90 PROCEKDINGS MANCHESTER INSTMTTT'TE 



whom we may justly liken him in the whole range of English 

 literature, though the names of Mrs. Radcliffe and of Gregory 

 I^ewis suggest themselves as distant relatives. Those who have 

 been nearest to him in spirit may perhaps be found in Germany. 

 In Poe at his best, one thinks of Wilhelm Hauff, Heinrich 

 Heine, of the witches on the Brocken, or the grotesqueness, 

 without the weird S5^mbolism, of the Second Part of Faust. 



But a better and more truly suggestive comparison, it seems 

 to me, might be discovered in another realm of art, in that wild 

 Hungarian music which seems to open a world of the unex- 

 pected and the fantastic, the uncanny, the weird and the myste- 

 rious. 



This is not to claim for Poe a genius of the highest order or 

 the highest success, but it is genius. Compared with Haw- 

 thorne, whose impulses lay in something of the same direction, 

 he failed. The statement is often made that genius and insani- 

 tj^ are akin, both being abnormally sensitive, irritable and neu- 

 rotic. We find a passage in Poe's own writing which touches 

 upon this idea. The tale of "Eleonora" opens thus : 



"I am come of a race noted for vigor of iancy and ardor of 

 passion. Men have called me mad ; but the question is not yet 

 settled whether, madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence 

 — whether much that is glorious — whether all that is pro- 

 found does not spring from disease of thought — from moods of 

 mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who 

 dream b}^ day are cognizant of many things which escape those 

 who dream only by night. In their grey visions they obtain 

 glimpses of eternity, and thrill in waking, to find they have been 

 upon the verge of the great secret." 



Fundamentally, such a statement, I believe, is false. The 

 great genius is calm, self-poised. The depths of human pas- 

 sion are not unknown to him ; indeed, he penetrates them 

 more deeply than the common man. But the deepest passion 

 has nothing in it effervescent and frothy. Genius is strongly 

 sane and wholesome in its highest form of expression. But, ' 

 since genius can only exist in conjunction with a fine and deli- 

 cate nervous organization, it runs a special danger of insanity, 

 and quickly, easily, momentarily, passes the dividing line. 

 Men of this kind are moody, ill-balanced, undisciplined and un- 



