Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/73

Rh This is Poe's method in all of the "funny" reviews. He probably took his cue from Macaulay whom he greatly admired though with qualifications. But Poe made the method his own. Instead of denouncing ab extra, he places a specimen before the reader, punctures it, and lets the nonsense and impropriety dribble out.

Of Rufus Dawes, author of Geraldine, Griswold had written, "As a poet the standing of Mr. Dawes is as yet unsettled." Poe thought otherwise: He laid her gently down, of sense bereft,
 * And sunk his picture on her bosom's snow,

And close beside these lines in blood he left:
 * "Farewell forever, Geraldine, I go

Another woman's victim—dare I tell?
 * 'Tis Alice!—curse us, Geraldine!—farewell!"

"There is no possibility of denying the fact: this is a droll piece of business. The lover brings forth a miniature, (Mr. Dawes has a passion for miniatures,) sinks it in the bosom of the lady, cuts his finger, and writes with the blood an epistle, (where is not specified, but we presume he indites it upon the bosom as it is 'close beside' the picture,) in which epistle he announces that he is 'another woman's victim,' giving us to understand that he himself is a woman after all, and concluding with the delicious bit of Billingsgate 'Tis Alice!—curse us, Geraldine!—farewell! We suppose, however, that 'curse us' is a misprint; for why should Geraldine curse both herself and her lover?—it should have been 'curse it!' no doubt. The whole passage, perhaps, would have read better thus— 'Tis Alice!—d——n it, Geraldine!—good bye!"