Text: Jesse Turner, “The Case of Macaulay v. Poe,” Report of the Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Bar Association of Arkansas, May 27-28, 1902, pp. 47-63

[page 47:]

THE CASE OF MACAULAY v. POE. BY JESSE TURNER.

I remember to have read somewhere that, when an essay on the Deity was offered to a certain Paris publisher, he rejected it with the exclamation: “An article on God? It has no actuality!”

It is not probable that any member here present would have declined that paper for the reason given by the irreverent Frenchman. I am not sure, however, that if you had the opportunity, you would not reject my paper for that very reason — for its lack of adaptability to the every-day needs of the lawyer. For, the cars to which I am about to invite your attention is not found in the reports of any court; nor is it cited by any text writer to sustain any proposition of law.

Its habitat is not in the domain of jurisprudence but in the domain of letters.

I am submitting to you certain fruits gathered in the course of a hasty incursion over the borders of one very small outlying province in a vast, an ancient and a noble kingdom.

Lawyers are proverbially averse to innovation; and I should, therefore, have hardly ventured to lay these modest spoils at your feet had it not been that, at the last meeting of the Association, one of our members created a precedent by reading a paper, the subject of which he illustrates so well in his own person: “The Lawyer in Literature.” Few may dare hope to rival him in that delectable field, but all who are so inclined are privileged to follow him there. The title of my paper, Mr. President and Members of the Association, is:

THE CASE OF MACAULAY v. POE.

Aside from the fortuitous circumstance that they have both bequeathed to posterity compositions which are destined to resist “the tooth of Time and razure of Oblivion” for [page 48:] many ages, there would seem to be nothing in common between Thomas Babington Macaulay and Edgar Allan Poe.

It is true that Poe has left a somewhat perfunctory paper on Macaulay, and that he has made several passing references to him elsewhere; but still the fact remains that it is difficult to establish any relation — either of affinity or repulsion — either of co-operation or contrast — between them.

Boswell has recorded how Dr. Johnson and an old Derbyshire acquaintance walked up and down London for more than a generation; each, all this time, unconscious of the proximity of the other. Finally, as DeQuincey puts it, the nodes of their daily walk came in contact. So, too, it happened that, after many years, the well ordered orbit of the great English historian was invaded momentarily by the eccentric trajectory of the brilliant American poet.

In the year 1841, through the “Edinburgh Review” Macaulay gave to the world the famous essay on Hastings.

My hearers will recall that one of the most momentous acts of “the great pro-consul” during his administration of the affairs of the English East India Company in India was the seizure of Benares, and that this act was made one of the principal heads of the articles of impeachment afterwards brought against Hastings by the House of Commons before the bar of the House of Lords.

Macaulay describes with characteristic vigor and richness of diction “the Holy City” and the insurrection caused by the attempt to seize the rajah — Cheyte Sing.

Of the city, he says: “ His (Hastings) first design was on Benam, a city which in wealth, population, dignity, and sanctity was among the foremost of Asia. It was commonly believed that half a million of human beings were crowded into that labyrinth of lofty alleys, rich in shrines, and minarets, and balconies, and carved oriels, to which the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveler could scarcely make his way through the press of holy mendicants, and not less holy bulls. The broad and stately flights of steps which descended from these swarming haunts to the bathing places along the Ganges, were worn every day by the footsteps of an innumerable multitude of worshipers. The schools and [page 49:] temples drew crowds of pious Hindoos from every province where the Brahminical faith was known. Hundreds of devotees came hither every month to die — for it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who should pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was superstition the only motive which allured strangers to that great metropolis. Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All along the shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of vessels laden with rich merchandise. From the looms of Benares went forth the most delicate silks that adorned the balls of St. James and of the Petit Trianon; and in the bazars, the muslins of Bengal, and the sabres of Oude, were mingled with the jewels of Golconda, and the shawls of Cashmere.”

