Text: Anonymous, “[Review of Poe's Tales],” Times and Compiler (Richmond, VA), July 30, 1845, vol. 67, no. 25, p. 2, col. 4

[page 25, column 4, continued:]

TALES, by Edgar A. Poe; “Library of American Books:” Wiley & Putnam.

Perhaps it is not necessary in this community to do more than state that the best pieces of Mr. Poe have been collected in a volume, and are now for sale here; for most literary persons have doubtless formed a decided judgment of the merits of this author. Personal predilection and prejudice has unconsciously so much influence upon our estimate of a writer, that when, as is the case with Mr. Poe, he has lived among us, contracted friendships, perhaps incurred dislikes, and shown us his real stature and strength, it is impossible to acquire an impartial opinion of his works. And this will account for the popularity in this country of some foreign authors who are ranked less highly at home. For our part, we think these tales manifest unusual talent, and indeed genius — but of a morbid, unpoised character; they resemble the strange outpourings of an opium eater, while under the influence of that stimulating drug, and we may properly adopt a part of the language of a critic, who, when speaking of Poe, says his book “appears to us a collection of visions of some one to whom Fancy only comes in a fit of the nightmare. The man has mounted the wrong peak of Parnassus. We were never there, but they tell us that there were two: they who climed [[climbed]] the one became poets, and they who scaled the other, madmen.”