all ; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, 
 yet everything had motion through the gentle sweep 
 ings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might 
 have been mistaken for tulips with wings. 8 
 
 8 Florem putares nare per liquidum aethera. P. Commire. 
 (Foe s Note.) 
 
3i8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed 
 in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and 
 peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees 
 were dark in color and mournful in form and attitude 
 wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral 
 shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and un 
 timely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cy 
 press, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, 
 and, hither and thither among it, were many small un 
 sightly hillocks, low, and narrow, and not very long, 
 that had the aspect of graves, but were not ; although 
 over and all about them the rue and rosemary clam 
 bered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the 
 water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating 
 the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied 
 that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and 
 lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that 
 gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream ; 
 while other shadows issued momently from the trees, 
 taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed. 
 
 This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, 
 greatly. excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in rev 
 erie. "If ever island were enchanted," said I to my 
 self "this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle 
 Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are 
 these green tombs theirs? or do they yield up their 
 sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, 
 do they not rather waste away mournfully ; rendering 
 unto God little by little their existence, as these trees 
 render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their sub 
 stance unto dissolution ? What the wasting tree is to 
 the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker 
 by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be 
 to the death which engulfs it ?" 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 319 
 
 As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun 
 sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered 
 round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom 
 large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the syca 
 more flakes which, in their multiform positions upon 
 the water, a quick imagination might have converted 
 into anything it pleased while I thus mused, it ap 
 peared to me that the form of one of those very Fays 
 about whom I had been pondering, made its way 
 slowly into the darkness from out the light at the 
 western end of the island. She stood erect, in a sin 
 gularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere 
 phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the 
 lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of 
 joy but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the 
 shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length 
 rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. 
 "The revolution which has just been made by the 
 Fay," continued I musingly "is the cycle of the brief 
 year of her life. 
 
 "She has floated through her winter and through 1 
 her summer. She is a year nearer unto Death : for I 
 did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her 
 shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the 
 dark water, making its blackness more black." 
 
 And again the boat appeared, and the Fay ; but 
 about the attitude of the latter there was more of care 
 and uncertainty, and less of elastic joy. She floated 
 again from out the light, and into the gloom (which 
 deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from 
 her into the ebony water, and became absorbed into 
 its blackness. And again and again she made the cir 
 cuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his 
 
320 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 slumbers) and at each issuing into the light, there was 
 more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler, 
 and far fainter, and more indistinct ; and at each pas 
 sage into the gloom, there fell from her a darker shade, 
 which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But 
 at length, when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay 
 now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconso 
 lately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, 
 and that she issued thence at all I cannot say, for 
 darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her magical 
 figure no more. 
 
 THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA (1841) 
 
 These things are in the future. 
 
 SOPHOCLES, Antig. [1334! 
 
 [This is a companion piece to The Conversation of 
 Eiros and Charmion. Monos died first but Una soon 
 followed him. A century has passed and they are to 
 gether again. Monos has just said : "That man, as a 
 race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be 
 born again. On the meaning of the two words the 
 colloquy begins. Monos s last speech, telling what it 
 means to die, that is, to be born again, is an earlier 
 prose sketch of For Annie. See page 232. Of course 
 the colloquy is more philosophic than the lyric, there 
 being no place in verse for so subtle a thought as the 
 birth of a sixth sense from the chaos of our mundane 
 five. Note the Ruskinian flavor in: "Meantime huge 
 smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves 
 shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair 
 face of Nature was deformed as with the ravages of 
 some loathsome disease."] 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 321 
 
 Una. "Born again"? 
 
 Monos. Yes, fairest and best-beloved Una, "born 
 again." These were the words upon whose mystical 
 meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the explana 
 tions of the priesthood, until Death himself resolved 
 for me the secret. 
 
 Una. Death ! 
 
 Monos. How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my 
 words! I observe, too, a vacillation in your step a 
 joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are confused 
 and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life 
 Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how 
 singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to 
 bring terror to all hearts throwing a mildew upon all 
 pleasures ! 
 
 Una. Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all 
 feasts ! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in 
 speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did 
 it act as a check to human bliss saying unto it "thus 
 far, and no farther" ! That earnest mutual love, my 
 own Monos, which burned within our bosoms how 
 vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its 
 first up-springing, that our happiness would 
 strengthen with its strength! Alas! as it grew, so 
 grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which 
 was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus, in time, 
 it became painful to love. Hate would have been 
 mercy then. 
 
 Monos. Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una 
 mine, mine forever now ! 
 
 Una. But the memory of past sorrow is it not 
 present joy? I have much to say yet of the things 
 which have been. Above all, I burn to know the inci- 
 
322 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 dents of your own passage through the dark Valley 
 and Shadow. 
 
 Monos. And when did the radiant Una ask any 
 thing of her Monos in vain ? I will be minute in re 
 lating all but at what point shall the weird narrative 
 begin ? 
 
 Una. At what point? 
 
 Monos. You have said. 
 
 Una. Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we 
 have both learned the propensity of man to define the 
 indefinable. I will not say, then, commence with the 
 moment of life s cessation but commence with that 
 sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned 
 you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor, 
 and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the pas 
 sionate fingers of love. 
 
