Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, page 213
The execution of “The Sinless Child” is, as we have already said, inferior to its conception — that is, to its conception as it floated, rather than steadily existed, in the brain of the authoress. She enables us to see that she has very narrowly missed one of those happy “creations” which now and then immortalize the poet. With a good deal more of deliberate thought before putting pen to paper, with a good deal more of the constructive ability, and with more rigorous discipline in the minor merits of style, and of what is termed in the school-prospectuses, composition, Mrs. Smith would have made of “The Sinless Child” one of the best, if not the very best of American poems. While speaking of the execution, or, more properly, the conduct of the work, we may as well mention, first, the obviousness with which the stories introduced by Eva’s mother are interpolated, or episodical; it is permitted every reader to see that they have no natural connexion with the true theme; and, indeed, there can be no doubt that they were written long before the main narrative was projected. In the second place, we must allude to the artificiality of the Arguments, or introductory prose passages, prefacing each Part of the poem. Mrs. Smith had no sounder reason for employing them than Milton and the rest of the epicists have employed them before. If it be said that they are necessary for the proper comprehension of a poem, we reply that this is saying nothing for them, but merely much against the poem which demands them as a necessity. Every work of art should contain within itself all that is required for its own comprehension. An “argument” is but another form of the “This is an ox” subjoined to the portrait of an animal with horns. But in making these objections to the management of “The Sinless Child,” we must not be understood as insisting upon them as at all material, in view of the lofty merit of originality — a merit which pervades and invigorates the whole work, and which, in our opinion, at least, is far, very far more than sufficient to compensate for every inartisticality of construction. A work of art may be admirably constructed, and yet be null as regards every essentiality of that truest art which is but the happiest development of nature; but no work of art can embody within itself a proper originality without giving the plainest manifestations of the creative spirit, or, in more common parlance, of genius in its author. The originality of “The Sinless Child” would cover a multitude of greater defects than Mrs. Smith ever committed, and must forever entitle it to the admiration and respect of every competent critic.
As regards detached passages, we think that the episode of “The Stepmother” may be fairly cited as the best in the poem
You speak of Hobert’s second wife, a lofty dame and bold;
I like not her forbidding air, and forehead high and cold.
The orphans have no cause for grief; she dare not give it now,
Though nothing but a ghostly fear her heart of pride could bow.
One night the boy his mother called; they heard him weeping say,
“Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy’s cheek and wipe his tears away.”
Red grew the lady’s brow with rage, and yet she feels a strife
Of anger and of terror, too, at thought of that dead wife.
Wild roars the wind; the lights burn blue; the watch-dog howls with fear;
Loud neighs the steed from out the stall. What form is gliding near?
No latch is raised, no step is heard, but a phantom fills the space —
A sheeted spectre from the dead, with cold and leaden face.
What boots it that no other eye beheld the shade appear?
The guilty lady’s guilty soul beheld it plain and clear.
It slowly glides within the room and sadly looks around,
And, stooping, kissed her daughter’s cheek with lips that gave no sound.
Then softly on the step-dame’s arm she laid a death-cold hand,
Yet it hath scorched within the flesh like to a burning brand;
And gliding on with noiseless foot, o’er winding stair and hall,
She nears the chamber where is heard her infant’s trembling call.
She smoothed the pillow where he lay, she warmly tucked the bed,
She wiped his tears and stroked the curls that clustered round his head.
The child, caressed, unknowing fear, hath nestled him to rest;
The mother folds her wings beside — the mother from the blest!
The metre of this episode has been altered from its original form, and, we think, improved by the alteration. Formerly, in place of four lines of seven iambuses, the stanza consisted of eight lines — a line of four iambuses alternating with one of three — a more ordinary and artificial, therefore a less desirable arrangement. In the three last quatrains there is an awkward vacillation between the present and perfect tenses, as in the words “beheld,” “glides,” “kissed,” “laid,” “hath scorched,” “smoothed,” “wiped,” “hath nestled,” “folds.” These petty objections, of course, will by no means interfere with the reader’s appreciation of the episode, with his admiration of its pathos, its delicacy and its grace — we had almost forgotten to say of its pure and high imagination.
We proceed to cull from “The Sinless Child,” a few brief but happy passages at random.
Gentle she was and full of love,
With voice exceeding sweet,
And eyes of dove-like tenderness
Where joy and sadness meet.
— —
— — — with calm and tranquil eye
That turned instinctively to seek
The blueness of the sky.
— —
Bright missals from angelic throngs
In every bye-way left —
How were the earth of glory shorn
Were it of flowers bereft!
— —
And wheresoe’er the weary heart
Turns in its dim despair,
The meek-eyed blossom upward looks,
Inviting it to prayer.
— —
The very winds were hushed to peace
Within the quiet dell,
Or murmured through the rustling bough
Like breathings of a shell.
