Poe that had been heard from England. And, to the last, Swinburne was always ready to take up the cudgels for the American poet and to give a reason for his championship. "Once as yet, and once only," he wrote,[1] "has there sounded out of it all [American literature] one pure note of original song—worth singing, and echoed from the singing of no other man; a note of song neither wide nor deep, but utterly true, rich, clear, and native to the singer; the short, exquisite music, subtle and simple and somber and sweet, of Edgar Poe." According to Swinburne, the comparison of Poe with Hawthorne is the comparison of the complete with the half man of genius. "I was nearly tempted the other day," he declares,[2] "to write a rapid parallel or contrast between Hawthorne—the half man of genius who never could carry out an idea or work it through to the full result—and Poe, the complete man of genius (however flawed and clouded at times) who always worked out his ideas thoroughly, and made something solid, rounded, and durable of them—not a mist wreath or a waterfall."
In a later letter to Edmund Clarence Stedman, Swinburne refuses to put Thanatopsis or The Commemoration Ode in quite the same class with Poe's verse, and gives his reasons. "I believe you know my theory," he says, "that nothing which can possibly be as well said in prose ought ever to be said in verse." August meditation and grave patriotic feeling are good in their way, he contends, but it is not the way of song. "I must say that while I appreciate (I hope)
