By James Russell Lowell
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he situation of American literature is anomalous. It has nocentre, or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes.It is divided into many systems, each revolving round its severalsuns, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer ofa milk-and-water way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris,is not a great central heart from which life and vigor radiate tothe extremities, but resembles more an isolated umbilicus stuckdown as near as may be to the centre of the land, and seemingrather to tell a legend of former usefulness than to serve anypresent need. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, each has itsliterature almost more distinct than those of the differentdialects of Germany; and the Young Queen of the West has also oneof her own, of which some articulate rumor barely has reached usdwellers by the Atlantic. Perhaps there is no task more difficult than the just criticismof contemporary literature. It is even more grateful to givepraise where it is needed than where it is deserved, andfriendship so often seduces the iron stylus of justice into avague flourish, that she writes what seems rather like an epitaphthan a criticism. Yet if praise be given as an alms, we could notdrop so poisonous a one into any man’s hat. The critic’s ink maysuffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or ofsugar. But it is easier to be generous than to be just, and wemight readily put faith in that fabulous direction to the hidingplace of truth, did we judge from the amount of water which weusually find mixed with it. Remarkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life ofimaginative men, but Mr. Poe’s biography displays a vicissitudeand peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with. Theoffspring of a romantic marriage, and left an orphan at an earlyage, he was adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whosebarren marriage-bed seemed the warranty of a large estate to theyoung poet. Having received a classical education in England, he returnedhome and entered the University of Virginia, where, after anextravagant course, followed by reformation at the lastextremity, he was graduated with the highest honors of his class.Then came a boyish attempt to join the fortunes of the insurgentGreeks, which ended at St. Petersburg, where he got intodifficulties through want of a passport, from which he wasrescued by the American consul and sent home. He now entered themilitary academy at West Point, from which he obtained adismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his adopted father,by a second marriage, an event which cut off his expectations asan heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his name was notmentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this regard,and he committed himself at once to authorship for a support.Previously to this, however, he had published (in 1827) a smallvolume of poems, which soon ran through three editions, andexcited high expectations of its author’s future distinction inthe minds of many competent judges. That no certain augury can be drawn from a poet’s earliestlispings there are instances enough to prove. Shakespeare’s firstpoems, though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness,give but a very faint promise of the directness, condensation andoverflowing moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however,Shakespeare is hardly a case in point, his “Venus and Adonis”having been published, we believe, in his twenty-sixth year.Milton’s Latin verses show tenderness, a fine eye for nature, anda delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint ofthe author of a new style in poetry. Pope’s youthful pieces haveall the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignityand eloquent irreligion of his later productions. Collins’ callownamby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and originalgenius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought thatthe world lost more in the “marvellous boy,” Chatterton, than avery ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated dulness. Wherehe becomes original (as it is called), the interest of ingenuityceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White’s promises wereindorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but surely withno authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditionalpiety, which to our mind, if uttered at all, had been lessobjectionable in the retired closet of a diary, and in the soberraiment of prose. They do not clutch hold of the memory with thedrowning pertinacity of Watts; neither have they the interest ofhis occasional simple, lucky beauty. Burns having fortunatelybeen rescued by his humble station from the contaminating societyof the “Best models,” wrote well and naturally from the first.Had he been unfortunate enough to have had an educated taste, weshould have had a series of poems from which, as from hisletters, we could sift here and there a kernel from the mass ofchaff. Coleridge’s youthful efforts give no promise whatever ofthat poetical genius which produced at once the wildest,tenderest, most original and most purely imaginative poems ofmodern times. Byron’s “Hours of Idleness” would never find areader except from an intrepid and indefatigable curiosity. InWordsworth’s first preludings there is but a dim foreboding ofthe creator of an era. From Southey’s early poems, a safer augurymight have been drawn. They show the patient investigator, theclose student of history, and the unwearied explorer of thebeauties of predecessors, but they give no assurances of a manwho should add aught to stock of household words, or to the rarerand more sacred delights of the fireside or the arbor. Theearliest specimens of Shelley’s poetic mind already, also, givetokens of that ethereal sublimation in which the spirit seems tosoar above the regions of words, but leaves its body, the verse,to be entombed, without hope of resurrection, in a mass of them.Cowley is generally instanced as a wonder of precocity. But hisearly insipidities show only a capacity for rhyming and for themetrical arrangement of certain conventional combinations ofwords, a capacity wholly dependent on a delicate physicalorganization, and an unhappy memory. An early poem is onlyremarkable when it displays an effort of _reason,_ and the rudestverses in which we can trace some conception of the ends ofpoetry, are worth all the miracles of smooth juvenileversification. A school-boy, one would say, might acquire theregular see-saw of Pope merely by an association with the motionof the play-ground tilt. Mr. Poe’s early productions show that he could see through theverse to the spirit beneath, and that he already had a feelingthat all the life and grace of the one must depend on and bemodulated by the will of the other. We call them the mostremarkable boyish poems that we have ever read. We know of nonethat can compare with them for maturity of purpose, and a niceunderstanding of the effects of language and metre. Such piecesare only valuable when they display what we can only express bythe contradictory phrase of _innate experience._ We copy one ofthe shorter poems, written when the author was only fourteen.There is a little dimness in the filling up, but the grace andsymmetry of the outline are such as few poets ever attain. Thereis a smack of ambrosia about it.
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