SOURCE: "Our Contributors—Fitz-Greene Halleck," in The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, VoL XI, edited by James A. Harrison, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1902, pp. 190-204.

[In the following excerpt from an article on Halleck originally published in 1843, Poe takes issue with comments by William Cullen Bryant concerning versification and Halleck's

Engraving of Halleck; from a miniature painted about 1820.

No name in the American poetical world is more firmly established than that of Fitz-Greene Halleck, and yet few of our poets—none, indeed, of eminence—have accomplished less, if we regard the quantity without the quality of his compositions. That he has written so little becomes thus proof positive that he has written that little well.…

We cannot better preface what we have to say, critically, of Mr. Halleck, than by quoting what has been said of him by his...