The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1012]
Although ill-temper has evidently engendered this “Fable,” it is by no means a satire throughout. Much of it is devoted to panegyric — but our readers would be quite puzzled to know the grounds of the author’s laudations, in many cases, unless made acquainted with a fact which we think it as well they should be informed of at once. Mr. Lowell is one of the most rabid of the Abolition fanatics; and no Southerner who does not wish to be insulted, and at the same time revolted by a bigotry the most obstinately blind and deaf, should ever touch a volume by this author. His fanaticism about slavery is a mere local outbreak of the same innate wrong-headedness which, if he owned slaves, would manifest itself in atrocious ill-treatment of them, with murder of any abolitionist who should endeavor to set them free. A fanatic of Mr. L’s species, is simply a fanatic for the sake of fanaticism, and must be a fanatic in whatever circumstances you place him.
His prejudices on the topic of slavery break out everywhere in his present book. Mr. L. has not the common honesty to speak well, even in a literary sense, of any man who is not a ranting abolitionist. With the exception of Mr. Poe, (who has written some commendatory criticisms on his poems,) no Southerner is mentioned at all in this “Fable.” It is a fashion among Mr. Lowell’s set to affect a belief that there is no such thing as Southern Literature. Northerners — people who have really nothing to speak of as men of letters, — are cited by the dozen, and lauded by this candid critic without stint, while Legaré, Simms, Longstreet, and others of equal note are passed by in contemptuous silence. Mr. L. cannot carry his frail honesty of opinion even so far South as New York. All whom he praises are Bostonians. Other writers are barbarians, and satirized accordingly — if mentioned at all.
To show the general manner of the Fable, we quote a portion of what he says about Mr. Poe:
Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge —
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge;
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make all men of common sense d—n metres
Who has written some things far the best of their kind;
But somehow the heart seems squeezed out by the mind.
We may observe here that profound ignorance on any particular topic is always sure to manifest itself by some allusion to “common sense” as an all-sufficient instructor. So far from Mr. P’s talking “like a book” on the topic at issue, his chief purpose has been to demonstrate that there exists no book on the subject worth talking about; and “common sense,” after all, has been the basis on which he relied, in contradistinction from the un common nonsense of Mr. L. and the small pedants.
And now let us see how far the unusual “common sense” of our satirist has availed him in the structure of his verse. First, by way of showing what his intention was, we quote three accidentally accurate lines:
But a boy | he could ne | ver be right | ly defined.
As I said | he was ne | ver precise | ly unkind.
But as Ci | cero says | he won’t say | this or that.
Here it is clearly seen that Mr. L. intends a line of four anapæsts. (An anapæst is a foot composed of two short syllables followed by a long.) With this observation, we will now simply copy a few of the lines which constitute the body of the poem; asking any of our readers to read them if they can; that is to say, we place the question, without argument, on the broad basis of the very commonest “common sense.”
They’re all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal. . . . .
Disperse all one’s good and condense all one’s poor traits. . . . .
The one’s two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek. . . . .
He has imitators in scores who omit. . . . .
Should suck milk, strong will-giving brave, such as runs. . . . .
Along the far rail-road the steam-snake glide white. . . . .
From the same runic