Text: Robert D. Jacobs, “Graham's: Honest and Fearless Opinion,” Poe, Journalist and Critic, 1969, pp. 249-273 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 249:]

X  •  Graham's: Honest and

Fearless Opinion

 

ALTHOUGH Poe was employing every stratagem to found his own journal, the Penn, he did not fail to give George R. Graham a full measure of service. For the first time he was comparatively unrestricted as to the length of his reviews and the level of severity he could display, and he was able to use the magazine as for a time he had used the Messenger: to gibbet dunces and to call for higher standards in American letters. By higher standards Poe meant first of all a criticism without fear or favor, uncommitted to increasing the profits of publishing houses, magazines, or individuals at the expense of quality. Scarcely less important, he wanted an improvement in the quality of the magazines themselves. It must be emphasized, however, that Poe was by no means a solitary Jeremiah. James Russell Lowell, also a magazinist for a time, made the same complaints and called for the same reforms, as did other responsible journalists. In fact many fledgling magazines, in the tall talk of their prospectuses, claimed that they would be just and impartial in their reviews and that they would employ writers only of the highest quality.(1) Poe's distinction lay in the fact that while others were talking of higher standards he was doing his best as a critic to enforce them, subject, of course, to the limitations of his temperament and taste. His first reviews for Graham's reveal considerable asperity, and he showed an increasing tendency to make judgments on the basis of rhetorical rules, either the conventional ones or those he made up for his own purposes. Occasionally he still launched into a rhapsody of appreciation for ideality, which he treasured both on a theoretical and on an emotional basis, but in general during the period with Graham his reviews were tough-minded critiques based upon traditional criteria.

The first review in Graham's that can be considered secure in the [page 250:] Poe canon was that of Bulwer's Night and Morning, in the April, 1841, number.(2) As has been brought out earlier in this study, it was customary for American critics to deplore the tendency toward immorality in Bulwer's novels, but Poe, limiting critical inquiry chiefly to questions of literary value, was prone to ignore any infringements on American prudery. He was opposed to vulgarity and coarseness of language, but in Poe's schemata of faults this offense came under the heading of bad taste. Accordingly, it is no surprise that instead of taking Bulwer to task for his alleged voluptuousness Poe proceeded immediately to discuss the plot of the novel and, as was his custom, he outlined his theory of what a plot should be and then measured the novel against it.

This definition of plot, which prefigures the much more familiar one Poe made in his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales a year later, suggests a development not only in Poe's critical theory but also in his self-assurance. In his Messenger days he had leaned [page 251:] on the authority of Coleridge and Schlegel. With Burton he had dared to “correct” Coleridge, and now he undertook not only to point out an error by Schlegel but to make an improvement on Aristotle's description of excellence of plot. Not too much should be made of Poe's finding fault with Schlegel. He had learned the trick of finding some point, however minor, that he could challenge in the work of an acknowledged authority in order to draw attention to his own brilliance. Actually Schlegel did not commend the plots of the Spanish dramatists, as Poe implied. He simply stated that “ingenious boldness, joined to easy clearness of intrigue,” was “exclusively peculiar” to the Spanish drama.(3) Apparently Poe consciously or unconsciously was misconstruing Schlegel in order to dispute an authority.

More important than the pointless refutation of Schlegel are the implications of Poe's improvement on Aristotle. Aristotle had described the requirements of a good plot as follows: “the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference is not an organic part of the whole” (Butcher's translation). Poe simply exaggerated this requirement by saying that in a perfect plot no part could be displaced without ruin to the whole. It is the metaphor of the building that can be overthrown by the removal of a single brick that is important. Poe thought an artist who worked from a preconceived design was like an architect who drew up a blueprint before construction was actually begun. This is analogous to the usual eighteenth-century concept of the universe as planned by God, and eventually, in Eureka, Poe was to describe God as the perfect plotter. Poe's concept of the work of art was mechanistic, like the Newtonian cosmology. Perfection of plot was unattainable on any level except the divine, but the human artist should keep this goal before him as a conscious ideal. By implication the critic, too, should keep in mind this unattainable perfection and should measure all actual plots by the ideal plot. [page 252:]

If Poe had considered the work of art as a living organism, as did Coleridge, Emerson, and Whitman, he might have maintained his early attitude toward close examination — to analyze is to destroy. Now, however, looking upon the work of art as a construction, he would analyze it, part by part, in order to arrive at a judgment of the quality of the artist's design. This he proceeded to do with Bulwer's novel, pointing out incidents that did not develop the main events, actions that pointed to later developments that the author had “forgotten,” and “interposed afterthoughts” that were not elements of the original plan. Then, surprisingly, he claimed that Bulwer's obvious intention of achieving a perfect plot was “conceived and executed in error.” The pleasure derived from appreciation of a perfect design, Poe stated, was confined to the few readers who were capable of perceiving it. The mass audience was not. And even at best, plot was “but a secondary and rigidly artistical merit, for which no merit of a higher class — no merit founded in nature — should be sacrificed.”

Here we would be justified in leaping to the conclusion that Poe was contradicting himself. After announcing that the artist should keep perfection of plot in mind, he claimed that Bulwer erred in doing just that. The paradox lies in the fact that Poe, however he might invoke the ideal in theory, was nothing but practical in many of his book reviews. He was a journalist writing to a mass audience. He knew that many successful novels (he cited Gil Blas and Robinson Crusoe) neglected plot. The novel, like the drama, was an imitation of life, and in Poe's opinion it could proceed with the inconsequent and haphazard motion of life itself. The novelist need not even consider perfection of plot, that “rigidly artistical merit,” and if he did he would be wasting his ingenuity, for the novel was too long for most readers to take in the design as a whole. The novel was “essentially inadapted to that nice and complex adjustment of incident” which was required for perfection of plot.

