Andrew Lang - "Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose"

John Payne - "Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1 3"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Mark"

Benjamin Disraeli - "Sybil, or the Two Nations"

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 5 of the Raven Edition

E >> Edgar Allan Poe >> The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 5 of the Raven Edition




"By all means, sir," replied the Count, drawing up.

"I merely wished to ask you a question," said the Doctor. "You mentioned
the historian's personal correction of traditions respecting his own
epoch. Pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these Kabbala were
usually found to be right?"

"The Kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered to
be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written
histories themselves; -- that is to say, not one individual iota of either
was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and radically
wrong."

"But since it is quite clear," resumed the Doctor, "that at least five
thousand years have elapsed since your entombment, I take it for granted
that your histories at that period, if not your traditions were
sufficiently explicit on that one topic of universal interest, the
Creation, which took place, as I presume you are aware, only about ten
centuries before."

"Sir!" said the Count Allamistakeo.

The Doctor repeated his remarks, but it was only after much additional
explanation that the foreigner could be made to comprehend them. The
latter at length said, hesitatingly:

"The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel. During
my time I never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy as that the
universe (or this world if you will have it so) ever had a beginning at
all. I remember once, and once only, hearing something remotely hinted, by
a man of many speculations, concerning the origin _of the human race;_ and
by this individual, the very word _Adam_ (or Red Earth), which you make
use of, was employed. He employed it, however, in a generical sense, with
reference to the spontaneous germination from rank soil (just as a
thousand of the lower genera of creatures are germinated) -- the
spontaneous germination, I say, of five vast hordes of men, simultaneously
upspringing in five distinct and nearly equal divisions of the globe."

Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or two of
us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. Mr. Silk Buckingham,
first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the sinciput of
Allamistakeo, spoke as follows:

"The long duration of human life in your time, together with the
occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in installments,
must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general development and
conglomeration of knowledge. I presume, therefore, that we are to
attribute the marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in all particulars
of science, when compared with the moderns, and more especially with the
Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the Egyptian skull."

"I confess again," replied the Count, with much suavity, "that I am
somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of science
do you allude?"

Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the
assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.

Having heard us to an end, the Count proceeded to relate a few anecdotes,
which rendered it evident that prototypes of Gall and Spurzheim had
flourished and faded in Egypt so long ago as to have been nearly
forgotten, and that the manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very contemptible
tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles of the Theban
savans, who created lice and a great many other similar things.

I here asked the Count if his people were able to calculate eclipses. He
smiled rather contemptuously, and said they were.

This put me a little out, but I began to make other inquiries in regard to
his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had never as
yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information on this
head, I had better consult Ptolemy (whoever Ptolemy is), as well as one
Plutarch de facie lunae.

I then questioned the Mummy about burning-glasses and lenses, and, in
general, about the manufacture of glass; but I had not made an end of my
queries before the silent member again touched me quietly on the elbow,
and begged me for God's sake to take a peep at Diodorus Siculus. As for
the Count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we moderns
possessed any such microscopes as would enable us to cut cameos in the
style of the Egyptians. While I was thinking how I should answer this
question, little Doctor Ponnonner committed himself in a very
extraordinary way.

"Look at our architecture!" he exclaimed, greatly to the indignation of
both the travellers, who pinched him black and blue to no purpose.

"Look," he cried with enthusiasm, "at the Bowling-Green Fountain in New
York! or if this be too vast a contemplation, regard for a moment the
Capitol at Washington, D. C.!" -- and the good little medical man went on
to detail very minutely, the proportions of the fabric to which he
referred. He explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less
than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten feet apart.

The Count said that he regretted not being able to remember, just at that
moment, the precise dimensions of any one of the principal buildings of
the city of Aznac, whose foundations were laid in the night of Time, but
the ruins of which were still standing, at the epoch of his entombment, in
a vast plain of sand to the westward of Thebes. He recollected, however,
(talking of the porticoes,) that one affixed to an inferior palace in a
kind of suburb called Carnac, consisted of a hundred and forty-four
columns, thirty-seven feet in circumference, and twenty-five feet apart.
The approach to this portico, from the Nile, was through an avenue two
miles long, composed of sphynxes, statues, and obelisks, twenty, sixty,
and a hundred feet in height. The palace itself (as well as he could
remember) was, in one direction, two miles long, and might have been
altogether about seven in circuit. Its walls were richly painted all over,
within and without, with hieroglyphics. He would not pretend to assert
that even fifty or sixty of the Doctor's Capitols might have been built
within these walls, but he was by no means sure that two or three hundred
of them might not have been squeezed in with some trouble. That palace at
Carnac was an insignificant little building after all. He (the Count),
however, could not conscientiously refuse to admit the ingenuity,
magnificence, and superiority of the Fountain at the Bowling Green, as
described by the Doctor. Nothing like it, he was forced to allow, had ever
been seen in Egypt or elsewhere.

