POE CEN T E X A K Y E X E RCISES. 5 I 



which ha-- m> far existed between the essentially ideal quality 

 df the American mind and the intensely practical character 

 nf the task which has fallen In Americans. If he had Keen 

 born a century later, his verse and prose might have come 

 closer tn the heart of his people, without limine; that exquisite 

 fineness which reveals the rare and beautiful quality nf his 

 genius. It is hardly possible t<» mis> the significance of the 

 fact that two nun nf such temper and gifts as 1 [awthorne and 

 Poe were driven by inward necessity to deal with the life oi 

 an earlier time, with lite in an older and riper society, or 

 with the life n\ the spirit in its must disturbed and abnormal 

 experiences. 



Poe's passion for perfection oi form, his ideality, and the 

 sensitiveness nf his temperament are all subtly combined in 

 the quality of distinction which characterizes Ins best work 

 in prose and verse. II is individuality is not only strongly 

 marked, hut it is expressed with the utmost refinement of 

 Feeling and of touch. In his prose and verse, Poe was pre- 

 eminently a man who not only brought artistic integrity and 

 capacity to his work, hut suffused it with purity, dignity, and 

 grace. In the disconnected product nf his broken life there 

 is imt a line to he blotted nut on the score ^i vulgarity or lack 

 n\ reticence concerning the hidden and sacred things ><i lite. 

 In his most careless imaginative writing the high quality of 

 his mind is always apparent. So ingrained is this distinction 

 oi tone that, however he may waste his moral fortunes, his 

 genius is never cheapened nor stained. In his worst estate 

 the great traditions of art were safe in his hands. 



I 'ne's very detachment in artistic interest from the world 

 about him was a positive gain for the emancipation nf the 

 imagination nf the young country, so recently a province ^\ 

 the Old World. His criticism was almost entirely free from 

 that narrow localism which values a writer because he belongs 

 to a section, and not because his work belongs to literature. 

 He brought into the field >^ criticism large knowledge 't\ tin 

 best that had been dime in literature, and clear perception nf 



