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PREFACE

In preparing this, the first edition of the one important imaginative work of Edgar Allan Poe which has been suffered to remain partly in manuscript, I have been animated by the belief that all the verse of so great a poet should be easily accessible to the public. Though a prolific prose writer, Poe wrote a very small amount of verse, and even when all the cancelled passages are collected, there are only about 5000 lines in the most complete edition of his works. Politian was Poe's one serious attempt at drama, and it has excited much curiosity, yet though many scholars of the first rank have expressed a desire to study it, Poe's biographers and editors, the late Mr. Ingram excepted, have been unable to examine the unpublished portions, and even Ingram seems never to have seen the ending.

Late in his life, Poe gave the original MS to Mrs. Sarah Anna Lewis — from her most of it passed to Mr. Ingram, and from him indirectly into the Pierpont Morgan Library, where, among so many treasures, it was singled out for special comment in Mr. E. V. Lucas’ Roving East and Roving West (page 120) — and it is through the generosity of Mr. Morgan that I am enabled to do for the play even more than W. M. Rossetti for Shelley's Charles I, since Politian is almost complete.

During the poet's lifetime, five scenes were published and a few selections from other parts have been printed posthumously, but about a third of what is here given is wholly new. The two breaks in the MS carry away many lines, but fortunately most of these are in scenes Poe published so that probably only about one hundred lines have been lost. When it is considered how large a portion of Poe's blank verse is here first given to the world — nay even of all his verse, rhymed and unrhymed, the importance of this material, if only to students of metrics, must be evident at once, while examination of the [page iv:] text sets at naught some theories which have been published about the probable ending of the play.

Those who seek only for dramatic excellence may be disappointed — one experiment seems to have convinced Poe that he was not quite at home in this province; yet as the late Dr. Richard Garnett remarked in connection with the dramas of Dryden and Byron, it is not well to slight any work of a great man. Again, a few of the scenes show far more dramatic ability than some writers have recognized. The sixth scene is pleasing — the delicately suggested influence of Fate in the words of Lalage's song seems very effective, and at least one student of Poe has felt in Lalage's speech at the close of the seventh scene “distinct dramatic quality of the old sort.” Monsieur William Little Hughes who first translated the old selections from the drama into French (in Contes inedits d’Edgar Poe, Paris, [1862] pp. 249-281) characterizes them as “an admirable fragment of romantic drama, wherein live truly human characters” (p. iii) and on the basis of them Hughes expresses the belief that Poe could have supplied the lack of an important American dramatist, had he turned his attention more to that field (pp. 249-250); while G. Edmund Gündel (Edgar Allan Poe, Freiberg, 1895, p. 28) expressed regret that portions of the play remained unpublished. The humorous scenes, Poe's only real attempt at comic verse, are curious and Scene x shows his perculiar [[peculiar]] bitter humor at a level with that in his best tales of the grotesque. Those who love poetry will find in the serious scenes passages of beauty and pathos, and those who study Poe can watch how, working in a new field, he strove to embody those fancies that haunted his brain, and can compare the first efforts (sometimes crude) with the perfected expressions in his later tales and poems. Finally, there is in this play “much of Poe's soul,” and the — student of Poe's literary genius, and of his tragic career may find new light both in the play, and in my notes which have been made as full as possible with the aid of the chief Poe specialists in this country. The imperfections of Politian are apparent enough, but the qualities of sincerity and earnestness, together with flashes of the true fire throughout, have made my task of editing not only a labor of love but [page v:] a pleasure. It is no less a pleasure to thank those who have aided me in my work, and to whom I would now express my gratitude.

First and most deeply I am indebted to Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan for permission to use the original MS upon which my text is so largely based, and to his librarians, Miss Greene and Miss Thurston for their unfailing courtesy. I am also grateful to Mr. Thos. F. Madigan who showed me and permits me to use the printed transcript of the one MS leaf not in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Professor Wm. P. Trent has supervised my work, and helped me by constant good counsel, and two of the foremost Poe specialists, my friends Mr. J. H. Whitty and Professor Killis Campbell, have read my MS, granted me permission to use what I liked from their excellent editions of Poe's poems, and in addition have given me other valuable suggestions. Professor Geo. E. Woodberry and Mr. Whitty also consented to read my proof sheets, an honor of which I am deeply sensible.

Through the kindness of Professor Brander Matthews and Professor W. W. Lawrence I obtained access to the J. Lorimer Graham copy of Poe's 1845 volume at the Century Club, New York, and through the courtesy of Miss Elizabeth Cloud Seip, the owner of the unique file of the Baltimore Visiter I have examined the Poe texts of that paper.

My indebtedness to many others is great — Miss Mary E. Phillips sent me her notes on the play, as did Professor C. Alphonso Smith his, and I am thankful also for aid received from correspondents and friends, who have replied to queries or collected items for me — Mrs. Ruth Shearin, Miss Caroline Ticknor, Mrs. Chase (literary executor of Sarah Helen Whitman) and Mr. L. F. Johnson deserve special mention, as do my sometime fellow students at Columbia, the Misses Anna Reubenia Dubach and Margaret A. Nolan, Messrs. Henry W. Wells, and Ralph Marcus.

Last but not least come the various members of the faculty of Columbia University, especially of the Departments of English and Comparative Literature, and of Classical Philology [page vi:] — and the officials of the great libraries wherein I have worked, or had work done, especially The New York Public Library; the Library of Congress; the British Museum; The American Antiquarian Society; The Ridgway Library, Philadelphia; The Boston Public Library; The libraries of Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Transylvania, and Yale Universities, of the Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin Historical Societies; the Valentine Museum at Richmond; and the libraries of Mr. Henry E. Huntington; of the Curtis Publishing Co.; and of the Supreme Council of the 33° at Washington. To all I express my sincere gratitude.

THOMAS OLLIVE MABBOTT.

Columbia University, May 28, 1923.

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ABBREVIATIONS

Certain rather simple abbreviations, in the main familiar to Poe students, are used in the Notes. B. J. = Broadway Journal; B. S. V. = Baltimore Saturday Visiter; J. L. G. = The J. Lorimer Graham copy of Poe's 1845 volume, with his own MS corrections; MS = manuscipt; MS canc. = cancelled readings of the MS; P. O. = Poet's Offering; P. P. A. = Poets and Poetry of,4merica; P. S. = Poetry of the Sentiments; S. E. P. = Saturday Evening Post; S. L. M. = Southern Literary Messenger; S. M. = Saturday Museum. Books published by Poe are referred to sometimes by date only, standard editions, like those of Campbell, Whitty (2nd edition of Complete Poems) and Harrison, are referred to by editor's names alone, Harrison contracted to “H.“ Woodberry refers to Mr. Woodberry's two volume Life of Poe. The familiar Library abbreviations N. Y. H.[istorical] S[ociety]; N. Y. P[ublic] L[ibrary] and L[ibrary of] C[ongress] are self-explanatory. All titles of books, articles, poems, etc., are italicized, Roman numerals refer to volumes, chapters, acts or scenes; Arabic to pages or lines. Authors of all poems and articles cited are named except works of Poe, of Shakespeare, and books of the Bible, but there may be a few exceptions unrecorded. References consisting wholly of numerals are of course to scenes and lines of Politian itself.

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SOURCES AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE TEXT

The text of the play here given is based on a thorough collation of the remaining portions of Poe's original MS, and of all printed versions of the play known to have appeared

during the poet's lifetime. The latest text certainly authorized by the poet has been in all cases adopted, as Poe's corrections were made with great care in all his works. There has been no trouble in deciding just what should be held the final text — for the scenes printed in The Raven and other Poems (1845), the J. Lorimer Graham copy of that volume with Poe's own pencil corrections has been followed; the other scenes follow the MS. The last scene is in part the same as Poe's poem The Coliseum, but the MS has been followed because the changes made in the separate publications of the poem may not have been intended for the version in the drama — the versions of Poe's To One in Paradise as a separate poem and as incorporated in his tale The Assignation differ. All known verbal variations of the different texts and cancelled readings are however collected in the Notes following.

The editing of the actual text of the play has been very conservative, and while all abbreviations of names and words have been fully expanded, stage directions put in italics, and names of characters in small capitals, in the interest of uniformity and the reader's convenience, as little change has been made in the text as possible. For the portions of the play given in 1845, Poe's punctuation has been followed exactly — in the scenes edited from the MS alone, a few corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made, but these changes, even the addition of periods at the ends of speeches, have been listed in the Notes. The editor has scrupled less to make these changes in view of Poe's confession in a letter to T. W. White, June 22, 1835 (H. xvii, p. 9) that he had been previously careless of his pointing, and the Politian MS antedates this. I have not however attempted to introduce any uniformity into the text, [page 42:] and have retained everything which Poe might possibly have kept. In one thing only I could not follow Poe, and I have wholly abandoned the division into acts. Poe seems to have changed his purpose regarding this in the MS, and since the MS is imperfect at places where it alone could show his final intentions, I have concluded to number the scenes consecutively i-xi, adding in brackets the numbers given them in Poe's old selection, since references are made at times to these. All that can be made out of Poe's changes is recorded in the Notes, and Ingram's proposed arrangement is also given. The question might be raised whether Poe intended to omit any scenes altogether — certainly he drew his pen carelessly across one or two of the pages, but probably this was done to indicate what the printer should omit in setting up the selections in the Messenger.

I have made no formal bibliography of my sources, but have described all the uncommon books cited where first mentioned. An Index of persons mentioned is given.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF “POLITIAN”

(All versions before 1850 are listed — thereafter only first printings and first incorporations in editions of the poems are given.)

1833. Baltimore Saturday Visiter (Baltimore, Cloud and Pouder) October 26, contains the Coliseum (vol. iii, n. s. No. 39, page 1, column 1).

1835. The original MS dates from about this period, and includes as preserved, Scenes i; ii; iii; iv, 1-23; v (incomplete); vi; vii; viii; ix, 1-54; x, (incomplete); xi. It now consists of eleven sheets, of which the first ten are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, all with writing on both sides of the page-the other sheet which was clearly the last has writing on one side only. Two sheets only seem to have been lost.

The Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, Va., T. W. White) August contains the Coliseum (vol. i, p. 706) as “Selected Poetry,” and December, Scenes iv; vi; vii (vol. ii, pp. 13-16).

1836. The Southern Literary Messenger for January contains Scenes iii; ix, (vol. ii, pp. 106-108).

1841. The Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia, George R. Graham) June 12 contains The Coliseum (vol. xxi, No. 1037, p. 1, col. 1.)

1842. The Poets and Poetry of America, [edited] by Rufus W. Griswold (Philadelphia, Carey and Hart), 1st edition, contains The Coliseum at pages 387-388, as also in the following editions: — 2nd (1842); 3rd (1843); 4th (1843); 5th (1844?); 6th (1845); 7th (1846); and at pages 431-432 in the 8th (1847) and 9th (1848) editions. From the 10th (1850) and subsequent editions the Coliseum is excluded.

1843. The Saturday Museum (Philadelphia, T. C. Clarke) Feb. 25 contained the Coliseum in the article on Poe by Henry B. Hirst, reprinted by the same paper, March 4. This exists only in clippings.

1845. The Broadway Journal (New York, John Bisco) March 29 contains iv, 5-27, 56-111 (vol. 1, p. 197.)

The same periodical, July 12, contains The Coliseum (vol. ii, p. 14 (“41”).)

The Raven and other Poems, by Edgar A. Poe (New York, Wiley and Putnam) contains The Coliseum, (pp. 12-13); and iii; iv; vi; vii; ix (pp, 31-51.)

1846. The Raven volume was issued with this date (London, Wiley and Putnam.)

The Poetry of the Sentiments, edited by R. W. Griswold (Philadelphia, U. Hunt & Son) contains the Coliseum (pp. 53-54.)

1846-49. Poe's MS revisions of the J. Lorimer Graham copy of The Raven volume belong to this period — there are revisions only in the Coliseum (p. 13) and iv (p. 34.)

