Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[209] he shows his weakness; his attempts at profundity are as unsuccessful as they are rare; where there is the greatest display of philosophic form he is often most trivial, whereas Hawthorne is usually profoundest when he has disarmed you by his simplicity. The truth is, that Poe lavished on things comparatively superficial those great intellectual resources which Hawthorne reverently husbanded and used. That there is something behind even genius to make or mar it, this is the lesson of the two lives.

Poe makes one of his heroes define another as “the monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius.” It is in the malice and fury of his critical work that his own low moral tone betrays itself. No atmosphere can be more belittling than that of his New York Literati: it is a mass of vehement dogmatism and petty personalities; opinions warped by private feeling, and varying from page to page. He seemed to have absolutely no fixed standard of critical judgment. There was, indeed, little unbiased criticism anywhere in America during those acrimonious days, when the most honorable head might be covered with insult or neglect, while any young poetess