Text: Thomas Ollive Mabbott, “A Few Notes on Poe,” Modern Language Notes (Baltimore, MD), vol. XXV, no. 6, June 1920, pp. 372-374

[page 372:]

I

1. In the field of bibliography the most important item is the discovery that Sonnet — Silence, appeared first in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, January 4, 1840. The version of the poem formerly considered the first publication, in Burton's Gentleman’ s Magazine for April of that year, is an exact reprint of the Courier text.

2. Poe's title to the authorship of the series of articles called Omniana which ran in the five numbers of Burton's from April to August, 1840 has always been more or less believed to hold as far as the numbers before June are concerned, but the appearance of a note on the meaning of the phrase agit rem in the July article, and the presence of the same note in the Marginalia(1) make it clear [page 373:] that Poe wrote that instalment, and shows that some of his work appeared in that magazine even after he ceased to be its editor.(2)

3. The Black Cat was reprinted in the Boston Pictorial National Library, November 1848.(3) Thus far no proof of Poe's authorizing this publication has been found, but it seems worthy of some notice, as perhaps the final publication of the tale.

4. At Poe's request N. P. Willis usually reprinted in the Home Journal the more important poems of Poe's last years, with an introduction. After Poe's death, Willis kept up the custom, and printed The Bells on October 27, 1849, with the following note: —

Poe's Last Poem

The Union Magazine, for November, contains the following remarkable poem, by the late Edgar A. Poe. We do not know of a piece of fugutive [[fugitive]] poetry in the English language that will be likely to be more generally read. Its rhythmical harmony is perfect, and its tone throughout, fit and sustained. “The Raven,” “The Bells,[[“]] “Ulalume,” “The Haunted Palace,” are unquestionably titles to an enduring reputation.

5. Poe's connection with the Philadelphia Saturday Museum has always been a subject of speculation, but continued failure to discover a file of the paper has prevented students from arriving at definite conclusions. It would seem, however, from advertisements in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, that the famous attack on Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America, which Gill reprinted from clippings,(4) appeared in the Museum for January 28, 1843. The review was probably one of a series, a review of Graham's Magazine for March, has been found in clippings from the Museum for March 4, 1843.(5) This review Poe told Lowell(6) was the work of H. B. Hirst, but the style of the attack, the fact that Poe was on better terms with Griswold when he wrote Lowell, the ascription of this very review, which calls Griswold “Mr. Driswold,” to Poe by F. W. Thomas(7) and Poe's intimacy with Hirst at the time all make it probable that Poe had more to do with the review than he later cared to admit.(8)

A review of the January number of the Pioneer, from the Saturday Museum was reprinted by Lowell on the cover of the February Pioneer. Poe's title to this is not certain, but the fact Poe acknowledged a later review of a number of the Pioneer,(9) the style, [page 374:] and the fact Lowell thought’ it worth reprinting argue for Poe's authorship.

6. A notice of the ninth number of the Southern Literary Messenger in the Baltimore American, June 15, 1835 seems to be acknowledged in letters to T. W. White.(10)

II

An incident which cannot fail to interest Poe's biographers is the dramatization of the Gold Bug by Silas Steele, in 1843, the year of the first publication of the story. The only account as yet found of this production is an announcement, and a paid advertisement in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, August 8, 1843. From this paper it appears that there was to be given that night at the benefit of Mr. Steele, the dramatist, what was described as an “entirely new drama, founded on Edgar A. Poe's beautiful prize-tale entitled The Gold Bug.” The author was Steele, and there were four characters, as follows: Friendling, Mr. Charles; Legrand, Mr. Thompson; Jupiter, Mr. J. H. White; Old Martha of the Isle, Mrs. ‘Knight. There was only one performance, and the Walnut Street Theatre closed for the summer a few nights later.

III

The City in the Sea has given commentators much trouble to explain, yet it has never been suggested that the city referred to by Poe is none other than the Biblical Gomorrah. Mr. Whitty has pointed out that the poem is an expansion of a passage in Al Aaraaf,(11) and by examining the earliest version of this part of the(12) poem and Poe's own note to the passage one can see that Poe was deeply interested in the legend that one could see the ruins of “the cities of the plain” by gazing down into the waters of the Dead Sea. Contemporary American poets seems to have been interested in the same subject, and L. A. Wilmer at one time seems to have echoed Poe's lines in a description of the Deal Sea, and(13) though Spencer Wallace Cone, in his poem The Dead Sea probably did not imitate Poe,(14) yet he evidently used the same source as Poe.

THOMAS OLLIVE MABBOTT.

Columbia University.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 372:]

1 Cf. The Virginia edition of Poe's Complete Works, edited by J. A. Harrison, XVI, 62.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 373:]

2 Woodberry, Life of Edgar Allan Poe, I, 236.

3 I, 255-259.

4 Reprinted by Harrison, XI, 220 ff.

5 This review was alluded to in a recent article by Mr. Whitty, in the Nation.

6 Woodberrv, Life, II, 47; of. Letter to Fields, Harrison, xvii. 149.

7 J. H. Whitty, Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, page xlv.7

8 In an article on Poe, published in the Saturday Courier, October 20, 1849, Hirst states that he saw Poe two or three times a day for a considerable period.

9 Woodberry, II, 21.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 374:]

10 Harrison, XVII, 6, 7. The tone of these letters suggests that Poe may have been connected with the paper at this time, and a search of its columns reveals several book reviews that are in Poe's manner, especially one of the Italian Sketch Book, in the issue for June 16, a note on “the extravagance of the present French Tragedy,” (June 22), and one on Coleridge's Table Talk (July 16).

11 Part II, especially lines 37-38.

12 The cancelled passage from the Yankee, December, 1829, may be found in Professor Killis Campbell's Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 41. The earlier title of the poem, The City of Sin applies to Gomorrah as well as to Babylon, while the passages that conflict with Professor Campbell's view (one of which he points out, loc. cit., p. 209), fit harmoniously with the interpretation here proposed.

13 Somnia (Phila., 1848), page 11.

14 Cone, The Proud Ladye (N. Y., 1840), page 70.