Text: Burton R. Pollin, “Poe's Authorship of Three Long Critical and Autobiographical Articles of 1843 Now Authenticated”, American Renaissance Literary Report (Hartford, CT), vol. 7 (Fall 1993), pp. 139-171

[page 139:]

[N.B. For special rubrics, short titles, dates, etc. see the note heading the terminal bibliography]

Surely one of the most far-reaching and successful hoaxes in the life of Edgar Allan Poe was that whereby he published at least four long articles and half a dozen short ones in a Philadelphia newspaper, the Saturday Museum, and yet concealed his authorship so successfully that we find it necessary now to prove it.(1) The reasons for this deception are varied and demonstrate well the harried existence, contradictory motives, and grandiose or unrealistic plans of Poe early in 1843. The account must be given tersely. After succeeding brilliantly in increasing the readership of Graham's Gentleman's Magazine (1841-42), Poe as a highly influential associate editor, disenchanted with his poor remuneration and the prevailingly low standards of a merely “popular” journal, resigned as of May 1842, to prepare for his new enterprise. This was to consist of editing, as co-owner, his dream magazine “The Stylus,” transformed (in name and slightly in prospectus-plan) from the 1840 planned magazine “The Penn” (DP 214-29). Considerable funding and a free editorial hand had been promised by Thomas Cottrell Clarke, previously the first editor of the Saturday Evening Post (1821-26) and later of other journals, himself a published poet, who greatly admired Poe's talents and skills, despite his own Temperance orientation.(2) Wisely Poe continued with his free-lance critical and creative writing and also sought to secure a Federal post in the Philadelphia Custom-House through the influence of his friend, the poet and novelist Frederick Thomas (then employed in the Washington Treasury Department).

Late in 1842 Clarke had decided to establish a new, family-appeal weekly newspaper, the Philadelphia Saturday Museum, of “blanket sheet” size (Luther Mott's term, 4:677) and of wide coverage of news and literary publications, in no way to be considered a rival of the planned “elitist” monthly, “The Stylus.”(3) Clarke also announced, repeatedly, Poe's becoming an associate editor of the new weekly; there is ample reason to believe that Poe exercised fully this office for about four months (January-April), despite his disclaimer to Lowell.(4) Poe continued to contribute to Graham's Magazine and sent Lowell first, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” then the poem “Lenore,” and finally, the long essay “Notes on English Verse” for publication in the first three (and only) issues of his new Boston monthly The Pioneer (1-3/1843). Making no progress in his government-clerk ambitions by the spring, Poe arranged to meet Robert Tyler, a minor poet of Philadelphia who was serving as secretary to his father President John Tyler. Poe, through yielding to the demon drink, terribly mishandled this visit and ended by convincing his sponsor Clarke of his unsuitability to conduct his own magazine. Yet Clarke continued to admire Poe and years later defended him against the canards of Griswold in the 1850 “Memoir” (Works 3) via private letters and a published article. Earlier he had persisted in publicizing and avouching his faith in Poe's extraordinary abilities as a declared partner in the disseminated “Stylus” prospectus, reprinted verbatim in issues of the SM. But by June 3 (possibly by late May) of 1843, Clarke indicated in the SM his ending the “Stylus” partnership. (The short life-span of The Pioneer, a like venture, may also have discouraged Clarke.)

Varied are the reasons for the continuing error by many students of Poe's life and works concerning Poe's inclusions in the weekly, in particular, the three long items presented in this text. As early as 1878 William Fearing Gill in his biography of Poe had reprinted as Poe's a long diatribe by Poe against the “new” third edition of Griswold's PPA. This was reprinted from a single surviving copy of the 1/28/43 SM (now lost), and it eventually entered the Harrison 1902 edition of Poe's works (11:220-43).(5) It has been regarded by some as of dubious authorship because Poe never claimed it as his work and ascribed it and his other Museum articles to his Philadelphia friend Henry B. Hirst. But Hirst had no reason atall to publish such a diatribe, no warrant to do so from Clarke, no skill, experience, or rhetorical style for such an attack, and absolutely no background knowledge in journalism or in contemporary literature (see Introduction to Part 3, “Poe's Life”). All of these factors in a tyro-reviewer, totally without name and credit among gossipy Philadelphia journalists would have made unlikely Clarke's costly advertisements of the review.(6) On the other hand, the enormous success of Griswold's bulky anthology, coming just as Poe's fortunes were precipitously sinking after he left the Graham's editorship now occupied by Griswold (named on the cover as co-editor with Graham), provided bitterness to Poe's feelings.(7) He also feit protected from Griswold's present reprisal by the promised “capital” from Clarke for the new “Stylus.”(8) In 1909 George Woodberry, the keenest reader of Poe's works, well summarized the case: “This mingled expression of pique, wrath, and scorn, with its flaunting self-commendation, is indubitably Poe's own work.” [[2:48]] And he alone has pointed to Griswold's conviction of Poe's authorship of the [page 140:] “flagellation” continuing in six 1843-44 lectures on poetry which always contained the same wholesale condemnation of Griswold's book, as the newspaper reports indicate.(9) Gill had pertinently asserted that the review “unquestionably inspired [Griswold's] malignant hatred” reflected in the “Ludwig” obituary and the posthumous “Memoir” (247; also, iv). Only Woodberry seems to have noticed the clear evidence of Griswold's knowing attribution of the review to Poe, namely, the forged letter “from” Poe to himself, which, to save face, he inserted in the 1850 volume about “that beastly article” linked to “some absurd jokes” in “the Lecture at Philadelphia,” with a rather garbled text.(10) Harrison cites Gill in his printing although it wasleft for TOM to settle the exact date of the lost copy (Works 1:553 n.1). But he showed doubt about Poe's authorship there, inclining only toward an overall Hirst authorship. Unfortunately, he did not live to revise this view, since he was too deeply involved with editing the poems and the tales, but he left a manuscript note on the Harrison text which veers toward giving Poe fuller responsibility.(11) There is good reason to believe that Poe wrote a second scorching review of PPA in the 2/4/43 SM.(12)

The next disputed Poe material occurs in the issue of March 4, which has two “Poe-Hirst” articles; the first for our consideration is actually the second in spatial placement but follows from the previous item because it represents more of Poe's resentment against Griswold's continued success with his anthology of poor choices and misguided critiques, in Poe's opinion. (It has never been reprinted.)(13) This target is the atrociously edited March 1843 number of Graham's Magazine, Poe's former “brainchild,” so flourishing when he left it in 4/1843. Now he would have a chance to demonstrate the decline in taste and interest of the journal under “Mr. Driswold,” as “Sissy,” the child of his review (probably patterned after Clarke's little daughter), was satirically depicted as calling editor Griswold.(14) Frederick Thomas, who certainly knew Poe as well as anyone in Philadelphia from 5/1840 on, authoritatively wrote: “Poe kept up a continuous warfare upon Griswold in the Museum, poking fun at him, and alluding to him as Mr. Driswold of Graham's Magazine, in childish humor.”(15) My very specific notes below for this article (part C) amply support Frederick Thomas, who must have known the authorship both from Poe and the rest of his circle as well as from the Poeian style and content. Indeed,it is so derisive of Griswold's editorial incapacity with so many thrusts again at the PPA that Poe later found it necessary to seek to suppress this ascription, as his magazine and the hoped-for government post eluded his grasp and his self-assurance was eroded. Hence, on 10/19/43, on sending Lowell the biographical sketch of 3/4/43 and eager to impress the author of the projected Poe sketch for Graham's series, “Our Contributors,” he wrote that this review of Graham's “was written by H. B. Hirst — a young poet of this city” (Ost. 239). It is to be noted, also, that in this column Poe had promised a review of the book of poems by Alfred B. Street in the 3/11/43 issue of the SM, one of the long-lost numbers (a single copy of which has just been discovered, but is still unavailable at this time). The promise of a review (normally in the province of an editor) definitively shows Poe's virtual or real editorship of the literary aspects of the SM. This has never proved to be in the slightest degree under the control of Hirst, either from his own claims (or those of Clarke), his contacts with other Philadelphians, or any remarks exchanged between him and Poe over many years, including letters, reviews, the correspondence of mutual friends, obituary notices, journalistic and editorial gossip and news columns. Moreover, if Hirst could be considered responsible for these two denigrations ofall aspects of Griswold (as poet, editor, and ordinary character), the editor, with his fingers on the — and journalistic pulse of the nation, would inevitably have known and vindictively excluded Hirst from his books and references, but often after 1843, he favored Hirst as an increasingly published poet. After Hirst's book of poems, The Coming of the Mammoth ... and Other Poems came out, early in 1845, Griswold regarded him as a poet sufficiently fluent and adaptable to participate in his 1845 Christmas keepsake volume, Scenes in the Life of the Saviour: By the Poets and Painters (Philadelphia). Hirst's long, blank verse “effusion” called “The Fishermen of Tiberias” (John, 21.2-7) must surely be the least inspired of the many “Scenes,” by Hemans, Milton, Landon, Keble, Longfellow, Osgood, Pierpont, Maginn, Montgomery, Whittier, et al. But the paper, binding, and engravings are sumptuous and costly. Soon, Griswold would admit Hirst into the sacred precincts of the PPA of 1847, asking him for headnote biographical data, which is given in a letter to Griswold later printed in William Griswold's omnium gatherum volume.(16) But none of this serves to prove the capacity of Hirst to acquire the needed acumen into poetry, as critic or as creator, manifested by Poe in these two SM critical articles.

Because of the ambiguities in the role of Poe in the SM and in his authorship ofarticles, it might be helpful to see listed the items in the journal which might be considered his or promoted by his influence or intervention, behind the scenes. Some of them must be inferred from surviving issues or from press statements, since so few of the SM issues have survived. To me, they all indicate that Poe was indeed an acting assistant editor from early January into April of 1843, devoting much time and effort to Clarke's new weekly. Since the elephant folio pages were so large and Poe's uses of the space were so varied, my list is by individual articles, rather than by issues, with many occurring in the 3/4/43 issue; yet all are individually numbered:

1] Review of Lowell's monthly The Pioneer, in 1/1843.(17)

2] Poe's review of PPA, transcribed from Gill's printing, 1/28/43 (see part A).

3] Poe's second review of PPA, inferred from letter of 2/10/43, from C. F. Hoffman to Griswold, requesting the “second” review (Bayless 73).

4] “Poets and Poetry of Philadelphia. No. II. Edgar A. Poe.” First printed in issue of 2/25/43 [see Thomas [1] 510, 516-17].

5] Reprint of no. 4 above, also on p. 1, 3/4/43.

6] 3 editorial paras. (titled with Poe's name) quoting Spirit of the Times praise of the 2/25 “sketch” and “promising an “extra” SM on special paper for another reprint (never produced). Mention also of Poe's engage’ ment as assistant editor.

7] Review of March issue of Graham's Magazine, 3/4/43, p. 2 (see part B).

8] Small editorial para. [by Clarke?] called “Quick Perception,” about Poe's quickly decoding a newspaper joke; also p. 2.

9] New “Prospectus” of SM, same issue, p. 2, col. 9, discussing improvements in printing and format and Poe as assistant editor from May 1. The humorous subheadline, with such Poe terms as “Humbug!!” and “Rigmarole!!!!” used, suggests his writing the whole long column.

10] Engraving of 10 hands illustrating proper and improper positions for using a pen, taken from M. A. Root's instructional “Writing Books,” 3/4/43, p. 3, one frame being used by Poe for his Stylus magazine cover.(18)

11] Prospectus for “The Stylus,” 3/4/43, p. 3, col. 7 [Thomas [1] 519-22]. Signed by Poe and Clarke.

12] Review of book of poems by Alfred B. Street, promised for 3/11/43 number in no. 7 above. Listed in the Poe Catalogue of the Nineteenth Century Shop, Baltimore, 1992, no. 121, p. 58, but unseen and unavailable at present.

13] Another printing of the “Stylus Prospectus,” in the SM Extra No. 1, undated, but internally verifiable as [page 141:] 3/18/43 [see Thomas [1] 538-39].

14] Editorial column, “To Readers and Correspondents,” in 3/18/43 ng, p. 2. The tone and humor are totally different from the style and orientation of Clarke and much like Poe's.(19)

15] On the same page, next column, as no. 14 above,is an editorial para., “Apologies — The Comet,” referring to a first page “cut” of the menacing comet. Its tone, humor, and phrase for “heavenly visits so few and far between” are typical of Poe.(20)

16] “Original Conundrums” [3] by Poe, first of 2 sets, this in 3/25/43, p. 2, col. 1. Of the 3 items the second is reprinted from Poe's 1839 Alexander's Weekly Messenger, of which he was an editor (see TOM, N&Q, 6/1943, 184:328-29).

17] Part 2 of “Original Conundrums,” nos. 4-11, with 4-6, 8-9 from AWM, 4/1/43 of SM (see TOM, as above).

18] Reprint of Poe's tale, “Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,” of 1839, now as “The Destruction of the World,” with a new motto from Euripides. It was significantly reprinted in the April 1 issue of the SM (p. 1), at the time of great apprehension over the approach of the Great Comet which had fomented the Millerites’ agitation about the end of the world. See Works 2:451-55.

19] “The Destruction of the World,” three paras. by Poe, in issue of 4/1/43, pointing attention to Poe's tale and “philosophizing” about such an end to terrestrial life (all drawn from Thomas Dick's Christian Philosopher, 1823), q.v. in TOM Works 2-453-55, which reprints the item from the SM and affirms it as Poe's.

POE RELATED ENTRIES AFTER HIS PROBABLE DEPARTURE FROM THE SM

20] A newly “discovered” issue of 5/13/43 has a poem “In the Silent Night” with touches of “The Raven,” according to the Poe Catalogue, p. 58 (unseen).

21] “Gold-Bug” abridged is in SM of 7/8/43, p. 1, plus an editorial para. (by Clarke?) on p. 2 discussing the ingenious and convincing handling of the mysterious and improbable materials of the tale.

22] Clarke, awkwardly and pompously, reviews Prose Romances in 7/22/43 no., p. 2.

Part A. POE'S REVIEW OF GRISWOLD'S POETRY ANTHOLOGY.

[Poe's review of] THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA. With an Historical Introduction. By Rufus W. Griswold. Third Edition. Revised, with Illustrations. Carey & Hart: Philadelphia.

Text: Philadelphia Saturday Museum, 28 January 1843(21) [[Actually from W. F. Gill's reprint in 1878, pp. 327-246]]

Quotations, as epigram [taken from Griswold's title-page](22)

1] Perhaps no work ever appeared whose announcement created a greater sensation among the poetasters of the land, whose editor was so puffed, praised, and glorified in advance, and which was so universally assailed on its advent, as “The Poets and Poetry of America.”(24) Is Mr. — we ask his pardon, — the Reverend Mr. Griswold, the man of varied talents, of genius, of known skill, of overweening intellect, he was somewhile pictured, or is he the arrant literary quack he is now entitled by the American press?(25) If he is a man of genius, or even great talents,(26) signal injustice has been done him; and if not, his assumption of such a character cannot be too sufficiently reprobated. Genius we defined in a former review.(27) The best means to establish a man's right to the title, is to examine his past course and his present position.(28)

2] The first knowledge we had of Mr. Griswold was his occupancy of the position of assistant, or junior editor, some years since, to a minor sheet entitled “The New Yorker,” then of the New York “Brother Jonathan,” then in the same capacity to the “Daily Standard,” (a political sheet published in Philadelphia during the Harrison campaign,) under that Atlas of intellect, Francis L. Grund, and finally, on Mr. Grund's withdrawal from the connection, sole editor. The paper (a notorious fact!) immediately fell off in circulation, and died in less than three weeks after his assuming the editorship.(29) We next find him in his former subordinate capacity to the “Boston Notion,” and finally as editor to the “Post,” and “Graham's Magazine,” or, as it is entitled by that chaste and exquisite sheet, the “New York Herald,” “The American Blackwood.”(30)

3] After the death of the “Standard,” Carey & Hart announced the present work, and our author arose from comparative insignificance to be the idol of all the poetical editors and would-be great men in America. The book appeared, and “la fleur d’une heure” faded into nothingness.

is a terse epitaph on his career.(31)

4] One question now remains to be answered: Did the “Jonathan” or the “Notion” attain any higher position than before, during Mr. G.'s connection with them; or have the “Post” and “Graham's Magazine” improved under his supervision? The “Standard” we leave out of the question, as it expired under his management. Certainly not as to the former; and the brilliant career of “Graham's Magazine” under Mr. Poe's care, and its subsequent trashy literary character since his retirement, is a sufficient response.(32) Mr. Griswold's genius, at least, has not benefited his employers. But that he has no claim to that character is evident, and we do not believe his warmest admirer (if he has one?) will insist on his right to bear the title. That he has some talents we allow, but they are only those of a mediocre character; indeed, every third man one might meet in a day's walk is his equal, if not his superior.(33) As a critic, his judgment is worthless, for a critic should possess sufficient independence and honesty to mete out justice to all men, without fear, favor, or partiality, as well as be a man of various acquirements, or at least a linguist and classical scholar. Is Mr. Griswold one of these? No! The review department of “Graham's Magazine,” and its original literary contents, monthly, exhibit ample evidence of his want of taste and inability if not of critical honesty; while its very cover displays his want of judgment in common-sense business matters, and his egotism and petty envy and dislikes of men he dares not openly assail. As an instance, we have the “Principal Contributors,” W. C. Bryant, J. F. Cooper, R. H. Dana. H. W. Longfellow, C. F. Hoffman (horresco referens!),(34) T. C. Grattan. N. P. Willis, and H. W. Herbert, arranged in proper order. We ask, is this in accordance with the age, established reputation, or merits of the several authors?(35)

5] Are Dana and Hoffman the superiors of N. P. Willis, who has written more beautiful and true poetry than either of them? Is Bryant a better poet than Longfellow? Certainly not, for in Longfellow's pages the spirit of poetry — ideality — walks abroad, while Bryant's sole merit is tolerable versification and fine marches of description.(36) Longfellow is unquestionably the best poet in America. These gentlemen would be better placed in alphabetical order, or at least in accordance with their actual merits. In the latter view they might be ranked thus: H. W. Longfellow, W. C. Bryant, N. P. Willis, and R. H. Dana, as poets, and J. F. Cooper and T. C. Grattan, as prose writers; while such names as C. F. Hoffman, whose only merit is his wealth,(37) and H. W. Herbert, who has written more trash than any man living with the exception of Fay, should be excluded to make room for those of men of more substantial character as writers.(38)

