Text: John R. Thompson, “Editor's Table,” Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, VA), vol. XIX, no. 3, March 1853, pp. 184-185

[page 184, column 2, continued:]

A charge of plagiarism has recently been brought by a correspondent of the London The rose from off her heaving breast she to the Minstrels Spectator, against the late Edgar A. Poe throws. “Ye have seduced my people-my wife ye now engage?” The King exclaims in fury, trembling with maddened rage; He throws his sword, and gleaming it pierces the youth's side: Then ceased the golden music, and gushed life's crimson tide. The listening crowds are scattered, as by a whirlwind's blast: whose exquisite poem “To One in Paradise” is alleged to have been stolen from Tennyson. The writer says, “I have had in my possession for some years, a manuscript poem which I believe, on good authority, to be the composition of the present Laureate, and which certainly bears a remarkable resemblance to the American poem.” Here it is as he gives it.

Poe's verses, which doubtless many of our readers can repeat from memory, are as follows —

There can be no doubt whatever that these two poems are the same. The resemblance is too close to be explicable on any other supposition than that of a common original. But what evidence have we in support of the allegation that Poe's version was the copy? A writer, whose initials only are given — “G. B. D.” — tells us that he has had in his possession for years this manuscript poem, which he believes to be Tennyson's. He does not state that Tennyson has ever laid claim to it, or admitted the authorship of it to any one. But he believes upon “good authority” that Tennyson wrote it. Now where the best authority can be obtained, none other is held ‘good.’ The Laureate is on the spot — at least, he is quietly domesticated at Twickenham, but a few miles from London, and could be consulted at any hour of the day. Why did not “G. B. D.” take the trouble to learn the facts of the case, before he brought his charge of plagiarism against the dead poet?

For ourselves, we give no sort of credit to this charge. If, indeed, it were true, why was not the poem included by Mr. Tennyson in the published collections of his writings? [column 2:] In either version, it is worth some dozen of the ‘airy, fairy Lilians,’ which grace (or disgrace) the Laureate's volumes, and the Laureate has judgment enough to know this.

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We had written so far with regard to “G. B. D.” when the Literary World came to us with a letter from Tennyson himself (taken from a later number of the Spectator,) in which he disavows the authorship of the verses attributed to him, and adds that they bear internal evidence of being only the first draught of the Poe version. We do not withdraw our ‘item’ in consequence of the Laureate's letter, because we think our readers will derive a certain interest from com- paring the rough original of a poet's conception with the finished form in which he gives it to the world, and because the poem itself is striking and brilliant enough to be reproduced with pleasure to every lover of the beautiful.