Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), April 19, 1845, vol. 1, no. 16, p. ???-???

[page 252, column 1, continued:]

REVIEWS.

NIGHT: a Poem. In two Parts. New York: Alexander V. Blake, 77 Fulton street. 15-13. pp. 60.

Alexandre Dumas, in the preface to one of his tragedies, says: “Ce sont les homtnes, et non pas l’homme, qui inventent. Chacun arrive à son tour et a son beure, s’empare des choses connues de ses pores, les met en oeuvre pat des combinaisons nouvelles, puffs meurt apres avoir ajouté quel-ques parcelles ‘a la somme des connaissances humaines. Quant a la creation complete d’une chose, je la crois impossible. Dieu lui ineme, lorsqu’il crea l’homme, ne put on n’osa point l’inventer: it le fit à son image.

We should be unwilling to charge the author of the poem before us with the profane sentiment of the audacious plagiarist whom we have quoted, but it is very plain that the two authors entertain very similar feelings respecting des choses connues de ses pères.

The author of Night has chosen an infelicitous title for his poem, for the word “Thoughts,” must pop into the minds of his readers as soon as they open his volume: yet it would have mattered nothing if he had chosen a different one, for the same title would have been inevitably suggested by the poem itself.

We can safely pronounce the author a good man and a scholar, which is higher praise than can be bestowed upon every good poet. His withholding his name from his combinaisons nouvelles proves him to be a modest man, at least. The volume makes a favorable appeal to the eye, if not to he heart, by its beautiful externals. It is one of the handsomest books that we have recently handled.

There are many lines like the following in the poem, which might be vastly improved by the alteration of one word:

if dewy were substituted for dusky, the line would then be quite perfect and original. As an example of the author's art and feeling, we make as long an extract as we can afford room for.