 Monos. One word first, my Una, in regard to 
 man s general condition at this epoch. You will re 
 member that one or two of the wise among our fore 
 fathers wise in fact, although not in the world s es 
 teem had ventured to doubt the propriety of the 
 term "improvement," as applied to the progress of our 
 civilization. There were periods in each of the five 
 or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution, 
 when arose some vigorous intellect, boldly contending 
 for those principles whose truth appears now, to our 
 disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious principles 
 which should have taught our race to submit to the 
 guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their 
 control. At long intervals some master-minds ap 
 peared, looking upon each advance in practical science 
 as a retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionally 
 the poetic intellect that intellect which we now feel 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 3 2 3 
 
 to have been the most exalted of all since those 
 truths which to us were of the most enduring import 
 ance could only be reached by that analogy which 
 speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, and to 
 the unaided reason bears no weight occasionally did 
 this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in the evolv 
 ing of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in 
 the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, 
 and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct 
 intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in 
 the infant condition of his soul. And these men the 
 poets living and perishing amid the scorn of the 
 "utilitarians" of rough pedants, who arrogated to 
 themselves a title which could have been properly ap 
 plied only to the scorned these men, the poets, pon 
 dered piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days 
 when our wants were not more simple than our en 
 joyments were keen days when mirth was a word un 
 known, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness holy, 
 august and blissful days, when blue rivers ran un- 
 damned, between hills unhewn, into far forest soli 
 tudes, primaeval, odorous, and unexplored. 
 
 Yet these noble exceptions from the general mis 
 rule served but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas ! 
 we had fallen upon the most evil of all our evil days. 
 The great "movement" that was the cant term 
 went on : a diseased commotion, moral and physical. 
 Art the Arts arose supreme, and, once enthroned, 
 cast chains upon the intellect which had elevated them 
 to power. Man, because he could not but acknowl 
 edge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish exulta 
 tion at his acquired and still-increasing dominion over 
 her elements. Even while he stalked a God in his own 
 
324 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As 
 might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he 
 grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He 
 enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd 
 ideas, that of universal equality gained ground ; and in 
 the face of analogy and of God in despite of the loud 
 warning voice of the laws of gradation so visibly per 
 vading all things in Earth and Heaven wild attempts 
 at an omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet 
 this evil sprang necessarily from the leading evil, 
 Knowledge. Man could not both know and succumb. 
 Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. 
 Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. 
 The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the rav 
 ages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, 
 sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced 
 and of the far-fetched might have arrested us here. 
 But now it appears that we had worked out our own 
 destruction in the perversion of our taste, or rather in 
 the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. 6 For, in 
 
 e Tt will be hard to discover a better [method of educa 
 tion! than that which the experience of so many ages has al 
 ready discovered; and this may be summed up as consisting 
 in gymnastics for the body, and music for the soul." Repub. 
 lib. 2. "For this reason is a musical education most essential ; 
 since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most inti 
 mately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it, filling 
 it with beauty and making the man beautiful-minded . . . .He 
 will praise and admire the beautiful; will receive it with joy 
 into his soul, will feed upon it, and assimilate his own condi 
 tion with it." Ibid. lib. 3. Music (iiouaixri) had, how 
 ever, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive signi 
 fication than with us. It included not only the harmonies of 
 time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment, and crea 
 tion, each in its widest sense. The study of music was with 
 them, in fact, the general cultivation of the taste of that 
 which recognizes the beautiful in centra-distinction from 
 reason, which deals only with the true. (Poe s Note.) 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 325 
 
 truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone that faculty 
 which, holding a middle position between the pure in 
 tellect and the moral sense, could never safely have 
 been disregarded it was now that taste alone could 
 have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to 
 Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and 
 majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the pouffiK-fi 
 which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education 
 for the soul! Alas for him and for it! since both 
 were so desperately needed when both were most en 
 tirely forgotten or despised. 
 
 Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, 
 how truly ! "que tout noire raisonnement se reduit & 
 ceder au sentiment" ; and it is not impossible that the 
 sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would 
 have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh 
 mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing 
 was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance 
 of knowledge, the old age of the world drew on. This 
 the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily al 
 though unhappily, affected not to see. But, for my 
 self, the Earth s records had taught me to look for 
 widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had 
 imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison of 
 China the simple and enduring, with Assyria the archi 
 tect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more 
 crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. 
 In history 7 of these regions I met with a ray from the 
 Future. The individual artificialities of the three 
 latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their in 
 dividual overthrows we had seen local remedies ap 
 plied ; but for the infected world at large I could an- 
 
 7 "History," f rom IOTOQEIV, to contemplate. (Foe s Note). 
 
326 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 ticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a 
 race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must be 
 "born again" 
 
 And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we 
 wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was 
 that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, 
 when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having un 
 dergone that purification 8 which alone could efface its 
 rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the 
 verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling wa 
 ters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwell 
 ing-place for man: for man the Death-purged for 
 man to whose now exalted intellect there should be 
 poison in knowledge no more for the redeemed, re 
 generated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the 
 material, man. 
 
 Una. Well do I remember these conversations, 
 dear Monos ; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was 
 not so near at hand as we believed, and as the corrup 
 tion you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. 
 Men lived ; and died individually. You yourself sick 
 ened, and passed into the grave ; and thither your con 
 stant Una speedily followed you. And though the 
 century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion 
 brings us thus together once more, tortured our slum 
 bering senses with no impatience of duration, yet, my 
 Monos, it was a century still. 
 