1849. The Poet's Offering edited by Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale (Philadelphia, Grigg, Elliot & Co., “1850,” copyright 1849) contains under the heading Ruins, the Coliseum, II. 22-28, 33-39, (P- 460.) [page 44:]

1850. The Works of the Late Edgar A. Poe (New York, J. S. Redfield) contains iii; iv; vi; vii; ix (vol. ii, pp. 54-74) and The Coliseum (vol. ii, pp. 15-16.)These are mere reprints of The Raven volume versions, but the misprint in the Coliseum is corrected.

1875. The Southern Magazine (Baltimore, Turnbull Brothers) for November contains Ingram's article Poe's “Politian” where are first printed (in slightly garbled form) i, 31, 33, 36-45 58-60, 113; ii, 34-S7, 75; v, 3536, 41-42; x 14-15, ig-2o (vol. x pp. 588-594.)

1888. The Poetical Works of Poe edited by John H. Ingram, “The Chandos Classics” (London, Frederick Warne & Co.; also issued in New York) contains Scene V, garbled, in a note at pp. 96-99. This portion is reprinted in Whitty's 2nd edition, but not by Stedman & Woodberry, Harrison, nor Campbell.

1909. The Bibliophile (London) for May gives, (vol. iii, No. 3, p. 136) a facsimile of the MS of xi, 1-9 in an article by Ingram called variations in Edgar Poe's Poetry.

1911. The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by J[ames] H[oward] Whitty (Boston, Houghton Mifflin) reprints most of the Southern Magazine material (pages 228-230).

1912. The Autograph (New York, P. F. Madigan) November-December issue contains xi,15-end (vol. i, No. 8, p. 196), II, 15-32 later appeared in an auction catalogue of the Anderson Galleries.

1917. The Complete Poems, ed. Whitty, 2nd ed. reprints v from Ingram's 1888 note (pp. 325-327) and xi, 15-32 (pp. 327-328) from the auction catalogue.

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EDITORIAL EMENDATIONS

The text has been edited conservatively, but it seemed pedantic to reproduce certain abbreviations and very obvious errors, which are listed below, while the stage directions have been handled with some freedom. All abbreviations have been expanded, the names of all characters put in small capitals, followed by a period, and all “directions” placed in italics, followed by a period and enclosed in square brackets. Exceptions to this rule are, first, the omission of the period after a speaker's name where it is immediately followed by a direction; second, the omission of the period where a direction is inserted within a sentence. The capitalization of Enter, Exit and Exeunt has been made uniform.

The division into lines is ultimately Poe's, but since he “justified” the beginning of each speech, the arrangement of lines spoken by two or more characters, is, like the numbering, due to the editor. See Notes on the Verse.

Obsolete spellings are retained, absolutely wrong spellings have been corrected, and a very few marks of punctuation added. Except for silent expansions of the symbol “&” all intentional changes are listed below.

In the Scene “16th” is added to fill a blank in the MS; in the Cast “neice” after Alessandra has been corrected; and a comma added after Baldazzar. That the date is shortly after 1492 is shown by the allusion to Columbus in vii 65 f.

I. The words in italics of 92-93 are not underlined in the MS but are in a different script which seems to demand italics. Periods are added in 92, 94 and i19; interrogation points in 96 and 98, and a comma and exclamation point in 123.

II. 35-36, MS has “slid”; 39, accent added; 56, the reading of the third word is uncertain; Ingram printed the line “of bread and milk and water” (!); 63, Stage directions added.

III. See Variorum for omission of ROME at head of this Scene.

V. 19, Period added; 54, See Variorum.

VIII. 14, and 41, see Variorum; 77, Poe has “ideot”; 82, Poe has “Its.”

X. 35, period added at end; 60, Poe has “Ive”; 77, no tail is visible in comma after “legs.“

XI. 54, 59, 62, Speakers’ names not given in the Autograph, where the changes are indicated by quotation marks only. Quotation marks added in 1-40.

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VARIORUM

[The following list of changes etc. made by Poe himself is verbally as complete as possible, but some erasures, if made with a penknife may have escaped detection.]

TITLE. The title is from the MS. Poe wrote above IV, in pencil “Scenes from Politian. An Unpublished Drama, by Edgar A. Poe” but in the printed version of the S. L. M. called his selections “Scenes from an Unpublished Drama, by Edgar A. Poe” and in 1845 the heading is “Scenes from “Politian;” an Unpublished Drama.” The last title is adopted by Griswold.

SCENE AND LIST OF CHARACTERS. Text from MS.

In the description of Lalage after orphan are the cancelled words of illustrious family, last of her race, and,

After San Ozzo MS cancels a.

Politian was first called a young and noble Roman but this was cancelled.

I. Text from MS — there headed Act I, Scene I which Ingram adopts.

II. Text, MS; there called Scene 2d, by Ingram Act I, Scene ii.

III. This scene is complete in MS where it was first called Scene 3d then changed to Act 2d, Sc. 1st. Ingram called it Act I, iii. The scene was printed in S. L. M., Jan. 1836, numbered 1 and again in 1845 as 1. The text follows 1835 except that the word ROME there given at the beginning of the Stage directions is omitted as unnecessary, since it does not occur in MS and the place of action has already been given in this edition.

IV. Of this scene the MS includes only the first 23 lines. It was first called Act 2nd Scene 1st, then Scene 4th, then Scene 3d. Ingram calls it Act II, Scene i. It was published in S. L. M. for December 1835 as I and in 1845 as II. The quotations in B. J., March 29,1845 are without title. The text follows 1845 (J. Lorimer Graham copy). At the beginning of the stage directions S. L. M. and 1845 insert ROME but this is cancelled in J. L. G. copy, which also expands the abbreviation before the first two speeches from Lal. and Jac. In these stage directions the phrase with .... garden is inserted later in the MS. For upon MS reads upon the back of, and B. J. on the back of. MS and B. J. omit a servant maid.

