[page 188:]

ON leaving Richmond Poe made his way with his family by slow stages through Baltimore and Philadelphia to New York, where he took up his residence at 113 1/2 Carmine Street. If he had gone there with the expectation of obtaining permanent literary employment from Dr. Hawks on the “New York Review,” he was soon undeceived, nor did Anthon or Paulding avail him much. The first number of the magazine had appeared in March, but the financial panic that then swept over the country made the enterprise more difficult and hazardous, and the second issue was delayed until October. In this was a notice by Poe of Stephens's “Travels in Arabia Petraea,” prepared at an earlier time and now rewritten. The article, which was attributed to Secretary Cass, is a reviewer's compilation, by extract and paraphrase, from the book itself and Keith's lately published work on Prophecy; it is written in a very orthodox vein, but its main point is a criticism of that doctor's interpretation [page 189:] of a few verses in Isaiah and Ezekiel respecting Idumaea, and turns on a rendering from the Hebrew. He had applied for this to Anthon, who inclosed it with the following note: —

Poe inserted the passage in his review textually as received; and he reprinted it, as his own, at favorable opportunities afterwards. He appears not to have contributed again to the theological quarterly, and no further connection with Anthon at this time is disclosed. Less is known of Poe at this period than at any other in his career. The only other contemporary publication that has been traced is the grotesque tale, “Mystification,” which appeared under the [page 190:] title, “Von Jung, the Mystific,” in the “American Monthly Magazine,” June, 1837.

Paulding, on his part, was now removing to Washington, but he may have been the medium of offering the “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,”(1) when completed, to the Harpers, who announced it in May, 1838, and published it at the end of July. Tales of the sea, under the influence of Cooper and Marryatt, were then at the height of their popularity, and many grew up and withered in a day. In selecting his subject, however, Poe was not merely adopting the literary fashion, but, with the sure journalistic instinct that characterized him, was trading on the momentary curiosity of the public, which was highly interested in Antarctic explorations [page 191:] in consequence of the expedition then fitting out under the auspices of the government. Poe, who was acquainted with the chief projector, J. N. Reynolds, had found some attraction in the scheme from the first. He had reviewed the congressional report on the matter, and twice written editorially about it while still editor of the “Messenger.” In this way his attention was originally drawn to the subject.

The narrative is circumstantial and might well seem plausible to the unreflecting and credulous, although there are a few slips, as where in the fifth chapter Augustus, who died on the voyage, is said to have revealed some matters to Arthur only in later years. Its credibility, how ever, is not so strange, nor the realistic art so ingenious, as might be thought, since portions of it are either suggested from other lately printed books, such as Irving's “Astoria,” or directly compiled (the detailed account of the South Seas is taken almost textually from Morell's “Voyages”(1)) by the easy process of close para phrase. What is peculiar to the book is its accumulation of blood-curdling incidents. All the horrors of the deep are brought in and huddled [page 192:] up together; the entombment of Arthur in the hold, where he suffers everything possible to his situation, from starvation to an attack by a mad dog, the butchery of the mutineers, the sickening riot, the desperate fight between the two factions on board, poison, shipwreck, cannibalism among friends, make the staple of the first part of Pym's adventures; some portions, such as the disguise of Pym as a putrescent corpse, the ship of carrion men with the feeding gull, or the details of Augustus's death, are so revoltingly horrible, so merely physically disgusting, that one can hardly understand how even Poe could endure to suggest or develop them. Death in every fearful form is the constant theme; even after the ship reaches the southern regions the author diversifies his geographical and botanical extracts only by the apprehension of living inhumation, or the analysis of the sensation of falling down a precipice, or wholesale murder. Poe's touch is notice able here and there throughout, it is true; but he does not show the distinctive subtlety, force, and fire of his genius until the very end, and then only in a way to discredit the plausibility he had previously aimed at. When the finely imagined isle of Tsalal comes in view, the real tale in its original part begins, and from that point the [page 193:] keeping and gradation of the narrative is exquisite, while a wonderful interest is afforded by the slight intimation and gradual revelation of the white country to the south. The caverns of the hieroglyphs are suggested by the Sinaitic written mountains; but after the voyagers leave the island and are drawn on toward the pole, the startling scenery, by which expectation is raised to the highest pitch without loss of vagueness, forms one of his most original and powerful landscapes.