 Monos. Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. 
 Unquestionably, it was in the Earth s dotage that I 
 died. Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their 
 
 8 The word "purification" seems here to be used with ref 
 erence to its root in the Greek XVQ, fire. (Poe s Note.) 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 327 
 
 origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed 
 to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and 
 many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the 
 manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I 
 longed but was impotent to undeceive you after some 
 days there came upon me, as you have said, a breath 
 less and motionless torpor and this was termed Death 
 by those who stood around me. 
 
 Words are vague things. My condition did not 
 deprive me of sentience. It appeared to me not greatly 
 dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him, who, hav 
 ing slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless 
 and fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to 
 steal slowly back into consciousness, through the mere 
 sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened 
 by external disturbances. 
 
 I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The 
 heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, 
 but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, 
 although eccentrically so assuming often each other s 
 functions at random. The taste and the smell were 
 inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, 
 abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which 
 your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last, af 
 fected me with sweet fancies of flowers fantastic 
 flowers, far more lovely than any of the old Earth, but 
 whose prototypes we have here blooming around us. 
 The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no 
 complete impediment to vision. As volition was in 
 abeyance, the balls could not roll in their sockets but 
 all objects within the range of the visual hemisphere 
 were seen with more or less distinctness ; the rays 
 which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner 
 
328 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those 
 which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the 
 former instance, this effect was so far anomalous that 
 I appreciated it only as sound sound sweet or dis 
 cordant as the matters presenting themselves at my 
 side were light or dark in shade curved or angular 
 in outline. The hearing, at the same time, although 
 excited in degree, was not irregular in action esti 
 mating real sounds with an extravagance of precision, 
 not less than of sensibility. Touch had undergone a 
 modification more peculiar. Its impressions were 
 tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and re 
 sulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus 
 the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, 
 at first only recognized through vision, at length, long 
 after their removal, filled my whole being with a sen 
 sual delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual de 
 light. All my perceptions were purely sensual. The 
 materials furnished the passive brain by the senses 
 were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the 
 deceased understanding. Of pain there was some lit 
 tle ; of pleasure there was much ; but of moral pain or 
 pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated 
 into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and 
 were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone ; 
 but they were soft musical sounds and no more ; they 
 conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the 
 sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and 
 constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the by 
 standers of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre 
 of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in 
 truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke rever 
 ently, in low whispers yon, sweet Una, gaspingly, 
 with loud cries. 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 329 
 
 They attired me for the coffin three or four dark 
 figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these 
 crossed the direct line of my vision, they affected me 
 as forms; but upon passing to my side their images 
 impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and 
 other dismal expressions of terror, or horror, or of 
 woe. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all 
 directions musically about me. 
 
 The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I 
 became possessed by a vague uneasiness an anxiety 
 such as the sleeper feels when sad real sounds fall con 
 tinuously within his ear low distant bell-tones, sol 
 emn, at long but equal intervals, and commingling 
 with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with 
 its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my 
 limbs with the oppression of some dull weight, and 
 was palpable. There was also a moaning sound, not 
 unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more con 
 tinuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had 
 grown in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights 
 were brought into the room, and this reverberation be 
 came forthwith interrupted into frequent unequal 
 bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less dis 
 tinct. The ponderous oppression was in a great meas 
 ure relieved ; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp 
 (for there were many), there flowed unbrokenly into 
 my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when 
 now, dear Una, approaching the bed upon which I lay 
 outstretched, you sat gently by my side, breathing 
 odour from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon 
 my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, 
 and mingled with the merely physical sensations which 
 circumstances had called forth, a something akin to 
 
330 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 sentiment itself a feeling that, half appreciating, half 
 responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but this 
 feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed 
 indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded 
 quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and then 
 into a purely sensual pleasure as before. 
 
 And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the 
 usual senses, there appeared to have arisen within me 
 a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise I found a wild de 
 light yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the un 
 derstanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal 
 frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered ; no 
 nerve thrilled ; no artery throbbed. But there seemed 
 to have sprung up in the brain, that of which no words 
 could convey to the merely human intelligence even 
 an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental 
 pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of 
 man s abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equili- 
 zation of this movement or of such as this had the 
 cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves, been ad 
 justed. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the 
 clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the at 
 tendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. 
 The slightest deviations from the true proportion 
 and these deviations were omniprevalent affected me 
 just as violations of abstract truth were wont, on 
 earth, to affect the moral sense. Although no two of 
 the time-pieces in the chamber struck the individual 
 seconds accurately together, yet I had no difficulty in 
 holding steadily in mind the tones and the respective 
 momentary errors of each. And this this keen, per 
 fect, self-existing sentiment of duration this senti 
 ment existing (as man could not possibly have con- 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 331 
 
 ceived it to exist) independently of any succession of 
 events this idea this sixth sense, tipspringing from 
 the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain 
 step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the 
 temporal Eternity. 
 
 It was midnight ; and you still sat by my side. All 
 others had departed from the chamber of Death. 
 They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps 
 burned flickeringly ; for this I knew by the tremulous- 
 ness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly these 
 strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Fi 
 nally they ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died 
 away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The op 
 pression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my 
 bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity pervaded 
 my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea 
 of contact. All of what man has termed sense was 
 merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the 
 one abiding sentiment of duration. The mortal body 
 had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly 
 Decay. 
 