V. This scene lacks the heading and opening lines, it is called by Ingram Act 2 Scene ii. The text follows MS.

VI. Complete in MS, and there called first Scene 2d then Scene 3d — and by Ingram Act II, Scene iii. Published in S. L. M. for December 1835 as II and in 1845 as III. Text,1845. [page 48:]

VII. Complete in MS, called Act 3rd Sc. [illegible] and by Ingram Act III, i. It was published in S. L. M. Dec. 1835 as III and in 1845 as IV. Text 1845.

VIII. Complete in MS, there first called Sc. 2nd then Act 4th Sc. 1 [or 2, the figure is uncertain]. Ingram calls it Act III, Scene ii. Text follows MS.

IX. The MS contains only the first 54 lines of this scene which is there headed first Scene 3d then Scene 2d then simply 2. Ingram calls it Act III, Scene iii. Published in S. L. M., January 1836 as II and in 1845 as V. Text follows 1845.

X. This scene lacks the heading and several of the opening lines. Ingram calls it Act IV Scene ii, believing a whole scene before it was lost, though without grounds in my opinion. At the end of the scene “135” is written — probably the number of lines in the scene when complete. Since nobody knows whether Poe counted half lines or not, little can be judged as to what is lost. Text follows MS which is without change.

XI. This scene is headed in the MS Scene 3rd and is called Act IV, Scene iii by Ingram. While the MS is preserved, Mrs. Lewis sometime during the sixties gave the last sheet to an autograph collector, and for all the text after 1.15 I have been forced to rely on the transcript of this sheet, printed by Mr. Madigan in the Autograph of November-December 1912. The scene is largely made up from The Coliseum, [page 50:] which Poe published as a separate poem, and I include the variants of all authorized texts below — those of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, Oct. 26, 1833; S. L. M., August 1835; Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, June 12,1841; Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America (1st-9th editions, 1842-1848) ; Philadelphia Saturday Museum February 25, and March 4, 1843; B. J. July 12, 1845; 1845; and J. L. G. revisions. The texts in Griswold's Poetry of the Sentiments, 1846, and in Mrs. Hale's Poets’ Offering for 1850 are probably derived from the P. P. A. without special authorization from Poe, but they have been collated far the sake of completeness.

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THE SOURCE OF THE PLOT

As Ingram pointed out, Poe's play is founded on the incidents of the celebrated murder of Sharp by Beauchamp in 1825. The facts were briefly as follows.

Col. Solomon P. Sharp, an influential Kentucky politician betrayed a lady of good family, Miss Ann Cook, to whom, some years later, a young lawyer of Glasgow, Ky., named Jereboam O Beauchamp became attached.(1) The lady in consequence of the stain upon her reputation lived very much retired, and refused to receive the addresses of Beauchamp until he had repeatedly tendered his hand in marriage. She finally consented to wed him solely upon condition he would kill Sharp before the wedding. He pledged himself, and at once challenged Sharp, but the latter refused to meet him. Miss Cook from that moment got the “womanish whim” (as her husband called it) to be herself the destroyer of her seducer. Beauchamp married her, prevailed upon her to resign the killing to him, and when Sharp added slander (of a most base character) to his former misdeeds, Beauchamp called him to the door at 2 A.M. on the morning of November 7, 1825, and “plunged a dagger in his heart.” Beauchamp was later arrested, convicted, and on May 19, 1826, sentenced to death. His wife was acquitted of complicity in the crime, but was lodged in jail with him, and the two attempted suicide together shortly before the date set for his execution. She died of her wounds, but Beauchamp recovered and was hanged July 7, 1826. The two were buried in one grave, at Bloomfield, Ky., where a marble slab records that Beauchamp was born Sept. 24, 1802, and his wife Feb. 7, 1786. Sharp was born about 1787, had been an attorney at Bowling Green, Ky., and a member of the legislature from about 1810, a member of [page 52:] Congress 1818 — 1819, of the legislature again (1820) and Attorney General of the state 1821-1825, but had resigned that post to make the race for Representative of Franklin County. About 1819 he married Miss Eliza T. Scott, who died January 4, 1844 in her forty-sixth year.

Poe's attention was probably first called to the story by the newspapers or by the account given in Charles Fenno Hoffman's Winter in the West (N. Y. 1835, vol ii, p. 161 and note K, pp. 332 — 343) but it is clear enough from the play that he was familiar with two pamphlets on the murder to be described as follows: —

1. The Confession of Jereboam O. Beauchamp. Who was executed at Frankfort, Ky., on the 7th of July, 1826. For the murder of Col. Solomon P. Sharp, a member of the Legislature, and late Attorney General of Ky. — Written by himself and containing the only authentic account of the murder, and the causes which induced it. — To which is added, Some Poetical Pieces, written by Mrs. Ann Beauchamp, who voluntarily put an end to her existence, on the day of the execution of her husband, and was buried in the same grave with him. — Bloomfield, Ky. printed for the publisher. (Gervis S. Hammond. — 1826. 12 mo., pp. 134. (Sabin 4159] N.Y.H.S. [The authenticity of this remarkable document is proved by facts brought out in the damage suit of P.H. Darby v. Jeroboam Beauchamp, uncle of the assassin. References, in my notes by pages: to Confession are to the first edition of this work.)

2. Letters of Ann Cook, late Mrs. Beauchamp, to her friend in Maryland. Containing [a] short history of the life of that remarkable woman. Washington: 1826. 12 mo. pp. 91, [Sabin 4161). Published by W — R — n of Charles Co. Md., the letters are addressed to his wife Ellen from Loudon Ct., Va., Laurenceburg, and “Franklin Ct.,” Ky. Mr. Wilberforce Eames believes the book was printed at Washington, D.C.; not Washington, Ky. The authenticity of the letters is not certain, but they seem to be genuine — in any case I believe Poe used them. My references are to the pages of these as Letters.] Copies: — N.Y.H.S. [page 53:]

Several other books devoted to the crime are known as follows:

3. Beauchamp's trial. A report of the trial of Jeroboam O. Beauchamp, before the Franklin circuit court, in May, 1826, upon an indictment for the murder of Col. Solomon P. Sharp, a member of the House of Representatives, and late attorney general of Kentucky. From short hand notes taken during the trial, by J. G. Dana and R. S. Thomas, Frankfort, printed by Albert G. Hodges (1826] 153 pp. (Sabin 79848-copy in L.C., and Edward Everett's copy in the Boston Public Library.]

4. The Life of Jeroboam O. Beauchamp, who was hung at Frankfort, Kentucky, for the murder of Col. Solomon P. Sharp; comprising, a full and complete history of his intercourse and marriage etc., etc. Compiled from the memoir written by himself. Illustrated with engravings. Frankfort, Ky., Published by D’Unger & Co., 1850 pp. 28. Copy at N.Y.H.S. has yellow paper covers with title The Avengers’ Doom etc. and imprint “Louisville, Ky.: Published by E. E. Barclay, A. R. Orton & Co. 1851.”

5. The Confession etc. Published by H. T. Goodsell, Kentucky (1854) 100 pp. [L.C., N.Y.H.S.]

6. The Beauchamp tragedy in Kentucky, as detailed in the Confession etc. . . . N. Y. Dinsmore & Co. 1858, x, 134 pp., I pl., 16 mo, Sabin 4160 [L.C.]

7. Kentucky Tragedy. A full and particular account of the Lives and Tragical Deaths of Jeroboam O. Beauchamp, and Ann, his wife, the Murderers of Col. Sharp. Philadelphia, n. d., 18 mo. pp. 32, Sabin 4162.

8. Beauchamp's Confession. Jeroboam O. Beauchamp was executed at Frankfort, Ky., on July 7, 1826, for the murder of Col. Sharp. His wife died one hour after the execution from the effects of poison. — Price 50 cents. pp. 144-cover title-n.p.n.d. [N.Y.H.S.)

9. Vindication of the character of the late Col. Solomon P. Sharp, from the Calumnies published against him since his murder, by Patrick Darby & Jeroboam O. Beauchamp. By [page 54:] L[eander] J. Sharp. Frankfort: printed by Amos Kendall and Company — 1827. 8vo. pp. 140 [Suppressed for 50 years — 25 copies discovered 1877, Sabin 79846, N.Y.H.S.]

The trial of Beauchamp was reported in The Patriot, Frankfort, May 15 — 29, June 5, and further discussed July 17, 1826. Other Kentucky papers probably contain similar accounts about the same period. A statement To the Public by Mrs. Eliza T. Sharp occupies five and a half columns in the Frankfort, Ky. Argus, March 22, 1826, and was reprinted in The Patriot (Frankfort, April 3) at p. 81, and also in the Russellville, Ky. Weekly Messenger of April 8. I quote from it in my notes on Scene VII. Accounts are also to be found in:

1. A full and complete account of the Heberton Tragedy: to which is added Beauchamp, or the Kentucky Tragedy. New York: published for the trade (1843 or 1849?] 16 mo. pp. 68, of which “Jeroboam 0. Beauchamp; or the Kentucky Tragedy” fills pp. 47 — 68. [N.Y.H.S.) ]

2. A short History of Franklin County, Kentucky. . Fourth of July, 1876, by C. E. James, Frankfort, Ky.: printed at the Roundabout office, George A. Lewis, 1881, 8 vo. pp. II, on pp. 4-5. [N.Y.H.S.)

3. A History of Franklin County, Ky. by L[ewis) F[ranklin] Johnson, 1912, Roberts Printing Co. Print Frankfort, Kentucky — Chapter VII, especially pp. 80 — 87.

4. Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials — by L. F. Johnson. The Baldwin Law Book Company Incorporated, Louisville, Kentucky 1916. 8 vo. pp. 336 — article The Assassination of Solomon P. Sharp etc., pp. 44-57. This last book has the latest and best treatment of the matter. I have taken some of the facts of the case from it, although my account is verbally based on Hoffman's. The exact date of the murder I give correctly, as on Sharp's monument in Frankfort Cemetery, since this is confirmed by the original report in Amos Kendall's Argus of Western America, Frankfort, Nov. 9, 1825, as quoted in the Lexington Kentucky Reporter of Nov. 14. “Two o’clock on the night of the 6th” is of course on the morning of the 7th! [page 55:]

The story of Sharp and Beauchamp was commented on by Hoffman (Winter in the West, letter xxxiv, Frankfort, Ky., April 9, 1834, but, unlike most of the series, not published in the New York American) as follows.

“Incidents like these, . . . seem from the exaggerated sentiment and romantic rashness they betray, as belonging to a bygone age or transpiring on a different planet. But among a people so earnest in character as the Kentuckians, and in a community whose sympathies have been outraged by such a mingled tissue of monstrous guilt and romantic infatuation the tragic fate of Beauchamp and his wife sinks. . . into men's bosoms; and the story of their strange loves, of her cruel wrong and his dark revenge, of the savage retribution they, exacted from the author of their misery and their crime, and the touching heroism of the death they shared at last together — all combine to make up a drama of real life which can never be forgotten among the scenes where it was enacted.”

Perhaps Poe took a hint from this and looked up the story — perhaps he had long had it in mind. In any case his treatment of the facts is free; such details as the facts that Miss Cook was older than Beauchamp, and that Beauchamp kicked Sharp, are of course omitted, but many less obviously necessary changes are made. Poe several times commented on the theme as treated by his contemporaries. A review of Simms’ Beauchampe (1842) appeared in Graham's Magazine, May 1842 (vol. xx, p. 300) where Poe said:

“The events upon which this novel is based are but too real. No more thrilling, no more romantic tragedy did ever the brain of poet conceive than was the tragedy of Sharpe and Beauchampe. We are not sure that the author of “Border Beagles” has done right in the selection of his theme. Too little has been left for invention. We are sure, however, that the theme is skilfully handled. The author of “Richard Hurdis” is one among the best of our native novelists — pure, bold, vigorous, original.”

Of the same story Poe says in a review of Simms’ The Wigwam and the Cabin in the Broadway Journal Oct. 4, 1845 [page 56:] (vol. ii, no. 13, p. 190; reprinted H. xii, 248). “Beauchampe” is intensely interesting; but the historical truth has somewhat hampered and repressed the natural strength of the artist.