The volume was noticed by the press, but had little success in this country, and the author, of course, derived no profit from its reprint by Putnam in England, where the country public are said to have been hoaxed by it. The main income of the family at this time seems to have been derived from Mrs. Clemm's keeping boarders, one of whom, Mr. William Go wans, a book seller, declares that for the eight months or more during which he lived with the family he never saw Poe otherwise than sober, courteous, and gentlemanly.(1) Mrs. Clemm's earnings seem to have been no more than sufficient, since Poe, when in the summer he decided to remove to Philadelphia, was forced to borrow money. [page 194:]

Thither he went in midsummer, apparently following his market, since in a letter of September 4 to his old acquaintance, Brooks, he declines to write an article upon Irving, on the ground that he has “two engagements which it would be ruinous to neglect.”(1) This may refer to his text-book of Conchology, upon which he was employed during the winter. This volume(2) has given rise to so much discussion that it must receive more notice than it would otherwise deserve. It was charged in his lifetime that the work was a simple reprint of an English book, Captain Thomas Brown's “Conchology,” which Poe had the effrontery to copyright in this country as his own. He indignantly denied the accusation, and said: —

“I wrote the Preface and Introduction, and translated from Cuvier the accounts of the animals, [page 195:] &c. All school-books are necessarily made in a similar way.”(1)

What Poe's understanding was of the manner in which authors of school-books use their authorities may be seen from his own words: —

“It is the practice of quacks to paraphrase page after page, rearranging the order of paragraphs, making a slight alteration in point of fact here and there, but preserving the spirit of the whole, its information, erudition, etc., etc., while everything is so completely rewritten as to leave no room for a direct charge of plagiarism; and this is considered and lauded as originality. Now, he who, in availing himself of the labors of his predecessors (and it is clear that all scholars must avail themselves of such labors) — he who shall copy verbatim the passages to be desired, without attempt at palming off their spirit as original with himself, is certainly no plagiarist, even if he fail to make direct acknowledgment of indebtedness, — is unquestionably less of the plagiarist than the disingenuous and contemptible quack who wriggles himself, as above explained, into a reputation for originality, a reputation quite out of place in a case of this kind — the public, of course, never caring a straw whether he be original or not.”(2) [page 196:]

In this passage Poe wrote from experience; for in the parts of the “Conchologist's First Book” which he claims as his own both methods are pursued. The first is illustrated by the “Introduction” (pp. 3-8), which is a close para phrase from Brown's(1) volume, the thoughts being identical in both, their sequence similar, and the authorities quoted the same. The second is illustrated by the plates, which are copied from Brown, and by the “Explanation of the Parts of Shells” (pp. 9-20), which is verbatim from the same source, and the “classification,” which is reprinted from Wyatt's “Conchology,”(2) a large and expensive volume published the preceding year, to which Poe acknowledges his obligations in his preface. In the body of the work, the order, the nomenclature, and the descriptions of the shells are a paraphrase of Wyatt, at first close, but as the writer grew more [page 197:] deft at the phraseology more free; and the description of the animals is, as Poe stated, translated from Cuvier. The volume concludes with an original glossary and an index from Wyatt. These being the facts as they are shown by a direct comparison of all the books involved, there can be no doubt that the real state of the case is given by Professor John G. Anthony, of Harvard College, who received his information from Wyatt. The latter said that as his work of the previous year proved too expensive for the public, and as the Harpers refused to bring it out in a cheaper form, it was determined to publish a new book which should be sufficiently different from the former to escape any suit for the infringement of copyright; and Poe was selected to father it.(1) This is supported by the fact that Wyatt, who went about lecturing on the subject, carried the volume with him for sale. It was copyrighted in Poe's name, and appeared about April, 1839, when it was favorably noticed by the press.(2) Poe shared the responsibility with others, for it will hardly be maintained that Poe was ignorant of the true character of the book [page 198:] to which he put his name. He is to be credited, too, with a translation and digest of Lemonnier's “Natural History,” which was published the same spring under Wyatt's name; but there is no indication that he had any part in this work beyond his own statement, in reviewing it, that he spoke “from personal knowledge, and the closest inspection and collation.”(1)

Meanwhile Poe's literary career, apart from this hack work, had the casual character that marks the life of the unattached writer. His friend, Brooks, had bought Fairfield's review, “The North American Quarterly Magazine” of Baltimore, and continued it as a monthly under the name of the “American Museum of Literature and the Arts”; and, being then interested in Poe, who was sending him articles, he saved from the waste basket, he says, the last of the “Tales of the Folio Club,” “Siope” (“Silence”), a fine piece of imaginative prose, which consequently appeared, in the fall of 1838, in the “Baltimore Book for 1839,” an annual edited by Carpenter and Arthur. Brooks himself printed in the first number of the “Museum,” September, 1838, “Ligeia”; and this was followed by the satirical extravaganza, “The Signora Psyche Zenobia [page 199:] — The Scythe of Time” (“How to write a Blackwood Article” and “A Predicament”), in December; two pages of “Literary Small Talk,” in January, 1839; as much more in February; and a poem, “The Haunted Palace,” in April. For these Poe received little or no pay, five or ten dollars, if anything at all. These pieces, together with “Von Jung, the Mystific,” already mentioned, even in conjunction with his work on “Arthur Gordon Pym” and the text-books, seem insufficient to account for Poe's time between January, 1837, and January, 1839, and it is likely that material was slowly accumulating in the desk.

