Accused of ‘mangling by wholesale,’ Poe denied the charge, declaring that among the many critiques he had written during a given period of ten years not one was ‘wholly fault-finding or wholly in approbation.’ And he maintained that to every opinion expressed he had attempted to give weight ‘by something that bore the semblance of a reason.’ Is there another writer in the land who ‘can of his own criticisms conscientiously say the same’? Poe prided himself on an honesty of motive such as animated Wilson and Macaulay. He denied that his course was unpopular, pointing to the fact that during his editorship of the ‘Messenger’ and ‘Graham’s’ the circulation of the one had risen from seven hundred to five thousand, and of the other ‘from five to fifty-two thousand subscribers.’ ‘Even the manifest injustice of a Gifford is, I grieve to say, an exceedingly popular thing.’[28] Poe’s critical writings take the form of reviews of books (‘Longfellow’s Ballads,’ ‘Moore’s “Alciphron,”’ ‘Horne’s “Orion,”’ ‘Miss Barrett’s “A Drama of Exile,”’ ‘Hawthorne’s Tales,’ etc.), polemical writings (‘A Reply to “Outis”’), essays on the theory of literary art (‘The Poetic Principle,’ ‘The Rationale of Verse’), brief notes (‘Marginalia’), and short and snappy articles on contemporary writers (‘The Literati’). His theory of literary art may be studied in the lecture entitled ‘The Poetic Principle,’ where he maintains that there is no such thing as a long poem, the very phrase being ‘a contradiction of terms.’ A poem deserves its title ‘only inasmuch as it excites by elevating the soul.’ This excitement is transient. When it ceases, that which is written ceases to be poetical. Poe even sets the precise limit of the excitement--‘half an hour at the very utmost.’ He then attacks ‘the heresy of The Didactic,’ protesting against the doctrine that every poem should contain a moral and the poetical merit estimated by the moral. ‘The incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may be introduced into a poem with advantage, but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.’ Poe then proceeds to his definition of the ‘poetry of words,’ which is, he says, ‘_The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty_.’ Its sole arbiter is Taste. ‘With the Intellect, or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.’ In his concrete criticism Poe never hesitated to prophesy. ‘I most heartily congratulate you upon having accomplished a work which will _live_,’ he wrote to Mrs. E. A. Lewis. Of some poem of Longfellow’s he said that it would ‘not live.’ Possibly he was right in both cases, but how could he know? Here is shown the weakness of Poe’s critical temper. He affirmed positively that which cannot positively be affirmed.