44 THE BRONX SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



Poe does not belong with Goethe, Coleridge, Sainte Beuve 

 and Arnold among the critics who have made criticism litera- 

 ture ; but he had rare analytical power, a keen sense of form, 

 a broad if discursive knowledge of literature, a perception of 

 principles which gave him standing ground for impersonal 

 judgment ; and he did not object to controversy when sharp 

 and merciless condemnation was the duty of the hour. In 

 the admirable edition of his works edited by Mr. Stedman 

 and Professor Woodberry, his criticism fills three volumes 

 and has not lost its interest. 



The time was ripe for frank and disinterested criticism, 

 and Poe not only recognized the opportunity but regarded 

 himself as having definite reformatory work to do. He was 

 a born lover of beauty and of art for its own sake, without 

 reference to anything beyond the immediate impression pro- 

 duced ; and he was. therefore, well adapted to the task of 

 judging a generation whose limited intelligence and uncertain 

 taste in matters of workmanship made it the dupe or the victim 

 of the cheap, the meretricious, and pretentious in contemporary 

 writing. Much of his critical writing was of slight value; 

 none of it is likely to survive by reason of its intrinsic interest, 

 for Poe was creative and masterful only when his imagination 

 was in play. But this work absorbed a large part of his time; 

 it attracted wide attention among his contemporaries, and it 

 filled an important place in the literary development of the 

 country. He was quick to recognize excellence, and his early 

 discernment of Hawthorne's quality must always be remem- 

 bered to his credit; he hated slovenly work and vulgarity of 

 manner, and never hesitated to hold them up to ridicule; he 

 meant to be impartial and disinterested; but he was some- 

 times misled by his own wilfulness of mind, as when he 

 failed to discriminate between Longfellow's frank and open 

 use of existing literary material and plagiarism; and he was 

 sometimes blinded by his theories of art, as in his sweeping 

 condemnation of the writers who were more or less in sym- 

 pathy with the Transcendental movement. He was not 



