Text: John H. Ingram, “Poe's Affectation of Learning,” The Critic (New York, NY), vol. I, no. 6, March 26, 1881, p. 80, col. 2

[page 80, column 2, continued:]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CRITIC:

Scribner's Monthly for February, calling in question Mr. Stedman's opinion that Edgar Poe was a man well versed in literary matters, remarks that Poe's “fondness for mystifying his readers reminds one of Colonel Higginson's confession that he had once looked in vain through Tieck to find that ‘Journey into the Blue Distance’ to which Poe refers in the ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” I am sorry that a man of Colonel Higginson's standing should have made such a “confession” — if he did, — because “Das alte Buch und die Reise ins Blaue hinein,” is Tieck's chef d’œuvre and deemed one of the most brilliant productions of the romantic school of German literature.

JOHN H. INGRAM.

LONDON, March 10, 1881.

[Mr. Ingram's reference to Mr. Stedman's opinion that Edgar Poe was well versed in literary matters” is open to qualification. Mr. Stedman's exact language in the Scribner essay on Poe (reprinted by Houghton, Mifflin , & Co.), is as follows:

“Poe is sometimes called a man of extraordinary learning. Upon a first acquaintance one might receive the impression that his scholarship was not only varied, but thorough. A study of his works has satisfied me that he possessed literary resources and knew how to make the most of them. In this he resembled Bulwer, and, with far less abundant materials than the latter required, employed them as speciously. He easily threw a glamour of erudition about his work, by the use of phrases from old authors he had read, or among whose treatises he had foraged with special design.”

The essay goes on to say that Poe “had little exact scholarship,” and the side note in the vellum edition is the phrase “Affectation of Learning.” — ED. CRITIC.]