POE CENTENARY EXERCISES. 43 



must fill a large place in any future survey of American 

 literature. It was in the columns of the " Southern Literary 

 Messenger" that his penetrating and searching commenl on 



the bi inks and writers of the day made lovers of literature 

 aware that a writer of fresh and original force was weighing 

 and measuring the literary work of the hour. There were 

 a few writers of high intelligence and a little group of men 

 of real if somewhat narrow genius making the second chapter 

 of our literar_\- history, but there was so little authoritative 

 criticism that local feeling ami provincial taste were in pos- 

 session of the held; and slovenly workmanship, commonplace 

 thinking, silly sentimentalism and cheap and pretentious dic- 

 tion went unchallenged to the rewards of reputation and 

 success. Seventy- four years ago last December Poe fell upon 

 " Norman Leslie," a popular novel of flamboyant mediocrity. 

 and made an example of it by a cutting disclosure of its 

 crudity, in a review of such penetration and intelligence that it 

 arrested the attention of thoughtful people in all parts of the 

 country. Here, evident 1 v. was a critic who knew the best 

 that had been thought and said, to whom local pride and 

 provincial standards were things of naught; a judge with 

 ideas and convictions, who knew the law and had small 

 mercy for offenders. It was clear also that here was a judge 

 who invested his function with the interest which flows from 

 a mind of extraordinary penetration and a style charged with 

 individual force. " Norman Leslie " has gone the way of all 

 crude and pretentious books into that limbo which must have 

 been enormously enlarged when the printing press began to 

 multiply the leaves which make for the weariness of nations, 

 and Poe rendered a signal service to our literature by defining 

 a standard in an age of ignorance and indifference to artistic 

 quality in the arts. That he found pleasure in the destructive 

 process does not diminish the judicial value of his work; a 

 just judge must always find satisfaction in bringing offenders 

 to book and making an end of that kind of anarchy which 

 takes the form of inefficiency and slovenliness. 