Of the Insurrection he says, in part: It can therefore scarcely be doubted that the governor general, before ‘he outraged the dignity of Cheyte Sing by an arrest, ought to have assembled a force capable of bearing down all opposition. This had not been done. The handful of sepoys who attended Hastings would probably have been sufficient to overawe Moorshedabad, or the Black town of Calcutta But they were unequal to a conflict with the hardy rabble of Benares. The streets surrounding the palace were filled by an immense multitude; of whom a large proportion, as is usual in upper India, wore arms., The tumult became a fight, and the fight a massacre. The English officers defended themselves with desperate courage against overwhelming numbers, and fell, as became them, sword in hand. The sepoys were butchered. The gates were forced. The captive prince, neglected by his jailors during the confusion, discovered an outlet which opened on the precipitous bank of the Ganges, let himself down to the water by a string made of the turbans of his attendants, found a boat, and escaped to the opposite shore.”

In subsequent pages of the essay, Macaulay states the charges preferred by the Commons. against Hastings; describes his impeachment; the place of trial — ”it was the great Hall of William Rufus” — the magnificent audience gathered there; the culprit himself, who “looked like a great man and not like a bad man;” his distinguished counsel; his still more distinguished accusers; the great speeches; the [page 50:] Report of the Proceedings issue of the trial — all in language known almost by heart — not merely by that prodigy of learning, Macaulay's “school boy” — but known by heart, it may be said almost without hyperbole, by Shakespeare's school boy the typical school boy of all time the “whining school boy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwilling to school.”

Of those passages, none are more admired than that in which the essayist notes the eminent qualifications of Edmund Burke for the office of public prosecutor-a. passage which Trevelyan says is “unsurpassed in force of language and splendid fidelity of detail by anything Macaulay ever wrote or uttered.” Says Macaulay: “ He (Burke) had in the highest degree that noble faculty, whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, but a real country and a real people. The burning sun; the strange vegetation of the palm and the cocoa trees; the rice field and the tank; the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble; the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, and the rich tracery of the mosque, where the imaum prayed with his face to Mecca; the drums, and banners and gaudy idols; the devotee swinging in the air,; the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the river-side; the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect; the turbans and the flowing robes; the spears and the silver maces; the elephants with their canopies of state; the gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble lady — all those things were to him as the objects amidst which his own life had been passed — as the objects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the gypsy camp was pitched-from the bazars humming like bee-hives with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenas.”

In the year 1844, one of the most striking and picturesque of Poe's stories, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” [page 51:] was first published, appearing in “Godey's Lady's Book.” It is a problem in metempsychosis wrought with all of Poe's consummate art.

The time is 1827; the place Charlottesville, Virginia, and the “chain of wild and dreary hills” near that university town “there dignified by the name of the Ragged Mountains.”

The central figure in the narrative is Mr. Augustus Bedloe who, in a former state of existence, was, as the denoument discloses, an English officer, Oldeb by name., who in 1781 (not in 1784 as Poe has it), led, it should seem, the very sally against the natives at Benares described by Macaulay, and who there fell, so runs the story, stricken dead by the poisoned arrow of a Bengalee.

In the course of the narrative, Bedloe relates an experience be had one day during a ramble in the Ragged Mountains. He tells how, in the course of the walk, “there came a wild rattling or jingling sound, as if of a bunch of large keys, and upon the instant a dusky-visaged and half-naked man rushed past me with a shriek. He came so close to my person that I felt his hot breath upon my face. He bore in one hand an instrument composed of an assemblage of steel rings, and shook them vigorously as be ran. Scarcely had he disappeared in the mist, before, panting after him with open mouth and glaring eyes, there darted a huge beast. I could not be mistaken in its character. It was a hyena.”

Bedloe continues his walk and finally, says he, “I found myself at the foot of a high mountain, and looking down into a vast plain, through which wound a majestic river. On the margin of this river stood an Eastern-looking city, such as we read of in the Arabian Tales, but of a character even more singular than any there described. From my position, which was far above the level of the town, I could perceive its every nook and corner, as if delineated on a map. The streets seemed innumerable, and crossed each other irregularly in all directions, but were rather long winding alleys than streets, and absolutely swarmed with inhabitants. The houses were wildly picturesque. On every hand was a wilderness of balconies, of verandas, of minarets, of shrines, and fantastically carved oriels. Bazars abounded; and there were displayed rich wares in infinite variety and profusion, silks, muslins, the most dazzling cutlery, the most magnificent jewels and [page 52:] gems. Besides these things were seen, on all sides, banners and palanquins, litters with stately dames close-veiled, elephants gorgeously caparisoned, idols grotesquely hewn, drums, banners and gongs, spears, silver and gilded maces.

