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8. — Eureka: a Prose Poem. By EDGAR A. POE. New York: George F. Putnam, of the late firm of “Wiley & Putnam.” 12mo., pp. 143.
It is well the author has, by his own admission, brought this startling work into the provinces of poetry or romance. As a work of the imagination, it teems with the highest beauty of view and glorious thought. There is, there must be, much of the true in the grand Utopia of the universe thus imaged forth, because the presence of the true is intuitively felt. And then, Mr. Poe has a wonderful faculty of illustrating his theories. He unites the precision of mathematical acumen with the creative energy of the wildest imagination, and uses facts or fancies, as the exigencies demand, with equal facility. That he has actually discovered the cause of gravitation, which this “Eureka” proclaims, we do not consider ourselves qualified to decide; but he has certainly written a very curious and original book on the subject, and we venture to prophesy that this “Art-Product” will give its author a wide reputation for scientific knowledge and subtle theorizing.
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Notes:
This review, as well as four others, was first resurrected by Burton R. Pollin in “Poe, Freeman Hunt, and Four Unrecorded Reviews of Poe's Works,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. XVI, no. 2, Summer 1974, pp. 305-313. In that article, he also identifies the likely author as Freeman Hunt. Hunt, the editor whose name was borne in the name of the magazine, appears to have been favorably disposed toward Poe. In his Literati entry on Hunt, Poe said of him that “He is a true friend, and the enemy of no man. ... His heart is full of the warmest sympathies and charities. No one in New York is more universally popular.”
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[S:0 - HMM, 1848] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Review of Eureka (Freeman Hunt, 1848)