Text: Jesse Erskine Dow, “[Notice of Graham's Magazine for November 1841],” The Index (Alexandria, DC), vol. I, no. 16, November 2, 1841, p. 3, col. 2

[page 3, column 2, continued:]

LITERARY.

The Gentleman's Magazine (Graham's) for November is at hand, and its reading matter as usual demands our commendation. Its embellishments — particularly its embossed view of Boston from the old hill in Chelsea — are worthy of our highest praise and are worth alone the price of the number. Mr. Poe, the talented critic of the Magazine, gives us a new chapter of wonders. He has gathered together a goodly list of autographs of authors, male and female, and served them up with vinegar and sweet sauce to be rolled upon the tongue of memory for no inconsiderable portion of time. Mr. Poe is a wonderful man. He can read the hieroglyphics of the Pharoahs, tell you what you are thinking about while he walks beside you, and criticise you into shape without giving offence.

We trust that he will soon come out with his Penn Magazine, a work which, if carried out as he designs it, will do away with the monopoly of puffing and break the fetters which a corps of pensioned blockheads have bound so long around the brows of young intellects who are too proud to pay a literary pimp for a favorable notice in a mammoth six penny or a good word with the fathers of the Row, who drink wine out of the skulls of authors and grow fat upon the geese that feed upon the grass that waves over their early tomb stones.