6] In the “Prospectus,” Mr. Griswold's self-esteem is strangely developed. Here we have him in his capacity of “author” of the “Poets and Poetry of America,” as thirteenth in the list, and of course superior in rank to Sargent, Benjamin, Simms, Lowell, Thomas, Poe, Hill, our own Conrad (one of the sweetest poets of the time), Greeley, &c., &c., who follow him.(39) Unexampled modesty! In the same list we find C. J. Peterson ranked as the superior of Greeley, Ingraham, Colton, Robert Morris, Reynell Coates, Field, &c.(40)

7] Again, how modestly our critic puffs himself in his remarks on the “Editorial Department”: — “The criticisms of Graham's Magazine are acknowledged in all parts of this country to be superior in acumen, honesty, and independence to those of any contemporary. Indeed, while a majority of the monthly and quarterly journals have become mere advertising mediums for the booksellers, in which everything ‘in print’ is indiscriminately praised, this periodical is looked upon as a just and discriminating arbiter between authors and readers, in which both can have implicit confidence.” Pretty well that, for a modest man, Mr. G., particularly in the assumption of praise given to the former editor, to whose criticisms it was awarded, and who, it is well known, made the magazine. Is this, or is this not, sailing under false colors?(41) However, our compiler is right. Any flag is better than his own. And in literature, as in piracy, the free-trader always “runs up” the best at his fore; but had we done this, we should blush at our own impudence in knowing that we had been guilty of one of the most, barefaced pieces of literary swindling of modern days.(42)

8] Mais, revenons à nos moutons, and a very muttonish production it is — “The Poets and Poetry of America.”(43) Is it fair to condemn Mr. Griswold's ability to act as a judge and critic of our poets without examining into his poetical and critical competency? Certainly not; and in the premises we shall act justly, generously, and impartially. “Just!” we think we hear our poet exclaim, like the man arraigned for horse-stealing, when told by his judge he should have justice done him. “Justice! plase your Honor's glory — that's the very thing I don't want.”(44) Mr. G., however, claims to be a poet, and deduces from that position his competency to judge of the poetry of others. Let us apply the touchstone to his latest acknowledged article, “THE SUNSET STORM,” published in his (Graham's) Magazine, September, 1842;(45) and if that does not prove him to possess as little of the divine afflatus, artistical skill, and knowledge of plain English construction, as a Desert-of-Sahara Arab, let our criticism go for naught.(46)

9] We shall premise with a short notice of the art of versification; an art which our best poets are ignorant of, or wilfully misunderstand, and which our first writers on Prosody have entirely misrepresented. Cooper, whose grammar is extensively used, defines it to be “the arrangement of a certain number of syllables according to certain laws,” yet lays down no laws for its government, but drops the subject, fearful of burning his fingers. Indeed, all the writers on Prosody, from Brown to Murray, have almost entirely waived the subject, while the little they have said is founded on, and consequently, a mass of — error.(47)

10] VERSIFICATION is the art by which various feet of equal quantity, though differing in the number of syllables, are arranged in harmonious order, and made to form verse. POETRY, in its most confined sense, is the result of versification, but may be more properly defined as the rhythmical personification of existing or ideal beauty. One defines it as the “rhythmical creation of beauty:” but though it certainly is a “creation of beauty” in itself, it is more properly a personification, for the poet only personifies the images previously created by his mind.(48)

11] FEET are the parts of verse by which, when harmoniously associated, the reader steps along, as it were, in a measured manner, through the whole. They are composed of one, two, or three variously accented and unaccented syllables.(49) The only feet admitted by our language are the Iambus, Trochee, Dactyl, Anapest, and Cæsura. The Tribrach, Amphibrach, and Pyrrhic, though adopted in English Prosody by very erudite writers, never did and never can exist in its poetry. Of these hereafter. We shall use the old marks, a [–], to mark the accented, or long, and the [ ̆ ], to mark the unaccented, or short syllables, in our notice of their various kinds. [See the note text for my printing compromise.](50)

12] The IAMBUS is composed of two syllables, one short and one long; as,

13] The TROCHEE, of the same number, but exactly the reverse of the former; as,

Here “of” is made long by emphasis.

is a better exemplification of the Trochee.(51)

14] The SPONDEE is composed of two long syllables; as, “wild wood,” “pale moon,” “wind sown,” and is only used to prevent monotony, or to produce some striking effect in versification. In the commencement of verse the Trochee is preferable. It is likewise the only foot, with the exception of the Cæsura, which cannot be used to form continuous verse. Longfellow thought it might, and murdered harmony most horribly in attempting English Hexameter, a species of verse which, though beautiful in the Latin, can never be introduced in our language, owing to its wanting a sufficient number of Spondees. A language correctly described by Holmes as —

15] The DACTYL is a foot composed of three syllables, two short, preceded by one long; as,

16] The ANAPEST is the converse of the Dactyl; as,

17] The CÆSURA — the word is from the Greek, and signifies “a pause” — is a foot composed of one long syllable, equal in quantity to, that is, occupying the same time in pronunciation as, the Dactyl, Anapest, Iambus, or Trochee. It is properly used in English poetry to give a sonorous close to, or to produce a striking and forcible commencement in verse. We shall give an example from Longfellow, who uses it in the latter case, without knowing of its existence, as a distinct fact.

18] Here, by reading the verse, the ear will observe that “brown,” which is the Cæsura, consumes the same time as any of the Trochees of which the line is composed.(54)

19] All our Prosodists define the Cæsura (and we give the definition in our own words, as it is impossible to form an idea of its use from theirs) as a pause introduced for the purpose of producing harmony, in a single verse or couplet, between “two members of the same verse,” by which the one is placed in direct comparison with the others; as,

(″) Being the marks by which they designate the Cæsura which they use, as will be readily perceived, only in an elocutionary(55) sense.

20] We too use the Cæsura as a pause — a pause compelled by the position of, and upon the foot — of the voice, which renders it equal in quantity to any of the larger feet, and at the same time gives to the close of the verse, where it is most frequently found, a singular richness, as well as sonorous fulness and force. When the Cæsura terminates a verse, the poet can immediately step in the next into another species of foot without producing the slightest discord. The following is an example of its commencing and concluding a stanza:

21] It will be seen that this stanza is scanned precisely as if it were written in one continuous verse, which is the proper mode in, and peculiar to our language; as,

March! | March! | March! | From the | yawning | grave they | come, and | thousands | rise with | lidless | eyes as | taps the | funeral | drum.

the arrangement of the same depending entirely upon the will of the poet.

22] The Cæsura has been used, “time out of mind,” by all our poets, but with a perfect ignorance of its present character. This discovery, as well as that of the above mode of scansion, was left to Edgar A. Poe,(57) who has spent more time in analyzing the construction of our language than any living grammarian, critic, or essayist. The following is an example of his use of this foot in the “Haunted Palace”:

With this brief analysis, sufficient to explain the subject, we return to the examination of the “Sunset Storm.”

Very fair, Mr. G.

This is Iambic, the simplest of all verse; yet in the second verse, or as Mr. G. would call it, the second “line,” we have a positive error. “Green clad hills” are three consecutive long syllables, and “clad hills” being a Spondee, has no business in that position in the verse. Mr. Griswold commences with a quiet picture of the sun sinking to rest, which the sun always does quietly, as he ought; and the second should, consequently, harmonize with the preceding verse, to carry out the idea. “Green clad hills” is as harsh as the grating of a coffee-mill.

or any other sort of “hills,” where the adjective is an Iambus, would make it melody. Let us proceed:

Here the same error is again repeated, “storm-cloud” being, like “green-clad,” a compound word, and distil is spelt with two “ll's.”(59)

“Blent in” is the most horrible massacre of harmony we ever encountered. It is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl; neither a Spondee, Trochee, or an Iambus;(60) and, deuce take us! if we know what to make of it. In Christian charity, Mr. G., enlighten us!

A most appropriate verse. It certainly pains our ear to proceed with the next.(61)

23] Did any one ever read such delectable doggerel? Did any one ever see such a number of short syllables collected in one “line,” or see such a line published, with a grave face, as poetry? We defy even Mrs. Wood to sing it musically. “The voice” is the only legitimate Iambus in the whole line. “It is,” we are compelled to read “It is,” to make the verse read musically. “Of the” is a Trochee, unless Mr. G. would have us read “of the,” which, from the versification precedent and subsequent, we should imagine he wishes us to do. “Storm-King” is another compound word, and a Spondee.

Here we have a Trochee, “leading,” commencing the verse. This is not objectionable, for it expresses an action — “leading his banner'd hosts.” Its introduction frequently produces a fine artistical and highly poetical effect, and the poet's as well as the reader's ear is the best judge when it should be used.(62) We will give one or two examples, since we are riding our favorite horse of versification.

“Rang the,” a Trochee, followed by the Spondee “shrill cry,” expresses forcibly the actual presence and force of the sound on the breath, that is, over the low murmur of the evening wind. Again, in Byron's “Childe Harold,”

Here is the same definite expression of passion and action in “of a dark eye,” and “leaps the live thunder.” You can feel the loveliness of the eye, and hear the crash of, and see the thunder leaping. How different are Mr. Griswold's and Lord Byron's descriptions of a storm!

24] We copy from the same magazine that contains the “Sunset Storm,” for Mr. Griswold's especial edification, a fine specimen of Iambic verse, and advise him when next he uses that “foot,” to take it as a model. It is from the “Haunted Heart,” by a Miss Mary L. Lawson, whose ear seems to be nearly faultlessly correct.

In the same poem we find the following highly finished and descriptive lines:

We stand as it were, upon the river's bank!(63)

25] We mentioned something before of the use of Spondees in Latin Hexameter, and to make our position perfectly understood, shall quote a few examples from different authors.

This last line is written

But in the words where “um,” “am,” “em,” or a vowel, occur, the syllable is taken off by elision. Again, where the line commences with a Spondee,

Ergo. Mr. Griswold ought to be happy in knowing his book to be the cause of our review.(64)

26] Now, gentle reader, is Mr. Griswold a versifier? — we have not touched him as a Poet, — and if not, and we assert he is not, and never was able to understand the first principles of versification, what shall be said of his presumption in becoming the judge of a race of men whose simplest productions are beyond his comprehension? We have more of his poetry (spirits of Pope, Byron, et al., forgive our desecration of the name!) on hand, but in none can we find two correct consecutive lines, nor do we wish to inflict them on the reader. But we have not yet done with the “Sunset Storm.” Independent of its worse than tyro-like versification, it is a heterogeneous compound of sheer, naked nonsense and rank bombast. We shall examine the first verse, that which we have already submitted to scansion, and then, if any one deems Mr. G. a competent judge of true poetry, we hope he will inflict one of his collections upon him annually. Now for it!(65)

We pause to credit Mr. G. with a new idea — the clouds distilling rain. We have heard of men distilling whiskey, alcohol, &c., but never before of clouds distilling rain.(66)

“The flash” of what do we see? “The peal” of what do “we hear”? Is lightning and thunder to be understood, or is it the flash and peal of the storm? If the latter is meant, it is another new idea. If the former — but it is not said, — how can “winds” be “blent in” with a flash of lightning? Mr. G., Mr. G., you are as mystical as Kant, and as incomprehensible as Wordsworth, without possessing the slightest claim to the common sense of either.(67)

We are now informed that this “blent in” mixture is

and we are happy to hear it. It is no wonder dairy-women complain of their milk being curdled the morning after a storm.

Is this even good grammar? Is it “the voice” or “the Storm King” “leading his banner'd hosts along the sky”? Tell us that!

27] Did any one ever read such nonsense? We never did, and shall hereafter eschew everything that bears Rufus Wilmot Griswold's name, as strongly as the Moslemite the forbidden wine, or the Jew the “unmentionable flesh.”(68) But we must say, ere we leave the “Sunset Storm,” that, with the exception of Mathews' “Wakondah,” Pop Emmons' “Fredoniad,” and some portions of Hoffman's “Vigil of Faith,” the world never even saw such balderdash.(69)

28] We defined Poetry “to be the rhythmical personification of existing or ideal beauty;” and here we shall give a vivid example of our idea, an example which even Mr. Griswold acknowledges “to possess a statue-like definitiveness and warmth of coloring.” It is the “SLEEPING BEAUTY,” by Tennyson, — the most perfect conception of loveliness we ever saw, or ever expect to see, and had Tennyson written nothing else, it would have made him immortal.

In the first place, this is a legitimate subject of poetry, finished with the highest artistical skill, burning with genius and ideality, and secondly it conveys to the mind in the very title that richest image of loveliness — a sleeping woman! Words cannot convey our conception of its beauty, nor our homage to the genius of its author. The italicized lines are the finest passages.(70)

29] Now for Mr. Griswold's critical powers. We shall quote some few passages from one of his latest reviews, and that on the works of the author of the Charmed Sleeper, — Alfred Tennyson, whose genius and originality have excited the wonder and admiration of the best critics in Europe, and the imitative faculties of the principal poets of America. “His chief characteristics pertaining to style, they will not long attract regard.” Here we have a gross grammatical error — two nominatives to one verb, “characteristics” and “they” to “will.” “He tricks out common thoughts in dresses so unique it is not always easy to identify them.” (Is not this originality? yet in the next portion of the sentence we hear this sapient critic say,) “but we have not seen in his works proofs of an original mind.” (O tempore! O mores! This Griswold says of Tennyson!) Again, “as a versifier, Holmes is equal to Tennyson, and with the same patient effort would every way surpass him.” (We advise Dr. Holmes, who does possess some merit as a versifier, to beg Mr. G. not to puff him, or he may depend upon his poems being incontinently d—d.) “We desire none of his companionship!” (Don't you hope you may get it?) “Him who stole at first hand from Keats.” Well, if this is not the height of assurance we don't know what assurance is, coming as it does from one of the most clumsy of literary thieves, and who, in his wildest aspirations, never even dreamed of an original thought. A man who does not understand the first principles of versification, the author of the “Sunset Storm;” and to speak thus of such a man as Tennyson, the author of the Sleeping Beauty we have just quoted! We can only say to Mr. Griswold, Jove protect us from his reviewing, and the public from what he deems exquisite. These remarks are from a man whose extravagant praise of Puffer Hopkins, one of the most abortive emanations ever issued from an American press, has been the daily ridicule of the whole community, and even of his own most intimate friends. A book which he stamps “as original,” which is the most palpable imitation of Boz's style, and like all imitations, only so upon the surface, wanting anything like genuine wit, pathos, or profundity, whose serious passages are extremely ridiculous, and whose comic wonderfully tragic.(71)

30] Now for the Book! the “POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA.” As regards its typography and execution, it is very, very neat, and the lines around give a compactness and finish perfectly desirable to the appearance of its pages.(72)

31] Let us commence with the delectable matter which constitutes Mr. Griswold's original portion of the “Poets of America.” In the first place we have the preface.

“It is said that the principles of our fathers are beginning to be regarded with indifference.” Who has said this, Mr. G.? Is the name or the principles of a Washington or Jefferson beginning to be obliterated in our hearts? Does not every American's bosom burn when he reads their names, or hears them promulgated from the rostrum? And the bursting huzzas from every lip at such a moment as the last, how well they speak that “the principles of our fathers are beginning to be regarded with indifference.” Is “love of country decaying[[”]] and are “the affections of our people in that transition state from the simplicity of Democracy to the gilded shows of Aristocratic government?” Perish the scandal! “Our national tastes and feelings are fashioned by the subject of kings.” Are we to understand this as a poetical license or not, for with these facts staring us in the face we cannot but imagine you've told a good many poetical lies since you have been in the business? If — and you assert it in set round terms — you think so, you are wrong. They are not so; at least by the majority, though they may be by the foolish few miscalled “the first circle of society!” — the worshippers of an Ellsler, a Morpeth, or an Ashburton, whose only merit is their wealth, and whose intellects rarely expand beyond the cut of a coat or the fashion of a mantilla. After reading such opinions promulgated, who can think our compiler a fit man to judge of American poetry, even had he possessed the competency. But Mr. G. is going to Europe, and there his opinions will meet with support.(73)

32] Let us proceed. Ah! what have we here? “The creation of beauty, the manifestation of the real by the ideal, in words that move in metrical array, is poetry.” Now what is this but a direct amplification by our poet, of the definition of poetry — “the rhythmical creation of beauty” — which appeared in Mr. Poe's critique on Professor Longfellow's ballads, from which we know, and he knows, he stole it.

33] Well, we have looked over the book, and we find it just such a result as might be anticipated. The biographies are miserably written, and as to the criticisms on style, they are certainly not critiques raisonnés, and that simply because reason and thinking are entirely out of Mr. G.'s sphere. As to the different degrees of merit allotted to each author, we cannot help thinking it possible, but we will not say it, that sub rosa arrangements were made, and a proportionable quantity of fame allotted, in consideration of the quid pro quo received. Besides, the whole work is not even a specimen of the Poets and Poetry of America; and in giving it our unqualified condemnation, we only cite the opinion of all, even to the Poets who have been so unfortunate as to figure in its pages, and we are satisfied our review will be met with vivas wherever the book has been seen or read.(74)

34] Now we want to know one thing: Is writing Poetry the exclusive privilege of the aristocracy of our country? for we are so led to imagine by finding no poor writers in this work. No! They are all “descended from ancient and honored families,” “the sons of wealthy members of the Society of Friends,” or of “eminent lawyers,” or “wealthy merchants,” “wealthy lawyers,” themselves, &c., &c., ad infinitum. How comes this? It is answered in a word. Mr. G. belongs to the class called “toady;” and as he is very ambitious of one day acquiring a position, can have no fellow-feeling for the class he would leave behind him. To this, and this alone, (and Mr. G. knows we speak — and it is as unpleasant for us to say as it is for him to hear it — the truth.) two thirds of the poets owe even the transitory reputation they have acquired in this miserable book.(75) And now that we feel in the vein, we shall propound to Mr. Griswold a few questions. Why was Robert Tyler, the author of Ahasuerus, &c., omitted? Why was Frederick W. Thomas insulted with a place as the author of one song, among the miscellaneous writers, after his having been written to, and “his biography and best articles” solicited? Was it not because he did not obey your dictatorial and impertinent request to write for you the biography of Mrs. Welby? Answer us that, Mr. Griswold!(76) How comes it that C. Fenno Hoffman is the greatest poet in America, and that his articles figure more than two to one over Bryant, and ten to one over Lowell, Longfellow, &c.? Why were Edward Everett, LL. D., John Quincy Adams, Samuel Woodworth, (the insult might have been spared the dying poet,) Robert M. Bird, M. D., J. K. Mitchell, M. D., Sarah G. [[J.]] Hale, George P. Morris, Rev. William B. Tappan, Catharine H. Esling (or Miss Waterman, as she is better known), Horace Greeley, Seba Smith, Charles West Thompson, Rev. Charles W. Everest, Lieut. G. W. Patten, William Wallace (author of the Star Lyra, &c.), Mrs. Frances S. Osgood (one of our sweetest poetesses), James N. Barker, &c., &c., classed under the head of “various authors,” thereby throwing openly the charge of their incompetency to sustain the name of Poets, and implying that they were only occasional scribblers? (This, and of such men, is again from Rufus Wilmot Griswold!)(77)

35] Are there no such persons in existence as Anna Cora Mowatt, Lydia J. Pierson, Juliet H. Lewis, Mrs. Harriet Muzzy, Mrs. E. C. Stedman, &c.? And if so, have they never written poetry? And if they have, why are they omitted?