If we remember Poe's review of Mrs. Sigourney, the premises underlying his argument are immediately clear. He saw little value in structural unity unless it contributed to that total impression on the reader wherein the sentiments or “ideas of emotion” stimulated by a work proceeded in a uniform train of association toward a single effect. Lord Karnes had defined sentiments as thoughts prompted by strong feeling,(4) and Poe insisted that the feelings be pleasurable. In his calculus of pleasure he assumed that an easy apprehension and retention of all the sentiments inspired by reading were necessary for the unity of effect. If the sentiments were experienced singly the result would be a dissipation of effect, like looking at a landscape detail by detail without ever comprehending the whole as a composition. No matter how well a painter has composed his scene, the effect must be apprehended as a whole. In a composition ordered in time instead of space the same principle must be observed, except that the limits of attention and recall are invoked, instead of the limits of perception. In Poe's view the mind, in this case the memory, could not retain the details of a novel as a composition, no matter how carefully the writer had worked out his plot. He had said as much in reference to the long poem in his review of Mrs. Sigourney, but now he applied the principle to a different genre. In a long composition it is better to be natural than it is to be artistic.(5) In his practical, journalistic way Poe was making a sound point. “Art” novels have never reached a mass audience. James Joyce, following art instead of nature in [page 254:] Finnegans Wake, produced a design that can be comprehended only after intensive study, but his short tales reach a wide audience.

Poe assumed that Bulwer, were he to read Poe's comments, would defend his carefully constructed plot on the basis that the novel was essentially dramatic and, like the play, should present structural unity. Not so, Poe said. The novel is dramatic chiefly as it exhibits the deficiencies of the drama, the “continual and vexatious shifting of scene.” Dialogue is suitable to the narrative form, but the “drama of action and passion will always prove, when employed beyond due limits, a source of embarrassment to the narrator, and it can afford him, at best, nothing which he does not already possess in full force.” By the drama of “action and passion” Poe meant a verbal representation of exciting events and the expression of strong feeling either in soliloquy or in the passionate speeches which characters in the nineteenth-century novel frequently made to each other. These, to Poe, were conventional in the drama but should be used with extreme care by the novelist. The novel had a flexibility that the drama had yet to exhibit. Not such a strictly imitative form, the novel could exhibit the “combining, arranging and especially ... the commenting power.” These techniques should be used to develop a smooth narrative pattern without the hiatuses (shifts of scene, divisions between acts) inevitable in the drama.

Poe's use of the term “commenting power” represents a development of his ideas about the nature of the novel which certainly would not be regarded as an improvement by critics since Henry James. In previous reviews of novels he had been content to use the standard criteria, but from this time on he demanded authorial comment, an element which in his opinion lifted a narrative from a barren imitation of action into a vehicle of the author's thought. Apparently it never occurred to Poe that the characters themselves might be the vehicle of the author's thought; the author had to enter the novel in person to express his ideas.(6) [page 255:]

It is clear that Poe never thought deeply about the novel, although he reviewed many; and the criteria he added to the standard list have been disallowed by the subsequent development of the novel form. The virtual disappearance of authorial comment in the modern novel, along with the increasing use of dramatic techniques in fiction, were not only unforeseen by Poe, he firmly opposed both tendencies. The “deficiencies of the drama,” he insisted, should not be imposed upon the novel, although the “drama of colloquy, vivacious and breathing of life, is well adapted to narration.”

2

Poe's other reviews in the April number of Graham's require no comment, since the books he reviewed did not inspire him to an effort. In May, however, he reviewed the collected Writings of Charles Sprague.(7) This gentleman, now forgotten, was in Poe's time a frequent contributor to magazines and appeared in lists of the best American poets, along with Longfellow, Bryant, and Halleck. Thus Poe demonstrated his independence as a critic when with deft irony he characterized Sprague as a poet of negative merit. Sprague's “Curiosity” was a fine thing in its way: “Its versification is superb — nothing could be better. Its thoughts are tersely put forth. The style is pungently epigrammatic. Upon the whole, it is fully as good a poem as Pope could have written, upon the same subject, in his finest hour of inspiration. We must bear in mind one important distinction, however. With Pope the ideas and management of the piece would have been original; with Mr. Sprague they are Pope's.”

More to Poe's taste than Mr. Sprague's poems was Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, which he also reviewed in the May number.(8) [page 256:] Dickens, to Poe, was an authentic genius. In the Messenger period he had taken Dickens’ “The Pawnbroker's Shop” as a perfect illustration of the principle of unity of effect. Now he considered The Old Curiosity Shop as an illustration of excellence in plot. Its conception was beautiful, “simply and severely grand,” with none of the “involute complexity of incident” that marred the work of Bulwer. With Night and Morning still in mind, Poe then proceeded to make a comparison between the genius of Bulwer and that of Dickens which in thought and language harks back to eighteenth-century criticism, reminding us again of Poe's tendency to use traditional approaches during his tenure with Graham's:

This passage, more obviously than any that we have seen thus far, illustrates Poe's tendency to rely upon the authority of the past in discussing questions he had not answered in terms of his own theory. [page 257:]

In the passage above, Dickens is taken as an original genius, Bulwer as a man of talent whose rhetorical skill and habits of work could produce novels that seemed to be works of genius and so would impress most readers.

