Review of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Knickerbocker Magazine, vol. 35 (February 1850), pp. 163-4

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe: with Notices of his Life and Genius. By N. P. Willis, James Russell Lowell, and Rufus W. Griswold. In two volumes, pp. 978. New-York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall.

The intellectual character of the late Mr. Poe may now be examined, and its qualities decided upon, without any of those disadvantages which his personal conduct constantly presented as barriers to the fair appreciation of his genius. In his habits he was very much like Richard Savage, as that author is presented to us in the pages of Johnson, but he had few of the apologies which could be urged by the English vagabond. He was, we have been led to believe, notwithstanding Mr. Willis's elaborate vindication of him, mainly destitute of moral or religious principle: certain it is, that the most careful student of his works will search in them vainly for elevated and generous sentiment. But very few of our American authors have possessed more of the creative energy or of the constructive faculty; and the remarkable ingenuity, compactness and simplicity with which he wrought out the gloomy forms of his imagination; the distinctness, completeness and force of his metaphysical analyses and illustrations; and the general careful and artist-like finish of his productions, may secure for them an enduring and not unenviable fame.

Although he possessed a vivid imagination, and was in many instances a creator in literature, he was quite as frequently a plagiarist, of both thoughts and forms. The story of 'The Pit and the Pendulum," in the first of the volumes before us, for instance, is a daring theft and combination of two tales; one in Blackwood, under the title of 'Vivenzio, or Italian Vengeance,' and the other, a tragic scene by the German, Hoffmann. From the Blackwood writer Mr. Poe took the gradually decreasing dungeon, and from Hoffman, the Pendulum, pointed with an instrument of torture. This machinery constitutes his whole nouvelette. His charge of plagiarism against Professor Longfellow, we happen to know, was so false that the plagiarism was on the other side. Of his 'Marginalia' many of the best paragraphs were borrowed, with scarcely the change of a syllable. Mr. Poe's best works are those tales, so minute in detail, and vraisemblant in action, as to have been often supposed to be narratives of real experience. Of these 'The Mystery of Mary Roget,' 'Mr. Valdemar's Case,' 'Descent into the Maëlstrom,' and 'The Purloined Letter,' are examples. His poems are commonly highly imaginative, and illustrative of a profound and intellectual melancholy. His criticisms are acute and ingenious, in some respects; but for the most part are carping, and entirely worthless, for any judgments they embrace of books or authors; he was so much the creature of kindly or malicious prejudice, or so incapable of going beyond the range of the grammarian. The volumes are handsomely printed, and embellished with an excellent portrait of the author.