His genius has had no better description
      than in this stanza from William Winter’s poem, read at the
      dedication exercises of the Actors’ Monument to Poe, May 4, 1885,
      in New York:

     He was the voice of beauty and of woe,
     Passion and mystery and the dread unknown;
     Pure as the mountains of perpetual snow,
     Cold as the icy winds that round them moan,
     Dark as the caves wherein earth’s thunders groan,
     Wild as the tempests of the upper sky,
     Sweet as the faint, far-off celestial tone of angel whispers,
     fluttering from on high,
     And tender as love’s tear when youth and beauty die. In the two and a half score years that have elapsed since Poe’s
      death he has come fully into his own. For a while Griswold’s
      malignant misrepresentations colored the public estimate of Poe
      as man and as writer. But, thanks to J. H. Ingram, W. F. Gill,
      Eugene Didier, Sarah Helen Whitman and others these scandals have
      been dispelled and Poe is seen as he actually was—not as a man
      without failings, it is true, but as the finest and most original
      genius in American letters. As the years go on his fame
      increases. His works have been translated into many foreign
      languages. His is a household name in France and England—in fact,
      the latter nation has often uttered the reproach that Poe’s own
      country has been slow to appreciate him. But that reproach, if it
      ever was warranted, certainly is untrue. W. H. R.




EDGAR ALLAN POE


By James Russell Lowell

      The situation of American literature is anomalous. It has no
      centre, or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes. It is divided into many systems, each revolving round its several
      suns, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of
      a milk-and-water way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris,
      is not a great central heart from which life and vigor radiate to
      the extremities, but resembles more an isolated umbilicus stuck
      down as near as may be to the centre of the land, and seeming
      rather to tell a legend of former usefulness than to serve any
      present need. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, each has its
      literature almost more distinct than those of the different
      dialects of Germany; and the Young Queen of the West has also one
      of her own, of which some articulate rumor barely has reached us
      dwellers by the Atlantic. Perhaps there is no task more difficult than the just criticism
      of contemporary literature. It is even more grateful to give
      praise where it is needed than where it is deserved, and
      friendship so often seduces the iron stylus of justice into a
      vague flourish, that she writes what seems rather like an epitaph
      than a criticism. Yet if praise be given as an alms, we could not
      drop so poisonous a one into any man’s hat. The critic’s ink may
      suffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or of
      sugar. But it is easier to be generous than to be just, and we
      might readily put faith in that fabulous direction to the hiding
      place of truth, did we judge from the amount of water which we
      usually find mixed with it. Remarkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life of
      imaginative men, but Mr. Poe’s biography displays a vicissitude
      and peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with. The
      offspring of a romantic marriage, and left an orphan at an early
      age, he was adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whose
      barren marriage-bed seemed the warranty of a large estate to the
      young poet. Having received a classical education in England, he returned
      home and entered the University of Virginia, where, after an
      extravagant course, followed by reformation at the last
      extremity, he was graduated with the highest honors of his class. Then came a boyish attempt to join the fortunes of the insurgent
      Greeks, which ended at St. Petersburg, where he got into
      difficulties through want of a passport, from which he was
      rescued by the American consul and sent home. He now entered the
      military academy at West Point, from which he obtained a
      dismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his adopted father,
      by a second marriage, an event which cut off his expectations as
      an heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his name was not
      mentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this regard,
      and he committed himself at once to authorship for a support. Previously to this, however, he had published (in 1827) a small
      volume of poems, which soon ran through three editions, and
      excited high expectations of its author’s future distinction in
      the minds of many competent judges. That no certain augury can be drawn from a poet’s earliest
      lispings there are instances enough to prove. Shakespeare’s first
      poems, though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness,
      give but a very faint promise of the directness, condensation and
      overflowing moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however,
      Shakespeare is hardly a case in point, his “Venus and Adonis”
      having been published, we believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton’s Latin verses show tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and
      a delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint of
      the author of a new style in poetry. Pope’s youthful pieces have
      all the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity
      and eloquent irreligion of his later productions. Collins’ callow
      namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original
      genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that
      the world lost more in the “marvellous boy,” Chatterton, than a
      very ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated dulness. Where
      he becomes original (as it is called), the interest of ingenuity
      ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White’s promises were
      indorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but surely with
      no authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditional
      piety, which to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less
      objectionable in the retired closet of a diary, and in the sober
      raiment of prose. They do not clutch hold of the memory with the
      drowning pertinacity of Watts; neither have they the interest of
      his occasional simple, lucky beauty. Burns having fortunately
      been rescued by his humble station from the contaminating society
      of the “Best models,” wrote well and naturally from the first. Had he been unfortunate enough to have had an educated taste, we
      should have had a series of poems from which, as from his
      letters, we could sift here and there a kernel from the mass of
      chaff.