Text: William Whipple, “Chapter III,” A Study of Edgar Allan Poe's Satiric Patterns Story, dissertation, 1951, pp. 92-118 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 92:]

That Edgar Allan Poe should attempt to satirize what he called the New York literati does not come as a surprise. The surprise is that he did not satirize this group more than he did. There are only two stories which seem to fit into this classification as a result of their satiric reference. Both were written within the last five years of Poe's life. The stories are “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob” and “Mellonta Tanta.”(1) Neither story is solely a satire on a single individual.

Why didn’t Poe aim his satire at the New Yorkers more frequently? They were as powerful, editorially, as the Bostonians; their group included a large number of writers antagonistic to Poe; and certainly the will to destroy them with the pen existed. There are several reasons that may be advanced to answer this. For one Shale Poe did “use them up” very thoroughly in his critical writings: in his “Literati” papers — a series [page 93:] of brief critical judgments on contemporary New York writers — in his reviews, and in his “Chapter on Autography.”(1) This mode of attack was more direct and explicit and he may have felt it was sufficient. Second, Poe did not seem to feel that the New York group, as a unit, enveloped and oppressed him as did the Bostonians. As a critic, as well as a writer, Poe may have realized that, fundamentally, these New Yorkers were no vital threat to his literary ambitions as were the talented, but clannish, Bostonians. And third, if Poe felt, as we have on, that malevolence should not appear in a satire then this precluded his attempting to satirize his individual enemies, such, for example, as Thomas Dunn English, with whom he bitterly engaged in a widely publicized libel suits.(2) Poe may have realized that any attempt to satirize English would have resulted in laughter at the expense of the satirist rather than the one satirized. Hiram Fuller, proprietor of the New York Mirror, was another who could not be satirized safely for the same reason.(3) And finally, as Poe made enemies among the [page 94:] New Yorkers he found his established position as critic gave him a direct method for attacking them as individuals. Consequently, it was rare that his spite accumulated to the point where it bubbled over into his imaginative writing; rarely, too, did Poe rise above the moment to generalize on the vices and follies of these New Yorkers. When his spite did spill over into his tales and when did generalize on the current follies of New York, we get such satires as we have mentioned — “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob” and “Mellonta Tauta.”

What was left for Poe to satirize if we exclude those individuals toward whom Poe felt too great an animosity, and if the heterogeneity of the whole New York group failed to arouse in Poe the desire to use them up in satire as well as in criticism? Their cliques offered a target. Poe, as an outsider trying to get a literary foothold in New York, on encountered the opposition of these journalistic cliques. The cliques, as we mentioned in the chapter on magazines, tended to puff one another's books, accept common critical standards for judging literature, and, especially, to raise their editorial tomahawks against anyone criticising one of their members. One of the most powerful cliques centered around The Knickerbocker magazine, edited by Lewis Gaylord Clark.

Poe's initial misdemeanor, in the eyes of this Knickerbocker group, was his vicious review, in 1836, of [page 95:] Norman Leslie by Theodore S. Fay.(1) Poe's general accusation was that the story owed its reception, to some extent, to the puffing and log-rolling which preceded its publication.(2) But his attack was not primarily against the vices of puffing; rather it was against Fay's personal literary deficiencies. This is an example of his abuse:

Such criticism of Fay was just a beginning of his offenses against this clique. The next tiff with a member of the Knickerbocker clique came in Poe's review of Drake's Culprit Fay and Halleck's Alnwick Castle, in April, 1836.(4) In this review he quoted a criticism of himself published in the Philadelphia Gazette, edited by Willis Gaylord Clark, the twin brother of Lewis Gaylord Clark:

This comment was reprinted in The New York Commercial Advertizer, edited by Colonel Stone, and by Fay in the New York Mirror.(2) Poe had this to say of Willis Clark's criticism:

Poe was less gentle with Colonel Stone, whose remarks he said were “equivocal” because they presented no “better evidence of our flippancy, injustice, personality, and gross blundering than the solitary dictum of Col. Stone.”(4)

Professor Quinn believes that this exchange may have been the beginning of the Poe-Clark controversy which was to reach major proportions by 1846, although not much editorial attention was paid it at the time.(5) Also, Poe's ‘satiric reference to Willis Gaylord Clark in “A Predicament,” [page 97:] November, 1838, where he has Zenobia say that the click-clack of the clock “put me in mind of the grateful sermonic harangues of Dr. Ollapod,” does not indicate a serious degree of animosity between the two parties.(1) As late as April, 1840, Lewis G. Clark seems to have thought well enough of Poe, for he praised Poe's ability to handle “this species of Crusoe material,” in a comment on the “Journal of Julius Rodman.”(2)

The death of Willis Gaylord Clark on July 12, 1841, was to alter, indirectly, this relationship between Poe and Lewis Clark. For Poe, the death of Willis Clark meant the loss of a poet for whom he had a great deal of respect, and it left Poe with a residue of contempt for the inferior surviving brother, Lewis. For Lewis Clark, the death of his brother was a severe shock, since the two were unusually close in their personal and literary associations. Their youth had been spent in rural New York where one of the bright spots seems to have been the visits of their uncle, Willis Gaylord, editor of the Genesee Farmer and Albany Cultivator. Apparently he inspired the boys to wish to be editors, for each left home with that express ambition in mind. Willis, his uncle's namesake, gravitated to Philadelphia where, after an apprenticeship as a writer for [page 98:] several literary and religious periodicals, he became editor of the Philadelphia Gazette and Philadelphia's leading poet as well.(1)

Lewis G. Clark left home later than Willis and chose New York, where, by a little astute financing, he became editor of the Knickerbocker magazine. Willis Clark acted as a sort of associate editor, contributing verse and essays under the name of “Ollapod.” These in formal essays were very popular and their popularity largely accounted for Lewis Gaylord Clark's decision, in 1844, to publish The Literary Remains of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark.(2)

For obscure reasons, the relations between Poe “and Lewis Clark deteriorated in the three years that intervened between Willis Clark's death and the publication of his Literary Remains in 1844. There was, of course, Poe's jab at Clark in his Autography paper, but this could scarcely have affected Clark very seriously.(3) One explanation of the deterioration has been that Poe wrote the article, “Our Magazine Literature,” which [page 99:] appeared in The New World, March 11, 1843.(1)

“Our Magazine Literature” analyzed and evaluated eight contemporary magazines: The Democratic Review, Knickerbocker's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, Godey's Lady's Book, Sargents’ New Monthly Magazine, The Lady's Companion, and The Southern Literary Messenger. Of the magazines discussed, the article deals most harshly with the editors of the Knickerbocker and the New Monthly Magazine, L. G. Clark and Epes Sargent.(2) If Poe wrote the article, then it could very well have been responsible for drawing forth the animosity which Lewis Clark later showed toward him.(3)

“Our Magazine Literature” commends the Knickerbocker for its former “glory” but declares that it is now in a state of decline.

The article must have irritated Lewis Clark considerably for by April, 1843, we find him protesting to his readers, at some length, that such an article is not worth noticing.

Once having flushed its game, if the writer was Poe, the Knickerbocker continued to blaze away.(2) In July, 1843, it printed this letter from one of its readers:

The article, by Poe, on “Flaccus” criticized Mr. “Flaccus” Ward for his poor verses, and mentioned Ward's support by the Knickerbocker clique.(4) Clark lost no time in indicating to the subscribers that the Knickerbocker had no use for Poe. In October, the “Editors Table” reprinted another attack on Poe. This time the attack came from Kentucky, from one of the most able practitioners of billingsgate, George De. Prentice. [page 102:]

The editorial goes on trying to clarify just who is what Kind of Yass.” We are apt to forget, sometimes, that the crude, personal attack was a part of the literary practise of the age, not peculiar to Poe alone. Doubtless, the practise provided a lightning-rod through which much of Poe's anger discharged itself that might otherwise have been transformed into the higher form of satire.

