The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [943]
We now learn the name of the tenant of the cottage, which is Wilton, and ascertain that he has an only daughter. A single stanza quoted at this juncture will aid the reader’s conception of the queer tone of philosophical rhapsody with which the poem teems, and some specimen of which is invariably made to follow each little modicum of incident.
How like the heart is to an instrument
A touch can wake to gladness or to wo!
How like the circumambient element
The spirit with its undulating flow!
The heart — the soul — Oh, Mother Nature, why
This universal bond of sympathy.
After two pages much in this manner, we are told that Geraldine is the name of the maiden, and are informed, with comparatively little circumlocution, of her character. She is beautiful, and kind-hearted, and somewhat romantic, and “some thought her reason touched” — for which we have little disposition to blame them. There is now much about Kant and Fichte; about Schelling, Hegel and Cousin; (which latter is made to rhyme with gang;) about Milton, Byron, Homer, Spinoza, David Hume, and Mirabeau; and a good deal, too, about the scribendi cacoëthes, in which an evident misunderstanding of the quantity of cacoëthes brings, again, into very disagreeable suspicion the writer’s cognizance of the Latin tongue. At this point we may refer, also, to such absurdities as
Truth with her thousand-folded robe of error
Close shut in her sarcophagi of terror —
And
Where candelabri silver the white halls.
Now, no one is presupposed to be cognizant of any language beyond his own; to be ignorant of Latin is no crime; to pretend a knowledge is beneath contempt; and the pretender will attempt in vain to utter or to write two consecutive phrases of a foreign idiom, without betraying his deficiency to those who are conversant.
At page 39, there is some prospect of a progress in the story. Here we are introduced to a Mr. Acus and his fair daughter, Miss Alice.
Acus had been a dashing Bond-street tailor
Some few short years before, who took his measures
So carefully he always cut the jailor
And filled his coffers with exhaustless treasures;
Then with his wife, a son, and three fair daughters,
He sunk the goose and straightway crossed the waters.
His residence is in the immediate vicinity of Wilton. The daughter, Miss Alice, who is said to be quite a belle, is enamored of one Waldron, a foreigner, a lion, and a gentleman of questionable reputation. His character (which for our life and soul we cannot comprehend) is given within the space of some forty or fifty stanzas, made to include, at the same time, an essay on motives, deduced from the text “whatever is must be,” and illuminated by a long note at the end of the poem, wherein the systime (quere systéme?) de la Nature is sturdily attacked. Let us speak the truth: this note (and the whole of them, for there are many,) may be regarded as a glorious specimen of the concentrated essence of rigmarole, and, to say nothing of their utter absurdity per se, are so ludicrously uncalled for, and grotesquely out of place, that we found it impossible to refrain, during their perusal, from a most unbecoming and uproarious guffaw. We will be pardoned for giving a specimen — selecting it for its brevity.
Reason, he deemed, could measure everything,
And reason told him that there was a law
Of mental action which must ever fling
A death-bolt at all faith, and this he saw
Was Transference. (14)
Turning to Note 14, we read thus —
“If any one has a curiosity to look into this subject, (does Mr. Dawes really think any one so great a fool?) and wishes to see how far the force of reasoning and analysis may carry him, independently of revelation, I would suggest (thank you, sir,) such