Text: James A. Harrison, “Poe and Chivers,” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. VII: Poems (1902), 7:266-288

[page 266:]

POE AND CHIVERS.

ONE of the strangest literary controversies of the time — a controversy which has been going on for fifty years, albeit all on one side — is the question whether Poe “stole” the form and rhythm of his “Raven” from Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers’ “To Allegra Florence in Heaven.”

Through the courtesy of Henry L. Koopman, Esq., librarian of Brown University, the editor has been enabled to study six of Chivers’ very rare volumes and reach certain conclusions which are set down in the following pages. These volumes, as far as we know, have not been accessible hitherto to students or have, at least, not been studied. Apparently, they were not accessible to Mr. Joel Benton when he wrote his interesting “In the Poe Circle,” or to Mr. W. C. Richardson, who reviewed in a recent Boston Transcript the perpetually recurring question of the “Precursor of Poe.” The following extracts from Griswold's Correspondence, Cambridge, 1898, p. 40 seq., will instructively introduce our remarks:

The New York Quarterly, however, took a somewhat different tone: — “The quaint conceits of these title pages [Nos. 6 and 7] are a warning of the affectation and absurdity which nestle within the covers of the present astounding volumes. Such a farrago of pedantry, piety, blasphemy, sensuality, and delirious fancies has seldom before gained the imprint of a respectable publisher. If the reader can imagine the fusion of the Hebrew Prophets, Solomon's Song, Jacob Bohme, Edgar A. Poe, Anacreon, Catullus, [page 270:] Coleridge, and Isaac Watts, into one seething, simmering cauldron of abominations, he may form some idea of these fantastic monstrosities. The prose run mad in the prefaces prepares for the demoniac-celestial-bestial character of the poetry.”

The editor of The Knickerbocker paid his respects to the work as follows: —

It will be seen from the following list that Chivers’ works number more than six volumes. Numbers 2, 8 and 9 are in the library of Harvard College, having belonged to J. R. Lowell. Numbers 1 and 3 are taken from the catalogue of the Harris collection.

(1.) Conrad and Eudora, or the Death of Alonzo, Phil’a, 1834, 144 pp.

(2.) Nacoochee (etc.) with other poems, by T. H. Chivers, M.D. — New York: W. E. Dean, Printer, z Ann St., 1837; 180, 143 pp.

(3.) The Lost Pleiad. N.Y., 1845.

(4.) Facets of Diamond.

(5.) Eonchsof Ruby. N.Y., Shepard & Spaulding, 1851, 168 pp.

(6.) Virginalia, or Songs of my Summer Nights. Phil’a, Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1853.

(7.) Atlanta, or the True Blessed Island of Poesy: a Paul (Prose?) Epic in three Lustra. Macon, 1855, 8°.

(8.) Memoralia, or Phials of Amber full of the Tears of Love. A Gift for the Beautiful. By T. H. Chivers, M.D. — Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1853, 18°, 168 pp. This consists of ‘Eonchs of Ruby’ preceded by a single 12 page poem. The copyright date is 1851, so that it is probably the same as No. 5.

(9.) The Sons of Usna, a Tragi-Apotheosis, in [page 272:] Five Acts. By T. H. Chivers, M. D. — Philadelphia, C. Sherman & Son, Printers, 1858; 8°, 92 two-column pages.

(10.) Heroes of Freedom.

Chivers’ ten volumes are so rare that only the British Museum possesses a complete set of them. Individual volumes are in the libraries of the poets Stedman and Swinburne. Brown University (the Fiske-Harris collection) possesses the following: “Conrad and Eudora”: Phil’a, 1834; “Nacoochee, or the Beautiful Star, with other Poems ”: New York, 1837;” The Lost Pleiad; and Other Poems”: New York, 1845; “Eonchs of Ruby, A Gift of Love”: New York, 1851; Virginalia, or Songs of my Summer Nights”: Phila., 1853 ; “The Sons of Usna, A Tragi-Apotheosis in Five Acts” : Phila., 1858.