And amid the crowd, and the clamor, the general intricacy and confusion-amid the million of black and yellow men, turbaned and robed, and of flowing beard, there roamed a countless multitude of holy filleted bulls, while vast legions of the filthy but sacred ape clambered, chattering and shrieking, about the cornices of the mosques, or clung to the minarets and oriels. From the swarming streets to the banks of the river, there descended innumerable flights of steps leading to bathing places, while the river itself seemed to force a passage with difficulty through the vast fleets of deeply-burdened ships that far and wide encountered its surface. Beyond the limits of the city arose, in frequent majestic groups, the palm and the cocoa, with other gigantic and weird trees of vast age; and here and there might be seen a field of rice, the thatched but of a peasant, a tank, a stray temple, a gypsy camp, or a solitary graceful maiden taking her way, with a pitcher upon her head, to the banks of the magnificent river.” At last Bedloe descends into the city. Here, he finds, “all was the wildest tumult and contention. A small party of men, clad in garments half Indian, half European, and officered by gentlemen in a uniform partly British, were engaged at great odds with the swarming rabble of the alleys. I joined the weaker party. * * * We were driven to seek refuge in a species of kiosk. * * * From a loop hole near the summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd in furious agitation surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river. Presently, from an upper window of the palace, there descended an effeminate-looking person by means of a string made of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand in which he escaped to the opposite bank of the river.” Bedloe (or shall we say his alter ego Oldeb?) then leads a sally and falls mortally stricken, just as the English officer 4ldeb was stricken nearly a half century before, with an envenomed dart hurled by the hand of a native.

The most careless and inattentive reader cannot but be impressed by the similarity of the preceding passages quoted respectively from Macaulay and from Poe. An analysis [page 53:] discloses that Macaulay's description of the city of Benares and his account of what Burke saw “with the eye of his mind” in India contain the following objects which are also encountered either in Bedloe's walk or in the “Eastern-looking city” which he entered: Palm trees, cocoa trees, a field of rice, a tank, trees of great age and size; a peasant's but (thatched), drums, banners, idols, a maiden, graceful and with a pitcher on her head, proceeded to the banks of a river, black men with long beards habited in turbans and robes, spears, silver maces, elephants richly caparisoned, palanquins, litters concealing ladies of high degree, a populous and crowded city with labyrinthine alleys, shrines, minarets, balconies, carved oriels, great numbers of sacred apes clinging to the oriels, holy bulls intermingled with the crowds of human beings, flights of steps descending from the swarming streets to the Ganges, the river crowded by fleets of vessels deeply laden; a gypsy camp, mosques, a temple, bazars, containing silks, muslins, gems; a jungle through which runs a man shaking a bunch of keys. In one case, he is actually pursued by a hyena; in the other, the keys are shaken for the purpose of scaring away the hyenas. The only colors which Macaulay has on his palette which Poe has not on his, are “the burning sun,” “mendicants,” “worshipers,” “the imaum praying with his face to Mecca,” “the devotee swinging in the air,” “the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns,” “the wild moor,” “sabers,” “shawls,” “the yellow streaks of sect.”

The only colors on Poe's palette not found on Macaulay’a are: “verandas,” “cutlery,” “gems,” “gongs,” “gilded maces,” and “yellow men.” Even the “cutlery” of Poe finds substantially its counterpart in Macaulay's “sabers of Oude,” and Poe's “gems” in Macaulay's “jewels of Golconda.” Moreover, Poe's “yellow men” have almost an equivalent in Macaulay's “yellow streaks of sect.”

