Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), December 27, 1845, vol. 2, no. 25, p. ???, col. ?

[page 385:]

Critical Notices.

The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. First American Edition (Complete); with some remarks on the Poetical Faculty, and its influence on Human Destiny. Embracing a Biographical and Critical Notice, by G. G. FOSTER, New York. J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall.

This is a very beautiful edition of a poet whom all poets, and whom poets only, appreciate. The volume is a pendant of the Carey's Dante lately issued by D. Appleton & Co., and includes 750 pages duodecimo — fine type and exquisite paper. It is, as asserted, a complete edition of the works of the author — rather too complete, perhaps; for many of the Fragments are utterly destitute of intrinsic value, and have no other interest than what appertains to them as relics of Shelley. The Biographical and Critical Notice by Mr. Foster, is well written, (barring a little justifiable furore) and evinces a keen discrimination, and, very especially, a thorough appreciation of the excellences of the subject of the memoir. We shall be pardoned for copying some passages embodying Mr. Foster's opinions on “The Revolt of Islam” and affording, also, a fair specimen of his style:

The “Revolt of Islam,” although not admitted by the critics to be his grandest work, is, in the meaning I attach to poetry, altogether the most important. It is, as it were, the consummation of himself — the prophecy which he has uttered; and although it contained still more literary errors than have been charged upon it, yet in this view they would not detract from the importance of it. But these errors are, for the most part, mere distortions of the critics’ brains, and do not deserve seriously to be alleged against a man who has shown his right to disregard the apparent and mechanical laws of poetry, by proving that he has held living communion with the source whence those laws have been attempted to be drawn. Autumn is a faulty colorist, by all the rules of Dilettantism — and yet we do not criticise, but admire her pictures. Language is at best but a dull instrument for Thought to work withal; and if Shelley has succeeded in producing, as a whole, deeper effects and more beautiful pictures than others, we will not quarrel with him because his instinct has developed rules of composition of which our critical scholarship happened to be ignorant: the great bard of Avon has been quite annihilated by the critics several times; and yet we have even forgotten their names, long ago, while we every day bring fresh worship to his altar — which bears not even a mark of all the critics’ well-filed teeth that have ever nibbled at its base.

The “Revolt of Islam” is written in twelve cantos of Spenserian stanzas, and was at first to have been called “Laon and Cythna.”

* * * * * * *

Bold as it is in many of the sentiments, it is a noble monument to the loftiness of his aims, the brilliancy of his imagination, the wealth of love in his heart, and the breadth and power of his intellect. It is an armory from which the young enthusiasts of many generations to come may draw their weapons, in the assurance that they are of tried temper and exquisite polish. We have never read it without feeling our souls stirred within us as with the sound of a trumpet — it has enlarged our thoughts, expanded and warmed our affections, quickened our purposes of good, and filled us with an unquenchable flame of philanthropy and love. It is almost the only poem that we can read at all seasons. In those darker moments, when the sense of misdirected efforts, or the exhaustion of disease, or the dark and mysterious dread of some future ill, weighs like an incubus upon the soul, it is almost the only work, after the gospels, that furnishes nutriment and solace to our mind. Then, it touches us with a feeling of universal sympathy. It awakans us to the broad, deep sorrows of the world, it quickens languid and lagging resolutiens, it confirms our faith in good, and swells our hearts with high and bursting hopes. Oh sweet, incomprehensibly sweet, are the emotions of intense and burning enthusiasm that it kindles!