Text: Thomas Dunn English, “Notes about Men of Note,” Aristidean (New York, NY), vol. I, no. 2, April 1845, pp. 153

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EDGAR A. POE, ONE OF THE EDITORS OF THE BROADWAY JOURNAL. He never rests. There is a small steam-engine in his brain, which not only sets the cerebral mass in motion, but keeps the owner in hot water. His face is a fine one, and well gifted with intellectual beauty. Ideality, with the power of analysis, is shown in his very broad, high and massive forehead — a forehead which would have delighted GALL beyond measure. He would have have [[sic]] made a capital lawyer — not a very good advocate, perhaps, but a famous unraveller of all subtleties. He can thread his way through a labyrinth of absurdities, and pick out the sound thread of sense from the tangled skein with which it is connected. He means to be candid, and labours under the strange hallucination that he is so; but he has strong prejudices, and, without the least intention of irreverence, would wage war with the DEITY, if the divine canons militated against his notions. His sarcasm is subtle and searching. He can do nothing in the common way; and buttons his coat after a fashion peculiarly his own. If we ever caught him doing a thing like any body else, or found him reading a book any other way than upside down, we should implore his friends to send for a strait- jacket, and a Bedlam doctor. He were mad, then, to a certainty.

II. RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE, THE AUTHOR OF THE “MOON HOAX.” — He is an abstraction in human dress — an idea in trowsers. There is an absolute atmosphere of dreams about his massive head He moves among cotton-bales, sugar-hogsheads and bipedal donkeys, like air through a crevice, unconsciously. He eats and drinks like other human beings; but he thinks like a god. He is full of strange projects; and successful he can be, in the strangest of them all. He is about to travel North in search of the magnetic centre. We have full faith that we shall see him, two years hence, walking the streets of New York, with a dozen of chips from the north pole in his left coat-skirt pocket. If there are any means of reaching Heaven by air-balloons, he would be the man to effect it. The Christian religion would not last six months. He would organize a company to carry the whole world to Heaven at sixpence a-head — children half-price, and black women to tend the babies, gratis.

III. N. P. WILLIS, ONE OF THE EDITORS OF THE EVENING MIRROR. — He is possessed of two devils. One is the devil of the writer, who is a freakish spirit, and cuts up strange capers with the pen, leaping about like an incarnate Bedlam, and vexing the ghost of LINDLEY MURRAY, with strange, and 'til now unheard-of combinations of words. It is a pleasant demon withal; and while it always amuses, sometimes throws instruction around — wheat grains remaining when the wind of criticism has blown the chaff about, and blinded the critic in his right eye. The other is the devil of the man, that has many angel-points about him — a manly, sincere devil, with a kind glance of a blue eye, and a warm shake of the hand, and a cry of — ”How are you, my dear fellow?” You wonder how these two devils can exist together — it is a psychological curiosity — a subject for hand-lifting and grievous astonishment. Before you know him you would not make his acquaintance for the [page 154:] world: — when you know him you would not lose his friendship for a dozen of worlds.

IV. GEORGE P. MORRIS, THE AUTHOR OF “SONGS,” ETC. — He naturally follows the other, whom he loves — and he loses no affection. He is just the man whom, if you would meet in the street and did not know, you would ask for the use of his umbrella. You would be shocked if he refused, though the rain poured in a torrent, and he were going in a different direction. When he married, doubtless, he never asked the lady to be his. He gave himself to her, because in the fulness of his heart he could not help it. If he ever goes to HADES, it will be from a charitable feeling towards the DEVIL, who lacks good fellows in the infernal regions. He seems to regret that he has not the United States for one big house; and a large “Mammoth Cave” underneath for a wine-cellar, that he might invite the whole world to “eat, drink, and be merry.” He has written a great deal of nonsense; but it is an undeniable fact that some of his songs are the sweetest in the language, and linger on the ear like the last echo of the last tone of a distant bell. Long life to the “Brigadier”! May he and “ mi- boy” die together, in the year 2845; and be billetted in a snug little room in ELYSIUM, with plenty of cigars, mint-juleps, with fresh straws in the tumbler, and daily numbers of the “ Celestial Gazette.”

V. HORACE GREELEY, THE EDITOR OF THE TRIBUNE. — He might stand for a painter, who desired to represent sin. He is as ugly as sin, that is, as sin is, not as she appears — as untiring as sin — and as energetic as sin; but rather more honest. He always means to be night; always conceives he is in the right; but, by some means, in nine cases out of ten, is in the wrong. He walks the street with huge strides — feeling like GULLIVER, among the little people of LILLIPUT. He cares for nobody, though a good many care for him; and would be very apt, if he were introduced to the Emperor of Russia, to ask the Autocrat for a chew of tobacco — did he chew; but he does not, so that falls to the ground. He loves progress; and therefore, he grows. Some say he is a great fungus on society; or rather a great pimple on the nose of the body-politic, and is of much use as a conduit pipe for the discharge of all foul matters. That may be; but he deserves credit for perseverance, industry and energy. If he should goto the naughty place when he dies, we caution our old friend, the Devit, to beware of him. He will organize a party there and endeavor to elect a new President of the Brimstone republic. He will strive to supplant the spiritual, with the earthly Old Harry.

VI. CHARLES EAMES, EDITOR OF THE NEW WORLD. — A transcendentalist, yet not all transcendental. He has an etherial look and talks etherially. There is “speculation in his eyes.’ He can pour out a whole book of his own, in an hour's conversation. He reminds you a little of COLERIDGE, a little of BROWNSON, a little of CARLYLE, and a great deal of EMERSON. He lacks physical power. He is a kind of intellectual monster, nature having given him a double allowance of soul, to an ordinary allowance of body. Hence his brain is too small to act as the agent of his thought — his tongue has not sufficient power to speak it, nor his fingers to put it on paper. He ought to have two [page 155:] brains, two tongues, and two pair of hands; with a dozen familiar spirits to set up his lucubrations in type, and a dozen steam presses to print them off. From this lack of means to get rid of his superfluous thinking, he seems to have a thousand horse-power of thought, and a lightning-like velocity of tongue. Hence his words poured out in volume, sometimes become pseudo-chaotic, and the mind is wearied if it follow out his thought. He is a “friend of progress,” squints lovingly at the “community system,” and has a fine dash of enthusiasm, which is refreshing in this land of humdrum.

VII. H. C. DEMING, ONE OF THE EDITORS OF THE SATURDAY EMPORIUM. — There is no transcendentalism about him. He has a profound contempt for FOURIER, thinks BRISBANE a noodle, cocks up his nose at ROBERT OWEN, and calls for his brandy and water with an air of defiance to Temperance societies. He eschews bran bread, and detests saw-dust pudding. Fun is to him a part of human life; and the only statue of the ancients which strikes his fancy is that of Momus. He was once caught with a serious face, and his friends were greatly alarmed. Some thought he had suffered under some severe domestic calamity. On inquiry, it was found that he had discovered an original idea in one of LONGFELLOW's poems; and he was shocked at the extraordinary occurrence. He writes, as an engine throws water at a fire; not particular who may be ducked, so he hits at last in the proper place. He bestows a superabundance of the liquid upon his object; and is not satisfied with putting out the fire of his opponent. He pours on — pours on — until he exhausts all the water at his command — and then holds up to have himself refilled by a moment's quiet.