Text: Richard George Temple Coventry, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Academy (Covent Garden, London, UK), vol. LXIX, whole no. 1751, November 25, 1905, p. 1234, col. 3

[page 1234, column 3, continued:]

EDGAR ALLAN POE

To the Editor of THE ACADEMY

SIR, — Mr. Ingram in his letter that appeared in your issue of the 18th inst has been led by his praiseworthy but indiscriminate admiration of Poe to make a somewhat unfair attack on certain remarks of mine concerning the — in my article on the perfect lyric. It is unjust to accuse me of saying that Poe was not up to his trade as a poet. It was Poe the critic that I criticised not Poe the poet, My remarks concerning the refrain and originality of metre were not an attack on Poe's poetry, nor were they final. I said: “The use of the refrain betrays as a rule a barrenness of invention, while the poem that relies on the originality of its metre is usually original in that and nothing else.” I was careful to say that Poe was saved from the pitfalls into which the use of those devices might betray minds less richly endowed than his own by his rare faculty of imagination. Surely no higher praise could be given. I cited his Philosophy of Composition not in dispraise of the actual poem it produced, but as being unlikely — from its falseness to all preconceived notions of art — to produce another work of equal merit. If Mr. Ingram claims indulgence for Poe's criticism of Wordsworth as being the opinion of a youth of twenty-two, I fail to see why he should ask us to accept as gospel the farther quotation he makes from the same critique. “It has been said that a good critique on a poem may be written by one who is no poet himself. This . . . I feel to be false; the less poetical the critic, the less just the critique, and the converse.”

By poet — in the general acceptance of the term — is understood one who has produced poetry. There are many men who have never written a line of poetry worthy the name who have shown a fire intelligence of what is poetry and what is not — the late Professor Palgrave for instance. To agree with Poe's statement would be to allege that no one can be a good judge of a play or picture who has not written or painted one himself. Poets are not always the best judges of poetry nor its most enlightened critics. For example — no one can affirm that Mr. Swinburne's essays on poets and poetry are amongst his happiest efforts. So far from a desire to belittle Poe as a poet, I have always been amongst his sincerest admirers; in fact I regard him as the one poet of genius that America has as yet produced.

R. G. T. COVENTRY.