Edgar Allan Poe. By John Macy. (Small, Maynard, and Co.,
Boston, U.S. 3s. net.)—This is one of the series of "Beacon Biographies of Eminent Americans," appearing under the editor- ship of Mr. M. A. de Wolfe Howe. Mr. Macy has no illusions about his hero. He finds him a restless, unstable being, with little regard for truth, and weighted by nature with an inability to resist this influence of alcohol. Poe was no drunkard, but un- happily the glass which is a mere social incident to most men upset his equilibrium. To the man's intellectual capacity, to his poetical power, to his extraordinary faculty of imagination, and to the general acuteness and truth of his literary criticism Mr. Macy does full justice. His own critical dicta we cannot always accept. That there were many feeble writers in the days when Poe was at his best is perfectly true; but the two exceptions which Mr. Macy is pleased to make should surely be increased. The two are Irving and Longfellow. How about Bryant (b. 1794), 0. W. Holmes (almost exactly contemporary with Poe), and Whittier ? Whittier, however, was but little known till somewhat late in life. Besides, Mr. Macy hates writers who, as he puts it, " hang sermons on the wings of visions." This, we suppose, rules out Emerson.
Previous page
