notoriety if not of merit. And certainly it is not without a peculiar
and fantastic excellence in the execution, while the conception is
highly striking and poetic. This much notice seems due to a poem which
created such a sensation in the author's country. To us it seems by
no means the best of Poe's productions; we much prefer, for instance,
this touching allegory, which was originally embodied in one of his
wildest tales, _The Haunted Palace_. In the very same volume with this
are some verses that Poe wrote when a boy, and some that a boy might
be ashamed of writing. Indeed the secret of rejection seems to be
little known to Transatlantic bards. The rigidness of self-criticism
which led Tennyson to ignore and annihilate, so far as in him lay,
full one half of his earlier productions, would hardly be understood
by them. This is particularly unlucky in the case of Poe, whose rhymes
sometimes run fairly away with him, till no purpose or meaning is
traceable amid a jingle of uncommon and fine-sounding words....

"Though Poe was a Southerner, his poetry has nothing in it suggestive
of his peculiar locality. It is somewhat remarkable that the
slave-holding, which has tried almost all other means of excusing or
justifying itself before the world, did not think of 'keeping a poet,'
and engaging the destitute author from its own territory to sing the
praises of 'the patriarchal institution.' And it would have been
a fair provocation that the Abolitionists had their poet already.
Indeed several of the northern poets have touched upon this subject;
Longfellow, in particular, has published a series of spirited
and touching anti-slavery poems; but the man who has made it his
_specialité_ is JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, a Quaker, literary editor of
the _National Era_, an Abolition and ultra-Radical paper, which, in
manful despite of Judge Lynch, is published at Washington, between the
slave-pens and the capitol. His verses are certainly obnoxious to the