36] Shame on such black injustice, which is made the blacker by imposing men. of whom no one ever heard out of their own parlors, upon the public as poets, and that above their superiors in genius, talent, artistical skill, and brilliant flow of ideality and language!

37] Again, how came you to alter Dr. J. K. Mitchell's song in such a manner that the author scarcely knows his own production? Just think of the impudence of the thing — Rufus Wilmot Griswold altering a production of Dr. J. K. Mitchell! And now that we are in our own city, has it no poets? Are Dr. Mitchell, C. West Thompson, and Catharine H. Esling only worthy to appear in one article in your contemptible appendix? Where is the Hon. Robert T. Conrad? You surely could not have forgotten him, for his “Aylmere” has been the most successful of American Tragedies, and he is the author of some of the finest poems known in American literature. Where is Professor Walter, Morton McMichael, Robert Morris (another sweet poet), the Rev. T. H. Stockton, and Dr. English? How came you to forget Mr. Spear, who was once placed by the Courier, if we remember aright, close to Shakspeare, and somewhere between Cowper and Goldsmith? We might name others.(78) However, all these gentlemen should be gratified at their non-appearance in the volume before us, for if ever such a thing as literary ruin existed, or exists, nine tenths of the Poets (!) of America are ruined forever by the praise of Mr. Griswold! This is our unvarnished opinion; and as we have established the fact of our knowing something of Poetry and its concomitants, and that Mr. Griswold is as ignorant of it and them as a Kickapoo Indian, we fancy it will pass for current coin.(79)

38] But, to close this affair. Had Mr. Griswold the genius of a Shakspeare, the powers of a Milton, or the critical learning of a Macaulay, he could not stem the torrent of animadversion this book has raised; but must be overwhelmed by the tide of public disapprobation which has set in so strongly upon him; but as he has neither the one nor the other, what will be his fate? Forgotten, save only by those whom he has injured and insulted, he will sink into oblivion, without leaving a landmark to tell that he once existed; or, if he is spoken of hereafter, he will be quoted as the unfaithful servant who abused his trust.(80)

Part B. Review [by Poe] in the Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843, p. 2, First in column, “REVIEWS.”

GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE [small caps.] of Literature and Art. — March, 1943: Philadelphia, George R. Graham, 98 Chesnut Street.

Our attention has been suddenly called, by the exclamations of our little sisters, to our table, where we find Graham's Magazine, for March, 1843. “Bless me,” said the youngest, looking at the decorations on its cover; “Ann, what is that!” “Thar!” responded the eldest; “Why, a Turkey Buzzard!” “I think not,” returned the first, “it looks like a Condor.” “An Anaconda, more likely,” exclaimed the eldest, laughing,” or a goose rampant!”(81) “No! no! sissy,” interrupted our baby brother, who had managed to climb up to the table, and who, we suppose, had heard us mention the gentleman's name; “dess it is Mr. Driswold!” Interrupting the colloquy, and smiling at the close connection between the goose rampant, and “Mr. Driswold,” we sent the children out of the room, and took up the Magazine.(82)

Premising(83) that we are not answerable for the opinions of children, whatever our own may be, and without farther reference to the cover, which is in shocking bad taste, and sufficient to condemn any periodical to the Styx, we shall examine its contents. The embellishments, which have no business in this, or any magazine, are tolerable, with the exception of that of the “Daring Lover,” which is execrable. The Fashion Plates, and here we have an opportunity to commend Mr. G., are wisely discontinued.(84) The first article, “The End of the World,” by J. K. Paulding, whom we thought dead long ago, as he ought to have been, unless a man can survive damnation, may be summed up in one word — rigmarole.”(85) The second, “Observation,” by Mr. Alfred B. Street, a protégé of “Mr. Driswold,” is not “one of those exquisite pictures of nature,” as some of the puffing journals describe them,(86) nor is it even poetry, if melody and r[h]ythm have any thing to do with that commodity. We never heard Mr. S. spoken of as a poet, until the production of the “Poets and Poetry of America,” and doubt, the learned editor's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, his right to the epithet. We shall examine the article, and quote a few lines to illustrate the melody of its r[h]ythm:

Clamber and downward pass. A chasm winds on — / Of its broad base, a little mined-out nook — / With horny, wide-spread edges. Plumes of brake — / A pine above has shed its dead moss — / A light swift tick tick in the brake and grass/ A scanning eye the withered pine-tuft holds — / Lift to the sun! what a rich hue of brown! — / Pick up that pale sea elm leaf from the nook — / A mimic pine tree bristling o’er with fringe — / And polished have their light gray tint o’erstreaked.

And so on, and so on to the end of the poem, if prose run mad can be called a poem! What does Mr. S. mean by writing scythe — ”sythe” —

[“]Pick up that pale sea elm leaf from the nook

Cast there by autumn's sythe.”

What is a “sea elm leaf”!

Sweep from the shelf the lichen; let your grasp

Be gentle, or it crumbles.

What exquisite twattle! Some fool of a critic has told Mr. S. to stick to nature, and we have it, with a rush, all through the poem. Only look at the quantity of “pine trees,” “mosses,” “slant sunshine,” &c. &c. through this (it will be called so) “exquisite picture.” “A glance of sunshine paints,” “that slanting shaft of quivering motes,” “an elm is slanting o’er,” “and up that knoll of pines,” “as though the pine,” “a pine above,” “this withered pine tuft,” “a mimic pine tree,” “withered cones,” “this dark unsightly cone,” “a coat of moss,” “that coat of moss,” &c. &c. “a bristling tuft of lichen,” (lichen looking as much like bristles as it does like the pig itself,)” “from the shelf the lichen,” &c. &c. We can’t stand any more of Mr. S's. repetitions, especially as we have to review his book next week; but before we leave him, we shall ask him when he heard “the fitful winding of a clock,” and what, in Nature's name, are “plumes of brake?”(87) “Conduct and Con sequences,” by Mrs. Mary Clavers, is one of her excellent every day pictures of every day life;(88) and “Lilliore,” by W. H. Burleigh, who is a poet, for none but a poet could coin so sweet a name, is fine, we may say very fine.(89) The “Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief,” by Mr. Cooper, reminds us of the ark of Noah so old fashioned is the idea. What will Mr. C. do with himself if he should ever have an original conception?(90) “Our Lida,” by Mrs. Stephens, and we are sorry to be uncivil, in speaking of a lady's production, is one of her usual long winded, unreadable articles.(91) “To a Winter Rose,” by that prince of literary pirates, George [page 147:] Hill, who is so modest withal, as “Mr. Driswold” says, “that he never spoke to a dozen ladies in his life” — we quote in part:

Rose, nursling of a sun before / Whose chill slant ray the summer flies, / One blast from wintry skies swept o’er / Thy frail form, and it perishes.

Mr. Hill never stole that — it is unequivocally original, every word of think of it. Who, besides him, would calling the sun's ray chill, or say that the summer fled before it? Nobody. Who, rhyme “skies” with besides him, would Manor,” “perishes,” and who calls Mr. Hill a poet, besides “Mr. Driswold?”(92) “The Lord of the “Ringwood by the Mr. Rover,” Henry William Herbert, author of “Cromwell,” “The Brothers,” “The Maid of Orleans,” etc., is — twattle.(93) The Rev. Walter Colton, U.S.N. poetry, (qr, Uncle Sam's Ninny?) is not tributes a though good the article, gentleman entitled is a Reverend, and the friend of “Mr. Driswold.”(94) Miss Jane T. Lomax con poem, which is, in the “Ruins of Palmyra,” but not one of an elevated character.(95) Bryant has a Morris part, fine, and which we mean to copy.(96) Willis has the tale of the month,(97) and Robert Osgood, a sweet poem, entitled “The Sisters,” one of his quiet and beautiful pictures.(98) Mrs. Frances S. we should the most imaginative, if not the truest of our poetesses, has a delightful poem, which, had we room, New York,) copy had, in our review;(99) and Edgar A. Poe, knocks the little life “Flaccus” (Mr. Thomas Ward, of out of him;(100) but the crowning article in the way of silliness, is one under of the title of a “Visit Poor is the Relations,” who by Walter Hawthorne.(101) Who is “Walter Hawthorne?” who but “J. H. Dana!”(102) Who is “J. H. Dana?” but “Miss Ellen Ashton!” Who is “Miss Ellen Ashton?” who but is “Jeremy Short!” Who “Jeremy Short?” who but “Childers!” Who is “Childers?” who but the author of “Cruisings in the Last War!” Who is he? who but the author of “Leaves from a Lawyer's Port Folio,” &c. &c. &c.;(103) a select number of “distinguished American novelists,” “celebrated authors,” &c. &c., as they are styled by himself in the “Post,” (their articles being copied in that delectable journal, each month, under the head of Gems from the Magazines,) and, by the by, the most notorious set of literary thieves, if stealing articles bodily, is theft, that ever disgraced pages of any Magazine.(104) We say this without apprehension, for we have in our possession, the originals of twenty plagiarisms, which we shall shortly, if we hear more from a certain author, publish, and hang that “Member of the Philadelphia Bar “ up in terrorem, as a scare-crow to frighten future depredators.(105)

In the trashiest of trashy reviews on Mr. Wilde's life of Tasso, at the end of the magazine, “Mr. Driswold,” or Mr. Peterson,(106) or some other of the literary giants attached to the establishment, attempt to pick from several hundred pages, three errors in grammar. Now, as these gentlemen never write gram[m]atically, except, when their articles belong in toto to somebody else, this is funny. The reviewer, whoever he may be, exclaims against Mr. Wilde's use of the words “but him,” and insist upon it, they should be written “but he.” We beg leave, with all possible respect for the critic's excessive erudition, to say that Mr. Wilde is correct, and that the head of the reviewer, is very nearly akin to the one given to Nick Bottom, in Shakspeare's “Midsummer's [sic] Night[‘s] Dream.” The word “but,” as it stands in the sentence, though otherwise a conjunction, is a preposition, and governs “him” in the objective case.(107) And now, having finished our task, for it is a task to be compelled to read and dilate where, we have upon twattle, we send “Graham's Magazine[“] up to the Nursery, no doubt, it will create a sensation.(108)

N. B. It has: the children are shaking the house with their laughter, and our baby brotheris crowing in ecstacy (sic).

Since writing the above, we find an opinion coincident with our own, “Democratic in the editorial columns of the Repository,” Meadville, Pa. It shows evident proof of the up strongly the humbug of the Magazine, and affords an true estimation in which it is held.

“Graham's Magazine. — This periodical has not reached us for two months; nevertheless we have published the proprietor's prospectus and regularly sent our paper in exchange for nothing. We hope the publishers will send it on, as the picters are pleasing to children, and the tales, though not always indicating that their authors have their authors have heads, are highly agreeable to sentimental young ladies in their teens. Now let us have it, or we’ll never puff it more.”(109)

Part C. POE's “AUTOBIOGRAPHY” Saturday Museum, February 25 and March 4, 1843

[Headnote: The length of this article — almost 10,000 words — and the importance of visual presentation required this facsimile reproduction of a copy from the unique, badly foxed newspaper sheet, 21 by 26 inches in size. The following scheme was evolved: the nine long columns were trisected and each of the thirds divided into three lengths. The resulting nine sets of columns are now designated as A through I, starting at the upper left, or beginning, downward for B and C (to enable printing the divided columns on successive pages), then D-E-F, and finally G-H-I. Each of the nine pages of text is treated as having three part-columns and also receives, after a slash, the enclitic “T” or “M” or “B” (meaning Top or Middle or Bottom) to designate the portion of the “column” under discussion. Thus, “D.3/M” indicates facsimile page D, column 3, middle of the column of print, The nine facsimile pages are printed below between the text of Part C and the consecutive notes for the entire article.

Most important in size and content is the last of the three documents claiming our attention (although second in printing placement in the extant file of the Saturday Museum): a sketch of Poe's life and works, under the title of “The Poets & Poetry / of Philadelphia. Number II ... Edgar Allan Poe.” Ironically, the title is obviously derived from Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America, and since Poe had complained about the treatment given to the human subjects of nos. 2-5 of the series, one might surmise that SM “editor” Poe had deliberately restored a proper balance with this large scale treatment of the Philadelphia “literati.”(110) This “sketch” occupies the entire front side of this “elephant folio” weekly and contains a crude wood-cut portrait of Poe(111) along with a preposterous claim of indebtedness for information to the “late Thomas W. White [ill in 1842, deceased 1/19/1843] ... but, principally, to memoranda furnished us by the well-known author ... Frederick W. Thomas.” In reality, this was solely a long memorandum that Poe had drawn up for Rufus Griswold, late in 1841, for his headnote on Poe in the 4/1842 PPA.(112) The third-person voice is preserved throughout, but in view of the style, the complex interweaving of important themes and threads in Poe's life and works, involving intimate and often highly tinged, misleading, or purposefully slanted and erroneous data, the voice could be that of no one but Poe himself, speaking of his distinguished lineage, his affluent upbringing with foreign and full university schooling, his rebellion against the gross and hard-hearted foster father, his Byronic adventures in Greece and Russia, his early entrance into authorship as a distinguished prize-winner and as a widely acclaimed critic, his being an athlete, an oft-published poet (twenty lyrics being fully quoted), an “unequalled tale-writer” (footnoted with “Hawthorne has one vein,” but Poe “a thousand”), an “ingenious” [page 148:] essayist on automata, autography, versification-analysis, and cryptography. Only Poe, the participant in the experiences (real and imaginary), could interweave these experiences, these literary productions and honors, these associated personalities, these progressive developments and these deeply felt and meaningful themes known to Poe scholars, so as to leave the desired and glorified picture — of the future editor of “The Stylus,” a stimulating, resourceful, quality monthly magazine. Clarke, his financial backer, must have thoroughly approved of this front-page biography, enhancing the image of Poe and lauding his work through such devices as citing private letters from Thomas and Washington Irving as though published statements.(113) Griswold, possessing all of Poe's materials, given him by Mrs. Clemm, in his observation about the Irving letters, furnishes proof positive of Poe's authorship of the “Life”: “It was among his remarkable habits that he preserved with scrupulous care everything that was published respecting himself or his works, and everything that was written to him in letters that could be used in any way for the establishment or extension of his reputation. In Philadelphia, in 1843, he prepared with his own hands a sketch of his life for a paper called “The Museum.” Many parts of it are untrue, but I refer to it for the purpose of quoting a characteristic instance of perversion in the reproduction of compliments” (“Memoir” of 1850, Works, 3:1-li; for discussion of the two letters from Irving to Poe).

Surely no intimate friend could have reworked any quantity of Poe-conveyed “facts” into this melange of half-facts and exaggerations and stated and insinuated powers and accomplishments, presented in Poe's own style, save by performing a “William Wilson” interchange of personae. Clearly, Poe had grown accustomed to using Henry Beck Hirst as his “fall guy” or scapegoat in the event of any repercussions from Griswold or from truth-seekers in journalism, but the virtual anonymity of the presentation was a safeguard in itself, and Lowell and Thomas apparently did not divulge Poe's epistolary explanations.

Poe's stratagem continues to undermine the proper attribution of these three articles, making it necessary briefly to present reasons for denying the authorship to Henry Beck Hirst. (Only one other very weak claimant, for the sketch of Poe, will be discussed below.) As we have seen, there is virtual identity in Poe's work and in the two reviews, of literary convictions, critical themes, motivating attitudes (chiefly against Griswold), and style, language, and rhetoric. Hirst was completely incapable of simulating these and other aspects of Poe's work. A reading of every bit of biographical evidence about the then young lawyer fails to elicit a shred of evidence of such capacity.(114) Hirst (8/23/1817-3/30/74), born of a merchant family, attended only an infant school before entering the office of his barrister half-brother to study law. He had only nine months at the University of Pennsylvania preparatory school before returning to his law reading, prior to admission to the bar in 1843 at twenty-six. He had also been a flower and seed merchant and self-taught in natural sciences, including ornithology, which led to his 1843 Book of Cage Birds, 270 pages of practical advice on the care and feeding of birds, on their songs and training, plus poems on various birds by contemporary poets (three by Hirst himself, one by T. D. English).”(115) You can gauge the quality of Hirst's prose from his Introduction:

But had Hirst perhaps the capacity to grow beyond this fledgling stage of 1842 as in his 1845 book The Coming of the Mammoth ... and Other Poems (Boston, 1845)? This is from his Preface: He here is a devoted “parent” of poems first issued in “ephemeral magazines.” Now they are “launched upon the waste of literary waters with somewhat better hope of riding the ripple of the coast, whatever may be their fate among the billows of the broader sea” (v). Does this pretentious, inept style match that of any of the three articles, the longest to be displayed below? Poe devoted much space to this 1845 volume in the Broadway Journal (Writings 3:162-67) and, after commending his poetic potential decried his poor “constructive ability, ... extravagance of expression, and ... imitativeness.” He counterbalances every commendation with a disparagement. Clearly Hirst cannot analytically improve his own verse, as in his Christmas keepsake of 1845;(116) how could he thus analyze Griswold's taste and poetic practice, as required in the 1/28/43 review?

In the Preface to Endymion: A Tale of Greece (Boston, 1848), Hirst explains that he avoided reading the “Endymion” of Keats “until the completion of my own, with the express design of escaping the danger of unintentional plagiarism . ... Until the age of twenty-three years, entertained a holy horror of poetry — an almost ludicrous result of an exceedingly prosaic existence. ... If the poetical temperament found any chance for proper development, it was displayed exclusively in a passionate fondness for the study of natural history and the practice of the pencil . ... More than its [Endymion's] just desert ... will never be claimed for it by one from whom it has beguiled the weariness of a few heavy hours” (vii-viii).

