was very deficient. It contained little moral signs of that most wonderful book, EUREKA, with sense and less reverence. This was one key to the same abstracted earnestness as if it was an many of his literary characteristics. With more amanuensis to whom he was dictating for the reverence, conjoined with the other traits of cra-press, or a Kepler, or a Bacon-who alone, beniology, Mr. Poe would have been a mocker and side himself, could have written it. This carea sneerer. Such was the head of Voltaire, whose lessness of companionship contained a trait of organ of reverence equalled that of Wesley or his character. If any man ever was perfectly Howard, but which only served as a guide to emancipated from all trammels of society, cared his mirthfulness and combativeness, in couse- not ten straws what was thought of him by the quence of the still greater predominance of his passer, cared not whether he was admitted freely animal organs. But Mr. Poe wanted the per- into upper-tendom, or denied access to respectaception of reverential things to give them suf- ble grog-shops, it was this singular and extraorficient importance to be mocked. The same fact dinary man. And this want of all conception accounts for an absence of that morbid remorse and perception of the claims of civilized society, and sense of duty unfulfilled which marks so dis-and the inevitable penalties which attend violatinctly all the writings of Byron, and of most tions of its laws-for there are penalties which modern authors of distinction. In Poe's wri- attend violations of the laws of human society, tings there is despair, hopelessness; and the (which are none other than the laws of nature) echoes of a melancholy extremely touching to as necessarily as those attending violations of the those who read with a remembrance of his bro-laws of the physical elements-was one of the ken life; but nowhere in them does "conscience causes which rendered Mr. Poe's life so unforturoused, sit boldly on her throne." The ideas of nate. Few men of literary powers so marked, right and wrong are as feeble in his chains of thought as in the literature of Ancient Greece.

of genius so indubitable as his, could fail of living at least tolerably well in the nineteenth cenBut we anticipate our subject. Mr. Poe's hair tury,-if they conducted themselves at all in was dark, and when we knew him, seemed to accordance with the behests of society. As be slightly sprinkled with grey. He wore a we shall presently show, true genius does not heavy and ill-trimmed moustache. He dressed now receive its meed of fame from its generation uniformly in good taste, simple and careless, the nor ever will; but it can now make books that attire of a gentleman. His manners were ex- will sell, and it will keep its owner above want cellent, unembarrassed, polite, and marked with if he chooses to use it with ordinary discretion. an easy repose. His conversation was the very Talent is still better than genius in such matters; best we have ever listened to. We have never but genius of such force, we repeat, always obheard any other so suggestive of thought, or any tains a competency, if nothing intervenes. That from which one gained so much. On literary sub-which intervened between Mr. Poe's genius and jects, books, authors, and literary life, it was as competency, was Mr. Poe himself. His changesuperior to all else that we have heard or read,able humors, his irregularities, his caprices, his even the best, as the diamond is to other jewels. total disregard of everything and body, save the It cut into the very gist of the matter. It was fancy in his head, prevented him from doing well the essence of correct and profound criticism di- in the world. The evils and sufferings that povvested of all formal pedantries and introductory erty brought upon him, soured his nature, and ideas-the kernel clear of the shell. He was not deprived him of faith in human beings. This a “brilliant talker," in the common after-dinner was evident to the eye-he believed in nobody, sense of the term,—was not a maker up of fine and cared for nobody. Such a mental condition points or a sayer of funny things. What he said of course drove away all those who would otherwas prompted entirely by the moment, and seem-wise have stood by him in his hours of trial. He ed uttered for the pleasure of uttering it. But became, and was, an Ishmaelite. His place of when he became well roused, when his thought abode was as uncertain and unfixed as the Bewas well worked up, and the juice all over it, he douins.. He was equally well known in New would say more, send out more pithy ideas, dri-York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Richving straight and keen as arrows to their mark, mond. than any man we ever heard speak. He was His habits of intoxication were another reason very fond of talking, and not at all exclusive in for his want of success in life. From all that we his audiences. Whether his hearers understood can learn he fell into them early in life, and they his acute abstractions or appreciated the glorious caused his death. Thousands have seen him conceptions that perpetually flashed and sparkled drunk in the streets of this city. In all his visits across his mental sky, was no care of his. He save the last, he was in a state approaching would sit himself down in a tavern porch beside mania. Whenever he tasted alchohol he seldom any dirty dunce, and unfold to him the great de-stopt drinking it so long as he was able. He did