The distinction between the original genius and the mere craftsman was often made in the eighteenth century. We find it in Addison's Spectator No. 160. It is present in Pope's prefaces to his edition of Shakespeare and in his “Essay on Criticism.” Homer, usually the illustration of natural genius in eighteenth-century criticism, was supposed to have learned directly from nature; and from his works, which were “Nature methodized” (Poe's “happy modification of Nature”), the rules of art were derived — which is precisely what Poe said about Dickens. The concept that original genius drew from nature instead of from art persisted throughout the eighteenth century in one form or another. It was presented at length in such works as Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), Alexander Gerard's Essay on Genius (1767), and, of course, in the Reverend Hugh Blair's Lectures. “A masterly genius,” wrote Blair, “will of himself, untaught, compose in such a manner as shall be agreeable to the most material rules of criticism: for as these rules are founded in nature, nature will often suggest them in practice. Homer, it is more than probable, was acquainted with no systems of the art of poetry. Guided by genius alone, he composed in verse a regular story, which all posterity has admired.”(9)

The romantic critics were as much interested in the psychology of genius as the neoclassic critics had been, but the emphasis had changed from an examination of the way genius revealed the laws or rules of art or general nature to an exploration of the mysterious, spontaneous, almost involuntary aspects of creativity. Poe wanted to have it both ways; as a critic he felt that he had to develop rules or principles drawn from nature as criteria for evaluation, and as a [page 258:] poet he wanted to understand the nature of the creative act in order to bring it under the dominion of his conscious will. He did not wish his visions or inspirations to come at random. Like Hart Crane, who tried to compel poetic inspiration through jazz and wine, Poe wanted to master the creative élan and make it function on demand. He was well aware that rhetorical skill and a knowledge of audience psychology could very nearly create the effect of genius, but he felt that a discriminating reader could detect the difference between a work of genius and a work of talent. His problems were how to control inspiration and make it function steadily instead of sporadically, and, above all, how to make a genuine work of genius reveal itself as such to both the discriminating and the mass audience. His solution was to emphasize the artistic will. He had said as much in his review of Longfellow's Hyperion when he had spoken of Longfellow's shirking “the great labour requisite for the stern demands of high art ... the unremitting toil and patient elaboration which, when soul-guided, result in the beauty of Unity, Totality, Truth ...”(10)

True genius, operating from unconscious sources, made art look easy, but Poe knew that it wasn’t. Dickens’ genius enabled him to compose “evidently without effort,” but, as Poe went on to say, his art was “elaborate and great.” This did not mean that Dickens’ artistry was perfect. Perfection would be achieved, Poe thought — and said some years later — only when the unconscious genius of a poet like Shelley could be united with the conscious art of a poet like Tennyson, and this combination did not yet exist. As far as Dickens was concerned, Poe found minor defects in plotting and in depiction of character; but the charge already being brought against the novelist, that his characters were caricatures, Poe disallowed. Even in an artistic mode so imitative of nature as the novel, [page 259:] Poe claimed, art is not a mirror image. The artist does not “paint an object to be true, but to appear true to the beholder. Were we to copy nature with accuracy, the object copied would seem unnatural.” Thus Dickens’ art was not nature itself but “a happy modification of Nature.” Had his characters really been caricatures, “they would not live in public estimation beyond the hour of their first survey.”

In spite of his often expressed contempt for the standards of the mob, Poe never quite relinquished the neoclassic notion that universality of appeal was one of the tests of art. The public could be fooled temporarily, he thought, but not for long. The fact that Dickens was the “idol of the people” was of undeniable importance to the critic who evaluated his work. To Poe as to the neoclassic critic, the first duty of the artist was not to express himself but to appeal to an audience. This was the reason for his emphasis, from the very beginning of his serious criticism, upon unity of effect, instead of the classical formal unity, or the transcendental unity invoked by Coleridge and Schlegel. Many critics, including M. H. Abrams, have taken Poe's statement in “The Poetic Principle,” that a poem is written “solely for the poem's sake,” to mean that art should be released from the burden of “external causes and ulterior ends.”(11) This is true enough, but chiefly Poe wished to release the poem, as genre, from the burden of didactic statement. There was an end — pleasure — and this end might be called ulterior in that Poe conceived of the poem as stimulating a feeling more intense than the aesthetic response, although the appreciation of the poem as poem contributed to the delight of the connoisseur. Yet in his theoretical criticism Poe sought to develop a formula for pleasing everyone. Through psychology he would locate principles of composition that would allow the artist to please the uncultivated as well as the cultivated taste. Even in “The Poetic Principle,” which is rhapsodic about the ideals of art, he stated that “it is [page 260:] to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of art, rather by the impression it makes, by the effect it produces, than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of ‘sustained effort’ which had been found necessary in effecting the impression.” Poe felt that works of genius produced an impression of apparent ease; works of talent seemed laboriously contrived. Neither the author's ease nor his effort should be used for evaluation, however. Audience reaction, the impression a work of art makes, should be its final test.

In Poe's opinion Dickens’ characters had lived in the public estimation because they were not caricatures, but “creations ... only not all of the highest order, because the elements employed are not always of the highest.” The “highest order” of imagination made its combinations approach the ideal, whereas some of Dickens’ characters, such as Quilp, with his “mouth like that of a panting dog,” his cowardice and malevolence, were made up of low elements indeed. Nevertheless, “the great feature of the ‘Curiosity Shop’ is its chaste, vigorous, and glorious imagination.”