 Yet had not all sentience departed ; for the con 
 sciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some 
 of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated 
 the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, 
 and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily 
 presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I 
 still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when 
 the noon of the second day came, I was not uncon 
 scious of those movements which displaced you from 
 my side, which confined me within the coffin, which 
 deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to th e 
 grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped 
 
332 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in 
 blackness and corruption, to my sad and solemn slum 
 bers with the worm. 
 
 And here, in the prison-house which has few se 
 crets to disclose, there rolled away days and weeks and 
 months, and the soul watched narrowly each second as 
 it flew, and, without effort, took record of its flight 
 without effort and without object. 
 
 A year passed. The consciousness of being had 
 grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere locality 
 had, in great measure, usurped its position. The idea 
 of entity was becoming merged in that of place. The 
 narrow space immediately surrounding what had been 
 the body, was now growing to be the body itself. At 
 length, as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep and 
 its world alone is Death imaged) at length, as some 
 times happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when 
 some flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet 
 left him half enveloped in dreams so to me, in the 
 strict embrace of the Shadow , came that light which 
 alone might have had power to startle the light of 
 enduring Love. Men toiled at the grave in which I 
 lay darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon 
 my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of 
 Una. 
 
 And now again all was void. That nebulous light 
 had been extinguished. That feeble thrill had vi 
 brated itself into quiescence. Many lustra had super 
 vened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had 
 food no more. The sense of being had at length ut 
 terly departed, and there reigned in its stead instead 
 of all things dominant and perpetual the autocrats 
 Place and Time. For that which was not for that 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 333 
 
 which had no form for that which had no thought 
 for that which had no sentience for that which was 
 soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion for 
 all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the 
 grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co- 
 mates. 
 
 THE POWER OF WORDS (1845) 
 
 [Again two angelic intelligences, children of the 
 fair earth that lately perished, meet and talk of supra- 
 mundane things. Agathos is inducting Oinos, the spirit 
 newly arrived, into the method of creation. The 
 thought follows closely the lines later developed in 
 Eureka, but the conclusion is a leap of fantasy over the 
 walls of analytic reason. Spoken words so runs the 
 main thread of the exposition create endless vibra 
 tions in the ether and these vibrations modify all exist 
 ent forms or, to put it differently, create new forms. 
 Now comes the startling terminal thought that the 
 spirit in which words are uttered is also communicated 
 to the resultant new worlds. A turbulent thought, 
 expressed in turbulent words, becomes immundane in 
 a turbulent world. "The Power of Words" says a 
 critic in The London Times Literary Supplement, of 
 June 22, 1916, "is worth all Poe s famous stories, in 
 cluding even The Gold-Bug or The Mystery of Marie 
 Roget. It is, in fact, one of the most wonderful pieces 
 of prose in the English language, both for manner and 
 for matter." One sentence of it at least is unsurpassed 
 in ancient or modern English prose. For sheer lift, 
 for sudden overflow into the infinite, I know nothing 
 comparable with this from Agathos: "Come! we will 
 leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and 
 
334 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 swoop outward from the throne into the starry 
 meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and 
 violets, and heart s-ease, are the beds of the triplicate 
 and triple-tinted suns." The Power of Words may 
 well close our brief study of Poe s writings. It con 
 tains the philosophy of one who believed that Aidenn 
 is the trysting-place not only of dead lovers but of all 
 those homing dreams and far-faring intuitions that 
 feel infinity in their pulses.] 
 
 Oinos. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit 
 new-fledged with immortality! 
 
 Agathos. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, 
 for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is 
 knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom ask of 
 the angels freely, that it may be given ! 
 
 Oinos. But in this existence, I dreamed that I 
 should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at 
 once happy in being cognizant of all. 
 
 Agathos. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but 
 in the acquisition of knowledge ! In forever knowing, 
 we are forever blessed ; but to know all were the 
 curse of a fiend. 
 
 Oinos. But does not The Most High know all? 
 
 Agathos. That (since he is The Most Happy) must 
 be still the one thing unknown even to HIM. 
 
 Oinos. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, 
 must not at last all things be known? 
 
 Agathos. Look down into the abysmal distances! 
 attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous 
 vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them 
 thus and thus and thus! Even the spiritual vision, 
 is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 335 
 
 walls of the universe? the walls of the myriads of 
 the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to 
 blend into unity ? 
 
 Oinos. I clearly perceive that the infinity of mat 
 ter is no dream. 
 
 Agathos. There are no dreams in Aidenn but it 
 is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the 
 sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the 
 soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever un 
 quenchable within it since to quench it would be to 
 extinguish the soul s self. Question me then, my 
 Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave 
 to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop 
 outward from the throne into the starry meadows be 
 yond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart s- 
 ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted 
 suns. 
 
 Oinos. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct 
 me ! speak to me in the earth s familiar tones ! I under 
 stood not what you hinted to me, just now, of the 
 modes or of the methods of what, during mortality, 
 we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean 
 to say that the Creator is not God ? 
 
 Agathos. I mean to say that the Deity does not 
 create. 
 
 Oinos. Explain ! 
 
 Agathos. In the beginning only, he created. The 
 seeming creatures which are now, throughout the uni 
 verse, so perpetually springing into being, can only be 
 considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct 
 or immediate results of the Divine creative power. 
 
 Oinos. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would 
 be considered heretical in the extreme. 
 
336 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Agathos. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to 
 be simply true. 
 
