Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/180

160 fective expression, without the instrumentality of those repetitions—those unusual phrases—in a word, those quaintnesses, which it has been too long the fashion to censure, indiscriminately, under the one general head of "affectation." No true poet will fail to be enraptured with the two extracts above quoted but—we believe there are few who would not find a difficulty in reconciling the psychal impossibility of refraining from admiration, with the too-hastily attained mental conviction that, critically, there is nothing to admire.

[This is the concluding part of Poe's review of Miss Barrett's Drama of Exile, See the preceding selection. It is well to compare with this bit of evolutionary criticism of Shelley Poe's only appraisal of Keats: "He is the sole British poet who has never erred in his themes. Beauty is always his aim."]

If ever mortal "wreaked his thoughts upon expression" it was Shelley. If ever poet sang (as a bird sings)—impulsively—earnestly—with utter abandonment—to himself solely—and for the mere joy of his own song—that poet was the author of the "Sensitive Plant." Of Art—beyond that which is the inalienable instinct of Genius—he either had little or disdained all. He really disdained that Rule which is the emanation from Law, because his own soul was law in itself. His rhapsodies are but the rough notes—the stenographic memoranda of poems—memoranda which, because they were all-sufficient for his own intelligence, he cared not to be at the trouble of transcribing in full