Text: Stuart and Susan Levine, “Notes Upon English Verse - Headnote,” The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe — EAP: Critical Theory (2009), pp. 145-146 (This material is protected by copyright)

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“Notes upon English Verse” is included here because it is essentially a first draft of “The Rationale of Verse.” Listing the very large number of variants between the two would have made this volume inexcusably ponderous, but omitting the earlier piece would have violated our editorial commitment to show all editorial changes that Poe made himself. We have not provided the usual notes of explication. “Notes upon English Verse” is present, then, as a very long textual note to “The Rationale of Verse.”

Poe sent it in early 1843 to James Russell Lowell so that Lowell could use it in his ambitious new magazine, The Pioneer, but there is evidence that he had written it some months before. George Graham printed a letter from Poe in the March 1850 number of Graham's Magazine in which Poe said, “We were square when I sold you the ‘Versification’ article for which you gave me first 25, and afterward 7 — in all $32.00. Then you bought ‘The Gold Bug’ for 52.00. I got both these back.” Poe had swapped Graham some book reviews for “Notes” and the short story (TOM).

Lowell ran it in the March 1843 Pioneer. While it is probably not true that Poe's essay killed The Pioneer, Poe himself acknowledged that it was dull stuff. It is not nearly up to the level of his best criticism. This is probably not entirely because Poe's theories of English verse are unsound; Poe produced quite a body of interesting and even useful criticism on subjects about which he knew very little. The problem is rather that, unlike most of his criticism, his fiction, and his poetry, it is not “effective”: now and then, Poe ignored his own strictures on effect.

Poe wrote Lowell a letter from Philadelphia dated February 4, 1843, which suggests again the close connections between his critical essays, his career, and the rest of his writing. He tells Lowell of his own ideas about conducting a magazine and praises Lowell for the quality of The Pioneer; Lowell's work is apparently pretty close to Poe's ideal. Well, The Pioneer was to fold after the issue in which Poe's “Notes upon English Verse” appeared, but that letter ties “Notes” historically to other works, for both “The Poetic Principle” in this volume and Eureka in its companion [page 146:] publication were prepared first as public lectures, given, Poe said, to raise money for that elusive magazine he wanted to found. Poe goes on to say, “I forwarded you, about a fortnight ago I believe, by Harnden's Express, an article called ‘Notes upon English Verse’. A thought has struck me, that it may prove too long, or perhaps too dull, for your Magazine — in either case, use no ceremony, but return it in the same mode (thro’ Harnden) and I will, forthwith, send something in its place” (Poe, Letters, 1:222).

A Note on the Text

Our text follows the March 1843 issue of The Pioneer except where pages of Poe's manuscript have survived or where The Pioneer text contains obvious typographical errors. In both situations our corrections are noted in the list of variants.

We are not reproducing words that Poe crossed out and replaced, words he plainly did not intend. There are a number of small changes obviously made by a copy editor at The Pioneer who added commas, for instance, moved Poe's punctuation marks within quotation marks when Poe had them out, or changed Poe's spelling. We have restored Poe's intention in the passages for which his manuscript has survived. Doing so creates small inconsistencies with the rest of the article, but it seemed preferable to show exactly the practice that he preferred. Some scansion marks are missing. In the Latin quotation in paragraph 13, for instance, there should be a mark over the first syllable of cædibus and a foot-dividing line between cædibus and armat. We have not provided the missing marks. Where Poe's manuscript exists, we silently correct printers’ omissions or errors in scansion — for example, in paragraph 33 The Pioneer shows two “long” marks on the word bloom in the quotation from Byron: bloom. Poe's manuscript is plain: bloom. A minor inconsistency is allowed to stand in paragraph 30, where Poe's manuscript shows a comma within quotation marks after the words “double rhyme” the first time he uses the term, and outside “double rhyme” the second time. An especially painful error thus stands in paragraph 51, where the words and the are given “long” marks; in paragraph 53 Poe explains that “the” “can never be forced, by any accentuation, into length.” Except for a couple of typographic errors typos and mistakes (such as “include” where Poe wrote “intrude” in paragraph 37), the alterations in The Pioneer are style-sheet matters. Poe did not see proof of this piece before it was published.