In 1846 Poe was kind to Hirst in calling him a poet “whose high merits have not been properly appreciated” — this in the course of exposing T. D. English's plagiarism from one of Hirst's poems in The Coming of the Mammoth. In the Godey's “Literati” sketch of English the reference is left vague, but in the revised version (for the 1850 Works) he changes this to a display of English's grammatical ignorance in a comment on a poem by Hirst (Complete Works 15:65, 269). But Poe became enraged, according to one source probably about 1848, over a parody by Hirst of “The Haunted Palace” (Works 1:317; Allen 455). At Poe's death, 10/7/49, Hirst wrote an obituary-memoir for the Model American Courier of 10/20/1849, based largely on the SM life of 1843 and full of the terrible tropes and Blevins sentiments typical of the Hirst style — so unlike Poe's: “Few could imagine the occupational sufferings under the awful wrong of undeserved poverty, for Poe was an industrious man, who would and did toil, delving, when his labors demanded, imperishable gold from the California of his heart .... We saw him twice and thrice a day, for two years... His criticisms of individuals, and they were nervous enough, referred only to their literary merits” (Walker 313-17 [[MMAC, October 20, 1849]]).

Considering his continued contacts with Hirst during the end of the decade, when he sought material to use in his suit against English, Poe proved finally decidedly “unamiable” in the posthumous “Literati” sketch of Hirst, printed in 1850 by Griswold (3:209-12). Poe repeats the “faint praise” and serious charges made in the Broadway Journal review and displays great irritation over charges of plagiarism that Hirst had made against “Ulalume.” Hence, he now combines charges of poor grammar and plagiarism against Hirst's lead-poem “The Penance of Roland” (1848; the book published 1849) in a bitingly humorous conclusion, reminiscent of the two SM reviews.

These are matters to be borne in mind when viewing the “autobiographical document, printed in facsimile, at the end of the text, just before the notes for all the parts of this presentation, rendered necessary at this late date because of the lack of any full scale reprint since first it surfaced about one hundred years ago. [page 149:] Poe's efforts to secure a reprint of the autobiography, however, as well as his sending copies, from one of the two issues of the SM, to numerous important correspondents show the importance that he attached to it. I have elsewhere discussed his earnest efforts to secure a reprint via Robert Carter, co-editor of the Pioneer, actually an abridgment in about 3,500 words in Carter's “leviathan” paper, the Boston Notion of 4/29/1843.(117) Poe again thought it useful to arrange for a partial reprint of this life sketch” in the 7/29/43 issue of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter of his friend Snodgrass shortly after the widely celebrated “Gold-Bug” appeared, three times, at 2600 the end of June and beginning of July in two separate periodicals (Works 3:804). Again, the abridgment (in words) as in the Notion, consists of the distorted life “facts” plus the descriptive paragraph at the end. This is still the legendary figure of Byronic adventure and literary brilliance that Poe felt would also popularize his long-planned “Stylus.”

The full text in the SM still remained unknown to Poe readers and students, even when Dudley Hutcherson, in 1933, decided to present the “twenty poems” as an updated, revised collection: Poe's only “edition” between 1831 and 1845 (36-37). He was chiefly interested in demonstrating the changes and improvements made in the texts, only occasionally reprinting the whole of Poe's texts or the highly “charged” transitional or prefatory comments by Poe. Even Hutcherson, however committed he is to the “Hirst as author” view, “suspects” Poe of shaping and “phrasing” much of the article, especially for the “Conqueror Worm” headnote, E.3/M (37, 43). Hutcherson naively mentions corrections made on the proofs by Poe as a way by which Poe could have reshaped the text of Hirst. In reality, this goes back to an earlier theory by Gill, equally untenable, that the text was written by T. C. Clarke.(118)

A partial reprint of the “life” was issued by Warren U. Ober and associate editors in a 1960 text for college students called The Enigma of Poe, now virtually unprocurable.(119) It has a headnote which includes the excerpt from Poe's letter to F. W. Thomas ascribing the article to H. W. Hirst and also alludes to Poe's 10/19/43 letter to Lowell ascribing the review of Graham's Magazine to Hirst. This, like the other partial reprints, has tended to minimize the need to reexamine the underlying facts of Poe's deliberate misattributions.

To gain a broad view of Poe's ingenuity in tying together so many aspects of his life and writings for the enhancement of his reputation on the “verge” of the publication of his own magazine, “The Stylus,” it is best to map out the broad section of the SM article. Since he had couched it in the third person, there were few limitations on the type of laudatory materials, the direct encomia, and the manipulations of data that Poe allowed himself. It is doubtful that he ever thought of acknowledging the material or, on the other hand, that he imagined that his closest friends would fail to guess the true author. Such scruples would not seem important to Poe, especially when his motivation was so great and an obscure figure like Hirst was so conveniently available — one who never claimed authorship save of a tale or a poem. Section 1 (pages A, B, C, totaling 2 1/3 columns) present Poe's life: romanticized, altered, gentrified, self-exculpating, slyly flattering and dramatic with a sense of predestinate success. The total effect is cleverly contrived for its publicity value. Section 2 continues “dropping” well-known names with “testimonials” of literary achievements, especially in tale-writing (2 columns, B-C.3+D-F.1).

Section 3 is devoted to twenty poems (including two long excerpts), reprinted with connecting comments, some by editors or “Poe” himself. It is really a new edition of his poems, many newly and definitively revised subsequent to the 1827, 1829, and 1831 “books” or later magazine publications (D-F.2-3 +G-1.1-2). Section 4 is about his essays, especially those on “Secret Writing” or “Cryptography” with excerpts taken from his Graham's Magazine 1841 series (G-H.3+1.2). The introduction and transitional sentences, however, are newly composed in Poe's best journalistic style — well worded, purposeful, and informative. The fifth is a short catch-all section for his books, his unidentified foreign publications (sic) plus special achievements, such as a swimming feat, personalia and his present appearance, including his phrenological Sou “points” (1.3).

The expressive, flexible, interesting language of the entire article is characteristic of Poe in its words, phrasing, and rhetoric. Poe was careful to use and preserve his own peculiar handling of the dieresis, over the first of adjacent, sounded vowels: “préeminent” (B.3/T), his cachet (q.v. in Writings 2:xxxviii-xxxix). Several of his favorite phrases occur, such as “nem. con” (nemine contradicente = without opposition), found also in Works 2:491/7 and 3:1056/25). He uses “monstrously” as equivalent to “very” in “monstrously absurd” in B.2/M (q.v. in Works 3:1056/23), and “abortion” in C.2/M as a term of denigration (Works 2:70/78; 92/10; 111/23; 3:1128/15). He favors a hyphen in “re-arrangement” in accord with his customary usage.(120) The striking rhetoric is typical as in “[Poe] should not be considered responsible ... for the external appearance, or the general internal character [of Graham's Magazine]” (A.3/B). He handily extracts double-duty and self-credit from the verb in stating “[Stephens’] misconceptions of the biblical prophecies were exposed, as well as some important mistranslations in Ezekiel and Isaiah” (C.2/B). The choice of words is frequently fraught with studied, ulterior meanings: e.g., Poe's leaving the SLM 1/37 is his “secession” (C.2/T) and it was Hawks’ “flattering invitation” that “induced” him “to abandon” it (C.2/B) — whereas the disenchanted, impatient White may have been the “inducer.” How could Hirst have included these nuances or interpretations without having the words literally put “into his pen” — a process that would have made it infinitely easier for Poe to write the entire article.

The selection, as well as the phrasing, of the headnotes and bridge passages for the “testimonials” and the reduction of the “Secret Writing” articles in Graham's Magazine for 7, 8, 19, 12/1841 (Complete Works 14:114-49), required a kind of synthesizing skill quite alien to Hirst and most litterateurs. Even his footnoting is dexterous in its citing of names and opinions, its “staging” of the “occasion” as only a skilled narrator could manage (q.v. “in a letter now lying before us,” C.1/B). His transitions between sections are invariably flattering: “... as a critic . ...His analytical reputation is universal” (B.3/T); “As an essayist, Mr. Poe has been equally successful” (1.2/B). The sources of his citations have been shown only partially and indirectly through a republication of the advertisements in the 12/39 Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, vol. II (Walker 116-121). About half of the roughly thirty there found their way into the SM (two expanded from the Poe-owned letter texts). In this earlier “self-puffery” (to use Poe's own term in “LW,” 189, n.82), personal opinions were separated from the “editorial” ones. In 1843, however, Poe did not scruple to “refabricate” or to “reposition” statements of W. Irving, Frederick Thomas, Mrs. Sigourney and probably others (some originally in letters).(121) Who but Poe himself would have engaged in this delicate reprocessing of material? Moreover, is it conceivable that he would allow himself to be questioned about the many bare-faced prevarications sown throughout the text, such as the fighting for the Turks and the trip to Russia; or the “unacknowledged” two-volume work of fiction or the articles in French and British periodicals or the offer to swim back from Warwick, frustrated only by the “exhaustion of the rowers” (1.3/T)?

A number of other “recommendations” came originally from the “Supplements” to the SLM which Poe as the undeclared “new” editor had been the first to print in 1836: January, April, and July. The sheaves of these voluminous “testimonials so unequivocally flattering,” as Poe wrote in the [Head] Notice of the first one (2:136), must have been among his preserved papers for just this sort of use. (We know from the mishap over [page 150:] the borrowed Duane volume of the magazine in 1844 that he did not possess the bound volume of his own edited issues.(122) ) At least five of these SLM testimonials found their way into the 1839 set of his Tales with two of them also in the SM items: Calvert's (E.1/M) and Haynes's (E.1/B), both from SLM 4/1836. 2:346. More telling is Poe's treatment of a Paulding letter written to White about the “publication” and also about “Mr. Poe,” which lacks Poe's italics and is worded slightly differently.(123)

In general, Poe takes many small (and pardonable) liberties of this sort. For example, John Neal's remarks came not from a “review” but from “pre-publication notices” in his Yankee of 1829, responding to long manuscript excerpts and a long, high-flown, entreating sort of letter (D.3/B). Often the tone and language of hyperbolic praise scarcely bespeak the would-be proprietor-editor who has been sending out numerous letters begging for subscribers and eminent contributors, as well: “As a critic, and a tale-writer, he is certainly unequalled in America” (E.3/M). “The following poems ... exhibit him second to none: not even excepting Mr. Longfellow” (E.3/M). “Three more passages ... might be quoted as gems even from Keats” (F.2/M). The anonymity of this sketch enabled him to express a basic pride which he vented also in the unpublished “LW” a few years later: “Query? shall I subject myself to the charge of vanity (in other words of being proud of that of which none but a conceited ass could help being proud) — or shall I suffer the public to remain undera false impression?”(124)

Poe preserves a wonderful insouciance that might have charmed the numerous readers of the two issues of the SM bearing this compendious “sketch.” After many long, detailed testimonials, he merely mentions “very high compliments [of W. G. Simms] in ‘The Magnolia,” which we are now unable to obtain” (D.1/M). More important — he tucks into the finale of his history as editor, his intention to issue “The Stylus” as part owner “for which ... we predict the most unequivocal success” and casually directs attention to the long Prospectus on the next page (B.3/3/T). Still resentful about Hewitt's being given the poetry award in the Saturday Visiter contest, he symbolically forgets his name (B.2/M) and admits to pride at having the [losing] poem featured in the 1842 PPA. (Ironically, within two weeks Hewitt would rescue him from dire hunger in Washington with a fifty-cent dinner.) [See Pollin [2] 103-104, 273, n. 79.)

The penultimate section presents one of Poe's undoubted, major achievements, especially for Philadelphia readers. As an associate editor of Alexander's Weekly Messenger, 12/39 to 5/40, he had begun his career as a preternaturally expert cryptologist or code-breaker, inviting readers to send ciphers for him to solve and publicize via the magazine columns (Brigham 3-4). A “spin-off” topic for exploitation was the installment series of “conundrums,” with answers given in the successive weekly issues. He was counting upon the popularity of his cryptography articles in Alexander's Weekly Messenger (Poe being quasi-editor, 1839-40) and of those instituted in the 6/41 issue of Graham's Magazine; the latter was cleverly attached to his April review of Walsh's translated Sketches of ... Characters of France, which raised the issue of cipher-solving. It was clearly an editor-planned strategy to exploit and publicize “his analytical reputation [which] is universal” (B.3/T), both as critic and as writer of such tales as “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” also in the 4/1841 issue of Graham's Magazine. Poe correctly estimates the great publicity value inherent in this cleverly encapsulated “sample” of the material (1.2/B+G.3+H.3) of the 7 and 8/41 articles (see Complete Works 14:114-37 for the full text). He overstresses, of course, the “miraculously” quick solutions, underscored also by Clarke's para. called “Quick Perception” on p. 2 (about Poe's quickly solving a joke in code shown to both men). However, experts in the field of cryptography have granted Poe's considerable skill and, more important, wonderful powers of explication in making the whole topic prominent in literature, through his virtual authorship of detective fiction.(125) Wimsatt and Kahn deemed Poe to be effective in helping “to establish “ a “leg character for himself through the “spectral aura” always clinging to cryptology (Wimsatt 778; Kahn 786, 792). Certainly, the threefold printing and widespread distribution of “The Gold-Bug” three months after this sketch climaxed the enhancement of analyst Poe's reputation, which was journalistically and creatively promoted over three years.(126) The final four paragraphs served to give him even greater variety of capabilities as varied author, as swimmer-sportsman, and as phrenologically endowed to contribute to the realm of beauty (“ideality”) and philosophic thought (“causality”). The self-portrait of Poe as the almost “Renaissance virtuoso” is but a very small part of this large overview in the SM, issued at the midpoint of Poe's creative career. The valuable insights furnished to students of this fascinating, productive, endlessly provocative genius should be presented in a suitable; scholarly text, not side tracked as in the past by obviously erroneous or misleading attributions.(127)

[[Notes]]

NOTES FOR INTRODUCTION, AND PARTS A, B, AND C, CONTINUOUSLY NUMBERED

1 My thanks are owed to the Rare Books Department of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for a microfilm of the page with Poe's “Life” and to Dwight Thomas for his microfilms of all the extant SM files [q.v. in Thomas [1] 515-16]; also, to the library staffs of Columbia University, CUNY Graduate Center, Sarah Lawrence College, and the N. Y. Public Library (Main Centerat 42nd Street) for responding helpfully and generously to many calls for their library materials, including old periodicals, books, microfilm readers and printers, xerox machines, and for their expertise. I am indebted to the Poe Studies Association (especially its Newsletter editor Kent Ljungquist and selecting reader), at whose panel in the ALA Conference in Baltimore, May 1993, I was able to present a summary of this paper; also to Dr. Kenneth W. Cameron, editor of this annual, who generously gave space for so sizable a document. Above all, I must here record my deep gratitude to Alice M. Pollin for the many hours spent in helping me devise strategies for presenting these varied materials clearly and economically, in repeatedly proofreading all the texts and annotations, and in maintaining, for a long, wearisome period, enthusiasm about the worth of adding these three articles to the Poe canon.

2 On 2/25/43 Poe wrote to F. W. Thomas: “I have managed ... to secure ... a partner possessing ample capital, and ... so little self-esteem, as to allow me entire control of the editorial conduct” (Ost. 224).

3 Though long-lived and active in Philadelphia journalism (1801-74), Clarke has received little biographical attention. See Thomas [1] 734-35 and Log xx. Clarke's 74-page book A Collection of Fugitive Poems (self-published, 1824) has perfectly conventional, 18th century lyrics of no originality and minor skill. His 64-page practical American Pocket Library of Useful Knowledge (with 2 editions, n.d.) cites three Presidents on “temperance” and offers a model “pledge.” The 3/4/43 SM declares it a gift for each new subscriber. [page 151:]

4 Clarke, a firm admirer of Poe's skills as editor, had very close journalist relations with Poe at the time over the recently begun SM and the planned “Stylus” (12/10/42), with a special contract for the art work of the latter signed by Poe, Clarke, and Felix Darley (1/31/43). In 3-4/43 a full, descriptive Prospectus of the forward-looking “Stylus,” signed by Clarke and Poe was regularly printed in the SM (as we infer from the scattered few extant issues). As for Poe's help with the SM — “Improvements” were promised in an undated but clearly late March “Extra (No. 1)” issue, in the American Antiquarian Society and kindly provided through Dwight Thomas; they include this statement: “We have secured, at a high salary, the services of Edgar A. Poe, Esq., a gentleman [of] ... high and versatile abilities ... and who, after the first of May, will aid us in the editorial conduct of the journal.” (In reality the services had started in January.) This notice in the regular issue of 3/4/43 on the obverse of the long biography of Poe (reprinted from the 2/25 issue) led to a number of very favorable responses by the papers of Philadelphia. It is significant that Poe did not cause Clarke to publish any retraction of this often reproduced statement, despite his private disclaimer of the editorship to James R. Lowell on 3/27/42: “I am nor editing this paper, although an announcement was prematurely made to that effect; but have the privilege of inserting what I please editorially” (Ost. 231). Poe is equivocating about being editor or having “editorial privilege” since there are many short and long articles in the SM since early January, editorial and Poeian in their authoritative phrasing and “tone” (for a list see the text below). Moreover, Clarke persisted in calling Poe an “assistant editor” elsewhere, for in a letter of 11/11/59 to Benjamin Moran, he inveighs against the “malignant biographer” Griswold and speaks of “our own personal knowledge of Poe, as our associate editor” on the SM. Concerning the review of the PPA (1/28/43), he also confirms Poe as author and loosely speaks, years later, “of some articles which Griswold had published as poetry, their author shown to be utterly destitute of any merit as a poet” (ALS 36607 M, Col. Univ. Library). While he never fulfilled his intention expressed here to controvert Griswold's “Memoir,” ten years later, Clarke published a more evidential article on the subject in the Northern Monthly Magazine (4/1868, 2:234-42). He said: “Poe was associated with myself in the editorial conduct of my own paper before his introduction into the offices of Messrs. Morris and Willis” [1844] (p. 236). Surely in his statement to Lowell (just starting on a prestigious sketch of Poe for Graham's), Poe wished to underplay an editorial commitment that seemed to undercut his own earnestness anent the projected “Stylus,” for which he was then soliciting literary contributions from Lowell and others as well as financial subscriptions from the public. The admiring publisher Clarke seems more credible than the insecure Poe.

