Text: Anonymous, “Holiday Books,” New York Herald (New York, NY), whole no. 14,000, December 21, 1874, p. 3, cols. 1-2

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HOLIDAY BOOKS.

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About this, the Christmas time, we are honored with a profusion of volumes in all the glory of typography, engraving and embellishment. The tendency extravagant bindings or over rated ed covers is growing, and it as if the art of bookmaker was devoted outside rather than the inside of his publication. The first holiday book that comes to us is entitled “Lotos Leaves, Original Essays and Poems by the Members of the Lotos Club, Edited by Mr. Brougham and Mr. Eiderkin. Published by William F. Gill & Co., Boston.” This is a quarto volume printed on the finest paper, in good type, filled with illustrations by New York and Boston artists. Some of the illustrations, especially the one on page 8, entitled, “Log Rolling in the South,” and another on page 321, Illustrating the line, lotos blows by every winding creek,” are exceedingly fine. Beyond these there is nothing especially valuable to the way or art the frontispiece being something terrible in its way. As we have said, this book is a collection of essays written by members of the Lotos Club, a literary and social association in New York. It is dedicated to Alfred Tennyson, poet of our day,” and bas a preface singularly stupid, containing one idea worthy of remembrance-namely, that the profits of the book will be presented to the American Dramatic Fund. There are thirty-two essays and poems, and among other authors we observe Whitelaw Reid, distinguished editor of the Tribune John Brougham, the actor; Mark Twain, Petroleum V. Nasby, Wilkie Collins, Noah Brooks, John Hay, Henry S. Olcott, J. Henry Hager, Colonel Thomas W. Knox, Robert B. Roosevelt and I. H. Bromley. Mr. Reid gives an admirable sketch of his life in the South, which shows a descriptive faculty that would have given him a high place in literature had he sought his vocation outside the sphere of the Tribune. Mark Twain's “Encounter with an Interviewer” is absurd, and rather too long to be amusing. The most valuable contributions are “How We Hung John Brown,” by Colonel Olcott; “Edgar Allan Poe and his Biographer,” by Mr. Gill; “Players in a Large Drama,” by J. H. Bromley,” by Colonel Hay. Colonel Hay's poem, in fact, is one of the most striking works of that gifted writer. It is injured, as an angel, standing on a guillotine, the however, by a wood engraving showing which has fallen, taking with it the head of a king. There is something repulsive in this picture, but the drawing is so bad that it becomes amusing. There is nothing in it at all resembling that tearful machine. Mr. Hay's poem is as follows: —

LIBERTY

The sketch “How We Hung John Brown” is an account of the experience of Colonel Olcott as a volunteer in the southern militia who surrounded the scaffold of that extraordinary fanatic. Colonel Olcott was one of the guard that accompanied the wagon bearing the victim to the gallows, “an old man of erect figure, seated on a box of fresh cut deal, clad in a black suit, with a black slouch hat and with blood-red worsted slippers on his feet.” Mr. Bromley describes the inauguration of President Lincoln, and his work is an exceedingly Ane bit of writing, with a little tendency to leave the narrative and preach, which lengthens the sketch but weakens it. Mr. Gill, the publisher of the book, has written a valuable contribution to the literature of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. It leads us to hope that the time may come when some of our ambitions authors will study the life of Poe and tell us the truth about him. A few days ago we had occasion to review Mr. Stoddart's [[Stoddard's]] sketch. Mr. Gill adds a some additional information to what we learned from Mr. Stoddard. He denies that Poe was a gambler and rake in his university, and contradicts the stories of Dr. Griswold, which are the basis of much of what is known of the poet's life. There has always been an unpleasant legend that Poe, before he died, went to the house or a lady to whom he was engaged to be married, in Providence, R. I., and behaved so badly that the engagement was broken off. This story Mr. Gill destroys completely, and quotes a letter from Mrs. Whitman, the lady in question, written last year, an extract from which is worth publishing: — “No such scene as that described by Dr. Griswold,” she writes, “ever transpired in my presence. No one, certainly no woman, who had the slightest acquaintance with Edgar Poe could have credited the story for an instant. He was essentially and instinctively a gentleman, utterly incapable, even in moments of excitement and delirium, of such an outrage as Dr. Griswold has attributed to him. During the last years of his unhappy life, whenever he yielded to the temptations that were drawing him into the fathomless abyss, he always lost himself in sublime rhapsodies on the evolution of the universe, speaking as from some imaginary platform to vast audiences of rapt and attentive listeners. During a visit to the city in the autumn of 1848 I once saw him after one of those nights of wild excitement, before reason had fully recovered its throne. Yet, even then, in those frenzied moments, when the doors of the mind's haunted palace were left all unguarded, his words were the words of a princely intellect overwrought — a heart only too sensitive and too finely strung. I repeat that no one acquainted with Poe would have given Dr. Griswold's scandalous anecdote moment's credence.” The Griswold story, which Mr. Gill thus destroys, is as follows : — “Poe's name was frequently associated with that of one of the most brilliant women of New England, and it was publicly announced that they were to be married. He had first seen her on his way from Boston, when he visited that city to deliver poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, at midnight he wandered from his hotel, near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a garden. He conceived Instantly one of his most exquisite poems, worthy of himself, of her and of the most exalted passion. They were not married, and the breaking of the engagement affords a striking illustration of the strangeness or his character. He said an acquaintance in New York, who was congratulating him on the prospect of his union with a person of so much genius and so many virtues, “It is a mistake; I am not going to be married.’ ‘Why, Mr. Poe, I understand [column 2:] that the banns, have been published.’ ‘I cannot help what you have heard, my dear madam, but, mark me, I shall not marry her.’ He left town on the same evening, and next day was reeling through the streets of the city which was the lady's home, and in the evening, which should have been the evening before the bridal, in his drunkenness he committed such outrages in her house as made it necessary to summon the police.” This is the story, which has hung like a cloud over the memory of Poe, which Mr. Gill destroys forever, and for which service we thank him. The poem which he referred to is the one beginning “I saw thee once, and once only, years ago.”

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