Chapter Edgar Allan Poe of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

Poe as a Critic.

Poe was, as has been said, a pioneer in this country in the field of serious criticism. As matter of fact, nearly half of his literary work is of this nature. Besides the pungent reviews of contemporary writers, the critical essays on The Rationale of English Verse and The Poetic Principle must not be forgotton. He was not always a sound critic; he was not infallible in hisjudgments, and in some of his attacks he was inspired by jealousy or prejudice. But it is remembered that he was one of the earliest to recognize the genius of Mrs. Browning and of Tennyson; that he applauded Dickens from the start; that he was one of the first to discover Hawthorne, and wrote warmly of his work -- although he later denied his originality and, characteristically, declared that Hawthorne had stolen some material from his own tale of William Wilson. For Lowell's verse Poe had nothing but praise; and Longfellow -- in spite of his own ill-tempered attack -- he placed at the head of American poets. He also noted the limitations of Irving, Cooper, and Bryant; and in much of his criticism he has been justified by time. The general effect of his critical work was apparently helpful in the development of American literature.

As a Romancer.

Poe wrote some seventy tales of greatly varying merit. These can be considered but briefly and in groups. We find, first narratives of romantic adventure, typified by MS. found in a Bottle, intense in its suggestions of the mysterious and unearthly. His longest piece of fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, inspired, perhaps, by the popular success of Cooper's romances of the sea, is as realistic in its employment of commonplace and minute details as any of the narratives of Defoe, the first great master of realism in fiction. Poe's imaginative power is exhibited in vivid pictures of murder, mutiny, shipwreck, and starvation, which are gruesome enough, and sometimes become so morbid as to be offensive to sound taste; but in the conclusion of the tale his poetic imagination asserts itself in wonderful descriptions of an unknown land and of the mysterious white sea of the Antarctic. In A Descent into the Maelstrom, we have the finest example of this group, realistic, poetical, and thoroughly impressive.The Adventures of one Hans Pfaal, like the subsequent story, The Balloon Hoax, is based upon the possibilities, real and romantic, of aerial navigation, and is a prototype of such pseudoscientific fiction as the romances of Jules Verne. Poe makes a brave display of scientific knowledge in all these tales -- a knowledge which is superficial in fact, although effective in the machinery of his realism.

Another group contains the analytical tales, which Poe himself called "tales of ratiocination," because their appeal is to the reasoning faculty rather than to the emotions. The presentation of a mystery the solution of which is to follow is always fascinating, and Poe's dominion over his reader is nowhere more complete than in these tales. That the romancer, having first built up his mystery, is obviously only retracing his own steps in the working out of its solution, does not at all affect the interest of his story; for here his art is strong enough to produce the illusion that the reader is watching the first unraveling of the plot. The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter still remain our best examples, at least in the short-story form, of this class of fiction.

Working more closely in the field cultivated by Hawthorne, Poe produced also a group of romantic tales in which conscience is the theme. William Wilson, the narrative of a man with a double, is the best; it might have been the suggestion of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here are to be included, also, the horrible story of The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and Thou art the Man. But Poe's most effective tales are those which are carefully, elaborately designed to produce a vivid effect on the reader's mind. Foremost among these is the remarkable fantasy The Fall of the House of Usher, a masterpiece of literary art, wherein every sentence is significant and almost every word a contribution to the dismal effect. Here belongs, also, The Masque of the Red Death, with its weird use of colors, its atmosphere of revelry invaded by the horror of the plague. Ligeia, a fantasy of transmigration, The Cask of Amontillado, a study in revenge, and Hop-Frog, in which the same theme again appears, grotesquely treated, fall in the same group. The morbid element is conspicuous in all. Death, horrible and ghastly, -- pestilence, -- dissolution, -- the awakening of the dead, -- the awakening of those prematurely buried: these are the