Poe had slowly begun to establish some connection with the city press, perhaps by the assistance of Wilmer, who was now pursuing his checkered journalistic career in Philadelphia, and on May 8, 1839, he published the grotesque sketch of “The Devil in the Belfry,” in the “Saturday Evening Chronicle.” In one way and another he made his name known locally, and found work to do, however humble and ill paid. E. Burke Fisher, an old contributor to the “Messenger,” who in May of this year had ventured with another sanguine man, Mr. W. Whitney, to start a magazine, “The Literary Examiner and [page 200:] Western Monthly Review,” at Pittsburg, then at the extreme confines of the American literary world, made him an offer of four dollars a page for critical reviews; but as Fisher published editorially, and with emendations of his own, the single article contributed, a review of “Tortesa,” apparently in July, it led only to Poe's declaring later that “no greater scamp ever lived,”(1) and congratulating himself that the magazine died the next month without circulating its fourth number. He took the matter probably with a more cheerful if not a higher spirit because he had already obtained permanent employment and a fresh opportunity to distinguish himself as an editor.

In July, 1837, William Evans Burton, an English comedian who was ambitious of winning literary as well as histrionic fame in his adopted country, had launched “The Gentle man's Magazine” in the very darkest period of the financial depression, and with singular felicity he had succeeded in his venture. At first this periodical, which he both owned and edited, was characterized by the lightest of stories and the most sluggish of poems; it was padded with clip pings, translations, and the usual et caetera of its [page 201:] kind, including the scrappy reviews, made principally by the scissors, that then went under the name of criticism; but Burton devoted himself to developing local talent, and the Philadelphia editors, novelists, and poetasters, male and female, stood by their patron. The fourth volume began, in 1839, with golden promises of better printing, elegant engravings, and contributions from a long list of writers, in which, beside the names of Leigh Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, and James Montgomery, whose wares were presumably stolen, figured the patronymics of thirty-two native authors, for the most part of Philadelphian or Southern extraction, now im partially forgotten. Poe's friends, Wilmer and Brooks, were among them, but he himself was not mentioned. Once, indeed, in the previous September, he had come under the notice of the magazine, but only anonymously as the author of “Arthur Gordon Pym,” in which capacity he had been flippantly treated. There is no evidence that he wrote anything for Burton until July, when his name was printed in conjunction with the former's as associate editor of the periodical whose variable title was then “Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and American Monthly Review.” This public announcement, he said, [page 202:] was against his will. He had retained, it is plain, firmly rooted in his mind the ambition to have a magazine of his own, and in the mean time was pursuing that policy of hack work and expectation which he had laid down for himself. In making some approaches to Burton, earlier in the year, he was merely seeking employment, — so he represented the matter later, — and did not intend to give up even temporarily the design he cherished, or to return to that scorned position of an underling and salaried editor which he held at Richmond. His application has not been found; but Burton's answer was as follows: —

Poe entered on his duties, presumably on this understanding, shortly after this date, and contributed to the first number that bore his name, for July, a few brief book-notices and some of his old poems. He certainly did not put himself forward with much energy, and at the close of the first six months the only original work done by him exclusively for “Burton's,” besides numerous but entirely perfunctory reviews, consisted of three tales, “The Man that was Used Up,” for August, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” for September, and “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,” for December. The tales for October and November were “William Wilson,” credited to “The Gift” for 1840, and “Morella,” credited to the forthcoming “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.”

In this fall, and in evident preparation for the appearance of his collected tales, Poe sent, in their first printed form, “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “William Wilson,” to some men whose good opinion he desired to have. He had through life the habit of sending tales and poems to persons of distinction in the literary world and soliciting thereby their attention. He kept the replies, and it was from this store that he furnished later an appendix of [page 205:] encomiums to the first newspaper biography of him, in addition to such as had been publicly made. He hoped much from these first examples of his peculiar imaginative power, and it was from motives of respect as well as of interest that he now laid them before persons whose judgment, it may be believed, he most regarded and whose position was such as to render their commendation authoritative and useful. James E. Heath, the first editor of the “Messenger,” was one of these; his reply is interesting, not only as a contemporary view of this kind of romance, but also as a natural pendant to Poe's association with White.

Philip Pendleton Cooke was another author whose opinion Poe sought similarly on “Ligeia”: —

To this Poe immediately replied:

Washington Irving also wrote a letter in acknowledgment of “William Wilson,” which had followed the “House of Usher,” as a means of introduction, and the substance of it, much altered and somewhat garbled, appeared in Poe's commendatory notices, and affords a striking in stance of how he dealt with such correspondence.

The most intimate view of Poe, in this earlier period of his stay in Philadelphia, is contained in his correspondence(2) with Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, [page 218:] of Baltimore, who had been Brooks's associate on the “Museum,” and was afterwards known as an early abolitionist in that city; and the letters as a whole offer an interesting illustration of the literary conditions of the time, — the magazine environment in which Poe's genius lived. They begin in the fall of this year, 1839, and require little comment: —

The two volumes referred to were issued at the end of the year under the title, “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,”(1) suggested by an [page 223:] article(1) of Sir Walter Scott, acquaintance with which is also shown by some phrases of the pre face and by the traits of the castle in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” clearly derived from Scott's description of the castle in Hoffmann's Das Majorat. The preface minimizes the charge of “Germanism” so often brought against Poe, and denies its justice except so far as it describes one vein of contemporary magazine taste and is included in the universal subject of terror which is “not of Germany, but of the soul.” The use of the phrase “phantasy-pieces” also indicates the quality of Poe's acquaintance with German romance, and suggests the mediation of Carlyle as one of the magazine writers who made him acquainted with it. Poe states also that his tales [page 224:] hitherto had been written with a view to their issue in a collected form, and hence with an endeavor “to preserve, as far as a certain point, a certain unity of design.” The collection is therefore to be regarded as an expansion of “The Tales of the Folio Club,” in which such an idea was involved in the title, and denned by the suppressed introduction.

The new publication included all the tales thus far mentioned, and in addition the grotesque “Why the Little Frenchman wears his Hand in a Sling,” making twenty-five in all. The publishers, Lea & Blanchard, with whom, under the name of Carey & Lea, he had previously had correspondence in 1834-37 in regard to the “Tales of the Folio Club,” engaged, September 28, 1839, to print an edition of seven hundred and fifty copies, on condition that Poe should have the copyright and a few copies (afterwards limited to twenty) for distribution among his friends, and they should have the profits. When the volume was nearly ready Poe endeavored to obtain better terms, and in reply received the following letter, which may account for his professed indifference at a later time regarding the fate of the tales: — [page 225:]

The volumes appeared early in December, and were widely and favorably noticed by the city press and in New York. The sale, however, was not large, and after Poe's own copies were dispatched he broke off intercourse with the firm for some time.

Three of these reprinted stories deserve some further notice. Two of them, “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” mark the highest reach of the romantic element in Poe's genius, and for the first time exhibit his artistic [page 226:] powers in full development and under easy command. He had matured in the six years since he printed his first story (he was now thirty), but his growth had been within singularly well-defined limits; his mind pursued the strong attraction that fascinated him in that haunted borderland upon the verge but not beyond the sphere of credibility, as the magnet obeys the pole; but this absorption of his imagination in the preternatural was not more extraordinary than the monotony of the themes that exercised it. In plot “Ligeia” is the same as “Morella,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” the same as “Berenice”; in each a single dramatic event had gathered about it in Poe's mind rich accretions of fancy, thought, and suggestiveness, but practically there was no change except in treatment, — in the art by which the effect originally sought was secured more finely, and in an intenser and more elemental form. In all his best work, however, Poe not only told a story, he also developed an idea, and his later renderings of early conceptions are markedly characterized by an increase in this suggested, or, as he designated it, mystic meaning.

In “Ligeia,” which he regarded as his finest tale, he rewrote “Morella,” but for much of its [page 227:] peculiar power he went back to the sources of his youngest inspiration. In “Al Aaraaf” he had framed out of the breath of the night-wind and the idea of the harmony of universal nature a fairy creature, —

“Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one!”

Now by a finer touch he incarnated the motions of the breeze and the musical voices of nature in the form of a woman: but the Lady Ligeia has still no human quality; her aspirations, her thoughts and capabilities, are those of a spirit; the very beam and glitter and silence of her ineffable eyes belong to the visionary world. She is, in fact, the maiden of Poe's dream, the Eidolon he served, the air-woven divinity in which he believed; for he had the true myth-making faculty, the power to make his senses aver what his imagination perceived. In revealing through “Ligeia” the awful might of the soul in the victory of its will over death and in the eternity of its love, Poe worked in the very element of his reverie, in the liberty of a world as he would have it. Upon this story he lavished all his poetic, inventive, and literary skill, and at last perfected an exquisitely conceived work, and made it, within its own laws, as faultless as humanity can fashion. He did not once lapse into the crude [page 228:] or repulsive; he blended the material elements of the legend, the mere circumstance and decoration of the scene, like married notes of a sensuous accompaniment, and modulated them with minute and delicate care to chime with the weird suggestions of the things above nature, until all unites and vanishes in an impression on the spirit, — in an intimation of the dark possibilities that lie hidden in the eternal secret, adumbrated in the startling event when the raven hair of Ligeia streams down beneath the serpentine flames of the writhing censer, and her eyes open full on her lost lover, as they stand embosomed within the wind-swayed golden hangings whereon the ghastly and sable phantasmagoria keeps up its antic and ceaseless dance. Without striving to unwind the mazes of the spell that confuses the reader into momentary belief in the incredible, one cannot but note the marvelous certainty with which Poe passes from vaguely suggestive and slightly unusual mutations of the senses, and advances by imperceptible gradations to accustom the mind to increasingly strange and complex changes, incessant and seemingly lawless variations, until one is fairly bewildered into accepting the final impossible transformation of the immortal into mortality [page 229:] as merely the final phase of the restless movement in all, and afterwards, on returning to the solid world, can scarcely tell where he overstepped the boundaries of reality.

As in “Ligeia” the idea of change is elaborated, so in “The Fall of the House of Usher” the intellectual theme is fear. For the purposes of this story Poe used again the plot of “Berenice,” but so purified and developed in its accidents as to be hardly recognizable. Not a few would rank this tale more high than “Ligeia”; for, if that be more distinguished by ideality, this is more excellent in the second virtue in Poe's scale, unity of design. In artistic construction it does not come short of absolute perfection. The adaptation of the related parts and their union in the total effect are a triumph of literary craft; the intricate details, as it were mellowing and reflecting one ground tone, have the definiteness and precision of inlaid mosaic, or, like premonitions and echoes of the theme in music, they are so exactly calculated as to secure their end with the certainty of harmonic law itself. The sombre landscape whose hues Poe alone knew the secret of; the subtle yet not over wrought sympathy between the mansion and the race that had reared it; the looks, traits, and pursuits [page 230:] of Usher, its representative; and the at first scarce-felt presence of Madeline, his worn sister, — all is like a narrowing and ever-intensifying force drawing in to some unknown point; and when this is reached, in the bright copper-sheathed vault in which Madeline is entombed, and the mind, after that midnight scene, expands and breathes freer air, a hundred obscure intimations, each slight in itself, startle and en chain it, until, slowly as obscurity takes shape in a glimmer of light, Usher's dread discloses itself in its concrete and fearful fulfillment, and at once, by the brief and sudden stroke of death, house, race, and all sink into the black tarn where its glassy image had so long built a shadowy reality.

Where every syllable tells, it is folly to attempt an analysis of the workmanship. By way of illustration, however, it may be well to remark on the mode in which the mind is prepared for the coming of Madeline, and made almost to share Usher's diseased acuteness of hearing, by the legendary tale, with its powerful and exclusive appeal to the senses; or to observe such a slight touch as the small picture painted by Usher, — the interior of a long rectangular tunnel, deep in the earth, with low, smooth walls, [page 231:] closed and without a torch, yet flooded with intense rays, — so clearly prophetic of Madeline's vault, gleaming with metallic lustre, of which, too, some reminiscence still survives in the mind when the same unnatural luminous exhalation glows from the under-surface of the storm clouds that press upon the turrets of the trembling house before its fall. Never has the impression of total destruction, of absolute and irremediable ruin, been more strongly given; had the mansion remained, it would seem as if the extinction of Usher had been incomplete. Doom rests upon all things within the shadow of those walls; it is felt to be impending: and therefore, Poe, identifying himself with his reader, places the sure seal of truth on the illusion as he exclaims, “From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast.” The mind is already upon the recoil as it turns to view the accomplished fatality.

These two tales deserve more attention in that they are in Poe's prose what “The Raven” and “Ulalume” are in his poetry, the richest of his imaginative work. On them he expended his spirit. There had been no such art before in America; but, like Hawthorne, he had to wait for any adequate recognition of his genius. His [page 232:] work in this kind was done; it could be left, safe as the diamond.

In “William Wilson” he opened a new vein. It is the first of his studies of the springs of terror in conscience. The idea itself which is developed in the story, the conception of a double dogging one's steps and thwarting one's evil designs, is an old fancy(1) of men that has taken many shapes since Zoroaster saw his phantom in the garden. The psychological element in it is less insisted on than is usual in Poe's finest work, and it consequently lacks the intensity and spiritual power of his later sketches on similar subjects. It has a peculiar interest as containing an autobiographical [page 233:] account of his school-days in England, but in his own life there was little to serve as a basis for other portions of the narrative.

Poe had from the first formed the habit, which no author ever practiced so flagrantly, of republishing old material slightly if at all revised. With the exception of the fine sonnet entitled “Silence,” all his poetic contributions to “Burton's” were of this sort; the 1829 edition of his poems afforded “Spirits of the Dead,”(1) “Fairy land,”(2) and “To the River ——,”(2) and the “Messenger” yielded “To lanthe in Heaven” and “To ——,”(1) the stanzas originally addressed to Eliza White. At the beginning of the New Year he applied the same convenient aid to the department of criticism, which had hitherto been very feebly conducted, although he had found opportunity to reproach Longfellow for using so crudely, in “Hyperion,” material capable of being highly wrought by art, and had praised Fouque's “Undine” with delightful appreciation. In the January issue Moore's “Alciphron” drew from him one of those partial reviews that seem to invalidate the usefulness of any criticism of contemporaries, and in piecing it out he availed himself of his former remarks [page 234:] on Drake and Marvell in the “Messenger,” but openly under the form of self-quotation. In a mediocre notice of Bryant, somewhat later, he again had recourse to the old files, and in other insignificant criticisms he is found airing the Hebrew learning of his article in the “New York Review,” and even enumerating once more the storehouses of literary odds and ends, including the mythical memoirs of “Suard and Andre.” The most noticeable article is that review of Longfellow's “Voices of the Night” in which he first urged against the New England poet the charge of plagiarism. He instanced in particular Tennyson's “The Death of the Old Year” as the source of “The Midnight Mass for the Dying Year.” This he characterized as belonging “to the most barbarous class of literary robbery; that class in which, while the words of the wronged author are avoided, his most intangible, and therefore his least defensible and least reclaimable property, is purloined.”(1) In other ways than such book-reviewing as this Poe's mind was also unprofitably employed. A satirical sketch, “Peter Pendulum, the Business Man,” in February, and the first of his articles [page 235:] respecting decoration, “The Philosophy of Furniture,” in May, were his only signed contributions, for the mere plate or sporting articles may be neglected.

In each number, however, from January to June, appeared an installment of his anonymous work, “The Journal of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America ever achieved by Civilized Man.” This narrative is constructed, like that of “Arthur Gordon Pym,” so as to win credence by circumstantial detail and an affected air of plainness, and Poe would probably have concluded it similarly with weird marvels of nature. Julius Rodman was the son of an Englishman who had settled in Kentucky. Being left alone by his father's death, he started in his twenty-sixth year professedly on a trapping expedition up the Missouri River, and pushing on for mere adventure crossed the Rocky Mountains in northern regions in 1792, but on returning to Virginia, after three years absence, never conversed respecting his journey, and took great pains to secrete his diary. Unfortunately, al though the characters of the exploring party are much more carefully selected than was the case in “Arthur Gordon Pym,” Poe conducted the [page 236:] travelers only to the head waters of the Missouri. The description of the trip, in which he followed very closely the obvious authorities, such as Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Lewis and Clark, Pike, and Irving, is enlivened only by an attack on the Sioux, the sight of a beaver dam, and a hand-to-hand conflict with a bear. As before, too, he was led to his subject by the public interest which was now especially directed to the exploration of the West. The work as a whole bears no relation to his genius, except in a single passage which contains a faint suggestion of the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass in “Eleonora.”

With the June installment of the “Journal” Poe's contributions to the magazine ceased, and at the same time his engagement with Burton abruptly terminated. There was evidently a serious quarrel between the two editors. Poe asserted that Burton had acted dishonorably in advertising prizes for contributions, which he never intended to pay, and that this was the ground of his own resignation; Burton, on his side, circulated scandalous reports in regard to Poe's habits and actions, and described these as the cause of the trouble, and said publicly on the cover of “The Gentleman's Magazine” for September, 1840: “Our friend at Portland may [page 237:] rest assured that we were ignorant of the nontransmission of his numbers. His name was erased from our list by the person whose infirmities have caused us much annoyance.” The correspondence with Snodgrass throws light upon the subject. In reply to a question regard ing the prizes offered by Burton, Poe wrote as follows: —

The first reference to the breach by Burton is contained in an undated letter from him to Poe: —

Poe wrote to Burton as follows: —

This letter seems meant to be conciliatory, but if Poe's later characterization of his old chief is any sign, it failed of its purpose. Burton sup pressed six or seven criticisms still on hand, and wrote and spoke hard words about his former associate. Nor did Poe lag much behind in returning ill-will. He wrote to Snodgrass with regard to a contribution which he had difficulty in recovering from the magazine: —

Dr. Snodgrass, however, heard at second hand the account given by Burton, and nearly nine months later wrote about it to Poe, who was then editor of “Graham's.” The reply is at length and explicit: — [page 252:]

There is another witness, Mr. C. W. Alexander, the publisher of the magazine, who wrote to Mr. T. C. Clarke, of Philadelphia, in answer to the question whether Poe's alleged irregularities at that time were such as to interfere with his work. He says: —

It is possible that Mr. Alexander, writing ten years after the event, may have confused his re collections and antedated the intemperance of Poe, which became frequent and notorious during the next year. Were it not for this letter there would be little evidence beside Rosenbach's that Poe was not, as he claimed to be, a sober man from the time he left Richmond to that of his wife's illness in 1841, and this would agree with Gowan's account of him in New York and with Mrs. Clemm's statement, reported by Mr. R. E. Shapley, of Philadelphia, — “For years I know he did not taste even a glass of wine.” To no other period of his mature life are these words applicable. It should be noted, too, that Wilmer, who sometimes met him in Philadelphia, says that during their acquaintance he “did not see him inebriated; no, not in a single instance;”(2) but in his “Recollections” he asserts unqualifiedly that this fault was the cause of all of Poe's differences with his employers. [page 258:]

The true cause of the trouble was probably mixed, and involved both Poe's temperament and his acts; it was partly of a business nature, and in the affair each party seems to have had matter for complaint. Burton, who it will be remembered was a comic actor, had got into quarrels with the managers, and he determined to have a theatre of his own; to obtain this he needed funds, and by way of raising them he advertised his magazine for sale without mentioning his intention to Poe. The latter, on his part, arranged to issue a prospectus of a new and rival monthly, “The Penn Magazine,” with out advising Burton. It was his old ambition. In fact, he was always waiting to find some one with capital to embark in the enterprise, and while still on Burton's was discontented through the indulgence of this hope, which he had mentioned in his letter to Cooke nine months before. He might fairly expect that in the changes about to take place, on the sale of the magazine, some of the subscribers to the “Gentleman's” would remain with him, who, as its literary editor, had won position and respect, especially with the press of the city, and that they would form a nucleus for the circulation of the “Penn.” Whether in fact, he did, as was charged by Griswold, [page 259:] obtain transcripts of Burton's subscription list and other valuable papers, for his own use, remains in doubt. It was an obvious thing for him to do; he was out of humor with Burton, and as he believed that the latter would soon sell he may not have regarded it as a dishonorable proceeding. Undoubtedly Burton looked on Poe's action in advertising his new enterprise at that moment as likely to diminish the selling value of his property; if in addition Poe attempted to secure his subscribers in an underhand way, he would have had cause to be offended, and if he remonstrated Poe may have told him that he “looked upon him as a blackguard and a villain,” in the phrases of his letter to Snodgrass. That there is no explicit mention of the charge in the letter to Burton already given, in which Poe makes his explanation, counts for nothing in view of the points that mark omissions; but the letter proves with sufficient certainty that, whatever contributory circumstances such as Rosenbach relates there may have been, in the beaten way of business the “Penn Magazine” was the apple of discord, as the latent hope of it was the source of Poe's discontent in his position from the first.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 189:]

1  Griswold MSS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 190:]

1  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket; comprising the Details of a Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on board the American Brig Grampus, on her Way to the South Seas with an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivors; their Shipwreck, and subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; their Deliverance by means of the British Schooner Jane Gray; the brief Cruise of this latter Vessel in the Antarctic Ocean; her Capture, and the Massacre of her Crew among a Group of Islands in the 84th parallel of Southern latitude; together with the incredible Adventures and Discoveries still further South, to which that distressing Calamity gave rise. i2mo, pp. 198. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 191:]

1  Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Seas and Pacific, 1822-31. By Benjamin Morell. New York, 1832: pp. 183 et seq.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 193:]