By the statements above we can deduce Poe's concept of the role of the imagination in the construction of character. It combines the most admirable aspects of character to produce idealized portraits that represent a “happy modification of Nature.” The concept is obviously neoclassic, but we should remember also that in his review of George Balcombe Poe had said that the only way a writer of fiction could achieve originality in characterization would be to present hypothetical qualities which were “so skilfully adapted to the circumstances which surround them, that our sense of fitness is not offended. ...”(12) Thus, to Poe, fidelity to the actual was not necessary to achieve the “happy modification of Nature” which was art. The elements of character that made up the idealized portrait could be completely hypothetical so long as the character was adapted to his environment. Adaptation was a law of nature, and the character who was adapted to the circumstances in which he lived could be said to be natural so long as audience [page 261:] assent was secured. By emphasizing the law of nature instead of empirical observation, Poe was able to accommodate his theory of the ideal — something that happens in the mind — to the neoclassic criterion of propriety. The imaginary character would not offend our sense of fitness if he suited his world, which in Poe's opinion might be an invented world, not an actual one. Thus, Dickens’ characters, though seemingly exaggerated when measured by the standards of experience, yet followed nature because they were adapted to the London which Dickens described. They were produced by a vigorous imagination that transcended mere observation and recording of facts by imitating not nature itself but natural law.(13) [page 262:]

3

In the June number of Graham's the only review worth consideration is that of Thomas Babington Macaulay's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.(14) Poe occasionally expressed admiration for Macaulay's criticism. If he had read — and probably he had — Macaulay's review of the poems of Robert Montgomery in the April, 1830, issue of the Edinburgh Review,(15) he would have found a method similar to his own as well as attitudes of which he would have approved. Macaulay attacked “puffery,” corrupt publishing practices, and the dishonesty of journalistic reviewers. Like Poe, Macaulay began his review by announcing that he had to render justice because the author's work had “received more enthusiastic praise and [had] deserved more unmixed contempt, than any which ... [had] appeared within the last three or four years.” Macaulay accused Montgomery of plagiarism in a manner strikingly similar to Poe's and then proceeded to examine the poet's imagery and his grammar, making satirical comments about both, as Poe was to do many times. Of course this resemblance is not surprising. Poe had learned his early reviewing method from the British magazines. What is surprising is that instead of praising the review of Montgomery's Poems, which was Macaulay's nearest approach to criticism in Poe's sense, he chose to comment on Macaulay's review of Leopold Ranke's Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome, published in the October, 1840, issue of the Edinburgh Review. Macaulay's article, Poe claimed, was not a review at all. Instead, it was “nothing more than a beautifully written treatise on the main theme of Ranke himself, the whole matter of the treatise being deduced from the History.” Poe's comment is perfectly accurate. The review was a long summary of the history of the period under consideration without a [page 263:] single line of criticism. Macaulay, a historian, frequently wrote this kind of review, and, as far as Poe was concerned, it was typical of the reviews currently being published in the quarterlies — long essays designed to inform the reader of the content of a work rather than to criticize it.

Within a few months Poe was to state in full his opinion of what a review should be, and his remarks about Macaulay are anticipatory. If he actually read the review of Montgomery, which was included in the collected edition, he deliberately avoided mentioning it because it would have diluted his thesis, and, in addition, it was not really characteristic of the reviews in the collection.

In the July number Poe reverted to his satirical manner in a review of Seba Smith's Powhatan: A Metrical Romance (Smith was better known as the humorist Jack Downing).(16) Prefixed to the poem was one of those pretentious, self-congratulatory prefaces that always aroused Poe's anger, but the poem itself, he felt, was beneath contempt because it gave no evidence of artistry:

Smith's attempt to make a poem into an accurate historical treatise showed that he had no conception of the proper function of art. In August, Poe had the uneasy task of reviewing a work by a friend, Lambert A. Wilmer,(17) with whom he had hoped to [page 264:] launch a magazine in the Baltimore period before he joined the Messenger. The work, called The Quacks of Helicon, had some merit because it satirized some of the “prominent literati” and gave them, Poe said, what they deserved. Yet not even for Wilmer, whom he had once reviewed leniently, did he shirk the essential function of a critic, an examination of the faults of the work.

Almost equally reprehensible was the coarseness of the satire, and Poe managed to excuse what he considered “the gross obscenity, the filth,” only by alleging that it came not from the mind of the author but from his indiscriminate imitation of the “Swift and Rochester school.” In Poe's opinion nothing vulgar should ever be said, or even conceived.

Since Wilmer's satire did not qualify as a work of art, Poe was free to comment upon the subject matter, a practice he usually abjured, but this particular subject enabled him to reopen the campaign he had begun in the Southern Literary Messenger against corrupt publishing practices, sycophantic reviewers, and the manipulations of the literary coteries. Poe's first satirical reviews had probably been for the purpose of attracting attention; but now, writing as an established critic known for his independence, he was less open to the charge of self-serving, and his opinions carried more weight. Perhaps he was not completely without guile, for his [page 265:] own magazine project was in his mind throughout his tenure with Graham's, and he was able to use the journal to prove that Edgar Poe was the most fearless critic in America. To supply this proof beyond any doubt, in the review of Wilmer he exhumed the case of Norman Leslie, as if daring his old enemies, Lewis Gaylord Clark, the powerful editor of the Knickerbocker, Colonel William L. Stone, and Theodore Fay himself to renew the combat.(18) Poe wrote: “It is needless to call to mind the desperate case of Fay — a case where the pertinacity of the effort to gull, where the obviousness of the attempt at forestalling a judgment, where the wofully overdone be-Mirrorment of that man-of-straw, together with the pitiable platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too potent for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob. We say it is supererogatory to dwell upon ‘Norman Leslie,’ or other by-gone follies, when we have, before our eyes, hourly instances of the machinations in question.”

