Text: William Mentzel Forrest, “The Bible in Poe,” Biblical Allusions in Poe, 1928, pp. 130-150 (This material may be protected by copyright)

[page 130:]

The foregoing chapters have been largely occupied in tracing in Poe's writings various themes and modes of expression akin to biblical writers. Following the present chapter is a list of Scripture passages quoted or in some way reflected in Poe's works. But it lies beyond the power of any human being to state the extent to which any author is indebted to the Bible. At the very beginning of Anglo-Saxon literature stands Caedmon's paraphrase of a portion of Scripture.(1) From that father of English literature to the latest modern writers it is impossible to find one who has not consciously or unconsciously drawn upon the Bible for treasures of speech. To compute the extent of any author's debt to the Bible would require the enumeration of every word used by him that came into our tongue, or into approved literary use, through any edition of the Scriptures, English or foreign. Though no little work has been done in our best historical dictionaries to make such an enumeration possible,(2) it can never be satisfactorily carried out. Nor [page 131:] can an adequate statement be made of what any writer owes to the thought of the sacred writings.

During the three centuries of its dominance as the English Bible the Authorized Version has unquestionably impressed itself upon our speech to a degree un-approached by any other form of the Scriptures ever used. But that our literary debt to the Bible did not begin with the King James Version is demonstrated by an examination of Shakespeare and Bacon, both of whom saturated their pages with the Bible before our common edition of it was born. While the people at large had no vernacular Bible till Wycliffe's time, near the end of the fourteenth century, many passages of the Latin Bible were so constantly read or recited to them in English that they had extensive familiarity with it. After Wycliffe, manuscripts of the Book in the people's speech must have been quite common. However, it was from the introduction into England of Tyndale's New Testaments in 1526 that the people began to be “the people of the Book.” In Poe's case, as in that of all our modern authors, immediate biblical influence is from the Authorized Version, while remoter, and generally unrecognized influences reached him from all the earlier English and foreign versions.

Without attempting the impossible task of finding how many of Poe's words came in any way from the Scriptures, it is interesting to remark upon a few thus derived that would never be suspected by the casual reader. Among words that found their way from Latin into English when Christianity won the Anglo-Saxons in the sixth and seventh centuries are “school,” [page 132:] “clerk,” and “verse.” ‘Whenever Poe used them he was therefore debtor to the Book that sent out the missionaries. Another word that would have occasioned surprise if found in a list of any writer's biblicisms is “noon.” Yet Poe's, “ ‘Twas noontide of summer,”(3) and every other use of it, reaches back to the time when the Church first taught England to observe “the ninth hour,”(4) or nona hora. Though that was three o’clock in the afternoon, when the service was changed to midday the word went with it and so became the name of that hour.

Our author was rather fond of characterizing certain writers as Bedlamites, saying they were Tom O’Bedlamizing, or that their productions were worthy of Tom O’Bedlam.(5) He never would have done so had not Mary and her Babe been at Bethlehem.(6) At that town medieval Christians established a religious house sacred to Mary. Later a branch of the establishment of Saint Mary of Bethlehem was opened in London. Its house first afforded entertainment to members of the order chancing to be in the city, but later received demented persons for treatment. After the Reformation it continued as Bethlehem Hospital for the insane. Then, with much use by English tongues, the name was corrupted to Bedlam, and a process of generalizing made it mean any lunatic asylum, while a Tom O’Bedlam was a crazy person. By a similar process a Lazaret, or Lazar house, came [page 133:] to Poe. It began in the parable of the beggar, Lazarus, full of sores.(7) His name was afterwards given to leper asylums, and thence to hospital ships and marine quarantine stations. “Talent,” so very common in Poe, is another word whose figurative sense would never have come to it but for its use in a well known parable.(8) “Publican” is of the same order.(9)

When Tyndale wrote “which appere beautyfull outwards,”(10) he seems to have put into the language a word for which our modern apostle of aesthetics had great use. At any rate, “beautiful” cannot be traced back of the great translator's day.(11) By the same coiner of words there were created for our Bible and our literature the compounds “peacemakers”(12) and “busybody.”(13) Both of these are found in our author. Tyndale introduced “beloved” as a substantive,(14) and Coverdale put it into the Song of Solomon.(15) Both as adjective and noun it has ever had a religious flavor which gave it the quaint and poetic quality Poe wanted.(16) The like may be said of “day-star” whose [page 134:] use in a figurative sense seems to have begun with Wycliffe.(17) Demon(18) as used in The Raven owes its meaning to the Bible and Christianity. To the Greeks, from whose language it came, it meant a god or divinity. St. Paul represented such gods and their idols as evil spirits.(19) Thence the word came to mean “devil” in our Bible; but in Poe's day the word was understood to signify an evil spirit, so getting back to the Pauline but not to the proper pagan sense.

