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[Broadway Journal, Sept. 6, 1845.]
THE subjoined jeu d’esprit has been “going the rounds of the papers” for some time, and we had intended to copy it before — but in some manner it escaped us. The editorial prefix (very generally published with it) is that of “The Morning News” — with which paper we thoroughly agree as to the cleverness of the verses.
THE RETORT.
The Rev. Arthur Coxe's Saul, a Mystery, having been condemned in no measured terms by Poe of the Broadway Journal, and Green of the Emporium, a writer in the Hartford Columbian retorts as follows, which strikes us as being very clever:
A REVERSAL.
An entertaining history
Entitled” Saul a mystery,”
Has recently been published by the Rev. Arthur Coxe.
The poem is dramatic,
And the wit of it is attic,
And its teachings are emphatic of the doctrines orthodox.
But Mr. Poe, the poet,
Declares he cannot go it —
That the book is very stupid — or something of that sort: [page 244:]
And Green of the Empori
Um, tells a kindred story,
And “swears like any tory” that it is n’t worth a groat.
But maugre all their croaking
Of the “raven” — and the joking
Of the verdant little fellow of the used to be review
The PEOPLE, in derision
Of their impudent decision,
Have declared without division, that the “Mystery will do.”
The truth, of course, rather injures an epigram than otherwise; and nobody will think the worse of the one above when we say that we have expressed no opinion whatever of “Saul.” Give a dog a bad name, etc. Whenever a book is abused, it is taken for granted that it is we who have been abusing it. Mr. Coxe has written some very beautiful poems, and “Saul” may be one of them for anything that we know to the contrary. As yet we have not found time to read the poem — which, to say the truth, is an unconscionably long one.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:1 - JAH12, 1902] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions - The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (J. A. Harrison) (Notice of Coxe's Saul)