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.
in his "Advertisements from Parnassus," tells us that Zoilus once presented
Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book: —whereupon the
god asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only busied
himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of
unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff for his reward.
Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the critics-but I am by no
Ineans sure that the god was in the right. I am by no means certain that the
true limits of the critical duty are not grossly misunderstood. Excellence, in
a poem especially, may be considered in the light of an axiom, which need
only be properly put, to become self-evident. It is not excellence if it require
to be demonstrated as such: —and thus, to point out too particularly the merits
of a work of Art, is to admit that they are not merits altogether.
Among the "Melodies" of Thomas Moore, is one whose distinguished
character as a poem proper, seems to have been singularly left out of view.
I allude to his lines beginning —" Come, rest in this bosom." The intense
energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in Byron. There are
two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all
of the divine passion of Love —a sentiment which, perhaps, has found its
echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any other single
sentiment ever embodied in words:
Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;
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