Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/43

 that he had too little art; criticism adverse to Poe tends to center in the charge that he had too much art. The one poet is pronounced to be over-copious, coarse, and slipshod; the other to be costive, over-refined, decadent. The question at once arises—are English and American readers sincere upholders of what we may call a golden-mean aesthetic standard, or are they rather to be classed in the main as partisan pleaders bent upon making their case as strong as they can? How is it that so many European readers manage to accept both the copious, inartistic Byron and the scrupulous, limited Poe? Is it that they have no standards, moral or æsthetic, or that they have other standards than ours, or that all these questions I am asking are beside the point?

Perhaps the last question touches the root of the matter. Shall we not, all of us, settle down as peaceable impressionists liking what we like and disliking what we dislike, and, in the language of the street, "letting it go at that"? A comfortable suggestion indeed. Acting upon it, we could all exclaim "Glory to Poe" and go home. But again that suspicion of laziness and cowardliness creeps over me. Can we afford "to let it go at that"? I think not.

Suppose for the moment we allow the unfriendly biographers of Poe to have it all their own way. Let us not dispute a single point. What have we left? In my judgment, the most interesting, the most pathetic, and in some ways the most instructive of all American biographies. What we Americans seem always to demand of a biography is that it should be exemplary and inspiring. This the biography of Poe certainly is not, except in so