EEVIEW — TALES OE MTSTEET AND POEMS. 103 



EEVIEf. 

 Tales of Mystery, and Poems. By Edgar Allan Poe. London : 



Vizetelly, 1857. 



The writings of Edgar Allan Poe have already been appreciated 

 in various forms, and they possess such an individuality of 

 character, and a power of fascination even in their least 

 attractive aspects, that we may be assured they will again 

 and yet again be subjected to re-issue, criticism, censure, and 

 laudation : as intellectual products, ephemeral in their aspect, and 

 yet such as this age at least will not willingly let die. We have 

 purposely selected for our present notice, the volume named at the 

 head of this article, though it is merely a popular selection of a few 

 of Poe's prose writings, issued in a cheap form along with his poems. 

 At another time we may have larger space at our command, and 

 shallthen pass under review the more comprehensive literary memorial 

 of this eccentric and wayward child of genius, recently issued from 

 the American press. The publication we refer to is entitled : 

 " The Works of the late Edgar Allan Poe, with a memoir by Rufus 

 Wilmot Grriswold ; and notices of his genius, by N. P. Willis, and 

 J. B/. Lowell." In this latter work four substantial volumes are 

 devoted to the Essays, Poems, and fugitive pieces, and to notices 

 of the biography and genius of Poe, — a writer of whom, if ximerica 

 may not be proud, it is only because the strange moral obliquity of 

 the man, has steeled the hearts of his countrymen against that pride, 

 akin to love, with which, they would otherwise have learned to re- 

 gard the author and the poet. In some striking respects we feel 

 tempted to designate Edgar Allan Poe the Charles Lamb of America 

 — so marked is that strange whimsical individuality of his, that 

 quaint gravity and affectation of seriousness in dealing with a jest, 

 and that sober and deliberate purpose of laughing in his sleeve at 

 the literary lies he successfully palmed upon the most credulous of 

 publics. And yet, assuredly, no two men were every more dissimilar. 

 When, some eleven years after Charles Lamb had been laid beneath 

 the green turf of Edmonton Churchyard, a few survivors of his old 

 circle of friends, — and among the rest his loving biographer, Sir T. 

 N. Talfourd, — met to lay the remains of Mary Lamb along side those 

 of her brother, his biographer thus records the revived memories 

 which the scene awakened : " so dry is the soil of the quiet Church- 

 yard that the excavated earth left perfect walls of stiff clay, and 

 permitted us just to catch a glimpse of the still untarnished edges 

 of the coffin in which all the mortal part of one of the most delightful 