These six the writer has carefully examined, making copious excerpts in the course of the examination. This examination reveals a singular state of things: Chivers has appropriated not only many of the quotations used by Poe to introduce his writings, such as the Greek quotation from Plato introducing the “Morella,” the quotation from Bishop Henry King prefixed to “ The Assignation,” the pseudo-quotation from Sale's Koran on Israfel, etc., but he has appropriated Poe's themes, proper names, verbiage, diction, and singularities of expression, leaving it beyond a doubt that the Georgian poet was the original sinner.

In detail:

We know from Kennedy's letter to T. W. White (April 13, 1835) that Poe was engaged, in that year, on a tragedy. This tragedy was “Politian,” and a poem from it — “The Coliseum” — gained the Baltimore Visiter prize for the best poem in the memorable competition which awarded the prize for the best prose tale to “A MS. found in a Bottle,” October 12, 1833. “Scenes from Politian” were, however, not published in the Messenger until December, 1835, and January, 1836, though a fragment from it had appeared in The Visiter, in 1833, and in the Messenger in August, 1835.

Chivers’ “Conrad and Eudora” bears the date 1834 and is a tragedy founded upon the same theme as Poe's. “The incidents of this drama” [“Politian”], says Mr. Ingram, who owns the poet's MS., “were suggested by real events connected with Beauchampe's murder of Sharp, the Solicitor-General of Kentucky [in 1828], the facts of which celebrated case are fully as romantic as the poet's fiction. Poe appears to have written a portion of ‘Politian’ as early at least as 1831, and to have first published some fragments of it in the Southern Literary Messenger of 1835-36 as ‘Scenes from an Unpublished Drama.’” (I., 111-114.)

The singular part of this circumstance is that, though absolutely unlike, the two tragedies should, by a strange coincidence, have been written by two young poets who had fallen upon the same theme without each other's cognizance, men whose after fates were continually to be thrown into fantastic juxtaposition.

The selection of subject was the merest accident: Charles Fenno Hoffman and William Gilmore Simms had also been struck by the tragic and romantic aspects of the murder, and had each written a novel embodying them. There is no suspicion of plagiarism here: mere coincidence is the explanation.

But in 1831 Poe published his West Point volume [page 274:] containing the quaint and beautiful poem “Israfel,” with the following note: “And the angel Israfel, who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures: Koran.”

“The passage referred to” (remarks Prof. G. E. Woodberry, Life of Poe, p. 97) “is not in the Koran, but in Sale's Preliminary Discourse (iv. 71). Poe derived it from the notes to Moore's ‘Lalla Rookh,’ where it is correctly attributed to Sale. At a later time he interpolated the entire phrase, ‘whose heart-strings are a lute’ (the idea on which his poem is founded), which is neither in Moore, Sale, nor the Koran; and with this highly original emendation, the note now stands in his Works as an extract from the Koran.”

In Chivers’ “Lost Pleiad,” published in 1845, Israfel is mentioned in the first poem. The book is a thin pamphlet of 32 octavo pages, containing poems dated 1836, 1839, 1840, etc., and, among others, “To Allegra Florence,” dated “Oaky Grove, Ga., Dec. 12, 1842.” In the “Song to Isa Singing,” (undated) occurs the stanza:

Then follows the note: “The angel Israfel, who has the most melodious voice of all God's creatures.” — Sale.

In “Eonchs of Ruby,” published in 1851, Israfel is again mentioned, with the same quotation from [page 275:] Sale, in the poem “To Cecilia,” p. 81. Again, at p. 167, Israfel crops up in the “ Sonnet on Reading Milton's Paradise Lost.” In the poem “Bessie Bell” Israfel comes again.

But “Virginalia,” Phila.: 1853, contains the crowning appropriation of Poe's idea:

Again:

The “Song of Seralim,” dated 1836, is a direct imitation of Poe's Israfel, and the heart-strings motif reappears again at p. 62.