Poe's admission is correct; it was supererogatory to bring up the Norman Leslie case, and it was inaccurate to say that the mob rejected the novel. It was quite popular, in spite of Poe's attacks. Poe, as he admitted in a letter to Snodgrass, was preaching a “fire-and-fury sermon,” and the remainder of his review was a general castigation of the abuses he detested in journalistic criticism: vainglorious nationalism, uncritical praise of literary hacks, and the “ruthless” character assassination and “untraceable slanders” practiced against the few critics with courage to be severe and honest, by which he meant himself.

The “slanders” were already circulating. In April, Poe had written [page 266:] to Snodgrass accusing Burton of “erecting” slanders concerning his drinking; and within the next two years the slanders were being circulated not only in Philadelphia but elsewhere. About a year later, in 1843, even Wilmer, Poe's “personal friend,” wrote to John Tomlin in Tennessee that Poe had become strange and was “going headlong to destruction.”(19) Poe reacted with characteristic violence when Tomlin informed him of Wilmer's letter and responded that Wilmer was an “envious scoundrel,” “a reprobate of the lowest class,” and a “villain.” Not only this, but Poe claimed that his review of The Quacks of Helicon, which he had used as an excuse to renew journalistic warfare, was really an attempt to befriend Wilmer out of pity.(20) It is obvious that Poe's sensitivity to criticism was the cause of much of his trouble. Whenever anyone, friend or foe, touched a sensitive spot, however lightly, Poe became vengefully furious. The rumors of his instability were based upon fact, but, like most rumors, they exaggerated the situation. Poe was obviously a capable man most of the time, and he knew that the alleged slanders endangered his cherished project of starting a magazine of his own, as well as his status as a critic. He had to find a backer, and men with money were unlikely to entrust it to an unstable editor who might be an alcoholic; so in his personal letters Poe raged against the slandermongers and rationalized by claiming that the slanders were a reaction to his severe and honest criticism.

Perhaps accurate in his general assessment of the journalistic criticism of the country, Poe was more reckless, to say the least, when he demonstrated his courage with satirical comments on some of the very authors whom be — and Graham — had been trying to cultivate. In June, 1841, he had solicited the support of Longfellow, Willis, and Bryant for his personal magazine project.(21) Now [page 267:] in August, ostensibly to defend them against the “indiscriminate censure of Wilmer” in The Quacks of Helicon, he conducted the defense in ironic understatement probably less pleasing to the authors than Wilmer's attack: “Mr. Bryant is not all a fool. Mr. Willis is not quite an ass. Mr. Longfellow will steal, but, perhaps, he cannot help it, (for we have heard of such things), and then it must not be denied that nil tetigit quod non ornavit.” Poe was fearless, no question about that; but his effrontery in making such statements about the very writers he was trying to attract is incredible. Tactics as irrational as these must be explained by psychiatry, not by a critical essay. Poe had his own axes to grind, and, as he admitted in his letter to Snodgrass, he used the review of Wilmer as a grindstone.

4

Although Poe wrote some two dozen reviews in the remainder of 1841, they may be summarized. He continued his campaign against what he considered illegitimate methods of gaining literary popularity and critical esteem, at the same time asserting his own opinion that literary merit, validated by comparison with ideal standards, was the only basis for approval of any work that pretended to be art.

Running the risk of alienating himself from an audience of sentimentalists on both sides of the Atlantic, Poe dared to suggest that those sweet and tragic sisters, Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, both of whom “perished of consumption” in their teens, were not quite the geniuses that their admiring biographers, Catherine Sedgwick and Washington Irving, had made them out to be. Lucretia had been elevated into public admiration by England's laureate, Robert Southey, and the “awe of the laureate's ipse dixit” had not yet disappeared. “We yield to no one,” Poe wrote, “in warmth of [page 268:] admiration for the personal character of these sweet sisters, as that character is depicted by the mother, by Miss Sedgwick, and by Mr. Irving. But it costs us no effort to distinguish that which, in our heart, is love of their worth, from that which, in our intellect, is appreciation of their poetic ability. With the former, as critic, we have nothing to do. The distinction is one too obvious for comment; and its observation would have spared us much twaddle on the part of the commentators. ... [[”]](22)

If, as E. Douglas Branch has written, criticizing Mrs. Sigourney was like criticizing George Washington, daring to criticize the sweet sisters Davidson must have been like casting aspersions on the saints, yet Poe took his chances in order to make his point: personal worth had nothing to do with literary merit, and it was with literary merit alone that a critic should concern himself.

