Text: Eugene L. Didier, “The New Poe Poems — Mr. Didier Has a Few Things To Say of The Discovery,” Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD), vol. CXLVII, no. 155, October 18, 1910, p. 6, col. 4

[page 6, column 4, continued:]

“The New Poe Poems’ — Mr. Didier Has A Few Things To Say Of The Discovery,

Messrs. Editors:

As THE SUN has always been a generous and sympathetic friend of Edgar A. Poe — always defending him ably and splendidly from the attacks of the malicious and ignorant — I ask the privilege of a few lines to say something about the “new forms” of several of the poet's poems, published in THE SUN last Sunday.

Dr. James A. Harrison, ex-professor of English literature at the University of Virginia, is a close, minute and microscopical investigator of Poe's life and works, and is never so happy as when he discovers the change of a word, or comma, in any version of the poet's writings. Unlike William Dean Howells and other ignorant or prejudiced Northern writers on Poe, Dr. Harrison has studied his subject well and faithfully, but, in his eagerness to do something more than any other person, he becomes tiresome by publishing the various versions of Poe's poems. The poet said, “I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all;” and as he left corrected copies of his works, they should be preserved as they were finally revised and corrected by him.

Dr. Harrison's “new form” of “A Valentine,” copied from the Flag of Our Union for March 3, 1849, shows only a few verbal changes in the poem as published in my original “Life and Poems of Edgar A. which was first issued in 1876. As there appeared to be some doubt as to the identity of the lady for whom the “Valentine” was intended, I supply the following key to the enigma Read the first letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end, and the answer will read — Frances Sargent Osgood, one of the most beautiful and devoted of Poe's many lady friends.

In the exquisite lines “For Annie” there are few changes in the “new form,” one of which, however, is not for the better. The generally accepted version reads:

In the beautiful lines, “To My Mother,” only one word is changed from the accepted version — the word “sweet” for “dear,” in the fifth line.

As Poe's “poverty and not his will consented” to writing for such a paper as the Flag of Our Union, he was heartily ashamed that the dire calamity of his “lonesome, latter years” obliged him to barter his poetry, which he said was with him a “passion,” for bread. Too often, even, that was denied to the unhappy poet — he asked for bread, which he did not always receive during life, and he has not received a stone worthy of him since his death.

EUGENE L. DIDIER.

1722 North Calvert street, Baltimore,

Oct. 17.