Text: George Sherburn, “[Review of Campbell edition of Poe's Poems],” Modern Philology (Chicago: University of Chicago), vol. XVI, no. 1, May 1918, p. 56

[page 56:]

REVIEWS AND NOTICES

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The Poems of Edgar Allen [[Allan]] Poe. Edited by KILLIS CAMPBELL. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1917. Pp. lxvi+332.

The appearance of this volume is an important event in the annals of Poe criticism, and indeed in American literary scholarship. For no other American poet is so excellent a volume available. The elaborate apparatus includes a judicious summary of the facts of Poe's life, discussions of the canon of Poe's poems, a very able account of the text and of revisions of it by Poe, an astonishingly illuminating account of Poe's indebtedness to other poets, and a summary of the various attitudes of critics towards Poe — which last, whatever it does for Poe's reputation, doesn’t add laurels to many of the critics or to criticism in general. Then follows probably the most thoroughly competent text of Poe yet printed, and voluminous and invaluable notes. These notes excel in placing the poems naturally in groups according to theme, in giving detailed accounts of sources of inspiration and circumstances of composition, and in citing parallels to other poets. Perhaps sometimes it might be made clearer that these parallels represent romantic commonplaces rather than sources. For instance, the line (“The Valley of Unrest,” 16)

Around the misty Hebrides!

is related to “Wordsworth's well-known lines in The Solitary Reaper,” but the reader gets no information that the Hebrides had been a new ultima Thule for many poets of the eighteenth century, probably under the influence of “Lycidas,” 155, to which, as much as to Wordsworth, Poe seems here indebted. In general the parallels show Poe as a much more bookish poet than he has generally been thought, though practically never discreditably bookish. As a whole the notes are admirable. That on hyacinth (p. 202) could have been improved by using a standard Greek dictionary on the Greek etymon, or even by consulting Murray, instead of quoting Verity and Kent. Perhaps other similarly petty improvements could be made, but the annotator gives so much that it is hardly just to ask more. The volume seems somewhat to neglect Poe's versification; at least the reviewer has been a bit surprised not to see among the abundant bibliographical references that occur throughout the notes, any reference to Professor F. Olivero's thorough study of one phase of the problem in his essay “Il Ritornello e la ripetizione in E. A. Poe” (pp. 31-77 of Studi sul romanticismo inglese, Bari, 1914).

Professor Campbell is to be highly congratulated for his most careful and judicious work.

GEORGE SHERBURN

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO