Poe has been studied as an effect, the effect of unfortunate inheritance, of cramping poverty, of uncongenial environment. But let us study him as a cause. A voice is studied backward from its reach and resonance. A projectile force is studied not merely in its constituents but by its power to project. "By their fruits ye shall know them," not by their roots. Doctor Samuel Johnson once said that he never knew that he had succeeded "until he felt the rebound." We have tried to estimate, though very cursorily, the rebound of Poe's effort. Ben Jonson phrased it better still: "Men, and almost all sorts of creatures, have their reputation by distance; rivers, the farther they run and the more from their spring, the broader they are, and the greater." Poe has traveled far from his spring. Are we wrong in approaching the study of him with at least the provisional supposition that there is a certain breadth, even a certain greatness in him?