I here asked the Count what he had to say to our railroads.

"Nothing," he replied, "in particular." They were rather slight, rather
ill-conceived, and clumsily put together. They could not be compared, of
course, with the vast, level, direct, iron-grooved causeways upon which
the Egyptians conveyed entire temples and solid obelisks of a hundred and
fifty feet in altitude.

I spoke of our gigantic mechanical forces.

He agreed that we knew something in that way, but inquired how I should
have gone to work in getting up the imposts on the lintels of even the
little palace at Carnac.

This question I concluded not to hear, and demanded if he had any idea of
Artesian wells; but he simply raised his eyebrows; while Mr. Gliddon
winked at me very hard and said, in a low tone, that one had been recently
discovered by the engineers employed to bore for water in the Great Oasis.

I then mentioned our steel; but the foreigner elevated his nose, and asked
me if our steel could have executed the sharp carved work seen on the
obelisks, and which was wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper.

This disconcerted us so greatly that we thought it advisable to vary the
attack to Metaphysics. We sent for a copy of a book called the "Dial," and
read out of it a chapter or two about something that is not very clear,
but which the Bostonians call the Great Movement of Progress.

The Count merely said that Great Movements were awfully common things in
his day, and as for Progress, it was at one time quite a nuisance, but it
never progressed.

We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and were at
much trouble in impressing the Count with a due sense of the advantages we
enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king.

He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused.
When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred
something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined
all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of
mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious
constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed
remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing
ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some
fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism
that was ever heard of upon the face of the Earth.

I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant.

As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob.

Not knowing what to say to this, I raised my voice, and deplored the
Egyptian ignorance of steam.

The Count looked at me with much astonishment, but made no answer. The
silent gentleman, however, gave me a violent nudge in the ribs with his
elbows -- told me I had sufficiently exposed myself for once -- and
demanded if I was really such a fool as not to know that the modern
steam-engine is derived from the invention of Hero, through Solomon de
Caus.

We were now in imminent danger of being discomfited; but, as good luck
would have it, Doctor Ponnonner, having rallied, returned to our rescue,
and inquired if the people of Egypt would seriously pretend to rival the
moderns in the all- important particular of dress.

The Count, at this, glanced downward to the straps of his pantaloons, and
then taking hold of the end of one of his coat-tails, held it up close to
his eyes for some minutes. Letting it fall, at last, his mouth extended
itself very gradually from ear to ear; but I do not remember that he said
any thing in the way of reply.

Hereupon we recovered our spirits, and the Doctor, approaching the Mummy
with great dignity, desired it to say candidly, upon its honor as a
gentleman, if the Egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the
manufacture of either Ponnonner's lozenges or Brandreth's pills.

We looked, with profound anxiety, for an answer -- but in vain. It was not
forthcoming. The Egyptian blushed and hung down his head. Never was
triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace.
Indeed, I could not endure the spectacle of the poor Mummy's
mortification. I reached my hat, bowed to him stiffly, and took leave.

Upon getting home I found it past four o'clock, and went immediately to
bed. It is now ten A.M. I have been up since seven, penning these
memoranda for the benefit of my family and of mankind. The former I shall
behold no more. My wife is a shrew. The truth is, I am heartily sick of
this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that
every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be
President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow a cup of
coffee, I shall just step over to Ponnonner's and get embalmed for a
couple of hundred years.

~~~ End of Text ~~~

======

The Poetic Principle

IN speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either
thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the
essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite
for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which
best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most
definite impression. By "minor poems" I mean, of course, poems of little
length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard
to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully,
has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I
hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long
poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch
as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the
ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a
psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would
entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a
composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the
very utmost, it flags -- fails -- a revulsion ensues -- and then the poem
is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.

There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the
critical dictum that the "Paradise Lost" is to be devoutly admired
throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during
perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand.
This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing
sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it
merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity -- its
totality of effect or impression -- we read it (as would be necessary) at
a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement
and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there
follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical prejudgment
can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the work, we read it
again, omitting the first book -- that is to say, commencing with the
second -- we shall be surprised at now finding that admirable which we
before condemned -- that damnable which we had previously so much admired.
It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect
of even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity: -- and this is
precisely the fact.

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very
good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting
the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect
sense of art. The modem epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but
an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic
anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem _were _popular in
reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will
ever be popular again.

That the extent of a poetical work is, _ceteris paribus, _the measure
of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition
sufficiently absurd -- yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly
Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere _size, _abstractly considered
-- there can be nothing in mere _bulk, so _far as a volume is concerned,
which has so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine
pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical
magnitude which it conveys, _does _impress us with a sense of the sublime
-- but no man is impressed after _this _fashion by the material grandeur
of even "The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies have not instructed us to be
so impressed by it. As _yet, _they have not _insisted _on our estimating
Lamar" tine by the cubic foot, or Pollock by the pound -- but what else
are we to _infer _from their continual plating about "sustained effort"?
If, by "sustained effort," any little gentleman has accomplished an epic,
1* us frankly commend him for the effort -- if this indeed be a thing conk
mendable--but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. It
is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer
deciding upon a work of Art rather by the impression it makes -- by the
effect it produces -- than by the time it took to impress the effect, or
by the amount of "sustained effort" which had been found necessary in
effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and
genius quite another -- nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom
confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been
just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being
generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as
truths.

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief.
Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem,
while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a
profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the
stamp upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent
and spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too imponderous to
stamp themselves deeply into the public attention, and thus, as so many
feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the
wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a
poem, in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the following
exquisite little Serenade--

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me -- who knows how? --
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark the silent stream --
The champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on shine,
O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O, press it close to shine again,
Where it will break at last.

Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines--yet no less a poet
than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal
imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by
him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in
the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

One of the finest poems by Willis -- the very best in my opinion which
he has ever written--has no doubt, through this same defect of undue
brevity, been kept back from its proper position. not less in the

The shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight-tide--
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.
Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,
Walk'd spirits at her side.

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,
And Honor charm'd the air;
And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair--
For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true--
For heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to won,
But honor'd well her charms to sell.
If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair --
A slight girl, lily-pale;
And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail--
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn,
And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow
From this world's peace to pray
For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way!--
But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven
By man is cursed alway!

In this composition we find it difficult to recognize the Willis who
has written so many mere "verses of society." The lines are not only
richly ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an
evident sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain throughout all
the other works of this author.

While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity
is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of the
public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded by a
heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the
brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more
in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies
combined. I allude to the heresy of _The Didactic. _It has been assumed,
tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of
all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a morals and
by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We
Americans especially have patronized this happy idea, and we Bostonians
very especially have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads
that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such
to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting
in the true poetic dignity and force:--but the simple fact is that would
we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately
there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor _can _exist any
work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem,
this poem _per se, _this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem
written solely for the poem's sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of
man, I would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of
inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by
dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the
myrtles. All _that _which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all
_that _with which _she _has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a
flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth
we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple,
precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must
be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the
poetical. _He _must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and
chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of
inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of
these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the
obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I
place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the
mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but
from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle
has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues
themselves. Nevertheless we find the _offices _of the trio marked with a
sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth,
so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is regardful
of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and
Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms:
-- waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity -- her
disproportion -- her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the
harmonious -- in a word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a
sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the
manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he exists.
And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in
the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and
sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a duplicate source of de"
light. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing,
with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of
description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and
sentiments which greet _him _in common with all mankind -- he, I say, has
yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the
distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst
unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This
thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and
an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for
the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild
effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of
the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among
the things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness
whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by
Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find
ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina
supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant,
impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at
once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which _through' _the
poem, or _through _the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate
glimpses.

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