Text: Anonymous, “[Review of the Southern Literary Messenger for January 1848],” Vicksburg Whig (Vicksburg, Mississippi), vol. X, no. 552, January 19, 1848, p. 3

[page 3, col. 3, continued:]

LITERARY NOTICES.

Southern Literary Messenger — The January number of this periodical is one of the best we have ever perused. Without intending to disparage Mr. Minor, we must say that the present editor — Mr. Thompson — does his work in a more tasteful and elegant style — and that the Messenger is a much more pleasant visitor now than heretofore. We need not mention particularly all the articles in this number; nay, we will mention none other than the sort paper of Mr. Cooke, upon the genius and writings of Edgar A. Poe. Brief and unpretending as this article is, it does (something that has been done too seldom) justice to one whose powers have been little appreciated — who has been frequently misunderstood, but who is, nevertheless, one of the master spirits of modern literature. Mr. Cooke comes near a truthful explanation of Poe's peculiar genius, when he speaks of finding in his works abundant proofs that “the fires of a great poet are seething under those analytic and narrative powers in which no living writer equals him.” This, the, is the key to the authorship of those tales, made awful by the most intense imagination, and yet narrated with such an air of truth that the mind of the most discriminating reader could not wholly reject them. Everybody recollects “M. Valdemar's case” — of which Miss Barrett said — “the certain thing in the tale in question is the power of the writer, and the faculty he has of making horrible probabilities seem near and familiar.” This “faculty” is a combination of faculties. Poe's imagination is of a creative order — he invents “horrible improbabilities” with astonishing facility, and his unequalled command all the scope and power of language enables him to give to those blood-freezing nothings, a reality, a breathing existence. Mr. Cooke has no need to ask whether the reader will believe that men were found to credit the tale of M. Valdemar — he who was mesmerized “in articulo mortis” — and around whom the imagination of Poe gathered such a cluster of horrors as made the cheek of the boldest reader turned pale. We opine that there are, within the circle of every man's acquaitance [[acquaintance]], numerous intelligent persons, who not only believed, but still credit the horrible tale. But we may not enlarge.