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Poe claims our attention as a critic, a poet, and a story-writer. His critical work, while sometimes acute and discriminating, especially when he deals with the technicalities of composition, is, on the whole, of passing rather than of lasting importance, and adds but little to his permanent reputation. He had not, as Lowell had, the breadth of view and the solid basis of scholarship which are such important elements in any enduring work of criticism. …

…if we believe that the spiritual and moral are vital elements in the greatest art, if we think that conscience and truth and duty have their place in its temple, we are forced to conclude that the limitations of Poe's own nature, the painful inadequacy of the man himself, have left ineffaceable marks upon the quality and character of his work, and prevented it from reaching an excellence to which it might otherwise have attained.