In March of the following year, 1844, Lewis Clark published The Literary Remains of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark. The book received wide press notice, being especially praised by such journals as: The New World, United States Gazette, The Genesee Farmer and Cultivator, and The American Quarterly Review.(2) In the July issue of the Knickerbocker the “Editor's Table” printed an extended Uoufr” of the book.

Poe could not have been unaware of the notice the book was receiving, for he was living in Philadelphia when the book was published and moved to New York in April, 1844. Poe, anxious to establish himself, was keeping abreast of the leading journals. It is interesting to note what he may have read in the 1844 issues of the Knickerbocker. In verse he would have found such titles as, “Aspstrophe [[Apostrophe]] to an Old Hat,”(2) “Ode to an Old [page 104:] Pair of India-Rubbers,”(1) “Midnight Monody,”(2) and “Ode to a Flea.”(3) If it was the popular, chatty “Editor's Table” that he read, Poe might have happened on such a criticism as this,

or,

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob we have discussed already in the chapter on magazines. The surface satire, we have seen, is concerned with the editorial practices of the 1830's and ‘40's. As we have said earlier, puffing, toadying, and cliques were all a part of American and, for that matter, English journalism. Yet there seems to be more to the tale than that. Hervy [[Hervey]] Allen believes that [page 105:] the story is autobiographical and may be a dig at Poe's foster father.(1) Mr. Allen goes further and sets the locale in Richmond.(2) There are enough similarities to Poe's own literary career to make this comparison possible, yet certain facts mitigate against it. For one thing, there was no particular reason for Poe to satirize his father at this time when their break was complete and final. Also, the satire is directed at the would be poet~editor, not at his father, except incidentally. Accepting Allen's theory raises the question, would Poe have satirized himself? Every indication we have of Poe's personality attests that, on the contrary, he took his literary ambitions seriously, that he did not have the objectivity for self-ridicule. But, if we do not accept Mr. Allen's autobiographical viewpoint, what is suggested by the story?

The evidence we have garnered indicates that Poe was striking at Lewis Gaylord Clark by satirizing his dead brother, Willis. This suggestion of course imputes to Poe a willingness to sink to the crudest use of personalities, yet Poe's criticisms bear this out. The points of similarity are these: first, the title. The Literary Life of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark, published [page 106:] during the early months of 1844, was, as we have shown, uppermost in the minds of the reading public. The title, The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, published in December, 1844, could hardly help but point up this initial identification.(1) Second, the rise of Thingum Bob to fame — his desire to be a poet and editor — parallels that of W. G. Clerk. Third, Thingum Bob was named Thingum after a relative of that name, just as the Clark boys received the middle name Gaylord from their uncle Willis Gaylord.(2) Fourth, there is the similarity in the choice of a pen name. Willis Clark wrote under the name “Ollapod.” Thingum Bob chose the name “oppodeldoc” as his early pen name. And fifth, although this is not as conclusive, there is Thingum Bob's pride in his style. We recall the Knickerbocker pointed out “Ollapod's” facility in writing in a wide variety of styles. Add to these five points the recollection that Poe lived in Philadelphia [page 107:] and New York during the 1840's and could not have been unaware of the salient facts about these two men, and there can be no doubt that Poe was striking at the Clark brothers.

There is supporting evidence in Poe's drawing heavily on the Knickerbocker magazine for his satire. For instance, it is the Hum-Drum, the Rowdy-Dow, and the Goosetherumfoodle that “are in the practice of publishing ‘Mother Goose's Melodies’ as original lyrics,” writes Poe; and he may have been laughing at the Knickerbocker, for he commented, “The Progress of English literature 1n France is remarkable!” and then cited a quatrain of Jack and Jill as an illustration.(1) Again, Poe satirically draws a comparison by suggesting that Thingum Bob's”nom de guerre”“ will one day extinguish the radiance of “Boz” A similar comparison had appeared in the Knickerbocker on the basis of a physical likeness between Martin Chuzzle wit and Willis Gaylord Clark.(2)

One wonders, quite aside from Poe's use of the exerpt [[excerpt]], whether it struck the Knickerbocker readers as amusing that Lewis G. Clark could say, in effect, “I do not know if the picture looks like me but it is an exact representation of my twin brother.”