5 Ed. 1: 4/42; ed. 2: end of 1842; ed. 3: 1/1843, but probably early copies of this “third” edition had been supplied to the magazines, judging from a brief notice in the 12/42 Graham's Magazine 21:342 remarking on its beautiful illustrations, its costliness (though a bit reduced), and its reaching a third edition in six months.” It seems almost “aimed” by editor Griswold at ex-editor Poe, who surely saw it before he wrote his January denunciation of the book. It was to reach a 10th edition by 1850. / William Fearing Gill's Life of Edgar Allan Poe (NY, 1877) was enlarged for the 3rd, 1878 edition to include the SM 1/28/43 review of the PPA in his “Appendix” (327-46), transcribed from a now lost copy of the SM presumably sent by Clarke plus some Poe reminiscences (Gill 100-103; Thomas [1] 496-97, 735). Overlooked is Gill's statement: “Several of his notable reviews appeared in [its, i.e. SM's] pages” (Gill 128). This could only refer to the PPA and also to a review of a book by A. Street in the unseen 3/11 issue. Concerning Griswold's 1850 Memoir in his Works of ...Poe, Grill [[Gill]] says correctly (p. iv) “Griswold's misrepresentations arose from the bitter enmity in which the mediocre writer held Poe, on account of the poet's slashing critique of his PPA.

6 See Thomas [1] 495 for advertisements on 1/27/43 in the Daily Chronicle, the National Forum, and the Pubic Ledger.

7 For the depth and enduring nature of Poe's bitterness, even during the long gestation of his abortive “Living Writers of America,” see, this theme in my treatment of the unpublished manuscript in Studies in the American Renaissance 1991, 151-211, specifically, 151, 168, and 184-85, nn. 48, 50-51.

8 There is a hint of Poe's early casting upon Hirst's authorial pen the “blame” for this attack upon Griswold's PPA in a letter sent to Poe from Washington, on 2/1/43, by F. W. Thomas, saying “Yes, I saw the SM [i.e. of 1/28/43] in Mr. Robert Tyler's room and [saw] ... the article in which we are mentioned . ... I remember Mr. Hirst. (para.) Why the devil did you not give me an inkling of what your good luck is.” This clearly refers to Poe's abuse of Griswold for his poor treatment of both these men, as well as to his expectation of starting his “Stylus” magazine soon with Clarke's help. In his 2/25/43 letter to Thomas he speaks of his intention then to send him “a specimen-sheet” of the “Stylus,” but to Lowell on 3/27 he shifts the date of the “first number” to 7/1/43 — hopes to be terminated by Clarke's withdrawal in May (Ost. 224, 231).

9 See Thomas [1] 642 and the separate newspaper advance notices and write-ups for the six dates that he indicates (in his Chronology); see also, Silverman 218-19 (perhaps seven lectures, he says), who underscores the gravamen of the contents as hostility to Griswold's work and standards for including selections.

10 George Woodberry, Life of Poe, 2:48. The invented letter of apology from Poe is inserted in the Preface to the “Memoir” (Complete Works 3:xxii). It is so patently a forgery that Ostrom neither includes it nor explains its exclusion. Griswold is thereby vindicating his accepting the “commission” (really a Clemm-Lewis invention) to work on the edition of his “enemy,” through this and other forged excuses from the hand of him who is in “the grave.” See also Quinn 444-50, 669-71.

11 The following review was probably written by Hirst ... but it represents Poe's opinions and probably was the result of collaboration. I should include it in my edition of Poe, but some phrases are surely not his.” He does not mark one such phrase. In my opinion it would be harder to search out any imputed Hirst phrases that are distinctly not Poe's, since Hirst's style is offensively flat, verbose, sentimental, strained, and dull, q.v. below in the text of part C.

12 Joy Bayless reports a postscript to a “cheering” letter from C. F. Hoffman to Griswold (of 2/10/43) asking: “Do send me that Museum[.] I had so much fun in laughing at the first one that I must see the Second” [given also by Thomas [1] 504-5]. That issue of the paper has never surfaced.

13 It has long been available on the second page of the 3/4/43 issue in the University of North Carolina unique copy, but attention has always been directed toward the front sheet with Poe's “Life and Works,” to the [page 152:] neglect of this review, wrongly ascribed to Hirst.

14 Of course, Poe's sobriquet ofa for Virginia, regularly employed in his household, at once springs to mind. Gill reports, from T. C. Clarke, the childlike, gay atmosphere in the Poe household when the small daughter of Clarke visited and sang songs, such as “Mistress Poe, Goody Poe,” and made Virginia laugh (100-103).

15 This is cited from the “Memoir” (xlv) in James H. Whitty's Complete Poems of ... Poe (Boston, 1911), using in turn Frederick W. Thomas’ “Recollections of Edgar A. Poe,” now unfound (see Thomas [1], 522, 917). Also see H. Allen 431 for the children's presence in their Philadelphia dwelling.

16 Passages from the Correspondence and Other Papers of Rufus W. Griswold (Cambridge: 1898), 254-55.

17 See the text, taken from a wrapper ofthe 2/43 Pioneer, in TOM, N&Q, 6/29/1940, 178:457-58.

18 This is a publicity advertisement; cuts 2 and 5 were adapted for Poe's idea of a hand writing on a tablet the Greek word “alethe” (truth). It was probably executed by Darley, who had contracted for illustrations for the magazine with Poe and Clarke (Log 396). See the 3/11/43 Baltimore Sarurday Visitor [[Visiter]]comment on the “sketch” by editor Snodgrass and on this cover design. Poe, in 1849, misleadingly described it as “designed by myself about a year ago” (Ost. 443).

19 The “Lines to Mary,” are entirely too imperfect for publication. The wrier [[writer]] has inflicted on us a double imposition — imposing upon us the charge of postage, and the task of reading a long MS., not only destitute of rhyme, but of reason. We take this occasion to say that we have little desire for any thing in the way of poetry that is not decidedly meritorious. In nine cases out of ten, the poetry published in our periodicals as original, is unworthy the space it occupies.

This suggests Poe and a directorial and editorial role: the pun on rhyme and reason and play on the word “impose,” the stress on originality for published verse, the lack of “of” after unworthy, and the authoritative tone about general standards and raising the level of published verse.

20 We hope the reader will excuse the sombre appearance of this page to-day. The back ground of our Comet cuts is of entirely too dark a color. It was certainly desirable to have put on a blue tint, and our pressman, who is one of the best in the country, has done his utmost, to give his materials a cerulean hue, in keeping with the heavenly objects attempted to be shadowed forth. But we fear the coloris laid on a little too thick, and instead of a sky blue, we may have a blue black. Well, better that than nothing; and as the Comet makes its visits so few and far between, we shall feel quite happy,if we are to make palpable [... illegible].

For the source of “angel visits few and far between,” in Blair and Campbell, as used by Poe, see Writings 2:32-33, 239, 242. A reading of Clarke's plodding American Pocket Library (1842) or his Northern Monthly Magazine article should suffice to deny him the authorship of this sprightly paragraph. It is clearly Poe's.

21 My text is taken, basically, from The Life of Edgar Allan Poe by William Fearing Gill (3rd ed., NY: W.J. Widdleton, 1878), “Appendix, note [letter] 1” (to p. 247), [Poe's] review transcribed on pp. 327-46. The first edition of 1877 (printing 2 called edition 2) is devoid of this review, found in the 3rd of 1878, also in the “5th ed.” of 1880. Since there is no surviving copy of this issue of SM, Harrison reprinted it from Gill's transcription presumably with his own corrections of “typos” and normalizations of punctuation, a few of which I have accepted. He introduced a few errors of his own, such as “real beauty” for “ideal beauty” (para. 9), “stand” for “stands” (para. 17), and dropping “wonder ... imitation of” before “faculties” (para. 29). My aim has been to reproduce, as far as possible, the source-text in the lost SM number. I have taken the editorial liberty of numbering the paragraphs for present and future ease of reference.

Harrison acknowledges Gill as his source for the entire text, citing, from p. 247, Gill's brief justification for his claim: “The tone of Poe's critique of Griswold, in his review of the PPA, which unquestionably inspired the reverend doctor's malignant hatred, scathing as it is, will impress the reader with its outspoken manliness and integrity of purpose.” (See also a similar statement in Gill, iv, given in note 4 [to my Introduction]). No one has ever analyzed the compelling reasons for this attribution.

22 The two excerpts, from the title page of PPA, are, first, from William Cullen Bryant's Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1821, “The Ages,” stanza 33, and, second, Charles Fenno Hoffman's, “The Primeval Woods,” 15-16. Neither is included in the book. Poe had studied Bryant's poem for his review of 1/1837 in the SLM, which gives long sections of this 35-stanza work for analysis (Complete Works 9:269-70, 275-79).

23 Charles Fenno Hoffman, “Primeval Woods,” 11. 15-16. Not included in PPA.

24 For Poe's parallel derision of previous encomiastic advance publicity for Norman Leslie, see Pollin [11] and Sidney Moss, Poe's Literary Battles 40-47.

25 See write-up of Griswold in the Dictionary of American Biography [[Dictionary of American Biography]]. Note the triadic adjectives, the first two with “p” and the detested idea of something's being “puffed” (q.v. In part C). Note the false show of respect, so obviously ironic and typical of Poe. For “quack” note Poe's fondness for forms of the word, including his coinage of “quacky” (q.v. in PCW 35); see “quackery” in Complete Works 10:205.

26 Poe frequently tried to estimate the degrees of genius or to contrast genius with talent as here. See, e.g., “Marginalia” 45, 216, in Writings 2:157, 363.

27 This implies a review within the SM, preceding this but in one of the “lost” issues for January or even 12/1842. Conceivably, Poe may be referring to a review in Graham's Magazine of 1841-42, although none is exactly suitable. This would assume that Poe was to make known his association with SM and become even more prominent in its conduct, as was true, in a sense, through other items (one longer) eventually published in a March number.

28 Poe was peculiarly capable of such a survey through his awareness of editorial gossip in the newspapers sent [page 153:] as exchanges to him at the SLM and Graham's, through his many contacts with journalists, especially now in Philadelphia, present home of Griswold, and through his thoroughness in preparing his reviews of PPA for the 6/42 Graham's and the 11/42 Boston Miscellany, as well as the short “Autography” item in the 12/1841 Graham's. The particularity of the following details, the journalist comments, and the interconnection of the events could not possibly be managed by Hirst, who was totally without journalistic knowledge or background or such presentational skills.

29 Griswold's earlier years included work as an itinerant printer in Albany, editorship of the Vergennes Vermonter, 1838-39, obtaining a license as a Baptist minister (which he seems never to have used save for his title of Dr.), association with Horace Greeley on the first and Park Benjamin on the second New York paper named during 1839-40, and editorship of The Saturday Evening Post and, following Poe, Graham's Magazine (5/1842-10/1843). / Poe's sincere laudation of Gründ (1798-1863), Austrian journalist, traveller, and friend of Poe (see Quinn, 399), is repeated in the 1845 Broadway Journal (Writings 3:103; see Index in 4 for other loci); here he wishes thereby to deprecate Griswold.

30 James Gordon Bennett filled the Herald with scandal and sensationalism. Poe used its detailed reports on the Mary Rogers case during the summer of 1841 for his “Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (11,12/1842). His basic ill-will toward Bennett was exacerbated later by the Herald's featuring the plagiarism charge against “The Gold-Bug” (issued 6/21/43) and its invidious reception of his “Balloon-Hoax” (4/13/44), so that the 12/44 version of “Thingum Bob” invents a book titled “Bennett's Billingsgate” (see Works 2:716, 802, 1141).

31 Poe's animus dulls his awareness that, far from ding, the book had 2 editions in 1842, and would have “new” ones in 1843 [2], and in each year from 1844 to 1850 (10th ed.) and beyond. Minor changes, especially in the “Appendix” pages or balancing additions and removals in the text permitted the basic text to continue to be used, unil 1847 when some real changes were made. Hirst was added, with his sonnet “Astarte” (p. 539) plus a small note, in no way inimical in tone. Poe received two more pages for the poems, “Conqueror Worm” and “The Raven,” and his headnote was brought up to date (but not corrected). Griswold adds a one-page Preface before that of 1842, now acknowledging that not all his original choices were “genuine poetry” and that he has been condemned for omissions, but he has “no regrets.” By “would-be great men” Poe implies behind-the-scene efforts to be included or have inclusions “increased.” Uncharacteristic of Hirst were the style and the quotation in French (a tongue unknown to him save for tiresome jokes such as “eau reservoir” for “au revoir” [see Sartain 224]). A readerof all of Hirst's published works will find a shred of humor expressed solely in his 10/26/40 parody of a T. D. English “poem” [see Thomas [1] 168-69]. / The first, referring to Edmund Burke, originated with Tom Paine's 1792 Letter to the Addressers on the late Proclamation (p. 4): “As he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.” However, Poe probably derived it from its appropriation by John G. Lockhart in his review of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers in the Quarterly Review: “He has risen like a rocket and he will come down like a stick,” to which Dickens said, on meeting Lockhart: “I will watch for that stick, ... and when it comes down, I will break it across your back.”

For the “squib” see Tom Paine, Letter addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation (1792), para. 5, Edmund Burke, Works, ed. M. D. Conway (NY, 1845), 3:46.

32 Clearly Poe's column on the March 1843 issue of Graham's (see part B below) is intended to particularize the present “trashiness” of the journal (the word itself being used to summarize its contents). See Poe's use near the end of his review of Graham's Magazine.

33 Poe italicizes words liberally for various reasons: 1) as his own coinages, 2) as foreign words, 3) for rhetorical emphasis, often irony, as with “some” in the same sentence. His italics for “mediocre” may reflect both 2 and 3, along with a pun on “character” referring to both Griswold's nature and his talents, this irony being reinforced by the rest of the sentence.

34 A Poe favorite expression from the Aeneid, 2,204, meaning, “I shudder recalling it”; see the 1839 “Man ... used up” and the 1839 “Eiros and Charmion,” to wit: “I shudder while I speak, Works 2:382, 461 “(reprinted as “The Destruction of the World” in the 4/1/43 Saturday Museum).

35 The first 4 paragraphs are replete with rhetorical devices that stamp this article as being by Poe; e.g., his questions in parentheses, as in para. 3: “if he has one [friend]?; the numerous italicizations of contrasted qualities and quantities, as in para. 3: genius, some talents, mediocre; implied speaking tones, as in para. 4 for “dares” and “horresco referens”; abusive or exaggerated or ironical terms, such as “overweening intellect” and “arrant literary quack” in para. 1, “notorious fact” and “chaste and exquisite sheet” in para. 2, “idol of ... editors and would-be great men” in para. 3; and the highly effective dual or triadic arangement of elements in phrases, often with additional enhancements of alliteration and rhythmic or stress emphasis, such as his past course and his present position [1]; “without fear, favor, or partiality” [4]. For examples of Poe's concentrated, critical derision, see the “Literati” sketch of L. G. Clark and portions of his reviews of “Flaccus” (Thomas Ward) and of W. E. Channing (Complete Works 15:114-16, 11:166-74 and 11:187-90).

Poe's objection to Griswold's “ranking” of the contributors is borne out by his evaluation of them elsewhere: For Bryant, see PD 14 for three dozen passages, references, and articles on America's foremost poet; also in Writings 2:“Marginalia” 104 and “Fifty Suggestions” 38 (p. 501); for Cooper, see “Marginalia” 74 (p. 177) and also this writer in section III of my text below; for Dana, see “Marginalia” 290 (pp. 418-19) and Pollin [8] 188 n.75; for Longfellow, see PD for over 40 passages, articles, and references, and also Pollin [14]; for Hoffman, see Writings 3:327 and 4:247-48; for Thomas Colley Grattan (British consul in Boston, 1839-46) see Writings 3:215, 4:168; for Willis, see PD 98 for over 30 loci; and for Herbert, see Writings 2:221 (for “Marg.” 116) and 392-93 (for “Marg.” 223).

36 Poe was still able to commend Longfellow, especially in contrast with flatly descriptive poets, as in a review of his book Ballads: “His artistical skill is great, and his ideality high” (Complete Works 11:65, also 11:84-85). For Poe's sources and use of the phrenological term “ideality,” with admixtures of imagination, ethereality, dedication to beauty, and “Poetic Sentiment,” see Jacobs 140-50 and E. Hungerford, American Literature, 1930, 2:209-31.

37 Poe clearly resented the fact that Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-84), blessed by wealth, popularity as poet and dramatist (for a play based on the same account as his own “Politian”), and success as editor, should have [page 154:] Griswold's “lavish approbation” and “more space in the book than any two or ... three” other poets (stated in the “Literati” sketch, Complete Works 15:121). Ironically Poe's death coincided with Hoffman's decline into irremediable insanity, often mislabeled also as “mania a potu” by the scandal-mongering press. For further derogation see paras. 27 and 34 below. It was Longfellow's wealth and success in part that motivated Poe's charges of plagiarism, imitativeness, and lack of “construction” in his works (Pollin [14] ).

38 For Poe's brave, no-holds-barred quarrel with the Knickerbocker clique, promoting the worthless novel of 1836, Norman Leslie by Theodore Fay, see Sidney P. Moss, Poe's Literary Battles 50-78; also, Pollin [11].

39 No copy of the PPA Prospectus exists to enable us to check on these judgments, but Poe's biases are clear enough in many of these entries. At the time of his negotiating with Lowell as one of his contributors to the Pioneer and enticing him as a regular for his own aborning Stylus, Poe was adulating this New Englander in letters and published references (see the puff written and published earlier in January in the SM). Later, after the Boston Lyceum scandal and Poe's continuing “war” on Longfellow, the passage on Poe in the Fable for Critics tore them asunder. Forhis Philadelphia period, Frederick William Thomas, novelist, poet, and political figure, was one of his firmest and most articulate friends. For George Hill see the note in part B of the text. For Poe's partiality for Judge Robert Taylor Conrad, see the encomiastic “appreciation” of 6/1844 Graham's Magazine, overlauding his play Aylmere, poems, and political essays (Poe's article reprinted by TOM in Doings of Gotham, 93-101); see also the “Autography” applause of 12/1841 for Conrad (Complete Works 15:232-33); and for the “remarkable” and “able and honest” editor, Horace Greeley, see the 1/1842 “Autography” (15:250-51).

40 The ranking of writers according to their estimated merit was a common procedure betokening a lively and even feral vying for place and payment, as here. Not incidental is the listing of “Principal Contributors” on the bound volume of Graham's Magazine, for Poe was first listed only for Vol. 22 (Jan.-June/1843), under Griswold's editorship, and Reynell Coates, M. D. alphabetically precedes Poe's name (save for the eight women, massed at the end, as always). Curiously, Reynell Coates was not in the text of PPA, but yet was to become editor of Sartain's very literary Union Magazine, 7-11/1851 (q.v., Mott, 1:546, 769). Poe shows his animus by objecting to Griswold's use of “author” for “compiler.” Strangely, Reynell Coates was not included in PPA. See part B, below,for Colton, called “U.S.N.” [i.e.] “Uncle Sam's Ninny!” for which insult probably Colton wrote to Griswold 4/2/1850, in praise of his “Ludwig” editorial (q.v. in Complete Works 1:348-349).

