∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[page 1236, column 1, continued:]
ILLUSTRATED GIFT-BOOKS.
IN the wake of larger and more sumptuous books destined to attract many a hand and eye on the table of many a drawingroom this season, a modest instalment reaches us in the Christmas week. The first volume before us touches feelings other than those appealed to by its companions, and its lease of life is far different, although, as being an ornamental edition, it may for the present moment find its lot cast among the gift-books: the rest owe their chance of vogue less to costliness of exterior or beauty of illustration than to the entertainment they promise — mostly to the young.
The first is the poetical works of that strange mad American, Edgar Allan Poe, prefaced by the only appreciative estimate of his [column 2:] genius — within our knowledge.* Mr. Hannay gives a strong but feeling picture of his antagonistic, unbridled, fatal life; his death, which he made as ignoble as the uprooting of a weed; the power and passion of his mind; and those truly singular manifestations of it now remaining with us, which blend so peculiar a love of analysis, the Defoelike faculty of deceptive narration which an almost insane craving for the preternatural led him to apply to conceptions so wild and ghastly, and the grace, unfleshliness, and remote charm of his lyrics. The “notice” is a finished and artistic piece of composition, sparkling with bright sallies, as well as a penetrative and sympathetic critique. Equally true and comprehensive, and undeniable, though by no means tritely obvious, is this remark on Poe's quite spiritual poem “To Helen,” written in his earliest youth —
“Now Poe may have done this and done that; there are hundreds of youths as ‘ wild’ as Poe; but this one wrote the above poem. That is the interesting fact. A fragment of song like this comes out of the inner being of a man, and the capability of producing it is the fact of his nature.”
The present is a very nice and tasteful edition — the only one of the poet that is so. But the illustrations fall altogether short of their subject. It is a characteristic of Poe's genius, as developed in his poems, that his leading idea was distinguished either by intensity, or by largeness, generally vague; that he refined on the idea till it almost became a conceit; and again redeemed it from that condition by imaginative or fanciful beauty of execution. The poems “ To Annie,” “Annabel Lee,” and “Ulalume,” may be cited as examples. Not any one of these phases is embodied by the artists. Mr. Weir alone avoids the merely prettified and unmeaning; and he not by rising with his author, but by taking counsel, as is his wont, of solid sense and artistic efficiency. However this may be, we cordially recommend the volume as a gift-book. It will satisfy the admirers of Poe by reason of Mr. Hannay's criticism; of others, many a one who has not yet undergone the spell of the poet, and who may now read him in the expiring days of 1852, will retain so vivid an impression of the first reading of Poe that he may say hereafter, in the author's own words,
“Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December.”
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 1236, column 2:]
* The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe; with a Notice of his Life and Genius by James Hannay. With twenty Illustrations, by E. H. Wehmert, James Godwin, F. W. Hulme, and Harrison Weir. Published by Addey and Co.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - SUK, 1852] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Notice of Hannay's edition of Poe's Poems (Anonymous, 1852)