Hoffman based his novel Greyslaer (N. Y. 1840) on the story, which he transferred to the times of the American Revolution.

In his Literati article on Hoffman (Godey's Lady's Book Oct. 1846, vol. xxxiii, p. 157 and H. xv, 119) Poe wrote: —

“. . . .Greyslaer followed a romance based on the well known murder of Sharp, the Solicitor General of Kentucky, by Beauchampe. W. Gilmore Simms, (who has far more power, more passion, more movement, more skill than Mr. Hoffman) has treated the subject more effectively in his novel “Beauchampe”; but the fact is that both gentlemen have positively failed, as might have been expected. That both books are interesting is no merit either of Mr. H. or of Mr. S. The real events were more impressive than the fictitious ones. The facts of this remarkable tragedy, as arranged by actual circumstance, would put to shame the skill of the most consummate artist. Nothing was left to the novelist but the amplification of character, and at this point neither the author of “Greyslaer” nor of “Beauchampe” is especially au fait. The incidents might be better woven into a tragedy. . . .

For further comment see Griswold's remarks, Prose Writers of America, (Philadelphia, 1847, p. 457). Miss Dorothy Dondore has called my attention to a republication of Greyslaer in the Magazine of History (New York) serially in volumes ix-xix, January 1909-July 1914.

Several other literary treatments of the theme have been discovered (mainly by Professors Shearin and Campbell) and may be mentioned as follows; Thomas Holley Chivers’ Conrad and Eudora; or, the Death of Alonzo, Philadelphia, 1834, pp. 144. Professor Campbell has read the copy in the Harris Collection and assures me it shows no influences from or upon Politian; Simms’ Charlemont (1856); and The Kentucky Tragedy by Mary E. Mac Michael (Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, vol. ii, 265 — 271, April 1838). A poem on the subject by Isaac Starr [page 57:] Clason (the actor who wrote a counterfeit conclusion to Don Juan) was written in 1833 but never printed, (Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American Literature ii, 263) and the popularity of the theme is attested by some words of Mrs. S. J. Hale in Godey's Lady's Book (vol. xxiv, 288, May 1842) noted by Professor Trent, Life of Simms (p. 119).

Certain ballads and folk songs are founded on the incidents of the crime — one, Colonel Sharp from North Carolina, (mountain whites) has been published by E. C. Perrow as no. 24 of his Songs and Rhymes from the South (Journal of American Folk Lore, April-June 1915, vol. xxviii, pp. 166-8). There are references to two others in A Syllabus of Kentucky Folksongs by Herbert G. Shearin and Josiah H. Combs, Lexington, 1911-on page 16, section VII (2) Beauchamp's Confession in which Beauchamp under sentence of death pictures his meeting with Sharp in Hell, and page 19, section VIII (12) Jeroboam Beauchamp. Both are included in the late Professor Shearin's article on The Beauchamp Tragedy in American Literature, soon I hope to be published by his widow, who has also in preparation a collection of Kentucky ballads. Some of the folk songs are yet current. Professor C. Alphonso Smith has kindly called my attention to a brief printed synopsis of Professor Shearin's paper in the Program of the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the Central Division of the Modern Language Association, Chicago, Dec. 27, 28, 29, 1916, p. 13, no. 52. Professor Shearin called Beauchamp a “lawyer's apprentice” but refers to nothing else not mentioned above. Unfortunately the paper was read by title only.

 

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 51:]

1. Beauchamp's first name is sometimes given as Jereboam, sometimes Jeroboam. The maiden name of his wife is given as Cook and Cooke indifferently, both forms sometimes occurring on one page of the Confession, though her Letters use Cook.

[page 58, unnumbered:]

DATE OF COMPOSITION

Poe seems to have composed the play in 1835, for Kennedy wrote T. W. White, April 13, 1835 (Harrison VII, p. vi from Griswold xxix) that Poe was “at work upon a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudging upon whatever may make money.” The MS is in script, not the tiny imitation of print found in the Morella and Folio Club MSS., and it is written with relatively few revisions, so there is no reason to think Poe had been long at work on it when Kennedy interrupted him. The version of the Coliseum was seemingly incorporated into the play as The Haunted Palace later was put into the House of Usher — see my notes to Scene xi. I am permitted by the authorities of the Valentine Museum at Richmond to say that there is no reference to Politian in the private letters of Poe there preserved, with the contents of which I am familiar in confidence.

[page 59, unnumbered:]

COMMENTARY

The Cast of Characters.

LALAGE. This name is familiar from Horace, Odes, I, xxii — but it is just possible Poe was playing on the name of his early sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster. President John Quincy Adams translated Horace's ode with the title To Sally (Poems, Auburn and Buffalo, 1848, p. 100), and that Poe was fond of tracing remote similarities in names we know from a MS note in the copy of the Broadway Journal he gave Mrs. Whitman, which points out the identity of the names “Helen, Ellen, Elenore, Lenore.” For evidence that this note is Poe's see Miss Caroline Ticknor's Poe's Helen, p. 189. Lalage in the play represents Miss Cook, — who in her Letters constantly speaks of the death of her father and sister — (cf. esp. l. c. p. 37)

ALESSANDRA. Cf. a note in Poe's Pinakidia, (S. L. M., August 1836; H. xiv, 65).

“Politian, the poet and scholar, was an admirer of Alessandra Scala, and addressed to her this extempore:

The original of this is in Politian's Epigrammata Greeca [Graeca], xxxii,

and explains the imagery of 11. 3-6 of To One in Paradise which is said to be inspired by a passage in Politian's Orfeo III, (The Assignation H. ii, 120).

Alessandra di Bartolomeo Scala, according to Isidoro del Lungo, (editor of Politian's Prose Volgari etc. Florence 1867, p. 199) famed for beauty and learning, was a pupil of Giov. Lascari and of Calcondila, married the scholar Marullo, and after his death in 1500 became a nun in San Pier Maggiore, where she died in 1506.

