Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), “[When the English play the literary thief . . .]” (A), from The Evening Mirror (New York), October 12, 1844, vol. 1, no. 6, p. 2, col. 3.

[page 2, column 3, continued:]

When the English play the literary thief they do it at least with an appreciative discrimination. When Dr. Channing's light broke though the Atlantic cloud, it was discovered that the religious Reviews had been for some time quietly using his lamp without showing its handle, and now two other barefaced robberies have come to light, perpetrated upon one of the best and clearest minds in this country, that of Mr. BRAZER of Salem. In Nos. 107 and 108 of the Christian Examiner, are two elaborate articles by this fine scholar and pure writer, on the “BURIAL OF THE DEAD.” A writer in the London Monthly Review has stolen and transferred these bodily, only having out a few local allusions and details for the sake of concealing the theft. Sidney Smith's famous question wants a tail, which we hereby affix: “Who reads an American book” — until re-ticketed by an appreciative English appropriator?