The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 eBook

As a critic, Mr. Poe was aesthetically deficient.  Unerring in his analysis of dictions, metres and plots, he seemed wanting in the faculty of perceiving the profounder ethics of art.  His criticisms are, however, distinguished for scientific precision and coherence of logic.  They have the exactness, and at the same time, the coldness of mathematical demonstrations.  Yet they stand in strikingly refreshing contrast with the vague generalisms and sharp personalities of the day.  If deficient in warmth, they are also without the heat of partisanship.  They are especially valuable as illustrating the great truth, too generally overlooked, that analytic power is a subordinate quality of the critic.

On the whole, it may be considered certain that Mr. Poe has attained an individual eminence in our literature which he will keep.  He has given proof of power and originality.  He has done that which could only be done once with success or safety, and the imitation or repetition of which would produce weariness.

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DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE

BY N. P. WILLIS

The ancient fable of two antagonistic spirits imprisoned in one body, equally powerful and having the complete mastery by turns-of one man, that is to say, inhabited by both a devil and an angel seems to have been realized, if all we hear is true, in the character of the extraordinary man whose name we have written above.  Our own impression of the nature of Edgar A. Poe, differs in some important degree, however, from that which has been generally conveyed in the notices of his death.  Let us, before telling what we personally know of him, copy a graphic and highly finished portraiture, from the pen of Dr. Rufus W. Griswold, which appeared in a recent number of the “Tribune:"{*1}

“Edgar Allen Poe is dead.  He died in Baltimore on Sunday, October 7th.  This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.  The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.

“His conversation was at times almost supramortal in its eloquence.  His voice was modulated with astonishing skill, and his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart.  His imagery was from the worlds which no mortals can see but with the vision of genius.  Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and by a crystalline process