Poems and essays of Edgar Allan Poe Author:Edgar Allan Poe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EDGAR A. FOE.' BY JAMES BUSSELL LOWELL Tmi situation of American literature is anomalous. It has no centre, or, if it hare, it is like that of the sphere o... more »f Hermes It is divided into many ystems, each revolving round its several sun, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and water way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not a great central heart, from which life and vigor radiate to the extremities, but resembles more an isolated umbilicus, stack down as near as may be to the centre of the land, and seeming rather to tell a legend of former usefulness than to serve any present need. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, each has its literature almost more distinct than those of the different dialects of Germany; and the Young Qneen of the West has also one of her own, of which some articulate rumor barely has reached us dwellers by the Atlantic. Perhaps there is no task more 'difficult than the just criticism of cotcmpo- rary literature. It is even more grateful to give praise where it is needed than where it is deserved, and friendship so often sednces the iron stylus ni justice into a vngne flourish, that she writes what seems rather like an epitaph than a criticism. Yet if praise be given as an alms, we could not dror o poisonous a one into any man's hat. The critic's ink may suffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or of sugar. But it is easier to be generous than to be just, and we might readily put faith in that fabulous direction to the hiding-place of truth, did we jndge from the amount of wa ter which we usually find mixed with it. Remurkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life of imnginative men, but Mr. Poe's biography displays a vicissitnde and peculiarity of interest sach as is rarely met with. Th...« less