The
attitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, a
singular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poe
exhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that
he revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country,--a position
in which he deserves much sympathy,--and perhaps this underlies his want
of deep literary identification with the national character in general.
But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could have
been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to do
with a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men in
Paris, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Theophile Gautier, as a sort
of private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem with
the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand,
comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American and
the English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving's
position was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his genius
under other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his native
Hudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and
"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accredited
literary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreign
audience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alone
secures him an important place in our literary history. Particularly
wise and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "English
Writers on America"; and this sentence from it might long have served in
our days of fairer fame as a popular motto: "We have but to live on, and
every day we live a whole volume of refutation.
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