live,) are treated with honor by the world. Such men the world can understand and estimate. But those who are cursed with that high and peculiar intellect, that strange thing called genius, that power of seizing on great truths—or ima

drink most barbarously. Most men, even the of TALENT and GENIUS, is the same alike in the most inveterate, make their bad habit a source achievements of reason and of imaginationof pleasure-luxury-voluptuousness, a means of though the vulgar error would confine the rule excitement or a gratification of the palate. Such to the first. For the fact is well known and sufwas not the case with Edgar Poe. His taste for ficiently admitted, melancholy though it be, that drink was a simple disease-no source of pleas- nearly all those who have blessed mankind with ure nor of excitement. When once the poison great discoveries have lived and died miserably. had passed his lips, he would go at once to a bar The men who have that degree of mind which and drink off glass after glass as fast as its tutelar we denominate talent, who make a good use of genius could mix them, until his faculties were the store of knowledge already in the world, and utterly swallowed up. His long fits of intoxica- who carry the discoveries which others have tion, and the consequent ill health and listless-made, but a short distance forward, (not so far ness, of course diminished the quantity of Mr. as to be out of sight of the age in which they Poe's intellectual products, and interfered with their perfecton. But wonderful as it may seem, we do not believe that the force of his intellect was at all impaired thereby. He was a greater man at the time of his death than he had ever been before. His greatest work is his last. It is some- ges-or expressions, which lie beyond the ken of what singular that this and several other of his best works either immediately preceded or succeeded long and fearful fits of his unhappy disease. He came to this city immediately after the appearance of Eureka, and plunged into the very depth of his woe. And we learn through pled under foot. These men speak to us of an eye witness, that on the morning the "Raven" saw the light in the pages of the "Whig Review," when all New York was just agog about it, when the name of Poe was in every mouth, he saw him pass down Broadway in such a state that he reeled from side to side of the pavement at every yard he advanced.

We pass to the writings of Mr. Poe, the portion of our subject we are much more willing to contemplate. About them there is no doubt. The true gold rings in that coin. Many things that he has written are children of hunger and haste; much more is marked with the flatness and inanity which makes up nine days in ten of a dissipated life. His multifarious outpourings, as collected in the mass before us, are unequal and uneven, gothic and grotesque; but of great weight as a whole and of inestimable value in parts.

all but themselves-in short, the men who go ahead of their age-are invariably either treated with neglect and stupid scorn, by the mob of common-place respectabilities who compose the enlightened public-or they are stoned and tram

things which they cannot comprehend-things which are to be seen only in THE FUTURE, that strange world which the curtain of time yet hides from our dull and horny eyes. Capt. Cooke says that when he came to Nootka Sound, the naked savages he found there split their sides with laughter at the sight of his ships with their great white sails, tall masts and innumerable ropes, because they were so different from their canoes of bark. So it is with the mass of mankind. We cannot understand the strange notions, the inconceivable ideas, told to us by the men who have leaped the bar which three centuries place between us and the world to come: therefore we "utter our barbarian cackle." According to our temper, we pass with a smile, and leave the man to poverty and neglect, or we get angry and rail at him for a fool and pestilent disturber of peace and quiet. When this huge globe has This we are convinced is the opinion of every thundered on its path some hundreds of years one who possesses sufficient originality of mental further, we begin to reap the benefit of their conformation, or of research into the powers of great ideas and their grand discoveries, and to unexpression and the fields of imagination, to con-derstand the magnificent creations of their imagistitute him a judge of an author entirely new, nation. We then look back to their lives with and of fruit entirely distinct from all ordinary spe- melancholy admiration and pity, and pour out to cies. The writer is well aware that the multi- their empty names the affection and honor which tude of well-educated readers, and the multitude would have soothed the fevered brain and broalso of gentlemen who "write with ease," will ken heart, long since mouldered into dust. And set down his sentence as extravagant and un-say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, tenable in the extreme. Edgar Poe has not yet we would not have done thus and so. But we reached his proper seat in the temple of fame- would, and we are now doing the same things to nor will for many a long year. These writings all such, only in a more civilized method. And, are too new and too great to be taken at once from the nature of things, thus it must ever be; into the popular mind. The temporary success for, as we have said, although the world will

always estimate talent, it cannot at first judge cor- the demiurgos, the creator of a Venus, or a Greek rectly of genius. Therefore, the age must ever know little of its truly great men, and thus must we ever " build the tombs of the prophets whom our fathers have slain."

slave, with the mechanic who cut the marble into shape; as we rank the producer with the manufacturer, the navigator with the bold discoverer, the honored and flattered Americus Vespucci with the Columbus brought home in chains. While the people of this day run after such authors as Prescott and Willis, speak with revereuce of the Channings and Adamses and Irvings, their children in referring back to our time in

The rule holds as rigidly in the realm of poetry and imagination as in the realm of scientific discovery. When Beethoven's Quartettes were brought over to the Philharmonic Society of London, the greatest pianist of the day threw them off his desk as rubbish, trash, unintelligible literary history, will say, "this was the time of and useless. The neat poets and the Addisonian | Poe." essayists have ever fared well; but Homer If called upon to name the trait which distinbegged his bread, Dante died in exile, Tasso in guishes this writer from other writers of equal in jail, Milton sold his Paradise Lost for ten genius, we should say it was the metaphysical pounds, and Shakspeare's plays were so forgot-nature of all his productions and of every line of ten in the time of Pope, that in publishing a new them. He is emphatically an 'ideologist'—his edition he was forced to distinguish what he was creations and his expressions are essentially abpleased to denominate the good passages, by stractions. Edgar Poe had travelled much,— quotation marks at the beginning lines. The seen cities, climes, governments-known great name of Poe does not at this moment rank with numbers of distinguished and remarkable people; that of either N. P. Willis, James Russell Lowell, but they never appeared in his conversations or in or Rufus Griswold. The matter which fills the his writings. His conversation contained no altwo volumes before us, may be properly estimated lusions to incidents, no descriptions of places, no by one person in two hundred who examine it; anecdotes. In his animated moods he threw off but the large majority will lay it down with utter brilliant paradoxes; and if he talked of individucontempt perfectly unconscious of its merits als, his ideas ran upon their moral and intellecand its beauties. The populace must have these tual qualities,―never upon the idiosyncracies of things interpreted to them by time and imitators their active visible phenomena, or the peculiaribefore they can understand or appreciate. ties of their manner. His writings contain no What we have here is new. It is not old wine descriptions-or next to none-of real life or landin new bottles only; it is not glossy broadcloth scape. When he sketches natural scenery, the from old cassinet, nor is it bread pudding from trees, the rocks, the waters, the walls are phanthe scraps of yesterday. It is seldom that one tasms,-it is from distorted, thin, strange and morhears any new music. Each village music mas-bid sick-dreams of trees, rocks, waters, and walls, ter picks a favorite movement from Mozart or that he draws. Take the fall of the House of Rossini, and dishes it up in the milk and water of his own "variations." Rarely do we hear a new theme. But this author's theme, movement, all are new-in his prose at least. Those notes have not been struck before. That is the modus operandi of the principle we have established that is the immediate and acting cause why his place as an author was not and has not yet been awarded him by the people. When a new musical composition is for the first time listened to by the unpractised ear, it seems a strange jumble. But when frequently heard, its design by degrees dawns upon the mind of the hearer, its harmonious coloring becomes visible, its glorious fancies gleam slowly out like stars. It is just thus with an entirely new composition in literature. When the world's ear becomes sufficiently accustomed to the strain, it will perceive that it is good as well as new, and it gives the author to whom it was indifferent in the days of its ignorance, an estimation proportioned to that indifference. It then ranks him in comparison with the mere men of talent, who were admired at the first, just as we rank less creatures we can imagine as the denizens of

Usher for instance-examine the natural scenery in that tale for an illustration of what we have been saying. In short, Edgar Poe is a painter of ideas, not of men and things. He held precisely the same relations to Dickens, Thackeray, and the like, that the mad artist Blake, to whom the apparition of William Wallace and the ghost of a flea [vide, Cunningham's British Painters and Sculptors, art. Blake,] were wont to sit for portraits,-held to Hogarth and Reynolds.