Poe's tone in his review of the Davidson sisters was appropriately tender, but he was much harsher in attempting to counteract the popularity of Captain Frederick Marryat. There was nothing in Marryat's novels, Poe thought, to arouse intelligent interest, not plot or style or thought. Written for the mob, Joseph Rushbrook had no semblance of originality and provided no incentive for thought. Incident was piled on incident in Marryat's work, and authorial comment — which Poe was beginning to demand to supply the intellectual content of a novel — was entirely absent. “The commenting force,” Poe argued, “can never be safely disregarded. It is far better to have a dearth of incident, with skilful observation upon it, than the utmost variety of event. ... The successful [page 269:] novelist must ... be careful to bring into view his private interest, sympathy, and opinion in regard to his own creations.”(23) Poe could conceive of no way for a novelist to reveal his ideas except by commentary; and yet we would have to agree with him that a narrative devoid of intelligence would be as dull as a ship's log. It is hard to imagine a novel completely lacking in evidence of the author's opinions, but there is a relative dearth of thought and feeling in purely commercial fiction, and in Poe's opinion that was what Joseph Rushbrook was, a commercial novel designed only to produce excitement.

Equally obnoxious to Poe were publishing tricks designed to gull the public into buying inferior works, and he hit hard at The Pic Nic Papers,(24) “edited” by Charles Dickens. This book was a collection of articles from Dickens, G. P. R. James, W. H. Ainsworth, and others; but the title, together with Dickens’ name, Poe claimed, would make the prospective buyer think of the currently popular The Pickwick Papers. The similarity of titles was “a piece of chicanery which not even the end in view can sanction.” The purpose in this case was to raise funds for the widow and orphans of a young publisher who had died recently, but Poe, campaigning for publishing honesty, would not allow the end to justify the means. “No body of men are justified in making capital of the public's gullibility for purposes of charity, public or private — for any purposes under the sun.”

Poe's attitude was uncompromising. Traditionally critics in America had assumed guardianship over the public morals. Poe, not much concerned with morals, assumed guardianship over the public taste in both a theoretical and a practical sense. A collection such as the one he was reviewing, Poe affirmed, was invariably made up of the miscellaneous scraps that the authors were unable to dispose of to better advantage, the least valuable manuscripts they happened to have about them. “The refuse labour of a man of genius,” Poe stated, “is usually inferior, and greatly so, to that of a man of common-place talent. ...” When a genius was constrained to write by external necessity, he would “occasionally [page 270:] grovel in platitudes of the most pitiable description.” Consequently it did not surprise Poe to find that The Pic Nic Papers contained a great deal of “trash,” and it was an imposition upon the public to sell such material by advertising the famous names of the contributors.

Poe's argument here was perhaps colored by his own predicament. Many times he protested that to be forced to compose at all hours, in whatever condition of health, was intolerable; yet he had been compelled to write in this way. He knew his own work was uneven, and it was comforting to him, no doubt, to revert to the traditional psychology of genius. Genius was wild and irregular, the eighteenth-century critics had proclaimed; and when it was subjected to restraints its products were likely to be inferior. Men of talent could compose well by the rules, but genius, writing from nature, made the rules. Poe did not hesitate to examine the products of genius in relation to ideal standards, but he was conventional in thinking that artistic genius was temperamental. We know that he published his own inferior work out of sheer necessity, and that he had allowed his name to be used for The Conchologist's First Book, but as guardian of the public taste he felt it necessary to oppose practices in which he sometimes engaged.

If the miscellaneous scraps of genius should not be foisted on the public, it was even worse for a critic to “puff” a piece of hackwork into fame. Poe saw the Crichton of William Harrison Ainsworth, the popular British novelist, in this light. A Philadelphia critic had proclaimed that Crichton was “unapproachable and alone” at the head of the list of English novels. Poe found it only “a somewhat ingenious admixture of pedantry, bombast, and rigmarole ... one continued abortive effort at effect.”(25) Ainsworth's [page 271:] Jack Sheppard, which American critics had condemned for “immoral tendencies,” had some merit as a work of art. At least it was not disfigured by bombast of style, though it was completely lacking in authorial comment. The events were merely narrated instead of being “discussed” by the author.

For several months now, Poe had been stressing the virtue of comment in a novel, and gradually his point had been made clear. What he disliked was a completely barren (“naked”) sequence of events, an objective account of action. Robinson Crusoe and Godwin's Caleb Williams, he thought, provided the best examples of a rich variety of incident colored by emotion and thought in such a way as to engage a reader's sympathetic attention. Poe's citation of these two works is revealing. In Robinson Crusoe it is the subjectivity of the character that counts. We experience what Crusoe experiences, what he thinks and feels. In Poe's opinion the novel showed Defoe's sympathetic imagination, his power of identifying with his character. Caleb Williams, on the other hand, is both a detective story and a thesis novel designed to convey Godwin's political views. Poe admired it as a novel that contained not only an ingenious plot and exciting action but also thought.

Poe wanted to be immersed in thought and feeling when he read fiction, to experience the mental and emotional life of the characters and of the author. The sympathetic imagination of the reader would be unaffected by a narrative that merely told what happened. Poe wanted a novel to be heavily subjective, and apparently it did not matter too much whether the subjectivity proceeded from the character or directly from the author. The pleasure derived from any kind of art, Poe always insisted, was in direct ratio to its effect. “Bald,” “naked,” and “barren” were the terms he usually applied to a narrative that did not reverberate with emotional and intellectual overtones.

Since, to Poe, Ainsworth's writings lacked thought and emotional intensity, he judged the author to be only a hack, writing a “stipulated number of pages” for a “certain sum of money.” Ainsworth only wrote for the “lowest order of the lettered mob.” Consequently, [page 272:] Guy Fawkes was beneath criticism, and the next work by Ainsworth that came to his desk, Poe promised, he would throw to the pigs, who had more “leisure for its examination” than he.

