"Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 of 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

Having received a classical education in England, he returned home
and entered the University of Virginia, where, after an extravagant
course, followed by reformation at the last extremity, he was
graduated with the highest honors of his class. Then came a boyish
attempt to join the fortunes of the insurgent Greeks, which ended at
St. Petersburg, where he got into difficulties through want of a
passport, from which he was rescued by the American consul and sent
home. He now entered the military academy at West Point, from which
he obtained a dismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his
adopted father, by a second marriage, an event which cut off his
expectations as an heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his
name was not mentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this
regard, and he committed himself at once to authorship for a support.
Previously to this, however, he had published (in 1827) a small
volume of poems, which soon ran through three editions, and excited
high expectations of its author's future distinction in the minds of
many competent judges.

That no certain augury can be drawn from a poet's earliest lispings
there are instances enough to prove. Shakespeare's first poems,
though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness, give but a
very faint promise of the directness, condensation and overflowing
moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however, Shakespeare is hardly a
case in point, his "Venus and Adonis" having been published, we
believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton's Latin verses show
tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of
classic models, .but give no hint of the author of a new style in
poetry. Pope's youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly
unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his
later productions. Collins' callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign
of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We
have never thought that the world lost more in the "marvellous boy,"
Chatterton, than a very ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated
dulness. Where he becomes original (as it is called), the interest of
ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White's promises were
indorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but surely with no
authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditional piety,
which to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less objectionable in
the retired closet of a diary, and in the sober raiment of prose.
They do not clutch hold of the memory with

the drowning pertinacity of Watts; neither have they the interest of
his occasional simple, lucky beauty. Burns having fortunately been
rescued by his humble station from the contaminating society of the
"Best models," wrote well and naturally from the first. Had he been
unfortunate enough to have had an educated taste, we should have had
a series of poems from which, as from his letters, we could sift here
and there a kernel from the mass of chaff. Coleridge's youthful
efforts give no promise whatever of that poetical genius which
produced at once the wildest, tenderest, most original and most