In the absence of positive proof to the contrary it is not unreasonable to assume that an author's quaintly archaic words are due to the Bible rather than to some other early English writing. Many elements of Poe's vocabulary are now obsolete, but for biblical influence, and must have been largely so three quarters of a century ago. Such are his “morrow,” “handmaiden,” “cock-crowing,” “prison-house,” “storehouse,” and “gainsay.”(20) His “apparel,” “raiment,” “quick,” and “firmament” are said to have been passing out of use three centuries ago when the King James Version endowed them with perpetual youth for certain types of writing. “Goodly” can hardly pass from use, while the “goodly heritage” of the Bible remains proverbia1.(21) It has served the sacred translators since [page 135:] the days of Caedmon.(22) “Eventide” is thoroughly archaic except for poets and the Bible. It too has had long connection with our sacred speech, having been used by the earliest Saxon paraphrasts and trans-lators.(23) “Exceeding,” along with an adjective, is now obsolete after having been in common use to the eighteenth century. Its sonorous music has been heard in the Scriptures since Tyndale and Coverdale. Our author was very partial to it.(24)

Poe's favorite manner of expressing his conceptions of literary merit and demerit, or the good or ill deserts of a writer, or the relation of a poet to his art, or of a lover to his beloved, was in the technical terms of biblical religion. Defects in a writing were “sins,” to result in “damnation,” unless “confession” and “repentance” might avert “judgment” and lead to “salvation.” Artists and lovers were “priests” or “worshipers” offering “sacrifice” and “incense” and “prayers” before “shrines” and “altars” and “divinities.” With him “grace,” “justification,” “sanctification”; “doctrines,” “sects,” “heresies”; “mediators,” “ministers”; “regeneration,” “resurrection,” “immortality,” and the like are about as frequently used as in the Bible. These words came into the language, or received new connotations, through the Latin Vulgate, [page 136:] which for a thousand years(25) was the Bible of all Western Christendom. In the same way entered a group of Hebrew words used by Poe — “cherub,” “seraph,” “hallelujah,” “amen.” Under the same influence there were furnished him many Anglo-Saxon words whose meaning came from the Bible — “world,” “flesh,” “devil,” “hell,” “gospel,” “Godhead,” “forgive,” “righteousness,” “meekness.”

Thus by merely dipping at random into Poe's vocabulary nearly a hundred words that are so commonly used by nearly all English speaking people as to attract no particular attention are discovered to be part of his debt and our debt to the Bible. Certain phrases and turns of expression now invite attention.

To “set the teeth on edge” is a thoroughly stereotyped and proverbial phrase. It recalls “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.”(26) But the idea is not expressed in the Hebrew original nor yet in the Greek or Latin versions.(27) It seems to appear first in Cursor Mundi about the year 1300, under the kindred form, “Their sunes tethe are edged yitt.” The phrase itself first [page 137:] entered English literature, so far as recorded, in Wycliffe's Bible of 1380. “I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge,”(28) wrote Poe in 1843, and so writing he used a phrase that the Bible in all its English versions had kept in the minds of the people for nearly a half millenium [[millennium]].