41 Our problem here is an inability to determine the date of the lost “Prospectus,” which might have come out any time after Griswold's assumption of the editorship, officially in 6/1842, or at the end of 1842, as publicity for the forthcoming 2 editions (again with minor changes) of 1843. Obviously Griswold could not have issued it for the very first edition, out in April of 1842, and Poe is correct aboutthe increase of the copies printed and circulated, to the incredible figure of 30,000 to 40,000 when he left the journal. His indignant charges of “piracy” and “literary swindling” certainly explain his disinclination to assume authorial responsibility for this review as time passed and Griswold's power in journalism and publishing circles grew.

42 Poe had withdrawn from Graham's Magazine early in 4/1842, but Graham did not signalize his departure until the last page of the July issue (p. 60): “The connection of E. A. Poe, Esq., with this work ceased with the May Number.” Since would-be contributors and friends continued to be unaware, Poe asked Joseph Evans Snodgrass of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter to publish his note (roughly indited) about his withdrawal and abouthis lack of blame for the “mere twattle” of the illiterate “Zanoni” review (6/4/42, Ost. 202-203). Poe's present two reviews in the Saturday Museum are further steps in his campaign to prove Griswold an incompetent editor and compiler — steps which he would not entrust to the callow young lawyer Hirst, with inadequate information, knowedge in general orcritical skill for such a task.

From “false colors” to the end of the para. Poe effectively uses an elaborated metaphor based on the common language of the day. A “free-trader” was a smuggler or his ship, as in Scott's Guy Mannering (1815) and Redgauntlet (1824), q.v., in OED. The “flag” or “pennant” is the identifying emblem (their “best” for the moment” which is “run up” or displayed on the “fore” or foremast (the forward mast) to deceive the coast guard or legitimate ships of the Royal Navy. In short, Griswold is illegitimately laying claim to the goods and/or good name of Poe. This reflects Poe's conversance with seafaring language as in Pym.

43 For this favorite Poe tag for “Let's return to the main subject,” see my note to Poe's Introduction to the Marginalia (Writings 2:112-113, note i, giving its immediate source in Bulwer's Pelham [originally from Rabelais’ Gargantua]). See Complete Works 10:193. Only the early source appears in Works 3:1117/n.8. Poe enjoys the chance for another denigrating pun at Griswold's expense.

44 Poe was fond of using Irish dialect, perhaps because of his self-acclaimed Irish ancestry (see his “autobiography,” part C), and had told one tale entirely in that style (“Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling,” first verified publication in 1840; see Works 2:463).

45 On 22:145, “The Sunset Storm” is an ode consisting of 3 12-line stanzas of rhymed lines ranging from dimeter to hexameter. (It was probably first published by Griswold in his Vergennes Vermonter, 3/1838,says a note from TOM.) Poe's text reprints the first stanza twice below for his derisive analysis.

46 The phrase, divine afflatus or inspiration, from Cicero's De Deorum Natura, 2.66, was a Poe favorite, q.v. in Works 2:173/27, 179/9, 3:1127/18; Complete Works 11:160, et al. The phrase about the “Desert” seems to be erroneous in its redundancy (Sahara meaning “desert” in Arabic), but clearly the whole phrase is adjectival for the noun Arab, in Gill's hyphenated version, rendered more awkward at first reading in Harrison's printing (Complete Works 11:225).

47 Para. 9 is the start of Poe's simplified abridgment of sections of his “Notes upon English Verse” published in the March 1843 magazine The Pioneer, about which he had written to Lowell, on 2/4/43: “I forwarded you, about a fortnight ago ...”Notes upon English Verse’ .... [I]t may prove too long, or perhaps too dull. ...” But it was printed in its entirety (102-112) and formed the substantial basis for its expansion into “The Rationale of Verse” in the 11-12/48 SLM, (Complete Works 14:209-65). The allusions, in brief, are to Joab G. Cooper, An abridgement of Murray's English grammar (Phila., 1828), Goold Brown, Institutes of English grammar (NY, 1823, 1833 used; 1844 ed. quotes Poe's praise in Pioneer, noted by Greenwood 181), and Lindley Murray, An [page 155:] English grammar (1818; numberless editions — 1829 of NY probably used by Poe). Forthe long source para. in “Notes on English Verse” see p. 103. Significant is Poe's retitling this work in his “autobiography” of 3/4/43 [see 1.2/B, below in part C] as “A New Theory of English Versification”; clearly, Hirst had nothing to do with all of this, now or later!

48 Poe would probably have been better off with the word “embodiment” or realization” or “manifestation” (see below) for “personification” which appears neither in the “Notes on English Verse” nor “Rationale.” He is the defining “one” who offered the phrase “Rhythmical ... beauty” in the 4/42 review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems (Complete Works 11:75). It is an interesting coincidence that Griswold's PPA, distributed on 4/12/42 and perhaps earlier to Philadelphia literati, such as Poe, bore a Preface (dated 3/42) with a para. on “the sense of beauty” and ending, “The creation of beauty, the manifestation of the real by the ideal, *in words that move in metrical array,” is poetry” (vi). I have not traced the quotation that Griswold encloses -which might be considered the real germ of both Poe's and Griswold's formulations. See Poe's direct accusation in para. 32 below.

49 Thus far Poe creates no problem for the standard English prosodists, in using the concept of “accent” which basically differentiates the native practice of verse from that of Greece and Rome, but by the end of the paragraph he considers accents as merely “long” syllables; this is essential to his erroneous concept of poetry as an inferior sort of music, subject to the same principles. See Gay Wilson Allen, American Prosody (1965 rep. of 1935 NY ed.) 56-59; Allen's promised “thorough analysis” [[sic]] of The Rationale of Verse” (p. 57) p has never eventuated, he has told me, but some such treatment is still needed for the volume on Poe's “prosodies” in the continuing series of Writings. For a discussion, with references, of Poe's view of “equality” in both music and in art, see Pollin, “Poe as a Writer of Songs,” American Renaissance Literary Report V1, 1992, 58-66, specifically, 60-61.

50 The lack (in my Nota Bene computer program) of Poe's semi-circle over the vowel, for a breve, and long horizontal, for a macron, forces me to substitute a circumflex [7] for the breve and a “grave accent” [e.g., è] for the macron. Marks over a capital vowel or over the letter “y” must be inked in by hand, unfortunately. / Poe's confusion between the metrical theory and practice of the classical poets and the standard English arises from his attempt to adapt his views chiefly probably to those of Goold Brown, which he cites for his types of meter in “Notes on English Verse”: (The Institutes of English grammar 1823, rep. of 1833; the 1844 ed. quotes Poe's Pioneer allusion). For Goold's definitions and identical scansion marks (in the 1833 ed.) see Arthur Greenwood's part-reprint, 181-85. It is probably from Brown that Poe caught up the word “pulsation” to avoid rhythmic “ictus” or “stress” since Brown also confusingly mixes “accent” with “quantity,” as a carryover from classical prosody.

51 The first example is line 2 of “The Sleeper,” which Poe had revised from the early “Irene,” in 1841 and given to Griswold for his 4/1842 PPA. It also was used in the SM reprint in the 2/25/43 autobiography (reprinted 3/4/43). The trochee example is from” The Haunted Palace” that Poe had published separately in 1839, then included in “Usher” in BGM and TGA and next in PPA, line 1. He realized the need for a normal ictus in his third foot and either gratified or merely used Hirst, his good friend at the time, by substituting line 23 of his poem, “To a Ruined Fountain,” printed in Snowden's Ladies’ Companion (9/1842, p. 27). This substitution is discussed by Quinn, 354 n. 16, as proving either Hirst's review-authorship or Poe's, especially if he were trying “to throw people off the scent.” He fails to notice that Poe has misquoted the line (“sunny” for “sun-lit”) which would be unlikely if the quoter were Hirst. Quinn also regards the absence of Hirst from the PPA as grounds for an imputed animus by Hirst against Griswold for omitting his works. This disregards the fact that before the anthology was ready for publication, at the start of 1842, Hirst had published only 2 newspaper poems in 1840 (in the Daily Chronicle) and 1 in the Casket, and 1 poem (“Autumn Wind”) in the 12/41 Snowden's Ladies Companion [see Thomas [1] 151, 167, 810]. Later editions of PPA, in the second half of the decade, after Hirst's collection, The Coming of the Mammoth, had appeared, included Hirst poems. This addition surely indicates that Griswold, despite any possible rumors as to the origin of the violent attack, thought Poe the true author of the PPA review. See also my text above concerning Griswold's forged and printed letter of self-excuse from Poe; also, about his implied letter concerning the present review to C. F. Hoffman, (Bayless 73).

52 This is from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Poetry, A Metrical Essay ll. 145-46. In “Notes on English Verse” Poe cites at length his “The Last Leaf” (109-110) to illustrate proper scansion. For Poe's derision of Longfellow's hexameters, see Pollin [14]. For Poe's strange use of “caesura” see para. 17 below and note.

53 This is from the “Needy Knife-Grinder,” whose sapphics, largely by John Hookham Frere, in the periodical The Anti-Jacobin of 1797-98, are a parody of the experimental (and liberal) verses of Robert Southey.

54 The word, which is from the Latin of course (for a cutting, from the verb root “caedo™) is indeed used for “a pause” at various places in the line of verse, but it does not designate a metrical element, such as an iamb or trochee, save in Poe's usage. He has been steadfast about this since the advent of the “caesural foot” of one syllable in his 4/1842 review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems (Complete Works 11:82), oddly enough there too with a misreading of “branches” as having one syllable). In “Notes on English Verse” 104 he announces his definition of the caesura: “a perfect foot consisting of a single long syllable ... neglected by all writers upon English prosody” (p. 104). This article had been dispatched to Lowell before the present review was begun. In the full development into “The Rationale of Verse” (issued 10-11/1848) the caesura has become “the most important [foot] in all verse...of a single long syllable, but the length ... varies .... Its chief office is that of pause or termination” (Complete Works 14:216, 240). It is odd that Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 ed. (vol. I) defines “caesura” as “a figure in poetry, by which a short syllable after a complete foot is made long”; he gives no citation nor does this item appear to have influenced the prosodies of the age. Could Poe have noticed and used it for his own, very individual interpretation of what is normally taken to mean a “cutting” or “pause” or “rest” within a line of verse? No prosodist has ever vindicated Poe's use of “caesura,” and it certainly stamps his authorship on any documents using it. / Poe's haste or emotion in composing this review may account for the poor construction of the part of para. 18, which requires an “our” before the gerund “reading” to avoid a dangling construction. Concerning the “same time” element — Gay Wilson Allen cogently remarks: “Quantity depends upon time; accent merely upon expiratory stress” (58-59). He properly cites the comments on Poe's defective theory by Stedman and Woodberry in Works (NY, [page 156:] 1914) 6:xvi. / We need not surmise why Poe transcribed the well known French-pronounced name for the Belgian town of “Brooj” as two-syllabled.

55 This word (elocutionary) is a Poe coinage, given in the OED as the first instance (before 1882) in the 1846 “Literati” sketch of Ann Mowatt (Complete Works 15:27) referring to her “recitations.” Also unnoted is the instance in his revised review of H. B. Hirst's Coming of the Mammoth (1845) appearing in the “Literati” sketch in 1850, Works of Poe (Griswold, ed.), 3:210:” [His] poems... are eloquent (or perhaps elocutionary) rather than poetic.” The quoted couplet is from “Windsor Forest” of Alexander Pope (ll. 155-56).

56 This is from “A March for Music” by the Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe (1818-96) which appeared as the last of 5 poems in PPA. Poe quotes the first 4 lines, given here, in NEV (p. 104), also to illustrate the use of 3 caesuras in a row. He derides Coxe's Saul, A Mystery, a dramatic poem,in the 1845 BJ, Writings, 3:244 and 4:193-94, a notice which he re-uses, amplified, in “Marginalia” 219, 2:367-368. One might remark that by simply agreeing to mix different metrical feet, such as anapests and iambs in lines 2-4, Poe's pother over unresolved” caesuras needing a linkage with a single “short” syllable beginning the next line could be easily avoided. Obviously he took pride in his “discovery,” as he calls it at the head of para. 22 after castigating everyone in prosodic history for “perfect ignorance.” See also the second note above this one.

57 Poe's phrase is from Mercutio's Queen Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet, 1.4.69: “Time out of mind.” Concerning Poe's claim about “mode of scansion,” see the note to para. 9 above for “his” earlier prosodist using it.

58 It is ironically coincidental that Poe quotes the first two stanzas of his own poem, which include lines that were objectionably parodied by Hirst in the late 1840s, producing a rupture of their relationship (q.v. in Woodberry, Life of Poe 2:419-20; summarized in Works 1:317, where the lines are somewhat euphemistically given). It is more likely that Poe's straightforward critique of Hirst's poetry volumes (Coming of the Mammoth, 1845, and Endymion, 1848) did more to “dissever” the two.

59 Poe's concern over the spelling springs from his belief that the two “II's” tend to make “distills” a spondee, even though he marks the first syllable as short. In para. 26 below Poe attacks Griswold for the word itself, choosing to select only the meaning basic to the action of workers in a distillery, whereas the verb then and now can mean “exude” or “let fall.”

60 Poe cleverly works his triadic adaptation of Shakespeare's line for Dame Quickly: “Why, she's neither fish nor flesh,” into a triad of “feet” for effective rhetorical balance. He purposefully misquotes from I Henry IV (3.3.120), a play he knew well (see 6 entries in Pollin, Studies in the American Renaissance 1985, 156-85, Specifically 171-72); Hirst, of course, had no chance in his meager schooling or work experience to acquire such facility.

61 Poe's problem hereis his wish to regard separate words or phrasesas fixed metrical feet without regard for the accent accorded them rhetorically or semantically within the context. Here he is disinclined to mix an obvious trochee with the prevailing iambs.

62 These two lines are 11 and 12 from “The Sunset Storm,” which Poe exceptionably accepts without rejection of the Miltonically separated adjectives at the end.

63 Her poem has 56 lines (7 octaves) on p. 141. Quoted are stanza 3 and 5.;3-4. In two years, her poem, “Estelle,” included in the 4/12/45 issue of the BJ, would vitally contribute to 1. 32 of “Annabel Lee”: “Can ever dissever my soul from the soul” (q.v. in Pollin, AN&Q 1984, 19:106-107).

64 Hirst, with his self-declared, limited formal schooling, could never have handled these Latin exempla nor thus scornfully (and humorously lessoned Griswold. The first is from Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1, 1-2; next is Virgil, Bucolics, 1, 1; third, his Aeneid, VIII, 369; the fourth is not from Lucretius but from Virgil's second Georgic (1. 490), the meaning of which caps this entire section of the review: “Happy is he who could learn the causes of things.” Dwight Thomas finds a single datum of “proof” in the Germantown Telegraph (2/8/43, p.2/3). It is congratulating Hirst on being admitted to the bar, and humorously alludes to “That ‘Review’ was a scorcher — regardless of those erroneous Greek and Latin quotations which those blundering compositors caused you to make” [Thomas [1] 504]. It is of minor importance that there are no “Greek” quotations among them. As for the tie to Hirst, at this date — it is conceivable that either Poe or Hirst, in a journalsts’ [[journalists’]] “get together,” had flippantly or by pre-agreement said something to this effect after Poe realized how harmful to his plans for the “Stylus” his denunciation of Griswold might prove to be. As for Hirst's willingness to participate in such a deception — Sartain, who knew him well, when recording Anne Clarke's vivid memories of Hirst's “swaggering in{to her father's home] ... and telling yarns galore,” says: “The most accomplished Liar of his day’ they used to call him (p. 224).

65 Characteristic of Poe are the exuberance and glee with which he savages Griswold's poetic pretensions, his invoking Pope and Byron as patron deities of poetry, his rhetorical sound effects in phrasing (the “n” for “naked nonsense” and flat a for “rank bombast®) and his coinage of a new word (“tyro-like”) based on an enclitic “like” (over two dozen such neologisms in PCW 17-18, 67).

66 The OED gives, for “distill,” to “trickle down or fall in minutes drops, as rain or tears” for Poe's day as well as earlier. He needlessly criticizes Griswold here. See my note in para. 22 above.

67 Poe's prefatory “Letter to B —— “ (Poems of 1831, rpt. almost unchanged in 7/1836 SLM) conveys his early attitude toward Wordsworth (Complete Works 7:xxxix-xlii), q.v. in Jacobs, ch. 2, 35-60. This scorn was greatly alleviated during Poe's later years. But his utter distrust and contempt for the “metaphysicianism” (Poe's coinage; PCW 31) of Kant (often spelled Cant derisively) steadily grew. See the 8 notes listed in the index of Works 3:1429; also Pollin [8] 185 n. 55.

68 Poe is citing the penultimate paragraph of his own work, “A Tale of Jerusalem.” This tells about the substitution by the Philistines for the sacrificial lamb of a grunting hog, purchased by the defending “faithful” on [page 157:] the ramparts. Upon its arrival at the top, they drop it back with the words: “El Emanu! — God be with us! — it is the unutterable flesh!” (Works 2:48).

69 For Richard Emmons’ inane “epic,” the Fredoniad of 1827, see Poe's references in “Thingum Bob,” in his “Flaccus” review in the 3/1843 Graham's Magazine, and in the 10/11/45 BJ “Editorial Miscellany” (all covered in Works 3:1146, n. 1). In the 2/42 Graham's Magazine Poe had fully derided Cornelius Mathewsfor his long poem, Wakondah, as “twaddling verbiage ... unintelligible rant and cant” (Complete Works 11:25-38; see Poe's footnote allusion to this in part C [facsimile text below], page C.3/B). As for Hoffman's book and poem of that title, even in 1846, in the “Literati” sketch, Poe rancorously talks at length about the “approbation” and space bestowed on it in the PPA although he grants some merit to it “now” (15:118-22).

70 Much of the material in paras. 28-29 is taken from Griswold's review of the new Boston and Philadelphia edition of The Poems of Alfred Tennyson, in the 9/42 Graham's Magazine 21:152-53. In his quotations Poe has introduced a few changes: “definiteness / definitiveness; [in the poem] parentheses around the second line; [stanza 2] coverlid / coverlet. The first change is very significant as showing Poe's mind-set about another form of the word: indefinitiveness, which was his 1839 coinage and repeated in his later uses 7 more times (q.v. in PCW 29). In his discussions of musical vs. poetic meaning or even merely the effects of poetic language, the “new” word has some application (but not always in Poe's exempla); however, accurate solely for a statue is “definiteness” as Griswold wrote it, not as Poe unconsciously reshaped it in his quotation. / Poe confuses his cross-referencings by mentioning the review only in para. 29. Poe's indignation springs from his conviction that a sleeping beauty (or one lying in the sleep of death) is “the most poetical topic in the world,” as he would claim in “The Philosophy of Composition.” Some of his confirming specimens were “A Paean” (1831) which had become the recently published “Lenore” (1843) and the 1831 “Irene” which had become “The Sleeper” of 1842. For Poe's adulation of Tennyson see Writings 2:153-55, 499-500; and 4:278 (references in the BJ and notes).

