The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [957]
At page 12, we read:
Think heedless one, or who with wanton step
Tramples the flowers.
At page 75, within the compass of eleven lines, we have three of the grossest blunders:
Oh Thou for whom as in thyself Thou art,
And by thyself perceived, we know no name,
Nor dare not seek to express — but unto us,
Adonai! who before the heavens were built
Or Earth’s foundation laid, within thyself,
Thine own most glorious habitation dwelt,
But when within the abyss,
With sudden light illuminated,
Thou, thine image to behold,
Into its quicksand depths
Looked down with brooding eye!
At page 79, we read:
But ah! my heart, unduteous to my will,
Breathes only sadness; like an instrument
From whose quick strings, when hands devoid of skill
Solicit joy, they murmur and lament.
At page 86, is something even grosser than this:
And still and rapt as pictured Saint might be
Like saint-like seemed as her she did adore.
At page 129, there is a similar error:
With half-closed eyes and ruffled feathers known
As them that fly not with the changing year.
At page 128 we find —
And thou didst dwell therein so truly loved,
As none have been nor shall be loved again,
And yet perceived not, &c.
At page 155, we have —
But yet it may not cannot be
That thou at length hath sunk to rest.
Invariably Mr. Lord writes didst did’st; couldst could’st, &c. The fact is he is absurdly ignorant of the commonest principles of grammar — and the only excuse we can make to our readers for annoying them with specifications in this respect is that, without the specifications, we should never have been believed.
But enough of this folly. We are heartily tired of the book, and thoroughly disgusted with the impudence of the parties who have been aiding and abetting in thrusting it before the public. To the poet himself we have only to say — from any farther specimens of your stupidity, good Lord deliver us!
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
MR. BRYANT’s position in the poetical world is, perhaps, better settled than that of any American. There is less difference of opinion about his rank; but, as usual, the agreement is more decided in private literary circles than in what appears to be the public expression of sentiment as gleaned from the press. I may as well observe here, too, that this coincidence of opinion in private circles is in all cases very noticeable when compared with the discrepancy of the apparent public opinion. In private it is quite a rare thing to find any strongly-marked disagreement — I mean, of course, about mere autorial merit. The author accustomed to seclusion, and mingling for the first time freely with the literary people about him, is invariably startled and delighted to find that the decisions of his own unbiased judgment — decisions to which he has refrained from giving voice on account of their broad contradiction to the decision of the press — are sustained and considered quite as matters of course by almost every person with whom he converses. The fact is, that when brought face to face with each other, we are constrained to a certain amount of honesty by the sheer trouble it causes us to mould the countenance to a lie. We put on paper with a grave air what we could not for our lives assert personally to a friend without either blushing or laughing outright. That the opinion of the press is not an honest opinion, that necessarily it is impossible that it should be an honest opinion, is never denied by the members of the press themselves. Individual presses, of course, are now and then honest, but I speak of the combined effect. Indeed, it would be difficult for those conversant with the modus operandi of public journals to deny the general falsity of impression conveyed. Let in America a book be published by an unknown, careless or uninfluential author; if he publishes it “on his own account,” he will be confounded at finding that no notice of it is taken at all. If it has