 Oinos. I can comprehend you thus far that cer 
 tain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural 
 laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that 
 which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly be 
 fore the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I 
 well remember, many very successful experiments in 
 what some philosophers were weak enough to denom 
 inate the creation of animalculse. 
 
 Agathos. The cases of which you speak were, in 
 fact, instances of the secondary creation and of the 
 only species of creation which has ever been, since the 
 first word spoke into existence the first law. 
 
 Oinos. Are not the starry worlds that, from the 
 abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens 
 are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handi 
 work of the King? 
 
 Agathos. Let me endeavour, my Oinos, to lead 
 you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are 
 well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is 
 without infinite result. We moved our hands, for ex 
 ample, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in 
 so doing, we gave vibration to the atmosphere which 
 engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended, 
 till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth s air, 
 which thenceforward, and forever, was actuated by the 
 one movement of the hand. This fact the mathemati 
 cians of our globe well knew. They made the special 
 effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special im 
 pulses, the subject of exact calculation so that it be 
 came easy to determine in what precise period an im 
 pulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 337 
 
 impress (forever) every atom of the atmosphere cir 
 cumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, 
 from a given effect, under given conditions, in deter 
 mining the value of the original impulse. Now the 
 mathematicians who saw that the results of any given 
 impulse were absolutely endless and who saw that a 
 portion of these results were accurately traceable 
 through the agency of algebraic analysis who saw, 
 too, the facility of the retrogradation these men saw, 
 at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, 
 had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress 
 that there were no bounds conceivable to its advance 
 ment and applicability, except within the intellect of 
 him who advanced or applied it. But at this point 
 our mathematicians paused. 
 
 Oinos. And why, Agathos, should they have pro 
 ceeded ? 
 
 Agathos. Because there were some considerations 
 of deep interest, beyond. It was deducible from what 
 they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding 
 one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay 
 unfolded there could be no difficulty in tracing every 
 impulse given the air and the ether through the air 
 to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely 
 remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that 
 every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, im 
 press every individual thing that exists within the uni 
 verse ; and the being of infinite understanding the 
 being whom we have imagined might trace the re 
 mote undulations of the impulse trace them upward 
 and onward in their influences upon all particles of all 
 matter upward and onward forever in their modifica 
 tions of old forms or in other words in their creation 
 
338 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of new until he found them reflected unimpressive 
 at last back from the throne of the Godhead. And 
 not only could such a being do this, but at any epoch, 
 should a given result be afforded him should one of 
 these numberless comets, for example, be presented to 
 his inspection he could have no difficulty in deter 
 mining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what 
 original impulse it was due. This power of retrogra 
 dation in its absolute fulness and perfection this 
 faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all 
 causes is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone. 
 but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute 
 perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole 
 host of the Angelic Intelligences. 
 
 Oinos. But you speak merely of impulses upon the 
 air. 
 
 Agathos. In speaking of the air, I referred only to 
 the earth: but the general proposition has reference 
 to impulses upon the ether which, since it pervades, 
 and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium 
 of creation. 
 
 Oinos. Then all motion, of whatever nature, 
 creates ? 
 
 Agathos. It must : but a true philosophy has long 
 taught that the source of all motion is thought and 
 the source of all thought is 
 
 Oinos. God. 
 
 Agathos. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a 
 child of the fair Earth which lately perished of im 
 pulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth. 
 
 Oinos. You did. 
 
 Agathos. And while I thus spoke, did there not 
 
THE FRONTIERSMAN 339 
 
 cross your mind some thought of the physical power of 
 words? Is not every word an impulse on the air? 
 
 Oinos. But why, Agathos, do you weep? and 
 why oh why do your wings droop as we hover above 
 this fair star which is the greenest and yet most ter 
 rible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its 
 brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream but its fierce 
 volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart. 
 
 Agathos. They are I they are I This wild star 
 it is now three centuries since with clasped hands, and 
 with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved I spoke 
 it with a few passionate sentences into birth. Its 
 brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled 
 dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of 
 the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, L. F., 37- 
 
 Abeledo, A., 14. 
 
 Abernethy, John, 277. 
 
 yEschylus, 89, 109, 113. 
 
 Alcman, 299. 
 
 Aldrich, James, 164, 165* 
 
 Allan, John, 2. 
 
 Allan, Mrs. John, 58. 
 
 American Whig Review, The, 166, 220. 
 
 Anacreon, 109. 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 149. 
 
 Annabel Lee, 225, 231, 234-236. 
 
 Anthon, Charles, 62. 
 
 Armstrong, John, 93. 
 
 Arnold, Elizabeth, Poe s mother, I, 166. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 75. 
 
 Assignation, The, 215, 239, 243. 
 
 Bacon, 29, 161, 248, 249, 295. 
 
 Balmont, Constantine, 6. 7. 
 
 Balzac, 316. 
 
 Barrett, Miss Elizabeth Barrett, 158, 160, 162. 
 
 Baudelaire, 7, 9, 14, 15, 16, 173- 
 
 Bells, The, 14, 225, 228-231. 
 
 Beranger, de P. J., 109, 150, 193. 
 
 Berenice, 243. 
 
 Berryer, P. A., 166. 
 
 Betz, L. P., 225. 
 
 Bielfield, Baron, in. 
 
 Black Cat, The, 239, 243. 
 
 B odd in, A., 8. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Viscount, 63, 64. 
 
