There is as fine and as true
literature in Poe's Tales as in Milton's epics; only the elevation
and dimensions differ. But I would rather live in a world that
possessed only literature of the Poe caliber, than shiver in one
echoing solely the strains of the Miltonian muse. Mere human
beings are not constructed to stand all day a-tiptoe on the misty
mountain tops; they like to walk the streets most of the time and
sit in easy chairs. And writings that picture the human mind and
nature, in true colors and in artistic proportions, are literature,
and nobody has any business to pooh-pooh them. In fact, I feel as
if I were knocking down a man of straw. I look in vain for any
genuine resistance. Of course "The Gold Bug" is literature; of
course any other story of mystery and puzzle is also literature,
provided it is as good as "The Gold Bug,"--or I will say, since
that standard has never since been quite attained, provided it is a
half or a tenth as good. It is goldsmith's work; it is Chinese
carving; it is Daedalian; it is fine. It is the product of the
ingenuity lobe of the human brain working and expatiating in
freedom.
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