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.
Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of
metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to
be wisely rejected-is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly
who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute
essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the
great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it strugglesthe creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime
end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, with a
shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot
have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that
in the Union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the
widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers
had advantages which we do not possess-and Thomas Moore, singing his
own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.
To recapitulate, then;-I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as
lThe Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the
Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless
incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.
A few words, however, in explanation.:That pleasure which is at once
the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I
maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation
of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or
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