The influence of Poe on Chivers in this one poem — “Israfel” — was profound, almost ludicrous, for Chivers goes on with his “Israfelia” (actually the name of one of his poems — the adjective “Israfelian” also occurring) after Poe is dead, in “Eonchs of Ruby” and “Virginalia,” dated respectively 1851 and 1853. The Greek quotation “Αυτο καθ’ αυτου, μονο ειδες [page 276:] αιει ον” (sic), (from Plato), which is found on the title-page of “Virginalia,” is taken from Poe's “Morella.” Poe has poems to “Eulalie,” and “To One in Paradise;” so has Chivers.

The reader may judge for himself of the Poe an echoes in the following stanzas from the collections of 1851 and 1853: —

Chivers indeed was a poet run mad with the sense of rhythm: it made no difference to him whether his combinations made sense or not, if only there were an exquisite mellifluence of sound. His peculiar crotchet was the feminine rhyme — the melodious terminations in — ing, — ation, combined with a passion for vocalisms — open vowel sounds — and for luxurious alliterations. All this he shared with Poe, though he did not share with Poe the artistic self-restraint necessary to make these crude elements of poetry a success. On all the moon-struck sea of Chivers there sails not a barque that has survived his whirlwind of words — 1,500 pages of verse! We might mention as graceful and musical the “Boat-Song,” “Bessie Bell,” “Invocation to Spring,” “Serenade,” “The Poet of Love,” “The Comforter,” “The New Moon,” “The Angelus,” “Euthanasia,” “The Heavenly Reaper,” “Avalon,” “Mary's Lament for Shelley,” “The Wife's Lament for the Husband lost at Sea;” “The Soaring Swan,” is highly poetical, and “Neah-Emathla” is deeply pathetic and beautiful in parts; but the general run of the thousands of lines is a wild orgy of words — mere protoplasm, not proto-Poe — a jellied unintelligibility, without form and void: such poems a sea-squib might write, shooting its ink into inarticulate speech.

Whatever Poe did, Chivers thought he must at least try: thus Poe's Queen-Mablikc “Al Aaraaf” [page 280:] (published in 1829) is a star-poem, treating of Tycho Brahe's wondrous disappearing star. Chivers too has a “Nacoochee, or the Beautiful Star,” “The Lost Pleiad,” and “Song of Leverrier on discovering a New Planet.” Poe has “The Fall of the House of Usher;” Chivers has a poem on “The Fall of Usher” (Virginalia, 1853). Both have an “Irene,” both have a “ Eulalie.” Chivers’ “Vigil in Aiden” (Eonchs of Ruby, 1851) appropriates a theme of Poe's. “Isadore “ is one of the poems attributed to Poe; Chivers literally harps — dotes — on the name. Poe's well-known “Catholic Hymn,” first appearing in April, 1835, is echoed by Chivers, “Catholic Hymn to the Virgin,” in “Eonchs of Ruby” (1851). Chivers’ “Rosalie Lee” is a mixed appropriation of Poe's “Annabel Lee,” and Philip Pendleton Cooke's charming “Rosalie Lee” whose title it filches outright. The wild tragedy of “Usna,” (1858) with its furious storm of words and imagery running a-muck, purloins Poe's idea, in “Morella,” of a dying woman transferring her soul to her unborn child.

Chivers’ claim to the exclusive possession of certain refrains as old as Poetry itself and his assertion that Poe “stole” them from him are indefensible: there is not the slightest foundation for either claim or possession. The testimony of these volumes indeed is that Chivers was a very illiterate man, possessed almost demoniacally with a sense of music, a kind of Blind Tom of the lyre, to whom metrical expression, literate or illiterate, was an urgent need, and who did not care whether his verbs agreed with their subjects or not, or whether a given word was an adverb or a conjunction; for example, converting exeunt into a verb of the third [page 281:] person singular: “exeunt Doctor (“Conrad and Eudora,” pp. 73 and 54); using such expressions as “Come thee out this way” (Ibid., p. 63); “why art all these tears?” (Ibid., p. 67); “like I and thou” (Ibid., p. 20), using like as a conjunction; rhyming there and are, care and are (in the fashion of the Georgia “Crackers”), etc., etc. If only the expression was a musically-sounding one, sense — to him — might fly to the four winds.