— —
The mystery of life;
Its many hopes, its many fears,
Its sorrow and its strife —
A spirit to behold in all
To guide, admonish, cheer —
Forever, in all time and place,
To feel an angel near.
— —
I may not scorn the spirit’s rights,
For I have seen it rise,
All written o’er with thought, thought, thought,
As with a thousand eyes!
— —
And there are things that blight the soul
As with a mildew blight,
And in the temple of the Lord
Put out the blessed light.
It is in the point of passages such as these, in their vigor, terseness and novelty, combined with exquisite delicacy, that the more obvious merit of the poem consists. A thousand such quotable paragraphs are interspersed through the work, and of themselves would be sufficient to insure its popularity. But we repeat that a far loftier excellence lies perdu amid the minor deficiencies of “The Sinless Child.”
The other poems of the volume are, as entire compositions, nearer perfection, but, in general, have less of the true poetical element. “The Acorn” is perfect as regards its construction — although, to be sure, the design is so simple that it could scarcely be marred in its execution. The idea is the old one of detailing the progress of a plant from its germ to its maturity, with the uses and general vicissitudes to which it is subjected. In this case of the acorn the vicissitudes are well imagined, and the execution is more skilfully managed — is more definite, vigorous and pronounced, than in the longer poem. The chief of the minor objections is to the rhythm, which is imperfect, vacillating awkwardly between iambuses and anapæsts, after such fashion that it is impossible to decide whether the rhythm in itself — that is, whether the general intention is anapæstical or iambic. Anapæsts introduced, for the relief of monotone, into an iambic rhythm, are not only admissible but commendable, if not absolutely demanded; but in this case they prevail to such an extent as to overpower the iambic intention, thus rendering the whole versification difficult of comprehension. We give, by way of example, a stanza with the scanning divisions and quntities [[quantities]]:
They came | with gifts | that should life | bestow; |
The dew | and the li | ving air — |
The bane | that should work | its dead | ly wo, |
The lit | tle men | had there; |
In the gray | moss cup | was the mil | dew brought, |
The worm | in a rose- | leaf rolled
And ma | ny things | with destuc | tion fraught |
That its doom | were quick | ly told. |
Here iambuses and anapæsts are so nearly balanced that the ear hesitates to receive the rhythm as either anapæstic or iambic, that is, it hesitates to receive it as anything at all. A rhythm should always be distinctly marked by its first foot — that is to say, if the design is iambic, we should commence with an unmistakeable iambus, and proceed with this foot until the ear gets fairly accustomed to it before we attempt variation; for which, indeed, there is no necessity unless for the relief of monotone. When the rhythm is in this manner thoroughly recognized, we may sparingly vary with anapæsts (or, if the rhythm be trochaic, with dactyls). Spondees, still more sparingly, as absolute discords, may be also introduced either in an iambic or trochaic rhythm. In common with a very large majority of American, and, indeed, of European poets, Mrs. Smith seems to be totally unacquainted with the principles of versification — by which, of course, we mean its rationale. Of technical rules on the subject there are rather more than enough in our prosodies, and from these abundant rules are deduced the abundant blunders of our poets. There is not a prosody in existence which is worth the paper on which it is printed.
Of the miscellaneous poems included in the volume before us, we greatly prefer “The Summons Answered.” It has more of power, more of genuine imagination than anything written by its author. It is a story of three “bacchanals,” who, on their way from the scene of their revelry, are arrested by the beckoning of a white hand from the partially unclosing door of a tomb. One of the party obeys the summons. It is the tomb of his wife. We quote the two concluding stanzas.
This restless life with its little fears,
Its hopes that fade so soon,
With its yearning tenderness and tears,
And the burning agony that sears —
The sun gone down at noon —
The spirit crushed to its prison wall,
Mindless of all beside —
This young Richard saw, and felt it all —
Well might the dead abide!
The crimson light in the east is high,
The hoar-frost coldly gleams,
And Richard chilled to the heart well-nigh,
Hath raised his wildered and bloodshot eye
From that long night of dreams.
He shudders to think of the reckless band
And the fearful oath he swore —
But most he thinks of the clay-cold hand,
That opened the old tomb door.
With the quotation of these really noble passages — noble, because full of the truest poetic energy — we take leave of the fair authoress. She is entitled, beyond doubt, to all, and perhaps to much more than the commendation she has received. Her faults are among the peccadilloes, and her merits among the sterling excellencies of the muse.