One other review during the closing months of 1841 has some interest. This was of Dr. Samuel Warren's Ten Thousand a Year.(26) Warren had gained some fame with his Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician, which had appeared serially in Blackwood's and may have influenced Poe in some of his early tales. Ten Thousand a Year became a very popular novel, but Poe, in his campaign to purify the public taste and to expose undeserved popularity, thought it “shamefully ill-written.” It was full of the “grossest mis-usages of language,” and the whole tone was “in the last degree mawkish and inflated.” Some of the incidents were “wofully in-adapted and improbable,” and the “moralizing throughout” was extremely tedious.

The fact that Poe objected to Warren's moralizing indicates that the comment he had been demanding from a novelist had nothing to do with those long sermons of direct address too frequently present in the nineteenth-century novel. He did not demand moral instruction in author comment; in fact, it bored him. What he wanted was evidence that the writer was totally engaged with his subject, emotionally and intellectually.

5

We have seen that Poe, although still maneuvering to establish his own journal, was able to use Graham's Magazine as a medium through which he could publicize his ideas about the function of criticism and the corruption of American journalism. Furthermore, since he had the space for one long, analytical review in each number (with the exception of the October, 1841, issue to which he did not contribute), he was able to express certain aspects of his developing [page 273:] theories. He reviewed no books of poetry during 1841 which were important enough to serve as a springboard for theory, but he gave a definition of fictional plot that represented a refinement of his earlier statements. In addition, he showed himself more confident in expressing his own opinions; he was less prone to rely upon authority from abroad. His argument with Coleridge and Schlegel may seem to be more factitious than genuine to us, but to Poe the distinctions were important because they furnished a theoretical basis for his conviction that art was, or should be, a conscious, willed activity, not completely subservient to the vagaries of inspiration. At the same time, he was aware that these vagaries did exist and that the critic had to take them into account when examining the inferior work of a genius. His temporary solution, a pragmatic one, was that the lesser works of a genius should not be given to the public, because they were likely to be inferior to the work of a merely talented man who possessed skill and patience. And if the inferior work of genius were given to the public, it must be judged by ideal standards and not by the reputation of the author, which could always have been achieved by dishonest publishing practices. The true work of genius, on the other hand, could stand the test of analysis; it was the duty of the critic to examine the work as an autonomous construct.

The first nine months with Graham's, then, may be regarded as a period of preparation for Poe's most significant criticism. Relative freedom from restraint by his employer, sufficient space to make the extended analyses he preferred, a large and rapidly increasing audience, and letters of encouragement from certain of his friends gave Poe the reinforcement he needed to pronounce boldly the elements of his critical theory and his ideas of the function of the critic. This he was to do within the first six months of the coming year, 1842. This year was to be Poe's annus mirabilis as a critic; and he was to begin it by making his most forceful statement of what criticism should and should not be.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 249:]

1.  For a description of the practices that would-be publishers promised to reform, see Mott, A History of American Magazines, 405-408.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 250:]

2.  Works, X, 114-33.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 251:]

3.  Schlegel, Lectures, 488.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 253:]

4.  Elements of Criticism, 483.

5.  Since the novel was not an art form but a representation of the observations and ideas of the author, it should not aim at unity of effect, the first principle of all the arts to Poe. Instead, it should appear to be true and should exhibit the author's thought.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 254:]

6.  For a convincing argument that authorial intrusion is not necessarily damaging to the illusion of reality given by a novel, see Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The Teller in the Tale (Seattle, 1967), 7-14.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 255:]

7.  Works, X, 139-42.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 255, running to the bottom of page 256:]

8.  Ibid., 142-45. Any investigator of Poe's reviews of Dickens will find a series of articles by Gerald Grubb indispensable. This particular review was discussed by Mr. Grubb in Part One of “The Personal and Literary Relationships of Dickens and Poe,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, V (1950-51), 1-22. He found Poe's review generally excellent, marred only by animadversions [page 256:] on the title page of the book. Since the work he reviewed was a “pirated” edition, Poe should not have blamed Dickens for the misleading “double title,” which insinuated that the book was a whole instead of one of a series. “The Old Curiosity Shop” was the title story of one collection of tales, “Master Humphrey's Clock” the title story of the second collection under one cover. Poe thought the title should have been: “Master Humphrey's Clock. By Charles Dickens. Part I. Containing The Old Curiosity Shop, and Other Tales, with Numerous Illustrations, &c., &c.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 257:]

9.  Blair, Lectures, I, 37-38. Such an opinion would appear to eliminate the necessity of criticism, but not according to Blair. Critics were still necessary to point out the faults of genius and direct it “into its proper channels.” This is what Poe did with Dickens — pointed out his faults, at the same time acknowledging that his “art” came from nature.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 258:]

10.  Nothing is more annoying than Poe's use of the term “truth.” In his review of Longfellow's Hyperion he was examining a prose narrative, and he did not forbid prose to have the object of communicating truth. In this case he was referring to “scattered” thought which was not organized into an appropriate form. The unity invoked was the unity of thought and expression, not the unity of impression required of a poem.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 259:]

11.  Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, 27. Mr. Abrams has placed Poe historically with the advocates of “art for art's sake,” but it is clear that Poe advocated art for the soul's sake.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 260:]