“Till romance writing shall be no more,” would never be mistaken for a verse of Scripture. But it calls to mind a pulpit declaration that “The angel shall stand with one foot on the land and one foot on the sea and proclaim that time shall be no more.”(29) Revelation is at once suggested by that utterance, but a search there yields nothing but “The angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth ... sware ... that there should be time no longer.”(30) That answers for the pulpit eloquence quite fully, but can hardly establish a connection between the “shall be no more” of Poe and the Bible. Turning to our revised versions, whose renderings were sometimes long anticipated by the clergy, it is found that such was not the case here. The English Revised Version there has practically no change; and the American Revision makes the matter hopeless by the perfectly intelligible rendering, “there shall be delay no longer” — in other words, “time's up.” Continuing the search, the older versions were consulted, since religion is a great conservator and keeps in use phrases that [page 138:] belong to olden times. In the long list of translations from Wycliffe down to the King James there is just one that has the exact words in the right order. The Geneva Version, in all its editions from 1557 down to the time the King James Version finally put a stop to its publication, has “that time should be no more.”(31) That version was the Bible of England as none other ever has been save the Authorized Version, and held sway at a time and over a party in the Church when the Apocalypse was especially in favor with fervid pulpit orators declaiming against the Papacy and Episcopacy. It is therefore highly probable that its phrase was kept current after the version passed out of use. Being the striking sort of thing that would live in the memories of men, it is probable it came to mind whenever they thought of the end of all things. It is, therefore, not unlikely that Poe's “shall be no more” is a genuine case of a phrase due to Bible influence.

Two other classes of phrases require notice here. Their frequency and nature in Poe constitute one of his mannerisms. They are somewhat common in the English Bible, but much more so in the Hebrew, where their use was due to a great poverty of adjectives. What in our translation stand as prepositional phrases were made to supply a lack of adjectives. Of the one class good examples from Poe are “heart of hearts,” “trash of trash,” “mystery of mysteries”; of the other, “box of wood,” “size of life,” “love of [page 139:] Maud.”(32) These are found in all types of our author's productions — tales, poems, criticisms, essays, letters.

“Heart of hearts” and kindred phrases in Poe are not found in our Bible, except in form.(33) But the pattern is evidently furnished in “Song of Songs,” “Vanity of vanities,”(34) and “Holy of holies.”(35) They serve as a sort of superlative. The Authorized Version translates the Hebrew for “Holy of holies,” “the most holy place.”(36) Coverdale gave us the meaning of “Vanity of vanities” in his, “All is but playne vanite.” Poe used the equivalent of “heart of hearts” when he said, “in my inmost heart.”(37) It was an impressive and poetic form of expression that appealed to Poe, who was not so much a word-maker and phrase-maker himself as a skillful adapter and user of ready-made phrases.

The other type of phrase abounds in the English Bible and superabounds in the Hebrew. Some of its varieties are undoubtedly indigenous to other tongues, as, for example, the genitive of material, and the possessive genitive. But it is unquestionably the wide use of the Bible that is responsible for sowing such prepositional phrases plentifully through a language whose simple possessive case and abundant adjectives made their use unnecessary, and generally undesirable. That Poe was thus influenced is evident from his [page 140:] copious use of them in pieces that otherwise exhibit a profusion of biblical features, and where they are usually not a blemish.(38) It is not easy to account for such awkward expressions in so finished a writer as a “box of wood” where he means a wooden box, and not a box containing wood;(39) the “size of life” for life size;(40) and “husband of Beulah” for Beulah's husband.(41)

Along with these may be noted other manifest Hebraisms such as “sons of earth,” “daughters of heaven,”(42) “shadow of death,”(43) “heart fainted,”(44) and “under the sun.”(45) The extent to which our language is indebted to the Bible for such quaint and impressive idioms borrowed from the Hebrew can be realized only after a painstaking study of the original.(46)

Poe's manner of using Scripture is interesting. Sometimes sentences that, as a whole, have no parallel in the Bible are almost as much mosaics of biblical bits as the Magnificat is of Old Testament thoughts and [page 141:] expressions.(47) Often the resemblance to the Bible is so elusive as to make it doubtful whether any parallel should be cited, but cumulative evidence is furnished by comparing several similar passages. His “voice of a thousand thunders” or of “a thousand waters”(48) would be ascribed to the Bible with hesitation. But when we meet his “voice of many waters” given as a quotation, we are confirmed in our belief that the other expressions were also due to the book of Revelation.(49) “The cold valley and Shadow” might have been written by a man ignorant of the Psalms, but that Poe was not thus ignorant is proved by his quoting the well known verse as a motto to one of his titles, “Yea! though I walk through the valley of the Shadow.”(50) “To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven,” might seem far-fetched if attributed to the influence of “Golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints.” Yet the poet's own note quotes the latter as the inspiration of the former.(51) “As a war horse when he springs” suggests Job's majestic steed. No doubt of its source can be held if it was written by the same man who said, “We feel like the war horse ... ‘who smelleth the battle afar off, the voice of the captains and the shouting.’ “(52)

