just as Poe ceased to be able to
enjoy it, the prestige of this remarkable poet might have been
successfully annihilated.

Nor was it only the synod of Boston wits who issued the edict that he
should be ignored, but in England also many good judges of literature,
especially those who belonged to the intellectual rather than the
artistic class, could not away with him. I recollect hearing Leslie
Stephen say, now nearly thirty years ago, that to employ strong terms of
praise for Poe was "simply preposterous." And one whom I admire so
implicitly that I will not mention his name in a context which is not
favourable to his judgment, wrote (in his haste) of Poe's "singularly
valueless verses."

This opposition, modified, it is true, by the very different attitude
adopted by Tennyson and most subsequent English poets, as well as by
Baudelaire, Mallarme and the whole younger school in France, was
obstinately preserved, and has not wholly subsided. It would be a
tactical mistake for those who wish to insist on Poe's supremacy in his
own line to ignore the serious resistance which has been made to it. In
the canonisation-trial of this whimsical saint, the Devil's advocates,
it may be confessed, are many, and their objections are imposing. It is
possible that local pique and a horror of certain crude surroundings may
have had something to do with the original want of recognition in New
England, but such sources of prejudice would be ephemeral. There
remained, and has continued to remain, in the very essence of Poe's
poetry, something which a great many sincere and penetrating lovers of
verse cannot endure to admit as a dominant characteristic of the art.

To recognise the nature of this quality is to take the first step
towards discovering the actual essence of Poe's genius. His detractors
have said that his verses are "singularly valueless." It is therefore
necessary to define what it is they mean by "value." If they mean an
inculcation, in beautiful forms, of moral truth; if they mean a
succession of ideas, clothed in exalted and yet definite language; if
they are thinking of what stirs the heart in reading parts of _Hamlet_
and _Comus_, of what keeps the pulse vibrating after the "Ode to Duty"
has been recited; then the verses of Poe are indeed without value. A
poet less gnomic than Poe, one from whom less, as they say in the
suburbs, "can be learned," is scarcely to be found in the whole range of
literature. His lack of cu