Text: Richard Herne Shepherd, “Edgar Poe's Tamerlane,” Athenaeum (London, UK), whole no. 2947, April 19, 1884, p. 504

EDGAR POE'S ‘TAMERLANE.’

Chelsea, April 7, 1884.

MR. JOHN H. INGRAM, in his communication on the above subject, printed in your columns of the 5th, complains that I have abused and slandered him, and that I have in my preface borrowed or stolen passages from publications of his without acknowledgment. These are grave and serious charges, if true; perhaps those of your readers who chance to possess the little volume in question will, in fairness if not in favour, refer to the preface and examine how far they correspond with fact. For the information of those who do not possess and have no opportunity of reference to it, you will mean time permit me to mention that my first quotation from Mr. Ingram, on p. 9 of the preface, is professedly derived from “a critic whose familiar acquaintance with the text of Poe gives weight to his verdict.” Later on the same page occur the following words: “I have no desire to disparage or underrate, and have already taken occasion to render tribute to, the worthy and loyal service and labour of love performed by Mr. Ingram, with zeal if not always with discretion, on the text of Poe, and still more notably in clearing his life and memory from the aspersions of contemporary calumniators.” And in the list of corrigenda and errata of the original edition, I have carefully acknowledged, half a dozen times over, my obligation for every conjectural emendation, however minute or however obvious, adopted by me in the text, if first suggested by Mr. Ingram. All this does not, primâ facie, look much like abuse or slander, or borrowing without acknowledgment.

Mr. Ingram's irritation — expressed, it seems to me, somewhat intemperately as well as incoherently — really appears to arise from my disputing his claim to be the “discoverer” of the first edition of Poe's ‘Tamerlane,’ and to hold in reserve, while he refrained from exercising, a kind of moral monopoly over its republication. He assumes too much the air and attitude, as Mr. Woodberry (who, I can assure Mr. Ingram, is as real and well-known a person as himself, and as earnest, enthusiastic, and indefatigable a student of the author of ‘The Raven’) expresses it, of “seeming to own Poe.” Mr. Woodberry's biography of Poe will shortly appear in the series of “American Men of Letters,” and will, I trust, convince Mr. Ingram's incredulity respecting the actual existence of a fellow-worker and a lover of Poe, in the country of Poe.

Mr. Ingram calls upon me to retract my “positive accusation that he made a false statement when he claimed to be the discoverer of the first edition of Poe's ‘Tamerlane’ at the British Museum.” I have already pointed out that the volume came into the possession of the British Museum in the autumn of 1867. Unless, therefore, Mr. Ingram is prepared to prove that it was purchased of or through him, or that he [column 3:] commenced his examination of it immediately on its acquisition, so far from retracting, I emphatically repeat, not that he “made a false statement” (an expression I never used), but that his claim to be considered as the discoverer of the volume is “untenable and preposterous.” And whenever the volume came into Mr. Ingram's hands, or first came under his notice, certain it is that he did not communicate any account of it to the public until the appearance of his paper in Belgravia in June, 1876 — a paper which, while it was (as I have already hinted) enriched with some valuable conjectural emendations, was also disfigured (as regards the reproduction of Poe's text) by the introduction of a dozen or more very ugly misprints, ruinous to sense and metre. Of these I am quite ready to supply a list, if Mr. Ingram desires it; and I should be very thankful if he, on his part, would give at least some proof of his vague accusation that my reprint is a “very incorrect” one, in any other sense than that of silently correcting what he himself designates the “palpable errata” of the original, and of “reducing the orthography and punctuation to a uniform standard,” which was the plan of editing I proposed to myself.

In conclusion, I cannot refrain from adding that it seems to me praise or blame is only valuable or significant in connexion with the weight and authority of the person who utters it; and that it concerns me little that a book which Mr. Swinburne has done me the honour to characterize as “so beautiful and valuable a little volume, full of interest for the admirers of Poe's singular and exquisite genius,” should be stigmatized by Mr. Ingram at once as an “exorbitantly priced book” and as “a valueless item of bibliography.”

RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD.

P.S. — As for “the bibliographical information about Tennyson,” for which I was somewhat amused as well as surprised to find myself also indebted to Mr. Ingram, my account of the ‘Poems by Two Brothers’ was contributed to Notes and Queries early in 1866, and reappeared a year later as the first chapter of Tennysoniana.