“Finger of death,” and “finger of Deity” are not [page 142:] in the Bible. They are built upon a Hebrew plan, but how could we be sure of conscious borrowing if we did not find the biblical “finger of God” used as a quotation?(53) “Face to face” is too natural a collocation of words to justify regarding it as necessarily scriptural. Yet it cannot well be regarded as otherwise in a writer who quoted its equivalent from the Greek Old Testament.(54) Was the expression “coming out from among mankind,” and its variants, Poe's own? Its origin is plainly revealed when it at last appears in a notice of a clergyman, “He has at last ‘come out from among them.’ “(55) Even the oft-recurring “under the sun” stands at length fully confessed as consciously biblical: “Oh, there is ‘nothing new under the sun,’ and Solomon is right — for once.”(56)

Whether using words, phrases, or sentences from the sacred book, Poe did so to serve definite literary ends. In certain essays, reviews, and notes his biblical material was used as interesting information.(57) In many passages discussing solemn and dignified subjects the style and words of the Bible were adopted to impart the solemnity and dignity of that literature.(58) [page 143:] Closely akin to that use was his employment of Scripture as a source of beauty. A favorite dictum of Poe's, adopted from Lord Bacon, was, “There can be no exquisite beauty without some element of strangeness.(59) That element in literature, he knew, could be supplied, in no small degree, by quaintness. And quaintness could be imparted by the use of archaic words \and unusual collocations. Hence his use of inflections, inversions, and words not belonging to the natural speech of his day. The Bible, above all other easily accessible books, is the great treasure-house of such quaintness. From the Bible he therefore drew, and where he followed other models he used forms that poetry and religion have kept in literary use long after their retirement from everyday usage.(60)

The skillful use of quotations and allusions has always been recognized as a valuable accessory of composition. Poe was not much given to it, and scarcely at all for mere ornamentation, or appendage to his own style.(61) He accomplished the same end, however, by using scriptural phraseology and bits of sentences in figurative senses. Thus he linked his own ideas with the immortal thoughts of the Bible by the power of association. Its charm and its force thus became, in some degree, his charm and his force. [page 144:]

There is one other purpose for which our author used Scripture. Those so far considered all partake of dignity and reverence, but the Bible has long been made to serve the ends of humor. To pervert its well-known words by putting them into all sorts of odd and funny situations has proved an irresistible temptation. The principle involved is easily understood. The mirth produced is akin to that called forth by seeing a very dignified and well-dressed person get a fall in the mud.(62) This same element of incongruity makes verse serve the ends of humor. Ridiculous things expressed in forms generally reserved for the noble and the beautiful gain a twofold comicality. Hence a misapplied quotation, or a phrase incongruously placed, becomes a sort of elaborate pun whose effect is in proportion to the strength of its association with widely different ideas. Poe fully appreciated this, and enjoyed an example of a clever quotation misapplied:

Poe did not extensively use the Bible in that way. In two criticisms he secured some good effects by [page 145:] mingling his gibes and satire with the narration of Scripture.(64) Anent the follies of a certain writer he cried, “Good Lord, deliver us.”(65) He perverted the statement about the sin against the Holy Ghost.(66) A phenomenal family of cats were said to fulfill the scriptural injunction “to increase and multiply.”(67) The humorous account of a man's wooing a widow was heightened by biblically flavored phraseology:

So also was the ridiculous pursuit of a very old woman, mistaken for a young and beautiful one by a near-sighted youth. “On account of the crowd ... not having been able to touch even the hem of her robe.”(69) The sum of Poe's sins against the sacred, in such ways, was small, and the total effect in happy hits even smaller.(70)

It remains to inquire into the sources of Poe's knowledge of the Bible as reflected in his writings. Much of it was an inheritance that any man in Christendom, and especially any user of English, finds [page 146:] ready to his hand. To have escaped the influence of the Bible on his vocabulary Poe must needs have gone out of his world. That at once accounts for the largest though least impressive part of his debt.(71)

To every man's legacy of words coined or modified by the Bible must be added the rich fund of proverbial sayings to which all English writers fall heir. Being an artist, Poe usually wrought such material into his sentences in modified form, or poured into their well worn molds thoughts of his own. His manner of using them is more interesting than their use, for he often betrays the fact that he knows they are biblicisms. That shows personal scriptural knowledge, however superficial.(72)

Another source of knowledge for Poe was the literature he read and reviewed all his life. His favorite “out-Herod Herod” is due to the New Testament, but it appears first in Shakespeare. Angels, seraphs, cherubs, demons, along with the appropriate environment of each, were bound to be familiar to a reader of Milton and Dante. He reviewed sermons, religious addresses, theological works, and all manner of writings that reflected the Bible. Such books as the Drama of the Exile and the Sacred Mountains would revive, if not create, knowledge of the sacred volume.(73)

Beyond all such avenues of knowledge, however, must have lain others more immediate and personal. His saturation with biblical style proclaims this. It [page 147:] fell in his way to mention incidentally certain scriptural episodes. Though they were not among the most familiar, he showed an intimate acquaintance with them.(74) Apt quotations were ready at hand when he had occasion to use them. Some of them are fairly long and were given as verbatim quotations. Yet it is evident they were quoted from memory, for few of them show absolute fidelity to their source. A superficial criticism might regard that as proof that Poe was ignorant of the Bible. But the evidence proves the contrary. Wanting to use some text to embellish his page or add weight to his statements, a man with no Scripture really in mind would seek passages with the aid of a concordance and copy them out with care, thus reproducing them to the minutest point. Whereas a man with a real knowledge of the Book would simply recall his verses while writing and set them down from memory. He would thus inevitably vary slightly from his source, for few men quote with absolute verbal accuracy, and none at all with inerrant reproduction of unusual capitalizing and punctuation. Out of fourteen such quotations in Poe, all but two of the shortest vary from the Bible in punctuation, capitals, or words, or all three.(75)

Such quotations, allusions, phrasings, and stylistic features as abound in Poe indicate considerable knowledge of the Bible. It seems ever to lie dormant in his brain, ready to be easily aroused to activity upon every [page 148:] favorable occasion. Its influence upon him can be no better expressed than in his own words explaining the rationale of literary resemblances due to the power of any noble writing over a poetic mind:

Apart then from the three sources of biblical influence already noted, whence had Poe this knowledge? Too little information of his early life is available to admit of a detailed tracing of its instruction. The good Scotch folk who adopted him were religious enough to have him baptized,(77) but whether he was taught the Bible at home and in Sunday school has not been discovered. What is known is that his foster [page 149:] parents, in spite of being Scotch, were affiliated with the Episcopal Church. The minister who baptized Poe, the Rev. John Buchanan, D.D., was rector of St. John's Church, Richmond, in whose churchyard Poe's young mother found a pauper's grave.(78) A few years later, when the Monumental Church arose on the ashes of the theater where Mrs. Poe had played, to commemorate the victims of the fire, the Allans had a pew there. From a very aged attendant of that church a statement was made some years ago that she had seen Poe, as a child, in the pew with the Allans.(79) Probably he thus became familiar with the service and its copious Scripture reading. At the age of six he was placed in an English private school, under the instruction of a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Bransby, Manor House School, Stoke-Newington. How vividly his five or six years of life there impressed him is revealed in the autobiographic touches in William Wilson.(80) At the very least there must have been morning and evening religious exercises in such a school — most likely there was compulsory Bible study. There were also the regular Sunday services in the church presided over by Dr. Bransby.

Returning to Richmond the lad was kept at school [page 150:] for six more years in two classical academies — first at Clarke's, then at Burke's.(81) Again conjecture can hardly err in concluding that such private schools, conducted by Old World men, must have opened their daily exercises with prayers. During his two years in the regular army and his year at West Point he must have attended religious exercises regularly. Thus through the most formative years of his life the poetic, impressionable boy was in such contact with the Bible as would indelibly stamp it upon his memory.

In later life, whatever his neglect of public worship and personal religion, he did not lose his interest in the Bible. Nothing but biblical study could supply a man with the knowledge displayed in his Tale of Jerusalem, and his essay on Palestine. His reflection of all sorts of significant and curious things connected with the Bible constitutes one of the interesting phenomena of his mental life, as unfolded in his Pinakidia and Marginalia.

Hence there is no mystery about this man's familiarity with Scripture. He absorbed it from hi: environment; he met it in the literature he critically examined; he was taught it in childhood and youth; he studied it in mature years.

[[Footnotes]]

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1 “The first coherent words of English speech which have been transmitted to us are in a species of verse which suggests, though somewhat remotely, the rhythms and parallelisms of Hebrew poetry; they constitute a hymn of praise which includes a paraphrastic rendering of the first verse of Genesis” (Cook, The Bible and English Prose Style, pp. ix, x) .

