Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/60

 have us believe that the effects produced by a famous book or writer can be reproduced if one will only follow a formula. Such critics generally fail to recognize that they are dealing with something truly alive, and that the vital principle escapes their analysis. Bland souls, they present us with a formula for writing a Poe tale of mystery or horror, and conveniently forget to furnish us at the same time with a tale written according to their formula which at all equals one of his.

But, although we need not despair of Poe's growing in favor with the American public, there is abundant room to despair of any critic's changing his opinions at the point of someone else's pen, and so I hasten to my fourth and last head.

Poe makes his fourth claim to our attention in the slender volume of his verses. He was primarily a poet, and perhaps it is as a poet that he is chiefly valued by Englishmen and Americans. His genius—on the side of melody and color—matured surprisingly, not to say regrettably, early, and even when his search for artistic perfection and the embarrassments of his life are taken into due account, his comparative infertility is a matter for wonder and disappointment. But his limited range accounts in part for the flawlessness of his workmanship when his art is at its best and for the intensity of the impression he produces upon appreciative readers. It is no small achievement to have sung a few imperishable songs of bereaved love and illusive beauty. It is no small achievement to have produced individual and unexcelled strains of harmony which have since so rung in the ears of brother poets that echoes of them may be detected even in the