This is the distinctive element of these volumes. It is not merely the distinctive element, but also the essential element of every thing in them. The ideas are ideas par excellence. There is not the faintest odor of flesh and blood about them-no earthly smell. They have all the same thin, immaterial and intangible outline. They have no more atmosphere about them than the cliffs and peaks of the moon. No earthly thing can live there. The things called men and women who inhabit the tales of Poe, are no more like the beings of our world, than the strange and color

the sun, passing and repassing in rays of light, celebrity has been the fruit of such men's labours. homogeneous with the elements themselves. pre- From these he is thought by some to have learned existent to, and superior to organization and to much relative to the literary profession, comparathe laws of existence as we know them. tively unknown in this new country. Here too This elementary quality infects every faculty he may have gained acquaintance with many of his mind—his idealty-his hate-his love- fields of learning, which are terra incognita his taste. Look at its manifestations in his wit. to American students, for want of the books The writings before us are not by any means and machinery to explore them. But be this as destitute of those qualities in their abstract con- it may, it is certain that in his compositions may stitution. On the contrary, parts of Eureka, and be observed things that are far in advance of the very many of the tales exhibit them, and the dis- profession on this side of the water. position to indulge them in the greatest strength. We shall now proceed to remark upon the But the humour never makes us laugh, and the matter of these volumes in particular. Mr. wit never pleases while it surprises us by its James Russell Lowell thinks that as a critic Edscintillations. Both faculties depend for means gar Poe was " aesthetically deficient." Very of manifestation upon human beings as they ap-like,-for Poe was incapable of appreciating Mr. pear to the eye, and can never be successful James Russell Lowell and his set. But as a when separated from those phenomena. Edgar critic we prefer what remains of Edgar Poe to Poe's wit and humour, in consequence of his su- anything after Hazlitt. In his paragraphs are perlatively metaphysical nature, becomes the pure no inanities, no vague generalities, no timorous grotesque. Passages which would be witty and and half-way work. His points are ever conhumourous in the hands of an earthly man-of a crete and tangible. When he gave chase to an real human being—upon his pages resemble only absurdity, he ran it into the earth. When he fantastic aperies, the grimaces of some un- sets up a principle for a critical law, he demonknown species of goblin monkey, twistings and strates it with such clearness that you can all but quaint gesticulations which we cannot understand at all. It is too far removed from fleshly sympathies to excite the nerves of laughter-or the odd surprise and smiling titilations which follow the natural exercises of wit.

see it. The reader must not estimate his critical writings by the specimens given in these volumes. For some reason or other, the editors have republished only the very dull stuff he had been putting forth for bread in the magazines of From the writers of our new and unfinished the last few years, under the headings of "Marcountry, the works of Poe, that is, the good ginalia," &c. All that is poor enough. But things among them—are distinguished by another while he conducted the Southern Literary Mesremarkable quality:-their finish of style. This senger, he poured forth quantities of critical superior finish consists not merely in that clear writing that was really "great." The volumes perfection of arrangement which comes natu- of this periodical, which were published under his rally with the best thoughts and good hours management, are worth an examination even at of a first rate mind; but also in the charms this late day. It was this writing which established of a mastery in the art of writing greater than the Messenger and gave it an early celebrity. those possessed by any other American author. Newspapers of the times denounced it hugely; so Mr. Poe was a learned man. In spite of his ir did all the small authors about New York and regular life, he managed to master both litera- Philadelphia; and all the ninimee pinimee people ture and science to an extent reaching far be- every where joined in the cry. The burden of yond any American we have known. He had, that cry was "wholesale denunciation," "abuse,” without doubt, gotten possession of many criti- &c., &c. He did lay on with the most mercical tools and springs not commonly in use. At less severity, crucifying many. But he did not one time in his life-we are unable to fix the pe- condemn one whit too much. The objectors riod-Mr. Poe is said to have lived in London. should recollect this great truth: As there are How he got the means and how he lived while there, great many more bad than good people in this no one knows. Little relative thereto, could be world, just so are there many more bad than gotout of him, save that he saw nothing of the great good books in the world. We go not too farworld in any sense of the word. He had been no, not half far enough-in saying that for every heard to mention Hunt and Hook as two of those one good book one hundred volumes which are whom he knew there; and it is supposed that utterly worthless are published. This is a fact. he lived very much with that class of men-the From the imperfection of human things it is so. men like himself, possessed of genius but down in The reviewer who pretends to treat the literature the world, dragging out a precarious existence in of his age with justice, must needs condemn a garrets, doing drudge-work, writing for the great hundred times as much he praises. The contrapresses and for the reviews whose world widery is the characteristic of American reviewing at

present. The press deluges every thing with people-and they constitute the majority of our eau sucrée. Mr. Poe dealt out nothing but justice practical race-are possessed of a false theoto the dunces. He flayed them alive. He was ry. They hold that every poem and poet should in those days like one possessed of a divine fury; have some moral notion or other, which it is his tore right and left with an envenomed tooth; like "mission" to expound. That theory is all false. some savage boar, broken into a hot-house of To build theories, principles, religions, &c., is pale exotics, he laid about him with white foam- the business of the argumentative, not of the ing tusks, uprooting all. His writing then at-poetic faculty. The business of poetry is to mintracted universal attention. At the same time it ister to the sense of the beautiful in human minds. made him an immense number of enemies among literary men. This was a cause why his merit was never acknowledged, even by his own profession in this country. He was not recognized by the popular mind, because it did not comprehend him. He was not recognized by the writers, because they hated him of old.

As a poet, we must contemplate in this author an unfinished column. He wanted money too often and too much to develope his wonderful imagination in verse. There is but one poem in

That sense is a simple element in our nature— simple, not compound; and therefore the art which ministers to it may safely be said to have an ultimate end in so ministering. This the "Raven" does in an eminent degree. It has no allegory in it, no purpose—or a very slight one-but it is a thing of beauty," and will be a "joy forever," for that and no further reason. The last stanza is an image of settled despair and despondency, which throws a gleam of meaning and allegory over the entire poem-making it all a

which he succeeded in uttering himself; but on personification of that passion-but that stanza its dusky wings he will sail securely over the is evidently an after thought, and unconnected gulf of oblivion to the eternal shore beyond. with the original poem. There is still such a difference of opinion in re- TheRaven" itself, is a simple narrative of lation to this unique production, that it is entitled simple events. A bird which had been taught to to a separate notice at our hands. With the speak by some former master, is lost in a stormy learned in imaginative literature, the Raven has night, is attracted by the light of a student's wintaken rank over the whole world, as the very dow, flies to it and flutters against it. Then first poem manufactured upon the American con- against the door. The student fancies it a visitinent. In their eyes, but one other work of the tor; opens the door; and the chance word uttered western world can be placed near it :-that is the by the bird suggests to him memories and fanHumble Bee of Ralph Waldo Emerson. This cies connected with his own situation and his last is admitted to be the superior of the Raven dead sweetheart or wife. Such is the poem. The in construction and perfect elaboration; the lat- last stanza is an accident and an after thought; ter possesses a greater merit as a work of pure and the worth of the Raven is not in any "moral,” art. But while the Raven maintains this exalted nor is its charm in the construction of its story. position upon the scale of all the class that pos- Its great and wonderful merits consist in the sesses a taste sufficiently cultivated to be catho- strange, beautiful and fantastic imagery and collic, there is yet a large majority of those denomi- ors with which the simple subject is clothed— nated "well educated people" who make it mat- the grave and supernatural tone with which it ter of special denunciation and ridicule. Those rolls on the ear,—the extraordinary vividness of who have formed their taste in the Pope and the word painting, and the powerful, but altoDryden school, whose earliest poetical acquaint-gether indefinable appeal which is made throughance is Milton, and whose latest Hammond and out to the organs of ideality and marvellousness. Cowper-with a small sprinkling of Moore and Added to these is a versification indescribably Byron-cannot relish a poet tinged so deeply sweet and wonderfully difficult-winding and with the dyes of the nineteenth century. The convoluted about like the mazes of some com"Raven" makes an impression on them which plicated overture by Beethoven. To all who they are not able to explain-but that irritates have a strong perception of tune, there is a music them. Criticism and explanation are useless in it which haunts the ear long after reading. with such. Criticism cannot reason people into These are great merits. They render the Raan attachment. In spite of our pleas, such will ven, in the writer's esteem, a gem of art. It is talk of the gaudiness of Keats, and the craziness engraved with the image of true genius--and of of Shelley, until they see deep enough into their genius in its happiest hour. It is one of those claims to forget or be ashamed to talk so. This things an author never does but once. class angrily pronounce the Raven flat nonsense. This author has left very little poetry that is good; Another class are disgusted therewith because they but that little contains traces of merits transcendcan see no purpose, no allegory, no "mean- ent-though undeveloped. Most of his collected ing;" as they express it, in the poem. These pieces were written in early youth. They are not