2 See especially Murray's Oxford Dictionary.

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3 Evening Star.

4 Matt. 27:45. 46.

5 For a list of such phrases see below, p. 204.

6 Lk. 2.

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7 Lk. 16:20.

8 Matt. 25:14-30.

9 Matt. 11:19.

10 Matt. 23:27.

11 But see the Oxford Dictionary for another example contemporary with Tyndale's use.

12 Tyndale's New Testament of 1526 bad “maynteyners of peace,” but in 1534 he used the above, which has held its place in all subsequent English versions including the Rheims. See Poe, XVI. 82:14.

13 Tyndale, 1526: “A busybody in other men's matters” (1 Pet. 4:15) . So in all later versions except Rheims. until changed in Revised Version to “meddler” (Poe, XIII. 49:12) .

14 Tyndale, 1526: “Derely beloved” (1 Sao. 3:2) .

15 Coverdale, 1535: “O bow fayre art thou, my beloved” (Song of Sol. 1:16, etc.).

16 Poe. IV. 241:22; VI. 144:2: VII. 92:1.

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17 “The dai sterre sprynge in youre hertis” (2 Pet. 1:19; Poe, VII. 19:16) .

18 Tyndale rendered the [[Greek text]] of Acts 17:18 “a tydynges brynger off newe devyls.” Thus he put into the mouths of Athenians a meaning placed upon the word by a Christian perversion which they would never sanction.

19 1 Cor. 10:20.

20 This had displaced the older “withsay,” and has yielded to “contradict,” but without being entirely displaced.

21 Psa. 16:6; Poe, XIII. 176:11; XV. 95:6.

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22 Thorpe's ed., Caedmon's Paraphrase, 18:31.

23 Thorpe's Caedmon, 146:19; Lindesfarne Gospel, Mark 11:11 Poe. XIV. 29 1: 13.

24 Tyndale's rendering of Gen. 15:1 in 1534: “I am thy shade, and thy rewarde shalbe exceadynge greate” — was improved by Coverdale, master of melodious phrasing that he was. in his Bible of 1535: “I am thy shylde and thy exceadinge greate rewatcle.” So it has remained in our Bible, and as Poe used it (IV. 241:1: XII. 115:30: XIV. 131:11) .

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25 English received many Latinate words through the Rheims-Douay Version of 1582-1609. Even at that late date it was necessary, in a glossary of fifty-eight words appended to the New Testament, to define such terms as “acquisition,” “advent.” “allegory,” and “victim.” Words received from the Latin Bible indicating further the extent of Poe's debt are. “carnal,” “communion,” “congregation,” “election,” “elements,” “eternity,” “discipline,” “glory,” “infidel,” “mercy,” “perverse.” “pilgrim,” “pity.” “remission,” “reprobate,” “revealed,” “sceptic,” “separated.” “spirit.” There are many others constantly employed.

26 Jer. 31:29; cf. Ezek. 18:2.

27 [[Hebrew text]] = blunted: [[Greek text]] = benumbed, and [[Greek text]] = ache; obstupuerunt = benumbed. The German is equivalent to these — Zähni sind sturnpf geworden. Thus the verses in English and out of English have not the same meaning.

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28 Pit and Pendulum, V. 80:29.

29 I cannot recall ever having seen that sentence in print; it comes to mind from sermons of a perfervid sort heard years ago. See Criticism, X. 125:30.

30 Rev. 10:5, 6.

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31 The fact that the notion, that time shall end at a certain point and eternity begin. is an unintelligible idea does not interfere with its popularity.

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32 For list see below, pp. 196, 197.

33 “Heart of hearts” seems to appear first in Shakespeare.

34 See the subtitle to the Song of Solomon, and Eccl. 1:1.

35 This is a well-worn phrase that the majority of people think is in our King James Bible, but it is found only in the Douay Version.

36 1 Kgs. 8:6.

37 XVII. 314, 328.

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38 Mask of Red Death; Shadow; Pit and Pendulum.

39 The Gold Bug, V. 95 sqq.

40 Maelzel's Chess Player, XIV. 8. “A statue of the size of life” (Criticism, XIII. 186:19) .

41 XI. 209:5. Perhaps in some cases these awkward phrases were due to Cooper's influence, for they run riot in his pages; cf. Poe. Criticism of Wyandotte, XI. 205.

