Text: Cornelia Wells Walter, “Quizzing the Bostonians,” Daily Evening Transcript (Boston, MA), October 30, 1845, p. 2

IN “E. A. POE'S POEMS,” second edition, published in New York in 1831, is the entire poem recently delivered before the Lyceum of this city, and for the attempt of speaking before which association the author made an apology as regards his capacity. This capacity, it seems, has been deteriorating since Mr Poe was ten years of age, his best poems having been written before that period. Mr Poe may have quizzed the Bostonians in his own estimation, but one Bostonian was not quizzed who had the above-named book of poems in his pocket during the late delivery of the “Messenger Star,” and who sat quietly reading it in the gallery, prepared to act the prompter if its author by any unaccustomed bewilderment of memory should have lost the cue!