The residium left in Poe's composition consists of “‘verandas” (which, however, are cousins german to Macaulay's “balconies”), “gongs” (which are cousins german to Macaulay's “drums”), and “gilded maces,” which are very closely related to Macaulay's “silver maces.” Nay, more; the account of the melee in the streets of Benares and the escape of Cheyte Sing as found in the pages of Macaulay is almost identically the account as found in the pages of Poe. [page 54:]

These identities of thought and language are too numerous, and elemental, and they are accompanied by too few differences to allow us to indulge the view that they are the result of mere coincidence. The mind recoils from such a conclusion. The reason repudiates it. Why the mind recoils from it, why the reason repudiates it, cannot be better stated than by Poe himself in his article entitled “Longfellow and other Plagiarists.” He there observes that the mere number of coincidences between two literary compositions proves nothing; that it may be demonstrated that a practically infinite series of identities may exist between any two compositions in the world; that it does not follow from this that all compositions have a similarity one with the other in any comprehensible sense of the term; that regard must be had not only to the number of the coincidences, but to the peculiarity of each — this peculiarity growing less and less necessary and the effect of number more and more important in a ratio prodigiously accumulative as the investigation proceeds. Moreover, says he, regard must be had not only to the number and peculiarity of the coincidences, but to the antagonistic differences, if any, which surround them and very especially to the space over which the coincidences are spread and the number or paucity of the events or incidents, from among which the coincidents are selected.

Tested by these canons, which commend themselves as eminently sound, we find that not merely is the number of coincidences in the picture painted by Macaulay and in that painted by Poe enormous — much in excess of a score — but that the peculiarity of these coincidences is striking, that they are surrounded by no antagonistic differences and that these numerous and peculiar coincidences are spread over a very limited space — something like two ordinary pages of printed matter.

The view that the compositions have no relation to each other being untenable, the inquiry naturally arises: did Macaulay copy his picture from Poe, or did Poe copy his picture from Macaulay? The essay was first published in October, 1841, the tale in April, 1844. So far as we are advised, there is no evidence extant tending to show when Poe wrote the tale. Non constat that, because it was first published in 1844, it may not have been written prior to October, 1841. Still, the sequence of the dates of the publication [page 55:] of the essay and of the tale is significant. The circumstance standing alone is sufficient, we take it, on which to find an indictment against Poe, and, if unexplained, is probably weighty enough, in itself, to support a verdict of guilty against him.

We know of no explanation favoring Poe's claim to priority. On the contrary, the damnatory circumstance is powerfully supported when we come to compare the intellectual equipment of these two gifted men of letters.

Macaulay spent several years in India; and at the time be wrote the essay on Hastings, had not been long absent from that country. His letters and the essay on Clive, published in 1840, display an intimate knowledge of the history, traditions, customs and habits of the people of India.

He was in close touch with his brother-in-law, Trevelyan, who had spent a considerable part of his life in India, and who was a man of keen observation and great talents.

Critics are, we believe, inclined to withhold from Macaulay a title to that highest order of poetic imagination which “bodies forth the forms of things unknown,” * * * turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.”

Be this as it may, there can be no question that be had in high degree, the historical imagination. In common with Burke, he possessed, as has been remarked by Taine, “that noble faculty whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal.”

His undisputed compositions show that his talent for describing landscapes was very considerable; although that talent was invariably exercised for the purpose of enforcing an argument, pointing a moral, making an effective setting for some great character or notable event, never for the mere purpose of painting a picture.

The passages under consideration have the characteristic touch and coloring of Macaulay.

Now, Poe had never seen India. He has painted many landscapes. Some of supernal beauty, others enveloped in an atmosphere saturated with desolation and doom, but over them all streams “the light that never was on sea or land.” The things he describes have no objective reality. They are essentially subjective, “of imagination all compact.” They are “out of Space, out of Time.” [page 56:]

So much for the mental equipment and aptitude of the two writers.

There is also a consideration based on the difference in the elements going to make up the moral characters of the two men, and a still further consideration based on the internal evidences contained in the respective passages themselves, which support strongly the view that Macaulay's composition is the original one. These .game considerations, however, lead much further; they enforce the view, not only that Poe was indebted to Macaulay for the passages in question, but that Poe was advised of the debt at the time he incurred it. That is to say: that the appropriation was a conscious one. To a discussion of these considerations we now pass.