71 The faulty sentence aboutstyle does not appear at all in Griswold's review of 9/1842 (152-53), and yet it is difficult to deem it a Poe invention. The Latin exclamation is taken from the first oration of Cicero against Catiline and enters Poe's poems as the title of his early satire in neo-classic couplets against the clerk Robert Pitts (Works 1:8). It enters his humorous tale “X-ing a Paragrab” of 5/12/49 as “Oh, tempora! oh, Moses!” twice, 3:1370. The references to Holmes and Keats are taken from separated passages of the review, including a quoted remark about Tennyson as “stealing” from Keats and a vague implication of “resemblances” between Tennyson and Holmes, a physician with “little leisure for dalliance with the muse.” / Cornelius Mathews’ novel on NY politics, The Career of Puffer Hopkins, was termed “a clever satirical tale,” but given to “excess in caricature” in Poe's 1/1842 “Autography” (Complete Works 15:249).

72 Poe surely begrudged the handsome format of the PPA in this restrained praise, especially since never did his books have illustrations or framing lines. For his conception of handsome books with suitable and tasteful illustrations see Pollin [8] 188 n. 75 and [6] 2-4.

73 Poe eliminates Griswold's intervening argument (on page v) with which he would agree, that the lack of a reciprocal copyright agreement between England and America discourages the professional products of native authors. As for the “domination” of British standard-makers and of those dazzled by foreign titles (by implication the poetasters “of elegant leisure” and their sycophants) — Poe seems to have one of his “titles” wrong: Morpeth was probably George Howard (1802-64), 7th Earl of Carlisle and Viscount Morpeth, who published poems and travels, did lectures, and was also in the British cabinet. Ashburton would be Alexander Baring (1774-1848), 1st Baron Ashburton, son of the financier Sir Francis Baring and himself a statesman and financier who had spent some time in Washington to settle trade and boun questions. The third name Ellsler seems to derogate the fans of the dancer Fanny Ellsler, who included Poe himself, although slightly later (q.v. in my study, “Poe and the Dance” in Insights and Outlooks, 130-46, esp. at n. 9). However this is probably a mistake for Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere (1800-1857), statesman and poet. / Concerning the fashion-followers and readers — Poe had many qualms, as assistant-editor of Graham's, over the “contemptible pictures, fashion-plates, etc.” (Ost.197: letter to F. W. Thomas of 5/25/42). / News of Griswold's planned trip to Europe, in part to seek a cure for his tuberculosis, proved premature and he never departed.

74 Poe's mood of triumphant euphoria here was caused, we may guess, from his new contract with Clarke for “The Stylus” and with Darley for illustrations, and his expectations of gaining a sinecure Federal post through the influence of F. Thomas and Robert Tyler, the versifying son of the President, who “just happens” to be the first poet receiving Poe's commiseration for omission from the PPA. This mood may not have lasted long, in view of Griswold's perceived power and the growing shakiness of Poe's hopes for “The Stylus” and the post; hence, a discreet silence about the authorship and the shifting to Hirst, upon inquiry.

75 The quoted phrases are identical with or similar to headnote phrases as follows: the first, articles on James K. Paulding (p. 48) p, J. A. Hillhouse (p. 80) p, Rufus Dawes (p. 242) p, and Poe himself (p. 387) p, based on Poe-supplied misinformation; the second, from that on W. Cliffton (p. 35) om the third, on Robert Treat Paine (p. 37) Contrariwise, Griswold does speak of descendants of “respectable mechanics” (p. 431) pbut not profusely.

76 The word truth in italics must surely be linked to the writing hand inscribing “alethe” (the Greek for truth) which years later appeared as the cover design for the Stylus but which Snodgrass in the Saturday Visiter of 3/11/43 reported seeing as a design for the new magazine (Log 404). / In singling out this 1842 very pedestrian 46-page “volume” on the “Wandering Jew” by President John Tyler's son, from whom Poe was then seeking a federal sinecure, he is putting himself on Griswold's level (for his unsuccessful trip to the White House in March see K. Silverman, Poe, 186-95, and Ost., 218-19). / Poe's letter of 9/12/42 to F. W. Thomas (Ost., 211) presents this material about Amelia Welby and Griswold's anger. Poe's tone here is certainly provocatively indignant.

77 Joy Bayless provides a convenient survey of Griswold's taste or preferences by number of poems for several of the 91 writers (p. 45): Bryant 20, Halleck 4, Sprague 12, Dana 5, Longfellow 11, Emerson 5, Lowell 11, Pike 13, John Neal 3, Whittier 12, Jones Very 18, Pierpont 14, Willis 11, Benjamin 26, Hoffman 25 (we add, Poe 3). New Englanders certainly predominate, to Poe's distress. [page 158:]

78 Many of these writers were familiar to Poe, editor of two Philadelphia journals which had published their “effusions,” or who “read” their personality in the “Autography,” or was the personal friend of several; e.g., Dr. Mitchell, a wealthy physician who treated Poe's family and was keenly interested in Automaton Chess Player” and in “Maelzel's ballooning, obviously complained about Griswold's printing of his 56-line “Song of the Prairie” (439 in ed. 2, 443 in ed. 3).

79 After using various devices of rhetorical abuse and printing techniques for highlighting contempt and inns as Florida he did Indian frequently, Poe now uses one of his own abusive terms, “Kickapoo Indian,” derived from the 1839 war, q.v. in Works 2:380, 384; Complete Works 10:170, 11:174, 14:101, Writings 2:542.

80 Undoubtedly Poe intended to invoke the Gospels in his “will be quoted”and italics and grave tone, specifically Matthew 25.24-26; Luke 19.20-23. He managed the same sort of biblical and comminatory ending in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym: “I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.” While Poe then merely referred to the publishers who had entrusted Griswold with the important “anthological” trust of sorting and “ranking” the poets of America, ironically it was his abuse of the trust accorded him by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Clemm over Poe's posthumous reputation that we all now infer.

81 The small daughter of T. C. Clarke was Anne E. C. Clarke, whose account of Poe and his friends, excerpted in Sartain's Reminiscences, 216-17, 224-26, shows the childlike conviviality prevailing, especially in the presence of Virginia, usually called “Sissy” by Poe and his family. For the pun on “-conda and “Condor” we note that Poe was extremely fond of and given to puns, and coined the word “punnage,” q.v. in Writings 2:“Marginalia intro,” 87, 235, 253, 291. Coincidentally, his later use of the heraldic adjective “rampant” in “Cask of Amontillado” for the menacing Montressor family coat of arms, also involves a serpent: “The foot crushes a serpent rampant, etc.” (Works 3:1259). The mockery of the “goose rampant” rests in the device on the cover of the Graham's wrapper, namely, an eagle in the top center proudly surveying the whole a fairly long neck. Other figures have page, with been added (see below) and presumably the paper cover has been greatly changed since Poe's editorship.

82 The cover shows four figures: 2 conventional classical corners, a man and a woman each figures with baskets at the top and in the lower reading a book. The “baby brother” “desses” the man to be “Driswold” — a truly Poeian mistake by analogy. See Poe's similar orthographic joke at the Theater, Dinneford in the Broadway expense of the manager of Palmo's Journal of 3/ 19/45, 1:251 W. Dinneford or Mr. P. or Q. Dinneford” (Writings 3:96-98): “We have a note for “Mr. ... this Quinneford [in 3 loct].”

83 Poe uses the verb “premised” in Works 3:1223/v.

84 Poe is correct about the “execrable” frontispiece plate (one of three, before 147) for the “Daring Lover,” the courts preposterous a humble village “tale of girl the and month” overcomes (191-94) his by N. P. Willis. It tells of a count who, disguised as an hussar, own father's objection to the marriage when the girl proves of Magazine noble birth. His visit via a ladder to her belfry-tower room is depicted. Poe explained his leaving Graham's Magazine in 4/42 as due “disgust with ... the (Ost. 197). See also Pollin (p. 9) 174-75. His contemptible pictures, fashion plates, music and love tales” much to say about the use of successive Prospectuses for “The Penn” and “The Stylus” had illustrative wood cuts versus steel nicety there is no possibility of engravings. In this particularity and aesthetic any interest or authorship by Hirst.

85 This is a favorite Poe word of abuse, as in Writings 2:333/2; Complete Works 11:33; Doings of Gotham 66; leading to his coinage of “rigmarolic” for Leigh Hunt, Writings 2:300. / Paulding is one crudely negative about of the best of the bad lot of articles in this Griswold as editor of the magazine (received issue, probably chiefly because of Paulding's 2/25/43 letter to strictures” on his friend “Flaccus” earlier, despite the date), protesting against Poe's “scurrilous (Thomas Ward). Griswold must have confronted Poe immediately with the indignant letter (see Thomas [1] 513-14 for the text), producing this response. Poe bore other grudges against the popular, esteemed, and successful Paulding: his apparent failure as Secretary of the Navy to respond to Poe's importunate letter of 7/19/38, begging for a clerkship in Washington (Ost. 681-82), and more recently his Graham failure for in financial 6/1841, to backing. agree to Most be a contributor to Poe's projected “Penn Magazine” as required by George recently, Paulding had sent a letter on 2/25/43 to Griswold protesting usual, Poe's “scurrilous which Griswold strictures” no doubt on “Flaccus” showed (Thomas Ward) in the March Graham's Magazine, received early as to Poe. Hence this review, prepared shortly before 3/4/43 expresses Poe's indignation. For Poe's previous indifference or antagonism to Paulding's writings and fame see PD 71, indexing over a dozen passages and articles. The Paulding article “types” confronted by the world's very pleasantly has a “dreamer” meet various holocaust: a philosopher, a skeptic, a usurer, et al.

86 Poe became famous for his execration of puffing, that is, overpraising weak lit works for irrelevant or venal reasons, often through devious means, unacknowledged to the readers. He himself occasionally was guilty, as in a January SM puff for Lowell's Pioneer, containing his own article. For his views see Moss 38-42; also Pollin [11]; also Poe's 2 articles collected in TOM, Doings of Gotham 103-109. See his coinage on the “root” of “puff”, such as “puffable” and “Don Puffando” (PC 35, 72); “self-puffery” in Poe Studies, 1989, 22:41; and of “self-puffery” in TOM, N&Q-1.

87 Poe is especially unkind to the Bryant-disciple, Alfred Billings Street (1811-81), possibly because of his current popularity and also his full seven pages with Griswold's encomium on his descriptiveness in the PPA (395-401) compared to Poe's meager two. Poe's reference to his 3/11 review (still unavailable) of The Burning of Schenectady belies his professed ignorance of Smith's fame, above, but a reviewer's anonymity supports such deliberate lapses of memory. See, e.g., for his guarded treatment of Street previously in the 1/1842 “Autography” (Complete Works 15:254-55). For others see Writings 278, 501, and in the 3/1843 issue of The Pioneer, “Notes on English Verse”(p. 112) a deprecatory passage on “The Lost Hunter”(in PPA) which Poe expanded in the 1848 “Rationale of Verse” in Complete Works 14:255-56). Poe's rigorous analysis of the sense and rhetoric of descriptive, moralistic works such as “Observation” (22:149) is often, as here, uncompromising; e.g., “brake” is a common term for “bracken” or “fern.” “Exquisite twattle” is typical of Poe, who also often used a variant “twaddle” for disdain. See Complete Works, 10:53; Ost. 220, letter of 12/25/41; Works 3:1129/22, 1130/27, 1167/7, Doings of Gotham 65. [page 159:]

88 In the “Literati” sketch” of Caroline M. Kirkland (Mary Clavers), Complete Works 15:84-85, Poe praises her very “life-like representations,” repeating material taken from his review in the BJ (Writings 2:316-17 and 4:241).

89 This is Poe's typical sarcasm, which mocks lines 2-3 of this somewhat free sonnet (p. 157), full of clichés, antiquated language, and sentimentality: “So sweet a name, methought, should be for one / Whose very presence is a benison —.” Griswold devotes 5 pages to fourteen of his effusions and records (PPA 402-406) his undistinguished career with stress on his descent from Gov. Bradford. He appears elsewhere in the Griswold-edited Graham's (sonnet “Anne” in 4/43).

90 Cooper's piece (158-167), a continuing fiction in monthly installments, relies upon the reflections (sic) of a luxurious handkerchief upon a wealthy NYC family's personalities, party and domestic manners, and emotional involvements, as well as the author's third person voice. The style, observed details, conversation, and narrative ease evince Cooper's genius and also his limitations, but do not deserve Poe's dismissal in contrast with the inept prose of all else save Paulding's article. For Poe's ambiguous responses in many reviews and references to Cooper's works see Writings 2:177 and PD 23.

91 Poe is unusually blunt but justly savage about Mrs. Ann Stephens” inept story, “Our Lida, or the Mock Marriage” (168-76), replete with his (later) literati sketch, fault-finding: “verboseness and floridity ... turgid ... sentences too long .... [failed] in comic [subjects] etc.” (Complete Works 15:57). Normally, he tries to be gallant toward this lady, a former member of the Graham's staff, honorifically named as a “principal contributor” along with Poe on the cover of vol. 22 (1843). See Thomas [1] 9-5-906.

92 Hill has 8 items in PPA 221-23. In “Marginalia” 208 (Writings 2:348-49), Poe charges Hill with plagiarizing the Pinckney's well-known “A Health,” in a poem from The Ruins of Athens of 1842.

93 See Writings 2:221; also 253, in which Poe derides the fiction of this aristocratic English immigrant, prolific and versed in many types of authorship.

94 Reverend Walter Colton, featured on the cover of the 1-6 1843 Graham's Magazine (vol. 22), also has 4 pages in PPA for his headnote and 8 poems (256-59). Poe's “qr.” is for “query” followed by the question mark. As a chaplain in the U.S. Navy he could be called “Rev.,” and Griswold had aspired vainly to such a post in 1837. See Bayless 47 and also her long n. 114, p. 48, asserting his title of “Reverend” only in 1842, from action of the 11th Baptist Church of Philadelphia, although others date it elsewhere in the late 30s. Poe scrupulously calls him “Mr. Driswold,” instead of the widespread “Dr.” Poe may have resented Colton also for his role as historiographer for the South Sea Expedition of Wilkes, who had displaced Poe's favored candidate Jeremiah N. Reynolds (see PD, refs., p. 78); also for having been an editor of the North American Review, organ of New England smugness incarnate, in Poe's eyes. / The poem, “Adam's Monody on Eve” (p. 183) phas 8 sestets in a derivative Miltonic style, to express the widower Adam's grief. The clichés and syntactical transpositions must have jarred Poe greatly. For another use of “ninny” by Poe see his 2/3/42 letter to Thomas, Ost. 193.

95 Poe correctly evaluates “The Fall of Palmyra. A Glance at the Past” (184-90), which competently tells of the city's fall in 5 brief chapters, through personal visits to the palace quarter, then the imprisonment of Zenobia and Longinus, et al. It uses the touches of orientalism and melodramatism popularized by Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii, as well as the subtitle of Wm. Ware's popular Zenobia.

96 Typical of Poe's ambiguous attitude is Complete Works 13:138-39, but Bryant was then virtually unassailable. The poem, “The Crowded Street,” of 11 quatrains (p. 190), begins by surveying the varied personalities seen by a walker through city streets, as in Poe's later tale, “The Man of the Crowd.”

97 Having scorned the so-called source picture for Willis’ tale of the month, “The Belle of the Belfry, or the Daring Lover,” 191-92 (see para. 2 above and the note for the frontispiece), Poe is wisely silent about this small pot-boiler, devoid of any merit.

98 This too is “embellished” with one of the three frontispieces, a saccharine picture of two vapid girls with arms interlinked. Poe is fond of the expression “sweet poem” — about all that he could find to say for these 6 octaves compact of clichés, poetic tags, archaisms, and tortured constructions. But Morris was a prominent editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer who praised Poe's works in the paper [see Thomas [1] 855-56]. He had used this phrase of commendation for Morris also in his SM review (see above).

99 Mrs. Osgood's 16 tetrameter lines, with alternate rhymes, 194, comprise one ofher less “delightful” efforts, based on a weak analogy of sea-shell and ocean home with the soul, parted from its heavenly home for its stay on earth. At this time she and Poe had not yet met for what might be considered one of the truest love-duets played by Poe. See PD 69 for the many items by Poe on Osgood, see also Writings 4:275, indexed entries; also Pollin, Poe Studies, 1990, 23:27-36, and “Poe and Osgood,” in Mississippi Quarterly, spring 1993.

100 In this critique, “Our Amateur Poets, No. I — Flaccus” (194-98), Poe outdid even his Dawes’ “Retrospective Criticism” article in the 10/42 Graham's Magazine. Apparently Poe took credit for the “Flaccus” article as singularly “funny” (q.v. on Note for “funny” in the next para.). For the first, see Complete Works 11:131-47; the second, 11:160-74). In both, Poe employs every variety of disparagement, granting very minor virtues of versifying skill only to counterbalance them with numerous faults of content and technique, savagely displayed. The “Flaccus” review shows Poe featuring (paras. 1-2) an invented term for wealthy amateur poets that he wrongly ascribed to Griswold in PPA; it became Poe's frequent term of abuse for poetasters. For the source, see para. 34 in the review of PPA; also Griswold's headnote for Ward: He “withdrew from business, his circumstances permitting him to exchange devotion to his profession [medicine] for the more congenial pursuits of literature and general knowledge” (p. 292).

101 Poe is correct about the silliness of Hawthorne's one-page “plate article” (p. 199) which contravenes common sense in plot and verbal skill. Whether it precedes or follows in inspiration the “embellishment,” which is one of the 3 “frontispieces,” is unsolvable; for this sort of problem see Poe's own “plate article” in “The Island of [page 160:] the Fay” in the 6/41 Graham's Magazine, which I discovered to be a Poe hoax (Insights and Outlooks 173-88). W. Hawthorne was to appear in the 4/43 issue of the magazine for “May Flowers,” 8 octaves of unmemorable verse.

102 J. H. Dana (not to be confused with Richard H. Dana!) is another inconsiderable (but prolific and, alas, published) author in the Graham's Magazine “stable”; see “his” “Outlaw Lover” in the 4/41 issue (184-88), “Thunder Storm” in 6/41 (285-87), “Fiery Death” in 7/41, “Assault,” in 11/41 (56-57). We note that Poe himself had to include some of these while editor either through pressure from Graham (for his personal friends), or the authors’ needing or wishing no payment at all, or their widespread popularity (mirabile dictu!). But then the first and third reasons would equally well apply to many of the bad choices made by Griswold (save for his vindicating encomia in almost all cases).

103 Ellen Ashton appeared in the 5/41 issue (204-206) for her “Worth and Wealth, or the Choice of a wife.” / Jeremy Short Esq.published “May Day. A Rhapsody” (in prose), 242-43, in 5/41; and “Cottage Piety,” 140, in 9/41. / “Childers” has not appeared in any of the 1840-43 numbers that I have seen, nor in any of the library catalogues or bibliographies that I have searched out. I doubt that this author's productions are worth more research, according to Poe's negative equivalence. / [Harry Cavendish] filled the 1841 and 1842 with his installments of “Cruising in the Last War” and “The Reefer of ‘76” — all filled with mariners’ lore, naval battles, and narrow escapes — like the staples of popular sea-fiction. / The undiscovered author of “Leaves ...” (mysteriously signing himself “D.” but always concealing his name) emitted “The Avenger,” 13-19, 1/41; “Robbery and Murder,” 225-34, 5/41; and “The Step-Mother,” 134-37, 9/41.

104 Poe's animus against the Saturday Evening Post, at the time, must have been increased by Graham's making Griswold an assistant editor of that venerable weekly; thereby adding to Rufus's stipend which began at $1,000 a year for Graham's Magazine, or $200 more than Poe's base pay had been. The lack of any available issues for 2-3/43 of the Post (the Early American Periodicals file has only 1 issue of 1/43 before jumping to the late 1840s) has made it impossible to verify Poe's allegation about the “Gems” column, but the issues of 1842 certainly support his “scissors-and-paste” allegation.

105 There are dozens of anti-plagiarism passages in Poe's works; a good sampling is available in Writings 3 (and associated notes in 4):30-33, 37-41, 45-53, 58-65, 73-74; 57, 89, 107, 125-26, 222, 252-53. See N. Adkins, “Chapter on American Cribbage: Poe and Plagiarism,” Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America, 1948, 169-210. / The Latin phrase appears in his critique on William E. Channing, Complete Works 11:175 and in “Thingum Bob,” Works 3:1130/7.

106 For Poe's disdain for Charles J. Peterson, a co-editor of Graham's Magazine in 1841, see Quinn 330, 342, and his letter of 2/3/42 to Thomas, calling Peterson a “ninny.” In a letter of 9/18/41 to Lewis J. Cist, Poe spells out his contempt for Peterson whose one-third interest in the Saturday Evening Post has led to confusion over publishing a poem by Cist (Ost. 181).

107 See Poe's unexpected us of “funny “ in a 2/24/45 letter to Griswold (Ost. 279). It seems fairly clear that Poe deems Griswold to be the reviewer of Richard Henry Wilde's Conjectures and Researches Concerning the il Love, Madness and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso (201-204), the first and major article in this section. Hence, Poe is applying his favorite condemnatory terms, “trashy” and, “ass's head” (implied) — neither merited by this lengthy, serious, and tempered review of a book that Poe was anticipating in his 12/1841 “Autography” (Complete Works 15:236-37). Poe picks up a flaw in the review (203/2 bottom) which shows only his bias against the Griswold not his overall qualities as a reviewer. For other instances of “trash” see Works 1:425: “Trash of all trash!” and para. 4 of PPA review.

108 Poe liked the word “sensation” and created a compound “sensation-paper” for a tale (Works 2:346/12). Ironically — he wrote to T. C. Clarke, on 3/11/43, about his visit to Washington, “I believe that I am making a sensation,” but it proved a “disaster.” Poe's spelling of “ecstacy” in the next sentence is good 18th century usage — a late lingerer, one might say.

109 Clearly the last three paras. are a spoof, devised by Poe as a fitting round-up of major thrusts at Griswold's Graham's Magazine number. The antepenultimate para. ties into the children's scene of the beginning. The next one iterates Poe's general estimate via the nonexistent “Democratic Repository” of Meadville, which is i not given in Luther Mott's History, or in Union Serials, or in Gregory's Newspapers or in bibliographies of Pennsylvania journals. The last para. is deliberately evasive: about the date, about why “they” should have printed the prospectus of Graham's Magazine back in 1840 when it was being set up through a merger for 1841, and about why they regularly sent their paper (why not magazine or journal?) for over 2 years and never before protested against receiving no “exchanges.” Or does this imply that the content equalled “nothing” but that for 2 months (in 1843) no issues had been received? Moreover, the deprecatory “picters” reflects the children's language but not any ordinary transcription of children's mispronunciation. Surely, the pun on “heads and tails” characterizes Poe's propensity but not any editorial comment for a regular journal. Having “ leveled” Graham's for babies, the putative editor now does the same for sentimental teen age girls. Finally, a prospectus is not exactly a “puff” nor likely to be called so by an editor. It is evident that Poe wrote it all.

110 Thomas [1] 506-508 ingeniously reconstructs, from advertisements of the SM in other Philadelphia papers and also in the news or critical comments by them, especially in the daily United States Gazette, which poets were to form the series of 20 “lives and works of which only 5 eventuated, the fifth and last being in the 5/43 issue. Many of the 20 names listed for projected sketches were of poets omitted from or neglected (in space) by Griswold in his PPA; This was true for 4 out of the 5 that ultimately appeared (collated with Poe's comments in paras. 34-37 of his review). Typical of Poe's approach were the merger of “life” plus extensive samples of the poetic works, as in his own sketch, and the insistence on an autograph under the picture — a then popular association device that Poe had exploited fully in his SLM and Graham's “Autography” articles a secret shared by Poe only with F. Thomas and Lowell, for obvious ulterior reasons. In all of Hirst's letters, prefaces, and the references in his wide circle of contacts in Philadelphia, New York , and Boston, nothing has ever confirmed Poe's shifting of [page 161:] authorship to Hirst.

111 See the excellent account of the now lost McKee daguerreotype on which the SM cut is based, in the splendid volume of Michael J. Deas 12-18.

112 The memorandum was preserved in the Griswold collection and published by Harrison in 1902, who preceded it by a run-down of its abundant “inaccuracies” (Complete Works 1:343-346). Griswold used most of the wording and “facts” for his headnote to the reprint of “Coliseum,” “Haunted Palace” and “The Sleeper” (387-88). His slight alterations and omissions subtly detract from Poe's prestige. The background data, including several of Poe's misstatements probably known by 1849, were used in Griswold's “Ludwig” editorial and even in the 1850 “Memoir,” as well as in reprints of the 1850s of the Prose Writers of America (1st ed. 1847; 4th ed., 1852) and of PPA. For the “lies and inflations” of Poe's account, which gave Poe an entrancing “Byronic past,” see Silverman 213, 196-97, 483.

113 Indeed, Poe was particularly concerned about Thomas's reaction since he expected him to use his influence in Washington to secure him a post, and might resent the juggling with his letter. Thomas's reminiscent statement is most telling: “Poe sent me the notes for the Museum biography, but I evaded writing them. I told him afterwards that I knew more of his history than he had sent me [undoubtedly the data that he had prepared for Griswold's headnote]. He was amused, and laughed the matter off by confessing that the story was intended to help the magazine project” (Whitty xlvii). The favorable comments in the Philadelphia press, four cited by Thomas [1] 509, proved the efficacy of the stratagem. Authorship by Hirst occurred to none of the journalist news-mongers, many in Poe's and Hirst's circle, such as Mayne Reid, John S. Du Solle (editor of the lively, popular Spirit of the Times), Lambert Wilmer, George Lippard, and Thomas Dunn English (the last not then unfriendly to Poe).

114 Hirst's career as a literary man, primarily a poetaster, began with verses placed in The Casket and the Daily Chronicle of 1840, and is now totally an appendage to that of Poe. His two columns in the DAB stress that connection, also his “bizarre, illogical, often quite negligible content,” “jarring and banal rhymes,” and heavy drinking of absinthe which produced his insanity early in the 1850s. Helen Lucille Watts, the writer of his “Life and Writings,” a 1925 master's thesis (140 pp.) at Columbia University, available only on microfilm, offers no more data than the incidental facts gleaned from anecdotes, episodes, letters, and references in the life of Poe and his circle. Having read everything at hand on Hirst, she used a small cache of his letters in the New York Public Library which show his interest in sports, shooting, boon companionship, but reveal no depths that could have made him a competent journalist or keen thinker. While she traces the references available to anyone using Poe's letters and writings (as I have done) she finds nothing to link these articles in the SM to Hirst (but does not even consider it a moot question). She did not have the benefit of Thomas [1] 137, 308-9, 317-18, 354-57, 421-22, 431, which document the sentiments of the local contemporary press on Hirst and his works — almost unfailingly deprecatory. A few references to his power of “versification” do not prove his power to analyze and present the principles of prosody or to ferret out the grave faults in rhymes and rhythms, of Griswold and others, as Poe alone could do in 1843.

115 The title, incorrect in the DAB and elsewhere, is Cage Birds, not Caged Birds. Published in Philadelphia by Bernard Duke, with a copyright date of 1842, the only copy seen by me is dated “1843” and called “3rd edition.,” 278 pp. It is a strange mixture of scientific names, practical advice, and objective facts (many derived from Thomas Nutthall's Manual of ... Ornithology, Cambridge, 183-, mentioned on 197).

116 As a sample, here are lines 1-4: “Night, throned on sombrous clouds, sat, zhhe Ruling the realms of air tug she sat, / For, pallid with their watch, the stars had sunk / And lay in sfumber, curtained by the mists” (p. 189).

117 For details of the omissions, the moderating of Poe's extravagant boasting, and Poe's future relations with Carter, see my article in The New England Quarterly, 1969, 42:585-89.

118 Gill, Life of Poe, 125-129, had possession of a file (now vanished) of the SM which showed Poe's proof marks in the margin of the “Life” and said they were “of great value to us in settling disputed points.” It may be surmised that Poe's great care for an accurate text manifests his own writing of a text which could not possibly have been authored by the utterly unsuitable Clarke, whose signed writings are extremely graceless and awkward and who certainly had no such “in depth” knowledge of Poe's attitudes and past performances. (See Clarke's 2 articles of 7/8 and 23[[22]]/43 in Walker 131, 136.) Hutcherson cites Woodberry's Life, 1:365 but is, apparently, unaware of its unmentioned source in Gill.

119 This double-column pedestrian volume, unprocurable in the whole of New York City, was sent on loan from the library of the University of Buffalo. It has many different sections, one of which is devoted to “biography,” including Poe's “autobiographical” notes given to Griswold for his 1842 PPA, followed by 2200 words of the “sketch” reprinted from the SM (82-87), encompassing the first part and the final paragraph.

120 See 44 instances of “re” hyphenated to a verb in Pollin, Word Index to Poe's Fiction (1982) 279-80.

121 Quinn 674-75 discusses Poe's misuse of private letters from Irving and Longfellow as though published. Poe apologizes to F. W. Thomas in his letter of 2/25/43 (Ost. 224) for this same SM misuse, and for Sigourney, see Complete Works 17:34 for the same fault. For the intermediary role of the advertisements in the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque see “LW” 180, n. 7.

122 See Log xxiii, 453, 457, 474-75, 495; also Woodberry 2:365-68.

123 SLM 1/1836, 2:138/1: “... decidedly the best of all our young writers; I don[']t know but 1 might add all our old ones, with one or two exceptions, among which I assure you I don[‘]t include myself.” Griswold in the 1850 “Memoir” was to object to Poe's liberal italicizing in Irving's letter.

124 “LW” 166, 185 n.51. Poe occasionally indulged in paradox. [page 162:]

125 The Signal Corps expert, Col. Wm. F. Friedman, with strong reservations about Poe's real skills, was first with his article in American Literature, 1936, 8:266-280; followed by two more in the 1937 Signal Corps Bulletin (apparently available only in Washington, D.C.). Utilizing his aid is the splendid article “What Poe Knew about Cryptography” by W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., in PMLA, 1943, 58:754-79. Finally, David Kahn, The Codebreakers (NY: Macmillan, 1967) 783-93, well summarizes all of their findings, and adds his tributes to the rhetoric and imagination of the “Gold-Bug,” with its disregarded “absurdities and errors.”

126 Friedman, the Signal Corps professional, naturally disparages (274-77) Poe's exaggerated skill as far inferior to even Revolutionary War patriots and exposes his stated errors about Bacon's cipher and his refusal, as here (H.3/B), to share the honors with Richard Bolton for deciphering Frailey's encoded baroque para.

127 As one who has been maintaining Poe's authorship of the “autobiographical sketch” (see “LW” 184 n. 48), I must pledge to include this and the other Poe writings in the SM in the critical edition of Writings, with the full apparatus of Introductions, headnotes, textual ale and annotations, to materialize within a few years. The present paper may, of course, be regarded as a prolegomenon for that edition.

Key to Short Titles and Acronyms in Texts & Notes

[[AWM = Alexander's Weekly Messenger]]

BJ = The Broadway Journal

[[BGM = Burton's Gentleman's Magazine]]

Complete Works = Harrison (see below)

Doings of Gotham + Mabbott [4]

Log = Thomas [2]

“LW” = Pollin [8]

Ost. = Ostrom, Letters...

PCW = Pollin [4]

[[DP = Pollin [2]]]

PD = Pollin [3]

PPA = Griswold [2]

SLM = Southern Literary Messenger

SM = Saturday Museum

[[TGA = Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque]]

TOM = Thomas Ollive Mabbott

Works = Mabbott [1]

Writings = Pollin [1]

NB. Most dates are given as figures: 4/5/43 = April 5, 1843. A slash after a newspaper page no. signals a column no.; after a “Works” page no., a line no.

Selective Bibliography (data for other books in notes)

Allen, Hervey. Israfel. NY: Farrar & Rinehart, 1934 (rev. ed. of 1926 vol.).

Bayless, Joy. Rufus W. Griswold, Poe's Literary Executor. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP, 1943.

Brigham, C.S. Poe's Contributions to Alexander's Weekly Messenger. Worc.: Am. Ant. Soc. 1942.

Carlson, Eric W., ed. The Recognition of ... Poe. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1966.

Deas, Michael J. Portraits and Daguerreotypes of ... Poe. Charlottesville: Univ. of Va. Press, 1989.

Gill, William Fearing. The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. 1877, 1st-3rd ed.; rev., 1878 as “4th ed.” (used); also, 5th ed., 1880. London: Chatto and Windus; NY: Widdleton.

Greenwood, J. Arthur. Edgar A. Poe: The Rationale of Verse. Princeton, NJ: Wolfbart Book Co., 1968.

Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. [1] “The Death of Edgar Allan Poe” [obit. by “Ludwig”]. New York Tribune, 10/9/1849, p. 2.

———. [2] The Poets and Poetry of America. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1842, [various later eds.].

———. [3] The Prose Writers of America. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1847.

———. [4] The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe. NY: Redfield, 1850, 3 vols. and various later editions.

Griswold, William M., ed. Passages from the Correspondence and Other Papers of ... Griswold. Cambridge: W. M. Griswold, 1898.

Harrison, James A. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. NY: Crowell, 1902. 17 vols.

Hutcherson, Dudley. “The Philadelphia Saturday Museum Text of Poe's Poems.” American Literature, 1933, 5:36-48.

Jacobs, Robert D. Poe: Journalist and Critic. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969.

Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed. [1] Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 3 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1969, 1978; 1, Poems; 2-3, Tales and Sketches.

———. [2] Notes & Queries, 6/29/1940, 178:457-58. “A Review of Lowell's Magazine.”

———. [3] Notes & Queries, 6/5/1943. 184:328-29. “Poe's Original Conundrums.

———. [4] Doings of Gotham, eds. TOM and J. E. Spannuth. Pottsville: J. E. Spannuth, 1929.

Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles. Durham, NC: Duke UP [[, 1963]].

Ostrom, John Ward, ed. The Letters of ... Poe. New York: Gordian Press, 1966 (expanded reprint of Harvard Univ. Press 1948 issue).

Pollin, Burton R. [1] Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe [Vol. 2], The Brevities. NY: Gordian Press, 1985. [Vols. 3, 4], text and notes for The Broadway Journal, 1986.

———. [2] Discoveries in Poe. Notre Dame, IN: University Press, 1970.

———. [3] Dictionary of Names and Titles in Poe's Collected Works. New York, Da Capo, 1968.

———. [4] Poe, Creator of Words. Baltimore, MD: Enoch Pratt Free Library, 1974; rev., augmented ed. (used), Bronxville, NY: Nicholas Smith, 1980.

———. [5] Word Index to Poe's Fiction. NY: Gordian Press, 1982.

———. [6] Images of Poe's Works. Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1989.

———. [7] Insights and Outlooks: Essays on Great Writers. NY: Gordian Press, 1986.

———. [8] “The Living Writers of America,” in Studies in the American Renaissance 1991, 151-211.

———. [9] “Poe as Probable Author of ‘Harper's Ferry,” America Literature, 1968, 40:164-78.

———. [10] “Poe in the Boston Notion,” The New England Quarterly, 1969, 42:585-89.

———. [11] “Poe's ‘Mystification”: Its Source in Fay's Norman Leslie,” Mississippi Quarterly, 1972, 25:111-30.

———. [12] “Poe as Author of the ‘Outis’ Letter,” Poe Studies, 1989, 20:10-15.

———. [13] “Frances S. Osgood and Saroni's Musical Times: Documents Linking Poe, Osgood, and Griswold,” Poe Studies, 1990, 23:27-36.

———. [14] “Longfellow and Poe,” Mississippi Quarterly, 1984, 38:475-82.

Quinn, Arthur H. Edgar Allan Poe. NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1941.

Sartain, John. Reminiscences of a Very Old Man. NY, 1899.

Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.

Stovall, Floyd. Edgar Allan Poe: The Poet. Charlottesville, VA: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1969.

Thomas, Dwight. [1] “Poe in Philadelphia, 1838-1844: A Documentary Record.” Doctoral Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1978. 2 vols. microfilm-xerography, Univ. Microfilms Int., Ann Arbor, Michigan.

———. [2] and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.

Walker, Ian, ed. Edgar Allan Poe: The Critical Heritage. London and NY: Routledge, 1986.

Watts, Helen L. “The Life and Works of Henry B. Hirst,” Columbia University Master's Thesis, 1925.

Whitty, James H., ed. The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911.

Woodberry, George. The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. Boston: Riverside Press, 1909. 2 vols.