of a piece of scenery, or an event, or a condition of human suffering or joy, will tell itself to you from his lips in a music inseparable from it, and by dint of perception into the heart of the feelings which such scenery, or event, or condition would naturally awaken in every human soul. There is no occasion for going into recondite inquiries about the "nature of the poet." We see how GOETHE had tired of all that when he tells Eckermann, "lively feeling of situations and power to express them make the poet." I say, take the verses "To Helen," "The Bridal Ballad," "The Sleeper;" take these two lines,— "The sad waters, sad and chilly, With the snows of the lolling lily," if we do not find poetry in these places, where are we to look for it? It is easy to talk about the "deep heart," &c., and there are half-a-dozen unreadable gentlemen always ready to assure one that poetry is gone to the dogs-all except their own; but submit Poe's volume to persons most habitually conversant with all poetry, and they will admit that the charm of it is in his book. Those who may deny that he is a great, have no right to deny that he is a true, poet. As un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme, so a real poet, of course, ranks with the family. The head of a family is, perhaps, a duke; but every cadet, however distant, shares the blood. My remark on a point in his youthful poems ex tends to all his poems. Traces of spiritual emotion are not to be found there. Sorrow there is, but not There is not any approach to the Holy divine sorrow. -to the holiness which mingles with all Tennyson's poetry-as the Presence with the wine. And yet, when you view his poems simply as poems, this characteristic does not make itself felt as a want. It would seem as if he had only to deal with the Beautiful as a human aspirant. His soul thirsted for the "supernal loveliness." That thirst was to him religion-all the religion you discover in him. But if we cannot call him religious, we may say that he supplies the materials of worship. You want flowers and fruit for your altar; and wherever Poe's muse has passed, flowers and fruit are fairer and brighter. 66 With all this passion for the Beautiful, no poet was ever less voluptuous. He never profaned his genius, whatever else he profaned. Irene," "Ulalume," "Lenore," "Annabel Lee," "Annie," are all gentle, and innocent, and fairy-like. A sound of music-rising as from an unseen Ariel, brings in a most pure and lovely figure-sad, usually; so delicate and dreamy are these conceptions, that indeed they hint only of some transcendent beauty-some region where passion has no place, where "Music, and moonlight, and feeling, as Shelley says. Poe loved splendour,-he delighted in the gorgeous—in ancient birth-in tropical flowers—in southern birds-in castellated dwellings. The hero of his "Raven" sits on a "violet velvet lining;" the dead have "crested palls." He delighted, as Johnson says of Collins, "to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." His scenery is everywhere magnificent. His genius is always waited upon with the splendour of an oriental monarch. I have spoken of the tinge of melancholy which gives an effect like moonlight to all that he has done. I have said elsewhere that his "genius, like the eyes of a southern girl, is at once dark and luminous."* "The Raven," "Ulalume," "For Annie," all turn on death. And this melancholy, too, is of a heathen character. You might say that his book is funestus. The stamp of sorrow is upon it, -as cypress hung over the doors of a house among the ancients when death had entered there. Remembering this, one must admit that his range is narrow. He has, for instance, no humour-he had little sympathy with the various forms of man's life. No one can claim for him a rich dramatic humanity, such as makes much of the charm and some of the greatness of our great poet Browning. But he is perfectly poetic in his own province. If his circle is a narrow, it is a Singleton Fontenoy, vol. ii. * xxxii LIFE AND GENIUS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. magic one. His poetry is sheer poetry, and borrows nothing from without, as didactic poetry does. For didactic poetry he had a very strong and a very natural dislike. His melody is his own. You will find a music in each poem which is inseparable from the sentiment of it. He gives a certain musical air, as a soul, to each poem, but he works up the details of the execution like an artist. Witness "The Raven" or "The Bells." Everything he has done is finished in detail, and has received its final touches. He had an exquisite eye for proportion, and every little poem is carved like a cameo. Such are the hints which I have to prefix to this American poet. And with three-times-three from a select band of his admirers he is now launched on the English public! LONDON, November, 1852. JAMES HANNAY. |