JACINTA. This name is a form of Hyacinth, a name which Poe plays with in various forms, as Ianthe (the form used by Ovid, Landor, Byron, and Shelley, who even gave it to his daughter by Harriet) which is borne by the heroine of the narrative in Al Aaraaf ii, 198; Zanthe, a lady addressed in an apostrophe by the poet, Al Aaraaf ii, 57; and Zante, as in the fine Sonnet to Zante beginning

Professor Campbell found the name Jacinta in Shirley's play The Example, but now observes that it is a name common enough in [page 60:] Europe. It is the title of a poem by William Rufus of Charleston (see his Rufiana, New York, 1826, pp. 49-51) whose book contains a serenade, Oh Lady, love, awake! which is worthy attention as a possible source for The Sleeper. Poe is also fond of the word “hyacinth” as applied to hair, cf. To Helen 1. 6, and the passage in Ligeia (H. ii, p. 250 1. 20) where he refers indirectly to the Homeric source in Odyssey, vi, 231.

DUKE DI BROGLIO. Perhaps an Italianized form of the name of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Achille Charles Léonard Victor duc de Broglie (1785-1870) whom Poe later mentioned in Graham's Magazine for April 1841 (vol. xviii, p. 202; H. x, 134 f.) in a criticism of Walsh's Sketches of Conspicuous Living Characters of France. Poe mentions “the Neapolitan Duke di Broglio” in William Wilson (H. iii, 323,1. 18).

CASTIGLIONE. This was the surname of Politian's admirer Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), author of The Book of the Courtier, Venice, 1528, who is mentioned in Pinakidia (H. xiv, 37) and Marginalia (H. xvi, 37). He represents Col. Sharp.

SAN OZZO. According to Professor Dino Bigongiari, San Ozzo is a common Tuscan diminutive or nickname, even to the present day, but is properly written as one word, Sanozzo.

POLITIAN is named for the Florentine scholar and poet Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano (1454-1494) mentioned s. v. Alessandra. His title Earl of Leicester the variants show was an afterthought, doubtless from the title of Dudley, patron of Spenser and favorite of Elizabeth, who is a leading character in Scott's Kenilworth. He represents Beauchamp, but his character (like that of the hero of The Assignation) has in it much of Byron, and some tincture of Poe himself. See notes on Baldazzar — and those on Scene III.

BALDAZZAR. This was the given name of the Castiglione mentioned above, and is thus spelled in Pinakidia. Another instance of Poe's using the given and surname of a single historical personage for two of his characters occurs in Arthur Gordon Pym (H. iii, 19, l 29) where the two sons of Mr. Ross are named Robert and Emmet, from Robert Emmet (1778-1803), the Irish Patriot. The title “Duke of Surrey” given Baldazzar (v, 51 etc.) is from the famous Tudor poet, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), Professor Trent believes that the Surrey-Geraldine story may have given Poe the hint for having an English noble in Italy, and having love adventures, and that Sir Philip Sidney's, vast reputation on the continent may have influenced the description of Politian. Leicester's connections were more with Holland and Spain — Poe knew the old poets more or less well, quotes sometimes from Sidney, and in this play from Wyatt. Whether the hint came from their travels (on which see Miss Clare Howard's English Travellers of the Renaissance, London and New York, 1914) or from C. F. Hoffman's comparison of the Kentucky crime to deeds of the Italian Renaissance, or from both, which is most probable, the combining imagination of the artist is [page 61:] well displayed in this mingling of Italian, English, and Kentucky elements into a romantic and poetic unity.

UGO. There is a soldier named Ugo in Chapter xxxii etc. of Mrs. Radcliff's Mysteries of Udolpho (from whose Montoni came Poe's Marquis de Montom in The Assignation) and there was a famous Italian writer Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) though I do not recall that Poe mentions him.

BENITO. Professor Campbell mentions a character of the name in Dryden's Assignation.

RUPERT is perhaps too common a name for comment.

Scene I. With Poe's opening scene note his remarks in a criticism of Mrs. Mowatt's Fashion in B. J., March 29,1845 (H. xii, 120,l 4f) “The denouément should in all cases be full of action and nothing else. Whatever cannot be explained by such action should be communicated at the opening of the play.”

1. The “hiccup” is extra-metrical except perhaps in line 89.

8. For a similar description of a drunken man with the hiccoughs cf. Bon-Bon (H. ii, 139). A buffo-singer is a singer in comic opera, or of burlesque songs. The compound is not in the N. E. D. but is in the latest Standard Dictionary.

28. The student may well apply this very quotable line to the author, and recall that the description of the effect of liquor in Hop Frog (H. vi, 220, 1. 14 etc.) was drawn from personal experience. Compare the words of Messrs. Williamson and Burns, editors of the Weekly Universe in a letter to George W. Eveleth, August 17, 1847, quoted by Eveleth to Poe, January 11, 1848. (Cf. my Letters from George W. Eveleth to Edgar Allan Poe, p. 17 — also in Bulletin of N. Y. Public Library March 1922, vol. xxvi, p. 179) “he is a gentleman-a man of fine taste, and of warm impulses, with a generous heart. The little eccentricities of his character are never offensive except when he is drunk.” Thomas Holley Chivers felt that Poe put much of himself into his characters, and apparently sings a dirge for Poe under the name ‘Politian’ in The Vigil in Aiden (Eonchs of Ruby, New York, Spalding and Shepherd, 1851, pp. 5-26), though “Politian” is merely a conventional name for a poet in his Isadore (1. c. p. 97-102, quoted in part as early as Feb. 21, 1847 in a letter to Poe, H. xvii, 280). In a note to VI, 13 W. L. Hughes (loc. cit. p. 263) says in substance that “Like all great writers, Poe gave the characters he created his personal sentiments and sensations — had he not often given some such answer to friends who reproached him etc. “ While Poe did put much of his personality into his characters, he also based them in no small measure on the romantic figures in the Kentucky Tragedy, and many phrases and actions are copied from life. Lauvrière (Edgar Poe, p. 370) in his anxiety to trace his misconception of Poe's personality in all his works, relegates Sharp and Beauchamp to a footnote, as not materially affecting the case, and then produces a criticism of the play “of the imagination all compact.“

43. This line is strangely like Chamberlayne s Love's Victory l. 273.

and this play, reprinted with Pharronida, London 1820, may have been known to Poe. The lines attributed to Pharronida in the motto to William Wilson [page 62:] I could not find in the poem, but there is in it so much of Conscience, one suspects Poe erred through, faulty memory rather than intent.

