The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1156]
Ast amæns charæ thalamum puellæ
Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit
Aspera amplexu teneræ cupito a —
— vulsus amicæ.
CXIV.
Miss Gould has much in common with Mary Howitt; — the characteristic trait of each being a sportive, quaint, epigrammatic grace, that keeps clear of the absurd by never employing itself upon very exalted topics. The verbal style of the two ladies is identical. Miss Gould has the more talent of the two, but is somewhat the less original. She has occasional flashes of a far higher order of merit than appertains to her ordinary manner. Her “Dying Storm” might have been written by Campbell.
CXV.
Cornelius Webbe is one of the best of that numerous school of extravaganzists who sprang from the ruins of Lamb. We must be in perfectly good humor, however, with ourselves and all the world, to be much pleased with such works as “The Man about Town,” in which the harum-scarum, hyperexcursive mannerism is carried to an excess which is frequently fatiguing.
CXVI.
Nearly, if not quite the best “Essay on a Future State.” The arguments called “Deductions from our Reason,” are, rightly enough, addressed more to the feelings (a vulgar term not to be done without,) than to our reason. The arguments deduced from Revelation are (also rightly enough) brief. The pamphlet proves nothing, of course; its theorem is not to be proved.
CXVII.
The style is so involute,† that one cannot help fancying it must be falsely constructed. If the use of language is to convey ideas, then it is nearly as much a demerit that our words seem to be, as that they are, indefensible. A man’s grammar, like Cæsar’s wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
CXVIII.
It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing. Not even is it content with doing it. It must both know and show how it was done.
CXIX.
Not so: — a gentleman, with a pug nose is a contradiction in terms. — “Who can live idly and without manual labor, and will bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he alone should be called master and be taken for a gentleman.” — Sir Thomas Smith’s “Commonwealth of England.”
CXX.
Here is something at which I find it impossible not to laugh; and yet, I laugh without knowing why. That incongruity is the principle of all nonconvulsive laughter, is to my mind as clearly demonstrated as any problem in the “Principia Mathematica;” but here I cannot trace the incongruous. It is there, I know. Still I do not see it. In the meantime let me laugh.
CXXI.
So violent was the state of parties in England, that I was assured by several that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward and Pope a fool. — Voltaire.
Both propositions have since been very seriously entertained, quite independently of all party-feeling. That Pope was a fool, indeed seems to be an established point at present with the Crazy-ites — what else shall I call them?
CXXII.
Imitators are not, necessarily, unoriginal — except at the exact points of the imitation. Mr. Longfellow, decidedly the most audacious imitator in America, is markedly original, or, in other words, imaginative, upon the whole; and many persons have, from the latter branch of the fact, been at a loss to comprehend, and therefore, to believe, the former. Keen sensibility of appreciation — that is to say, the poetic sentiment (in distinction from the poetic power) leads almost inevitably to imitation. Thus all great poets have been gross imitators. It is, however, a mere non distributio medii hence to infer, that all great imitators are poets.
CXXIII.
With all his faults, however, this author is a man of respectable powers.
Thus discourses, of William Godwin, the “London Monthly Magazine,” May, 1818.
CXXIV.
As a descriptive poet, Mr. Street is to be highly commended. He not only describes with force and fidelity — giving us a clear conception of the thing described — but never describes what to the poet, should be nondescript. He appears, however, not at