Text: John Banister Tabb, “Mr. Stedman's Estimate of Poe,” The Critic (New York, NY), vol. VII, November 21, 1885, p. 247

[page 247, column 2, continued:]

Mr. Stedman's Estimate of Poe.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:

I BEG to remark two points in Mr. Stedman's notice of Poe in his ‘ Poets of America.’ First, he says, as quoted in THE CRITIC of Nov. 7: ‘The slender body of his poetic remains should make writers hesitate to pronounce him our greatest one.’ If this were so, where would Sappho stand? or the unknown creator of the Apollo Belvidere, in the ranks of Greek artists? Shelley's ‘traveller from an antique land’ criticised quite differently. He said:

Here, evidently, the ‘slenderness of the remains’ is considered an index in inverse proportion to the genius of the artist — a criterion justified by the world's estimate of Sappho and the sculptor of the Apollo Belvidere. In the second place, Mr. Stedman ‘is in doubt whether to commend or deprecate’ a habit of Poe's of hoarding and elaborating his early songs. ‘It does not betoken affluence,’ he says, ‘but it was honest in Poe,’ etc. Nor does he remember another instance where a writer has so re-worked. To say the least, there was something in the rough in these early songs that could stand elaboration — a merit not to be always found in the early songs of some other great poets, not even of ‘ our greatest ones.’ A wise lapidary will spare no pains in cutting a stone that is worth the operation, and no one could ever find fault with him for so spending his time, nor deem him the poorer for a few precious gems whose value exceeds the worth of many larger ones. What might have escaped a less penetrating eye was evident to Poe; and why should he search the mines for new jewels when he had rough diamonds of the first water already at hand? Poe knew the worth of work thoroughly done, and who in America would not be glad to exchange the bulk of his literary achievement for the ‘slender remains’ of this modern Ozymandias?

JOHN B. TABB.

ELLICOTT CITY, MD.