University of Virginia Library

Poe and "Young America"
by
Claude Richard

When Edgar Allan Poe moved to New York in April 1844, there is no doubt that he was pursuing his life-long dream of launching a first-class magazine — one which would, at last, be under his sole control. His many frantic attempts to bring this recurrent dream to life bear testimony to his dissatisfaction with his previous activities as a critic whether in Richmond under the authority of Thomas W. White, or in Philadelphia where William Burton's expediency and George Graham's namby-pambiness had come to "disgust" him. In Philadelphia, however, competition was tough and though the "Stylus," as he had decided to call the magazine he was planning, was to strike a radically different note, the odds were against success in a contest with the popular Godey's Lady's Book cleverly edited by Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale and Graham's Magazine which had succeded in appealing, thanks largely to Poe's own contributions, both to a sentimental female audience and to the more exacting patronage of lawyers and wealthy gentlemen. New York offered better opportunities than the conservative old capital for a thoroughly original magazine with high intellectual ambitions.

Poe also realised that money was more likely to turn up in New York than in Philadephia. He needed a backer but failed to find one: instead he found a friend, Evert A. Duyckinck, the head of the so-called "Young Americans," who in Arthur H. Quinn's words "provided what Poe needed, an adviser and a manager."[1] The best known result of the friendship with Duyckinck was the publication as No. 2 of Wiley and Putnam's "Library of American Books" of Poe's Tales in June 1845 and his The Raven and Other Poems in November 1845. While commentators, influenced by Poe's objections to the selection[2] have

blamed Duyckinck for the omission of "Ligeia" and other masterpieces, it might be more profitable to consider the problem from the publisher's and the editor's point of view and wonder why Wiley and Putnam took the obvious risk of publishing Poe's tales at all. The copyright of every book in the series was assigned to the author (Poe was to get eight cents for each copy sold) which implied the publication of books that might safely be surmised to sell in reasonably large quantities. Such was not the case with Poe's Tales, despite the fact that his popularity had soared after the much discussed newspaper publication of "The Raven" in January, 1845. The collection included no new material, all of the tales having previously appeared in widely circulated magazines.[3] The name of Poe was less popular with the reading public than most of the names that were to appear in the series (J. T. Headley, William Gilmore Simms, Cornelius Mathews, etc.). Moreover, tales, as Carey, the Philadelphia publisher, once wrote John P. Kennedy, sold poorly when the public demand was for huge novels.[4] Duyckinck, who evidently was given full liberty by the firm and could select whatever title he pleased, was aware of these difficulties. Why, then, did he choose to publish the tales of an outsider to New York and to his own group with every chance that the publication would be a financial failure? His choice is puzzling. Friendliness alone cannot account for such conspicuous favor from the leader of the "Young Americans" and the editor of a series of literary works avowedly intended to serve the cause of American letters.

Here in fact lies the core of the matter. Duyckinck was the enthusiastic proponent of a truly national literature with a democratic appeal, and he had preached his gospel with unmistakable fervor for more than five years. He had created the Tetractys Club whose program was to serve the promotion of a truly American literature; he had projected the establishment of the Home Critic — the name speaks for itself —; he had launched, with his friend Cornelius Mathews, the devoutly national Arcturus and even after its failure had risen to prominence in New York as the defender of a new, independent literature — a literature which, in contrast with the more aristocratic and European works of such writers as Longfellow and Washington Irving, would strike a truly national note likely to win the average uncultured American to the habit of reading and initiate him to the moral profits of art. So far he shared nothing in common with Poe, except his scorn or rather utter misunderstanding of transcendentalism. But for a rather florid paragraph written ten years before at the outset of his career as a critic,[5] Poe was anything but a champion of a national literature. He had handled Duyckinck's nearest allies, Cornelius Mathews and William A. Jones,[6] rather roughly and he was nothing of a Democrat: he had "battled with right good will for Harrison" and he considered his "principles" to "have always been as nearly as may be, with the existing administration" (Tyler's) (Letters, I, 170). He had steadily denounced the degrading influence of the idea of nationality on American criticism[7] and American taste.[8] Finally, no casuistry could so misrepresent the truth of Poe's tales as to regard them as specifically American, redolent of native life and expressing the genius of the American people, in the manner of Simms's The Wigwam and the Cabin or Mathews' Big Abel and the Little Manhattan.[9] Some other link must exist between Poe and the Young Americans, some alliance which

would explain the "quixotic" favors bestowed upon Poe by the editor of "The Library of American Books."

The proof of Poe's allegiance to "Young America" is glaringly written in an article in the Broadway Journal (July 19, 1845) that has somehow escaped previous notice.[10] The brief paragraph is entitled "Young America" and runs thus: "Regretting the necessity of employing the phrase which is not only borrowed, but redolent of affectation, we still have the most earnest sympathy in all the hopes, and the firmest faith in the capabilities of 'Young America.' We look upon its interests as our own, and shall uniformly uphold them in this Journal. What these interests are — what should be the aspirations of the new men in the country, and of the country through them in particular, it has been our intention to express fully in our own words, at the first convenient opportunity — but we have now lying before us an address which embodies all that there is any necessity for saying.

"We allude to a paper read by Mr. Cornelius Mathews at the late annual meeting of the Eucleian Society of the University of New York. We shall be pardoned for making some extracts."[11] The excerpts from Mathews' highflown address cover two columns in small type and contain such frantically nationalistic statements as the following: "I therefore, in behalf of this Young America of ours, insist on nationality and true Americanism in the books this country furnishes to itself and to the world: nationality in its purest, highest, broadest sense" (pp. 26-27). The printing of large extracts from Mathews' address is enough to prove Poe's goodwill towards "Young America" and his gratitude towards Duyckinck. The tenor of the introductory passage is complex: it is both a profession of faith ("we look upon its interests as our own") and, as Poe's New York audience must have at once perceived, a declaration of war. In pledging that his magazine would serve the interests of Young Americans, Poe was renouncing the middle-of-the-road policy he and his co-editor Charles Frederick Briggs, who was sympathetic to the Knickerbocker group, had maintained at the Broadway Journal. By the end of June, Poe, after "a series of manoeuvres almost incomprehensible to [himself]" (Letters, I, 299), had managed to get rid of Briggs who would soon find refuge in the Sanctum; Poe wastes no time in proclaiming to which side he belongs: the statement, under the editorial "we," coming not long after the announcement that he is now sole literary editor, is clear enough. The ousting of Briggs and Poe's

consequent freedom brought about the final break that had been threatening for some time: on the one hand we have the Knickerbocker group, closely allied by links of kinship and political identity to Colton's American (Whig) Review, with the help of Briggs's bitingly satirical pen; on the other, the Democratic set led by Duyckinck and Mathews in O'Sullivan's Democratic Review, helped by the even more caustic pen of the editor of the Broadway Journal. Thus, until the final collapse of the Broadway Journal, Poe's criticism is manifestly partisan: it either bestows fervid praise on the Young Americans and every title in "The library of choice reading,"[12] eagerly puffing William G. Simms[13] who had joined the Democratic set,[14] or casts sharp barbs at whoever appears to belong to the other camp.

Thus if we find Poe advocating the Young American movement in his first period of critical independence, would it not be logical to expect to find covert or overt advocacy of that movement in his earlier critical writings? His advocacies of these ideas will date from a period after his initial contact with the conspicuous members of the Democratic set. Poe had much to win, for Duyckinck's protection was as effective as the protection of an eighteenth century patron. Who could reproach any half-starving young critic with a dying wife for forcing and somewhat colouring in brighter hues some of his opinions? Who would doubt Poe might yield to such temptation?

The first indication of relationship between Poe and any member of "Young America" is the arresting letter he sent to Cornelius Mathews on March 15, 1844. Surprisingly enough Poe accuses himself of flippancy, a reproach he often chafted under and makes light of the matter: "Could I imagine that, at any moment, you regarded a certain impudent and flippant critique as more than a matter to be laughed at, I would proffer an apology on the spot." The touchy and haughty pride which was his customary attitude is stifled under the painfully elaborate

protestations of "the Highest Respect & Esteem" (Letters, I, 245). It was not Poe's habit to apologize for his mordant reviews. The following remark sums up his habitual attitude: "If I must call it a good book to preserve the friendship of Prof. Ingraham — Prof. Ingraham may go to the devil" (Letters, I, 71). Moreover the "impudent and flippant critique" he mentions was a thorough study of Mathews' poem "Wakondah," covering thirteen pages and including, among other compliments, the following conclusion: "We should be delighted to proceed — but how? to applaud — but what? Surely not this trumpery declamation, this maudlin sentiment, this metaphor run mad, this twaddling verbiage, this halting and doggerel rhythm, this unintelligible rant and cant" (Works, XI, 25-38). Poe had already clearly stated his disagreement with Mathews' critical attitudes, particularly in an untitled paragraph in Graham's Magazine. This article, later called "Exordium" by Poe's editors,[15] is written in answer to the nationalistic manifestoes of the Young Americans which had appeared in Arcturus. Besides, he had repeatedly upheld the point of view that the whole controversy about a national literature had led the too exclusively nationalistic critics into the worst excesses; they had gone even so far as to pervert the taste of the American public by puffing such "trash" as the selfsame "Wakondah" (Works, XI, 26). The sudden shift, so far unexplained, is, to say the least, troubling. I am well aware that long before he had anything to do with any of the members of Young America, Poe professed some opinions that fitted very well with the new orthodoxy of the literary democrats. This partial identity, his need of a backer for his magazine and the natural tendency of the foes of Lewis Gaylord Clark to unite are not enough to account for such blatant rejection of his previous opinions. The previously undiscovered fact that will help us to understand Poe's motives in writing this disturbing letter and will eventually shed light on some of his major reviews is that his letter is a response to another. Mathews' letter, if extant, has not, to my knowledge, been located, but an excerpt from a letter quoted by Poe in Graham's Magazine for January 1844 points to an early correspondence between the two men. In January 1844, Poe announces a forthcoming review of R. H. Horne's epic poem Orion.[16] With his usual journalistic shrewdness he hints the book has been sent directly from England and quotes from "a letter now lying before us," intimating that the letter also comes from England: "A rush of buyers . . . almost carried the publisher off his feet. The public fell into an especial ecstasy, and bought the poetry in its sleep — a thing it very seldom does awake — and now the poet [R. H. Horne] brings out his fourth edition for a shilling (which the public buys too because it is not yet wide awake) and promises a fifth for half a crown in a few days." Poe's biographers, assuming that this letter had been sent to the poet, have concluded that it was probably lost. I have however been able to find the source of the extract quoted above in a letter from Elizabeth B. Barrett to Cornelius Mathews.[17] Miss Barrett was a close friend of Mathews' who had first introduced her to the American public.[18] Because Mathews had acted the part of an American literary agent with great effectiveness, she believed him to be powerful with editors and publishers and enquired whether he could be of any help to her professional friend Horne. On April 28, 1843 she offered Mathews some of Horne's poems for publication in "Graham's Miscellany."[19] Mathews must have taken the affair in hand and Graham must have agreed for on July 3, 1843 she mentions two copies of Orion she proposes to send — "one for Graham's Miscellany" (p. 52). This letter contains the paragraph quoted verbatim by Poe about the original publication of the poem. Thus it is evident that Mathews forwarded to Graham's office both the poem and probably a copy or an extract of Miss Barrett's letter.

Poe, however, was no longer the editor of Graham's Magazine and contributed only occasional reviews. It may thus be assumed either that he received the book for review from Mathews, or that Graham handed it over to him along with the letter. In both cases Poe must have known that Mathews was the "importer" and sponsor of the poem which he planned to publish in America. Poe wastes no time in advertising it, inserting a brief but highly commendatory paragraph even before having perused it attentively: ". . . as yet . . . we . . . have had opportunity to glance at individual passages," letting naïvely slip the confession that: "We must read and review 'Orion.'" In spite of that "the work . . . is, beyond doubt, that of a man of genius."[20] Two months later — Poe seems to be waiting for something as he seldom delayed so long between the announcement of a review and the review itself — appears the glowing tribute to Horne's poem.[21] This enthusiastic review is generally considered as one of the most conspicuous lapses

in Poe's critical judgement. It is actually disturbing for not one of the poem's features meets Poe's standards in spite of which the reviewer declares that "'Orion' has never been excelled. Indeed we feel strongly tempted to say it has never been equaled" (p. 266) and concludes that "'Orion' will be admitted, by every man of genius, to be one of the noblest, if not the very noblest poetical work of the age" (p. 275). Poe's unaccountable enthusiasm is disturbing because he bestows praise on a long, didactic, ethical, allegorical epic, thus apparently overlooking his clearest previous dicta that a true poem is short, unconcerned with either truth or ethics and spurning above all else allegory.

Although Poe acknowledges that "Mr. Horne, . . . is, in some measure, infected" (p. 254) by the "cant of the day" (p. 253), transcendentalism, an element the critic could never force himself to commend, although he acknowledges that Horne "has been badgered into the attempt at commingling the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth" and "has weakly yielded his own poetic sentiment of the poetic — yielded it, in some degree, to the pertinacious opinion, and talk, of a certain junto by which he is surrounded," yet, he opines that Horne is ". . . unquestionably . . . a man of high, of the highest genius . . ." (p. 254). One must note at once that Emerson had so far been simply ignored by Poe, precisely because he indulged in the "cant of the day" and Longfellow fails to elicit from Poe the label of genius for one sole reason: he insists on commingling "the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth." Overlooking these disparities between Horne's practise and his own critical tenets, Poe proceeds to define once again what he now calls "pure poetry" (p. 256). Leaning on his usual examples — Coleridge's theory of passion and poetry, Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," "Oenone" and "Morte d'Arthur," Cousin's ideality — he evolves one of his most fruitful definitions of the origins of poetry as "the thirst for a wilder beauty than earth supplies" and of poetry as "the imperfect effort to quench this immortal thirst by novel combinations of beautiful forms . . ."; concluding after an approval of Coleridge's rejection of even love from poetry that "Truth is, in its own essence, sublime — but her loftiest sublimity, as derived from man's clouded and erratic reason, is valueless — is pulseless — is utterly ineffective when brought into comparison with the unerring sense of which we speak" (pp. 256-57). This is Poe at his best, but the definition has nothing to do with Horne's work which is confessedly a poem with a moral, that is to say, in Poe's special vocabulary, concerned with Truth.

The next paragraph shows Poe at his worst. He now dedicates all his logical powers to the vindication of Horne's shortcomings so that

the poem may seem to meet his own critical standards: "In setting about 'Orion', Mr. Horne proposed to himself, (in accordance with the views of his junto) to 'elaborate a morality' — he ostensibly proposed this to himself — for, in the depth of his heart, we know that he wished all juntos and all moralities in Erebus. In accordance with the notions of his set, however, he felt a species of shamefacedness in not making the enforcement of some certain dogmas or doctrines (questionable or unquestionable) about PROGRESS, the obvious or apparent object of his poem" (p. 257). "Orion" is allegorical but so obscurely so that it shows ". . . conclusively that the heart of the poet was not with it" (p. 258). As for the narrative, it ". . . is beautiful indeed," but ". . . we have only to object that the really magnificent abilities of Mr. Horne might have been better employed in an entirely original conception" (p. 259). The whole structure of the poem evinces an "uncertainty of purpose which is the chief defect of the work" (p. 261), a meek remark from the pen of the most thorough theoretician of Unity, who will harshly condemn The Iliad and Paradise Lost on the same ground.[22] After an unusually short catalogue of the grammatical and metrical errors, a point upon which Poe might have been expected, in his usual fashion, to dwell at greater length, he simply dismisses those shortcomings as "mere inadvertences" (p. 265) (an exceptionally lenient opinion). He then proceeds in his usual manner to analyse "the beauties of this most remarkable poem" (p. 266), making his point clear without further delay: "it is our deliberate opinion that, in all that regards the loftiest and holiest attributes of the true Poetry, 'Orion' has never been excelled" (p. 266). The following pages teem with indications that, though candidly admiring such or such passage,[23] Poe is at a loss to grasp and convey the elements of beauty of the poem: characteristically, he resorts to high-flown style when attempting to impart the specific quality of the only virtue he can point out: "Its imagination — that quality which is all in all — is of the most refined — the most elevating — the most august character" (p. 266). Then follow the usual apologies he offers whenever anything baffles his analytical powers. Such sentences as: "And here we deeply regret that the necessary limits of this review will prevent us from entering, at length, into specification" (p. 266-67), or, "we conclude with some brief quotations at random, which we shall not pause to classify" (p. 273) are patent confessions of powerlessness, whatever its cause. The general impression therefore is that Poe is ill at ease, that he carefully avoids speaking of the poem at all for almost half of the article and then apologizes for having no space left for anything but a cursory review,[24] that he refrains from listing the many obvious stylistic and metrical flaws of the poem and is as heedless as to quote and italicize for commendation an obviously lame line: The final flourish, so unlike his more candid assertions of enthusiasm reinforces the impression that Poe is not at ease.

Now if we recall the date of the letter sent to Mathews we cannot but be struck by a coincidence and we may perhaps re-read the first paragraph: the "small parcel for Mr. Horne" is evidently the review, with Poe's tale, "The Spectacles" he hopes to publish in England through Horne. Under the pretence of asking for Horne's address, Poe lets Mathews know that the mission he has been entrusted with — the writing of a favorable review of "Orion" — has been carried out, that he himself Poe has done the job[26] and the apologies that follow are consequently less bluntly humble than we might at first have thought. They are not the words of a poor artist begging for protection but the last concession of one of the parties towards a compromise. To Poe it was important that Mathews should know the review was his, because Poe, it would appear, had contracted to review the poem, perhaps for payment, perhaps in return for some good offices he expected from Mathews who had written to Horne that "there would be a review,"[27] perhaps because he was Mathews' "debtor for many little attentions" as he acknowledged in his letter of March 15, 1844 (I, 245). Thus Poe seems to have striven to show his good will towards Young America

as early as the last days of 1843. The obvious question is therefore what advantage he could derive from such alliance. In addition to the facts that it was common talk Duyckinck was planning to launch a new magazine and was the only New York patron that could be of any help to Poe, another coincidence may explain Poe's tokens of good will. It is well-known that he meant to issue a collection of his tales but that no publisher would run the risk of publishing them.[28] In March 1844 a new and entirely original publishing project had been advertised: the Home Library, the history of which it is perhaps not useless to sketch out.

On August 23, 1843, Duyckinck, Mathews, William Cullen Bryant and other less conspicuous figures had founded a club whose program was "to procure the enactment of such law or laws as shall place the literary relations of the United States and foreign countries, in reference to copyright, on just, proper, and equitable grounds."[29] Poe's interest in the issue of international copyrights is well-known and any American author, particularly a professional one, must have followed closely the evolution of the enterprise and read the statement, signed by Bryant, Francis L. Hawks and Mathews, of October 18, 1843. It stressed the necessity of a collection "at a price which will satisfy the just demands of the author, and the rightful expectations of the reader."[30] In the winter of 1843-44 Poe could not but be cognizant of the activities of Duyckinck, Bryant and Mathews that would lead to the publication of a prospectus of the Home Library in the New York Tribune dated March 30, 1844.

This new publishing venture had been widely advertised and must have been known to Poe on March 15, when he wrote to Mathews since the prospectus advertised the first volume of the series as ". . . now ready at all the book stores and periodical agencies . . ." Friendship with Mathews and Duyckinck would be particularly helpful since they were in charge of a collection whose plan was to include "COPYRIGHT WORK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS, and new works of English writers, to be published by mutual arrangement with them and for their benefit."[31] The Home Library was a failure and only two

volumes were published: Bryant's The White Footed Deer and Headley's Italy and the Italians, a name that would later appear as No. 3 in Duyckinck's "Library of American Books." Number two would be Poe's Tales. When one reconsiders Poe's critical reviews during the span of time from the propitiatory letter to Mathews to the statement of alliance with Young America in the Broadway Journal of July 19, 1845, one cannot fail to notice that the great majority of his themes tally with the dearest opinions of the Democratic set. Both his themes and his new tastes in literature suggest either Duyckinck's influence or Poe's attempts to gain recognition as a reliable Young American. With more energy than ever, he harps upon the themes of the financial hardships of the truly American writer,[32] of the devastating subserviency of American critics to English opinions,[33] on the artificiality of modern plays plagued by imitation of the old models,[34] on the urgent need for an international Copyright law,[35] on the necessity of a new, modern magazine-literature,[36] more adapted to a rapidly increasing reading public. That democratic public he observed was not concerned with the leisurely, cultivated essay in the English style of Lamb, that the Knickerbocker set's favorites, John Waters [Henry Cary], George Templeton Strong, and Rufus Dawes, (three "gentlemen of elegant leisure," an anti-democratic conception), were trying to impose as the genuine literature of America. One of these themes, imitation in literature, lay at the core of Young America's campaign for a truly original literature.[37] It should be noticed that, contrary to what has been held, Poe fought the first skirmish in the too famous "Longfellow war" under the banner of Young America. The so-called war that was to degenerate and lead Poe to utter some of his most preposterous statements, originated in two reviews of Longfellow's Waif published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 13, and January 14, 1845.[38] In the concluding paragraph that roused such anger, Poe took issue with Longfellow for "a very careful avoidance of all American poets who may be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of Mr. Longfellow: These men Mr. Longfellow can continuously imitate (is that the word?) and yet never even incidentally commend."[39] The only American poets who could have interfered with Longfellow's claims were, apart from Poe himself, the democratic-minded ones who strove to refresh American poetry by a more genuinely American style than the erudite Professor was able to achieve. The most active were Cornelius Mathews with his pregnant theme of the American Indian and a young, ardent romanticist, who was then seeking inspiration in the popular traditions of his country and, though he would later defect to the enemy, was an early friend and favorite of Duyckinck's: James R. Lowell.[40] Against which of the titans of American poetry ought an aggressive critic who desired to curry Duyckinck's favor launch his weapons? Against Longfellow, of course, whose popularity threatened the advent of the American "Master genius . . . who would automatically be greater than Shakespeare."[41]

As significant as both Poe's insistence on those themes and his attacks on Aldrich and Longfellow are the many favorable allusions to once despised Young Americans with which he sprinkled many of his articles. His treatment of William Gilmore Simms is particularly illuminating: in November 1844, Poe is given access to the columns of the fortress of the Democrats, the Democratic Review. He is probably short of matter, for these first two Marginalia are largely made up of reprints and adaptations of his earlier reviews. These reprints however are not selected at random: one of the adaptations is particularly interesting. It concerns William G. Simms, the latest recruit of the Young Americans. Poe had had frequent opportunities to express his

opinions of Simms: he had reviewed The Partisan,[42] The Damsel of Darien,[43] and had included Simms in his Autography sketches.[44] These reviews were very unfavorable, the review of the Partisan scathingly so. But in 1844, Simms is a Young American: consequently, though he kept the good joke about the "poetical gaping oyster," Poe is careful to select the most favorable passages in his previous articles and to "edit them": he extracts the only two favorable remarks he had made and prints them as two separate items.[45] To the sentence reading: "Mr. Simms has abundant faults," he now adds the very ingratiating corrective note "or had." Then to a once unfavorable passage he added the following sentence: ". . . leaving out the question of Brockden Brown and Hawthorne, he is immeasurably the best writer of fiction in America." Six months later, in the Broadway Journal, the sentence has been finally adapted thus: ". . . the best novelist that this country has, upon the whole, produced."[46] As compared to Poe's absolute frankness about his allegiance to Young America in the second half of 1845 and to his downright puffery of Young Americans,[47] those incidental compliments tend to suggest that, as late as January 1845, Poe had not come "under the wing" of Duyckinck, but was striving to obtain his protection. Distrust on Duyckinck's part was natural enough since Poe had never given any incontestable proof of faithfulness. But, in January 1845, thanks to Lowell's introducing him to Charles F. Briggs, Poe was given free access to the columns of the Broadway Journal: his very first contribution was a thorough review of Elisabeth Barrett's [Browning] The Drama of Exile and Other Poems [48] which, when considered in the light of Poe's relationship with Mathews and Duyckinck is revealing. All Poe's critics consider the article to be favorable. Echoes of Poe's great admiration for Miss Barrett crop up regularly.[49] How can we account for the critic's concluding many dense column inches of harsh exacting criticism with the judgement that Miss Barrett "has done more, in poetry, than any woman, living or dead . . ." and "has surpassed all her poetical contemporaries of either sex (with a single exception) [Tennyson]" (Works, XII, 32)? There is an obvious gap between the harshly critical comments upon individual poems on the one hand and the glowingly enthusiastic conclusion on the other. Once again, Poe is ill at ease: the rigorously logical approach that is customary with him dissolves into mere wordiness. To any one familiar with Poe's chivalric sense of what a gentleman's behavior towards women should be, the opening quotation is a warning: "'A WELL-BRED man,' says Sir James Puckle, in his 'Gray Cap for a Green Head,' 'will never give himself the liberty to speak ill of women'" (p. 1). At the very outset of the review Poe seems to state that whatever the faults of the poetess's poem, a gentlemanly critic will offer a favorable conclusion. Then, in spite of his many previous statements that a review is nothing but a discussion of the work considered, he devotes two pages to an examination of what he regards as the excesses of other American comments upon The Drama of Exile and Other Poems. Regretting that the "limits of this 'Journal' will preclude the possibility of [his] speaking this truth [about Miss Barrett] so fully, and so much in detail, as [he] could wish" (p. 3), he starts a hardly necessary discussion of the weaknesses of the Greek drama, in which he makes use of material written three years before (Works, X, 201), checking his sources rather carelessly and attributing Oedipus at Colonos to Aeschylus. Next comes a thorough and brilliant examination of Miss Barrett's errors: the drawing of Eve's character is feeble; ". . . she is a mystical something or nothing, enwrapped in a fog of rhapsody about Transfiguration, and the Seed and the Bruising of the Heel, or rather talk of a nature that no man ever pretended to understand in plain prose, and which, when solar-microscoped into poetry 'upon the model of the Greek Drama,' is about as convincing as the Egyptian Lectures of Mr. Silk Buckingham . . ." (Works, XII, 4-5).

The whole tone is transcendental and ". . . in nine cases out of ten, the thought, when dug out, will be found very poorly to repay the labor of the digging" (p. 5); which allows Poe to insert a contrastingly vigorous, though unconnected paragraph about the justified use of obscurity in the creation of the fantastic.

The "Drama of Exile" "opens with a very palpable bull" (p. 6) — a long, turgid, self-contradictory stage direction — whose obvious awkwardness Poe minutely discusses in thirty lines. His apologies for "alluding to these niaiseries at all" is that they allow him to put "in the clearest light the mass of inconsistency and antagonism in which her subject has inextricably involved her" (p. 7). The plot receives no better treatment: ". . . it is something even worse than incongruity which affronts: — a continuous mystical train of ill-fitting and exaggerated allegory — if, indeed, allegory is not much too respectable a term for it" (p. 8). Poe's delightful satirical verve here betrays his sincerity: "Innumerable other spirits discourse successively after the same fashion, each ending every stanza of his lamentation with the 'yet I wail!' When at length they have fairly made an end, Eve touches Adam upon the elbow, and hazards, also, the profound and pathetic observation — 'Lo, Adam, they wail!' — which is nothing more than the simple truth — for they do — and God deliver us from such wailing again!" (p. 9).

The "Drama of Exile" is then merely dismissed in strong plain words: "It is our purpose, however, to demonstrate what every reader of these volumes will have readily seen self-demonstrated — the utter indefensibility of the 'Drama of Exile', considered uniquely as a work of art" (p. 9). After quoting one eighteen-line extract for commendation, Poe insists that it is ". . . the longest quotable passage in the drama, not disfigured with blemishes of importance," which leads him to the conclusion that ". . . neither are there, in any of her poems, any long commendable paragraphs nor are there any individual compositions which will bear the slightest examination as consistent art-products" (p. 10), for Poe, the most damning of all judgments; yet, he follows immediately with an utter non sequitur, the observation that she is ". . . unhesitatingly, the greatest — the most glorious of her sex" (p. 11).

To the didacticism of the "Vision of Poets," he, of course, objects, but grants the poem to be "thoughtful, vivid, epigrammatic and abundant in just observation" (p. 12). He had always counted one of these, epigrammaticism, the most perilous pitfall of short poems. Thoughtfulness, vividness and justness of observation are critical clichés he had always been wary to avoid. With obvious relief he now turns to the opinions of a "reviewer in Blackwood's Magazine" and devotes two full pages to the minute and tedious corrections of Christopher North's misconstruing of three unimportant quotations. Then he gets rid of the twenty sonnets and nineteen remaining poems in two or three sentences containing such statements as: "In general, the themes are obtrusively metaphysical, or didactic" (p. 14).

A week later he continues in the same vein: after a brief favorable analysis of "The Cry of the Human" and "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," ending with a delicate hint — for Poe, a very delicate hint — that the latter contains borrowings from Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," Poe manages a noncommittal defense of Miss Barrett by a schoolmaster analysis of what he knows best: Professor Wilson's blunders in his review of the collection of poems. Having picked out a line Wilson had selected "for special animadversion" he studies it exhaustively to show that ". . . from the entire range of poetical literature there shall not, in a century, be produced a more sonorous — a more vigorous verse — a juster — a nobler — a more ideal — a more magnificent — . . ." (pp. 18-19) and passes on to a surprisingly long, accurate and justified listing of all her shortcomings: the language is affected, though the quaintness of some phrases is duly commended and worked into a defense of Poe's own belief in the virtues of old-fashioned oddity; the imagery is occasionally farfetched "which is reprehensible in the extreme" (p. 21), sometimes verging on ". . . nonsense, and nothing more," sometimes "repulsive" (p. 22); knotty paradoxes, platitudes, synecdoches, inartistical and undecorous conceptions are duly listed; repetitions, mannerisms are "multitudinous" (p. 25), and we are given a complete list of the "pet-words," "down" and "to lean," though her grammar is unexceptionable and her style, in Poe's limited meaning, ". . . exceedingly chaste, vigorous and comprehensive . . ." (p. 27). In his strictures upon her inattention to rhythm he does not mean "the multiplicity of inadmissible rhymes," though he gives twenty-seven examples, so much as the metrical deficiencies that make the ". . . metre . . . intended . . . nearly impossible to determine . . . in some cases . . ." (p. 27). The double rhymes have no special value; breaks are forced after the fourth trochee, the division of the poem into quatrains serves no prosodic purpose. Poe obviously enjoys himself, indulges gleefully in metrical games, printing a quatrain in a new typographical disposition to bring out in relief the artificiality of the seven-foot line, then printing another one in prose to call attention to the deficiency of the foot pattern. He had never been more accurate, more thorough and more convincing.

But he now "make[s] an end of [his] fault-finding" and turns to the "beauties" of the book (p. 29). As he puts it: "Alas! here, indeed, we feel the impotence of the pen" (p. 29). His clear-cut sentences dwindle into blurred rhetoric: "We have already said that the supreme excellence of the poetess whose work we review, is made up of the multitudinous sums of lofty merits" (p. 29). He painfully succeeds in quoting four isolated specimens worthy of admiration:

"an example of keen insight into our psychal nature" — "an instance of the purest and most radiant imagination" — "a specimen of wild Dantesque vigor in combination with pathos never excelled" — "a passage embodying the most elevated sentiment most tersely and musically expressed" but confesses his powerlessness to account for the value of the book and "to the book, then, with implicit confidence [he] appeal[s]" (pp. 30-31). Psychological insight in poetry he had never before associated with the loftiest order of poetry; imagination, he is accustomed to qualify by more accurate adjectives than either "pure," by which he means unspoilt by didacticism, a reproach he has insistently levelled at Miss Barrett throughout the review, or "radiant," an "indefinite" word hovering in his mind at the time, better suited to the "indefinitiveness" of poetical suggestion than accurate critical analysis; "wild Dantesque vigor" is a reminiscence of Mathews' review of the poems of Miss Barrett in the Democratic Review [50] that Poe had evidently read, since he mentions it twice in his own review. Still, to the utter bewilderment of the attentive reader he goes on to say it "will scarcely be questioned . . . that Miss Barrett has done more in poetry, than any woman, living or dead" (p. 32). What she had done in poetry is less than evident in the very critical comments in the preceding pages. And Poe is aware that it is not evident in these pages as we can see in his protestation that ". . . that she has surpassed all her poetical contemporaries of either sex (with an exception) [Tennyson] is our deliberate opinion — not idly entertained, we think, nor founded on any visionary basis" (p. 32).

Thus, out of thirty-two pages, Poe is able to devote only two, largely made up of extracts, to the analysis of the truly poetic essence of the work under review and his praise has been shown to be clumsy, patently half-hearted and unnaturally high-flown, at times even bombastic. And when he undertakes, in the concluding paragraph, to trace Miss Barrett's affiliation to her English predecessors, the contrast between the deep insight into Shelley's and Tennyson's creative processes and the flat unsupported statements of Miss Barrett's genius leaves a durable impression of unconvincing exaggeration of the merits of the poetess, the more so as close examination of the final arguments reveals they contain a contradiction and are partly adapted from Horne's paragraph on Miss Barrett in the New Spirit of the Age.[51]

The sincere admiration Poe shows for some of E. B. Barrett's poetic qualities in the body of the article would hardly lead us to expect the unbridled enthusiasm of the last paragraph. He is manifestly puzzled by this "mystic" poetry, at a loss to express his complex feelings. He resorts to easy schoolmaster's criticism, betraying as he goes along, his utter powerlessness at accounting for the enthusiasm he professes to show. In spite of what is generally assumed, he had never so far taken interest in E. B. Barrett's poetry, though it was already widely circulated. He had mentioned her once only[52] as a contributer to R. H. Horne's Chaucer Modernized (Works, XI, 250). Besides why should he write a review, so long after the publication of the work[53] that he feels compelled to apologize for the delay (Works, XII, 3)? In January 1845, he badly wanted money and may have swelled the article to get an extra dollar a page (Quinn, p. 452). He may have wanted to please Graham, in whose magazine most of Miss Barrett's poetry had appeared and was still appearing and whose editor, Griswold, was begging for reviews of The Drama of Exile and Other Poems.[54] He may have tried, as he did with Horne, to gain Miss Barrett's gratitude with a view to her helping to introduce his tales in England. Both, however, the circumstances of the American publication of The Drama of Exile and Other Poems, and some obscure allusions in the review, suggest Poe's desire to please the Young Americans. It is not perhaps uninteresting to recall that the fame of Miss Barrett in the United States had been the result of the "wonderful"[55] exertions of Cornelius Mathews.

The prospectus of the Home Library issued on March 30, 1844,[56] mentioned among the works intended for publication in the poetical series, "A new Volume of poems by E. B. Barrett of England" (Good-speed, p. 113) that "of course" was "to be secured through the good offices of Mathews" (p. 116). Mathews' correspondence with Miss Barrett had already put them on a friendly footing. The first criticism of her works ever to appear in the United States appeared in Arcturus

for February 1841. It is by Evert A. Duyckinck. The highly laudatory review was the keynote of the campaign of laudation the Young American followers of Duyckinck were to conduct on Miss Barrett's behalf. They prided themselves on having "discovered" her and they were indeed gratified when the prestigious North American Review followed their lead and published a commendatory review of her poetry. But Mathews had already "staked his claim" to E. B. Barrett: in December 1841 the two editors of Arcturus had forwarded the volume containing Duyckinck's review with word that her verse would be "heartily received by the lovers of poetry in America."[57] In July 1842, the delighted Miss Barrett sent four sonnets and "The Cry of the Human." They arrived too late to save Arcturus which had collapsed in May 1842. Cornelius Mathews then took the matter in hand: he sold "The Cry of the Human" to Nathan Hale Junior, in whose Boston Miscellany for November 1842[58] it appeared not far from Poe's review of Griswold's "American Poetry" (pp. 218-221). The four sonnets were sent to Philadelphia where they appeared in Graham's Magazine for December 1842.[59] In the "Editor's Table" of the same issue (p. 343) Graham printed an enthusiastic notice after the following paragraph: "Miss Barrett — In this number will be found a series of sonnets by Elizabeth B. Barrett, among the first of her contributions to any American periodical. They were originally intended for 'Arcturus,' to which magazine they were sent: but arriving after the discontinuance of that periodical, its editors placed them at our disposal, 'thinking the good company into which they would be introduced in 'Graham' would be every way agreeable to the fair authoress.'"

Thus Poe, who still lived in Philadelphia and occasionally contributed to Graham's Magazine, was very likely to have read this notice, to have learned that Miss Barrett was the protegée of the Young Americans and to have gathered from the raving tone of the puff that the literary man who wanted to curry the favor of Young Americans would be well advised to treat Miss Barrett with cordiality.[60] Moved by Mathews' tokens of kindness, Miss Barrett promised a volume of her poems: "Whenever I print another volume you shall have it, if

Messrs. Wiley and Putnam will convey it to you,"[61] and wished every kind of success to ". . . the Society of Help in New York of which you are secretary."[62] Then, in March and July, she sent her most heartful thanks for the troubles he had taken on her behalf in making arrangements with H. G. Langley for an American Edition of her Poems, 1844.[63] She was to get "ten per cent of the net proceeds of the sales"[64] and the edition would come out simultaneously with the English publication to avoid piracy.[65] She is fully aware of the extraordinary favor bestowed upon her by an American publisher[66] who could have got her poems or any novel by Dickens or Walter Scott for nothing within days after the publication of the English edition.[67] She is explicit in acknowledging her debt to Mathews and Mathews only.[68] H. G. Langley was, of course, the publisher of the Democratic Review.

Miss Barrett's instant popularity constituted a demonstration of the critical acuity of the Young Americans who had discovered her. She had been hailed in England, accepted by the North American Review, but now her name was inextricably linked to Young America: prepublication of the "Drama of Exile" appeared in the Democratic Review for July and August 1844 together with two sonnets in August and September[69] and two highly laudatory articles in July and October 1844.[70]

Again and again, in her letters, she dwells on that "wonderful" kindness and urges Mathews not to sacrifice his "critical faculty" to his "interest in [her] (proved in so many ways)."[71] By the end of the year the Poems, 1844 had received almost unanimous praise in England and America. By that time, since Miss Barrett acknowledged her association with Young America in the preface to the American edition of her book where she speaks kindly of her American editor, Mathews, Young Americans were able to use her fame as the most incontestable proof of their critical acumen. They cleverly organised her publicity,[72] for her fame bore such indisputable testimony of the superiority of their critical insight over any other critical school — the Knickerbocker's in particular. To Poe, the newcomer, this was a convenient occasion to show his sympathy at a particularly opportune period when the plan for the "Library of American Books" was under way. Prudence was required, however, for the gossiping busybody of the world of literati, Poe's old enemy, Lewis Gaylord Clark, lay in wait, hoping to catch Poe contradicting himself. Briggs, however, was at this time not

utterly opposed to Young America and was willing to go so far as to accept a very favorable article on that staunch Young American, William A. Jones, by Dyckinck.[73] Hence he would not refuse an apparently very objective one about Young America's protegée, the more so as the article, whether he noticed it or not, was peppered with cryptic allusions.

First, Poe did not fail to remark that the edition was an "American edition," emphasizing the phrase by quotation marks though he had already noticed that the American edition of Miss Barrett's works is "published under the superintendence of an American author" (Works, XII, 2), a sentence that had been made conspicuous by Duyckinck's note in his article in the American Review (I [January 1845], 38); the allusion in Poe's review is an obvious commendation of the achievements of the gentlemen of the Copyright Club and of their secretary, Cornelius Mathews, the self-same "American author." In examining American opinions of Miss Barrett, Poe mentions that the only critique evincing any degree of objectivity — this can hardly be a coincidence — is that of the Democratic Review, Mathews', of course. On the contrary, the most flattering article to appear, one which is so dithyrambic that it is "an insult well intended" (Works, XII, 2), had been published in the Journal of the foes: the newly born American Review. This, however, may have been a blunder which, I believe, suggests that Poe was not yet an acknowledged member of the group let into all the secrets, that he was a newcomer not yet quite cognizant of the subtle intricacies in the pattern of alliances on New York stage: as we have seen, the unsigned article he disparaged was by Duyckinck. Who on earth, familiar with Duyckinck's "true blue" Democratic trends, would expect the leader of Young America to be given access to the first number of a magazine that contained in its announcement to the public a violent diatribe against the Democratic Party, that "other great political division . . . essentially anarchical in its principles and tendencies."[74] The announcement flatly stated the aim of the new review was to ". . . support freely and openly the principles and measures of the Whig Party . . ." (p. 3) and exploded Duyckinck's pet idea, a truly new national literature, in these words: "we are a people eager for novelty: we care more for the newness of a thing than for its authority. This is a trait which . . . has an unfavorable influence upon us in many respects . . . It especially affects, what must

have all these [morals — philosophy — speculative belief — regular formation of national customs — characters] for a partial foundation — the growth of our national literature. For, if tastes may change and customs be laid aside with the hour, and opinions be held no longer than they are able to excite, and faith be considered a matter of choice, it is obvious that our literature must be forever unsubstantial and fugitive" (p. 4).

The paragraph amounted to a manifesto meant to counterbalance the pernicious influence of all Young America's jabbering about the rejection of models as the first step toward attaining a national literature. There were some facts that Poe, still rather green for the "literary butcher-shop" was unaware of: Colton's personal friendship with Duyckinck, their tacit agreement that an anonymous article of a different trend in a professedly partisan journal could not fail to brighten up the reputation for fairness of the magazine and attract uncommitted readers. More precisely still, Poe was too much of an outsider both to New York and to the Young Americans to realize how fast political commitments may shift and that a temporary truce has just been made between such broadminded Whigs as Colton (who naïvely hoped to keep politics apart from literature) and such undoctrinaire Democrats as Duyckinck because they both disapproved of the annexation of Texas and of the war with Mexico, and both supported the notion of protection by an international copyright. "Hence," in Perry Miller's words, "in New York many Whigs found that they could be friendly with 'loco-foco' Democrats like Duyckinck. . .."[75]

This typical New York rapprochement, Poe, the provincial American in New York, grasped after some delay. There were however in Poe's review enough tokens of good will to atone for the blunders: the typographical errors were charged to the English edition, Poe assimilated himself to the "friends" of Miss Barrett; the exposition of the pernicious influence of the imitation of the ancient drama was a faithful echo of Mathews' campaign for a truly American Drama rejecting models of any kind. The assertion that the modern public at large was able to think and judge, an idea quite unlike Poe's conception of a pyramid-shaped society in which adequate judgement is transmitted down the scales to the "rabble" (one of his favorite words that had strangely disappeared from his vocabulary at the time) must ring pleasantly in Duyckinck's ears. Winding up the whole with another allusion to the critic in the Democratic Review (Works, XII, 16), regular insertions of flat statements of Miss Barrett's supreme, though

unanalysed, genius, Poe had managed to say his word about that poetry without obscuring his real meaning. For, as early as February 1, praise poured on Poe from Young American quarters.

Of course, Poe's article was unsigned. How did then Poe manage to let Young Americans know of his authorship? First, we must note that in style it was unmistakably his and that Lowell identified the author at first glance.[76] Then one must recall that January and February 1845 were precisely the two months when Duyckinck and Briggs were on most friendly terms.[77] Moreover, on January 11, again, the very date of the second instalment of Poe's review of Miss Barrett, the New York Weekly News published an estimate of the Broadway Journal indicating Poe as the author of the review: ". . . Miss Barrett (rather painfully to us) is put to the question by Mr. Poe with his usual critical acumen and force of style."[78] The editor of the New York Weekly News was O'Sullivan, Duyckinck's old friend and ally, and Duyckinck held an unofficial position on the board of editors of the New York Weekly News. Finally, on February 1, 1845 came Duyckinck's recognition of Poe in terms of the warmest commendation:

It seems therefore that this puzzling review has puzzled everyone but the man for whom it was intended: E. A. Duyckinck. Such recognition, presented so objectively and so thoroughly, of Young America's Egeria by the harshest critic in the United States was really ingratiating.

The other person involved, Miss Barrett herself, was astonished and provided the best commentaries. Her official answer, sent to Poe through Horne, is generally quoted: it is interesting to notice that the ordinarily glib and easy letter writer is unsettled to the point of writing twice to Horne on the same day: "You will certainly think me mad, dear Mr. Horne, for treading upon my own heels [illegible] in another letter. But I am uncomfortable about my message to Mr. Poe, lest it should not be grateful enough in the sound of it."[80] Her first reaction had been to consider the review unfavorable — which it was — her sure instinct having told her that the strictures ring far truer than the praises. But her commentaries to her personal friends, in her more natural mischievous manner are more revealing. To Horne a few hours before the letter quoted above she had written: "Your friend, Mr. Poe, is a speaker of strong words 'in both kinds' . . . But Mr. Poe seems to me in a great mist on the subject of meter."[81] To Robert Browning she wrote on December 1, 1845: "He [Poe] wrote a review of me — the two extremes of laudation and reprehension, folded in on one another. You would have thought that it had been written by a friend and foe, each stark mad with love and hate, and writing the alternate paragraphs — a most curious production indeed." Of course she felt something odd in this rabid admiration so clumsily supported by such harsh strictures. But when she heard of the dedication of The Raven and Other Poems, she was utterly bewildered. Because Poe's attitude was more ambiguous than ever: "And think of Mr. Poe, with that great Roman justice of his (if not rather American!) dedicating a book to one and abusing one in the preface of the same."[82]

It seems as if he had, for some reason or other, to give public testimony of his esteem for her but tried at the same time to convey his real meaning. The surprise is that when we turn to the preface of The Raven and Other Poems, we find no derogatory opinion of Miss Barrett, not a word about her or anybody else. She too was surprised when she received the book — so much so that she considered the

very improbable possibility that the copy under her eyes had been specially printed for her own use: "I have just received Mr. Edgar Poe's book — and I see that the deteriorating preface which was to have saved me from the vanity-fever produceable by the dedication is cut down and away — perhaps in this particular copy only."[83] What had happened? Of course, it was Mathews himself who had sent her the news. On December 3, 1845 she wrote to him: "You amuse me when you say that Mr. Poe has dedicated a book to me and abused me in the preface of it."[84]

There are only two possibilities: either Mathews had lied, or he or someone else had prevailed upon Poe to cut out the unfavorable remarks on Miss Barrett. In this literary milieu where the value of puffery was unquestioned, it was obviously in Mathews' interest to try and erase those unfavorable sentences, since he was planning to reprint Miss Barrett's Prose Miscellanies [85] and looked to Poe for help in promoting them. Thus if Mathews' hint is no downright lie (and what possible reason for lying could be he have had?), there may exist an unknown draft of Poe's preface to his The Raven and Other Poems and the very publication of the book may be the result of an arrangement with the Young Americans. May we venture to surmise that Duyckinck, though willing to publish Poe's poems,[86] imposed or suggested the dedication as a condition; that Poe half-heartedly accepted but attempted to make his opinion clear in the preface; and that he was finally prevailed upon by Mathews to cross out any allusions to Miss Barrett with the idea they might harm the sale of his forthcoming reprint of the Prose Miscellanies? Two facts support this surmise: as everyone knows Poe argues in a note prefixed to the "Poems Written in Youth" included in the same edition that "Private reasons — some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems — have induced me to re-publish

these, the crude composition of my earliest childhood" (Works, VII, xlix). The note is an attempt to exculpate himself from the accusation of plagiarism from Tennyson.[87] But there had also been rumors of his borrowing some details for "The Raven" from Miss Barrett's "Lady Geraldine's Courtship."[88] How like Poe it would have been to exonerate himself of the charge of having plagiarized her poem by taking her to task in the preface of the first printing of "The Raven" in a collection of his poems. This was probably the theme of those unfavorable remarks hinted at by Mathews.

Moreover, close examination of Poe's later criticism reveals that, once his poems were published, with their most humble and enthusiastic dedication, Poe lost all interest in Miss Barrett.[89] Her name often appeared in Poe's later criticism but not once does he qualify or reconsider his previous opinions. He plunders his own article and either reprints verbatim or "edits" his excerpts from his own review to fit them into a new reasoning but never further than replacing the editorial "we" by "I," changing a few conjunctions or omitting a word or phrase.[90] Again his glowing respect for her does not prevent him from "editing" her letter of thanks in a much more significant manner and of using it as a puff. She wrote: "After which [the foregoing] imperfect acknowledgement of my personal obligation may I thank you as another reader would thank you for this vivid writing, this power which is felt! Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a 'fit horror,' here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the nevermore . . . I think you will like to be told that our great poet, Mr. Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus' and the 'Bells and Pomegranates' was much

struck by the rhythm of that poem."[91] To Joseph M. Field, editor of the Saint Louis Reveille he sent, with request to insert "editorially" under the title: "The British literary journals are admitting Mr. Poe's merits, in the most unequivocal manner" the following adaptation: "The world's greatest poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, says of Mr. Poe: — 'This vivid writing; — this power which is felt! 'The Raven' has produced a sensation — a 'fit horror' — here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the yias [sic] of it and some by the music — but all are taken. I hear of persons absolutely haunted by the 'Nevermore' . . . Our great poet, Mr. Browning, the author of 'Paracelsus,' 'The Pomegranates' etc. is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm" (Letters, II, 319-20). He sent the same "edited" text to P. P. Cooke, with a request to print it in Cooke's notice on Poe as an extract from a British magazine.[92]