What one notices, however, especially in Chivers, is his intense tenderness of soul and passionate devotion to his mother and children. It would be difficult to say how many of these hundreds of poems are consecrated to them, in lament, in elegy, in threnody, in every chord that Grief can strike or Sorrow conceive. “The Lily of Heaven,” “The Violet in the Valley of Death,” “To Allegra Florence in Heaven” — the titles run through the whole gamut of delirious lamentation, in every variety of metre. His muse is essentially elegiac: it dwells in Heaven, in Aidenn, far more than on earth, among the prosaic realities of the world. Reams of paper are filled with rhyming meditations of this kind: nearly all the poems in the 1837 volume are of the Scriptural, elegiac, or devotional character; one of them incidentally fixes the date of the poet's birth, which is inaccurately given in all the manuals. On p. 90 of this volume (1837) he addresses a poem “To My Precious Mother, on the anniversary of my Twenty-Fifth Year,” and subscribes it “written at Philadelphia, October 18, 1834.” One curious poem of 1833 in this collection, entitled “Medora of Ultramontane,” has the refrain,

The peculiarly Poesque words “Aidenn,” “Auber,” “Weir,” are never used in the first three Chivers books, but are abundantly employed in “Eonchs of Ruby” (1851) and “Virginalia” (1853): volumes saturated with Poe.

Incidentally the present writer must incur the gratitude of etymologists for discovering the meaning of “Eonch” — horn, shell: if, indeed, it is not a misprint for conch.

Again:

The field of Chivers’ metaphors is one that no rhetoric or rhetorician could adequately cover: they would require a separate appendix by themselves. Still, our readers might like to obtain one glimpse of the amazing enginery used by this poetical soul: —

Chivers’ vocabulary is often as singular as his metaphors. Here are a few of his words and word-combinations: “Cydonian suckets,” “melphonic rhyme,” “Chrysomelian Hours,” “Down the dark vistas of the reboantic Norns,” “Corybantine Hours,” “Conchimarian Horns,” “empyreal heights,” “diaphane dew,” “hyaline,” “azure sound,” “daedal,” “earthquake of sweet joy,” “Miriam jubilations,” “red-litten,” “anastasis,” “Christcouching of our mortal sight,” “Ouphantic fairies,” “choirs of Cherubinical Willows,” “Edenic,” “pyrotechnical joy,” “the luscious vineyard of her clustering curls.”

Occasionally a highly poetical expression or passage occurs:

This last poem is exceedingly poetical and has evidently influenced Rossetti.

In 1842 Dr. Chivers wrote a poem addressed to “Allegra Florence in Heaven” which we reproduce in full as the Chivers school claim it to be the “original” of “The Raven” written in December, 1844, and printed in 1845. [page 285:]

Is there anything in the above poem even remotely resembling the music, the mystery, the fantastic horror, the weird beauty and the elements of subtle charm which have preserved “The Raven” for immortality?

Poe has confessed in the frankest manner that the metre of the single line in “The Raven” was not original with him; that it had been used repeatedly before, and was suggested in his particular use by a line in Mrs. Browning's “Lady Geraldine's Courtship.”

“The late Buchanan Read,” (says Mr. J. H. Ingram, I., 276) “informed Robert Browning that Poe described to him (Read) the whole process of the construction of his poem, and declared that the suggestion of it lay wholly in a line from ‘Lady Geraldine's Courtship.’

“Of course” (says Poe in “The Philosophy of Composition”), “I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm, or the metre of ‘The Raven;’ what originality ‘The Raven’ has is in their [the forms of verse employed] combination into stanzas; nothing even remotely approaching this combination has ever been attempted.”

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 268:]

1.  This is a mistake, as will be seen further on.