 Bonalde, P., 14. 
 
 Brandes, George, 19. 
 
 Bresciano, R., 10. 
 
 Broadway Journal, The, 158, 163, 218. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 295. 
 
 Brownell, W. C, 24, 296. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 15, 71, 208, 209. 
 
 Bruyere, La, 8l, 280. 
 
 Bryant, Jacob, 284. 
 
 Bryant, W. C., 22, 31, 32, 73, 98, 101, 104, 105, 106, 190. 
 
 343 
 
344 
 
 Bulwe?, 5 SfrEdward, 63, 78, 116, 119, wi, 123. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 120. 
 
 Burger, G. A., 206. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 49. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 89. 
 
 Burroughs, John, 24. 
 
 Burton s Gentleman s Magazine, 100, 145. 
 
 Byron, 70, 101, 145. 
 
 Calderon, Pedro, H7- 
 
 Campanella, 280. 
 
 Campbell, Killis, 210, 231, 236. 
 
 Carew, Thomas, no. 
 
 Cask of Amontillado, The, 239, 243. 
 
 Castro y Serrano, Jose de, 13. 
 
 Cata, D. A. H., 12. 
 
 Catalani, A., 291. 
 
 Cervantes, 89, 113, "7 
 
 Cham fort, 283. 
 
 Chopin, 4. 
 
 City in the Sea, The, 212-214. 
 
 Clemm, Mrs. Maria, 2, 3, 32, 66. 
 
 Clemm, Virginia, Poe s wife, 2, 3, 32, 56, 57, 66, 71, 225, 234. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 75, 89, 105, no, in, 113, 162, 206. 
 
 Coliseum, The, 214-215, 300. 
 
 Colloquy of Monos and Una, The, 221, 231, 320-333. 
 
 Commire, P., 3 : 7 
 
 Cone, S. W. f 218. 
 
 Conqueror Worm, The, 217-220, 246, 254. 
 
 Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, The, 221, 305-312, 32O. 
 
 Cooke, P. P., 245, 246. 
 
 Cooper, J. R, 4, 9, ", 12, 47, 73- 
 
 Corinthians, First Epistle to, 221. 
 
 Cowley, A., no. 
 
 Cowper, 1 06, 115. 
 
 Crabbe, G., 149. 
 
 Crebillon, P. J. de, 292. 
 
 Cunningham, Allan, no. 
 
 Dante, 89, 113. 
 Dario, Ruben, 14. 
 Darwin, Charles, 4. 
 Dawes, Rufus, 53. 
 Defoe, 76, 77, 78, 120, 240. 
 Descent Into the Maelstrom, A, 202, 240, 243. 
 Devil in the Belfry, The, 51. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 5, 55, 124, 128, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 
 139, 140, 141, 142, 174. 
 
INDEX 345 
 
 Donne, John, no. 
 
 Dostoyevsky, 19. 
 
 Doyle, Conan, 266. 
 
 Drake, Joseph Rodman, 82, 112. 
 
 Due de L Omelette, The, 240. 
 
 Edison, Thomas, 59. 
 
 Edward, 221. 
 
 Edward, Georg, 7. 
 
 Eldorado, 236-237. 
 
 Eliot, George, 69. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 4, 22, 24, 74- 
 
 English, Thomas Dunn, 45. 
 
 Etzel, Theodor, 8, 9. 
 
 Eureka, 58, 66, 67, 116, 194, 221, 333. 
 
 Euripides, 305. 
 
 Fall of the House of Usher, The, 29, 216, 239, 243. 
 
 Ferguson, J. DeL., n. 
 
 Ferrero, Felice, 9. 
 
 Foch, General Ferdinand, 242. 
 
 Fontainas, Andre, 19. 
 
 For Annie, 211, 225, 231-234, 320. 
 
 Fouque, Baron de la Motte, 113, 171. 
 
 Fraisse, A., 15. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 4. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, 44, 45- 
 
 Gautier, T., 15. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, 61, 79. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 4. 
 
 Glanvill, Joseph, 218, 245, 251, 255. 
 
 Godwin, William, 142, 174. 
 
 Goethe, 173, 206. 
 
 Gogol, 4. 
 
 Gold-Bug, The, II, 16, 240, 333. 
 
 Gosse, E., 17, 21, 23, 206, 220, 225. 
 
 Gourmont, Remy de, 15. 
 
 Graham G. R., 35. 
 
 Graham s Magazine, 116, 124, 142, 149, 173. 
 
 Grandgent, C. H., 9. 
 
 Gravina, L Abbate, 108. 
 
 Griswold, R. W., 20, 41, 51, 53, 74- 
 
 Guerra, A., 13, 14. 
 
 Hannay, James, 50. 
 Harrington, J., no. 
 Harris, J. C., 4, 238, 239. 
 Harrison, James A,, 28, 
 
346 INDEX 
 
 Harte, Bret, 238, 239. 
 
 Haunted Palace, The, 216-217, 244. 
 
 Hawthorne, N., 12, 21, 69, 74, 149, 151, 153, 154, 156, 158, 238, 
 
 239, 241. 
 
 Headley, J. T., 54- 
 Heine, H., 19. 
 
 Henry, O., 4, 51, 238, 239, 243, 293. 
 Hippe, Fritz, 9. 
 Hirst, H. B., 55. 
 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 7, 8, 13. 
 Hogarth, 121. 
 Holmes, O. W., 4, 4i, 74- 
 Homer, 109. 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 159, 164, 165. 
 How to Write a Blackwood Article, 51. 
 Hoyt, Ralph, 158. 
 Hugo, Victor, 136. 
 
