e was a faithful follower of
the best models, a patient student of masters dead and gone. Though he
aspired to live wholly from within, he composed his works wholly from
without, and fashioned an admirable style for himself, more antique in
shape and sound than the style affected by the Englishmen of his time.
But it is Edgar Allan Poe who most eloquently preached the gospel of
style, and who most honourably defended the cause of art pursued without
the aid of the pulpit. Taste he declared to be the sole arbiter of
Poetry. "With the intellect or the Conscience," said he, "it has only
collateral relations. Unless incidentally it has no concern whatever
either with Duty or Truth." Not that he belittled the exigence of Truth;
he did but insist on a proper separation. "The demands of Truth," he
admitted, "are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that
which is so indispensable in song is precisely all that with which she
has nothing whatever to do." And thus it followed that he had small
sympathy with Realism, which he denounced in the clear spirit of
prophecy many years before it had become a battle-cry of criticism:

The defenders of this pitiable stuff [he wrote] uphold it on the ground
of its truthfulness. Taking the thesis into question, this truthfulness
is the one overwhelming defect. An original idea that--to laud the
accuracy with which the stone is hurled that knocks us in the head.
A little less accuracy might have left us more brains. And here
are critics absolutely commending the truthfulness with which the
disagreeable is conveyed! In my view, if an artist must paint decayed
cheeses, his merit will lie in their looking as little like decayed
cheeses as possible.

Of this wise doctrine Poe was always a loyal exponent. The strange
veiled country in which he placed the shadows of his creation lay not
within the borders of the United States. He was the child neither of his
land nor of his century. Dwelling among men who have always worshipped
size, he believed that there was no such thing as a long poem. A
fellow-citizen of bustling men, he refused to bend the knee to industry.
"Perseverance is one thing," said he, "genius quite another." And it is
not surprising that he lived and died without great honour in his own
country. Even those of his colleagues who guarded the dignity of their
craft with a zeal equal to his own, shrank from the pitiless logic of
his analysis. They loved his work as little as