The first reaction of the Democratic papers to the Barrett review was dubious; as we have seen, O'Sullivan in the New York Weekly News deemed it "rather painful" for his taste and the New York Morning News for January 14, 1845 carried a lukewarm estimate of Poe's review. Poe believed the notice to have been by Duyckinck and was scared. He hurried to print a corrective note for the enlightenment of Duyckinck which brings additional proof that the latter's opinion was what Poe really cared for: "We observe, in a notice of the Broadway Journal, a new aspirant for public favor, that Mr. D. speaks of a review of Miss Barrett's Poems as if it were condemnatory. We should be sorry indeed, if any general disparagement were intended of the most extraordinary woman of her age — perhaps of any age. Our impression, however, is that the critic of the Broadway Journal meant only, by a few unimportant objections, to place her pre-eminent merits in the best light. But perhaps this is Mr. D's impression also, and we have misconceived him."[93] Evert A. Duyckinck loathed puffery as much as Poe himself (though he made an exception for his bosom-friend, Mathews) and admired above all the dignity of the dauntless critic who was not afraid of speaking out the truth however harmful to himself. To him, the review, apparently by a great admirer of Miss Barrett lucid enough to point out her weaknesses, must have appeared as the archetype of critical honesty. He may have said so to his obedient troops

and allies for after his own glowing recognition of Poe's genius in the Weekly News for February 1, 1845, the chorus of Young Americans sang the praises of Poe and the Broadway Journal.[94] Moreover three journals whose editors were friends of Duyckinck's, opened their columns to Poe's poems and tales; the American Review published "The Raven" in its February number,[95] "Some Words with a Mummy" and "The Valley of Unrest" in April, "Eulalie" in July, "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar" in December; O'Sullivan (New York Morning News) reprinted "The Raven" on February 3, 1845, "The Purloined Letter" on January 21 and 24, and "The Oval Portrait" on May 1.[96] He also reprinted "The Raven" and the two tales in the Weekly News on February 8, January 25 and May 30, 1845.[97]

By March 15, 1845, W. G. Simms, having come to understand that Poe had been adopted, hastened to congratulate Duyckinck.[98] In February

Poe had smashed to pieces Rochietti's "Why a national literature cannot flourish in the United States."[99] At last, on March 8, when Nathaniel P. Willis's authority was no longer a hindrance and Poe's new position as associate editor of the Broadway Journal allowed him to state clearly his allegiance, he made haste to publish a sort of manifesto in a letter "To the editor of the Broadway Journal." Down with the blind critics who ruin American letters by their incompetence or dishonesty — this is the tenor of the paragraph — down with the indiscriminate pretended friends of National literature and hail to "the Willises — the O'Sullivans — the Duyckincks — to the choice and magnamimous few . . ."[100] that have supported him and whose aim is so similar to his. The paragraph being a letter to the editor is exceptionally signed E. A. P. Is the presence of the most ardent locofocos in this short list of the savers of American literature fortuitous? In all likelihood, February 1845 saw the sealing of Poe's alliance with Young America. In June 1845, the Tales, edited by Duyckinck, appeared. On June 26, the Broadway Journal was about to collapse: Poe offered it for sale to Duyckinck or Mathews (Letters, I, 290). "Or, if this cannot be effected, might I venture to ask for an advance of $50 on the faith of the 'American Parnassus'?" Duyckinck lent fifty dollars and saved the Broadway Journal.[101] On July 19, Poe published his "profession of faith" in the Broadway Journal and from now onwards systematically puffed anything by Duyckinck, J. T. Headley, Mathews and Simms, as well as all the numbers of the "Library of Choice Reading" and the "Library of American Books."[102]

In the New York and Boston magazines for 1845 and 1846, there is ample proof that Poe was universally considered as a staunch Young American: Lewis Gaylord Clark often referred to him as a member of the "Mutual Admiration Society";[103] in a review of "Simms's Stories and Reviews" printed in the North American Review for October 1846, C. C. Felton disposed of Poe in one sentence along with Cornelius Mathews, J. T. Headley and other Young Americans: "The Tales by Edgar A. Poe and the lucubrations of Mr. J. T. Headly, the former belonging to the forcible-feeble and the shallow-profound school . . ., are poor enough materials for an American Library."[104] Another proof of Poe's association with Young America is provided by Charles F. Briggs in his hilarious description of the literary party he included in his satire on New York life: The Trippings of Tom Pepper (1847-50). It is interesting to note that Austin Wicks (Edgar A. Poe) arrives at the party in the company of Mr. Ferocious (Cornelius Mathews) and Mr. Tribbings (Evert A. Duyckinck): they are the best friends in the world. Poe is then presented as the mouthpiece of Young America and the hero of Mr. Tribbings until he drinks one glass of wine and quarrels with Ferocious whom he calls an ass (I, 162). Since the instalment including the literary party appeared in the New York Mirror on February 27, 1847, it is reasonable to conclude that the final break between Poe and the Young Americans took place towards the fall of 1846. This dating is confirmed by Poe's strictures on Young Americans in his unpublished manuscript on 'The living writers of America' which can be safely dated to the second half of 1846. In fact from the end of 1846 onward, Poe was to deny all those favorable opinions of Young Americans and to deal frankly and devastatingly

with Mathews, Headley and Simms.[105] Moreover, in his manuscript notes for his great critical work on 'The living writers of America,' he adopted Lewis Gaylord Clark's derogatory phrase whenever he referred to Young America: "want of centralisation gives birth to a peculiar cliquism whose separate penchants render it nearly impossible to get at the truth . . . The M[utual] AD[miration] Society Mathews, Duyckinck, Jones, Cheever etc once — now reduced to Mathews and Duyckinck."[106] More significantly, he completely rejected the idea of nationality in letters and clearly named Duyckinck and Mathews as its proponents: "What is a true nationality — the cant of the M[utual] A[miratio]n Society ab[ou]t it — there should be no nationality . . . Nationality means according to Mathews, toadying Americans and abusing foreigners right or wrong. . . ." After Griswold had made Poe's opinion of Duyckinck's selection of the Tales appear to have been hostile to the point of insult, Duyckinck struck back with his well known charge that Poe was "a literary attorney, who pleaded according to his fee" (Quinn, p. 677); there was perhaps more truth in his opinion than is generally assumed.

Thus most of the glaring contradictions or erratic judgements in Poe's critical work belong to the period when he strove to please Duyckinck, the final outcome being that those contradictory statements are not so much the proof of a muddled mind as a reflection of the hardships of an artist's life in the 1840's when literature and criticism were still for so many Americans, the domain of "gentlemen of elegant leisure." The explanation of such contradictions or erratic reviews will finally illuminate the great consistency of Poe's critical output, which is not necessarily a point in his favor; such explanations may help to show that the precepts laid down by the very young poet in 1831 in the "Letter to Mr. ____ ____" continued to dominate the critical thought of the mature writer. That writer applied those precepts with more unswerving and unqualified rigor than is generally thought.

The complexity of motives, aesthetic, economic and personal which lay behind Poe's critical pronouncements throughout his career are nowhere better exemplified than in the record of his years in New York. His years in Baltimore, Richmond and Philadelphia, however,

remain to be examined in detail before critics can reach reliable conclusions about which of his reviews deserve to be taken seriously as revealing his genuine convictions on literary questions and which are to be dismissed as insincere or frivolous. Only after such a study has been made shall we be able to assess the worth of Poe's accomplishment as critic with accuracy.

Notes