Macaulay was a man of singularly sturdy, honorable and independent nature. It is very difficult to conceive him guilty of knowingly wearing the robes of another without making an explicit acknowledgment of the obligation.

The memory of Poe has often been most virulently and unjustly assailed. It has been as often generously and ably defended. Many charges have been demonstrated to be false; others have been modified so as to not bear so dark a complexion as they originally presented. But after all has been said in his behalf that can truthfuly be said, there remains much in his character which the world (always considerate of those who have done much to delight and instruct it) would wish to have otherwise. It is certain, he was fond of ostentatiously parading his not very extensive store of learning; that he was envious, and that, often, be was disingenuous. Being gifted with an intellect admirably equipped for discovering similitudes and instituting comparisons, the subject of plagiarism became a favorite theme of his; and many have been the culprits whom he has hauled to the bar of justice to answer for their real or supposed delinquencies.

Notwithstanding Poe's clamorous and oft repeated denunciations of the sin of plagiarism one is apt to suspect, at times, that he doth protest too much, and to wonder whether his object in raising the hue and cry of “stop thief!” is not the better under cover of the confusion to make way, himself undetected, with the literary goods, wares, and merchandise of others. [page 57:]

That a man is not a man of lofty principles and, so, is capable of perpetrating a crime for which he stands arraigned, or that he formerly committed another crime of the same sort, and has a tendency to commit such crimes is, in our jurisprudence, irrelevant to the issue. These things cannot be shown. But in the forum of reason, unhampered as we are there by arbitrary rules of evidence, such circumstances may be legitimately urged.

That Poe has been charged with plagiarism and that, in at least one instances-the case of “the Conchologist's First Book” — the charge has been substantiated, cannot, we think, be successfully denied. These things, while they do not convict Poe of the offense with which he now stands charged at bar, do make its truth that much more probable. It does not, therefore, a priori, seem highly unreasonable that Poe may have consciously appropriated the fruit of Macaulay's labors.

That he did this very thing seems to us from the internal evidences at hand, clear. And here, we take it, he may be hoisted by his own petard.

In discussing the case of an alleged plagiarism by an anonymous writer from Canning he remarks: “Whenever there is a question as to who is the original and who the plagiarist-, the point may be determined almost invariably by observing which passage — is amplified or exaggerated in tone. To disguise his stolen horse the uneducated thief cuts off the tail, but the educated thief prefers tying on a new tail at the end of the old one and painting them both sky-blue.” Under the application of this rule, how stands the case?

We find Macaulay gives us “huge” trees, but Poe is content with nothing less than “gigantic and weird” ones; Macaulay presents us with a “graceful maiden,” but Poe must needs make her a “solitary graceful maiden.” Macaulay's maiden descends to “the riverside,” but Poe's damsel takes her way “to the banks of the magnificent river.” In Macaulay the idols were “gaudy;” in Poe they are grotesquely hewn.” In Macaulay's Benares there was a “labyrinth of lofty alleys;” in Poe's “the streets seemed innumerable and crossed each other irregularly in all directions, but were rather long winding alleys than streets.” Macaulay says the alleys were “rich” with shrines, etc., and that the oriels were “carved.” Poe insists that there existed “a wilderness” of shrines, etc., [page 58:] that the oriels were “fantastically carved.” Macaulay's apes were “sacred” and they “clung to the oriels by hundreds,” but Poe's apes were both “sacred” and “filthy” and they “clambered chattering and shrieking about the oriels” “in vast legions.” Macaulay tells us that “the traveler could scarcely make his way through the press of holy mendicants and not less holy bulls.” Poe affirms that “amid the crowd and clamor and general intricacy and confusion, amid the million of black and yellow men there roamed a countless multitude of holy filleted bulls.”

