Text: Edmund C. Stedman, “A Distressing Misquotation,” The Dial (Chicago, IL), vol. XXX, no. 353, March 1, 1902, p. 131, col. 2

[page 131, column 2, continued:]

”A DISTRESSING MISQUOTATION.”

(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)

A correspondent (“S.”) in your issue of February 1 tartly refers to what seems to him a lapse on the part of the editor of “An American Anthology.” One of Poe's “gems” he finds to be “marred by one of the most diabolical blunders of misquotation in all the annals of printing.” Quoting, from “To One in Paradise,” —

— he truthfully states that, “instead of ‘dark’ eye, Mr. Stedman has gray eye.”

If “S.” will consult the Stedman-Woodberry edition of Poe's Works (the latest complete text), he will see that “gray,” and not “dark,” was the adjective finally used by the author of “To One in Paradise.” Doubtless Poe might have stuck to his early draft of that ballad, instead of carefully rewriting it, if he could have known that “S.” was to say of “gray eye glances” that the “distressing alliteration would have ruined the fame of Milton.”

On page 190, Vol. X., of the Edition cited, the variorum notes show the poet's many radical emendations, — one of which is the substitution in question. After my labors with Professor Woodberry in the editorship of Poe, I could hardly be expected to prefer any text before our own, and I would be apt to scrutinize the proof of selections therefrom with unusual care. One of the claims of our text to the title of “definitive” is that it follows Poe's own copy of his last book of verse, with the marginal revision by his own hand. Occasionally his changes from a crude early draft are open to criticism, but nineteen times in twenty they are most felicitous (as in the ballad of “Lenore”). Possibly this may not be said of the change from “dark” to “gray,” yet it will be recalled that Poe had a passion for alliteration, and, again, that such a change was sometimes determined by other than technical considerations. In standing by the text of the “Anthology,” I may be guilty, but certainly not of the “blunder” which is proverbially worse than a crime.

EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

Bronxville, N. Y., February 19, 1901.