J. G. C. BRAINARD.
AMONG all the pioneers of American literature, whether prose or poetical, there is not one whose productions have not been much overrated by his countrymen. But this fact is more especially obvious in respect to such of these pioneers as are no longer living, — nor is it a fact of so deeply transcendental a nature as only to be accounted for by the Emersons and Alcotts. In the first place, we have but to consider that gratitude, surprise, and a species of hyper-patriotic triumph have been blended, and finally confounded, with mere admiration, or appreciation, in respect to the labors of our earlier writers; and, in the second place, that Death has thrown his customary veil of the sacred over these commingled feelings, forbidding them, in a measure, to be now separated or subjected to analysis. “In speaking of the deceased,” says that excellent old English Moralist, James Puckle, in his “Gray Cap for a Green Head,” “so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence.” And with somewhat too inconsiderate a promptitude have we followed the spirit of this quaint advice. The mass of American readers have been, hitherto, in no frame of mind to view with calmness, and to discuss with discrimination, the true claims of the few who were first in convincing the mother country that her sons were not all brainless, as, in the plentitude of her arrogance, she, at one period, half affected and half wished to believe; and where any of these few have departed from among us, the difficulty of bringing their pretensions to the test of a proper criticism has been enhanced in a very remarkable degree. But even as concerns the living: is there any one so blind as not to see that Mr. Cooper, for example, owes much, and that Mr. Paulding owes all of his reputation as a novelist, to his early occupation of the field? Is there any one so dull as not to know that fictions which neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Cooper could have written, are daily published by native authors without attracting more of commendation than can be crammed into a hack newspaper paragraph? And, again, is there any one so prejudiced as not to acknowledge that all this is because there is no longer either reason or wit in the query, — “Who reads an American book?” It is not because we lack the talent in which the days of Mr. Paulding exulted, but because such talent has shown itself to be common. It is not because we have no Mr. Coopers; but because it has been demonstrated that we might, at any moment, have as many Mr. Coopers as we please. In fact we are now strong in our own resources. We have, at length, arrived at that epoch when our literature may and must stand on its own merits, or fall through its own defects. We have snapped asunder the leading-strings of our British Grandmamma, and, better still, we have survived the first hours of our novel freedom — the first licentious hours of a hobbledehoy braggadocio and swagger. At last, then, we are in a condition to be criticised — even more, to be neglected; and the journalist is no longer in danger of being impeached for lese majesté of the Democratic Spirit, who shall assert, with sufficient humility, that we have committed an error in mistaking “Kettell’s Specimens” for the Pentateuch, or Joseph Rodman Drake for Apollo.
The case of this latter gentleman is one which well illustrates what we have been saying. We believe it was about 1835 that Mr. Dearborn republished the “Culprit Fay,” which then, as at the period of its original issue, was belauded by the universal American press, in a manner which must have appeared ludicrous — not to speak very plainly — in the eyes of all unprejudiced observers. With a curiosity much excited by comments at once so grandiloquent and so general, we procured and read the poem. What we found it we ventured to express distinctly, and at some length, in the pages of the “Southern Messenger.” It is a well-versified and sufficiently fluent composition, without high merit of any kind. Its defects are gross and superabundant. Its plot and conduct, considered in reference to its scene, are absurd. Its originality is none at all. Its imagination (and this was the great feature insisted upon by its admirers,) is but a “counterfeit presentment,” — but the shadow of the shade of that lofty quality which is, in fact, the soul of the Poetic Sentiment — but a drivelling effort to be fanciful — an effort resulting in a species of hop-skip-and-go-merry rhodomontade, which the uninitiated feel it a duty to call ideality, and to admire as such, while lost in surprise at the impossibility of performing at least the latter half of the duty with any thing like satisfaction to themselves. And all this we not only asserted, but without difficulty proved. Dr. Drake has written some beautiful poems, but the “Culprit Fay,” is not of them. We neither expected to hear any dissent from our opinions, nor did we hear any. On the contrary, the approving voice of every critic in the country whose dictum we had been accustomed to respect, was to us a sufficient assurance that we had not been very grossly in the wrong. In fact the public taste was then approaching the right. The truth indeed had not, as yet, made itself heard; but we had reached a point at which it had but to be plainly and boldly put, to be, at least tacitly admitted.
This habit of apotheosising our literary pioneers was a most indiscriminating one. Upon all who wrote, the applause was plastered with an impartiality really refreshing. Of course, the system favored the dunces at the expense of true merit! and, since there existed a certain fixed standard of exaggerated commendation to which all were adapted after the fashion of Procrustes, it is clear that the most meritorious required the least stretching, — in other words, that, although all were much overrated, the deserving were overrated in a less degree than the unworthy. Thus with Brainard: — a man of indisputable genius, who, in any more discriminate system of panegyric, would have been long ago bepuffed into Demi-Deism; for if “M’Fingal,” for example, is in reality what we have been told, the commentators upon Trumbull, as a matter of the simplest consistency, should have exalted into the seventh heaven of poetical dominion the author of the many graceful and vigorous effusions which are now lying, in a very neat little volume, before us.
