Text: Richard Beale Davis, “Preface,” Chivers' Life of Poe 1952, pp. 81-85

[page 81:]

There is no doubt of one fact that Poe was one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, Critic that ever lived. As a specimen of his analysis, I will now give the following succinct, [not to say graphic,](165) Review of Professor Taylor's translation of PLATO CONTRA ATHEOS.(166)

The following portion is from a Review of Charles O’Malley, by Harry Lorrequer, which appeared in Graham's Magazine in 1842.(167)

The following very just, as well pertinent, remarks are from a review of Charles O’Malley, by Harry Lorrequer, which appeared in Graham's Magazine in 1842. They go to show not only in what contempt he held false adulation, but, also, with what ineffable disgust he looked upon that mind who would stoop so low as to make the vox populi [page 82:] the Umpire of any work of Art. It is absolutely too good to be lost — or even left out of this work.(168)

Mr Poe,(169) in noticing some remarks by a Critic in The Literary World, on Bayard Taylor's Rhymes of Travel, quotes a Poem which he called “grand.” The Rhythm of this Poem was formed on the basis of one of Tennyson's. Some of the verses possess considerable strength but no grandeur — their grandeur being marked by a prosaic hirsuteness of rhetoricism — the peculiar characteristic of all Mr Taylor's Poems. All his rhythms are borrowed, nor does he ever relieve the platitude of this borrowing by any novel combination of numbers.

are the best lines in the Poem — or, perhaps, the best that he ever wrote — my only objection to them being the difficulty attending the interpretation of such “anguish” as could be felt by “her mournful lips.” This, I imagine, would rather puzzle a Philadelphia Lawyer to solve.

Mr Poe was a very peculiar man. It is said that our Saviour cast some devils out of the possessed body of Mary Magdalene. If any man ever held seven devils in him — (or even fourteen —) that man was Edgar A. Poe. At one time he found fault with the very man which he would at another praise. This was his fault. He speaks highly of the Chaunt of the Soul, by William Wallace, and italicizes the only passages to which this exception should be taken, [page 83:] namely, that they not [sic] original, but taken from Shelley. The following are the lines to which I allude:

These lines are all to be found in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

Poe(170) believed that pure Poetry consisted in Artistical passionless expression — that melodious rhythmical creation of Beauty which is only to be seen by the couched eyes of a serene and unperturbed soul. This Poetry he declared ought rather to be written in moonbeams than in sunshine. This he firmly believed; and this he contended was the divine love of the Angels in Heaven.

The most obvious idiosyncrasy of this man's mind appeared to me to be a calm clearness, from which was reflected, as from a crystalline Lake the Stars of Heaven, all the manifold forms of Beauty — but his soul was without strength. Where are the Shells which murmur to us, with potent revelations, of their mournful remeniscences [sic] of this unfathomable Sea of Brains.

We have none — because he has left us none. Why did he not leave us any? Because his soul, instead of being a tumultous Sea, beneath whose raging waters lay hidden all the Golden [Argosies? of the Past, was merely a calm and unruffled lake in whose placid mirror only the cold Stars and the colder Moon looked tenderly down, with little light, but no heat.

He had no passionate energies lying hidden deep down [page 84:] within the secret center of his soul. No unutterable joy — no inexpressible sorrows — thrills through his soul incensing his heart into tears as the sweetest odors are trampled out of the fairest flowers; but when he speaks it is with coldness, or a scornful indifference — weeping only in reply to the distresses of others, as the Rock did, in a pellucid murmur, in answer to the potent rod of Moses.

He is not a Voice, but an Echo, from the Land of Melody revealing to us only a Satelite — reflection of the Eternal HarMonies. His occult Arcana, heard in the labarynthine caverns of his soul from the high-up Adytum of the Empyrean, he reveals to us in the weird fantasqueness of an exiled Angel who but dimly remembers the vernacular of his native Heaven. His struggles through his rhythmical completeness like the first light from the smiles of God before the distraction of Chaos, when all things, except Heaven, went by the name of °Tohoo Vabohoo! But when it does come, it is like the indistinct melodies of the Sons of God, in unison with the Morning Stars, choiring far up in Heaven.

But he saw through a glass darkly, — having seen all his visions by the light of the Moon for it is only through the sunlight of Passion that the divine forms of the Celestial Beauty can be beheld.

The bounty of his culture far exceeded the [Regal? ] endowment [page 85:] of his nature. This is the reason why he made the God-created freeborn Passion a slave to Art.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 81:]

164 This is in Chivers’ hand, and is the first item here reproduced of MS. HEH HM 2516, [c. 1853?]. The MS. includes comments on N. P. Willis, Griswold, and Lowell independent of their relation to Poe and scattered comments such as those here given on Poe, along with printed material as illustration.

165 Material in brackets crossed out by Chivers.

166 The clipping is included with the MS. comment. Broadway Journal, I, No. 25 (June 21, 1845), 393-4.

167 This first sentence of another part of HEH HM 2516 is crossed out.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 82:]

168 Three pieces of clipping, in which all but six paragraphs are crossed out, follow pasted to the MS. sheet. They are from Graham's Magazine, XX, No. 3 (March 1842), 186-188.

169 We return here to certain portions of MS. HEH HM 2530.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 83:]

170 Beginning of MS. p. 27 of HEH HM 2530.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 84:]

171 These verses are on a slip pasted over the following: