Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/38

 in Mr. Poe’s writings is due rather to the deformity of his moral character than to the vigor or freshness of his intellect,” and, finding himself “profoundly impressed by Poe’s wonderful solutions of the most difficult problems,” suspects that “it is after all, an easy thing for man to solve the riddles which he himself has fabricated.”

There is a prevalent impression among critics and readers who have never felt the magnetism of Poe’s weird imagination, nor come into full rapport with his genius, that his intellectual creations were always the result of deliberate effort and artistic skill, that they were not genuine outgrowths of the inward life but arbitrary creations of the will and the intellect.

This opinion, founded in part upon the subtlety and refinement of his analytical faculty, has been seemingly guaranteed by some of his own statements in regard to his methods of composition. A writer in the "North American" characterizes his poetry as “word-maneuvering,” and one of his critics, sitting at the time in