Of this poet, who has so much flame in him that we cannot distinctly see his features, it is said in almost the next sentence, "Even in his most brilliant passages there is nothing of the heat of inspiration, nothing of that celestial fire which makes us feel that the author has, by intensifying the action of the mind, raised himself to communion with superior intelligences.(!) It is where he is most calm that he is most beautiful; and, accordingly, he is more excellent in the expression of sentiment than in narration." (The force of the "accordingly" one does not see; surely there may be as much scope for inspiration in sentiment as in narration.) "Scarce any writer presents to us a sentiment with such a tearful depth of expression; but though it is a tearful depth, those tears were shed long since, and Faith and Love have hallowed them. You nowhere are made to feel the bitterness, the vehemence of present emotion; but the phœnix born from passion is seen hovering over the ashes of what was once combined with it."
The young phœnix rises from the ashes of the old; so far we comprehend. This, metaphorically understood, would infer that a new and stronger passion rose from the ashes of the old and defunct one. But into the allegorical signification of Mrs Fuller's phœnix, we confess we cannot penetrate. We have a dim conception that it would not be found to harmonise very well with that other meaning conveyed to us in so dazzling a manner by the illuminated statue. Pity the lady could not have found some other poet to take off her hands one of those images: we are not so heartless as to suggest the expediency of the absolute sacrifice of either.
It is not to be supposed that this authoress is always so startling and original as in these passages. She sometimes attains, and keeps for a while, the level of commonplace. But we do not remember in the whole of her two volumes a single passage where she rises to an excellence above this. If we did, we should be happy to quote it.
"Tales, by Edgar A. Poe," is the next book upon our list. No one can read these tales, then close the volume, as he may with a thousand other tales, and straightway forget what manner of book he has been reading. Commonplace is the last epithet that can be applied to them. They are strange—powerful—more strange than pleasing, and powerful productions without rising to the rank of genius. The author is a strong-headed man, which epithet by no means excludes the possibility of being, at times, wrong-headed also. With little taste, and much analytic power, one would rather employ such an artist on the anatomical model of the Moorish Venus, than intrust to his hands any other sort of Venus. In fine, one is not sorry to have read these tales; one has no desire to read them twice.
They are not framed according to the usual manner of stories. On each occasion, it is something quite other
than the mere story that the author has in view, and which has impelled him to write. In one, he is desirous of illustrating La Place's doctrine of probabilities as applied to human events. In another, he displays his acumen in unravelling or in constructing a tangled chain of circumstantial evidence. In a third, ("The Black Cat") he appears at first to aim at rivalling the fantastic horrors of Hoffman, but you soon observe that the wild and horrible invention in which he deals, is strictly in the service of an abstract idea which it is there to illustrate. His analytic observation has led him, he thinks, to detect in men's minds an absolute spirit of "perversity," prompting them to do the very opposite of what reason and mankind pronounce to be right, simply because they do pronounce it to be right. The punishment of this sort of diabolic spirit of perversity, he brings about by a train of circumstances as hideous, incongruous, and absurd, as the sentiment itself.
There is, in the usual sense of the word, no passion in these tales, neither is there any attempt made at dramatic dialogue. The bent of Mr Poe's mind seems rather to have been towards reasoning than sentiment. The style, too, has nothing peculiarly commendable; and when the embellishments of metaphor and illustration are attempted, they are awkward, strained, infelicitous. But the tales rivet the attention. There is a marvellous skill in putting together the close array of facts and of details which make up the narrative, or the picture, for the effect of his description, as of his story, depends never upon any bold display of the imagination, but on the agglomeration of incidents, enumerated in the most veracious manner. In one of his papers he describes the Mahlstrom or what he chooses to imagine the Mahlstrom may be, and by dint of this careful and De Foe-like painting, the horrid whirlpool is so placed before the mind, that we feel as if we had seen, and been down into it.
The "Gold Bug" is the first and the most striking of the series, owing to the extreme and startling ingenuity with which the narrative is constructed. It would be impossible, however, to convey an idea of this species of merit, without telling the whole story; nor would it be possible to tell the story in shorter compass, with any effect, than it occupies here. The "Murders of the Rue Morgue," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget," both turn on the interest excited by the investigation of circumstantial evidence. But, unlike most stories of this description, our sympathies are not called upon, either in the fate of the person assassinated, or in behalf of some individual falsely accused of the crime; the interest is sustained solely by the nature of the evidence, and the inferences to be adduced from it. The latter of these stories is, in fact, a transfer to the city of Paris of a tragedy which had been really enacted in New York. The incidents have been carefully preserved, the scene alone changed, and the object of the author in thus re-narrating the facts seems to have been to investigate the evidence again, and state his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. From these, also, it would be quite as impossible to make an extract as it would be to quote a passage from an interesting case as reported in one of our law-books. The last story in the volume has, however, the advantage of being brief, and an outline of it may convey some idea of the peculiar manner of Mr Poe. It is entitled "The Man of the Crowd."
The author describes himself as sitting on an autumnal evening at the bow-window of the D—— coffee-house in London. He has just recovered from an illness, and feels in that happy frame of mind, the precise converse of ennui, where merely to breathe is enjoyment, and we feel a fresh and inquisitive interest in all things around us.
The passing crowd entertains him with its motley variety of costume and character. He has watched till the sun has gone down, and the streets have become indebted for their illumination solely to the gas lamps. As the night deepened, the interest of the scene deepened also, for the character of the crowd had insensibly but materially changed, and strange features and aspects of ill omen begin to make their appearance.