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[page 335, column 2, continued:]
POE AND HAZLITT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:
SIR: Prof James Albert Harrison, in his “Life of Poe” (p. 86), quotes from an article by T. H. Gibson, in Harper's Magazine, November, 1867, the following:
The first conversation I had with Poe after we became installed as room-mates [at West Point, 1830], was characteristic of the man. A volume of Campbell's Poems was lying upon our table, and he tossed it contemptuously aside, wit! the curt remark: “Campbell is a plagiarist’‘; then, without waiting for a reply, he picked up the book, and turned the leaves over rapidly until he found the passage he was looking for.
“There,” said he, “is a line more often quoted than any other passage of his: ‘Like angel visits, few and far between,’ and he stole it bodily from Blair's ‘Grave.’ Not satisfied with the theft, he has spoiled it in the effort to disguise it. Blair wrote: ‘Like angel visits short and far between.’ Campbell's ‘Few and far between’ is mere tautology.”
This may have been “characteristic of the man,” but the criticism was not original with Poe, In Hazlitt's ‘”’English Poets” (1818) occurs the following (Bohn Library Edition, p. 199): “His [Campbell's] fine things are,
Like angels’ visits, few, and far between.”
A footnote by Hazlitt adds:
There is the same idea in Blair's “Grave”:
Its visits,
Like those of angels, short, and far between.
Mr. Campbell, in altering the expression, has spoiled it. “Few” and “far between” are the same thing.
And the editor comments: “Campbell never forgave the author this exposure of his plagiarism.”
Perhaps Poe had not read Hazlitt's essay, but the chances are against this supposition, for Hazlitt's temperament would have been especially congenial to the author of “The Raven”: both were brilliant and misanthropic, both possessed extraordinary insight, but lacked system, and were impatient of restraint. Add the fact that Hazlitt's volume had been in print twelve years, and it becomes extremely probable that the American was himself guilty of plagiarism in this instance — the more so since the [column 3:] charge has been proved against him in other instances. Hazlitt's light has illumined many a thankless follower, though it is good to remember that at least one appreciator, Robert Louis Stevenson, generously expressed his indebtedness in the words: “We are mighty fine fellows, but we can’t write like William Hazlitt.”
HARRY T. BAKER.
Beloit College, Beloit, Wis., September 22.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - AM, 1908] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Poe and Hazlitt (H. T. Baker, 1908)