Life & Wisdom Quote by Edgar Allan Poe

Praise, in Poe's hands, is never just kindness; it's power with a velvet glove. "The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire" frames criticism not as a guillotine but as oxygen: the poet already has heat, but it takes an outside hand to turn private spark into public flame. The verb "fann'd" is doing sly work. It suggests proximity and risk - the critic must get close enough to the fire to feed it, and could just as easily smother it. Poe, a professional reviewer as much as a poet, is quietly staking a claim for criticism as an art that shapes art.

Then comes the sharper pivot: "taught the world with reason to admire". Admiration isn't presented as spontaneous feeling; it's instructed, rationalized, almost litigated. That word "reason" signals Poe's preferred aesthetic posture: emotion needs architecture. He's flattering the critic, yes, but also disciplining the audience. The public's taste is not sovereign; it's educable, correctable, and in need of a translator between genius and reception.

The subtext is partly autobiographical. Poe lived at the mercy of reviewers and editors, in a literary economy where reputation could be made or mauled in print. He also wrote criticism that blended close reading with showmanship and score-settling. So the line doubles as an idealized self-portrait: the critic as fair-minded midwife to beauty, not a gatekeeping scold. It's aspirational - and faintly defensive - a bid to dignify a role that, in Poe's era, was often accused of parasitism.