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 curiosity about moral ideas is so complete that
evil moves him no more than good. There have been writers of eccentric
or perverse morality who have been so much irritated by the preaching of
virtue that they have lent their genius to the recommendation of vice.
This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is
vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as
innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers