Text: Stanley Thomas Williams, “Antediluvian Antiquities: A Curiosity of American Literature and A Source of Poe's,” Yale Review, July 1927, vol. XIV, pp. 755-773

Text: Thomas Ollive Mabbott, “‘Antediluvian Antiquities: A Curiosity of American Literature and A Source of Poe's,” American Collector (New York, NY), vol. IV, no. 4, July 1927, pp. 124-126

[page 124:]

In that collection of extracts from his commonplace book which Poe printed, not without some mystification, in the Southern Literary Messenger for August 1836, under the title Pinakidia, one may find the following passage:

Now I have long had a bad habit — or a good habit — of verifying Poe's references, for someday I plan to edit his complete Writings — and besides that, his taste in reading has more kinship with my own than most critics’. And even without these two reasons, I believe the extraordinary combination of incongruous elements in that note would have piqued my curiosity to the reading point long ago. But if the desire was present with me, the book was not. In one library and another I sought it — in all there was no copy to be seen. True, a notice in John Neal's Yankee gave me the facts of imprint and date, “Boston, 1829,” and a notion the book was privately issued, as well as a clue to Poe's interest, for he was a reader of and a contributor to the “new series” of the Yankee. And at last, in a “Union card catalogue,” I found that a copy was recorded in a certain city.

When I visit that city, said I, I'll [column 2:] read the book. “But when I came there, the cupboard was bare” — the copy was not on the shelves. At last I advertised for a copy — through The American Collector; for a very rare book may not be a very valuable book — even though more curious than rare. And while I could not buy one, the American Antiquarian Society's copy has been placed at my disposal for study through the kindness of our learned friend, Mr. Brigham.

Nor has the volume disappointed me in my expectations of its unusual nature — rather it is stranger than I hoped. It is a duodecimo of 286 pages, with title page reading:

The name of the author (for the translating, as will appear, is a mere fiction) remains unknown to me — he was a person of much curious learning, he resided far enough away from Boston to make it inconvenient for him to read all his proofs, he was a devoted reader of the writings of his countrymen (and therein lies his chief importance) — and he had been a soldier, in the Revolution and also possibly in the War of 1812.* [page 125:]

In 1829 I judge he was a somewhat crotchety gentleman, with an ambition to write books, and a certain enthusiasm for the antique which had about it a little air of quackery. Some years later, Dr. McHenry of Philadelphia was to lament the lack of a more complete antediluvian history. Our author, like many romancers before and since, may have lamented that lack, but not too deeply, for he set out to supply it by the ready aid of his imagination. Who, shall blame him? It was quite the fashion to tell what happened before the flood. Byron had done it in Cain, Tom Moore with his angels — made Mohammedan to soften the horror of the unco guid at the thought of angels having “gifted mortal paramours,” Montgomery with an epic — and I think the Reverend George Croly, too, tho’ I have not verified my impression — all of them had dealt with the doings of the early patriarchs — or at least with the doings of the ladies of their families. Besides this, our author had been reading, to his own edification, and with the approval of his pastor, the Bible with care enough to know Methuselah from Methusael. And he had also been busy, I think, less to his edification, but certainly with the approval of the great Goethe and the Emperor Napoleon, with the windy, wordy epic poem of Ossian. Now good men, and good critics, have admired those productions — and their influence on subsequent literatures in Europe and America has been very great. But somehow I agree with Dr. Johnson in regarding Macpherson's forgeries as no less offensive to scholarship than to true poetic taste — as palpable hoaxes, very thin poetry, and nothing more, even tho’ Coleridge's Wanderings [column 2:] of Cain, and all modern free verse spring from that source.

The author of the Antediluvian Antiquities did not, like Coleridge or the best writers of free verse, improve upon Ossian. Rather he followed in the steps of his master afar off. Where Macpherson had “Gaelic versions” — one of which upon demand of scholars he actually manufactured after many years of labor, our American unknown had tablets or inscriptions in an unknown language, akin to the Hebrew, of which he had learned the key, and from which he “translated” his little tales. Fortunately nobody asked him for his originals — else we might have had some curious tablets of stone with strange attempts at hieroglyphs for the late Harry Houdini's collection.

The “translation” proceeds in Ossianic fashion — it relates of the first wars, the first woman ruler, the first idols, and kindred subjects — all in prolix fashion. And what virtue all this might have as a series of stories is lost by the author's breaking all up into fragments from time to time, and explaining that his originals were imperfect. He also laments the inferiority of this translations to those originals — a bit of farce which one hopes he appreciated; but of that one is not sure.

As he warmed to his work, our author began to add notes to his text. And these are really the best parts of the book. They show the old gentleman as a wide reader — more curiously learned than critical — and when the book fell into Poe's hands, he extracted several bits for his commonplace book. Poe's commonplace book contained things he thought might prove useful — things a man of letters could turn to account. I know one sentence which he uses humorously in a tale of the grotesque, which he later used in a climactic place [page 126:] in one of his finest stories. All this material was simply to him an artist's medium; its truth or falsity, improbability or moral value was aside from the point; its arresting quality everything. From the Antediluvian Antiquities he took in Pinakidia, the second, fourth, the fifty-fifth small items, and parts of the sixty-third. Besides these he probably read with interest the discussions of the material nature of the Deity (page 90 of the Antiquities [[Antiquities]]) for he later inclined to this heresy — and also of the distinction between body, mind and soul — though of these ideas he knew from other sources surely.

The author is today of interest largely, I suppose, for this slight connection with a great poet. But among his notes I find some intensely interesting, in which he [column 2:] proposes an American library of one hundred volumes, to contain the works of — American men and women of letters worth the attention of that day and a later. Surely, wrote he, there are that many. And he names authors who might be included —— among them Neal, Irving, Paulding, Cooper, Pierpont, Percival, Dennie, Bryant, and Mrs. Brooks (even before Zophiel was printed!) but he makes no mention of Drake, of Cliffton, or E. C. Pinkney, whom “my partial fancy” would choose besides. His plans met with little encouragement — he had threatened to abandon the series of Antediluvian Antiquities even, if his name became known. Perhaps he did not even need a discovery to discourage him. Yet the book remains a curiosity of literature, and a source for Poe. I wish we did know the author's name!

[[FOOTNOTES]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 124, running to the bottom of page 125:]

* He says he read Odiorne's poem in camp, in his youth. Now the N. Y. Public Library copy of “The Progress of Refinement” dates from Boston, 1792. But the author of “Antediluvian Antiquities” [page 125:] says he mixes his history a little to conceal his identity, or perhaps he was just confused, or read an earlier (MS. or periodical) version. His quotation from Odiorne is from Book I, line 108 — on page 19 of the edition named.