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Page 7
By the time we had smoked out a cigar apiece, we were exchanging views
and comments on such writers, English and American, as came to mind. One
of the books that lay on my table was a copy of Byron; though most of
the others were the works of American authors--Hawthorne, Irving,
Longfellow, Poe, and one or two others. He had picked up my Byron, and
glancing at it had remarked that if all the poets were like Byron he
would devote more time than he did to the reading of verse. I recall a
remark that, with Byron's personality in mind, he made as he returned
the book to the table. "Poor fellow!" he said. "But what are we to
expect of a man who had a volcano for a mother, and an iceberg for a
wife? A woman's character is largely formed by the quality of men that
enter into her life; a man's, even more so by the quality of women that
enter into his. I wonder if Byron ever intimately knew a true woman?--a
woman at once intellectually and morally normal, in a good wholesome
way--a woman with a good brain and a warm heart? No man, in my opinion,
is a really good man save through the influence of good women."
It is impossible for me to recall much of what he said of the American
authors of whom we talked, with the exception of Poe; and there are
reasons why I should clearly remember in substance, and almost in words,
everything that was said of him. Of all writers, with one exception, Poe
interests me the most; and I judge that in interest, both as a
personality and as a literary artist, Doctor Bainbridge placed Edgar
Allan Poe first and uppermost among those who have left to the world a
legacy of English verse or prose. And this feeling was, I truly believe,
in no measure influenced by Poe's nationality. If Bainbridge possessed
any narrow national prejudices I never learned of them.
He spoke rapturously of Poe as a poet--"The Raven," as a matter of
course, receiving high praise: Of that unique and really grand poem, he
said that he thought it the best in the English language.
It was at this point in our conversation that he told me he rarely read
verse; that he had, with certain exceptions, never done so with much
pleasure, but that in some way he had managed to read nearly all the
noted poetry published in our language. Still, he said, there were poems
which absorbed and almost fascinated him. Of the English poets of the
present century, Byron alone had written enough poetry to prove himself
a poet; and he explained that in his opinion the writing of an
occasional or chance poem, though the poem were true poetry, did not
make of the author a poet. Then he mentioned a poem which for more than
a century has been by the critical world accepted as of the highest
order of true poetry. Gradually warming to the subject, he said:
"A poem like this is not to my mind poetry. Byron wrote true poetry, and
sufficient of it in his short life to prove himself ten times over a
poet. To compare this poem with Byron's poetry--say with parts of
'Childe Harold,' or 'The Prisoner of Chillon,' or with some of his
shorter poems--would be like comparing the most perfect mechanical
device with a graceful animal--say the mechanical imitation of a tiger
or a gazelle with the living original; the first a wonderfully moving
piece of machinery, illustrating the limit of human constructive power;
perfectly under control, the movements smooth, unvarying, rhythmical,
charming, excelling in agility and power its living prototype--but
still, scientific--to the discerning eye, artful. The other, something
more than rhythmical, more than smooth, beyond the control of human
agency, beyond the power of man to analyze as to synthetize--more than
science can explain, more than even art dare claim. The one explicable,
the other inexplicable; the one from the hand of patient skill--of
talent; the other a result of force mysterious, divine. The lions of
Alexius Comnenus, it is said, could roar louder than the lions of the
desert."
"But what of Poe, and 'The Raven?'" I asked.
"The surprising thing about 'The Raven' is," he said, "and I assert only
what I believe to be from internal evidence demonstrable--first, that
the poem arose out of a true poetic impulse of the soul; and, second,
that it discloses the very highest art possible to a writer. Now I truly
believe that the first writing of 'The Raven'--and, too, the stanzas
were probably not first written in their present published
order--conveyed Poe's poetic sense just as completely as the published
poem now does. But this was not sufficient for Edgar Allan Poe--for the
scientific man, the artful man, the poetic genius with a genius for
concentrated mental toil in the effort to attain literary perfection.
This makes 'The Raven' a curiosity in true poetic expression."
"Then you believe," I said, "that both the state of feeling from which
true poetry arises, and the particular words by which the feeling is
conveyed, are inspired."
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