One would need to go no further than the already quoted pages of the Knickerbocker to explain Poe's reference to “Prentice's Billingsgate”(2) (folio edition), and “Lewis G. Clarke on Tongue.”(3) It is interesting to note that, by the addition of Lewis Clark's name, the remarks receives a pointedness which was missing before.

Perhaps the addition of Lewis Clarke's name was to offset the gradual weakening of the point of the satire as people forgot the juxtaposition of the publishing of this story with the publication of Clark's Literary Life. In general, Poe altered his stories very little so that the addition of a name is significant.

The actual name “Thingum Bob, Esq.” might have been suggested to Poe by the name Robert Linkum, Esq., a contributor to the Knickerbocker. This slender suggestion is strengthened when we recall that Mr. Linkum wrote “Song of the Kety-Did” and that Poe uses the “Katy-Did” for the title of Mademoiselle Cribalittle's tale, “The York-Town Katy-Did and the Bunker-Hill Katy-Didn’t.”(2) Also, the titles of literary efforts submitted to the magazines controlled by Thingum Bob titles like, “Monody in a Mud-Puddle,” “Oil of Bob,” “Dish-Clout,” “Hey Diddle-Diddle, “ ”Pigs” — were no more outlandish than those received by the Knickerbocker at every Cymerip like, “Ode to a Flea,” “The Done-Over Tailor,” “To A Pair of Old Ear Rings,” “Midnight Monody,” “The Married Man's Eye.”(3) [page 110:] But it is unnecessary to go on drawing these parallels, for enough has been shown to indicate that Poe could have found much of his material in the current issues of the Knickerbocker magazine.

There is no direct evidence that Lewis Clark recognized the satire as directed at himself by way of his beloved dead brother, but it is demonstrable that, from this point on, Clark never relented in his attacks against Poe, even continuing after Poe's death.(1) In April, 1845, Clark published in his magazine a parody of “The Raven.”(2) Poe seems to have retaliated by republishing “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” July 26, 1845, in the Broadway Journal, of which Poe was the editor.(3) Clark began 1846 by writing of Poe.

In May, Clark renewed the attack by calling Poe a “snob.”(5) In September, 1846, Poe criticized Clark in his famous Literati papers. [page 111:]

Beyond this we need not trace the controversy. The enmity between Poe and Clark was only a little less violent than that between Poe and English. The jigsaw of the Poe-Clark controversy was well matched by Mr. Spivey but a key piece was missing. That piece is to be found in the story, “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” for that satire furnishes the emotional basis for Clark's vindictive critiques on Poe, We may find, too, that the supposedly fictitious references to magazines pointed to specific periodicals belonging to the Knickerbocker clique, although such an identification eludes us at the present time.

The second tale involving the New York literati is “Mellonta Tauta,” published in Godey's Lady's Book, February, 1849.(1) It might be held an error to include this story in this particular grouping because of the wide variety of satire included in it. Certainly “Mellonta Tauta” is more comprehensive in its general satiric allusions than any other of Poe's tales. In part, this may be because of the story's close connection with “Eureka,” Poe's philosophical prose-poem.(2) In “Mellonta Tauta,” if anywhere, Poe hits “right and left,” as he [page 112:] said earlier of his satire on The Dial: There is satire of government, of antiquarianism, of philosophy, of progress, of individuals, and of the effervescence fame.(1) Poe seems to have covered everything. But, if this is so, why is the story included in a discussion of the New York group?

