The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe (Volume 7); Criticism (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Magazine-Writing?" Peter Snook" N a late number of the Democratic Review, there appeared a very excellent paper by Mr. Duyckinck on the subject of Magazine Literature, a subject much less thoroughly comprehended here than either in France or in England. In America, we compose, now and then, agreeable essays and other matters of that character, but we have not yet caught the true magazine spirit, ?a thing neither to be defined nor described. Mr. Duyckinck's article, although piquant, is not altogether to our mind. We think he places too low an estimate on the capability of the magazine paper. He is inclined to undervalue its power, to limit unnecessarily its province, which is illimitable. In fact, it is in the extent of subject, and not less in the extent or variety of tone, that the French and English surpass us to so good a purpose. How very rarely are we struck with an Americanmagazine article as with an absolute novelty; how frequently the foreign articles so affect us! We are so circumstanced as to be unable to pay for elaborate compositions; and, after all, the true invention is elaborate. There is no greater mistake than the suposition that a true originality is a mere matter of impulse or inspiration. To originate is carefully, patiently, and understandingly to combine. The few American magazinists who ever think of this elaboration at all cannot afford to carry it into practice for the paltry prices offered them by our periodical publishers. For this and other glaring reasons, we are behind the age in a very important branch of literature, a branch which, moreover, is daily growing in importance, and which, in the end (not far distant), will be the most influential of all the departments of letters. We are lamentably deficient, not only in invention proper, but ...