Among Poe's greatnesses was his ability as an editor to recognize great literature and to dismiss insignificant works. For example, Poe was the first major, or influential, writer to recognize the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, Poe says that "Mr. Hawthorne is scarcely recognized by the press or by the public . . . yet . . . he evinces extraordinary genius, having no rival either in America or elsewhere." This critical recognition of Hawthorne, therefore, attests to Poe's keen critical faculties; few critics have made such wholly accurate summations about a writer's talent which subsequent generations of critics have verified.
In Poe's review of Twice-Told Tales and in his two main essays on criticism, "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," we have access to Poe's critical statements — stated, restated, emphasized, and applied to his own works ("The Philosophy of Composition," for example, deals in detail with his methodology of composing his most famous poem, "The Raven"), and not only does he apply his own principles to his own works but he applies them to the works of other writers for critical evaluations. From these cited works, we can easily compile certain key principles that Poe consistently believed in and used. These include his emphasis on (1) the unity of effect, (2) his rejection of allegory and didacticism, (3) the epic poem's being a non-poem, (4) the brevity of a work of art, (5) the appeal to the emotions, (6) the ideal subject matter for art, and (7) the importance of emotional responses; in addition, each of these separate ideas is closely associated with the others. For example, because Poe put such importance on creating an effect that would appeal to the emotions, he rejected all works of primitive art or works based on a primitive sense of art. Likewise, he believed that didactic writing was for the pulpit and had no place in the realm of artistic creation. Anything that appealed solely to the intellect could not be considered art because art existed in the world of the beautiful, the refined, and the aesthetic. Consequently, Poe, as a Romantic writer, dismissed most of the literary works of the eighteenth century, a period which concerned itself mainly with satire. For Poe, satire could create no sense of the beautiful within the reader. And also, much of eighteenth-century literature is epigrammatic (something short), and Poe believed that the epigrammatic approach to art could not create a lasting emotional impression within the reader. Writings that were moralistic or allegorical were likewise unacceptable to Poe because they failed to appeal to one's sense of beauty.