1  Gowans’ Sale Catalogue, No. 28, 1870, p. 11.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 194:]

1  Poe to Brooks, Didier, p. 65.

2  The Conchologist's First Book; or, a System of Testaceous Malacology, arranged expressly for the use of schools, in which the animals, according to Cuvier, are given with the shells, a great number of new species added, and the whole brought up, as accurately as possible, to the present condition of the science. By Edgar A. Poe. With illustrations of two hundred and fifteen shells, presenting a correct type of each genus. Philadelphia: published for the author by Haswell, Barrington & Haswell, and for sale by the principal booksellers in the United States. 1839. 12mo, pp. 156.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 195:]

1  Poe to Eveleth, Ingram, i, 168.

2  Works, viii, 36.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 196:]

1  The Conchologist's Text-Book. Embracing the arrangements of Lamarck and Linnaeus, with a glossary of technical terms. By Captain Thomas Brown, Fellow, etc., etc. Illustrated by 19 engravings on steel. Fourth edition. Glasgow: Archibald Fullarton & Co. 1837.

2  A Manual of Conchology according to the System laid down by Lamarck, with the Late Improvements of De Blainville. Exemplified and arranged for the Use of Students. By Thomas Wyatt, M. A. Illustrated by 36 plates, etc., etc. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1838.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 197:]

1  Professor John G. Anthony to John Parker, June 22, 1875, MS.

2  Saturday Evening Chronicle and Mirror of the Times, Philadelphia, April 27, 1839.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 198:]

1  Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, v, 62 (July, 1839). [[The Virginia Poe, 10:26-27 — JAS]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 200:]

1  Poe to J. E. Snodgrass, July 12, 1841.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 203:]

1  Griswold MSS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 208:]

1  Griswold MSS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 212:]

1  Griswold MSS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 216:]

1  Griswold MSS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 217:]

1  Griswold MSS.

2  The Snodgrass Correspondence (partly published in the New York Herald, March 27, 1881), when not otherwise credited, is here given from a very careful MS. copy of the originals, [page 218:] made some years ago by Dr. William Hand Browne of Baltimore.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 222:]

1  Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. By Edgar A. Poe. In two volumes. Philadelphia. Lea & Blanchard. 1840. 16mo. [page 223:] The work was copyrighted in 1839, and was dedicated to Colonel William Drayton. Vol. i (pp. 243) contained a preface and fourteen tales, that is, Morella, Lionizing, William Wilson, The Man that was Used Up, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Duc de L’Omelette, MS. Found in a Bottle, Bon-Bon, Shadow, The Devil in the Belfry, Ligeia, King Pest, The Signora Zenobia (How to write a Blackwood Article), The Scythe of Time (A Predicament). Vol ii (pp. 228) contained Epimanes, Siope, Hans Pfaall, A Tale of Jerusalem, Von Jung, Loss of Breath, Metzengerstein, Berenice, Why the Little Frenchman wears his Hand in a Sling, The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion. Appendix.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 223:]

1  Foreign Quarterly Review, July, 1827.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 225:]

1  Letter-Book of Lea & Blanchard.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 232:]

1  It has been suggested (Ingram and Stoddard) that this tale was from a rare drama by Calderon, El Embozado or El Capotado, mentioned by Medwin to Irving, and vainly sought for by the latter in Spanish libraries. (Irving's Life and Letters, ii, 232; iv, 70-72.) Medwin undoubtedly had the plot from Shelley. The reference is plainly to El Purgatorio de San Patricio, a favorite of Shelley's (from which he took a passage of The Cenci), in which Un Hombre Embozado is a character. Poe read Medwin's Shelley; but it is extremely unlikely that he ever saw the drama in question, nor is there any reason to seek so far for his knowledge of a superstitious idea common to literature. The immediate source has also been sought in Hoffmann's Elixiere des Teufels. The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, by Palmer Cobb, Chapel Hill, the University Press, 1908; this, indirectly, through Blackwoods, July, 1824, is probable.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 233:]

1  Unsigned.

2  Signed “P.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 234:]

1  Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, vi, 102-103 (February, 1840).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 237:]

1  Words in brackets undecipherable owing to the state of the MSS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 242:]

1  Griswold, xxxii [[xxvi in the earlier editions — JAS]].

2  The American, February 26, 1887.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 248:]

1  Poe to Burton, Ingram, i, 175-179.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 250:]

1  “I allude” — almost illegible in original MS.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 256:]

1  Poe to Snodgrass, Baltimore American, April, 1881.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 257:]

1  Alexander to Clarke, October 20, 1850, Gill, p. 97.

2  Our Press Gang, p. 284.