Perhaps the boosting of books into
public regard by the use of great names is a proper and sufficient
subject for attack by ridicule.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
By Edgar Allan Poe.
In speaking of Mr. William Ellery Channing, who has just published a
very neat little volume of poems, we feel the necessity of employing the
indefinite rather than the definite article. He is _a,_ and by no means
_the,_ William Ellery Channing. He is only the _son_* of the great
essayist deceased. . . It may be said in his favor that nobody ever
heard of him. Like an honest woman, he has always succeeded in keeping
himself from being made the subject of gossip. His book contains about
sixty-three things, which he calls poems, and which he no doubt
seriously supposes to be such. They are full of all kinds of mistakes,
of which the most important is that of their having been printed at all.
They are not precisely English---nor will we insult a great
nation by calling them Kickapoo; perhaps they are Channingese.
We may convey some general idea of them by two foreign terms not in
common use---the Italian _pavoneggiarsi,_ "to strut like a peacock,"
and the German word for "sky-rocketing," _Schwarmerei_.
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