Text: Edward Everett Hale, Jr., “Mr. John Burroughs on Poe,” The Dial (Chicago, IL), vol. XV, no. 177, November 1, 1893, pp. 254-255

[page 254, column 2, continued:]

MR. JOHN BURROUGHS ON POE.

(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)

Without taking up the cudgels for Poe and trying to think of one real thing made more dear to us by his matchless rhyme, without depreciating our New England poets and hinting that it might have been yet better had they cared a little more for art, one may still feel that all is not for the best in the remarks of Mr. John Burroughs in your last number (unless, perhaps, we at once turn the page and consider some of the questions put by Mrs. Woolley toward the beginning of her communication). It is doubtless true that there are many with whom the purely art value, so-called, is the only thing to consider in a poem ora picture. But the number of such is, on the whole, small. It is quite right to say that with most readers this view is held less and less in sight. We in America, at least, need no incitement to value literature, or anything else, for its practical worth, or for what may seem such. If we need caution, it is on the other side. We do not need to be told that thought is important, — we know it is, and we are always on the lookout for it. But we do need to be told that art or style is of value too, for, as a rule, we are not so much on the lookout for that; or, if we are, we don’t know it so well when we see it.

The more we are told by critics whom we honor (like Mr. John Burroughs) that thought is important and that art counts for less, the more do we fall into the error that thought is all-important and that art count [page 255:] or nothing, — and then we have poems like Miss Emily Dickinson's, for example.

Now style, or form, or art, or whatever else one may call it, is important. And, more to the point, style is difficult. It is difficult to attain, and it is, on the whole, difficult to appreciate. That it is difficult to appreciate good style, may seem a hard saying; one may think that if a thing be done in the best way everybody will recognize it. It is not so. To appreciate style needs training. And this training we in America will not undergo, so long as we are told that art is unimportant.

One great use of the “full-blown professional literary critic” is that he is apt to insist on art for art's sake. And one great good thing in a poet like Poe is that he shows us what art for art's sake can do. There is small danger that we shall go too far with either. There are comparatively few so constituted by nature that they ever could enjoy art for art's sake if they wanted to. There is little danger that we shall go too far in that direction. The important thing is that we go at all. And go some way we must, or literature runs down-hill, and at the bottom we have a horde of writers with plenty of thought perhaps, with plenty of messages for their time, with plenty of feeling for life, and with the highest ethical or sociological aspirations, but no style at all — because they don’t know what it is.

Especially here in the West do we need to be constantly reminded of the value of art, to be taught what is style, to be told even (though it isn’t so) that form in art is everything. We are not likely to take it too much to heart, and we may learn something from it. I sometimes almost wish that Mr. Oscar Wilde would come out here again. He could hardly get us to be like Gilbert and Ernest and Cyril and Vivian, but he might perhaps prevent us from becoming what we are likely to become if we persist in binding it upon the tablets of our hearts that good poetry is only a criticism of life.

EDWARD E. HALE, JR.

State University of Iowa, Oct. 20, 1893.