Poe’s lecture on The Universe — New York Tribune review

Poe’s lecture on The Universe — New York Tribune review A contemporary review of the February 3, 1848 lecture. This short notice is distinct from Eureka and does not reproduce the lecture itself. Locally preserved electronic transcription of the cited historical printing. This is not a newspaper-page facsimile. Typography is simplified, and the text has not been independently proofread word by word. ☞ The Lecture of E. A. POE, Esq. on “The Universe,” was not very largely attended, but the intelligence of his auditory compensated for its deficiency in numbers. His remarks on a subject — the contemplation of which is infinite, (a word, as Mr. Poe happily said, used in the effort to express the thought of a thought) were characterized by the strong analytical powers and intense capacity of imagination, which distinguish him, rather than by any shadow of probability, which might assist the soul in its graspings after the unattainable. The substance of Mr. Poe's theory of the Universe, briefly stated, is, that at some inconceivable period of past time, an exertion of the Divine essence created throughout immeasurable space, the systems and clusters of systems which have been revealed to us by Astronomy, yet whose extent we can never measure; that these clustering systems, circling round still grander systems, to an infinite degree, are influenced by a universal tendency to agglomeration, or union in one overwhelming globe; that when, at an inconceivable period in the future this shall take place, each individual soul that inhabits every sun and planet, shall return into the Deity of which it now forms a part, when all matter will disappear and the great drama of the Universe be acted over in some other region of space.