 Ibanez, V. B., u. 
 
 Ingram, J. H., 7, 17, 20, 220. 
 
 Irving, Washington, 73, 153, 238, 239. 
 
 Isaiah, 212. 
 
 Island of the Fay, The, 313-320. 
 
 Israfel, 211-212. 
 
 James, Henry, 24. 
 
 James, William, 4. 
 
 Jannaccone, P., 10. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 36. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, 25, 109. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 25, 84. 
 
 Journal of Julius Rodman, The, 240. 
 
 Keats, 89, 105, 113, 160. 
 Kellner, Leon, 240, 266. 
 Kennedy, J. P., 36. 
 Knowles, Sheridan, 169. 
 Korner, K. T., 146. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 51. 
 
 Landa, N., 12. 
 
 Landor s Cottage, 30. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 23. 
 
 Latrobe, J. H. B., 55- 
 
 Lauvriere, E., 17, 18, 19, 220, 313. 
 
 Legare, H. S., 44. 
 
 Le Sage, 120. 
 
 Ligeia, 210, 218, 219, 239, 240, 243, 245-366. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 4, n. 
 
 Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq., The, 51. 
 
INDEX 347 
 
 Literati of New York, The, 31. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W., 4, 9, 12, 14, 22, 44, 45, 73, 98, 142, 143, 
 
 147, 148, 149, 164, 165, 166, 206, 211, 216. 
 Longstreet, judge A. B., 44, 80. 
 Lord Randal, 221. 
 Lowell, J. R., 22, 27, 28, 35, 4*, 42, 44, 45, BO, 73, 75, 234, 295- 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 53, 63, 173. 
 
 Machiavelli, 280. 
 
 McKenzie, William, 2. 
 
 Madison, Dolly, 8. 
 
 Mallarme, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20. 
 
 Mew 77wf Wa.5 Used Up, The, 51. 
 
 Marginalia, 56, 116, 166. 
 
 Markham, Edwin, 228. 
 
 Marmontel, J. F., 313. 
 
 Masque of the Red Death, The, 239, 243. 
 
 Matthews, Brander, 35, 241. 
 
 Maury, M. F., 59, 94, 95. 
 
 Mela, Pomponius, 316. 
 
 Mellonta Tauta, 240. 
 
 Menasci, Guido, 10. 
 
 Mesmeric Revelation, 56, 231. 
 
 Milton, 89, H3, 149, 210, 295. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, no, 114, 115, 145, 198. 
 
 Moran, Dr. J. J., 3. 
 
 Moran, Mrs. J. J., 58. 
 
 Morella, 243, 245, 246. 
 
 Morris, G. P., 106, no. 
 
 Morris, William, 20. 
 
 Mourey, G., 16, 17, 20. 
 
 Ms. Found in a Bottle, The, 2, 214, 240, 243. 
 
 Murders in the Rue Morgue, The, 15, 240, 244, 266. 
 
 Mystery of Marie Roget The, 240, 333. 
 
 "Nadar": see Tournachon, F. 
 
 Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, The, 10, 76, 94, 240. 
 
 Neal, John, 153. 
 
 Nencioni, E., 10. 
 
 Nettleton, G. H., 239, 240. 
 
 Never Bet the Devil Your Head, 51. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 63. 
 
 New York Evening, Mirror, The, 220. 
 
 Nichol, John, 234. 
 
 Nicoll, Sir Robertson, 124. 
 
 Niebuhr, 79. 
 
 Nitobe, Inazo, n. 
 
 North, Christopher, John Wilson, 81, 105. 
 
 Noyes, Alfred, 226. 
 
348 INDEiX 
 
 O Malley, Charles, 49. 
 Orban, V., 17. 
 Ortensi, U., 10. 
 Osgood, Mrs. F. S., 56. 
 "Outis," 164. 
 
 Page, C. H., 19, 29, 
 
 Pascal, 325. 
 
 Pater, Walter, 15. 
 
 Percy, Bishop, 206. 
 
 Philosophy of Composition, The, 17, 173-190, 202, 203, 246. 
 
 Pit and the Pendulum, The, 243. 
 
 Plato, 325. 
 
 PocaTidntas, 8. 
 
 Poe, David, Jr., Poe s father, I. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan: brief sketch of life, 1-3; his centennial, 
 3-4; his popularity in Russia, 5-7; in Germany, 7-9; 
 in Italy, 9-11; in Spain, 11-14; in Latin-America, 14; 
 in France, 14-19; in England, 20-23; as a projectile 
 force, 24-25; relatedness to time and place, 26-27; the 
 man vs. the artist, 27-35; suggestions for improvement 
 of schools, 36-37; opinion of slavery, 38-40; alleged 
 sectionalism, 40-45 ; his Americanism, 45-50 ; his humor, 
 50-56 ; at home, 56-57 ; attitude to religion, 58-68 ; fond 
 ness for strong drink, 69-71 ; not the poet laureate of 
 death, 71-72; the critic, 73-75; specimens of his criti 
 cism, 76-201 ; the poet, 202-209 ; selections from poems, 
 210-237; the writer of short stories, 238-244; selections 
 from short stories, 245-292; the frontiersman, 293-295; 
 selections from frontier sketches, 296-339. 
 