Another circumstance that makes against the theory that Poe unconsciously assimilated the elements of Macaulay's picture and subsequently unconsciously gave them forth again is, that while, as we have seen, every essential element entering into the two is almost the same, there is often, in Poe, an identity of thought accompanied with what we are compelled to characterize as a studied change of language. Thus, in Macaulay, we have “the elephants with their canopies of state;” in Poe, “elephants gorgeously caparisoned.” In Macaulay we have “sabers of Oude;” in Poe we are presented with “dazzling cutlery.” Macaulay says “jewels of Golconda,” Poe, “most magnificent jewels and gems.”

But perhaps the strongest argument against the theory of unconscious assimilation is this: that while, as already stated, the ingredients in the two compositions are practically identical, the sequence of words in clauses, clauses in sentences and sentences in paragraphs is consistently and invariably changed.

Some of the minor variations are sufficiently interesting to note. - Thus, in Macaulay, we have “the thatched roof of the peasant's but;” in Poe, “the thatched but of the peasant.” In Macaulay, we have “the closed litter of the noble lady,” in Poe, “litters with stately dames close veiled.” Other inversions are so violent that it would almost require a capital operation to restore the parts to the natural order as found in the essay. It is impossible to conceive of any memory retaining all the details of the passages in Macaulay without, at the same time, remembering them in substantially the order in which they were memorized. That they were not reproduced in substantially that order, leads inevitably to the conclusion that the radical change in the collocation is the result of a conscious and, of course, premeditated effort. [page 59:]

The truth must be this: The incident of the seizure by Hastings of Benares; the tumult in its narrow streets; the death of the British officers at the head of their sepoys; the escape of the rajah — all described in that vivid and opulent language of which Macaulay was so great a master — impressed Poe deeply. He saw the value of the episode as the basis of a weird tale, the action of which should revolve about the belief in the transmigration of souls as a center. He was too great an artist not to perceive that, in order to make the story carry, in order to give it the necessary air of actuality — its foreground must be palpable and familiar. It was only by placing the feet of the reader on firm ground at the initial point that Poe could hope to lead him by imperceptible gradations up to and beyond the line separating the real from the unreal. Only by having induced the senses to accept that which might have been, could the author expect to succeed in inducing the senses to accept that which could not have been; could not have been unless, indeed, the reader believes with Hamlet that: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

The treatment required was analogous to that we have all seen applied in the cyclorama where the eye of the spectator rests on a real foreground of water, rocks and trees leading up to and continued into a canvass on which is spread a landscape of vast extent. There, too, the senses are bewildered and it becomes almost impossible to ascertain the point where the real thing ends and where the represented thing begins.

In “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” the historic incident, the descent of Hastings on Benares, and the environment of Benares, man and nature as they existed in India, were relied on to give the necessary verisimilitude to the entire story. But, in order that this verisimilitude might exist, it was necessary that Poe should be prepared to make the reader feel, as Burke felt, that “India and its inhabitants were not mere names and abstractions, but a real country and a real people.”

Great and rare as were Poe's gifts, they were unequal to this portion of his task. His “soul was,” as we have seen, “a star and dwelt apart,” far from where the tides of humanity ebbed and flowed. Reigning supreme in the land of shadows, on the earth, be wandered a stranger. [page 60:]

It is a high tribute to the sureness of his artistic instinct that he recognized his limitations, and that he was unwilling to mar his work by attempting the impossible.

No recourse was left except to supplement his talent with the talent of another. This he did. He transferred to his own page the glowing periods of Macaulay.

What, it may be asked, is the quality of guilt which shall be assigned to this offense? That Poe borrowed from Macaulay; that he did so consciously and without, in any way, acknowledging the debt, has been demonstrated.

Is there nothing, then, that can be said in extenuation? It may be suggested on his behalf, for what it is worth, that while Poe has not admitted the obligation, be has taken no great pains to conceal the name of his creditor.

In support of this view, it may be argued that the tale contains an explicit statement put by Poe in the mouth of Bedloe's physician, Doctor Templeton, that the vision described by Bedloe was of “the Holy City;” that the riots were the actual events of the insurrection of Cheyte Sing, and that the man escaping by the string of turbans was Cheyte Sing himself.

It might seem that, if Poe had desired to conceal his obligation to Macauley he would not have avowed that there was any historic basis whatever to the vision. The force of any deduction favorable to Poe from this circumstance, however, is neutralized when we remember that Poe found it essential to disclose this historic basis in order to provide the necessary elements of actuality to the tale.

If it be said that the violent and undeviating inversions by Poe of the collocation of the words, clauses and sentences, to which we have adverted, demonstrate (as we insist it does) not only that Poe was a conscious borrower; but that it also demonstrates that his very purpose in making the change was to destroy, if possible, the identity of the wares purloined, it may be replied that it is a matter of record that, while Poe thought highly of the style of Macaulay he also thought it might be improved and that, furthermore, he was the very man that could improve it. This he attempted to do — to us it seems with very indifferent success — in his paper “E. P. Whipple and other critics.” [page 61:]

In the case we are now considering, we are not so sure, however, that Poe has not, for his immediate purposes, been more successful.

It is certain, at least, that, by a redistribution of Macaulay's material, he has produced a novel effect. Macaulay's composition, while not lacking in picturesqueness, is characterized, primarily, by symmetry, dignity, weight and vigor, qualities admirably adapted to his theme.

In Poe's composition, these qualities are absent. They are not essential. They are not even suitable to accomplish the ends he had in view.

The pictorial quality, however, emphasized, it would seem, by the motley rout of objects, created by the change of collocation, is developed in much higher degree — in a degree so high, indeed, as to produce an almost phantasmagoria effect — an effect entirely in harmony with the weird and extraordinary tone of the narrative — and yet an effect not sufficiently exaggerated to defeat the purpose of the introduction of the episode of Benares — a purpose which was, as we have endeavored to show, to give to the tale the necessary degree of verisimilitude.

From this point of view, the conclusion would be that the changes were made, not from a sinister motive, but were forced on Poe entirely by artistic considerations.

When the hearer comes to make up his verdict and determine the exact quantum of moral turpitude involved in Poe's trangression, he will, doubtless, weigh all the matters heretofore adduced, and, in addition, he will remember that Poe has sinned in common with a very numerous and a very illustrious company of worthies of many times and of many lands.

“It has come,” so says Emerson, “to be practically a sort of rule in literature that, a man having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

Says Montaigne: “Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be found.” [page 62:]

In truth, plagiarism seems, in all ages, to have been considered much as honest Pistol considered filching:

That these considerations may not be urged in bar of the offense is true; but it is also true that they may be urged in palliation of it. Perhaps, after all, the best plea that can be interposed for Poe is the plea made by himself in the passage which concludes his article on “Longfellow and other Plagiarists.”

Says be: “It appears to me that what seems to be the gross inconsistency of plagiarism as perpetrated by a poet, is very easily thus resolved: the poetic sentiment (even without reference to the poetic power) implies a peculiarly, perhaps an abnormally, keen appreciation of the beautiful, with a longing for its assimilation, or absorption, into the poetic identity. What the poet intensely admires becomes thus, in very fact, although only partially, a portion of his own intellect. It has a secondary origination within his own soul — an origination altogether apart, although springing from its primary origination from without. The poet is thus possessed by another's thought, and cannot be said to take of it, possession. But, in either view, he thoroughly feels it as his own, and this feeling is counteracted only by the sensible presence of its true, palpable origin in the volume from which he has derived it — an origin which, in the long lapse of years, it is almost impossible not to forget — far, in the meantime, the thought itself is forgotten. But the frailest association will regenerate it — it springs up with all the vigor of a new birth — its absolute originality is not even a matter of suspicion — and when the poet has written it and printed it, and on its account is charged with plagiarism, there will be no one in the world more entirely astounded than himself.

“Now, from what I have said, it will be evident that the liability to accidents of this character is in the direct ratio of the poetic sentiment — of the susceptibility to the poetic impression and in fact all literary history demonstrates that, for the most frequent and palpable plagiarisms, we must search the works of the most eminent poets.” [page 63:]

With this passage as a fitting close to my paper, I submit to your charitable judgments, my fellow members, the case of that