Text: John H. Ingram, “Edgar Allan Poe and His Commentators,” Academy (Covent Garden, London, UK), vol. LXIX, December 2, 1905, p. 1752, col. 1

[page 1269, column 1, continued:]

SIR, — Evidently Mr. Coventry has not read my remarks on Poe's writings, or he would not accuse me of “indiscriminate admiration,” which, by the way, could not be “praiseworthy.” Nor should he call me to account for “a somewhat unfair attack” upon him, because I did not understand that it was the critic and not the poet whose art he was impugning. My contention is that the two were indissoluble, and this, it appeared to me. Mr. Coventry sought to prove. His premisses were, that Poe's method was fatal to the success of him who would make a perfect lyric; and he tried to prove his theory by stating that Poe relied upon the refrain, the use of which is “bad art,” and upon originality of metre, which usually results in the poem being original in that and nothing else.” These things, and implied “barrenness of invention,” are the conclusions he arrives at as to Poe's poetic theories. To fortify his argument, Mr. Coventry continues: “How few are the lyrics of abiding excellence which make use of the refrain,” thus ignoring or contemning some of the most glorious productions of British poetry, by the Balladists, by Marlowe, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Rossetti and Swinburne.

After accusing Poe of “bad art,” Mr. Coventry, so it appears to me, intimates that poets, being born, need no art, and that “when a perfect thought arises in the brain of genius, it comes “ready dressed in all its singing robes.” Surely the great names he refers to as proof of this theory wrought their immortal works by art. Inspect their manuscripts, revised over and over again, after the words and thoughts had been well weighed before pen was put to paper: Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, to speak only of comparatively modern British bards, are known proofs of this. The greater the poet the greater the artist.

Mr. Coventry's selection of a name to prove the correctness of his argument, “that poets are not always the best judges of poetry,” is most infortuitous. Surely Mr. Swinburne's judgments on “poets and poetry” are amongst the most valuable and most valued specimens of English critical literature. His decisions on such matters are deemed comprehensive, incisive, convincing and final by critics generally. By whom is it to be decided, if not by a poet, that the better poet a man is the better judge is he of poetry? Reference to plays and pictures, or music, does not refute Poe's proposition, for a dramatist, an artist, a musician, must be regarded as a better judge of such productions than a mere outsider. Is a manufacturer, or an agriculturist, to be deemed an unfit adjudicator upon matters appertaining to his occupation?

The remarks of Mr. Wallis scarcely call for comment. The man who terms a youth of twenty-two “an idiot,” unless he can form a ripe judgment upon a subject so abstruse that — as is seen by this correspondence — experienced literati cannot agree about it, is hors de combat, to put it politely. And Mr. Wallis should not attribute remarks to me that were never made by me.

JOHN H. INGRAM.