12.  Works, IX, 261-62.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 261:]

13.  Poe's clearest exposition of adaptation is in an item from his “Marginalia” (Works, XVI, 9), but his first consideration of the subject may have been prompted by his reading of Roget's Animal and Vegetable Physiology, which he reviewed for the Messenger in 1836. Works, VIII, 206-10. This book was one of the “Bridgewater Treatises,” sponsored by a bequest from the Earl of Bridgewater. As Poe noted in this review, the Bridgewater researchers were limited by the terms of the bequest, for they were required to use “natural philosophy” (science) to point out the wisdom and benevolence of God as “manifested in the Creation.” Accordingly, they looked for evidence to prove that the laws of nature were framed for the benefit of man: nature was adapted to man, instead of the reverse. Poe perceived this error and in his “Marginalia” declared that God's work exhibited “reciprocity of adaptation” in which cause and effect could not be distinguished. In other words, we could not really tell whether man became adapted to his environment or whether the environment was planned in such a way as to permit the specific adaptation. Adaptation, then, should be observed as a complex interaction, not a simple cause and effect relationship. In human creations, however, such as that of character in a novel, the cause-effect relationship was easy to comprehend. Although in the review Poe did not explain why Dickens’ characters were “original” yet true to nature, his concept of adaptation enables us to interpret his argument that caricature is rarely present when “the component parts” of the character are “in keeping.” This would mean that the character traits, however exaggerated, were of a piece, and that, furthermore, they were “skillfully adapted to the circumstances which surround them.” The despicable Quilp, for instance, has his haunts “among the wharf rats.” Poe may have developed his concept of a prevailing disposition (all parts “in keeping”) from the phrenological description of temperament, or observable somatic type. See Note 44, Chapter IX, of this book.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 262:]

14.  Works, X, 156-60.

15.  Since Macaulay began contributing to the Edinburgh Review in 1825, it is probable that Poe was familiar with his reviews before the publication of the collected edition.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 263:]

16.  Works, X, 162-67.

17.  Review of The Quacks of Helicon: A Satire, by Lambert A. Wilmer, ibid., 182-96. Poe was careful to announce that Wilmer was a personal friend, thus attempting to avoid any imputation of the bias that could have easily been concealed behind his editorial anonymity.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 265:]

18.  Poe's old opponents were much less in evidence by this time. Willis Gaylord Clark died this same year, and Theodore Fay was abroad serving as a diplomat (Fay had never retaliated directly). Colonel Stone, though only fifty years old, had but three years to live. Lewis Gaylord Clark was one year older than Poe and continued to be most obliging in responding to Poe's challenges, but now Poe was writing for an increasingly powerful journal, and evidently George R. Graham was an astute journalist who recognized Poe's commercial value as well as his literary ability. At any rate, Graham did not often try to make Poe temper his criticism, as had White and Burton. Graham continued to think highly of Poe, even after Poe's inevitable dissatisfaction with working for someone else had caused a break.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 266:]

19.  May 20, 1843, in Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe, 401. Wilmer's letter to Tomlin seems indicative more of concern than of groundless malice, as Poe interpreted it; but since in 1843 Poe was making every effort to establish a journal of his own, and since Tomlin was a supporter, he had to defend his character.

20.  Poe to John Tomlin, August 28, 1843, in Letters, I, 235-36.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 266, running to the bottom of page 267:]

21.  See Poe to Longfellow, June 22, 1841, ibid., 166-68. If he actually wrote to Willis and Bryant, the letters are not available, but in a letter to Washington Irving on June 21, 1841 (ibid., 161-63), he declared that he [page 267:] was sending similar letters requesting contributions to Cooper, Paulding, Kennedy, Bryant, Halleck, and Willis. The letters to Kennedy and Halleck, similar in content to those cited above, are printed in Letters, I, 163-65, 168-70. The letters of solicitation that are available are all dated between June 21 and June 24, 1841.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 268:]

22.  Works, X, 225-26. In this connection, one should also read Poe's review of Margaret Davidson's Poetical Remains (ibid., 174-78). His review of Margaret Davidson was quite tactful and displayed admiration for the girl's precocity. Her longest poem “Lenore” (that ubiquitous “poetic” name also favored by Poe) was remarkable for a child of fifteen, but not so remarkable as other poems she wrote at the ages of eight and ten. In the review of Lucretia Davidson's poems, Poe avoided direct criticism by intimating that Southey had taken leave of his wits and that Miss Sedgwick had erred in quoting Southey. Miss Sedgwick's praise was at least honest, but “the cant of a kind heart when betraying into error a naturally sound judgment, is perhaps the only species of cant in the world not altogether contemptible.” Poe did not censure the poetry of the Davidsons, but his opinion is clear in his remarks on their critics and biographers.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 269:]

23.  Works, X, 201.

24.  Ibid., 206-209.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 270:]

25.  Poe's opinion of Crichton is expressed in a review of Ainsworth's Guy Fawkes. See Works, X, 214-20. In this review he violated his own principles by using most of his space to discuss a work other than the subject of his own review, justifying himself by declaring that Guy Fawkes was beneath contempt. It should be noted that here Poe used the term “effect” perjoratively [[pejoratively]]. In this usage, it meant an unsuccessful effort to provide anticipation by letting the reader think that something remarkable was about to happen.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 272:]

26.  Works, X, 210-12. An interesting sidelight on Poe and Warren is furnished by Ada B. Nisbet. Warren wrote a vitriolic Blackwood's review of Dickens’ American Notes that was attributed to Poe by the biographer Mary E. Phillips [[2:719]]. See Nisbet, “New Light on the Poe-Dickens Relationship,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, V (1959-51), 295.