“Mellonta Tauta”“ is almost cosmic in its references, it is true, for it reaches into the past, the present, and the future; still, it is a cosmos with its anchor firmly fixed in New York. The majority of the allusions, as mich as they are secured to anything, are tied to New York. The climax of the story seems -to be the satire of the “Knickerbocker tribe,” although this is no longer as conspicuous to the modern reader as Poe's satire of government, status of man, scientific progress, and antiquarianism.(2)

The narrator of the story, Pundita, is on a balloon trip in the year 2848 A.D. She is writing a letter so as to pass the time during their “jog trot,” hundred-miles an~hour, slow trip. In her letter, Pundita is regaling her friends with curious bits of history as told to her [page 113:] by Pundit, the noted antiquarian. Her letter is cut short when their balloon collapses and they are tumbled into the sea.(1)

Poe shows us early that this is no Utopia, for life is far from-ideal in 2848, but an excellent vantage point for surveying the America of 1848. Although the story was first published in 1849, we may reason that Poe had written it in 1848 and that he chose 2848 to make the time a round 2,000 years.

The introductory note which accompanies the story indicates to us the tone which the letter is to take.

The reference to Martin Van Buren Mavis, the Toughkeepsie Seer, is easily recognized as a thrust at Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie Seer.(3) The allusion to transcendentalists [page 114:] is, of course, a reflection of Poe's bitterness toward the New England literati who were grouped under that titles The full extent of that antagonism we will show later in the chapter on the New Englanders; but, by 1848, the irreconcilability of Poe and the New Englanders was unmistakable.

The story has three primary satiric allusions: the Hog-ites, government, and the New Yorkers. Poe's reference to government we have treated in the chapter on “Poe and Politics.” The Hog-ites and New Yorkers are best treated here.

By the Hog-ians Poe meant the followers of Bacon's method of arriving at Truth, inductive reasoning.(1) Opposed to the Hog-ians were the Aristotelians who arrived at truth in the manner prescribed by Aristotle, deductively.(2) Both of these methods were in opposition to the method Poe called intuitively-divined truth.(3) The satire which is applied to these followers of Aristotle and Bacon is expressed through puns, distorting and burlesquing facts, and occasional invective — like “bullet-headed savans” for those who depended on scientific facts. “Mellonta Tauta” was such a close sister to “Eureka” that it is shadowed by “Eureka's” heavy nimbus of thought and [page 115:] argument.(1) Yet this very similarity to “Eureka” argues for a transfer in the object of the two sketches of the “Hog-ians.” In a letter to George W. Eveleth, Poe observed,

This Draper was John W. Draper, a professor in New York University, president of the medical school, and author of many scientific papers both for scientific journals and for James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald.(3)

Poe's satire of the “Mob” and his attitude toward government we will reserve for treatment in the chapter on his political satire; but here it is enough to say that probably Poe's natural antipathy to mobs was heightened by the masses of riff-raff that jammed New York streets on election days.

The reference to “Purrier” (Fourier) was, at least [page 116:] secondarily, a strike at New Yorkers who entertained his voguish economic doctrines.(1) Horace Greeley and Albert Brisbane were the leaders of Fourierism in the United States, especially Brisbane who studied under Fourier and who persuaded the Concord group to adopt the Fourier system at Brook Farms.(2) Poe, however, was better acquainted with Horace Greeley, who loaned him fifty dollars in October, 1845, to buy control of the Broadway Journal, than with Brisbane.(3) Greeley loaned him the money in spite of the fact that, in June, Poe had written of him,

Fourierism in America stood with one foot in New York and one foot in Concord, and Poe, besides considering the doctrines ridiculous, associated them with the Concord and Brook Farm Transcendentalists: a connection we shall [page 117:] point up more fully in the chapter on the New England literati. The fact that Greeley's paper, the Tribune, wrote unfavorably of Poe on February 21, 1847, would not tend to encourage Poe to view Greeley's ideas with greater tolerance when Poe came to write “Mellonta Tauta” a year or so later.(1)

Finally, there is the direct satire of New Yorkers, members, Poe would have it, of the “Knickerbocker tribe of savages.” New York, Pundita writes in her letter, has been destroyed by an earthquake, but,

A tablet is dug up, Pundita continues, from which the learned antiquarian, Pundit, deciphers that “Lord Cornwallis (a dealer in corn) was surrendered (for sausage) ‘under [page 118:] the auspices of the Washington Monument Association’ — no doubt a charitable institution for the depositing of corner stones (statues were not erected, just the intention to erect a statue.)”(1)

There are other satiric asides not directly concerned with New York, satires on speed, inventions, progress, and other incidental references; but the main body of the satire contained in the story centers on New York or on New Yorkers.[[(2) ]]

As always with these satiric tales, one is tempted to ask what part of the fabric of the story is the satire? In this case, at least, there would be a tale even if the satiric overtones were dropped. It would be a story like “Hans Phaall,” or “The Balloon-Hoax,” or any of Poe's similar tales; but much would be lost, for dramatically the tale is rather passive, and as a tale of the wonders of science it is uninspired. However, as a satiric tale it still holds some charm for the reader and probably will continue to do so as long as readers take an interest in satire of Aristotle, Bacon, and individual man versus the State.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 92:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 578-93, 683-24.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 93:]

1 Harrison, op. cit., XV, 6-137. The “Literati Papers” were published in Godey's Lady's Book in the May to October issues, 1846. Poe was harsh in his criticism of such men as Charles F. Briggs, Thomas Dunn English, and Lewis G. Clark. The “Chapter on Autography” appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger from February to August, 1833. Ibid., pp. 139-261.

2 Quinn, Poe, 508-06,

3 Ibid., p. 505. The suit was really brought against Fuller and Clason as editors of the Mirror.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 95:]

1 Harrison, op. cit., VIII, 51 ff. This review was published in the Southern Literary Messenger, December, 1835.

2 Quinn, Poe, pp. 243-14.

3 Harrison, op. cit., VIII, 60.

4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 861-89. The review of Drake and Halleck appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger, April, 1836.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 96:]

1 Ibid., p. 863.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 864.

4 Ibid.

5 Quinn, Poe, p. 245.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 97:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 246. “Ollapod” was Willis Clark's pen name used for his contributions to the Knickerbocker.

2 Knickerbocker, XV (April, 1840), 359.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 98:]

1 Dictionary of American Biography, IV, 148-49. See also: The Cyclopaedia of American Literature, ed. by Evert Duyckinck (Philadelphia: William Rutter and Co., 1877), IL, 400.

2 Ibid.

3 Quinn, Poe, p. 328. The “Chapter on Autography” was published by the Southern Literary Messenger, running in issues from November, 1841, to January, 1842.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 99:]

1 Herman E. Spivey, “Poe and Lewis Gaylord Clark,” P.M.L.A., LIV (December, 1939), 1124-32.

2 Ibid., p. 1126.

3 Ibid., pp. 1124-32. Killis Campbell felt that internal evidence supported Poe's authorship but that the proof wasn’t conclusive. Mr. Spivey contends that the proof is conclusive since Mr. Clark acknowledged in 1846 that, some years before, he had rejected a contribution from Poe, a8 had another editor. Assuming this was the article which Clark rejected, then Sargent must have been the other editor. Campbell, op. cit., pp. 227-28.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 100:]

1 Spivey, op. cit., p. 1126.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 101:]

1 Knickerbocker, XXI (April, 1843), 380.

2 Probably the author was Poe, but the proof is not conclusive.

3 Knickerbocker, XXII (July, 1843), 89.

4 Harrison, op. cit., XI., 160 ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 102:]

1 Knickerbocker, XXII (October, 1843), 392. George D. Prentice, Whig editor of the Louisville Journal, was one of the most capable editors of the South and West. See Dictionary of American Biography, XV, 186-87.

2 New World, VIII (April 20, 1844), 20-22. Knickerbocker, XXIII (May, 1844), 496. Southern Literary Messenger, X (October, 1844), 635.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 103:]

1 Knickerbocker, XXIV (July, 1844), 100.

2 Knickerbocker, XXIII (January, 1844), 69.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 104:]

1 Knickerbocker, XXIV (September, 1844), 284.

2 Knickerbocker, XXIV (October, 1844), 357.

3 Ibid., p. 393.

4 Knickerbocker, XXIV (August, 1844), 203.

5 Ibid. (September, 1844), p. 285.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 105:]

1 Hervy [[Hervey]] Allen, Israfel (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1927), I, 136-38.

2 Ibid., II, 515.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 106:]

1 The Literary Life of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark, a book of several volumes, was published over a number of months and each volume received its share of notice from the press. The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, while not published until December, was written at least by the middle of November and may have had as early a writing date as June, Professor Quinn thinks; although there is no conclusive proof to sustain this conjecture.

2 1844 was also the date of the death of Willis Gaylord, the uncle. Praise of The Literary Life of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark vied with eulogies for the editor-agriculturist, Willis Gaylord, in the editorials columns of the days all of which must have served to keep these relationships fresh in Poe's mind.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 107:]

1 Knickerbocker, XXI (May, 1843), 498.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 581. Knickerbocker, XXI (May, 1843), 498.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 108:]

1 Ibid., XXII (August, 1843), 186-87.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 590.

3 Ibid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 109:]

1 Quinn, Poe, p. 422. Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 590.

2 Knickerbocker, XXIV (August, 1844), 203.

3 Ibid., (October, 1844), pp. 357, 391, 393, Ibid. (November,1844), p. 491. Ibid., XX (December, 1842), 543.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 110:]

1 Quinn, Poe, pp. 484, 660, 677.

2 Knickerbocker, XXV (April, 1845), 368.

3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 1082.

4 Quinn, Poe, p. 484.

5 Knickerbocker, XXVII (May, 1846), 461.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 111:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 683-94, 1084.

2 Harrison, op. cit., XVI, 185-315. See, especially, pages 187-198 for a comparison of “Eureka” and “Mellonta Tauta.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 112:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 68990, 693, 687-88, 684, 691, 692.

2 Poe is referring to New Yorkers as the descendents [[descendants]] of the Dutch, although it is within the realm of possibility that he depended on the word “Knickerbockers” to carry a double meaning.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 113:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 683-94.

2 Ibid., p. 683.

3 Andrew Jackson Davis was a spiritualist-mesmerist who healed by ‘clairvoyance.’ In 1847 he published Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind. His home was Orange County, New York, but he was a regular lecturer in New York City, delivering 157 lectures from November 28, 1845, to January 25, 1847, each lecture delivered while he was ln a state of trance.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 114:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 686.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 687.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 115:]

1 A comparison of “Eureka” with “Mellonta Tauta” shows that this section of the Hog-ians and Aristotelians was borrowed almost verbatim. See Harrison, op. cit., XVI, 187-98.

2 Ostrom, op. cit., II, 449.

3 Dictionary of American Biography, V, 438-41. The credit for identifying Mr. Draper goes to Mr. T. O. Mabbott. See Ostrom, op. cit., II, 449-30.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 116:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 685.

2 Harry W. Laidler, A History of Socialist Thought (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1927), pp. 125-33 Albert Brisbane, who edited column in the Tribune, engaged in an editorial debate with Henry J. Reymond, editor of the Courier and Enquirer, on the principles of Fourierism, during The months November, 1846, to May, 1847.

3 Quinn, Poe, p. 490.

4 Harrison, op. cit., XIV, 179-80. This was published in Graham's [[Graham's]] magazine under the title, “Fifty Suggestions.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 117:]

1 Quinn, Poe, pp. 529-30.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 692.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 118:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 692.

2 Ibid., p. 692-94.