Only
one American author of the first rank could possibly, at a superficial
glance, appear--not so much English as--European, cosmopolitan. I mean,
of course, Edgar Allan Poe, who has left perhaps a deeper impress upon
literature outside the English-speaking countries than any other
imaginative writer of the century, with the exception of Byron. Poe was
a born idealist, a creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry or
fiction, he was always solving problems; and it is hard to be
distinctively national in an exercise of pure intelligence. We do not
look for local colour in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid.
But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a characteristically American
type. He was the Edison of romance.[N] As for the other great writers of
America, what can be more patent than their Americanism? Speaking only,
for the present, of those who have joined the majority, I would name two
who seem to me to stand with Poe in the very front rank of original
genius. They are Emerson, that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serener
ether than ours, which, though we may never attain, it is yet a
refreshment to look up to; and Hawthorne, not perhaps the greatest
romancer in the English tongue, but certainly the purest artist in that
sphere of fiction.
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