"Criticism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

than those of the ridiculous. We are bidden, in the first place, and
in a tone of sentiment and language adapted to the loftiest breathings
of the Muse, to imagine a race of Fairies in the vicinity of West
Point. We are told, with a grave air, of their camp, of their king,
and especially of their sentry, who is a wood-tick. We are informed
that an Ouphe of about an inch in height has committed a deadly sin in
falling in love with a mortal maiden, who may, very possibly, be six
feet in her stockings. The consequence to the Ouphe is- what? Why,
that he has "dyed his wings," "broken his elfin chain," and
"quenched his flame-wood lamp." And he is therefore sentenced to what?
To catch a spark from the tail of a falling star, and a drop of
water from the belly of a sturgeon. What are his equipments for the
first adventure? An acorn-helmet, a thistle-down plume, a butterfly
cloak, a lady-bug shield, cockle-seed spurs, and a fire-fly horse. How
does he ride to the second? On the back of a bullfrog. What are his
opponents in the one? "Drizzle-mists," "sulphur and smoke," "shadowy
hands and flame-shot tongues." What in the other? "Mailed shrimps,"
"prickly prongs," "blood-red leeches," "jellied quarls," "stony star
fishes," "lancing squabs" and "soldier crabs." Is that all? No-
Although only an inch high he is in imminent danger of seduction
from a "sylphid queen," dressed in a mantle of "rolled purple,"
"tied with threads of dawning gold," "buttoned with a sparkling star,"
and sitting under a rainbow with "beamlet eyes" and a countenance of
"lily roon." In our account of all this matter we have had reference
to the book- and to the book alone. It will be difficult to prove us
guilty in any degree of distortion or exaggeration. Yet such are the
puerilities we daily find ourselves called upon to admire, as among
the loftiest efforts of the human mind, and which not to assign a rank
with the proud trophies of the matured and vigorous genius of England,
is to prove ourselves at once a fool; a maligner, and no patriot.*

* A review of Drake's poems, emanating from one of our proudest
Universities, does not scruple to make use of the following language
in relation to the Culprit Fay. "It is, to say the least, an elegant
production, the purest specimen of Ideality we have ever met with,
sustaining in each incident a most bewitching interest. Its very title
is enough," &c. &c. We quote these expressions as a fair specimen of
the general unphilosophical and adulatory tenor of our criticism.

As an instance of what may be termed the sublimely ridiculous we
quote the following lines-

With sweeping tail and quivering fin,
Through the wave the sturgeon flew,
And like the heaven-shot javelin,
He sprung above the waters blue.

Instant as the star-fall light,
He plunged into the deep again,
But left an arch of silver bright