“The Confessions of a Poet made much noise in the literary world, and no little curiosity was excited in regard to its author, who was generally supposed to be John Neal....  The ‘Confessions,’ however, far surpassed any production of Mr. Neal’s.... He has done nothing which, as a whole, is even respectable, and ‘The Confessions’ are quite remarkable for their artistic unity and perfection.  But on higher regards they are to be commended. I do not think, indeed, that a better book of its kind has been written in America....Its scenes of passion are intensely wrought, its incidents are striking and original, its sentiments audacious and suggestive at least, if not at all times tenable.  In a word, it is that rare thing, a fiction of power without rudeness.”

I will adduce another example of the same kind.  In a notice of the “Democratic Review,” for September, 1845, Mr. Poe remarks of Mr. William A. Jones’s paper on American Humor: 

“There is only one really bad article in the number, and that is insufferable:  nor do we think it the less a nuisance because it inflicts upon ourselves individually a passage of maudlin compliment about our bring a most ‘ingenious critic’ ‘and prose poet,’ with some other things of a similar kind.  We thank for his good word no man who gives palpable evidence, in other cases than our own, of his incapacity to distinguish the false from the true—­the right from the wrong.  If we are an ingenious critic, or a prose poet, it is not because Mr. William Jones says so.  The truth is that this essay on ‘American Humor’ is Contemptible both in a moral and literary sense—­is the composition of an imitator and a quack—­and disgraces the magazine in which it makes its appearance.”—­Broadway Journal, Vol. ii.  No. 11.

In the following week he reconsidered this matter, opening his paper for a defense of Mr. Jones; but at the close of it said—­

“If we have done Mr. Jones injustice, we beg his pardon:  but we do not think we have.”

Yet in a subsequent article in “Graham’s Magazine,” on “Critics and Criticism,” he says of Mr. Jones, referring only to writings of his that had been for years before the public when he printed the above paragraphs: 

“Our most analytic, if not altogether our best critic, (Mr. Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) is Mr. William A. Jones, author of ‘The Analyst.’  How he would write elaborate criticisms I cannot say; but his summary judgments of authors are, in general, discriminative and profound.  In fact, his papers on Emerson and on Macaulay, published in ‘Arcturus.’ are better than merely ‘profound,’ if we take the word in its now desecrated sense; for they are at once pointed, lucid, and just:—­as summaries leaving nothing to be desired.”

I will not continue the display of these inconsistencies.  As I have Already intimated, a volume might be filled with passages to show that his criticisms were guided by no sense of duty, and that his opinions were so variable and so liable to be influenced by unworthy considerations as to be really of no value whatever.