 Poe, Henry, Poe s brother, I, 
 
 Poe, Rosalie, Poe s sister, I. 
 
 Poetic Principle, The, 190-201. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 89, 115. 
 
 Potez, H., 14. 
 
 Power of Words, The, 221, 294, 333-339. 
 
 Preface to the Poems of 1845, 209. 
 
 Premature Burial, The, 240. 
 
 Previati, G., 10, II. 
 
 Purloined Letter, The f 240, 244, 266-292. 
 
 Rachmaninoff, 6. 
 
 Ransome, Arthur, 294. 
 
 Raumer, von Frederick, 97, 98. 
 
 Raven, The, 3, 8, 10, n, 14, 18, 33, 56, 71, 76, 125, 173-190, 
 
 215, 220-225, 231. 
 Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 60. 
 Revelation, 212. 
 Richardson, C. F., 245. 
 
INDEX 349 
 
 Richmond, Mrs. Annie, 231. 
 Robertson, J. M., 23. 
 Rochefoucauld, 81, 280. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 37. 
 Rossetti, D. G., 20, 226, 231. 
 Ruskin, John, 320. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 75. 
 
 Saintsbury, George, 206. 
 
 Sardou, V., 267. 
 
 Sartain s Union Magazine, 190. 
 
 Schlegel, A. W., 112, 117, 144, 173. 
 
 Schlegel, F., 173. 
 
 Servius, 313. 
 
 Shadow A Parable, 59, 296-299. 
 
 Shakespeare, 51, 112, 209. 
 
 Shelley, 71, 89, 91, 101, 105, 113, 160, 163. 
 
 Shelton, Mrs. Sarah E., 3. 
 
 Sheridan, R. B., 70. 
 
 Shew, Mrs. M. L., 28. 
 
 Silence A Fable, 59, 299-305. 
 
 Simms, W. G., 40, 44. 
 
 Sismondi, 79. 
 
 Sleeper, The, 33- 
 
 Slidell, Alexander, 94. 
 
 Sonnet Silence, 215. 
 
 Sonnet To Science, 313. 
 
 Sonnet To Zante, 215. 
 
 Sophocles, 320. 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, The, 2, 42, 76, 78, 80, 82, 93, 
 
 97, 98. 
 
 Spectacles, The, 51. 
 Spielhagen, F., 7. 
 
 Stedman, E. C., 21, 45, 71, 73, 240. 
 Steele, Richard, 210. 
 Steen, Jan, 149. 
 Stephens, J. L., 60. 
 Sue, Eugene, 172. 
 Swift, Dean, 240. 
 Swinburne, A. .C, 20, 21, 
 
 Taine, H., 75. 
 
 Tale of Jerusalem, A, 51. 
 
 Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 157. 
 
 Talleyrand, 130. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 295. 
 
 T ell-Tale Heart, The, 243. 
 
 Tennyson, 4, 22, 23, 67, 71, 105, 106, 162, 163. 
 
 Thomas, F. W., 70, 236. 
 
35Q 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ticknor, Caroline, 18, 20. 
 
 To Helen, 210. 
 
 Tolstoi, 19- 
 
 To One in Paradise, 215-216. 
 
 Tournachon, F., 15. 
 
 Twain, Mark, 4, 51. 
 
 Ulalume, 18, 33, 210, 225-228, 231. 
 
 Verne, Jules, 240. 
 
 Volney, Count, 61. 
 
 Voltaire, 173- 
 
 Von Kempelen and His Discovery, 230. 
 
 Wallack, Lester, 267. 
 
 Ward, Thomas, 51, 52. 
 
 Whitman, Mrs. Sarah Helen, 3, 17, IQ, 20, 56, 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 4, 6, 9, 14, 18, 22, 42. 
 
 Whittier, J. G., 74- 
 
 Whitty, J. H., 58. 
 
 Wilkins, E. H., 9. 
 
 William Wilson, 71, 157, 158, 239, 243. 
 
 Willis, N. P., 166, 220. 
 
 Wirt, William, 36. 
 
 Wise, T. J., 21. 
 
 Woodberry, George E., 58, 73, 208, 240. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 71, 105, no, 162, 226, 
 
 Wyzewa, Teodor de, 19. 
 
 X-ing a Paragrdb, 51. 
 
 Yarmolinsky, A., 5. 
 Young, Edward, 106. 
 
 Zimmermann, J. G., 316. 
 Zola, 225. 
 
\ 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 llMfty Qjfi u 
 
 IN STACKS 
 
 / w >t./jy 
 
 DPT 1 1 1QCC 
 
 MAYR 64 -5PM 
 
 U I 1 _ WtJO 
 
 
 Kh-CFlA/E-r* 
 
 
 
 NOI/ 1 ^ S FP in A 
 
 i DU 
 
 " * * ^-lOAM 
 
 t/ -V A ^ 
 
 
 <->AN DEPT 
 "^ i 
 
 NOVl8 Wb13 
 
 
 REC D 
 
 An\ H 
 
 4 v r f* gp . - 
 
 NOV17 65-6PM 
 
 iVED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 A p R ^0 67-^5 PM 
 
 . 
 
 rpfflteg7053 
 
 OCT25t966 41 
 
 > <> 170-8 AM 
 
 
 : 197i.4 n* r. o 
 
 T n 
 
 irin t-i ^ ^ryt,m\^ i^iVi ) 
 
 General Library 
 
 " University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY