Year: 1877




A Characteristic of Poe.


The New Quarterly Masazine.l


If / were suddenly asked to name
Poe's dominant intellectual charac-
teristic, | should unhesitatingly an
swer a passion for perfection; and if
l were then asked to name the mere
ly literary qualities by which this is
indicated, | should say his accuracy
and his thoroughness. / know how
strange and even absurd this must
sound to those who think of Poe
as a specimen of the most impul-
sive and irregular type of genius,
but cannet help its strangeness,
and hope to prove its truth and to
show the special kind of perfection
which 1T was his constant endeavor
to attain. Perhaps to those whose
acquaintance with his works
is not limited to "The Raven" and
half a dozen of his short tales it
may hardly seem SO very strange,
after all. 1t may indeed be said
that when this quality of Poe's in
tellectual temperament has once
been seized by the critical percep-
ton, it seems so obvious that the
wonder is how it could ever have
been missed. 1t is like some new
truth, which the moment after its
discovery appears so familiar that
we feel as if we had known it all
our lile-which harmonizes SO en-
tirely with our other mental acqui-
sitions that it is difficult to believe
it had not some Obscure place
among our original mental fnrni-
ture. Poe's passion for perfection
manifests itself more or less visibly
in everything which he wrote; its
workings are clearly enough to be
seen in the compositions just men
toned, and its existence might be
inferred if not proved from them
alone.


Most of his short tales belong
to the class Of artistic productions
which painters call by the name of
spot boilers" that is, they were
produced to supply immediate pc
cuniary necessities, which were too
pressing to wait for completion of
more elaborate work. And yet
they have nothing about them of
the hasty, careless, slapdash, pot
boiler character. They are planned
as carefully and finished as mi
nutely as if their author had been a
rich literary amateur with nothing
to do but take care of his reputa-
ton. In the merest externals the
same spirit was manifested. He
did not, like Button, array himself
in full dress when he sat down to
write, but the outside garments of
| his thoughts, the characters in
which they were traced upon the
paper, we're distinguished by such
singular beauty that a manuscript
of Poe is a veritable artistic treat.
His handwriting is, indeed, so
characteristic that it is a real help
to us in forming an opinion Of the
man. The compliment paid to its
mere legibility in one of Griswold's
fictitious anecdotes is a fine speci-
men Of the art of damning with
faint praise. Every letter is per-
fectly formed, every word reveals its
significance at a glance, every point
is placed as carefully as if Poe had
been a Hebrew scribe copying the
sacred law; everywhere there is an
exquisite symmetry, and yet nc
J handwriting was ever less mechani-
cal and formal, or more full of in
dividuality and significance. Thack-
eray's calligraphy somewhat resem-
bles it, but in the manuscript ol
the English novelist the mere
prettineSs of the penmanship is in
excess Of the expressiveness, while
in that of Poe we seem to get q
glimpse Of the real man.