The Press.
London, England, 1857-11-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 28, 1857 b

Foster is rather too fond of a long seashore,
with the surf failing in one lengthy wave. He
seems to have studied the sea in one geogra-
phical locality, where, as at Deal, the ocean
breaks in what sailors call " rollers." We
cannot, however, forget that of all mental
pursuits there is none which begets man-
neristn so much as producing designs for
books. "The Garden," by this clever artist,
is extremely picturesque and airy, and realises
the imagination of the poet. It is drawn for
the " Scenes from Politian." The " View of
Rome," by Percival Skelton, to illustrate the
same fragmentary drama, is extremely hold
and effective, the sense of space and distance
being well brought out. On the other hand,
we cannot praise for invention Pickersgill's
scene between Castiglione and Alessandra ;
the form and features of the latter are like
those usually assigned by Leech to her
Majesty. But altogether the volume as a book
of art desErves great praise. The binding and
typography are all got up in a most handsome
style.
Whether Poe's poems are those which one
ought to give as a present is a point on which
tastes will differ. With many persons, the un-
deniable beauty of his poetry is scarcely a
compensation for its morbid feeling. It is
hardly possible, also, to avoid recollecting his
most unfortunate life and his melancholy end.
The music of his verses and the force of his
ideality, are beyond question, but ho had no
calm sense of pure nature. He has been said
to be amongst poets what Salvator Rosa was
amongst painters; but Salvator did represent
Nature as she is seen in some of her most
sublimely beautiful forms in the Apennines.
As mere landscape pieces, his woods an d
mountains are of ;.he true Italian kind. We
cannot find a correspondent local fidelity in
Poe ; he might have written in Germany, or
France, or anywhere else, as well as in America.
In the memoir prefixed to this volume, Poe's
genius is thus delineated :
Of all the poets whose lives have been a puzzle and a
mystery to the wort 1, there is no one more difficult to be
understood than Edgar Allan Poe. ft is impossible to
carry in the mind a double idea of a man, and to believe
him to be both a saint and a fiend ; yet such is the em-
barrassment felt by those who have first read the poems of
this strange being, and then read any of the biographies
of him which pretend to anything like an accurate account
of his life. Like his own Raven, he is, to his readers,
" bird or fiend," they know not which. But a close study
of his works will reveal the fact, which may serve in some
degree to remove this embarrassment, that there is no-
where discoverable in them a consciousness of moral
responsibility. They are full of the subtleties of passion,
of grief, despair, and longing, but they contain nothing
that indicates a sense of moral rectitude. They are the
productions of one whose religion was a worship of the
Beautiful, and who knew no beauty but that which was
purely aensuons. There were but two kinds of beauty for
him, and they were Form and Colour. He revelled in an
ideal world of perfect shows, and was made wretched by
any imperfections of art. The Lenore whose loss he de-
plored was a being fair to the eye, a beautiful creature,
like Undine, without a soul. With this key to the cha-
racter of the poet, there is no difficulty in fully compre-
hending the strange inconsistencies, the basenesses and
nobleness which his wayward life exhibited.
This want of " moral rectitude," and admira-
tion of mere " sensuous beauty," spoken of in
the foregoing extract, must largely interfere
with the permanent popularity of Poe as
a poet.
2. This volume consists of selections of re-
ligious pieces from the poets of England. It
is designed as a Christmas book—all the
pieces being arranged under seven heads—
" The Eternal Purpose," " Annunciation,"
" Nativity," &e. &e. The selection is judi-
ciously made, and includes some of the finest
religious pieces in the language, but in reading
them we are forced to recollect Johnson's
famous argument on the, comparative weakness
of " religious poetry." The various writers
seem like so many rhetoricians trying to echo
in verse the inspiration of the Bible. Books
of this kind are suited for presents at festivals
held in honour by Christians, and this volume
is one of the best of the kind that we have
seen. It is handsomely illustrated by de-
signers of merit, and it will no doubt meet
with appreciation.
3. This is a beautiful edition of Longfellow's
well known tale of " Kavanagh." It is illus-
trated by Birket Foster, and is well suited for
a gift of affection, as the letterpress is inte-
resting in matter, and a serene sense of the
beautiful is finely produced by the illustra-