The poetical works of Edgar Allan Poe, with original memoir. Illustrated by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A., John Tenniel, Birket Foster, Felix Darlay [and others]

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.
Her woman's heart gave way!But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway i
In this composition we find it difficult to recognise the Willis who
has written so many mere "verses of society." The lines are not only
richly ideal, but full of energy; while they breathe an earnestnessan evident sincerity of sentiment-for which we look in vain throughout all
the other works of this author.
While the epic mania-while the idea that, to merit in poetry, prolixity
is indispensable —has, for some years past, been gradually dying out of the
public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity-we find it succeeded by a
heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief
period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the
corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined.
I allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed, tacitly and
avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is
Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral
is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially
have patronized this happy idea; and we Bostonians, very especially, have
developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to write a
poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to have been
our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true Poetic
dignity and force:-but the simple fact is, that, would we but permit our223