Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex

  post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a

  jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally

  obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This act, however,

  did not prevent young Ellison from entering into possession, on his

  twenty-first birthday, as the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a

  fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars. {*1}

  When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited,

  there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its

  disposal. The magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum

  bewildered all who thought on the topic. The possessor of any

  appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform any

  one of a thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any

  citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme

  excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time -- or busying

  himself with political intrigue -- or aiming at ministerial power --

  or purchasing increase of nobility -- or collecting large museums of

  virtu -- or playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of

  art -- or endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive

  institutions of charity. But for the inconceivable wealth in the

  actual possession of the heir, these objects and all ordinary objects

  were felt to afford too limited a field. Recourse was had to figures,

  and these but sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three

  per cent., the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less

  than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which was

  one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or

  thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one

  thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty

  dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of

  supposition was thoroughly broken up. Men knew not what to imagine.

  There were some who even conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest

  himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly

  superfluous opulence -- enriching whole troops of his relatives by

  division of his superabundance. To the nearest of these he did, in

  fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was his own before the

  inheritance.

  I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up

  his mind on a point which had occasioned so much discussion to his

  friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his decision.

  In regard to individual charities he had satisfied his conscience. In

  the possibility of any improvement, properly so called, being

  effected by man himself in the general condition of man, he had (I am

  sorry to confess it) little faith. Upon the whole, whether happily or

  unhappily, he was thrown back, in very great measure, upon self.

  In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended,

  moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty

  and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole

  proper satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in

  the creation of novel forms of beauty. Some peculiarities, either in

  his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged

  with what is termed materialism all his ethical speculations; and it

  was this bias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the most

  advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate field for the

  poetic exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely

  physical loveliness. Thus it happened he became neither musician nor

  poet -- if we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or

  it might have been that he neglected to become either, merely in

  pursuance of his idea that in contempt of ambition is to be found one

  of the essential principles of happiness on earth. Is it not indeed,

  possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious,

  the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not

  thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly

  remained "mute and inglorious?" I believe that the world has never

  seen -- and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the

  noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never

  see -- that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer

  domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.

  Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more

  profoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other circumstances

  than those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would

  have become a painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously

  poetical was too limited in its extent and consequences, to have

  occupied, at any time, much of his attention. And I have now

  mentioned all the provinces in which the common understanding of the

  poetic sentiment has declared it capable of expatiating. But Ellison

  maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not

  altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably

  neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of

  the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the

  landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of

  opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of

  imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the

  elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the

  most glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and

  multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most

  direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in

  the direction or concentration of this effort -- or, more properly,

  in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth -- he

  perceived that he should be employing the best means -- laboring to

  the greatest advantage -- in the fulfilment, not only of his own

  destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had

  implanted the poetic sentiment in man.

  "Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth." In his

  explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward solving

  what has always seemed to me an enigma: -- I mean the fact (which

  none but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery

  exists in nature as the painter of genius may produce. No such

  paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of

  Claude. In the most enchanting of natural landscapes, there will

  always be found a defect or an excess -- many excesses and defects.

  While the component parts may defy, individually, the highest skill

  of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will always be

  susceptible of improvement. In short, no position can be attained on

  the wide surface of the natural earth, from which an artistical eye,

  looking steadily, will not find matter of offence in what is termed

  the "composition" of the landscape. And yet how unintelligible is


  this! In all other matters we are justly instructed to regard nature

  as supreme. With her details we shrink from competition. Who shall

  presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to improve the

  proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which says, of

  sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or

  idealized rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or

  sculptural combinations of points of human liveliness do more than

  approach the living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the

  principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is

  but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to

  pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. Having, I say,

  felt its truth here; for the feeling is no affectation or chimera.

  The mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations than the

  sentiments of his art yields the artist. He not only believes, but

  positively knows, that such and such apparently arbitrary

  arrangements of matter constitute and alone constitute the true

  beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet been matured into

  expression. It remains for a more profound analysis than the world

  has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he

  is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his

  brethren. Let a "composition" be defective; let an emendation be

  wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be

  submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be

  admitted. And even far more than this: -- in remedy of the defective

  composition, each insulated member of the fraternity would have

  suggested the identical emendation.

  I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature

  susceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her susceptibility of

  improvement at this one point, was a mystery I had been unable to

  solve. My own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the

  primitive intention of nature would have so arranged the earth's

  surface as to have fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection

  in the beautiful, the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this

  primitive intention had been frustrated by the known geological

  disturbances -- disturbances of form and color -- grouping, in the

  correction or allaying of which lies the soul of art. The force of

  this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which it

  involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to

  any purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that they were prognostic

  of death. He thus explained: -- Admit the earthly immortality of man

  to have been the first intention. We have then the primitive

  arrangement of the earth's surface adapted to his blissful estate, as

  not existent but designed. The disturbances were the preparations for

  his subsequently conceived deathful condition.

  "Now," said my friend, "what we regard as exaltation of the landscape

  may be really such, as respects only the moral or human point of

  view. Each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly effect a

  blemish in the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at

  large -- in mass -- from some point distant from the earth's surface,

  although not beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily

  understood that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may

  at the same time injure a general or more distantly observed effect.

  There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to

  humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order -- our

  unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a word, the earth-angels, for whose

  scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose death -- refined

  appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by God the

  wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres."

  In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a

  writer on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well

  treated his theme:

  "There are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the

  natural and the artificial. One seeks to recall the original beauty

  of the country, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery,

  cultivating trees in harmony with the hills or plain of the

  neighboring land; detecting and bringing into practice those nice

  relations of size, proportion, and color which, hid from the common

  observer, are revealed everywhere to the experienced student of

  nature. The result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather

  in the absence of all defects and incongruities -- in the prevalence

  of a healthy harmony and order -- than in the creation of any special

  wonders or miracles. The artificial style has as many varieties as

  there are different tastes to gratify. It has a certain general

  relation to the various styles of building. There are the stately

  avenues and retirements of Versailles; Italian terraces; and a

  various mixed old English style, which bears some relation to the

  domestic Gothic or English Elizabethan architecture. Whatever may be

  said against the abuses of the artificial landscape -- gardening, a

  mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This

  is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show of order and design, and

  partly moral. A terrace, with an old moss -- covered balustrade,

  calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that have passed there in

  other days. The slightest exhibition of art is an evidence of care

  and human interest."

  "From what I have already observed," said Ellison, "you will

  understand that I reject the idea, here expressed, of recalling the

  original beauty of the country. The original beauty is never so great

  as that which may be introduced. Of course, every thing depends on

  the selection of a spot with capabilities. What is said about

  detecting and bringing into practice nice relations of size,

  proportion, and color, is one of those mere vaguenesses of speech

  which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. The phrase quoted may mean

  any thing, or nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result

  of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of

  all defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special

  wonders or miracles, is a proposition better suited to the grovelling

  apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of

  genius. The negative merit suggested appertains to that hobbling

  criticism which, in letters, would elevate Addison into apotheosis.

  In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of