42 II. 30:19-22.

43 II. 147.

44 II. 200:15.

45 VI. 112:12, and frequently in all classes of his writings.

46 See Rosenau, Hebraisms in the Authorized Version of the Bible, in which a partial list contains over two thousand examples. That some of these might have arisen spontaneously in English is quite possible. As Tyndale expressed it: “The properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with English than with Latin. The manner of speaking is both one, so that in a thousand places, thou needest not but to translate it into English, word for word” (Preface to Obedience of a Christian Man, Works, Russel's ed.. Vol. 1. p. 188) .

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47 E.g.. Gordon Pym, III. 242:14-18.

48 II. 92:11: III. 297:16.

49 Rev. 14:2; IV. 2:4.

50 Shadow, II. 147.

51 VII. 26:9 and Note 4.

52 VII. 256:19: VIII. 34:15.

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53 IV. 240:14; XVI. 253:29: 255:20.

54 XVI. 5:20.

55 IV. 3:9; XV. 69:3.

56 XVII. 333:26. In some other cases Poe, in repeating, expounded himself and revealed the source of his phrases: “Thy hyacinth hair” (VII. 46) : “Her hair ... in curls like those of the young hyacinth” (II. I I 1) ; “The luxuriant and naturally curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet. “hyacinthine” (II. 250) .

57 See his Palestine, XIV. 1: Review of Arabia Patraea, X. I: Jerusalem, II. 214. and numerous Marginalia.

58 For example, Silence, Shadow, Masque of the Red Death. Such things cannot be written in English without use of a biblical style.

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59 II. 250.

60 Many inversions in the English Bible have been pronounced Germanisms due to Luther's influence upon Tyndale. See Marsh, Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible, 518; cf. Rosenau. Hebraisms in the Authorized Version of the Bible, 80, with a reference to Hofman, Germanisms in the Authorized Version of the Bible. As against this view see Eadie, The English Bible, Vol. I, pp. 143-146; cf. Slater, Sources of Tyndale's Version of the Pentateuch, 4, 52, 54.

61 His repeated use of certain foreign phrases and quotations was a partial exception.

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62 “Dignity is all very well ... but the being everlastingly on stilts is not only troublesome and awkward, but dangerous. He who falls en homme ordinaire — f corn the mere slipping of his feet — is usually an object of sympathy; but all men tumble now and then, and this tumbling from high sticks is sure to provoke laughter” (Poe, XVI. 15) .

63 Marginalia, XVI. 42.

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64 Elizabeth Barrett's (Browning) Drama of the Exile, XII. 1-35; Headley's Sacred Mountains, XIII. 202-209.

65 XII. 161:18. The writer's name was Lord.

66 XVII. 204:23.

67 IV. 133:16.

68 Angel of the Odd, VI. 111.

69 Spectacles, V. 187:22.

70 Additional examples as the following: III. 253:14; 264:30; IV. 128:16; 215:8; 219:1; V. 222:9; VI. 2:13-31; 8:20; 23:6; 230:30.

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71 Such items as are discussed above, pp. 131-136.

72 These sayings can be found plentifully scattered through the appended list; e.g.. “He who runs may read”; “The scepter has departed.”

73 Also X. 1 and 81.

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74 For example. the story of Rizpah. IX. 289.

75 II. 147:Motto; III. 264:30; VII. 26:Note 4: 32:Note 2; VIII. 13:20; 137:6; 268:24; 26; 27; XIII. 72:20; XIV. 55:24; 70:20: XVI. 10:22. 20:10.

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76 The Longfellow War, XII. 105, 106.

77 Biography, I. 23.

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78 The church immortalized by Patrick Henrys “Give me liberty, or give me death” speech in it.

79 For this information I am indebted to Mr. Wm. G. Stanard, Secretary and Librarian, Virginia Historical Society, who knew the old lady. Anent remarks made above about the probable rigid Calvinism of Allan (see pp. 16. 17) , it must be kept in mind that it then characterized the Episcopal. quite as much as the Presbyterian Church. It would quite certainly be the theology of any religious Scot of that day. Miss A. F. Poe of Baltimore writes me that the Poes originally in Ireland were Presbyterian.

80 III. 301, 302; Biography, 17-19.

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81 Biography, 19.