43-44. Probably reminiscent of Vergil's Æneid, vi, 100-101

In Æneid vi, 78-80, Apollo is compared to a rider on the Sibyl's spirit, and compare Servius’ commentary on the lines. Poe quotes from Servius on Æneid V, 9S in his motto to The Island of the Fay.

49. In a cancelled passage following this line is Poe's first poetic use of the famous refrain of the Raven, “nevermore.” Compare with these lines IV, 77 f., and note two passages from Beauchamp's Confession. “She [Miss Cook] sternly refused to make any acquaintances or even to receive the society or visits of her former acquaintances” (p. 9); and “She said'she could never be happy in society again. “‘ (p. 10). There are similar passages in her Letters.

54. Miss Cook wrote (Letters p. 60) after her betrayal of suffering “my heart to be irrecoverably lost and blighted by one so little to be trusted — so little worthy of my affections. But, whom I yet love.” There is similar phraseology in Ballad (a poem in S. L. M. Aug. 1835 believed by Professor Woodberry and others to be Poe's first draft for Bridal Ballad) ll. 31-32

while Poe (H. xiii, 21) praises a poem by Mrs. Osgood (Song CVII in her Poems, 1850, p. 457) which has a kind of refrain “She loves him yet.”

67. Cf. Proverbs, xvi, 18 “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

74f. Cf. V 45, and Poe's earlier Autography (H. xv, 140) “we are British, but not particularly British .... This is a riddle which you may be able to read hereafter.”

92. An interesting essay might be written on Poe's puns and plays upon words. A good many are listed by Professor Campbell (p. 265 [[263]]) but there are more than twenty-five in the essay Enigmatical and Conundrum-ical recently discovered by Professor John M. Manly in Alexander's Weekly Messenger, Dec, 18, 1839, (vol. iii, No. 50). And there is a curious story in The Cosmopolitan Art Journal (New York, Dec. 1858, vol. iii, p. 51) which perhaps may be told here.

“Poe once was dunned savagely for a grocer's bill, long overdue. [On finally paying it] “There, sir!” said he, “grow, sir, you grocer puppy, into a dog, sir, and may you then be dogged, sir, as you have dogged Poe, sir. Now, go sir, and be ——— to you.” This, properly expressed, would look very like a Poe-stanza.”

From other references in the periodical it is clear the editor was a great admirer of Poe, who, as early as July 1856 advocated the erection of a monument to Poe, and was eager to learn about him, as well as to praise him (see Honor to Genius in the March 1857 issue, vol. i, 83; Remembrance of the Dead in the next (June) issue, vol. i, 11,2 etc.) and tells the above story as fact. Whether perfectly authentic or not it shows Poe had a reputation for punning. [page 63:]

105. A zecchin, zecchino, or sequin was a gold coin worth about $2.29, first coined in Venice about 1280, and down to the 19th Century, also issued elsewhere, as in Modena and Savoy.

II 1-2. Cf. The Cask of Amontillado (H. vi, 175) “Ha! ha! ha! — he! he! he! — a very good joke indeed — an excellent jest.”

24. Cf. Why the Little Frenchman (H. iv, 117) “his riverence, Sir Pathrick O'Grandison, Baronitt.”

28. “Between you and I” is retained, because San Ozzo (III, 20) is called a “fellow low-born.” But Poe in his revision corrected Jacinta's grammar in VIII, 38, (see Variorum) and an error of like nature of which he was himself guilty in early versions of Four Beasts in One (H. ii, 204 l. 33)

33f. Cf. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy Part III, Sect. I, Memb. i, Subsect. 2 On the Objects of Love for “birds of a feather” which has not necessarily a bad connotation, though it has here.

38. Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, I, ii, 70-72,

45. Cf. Othello V, ii, 345, “one who loved not wisely, but too well.”

54. Cf. Keats, Lamia, ii, 1-2

74. Cf. The Fall of the House of Usher (H. iii, 275, 1. 17) “the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was.”

75. Cf. King John, III, i, 313 f.

Poe seems to echo King John again, IV, 94; 107; VII, 84

92. Salermo is clear in the MS, it is however probably an error for Salerno, a town in Italy famous for its wine.

III. The first scene in the 1845 selections.

23f. Cf. Polonius’ speech, Hamlet, I, iii, 70-75

35-36. Cf. Notes to VI, 97-98.

45f. Cf. the descriptions of Politian with that of the hero of The Assignation (H. ii, 109 ff.) “Ill-fated and mysterious man! bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth .... squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice .... . Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?” (H. ii, 113) “the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was [page 64:] then ringing.” (H. ii, i 15) “Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face — but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when the passion had departed .... . Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration ....” (H. ii, 118, I. 5) “the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner .... .” (H. ii, 122 I. 8) “the person of whom I speak was not only by birth, but in education, an Englishman.”

54-55. Cf. Ligeia (H. ii, 253, l. 33 f.) “I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense — such as I have never known in woman. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the Academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault?.... where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science?

65. This confusion of the senses, termed by psychologists “synasthesia” is commonly found in the poets, especially Shelley. In Poe's works note Tamerlane (1827) 11. 372-373, Al Aaraaf, n, 47, Poe's notes to those passages, a paragraph in Marginalia from the Democratic Review, November 1844 (H. xvi, 17) and a long passage in The Colloquy of Monos and Una (H. iv, 207).

67. Identical with V, 78.

IV. From this scene, the second in the 1845 selections, Poe accused Longfellow of plagiarizing a scene (II, iv) in the Spanish Student. Poe's discussion from the Broadway Journal may be found in H. xii, 96 f. W. L. Hughes (Contes inédits p. 255) remarks that, well-founded or not, the accusation is more probable than many of Poe's charges of like nature, and the similarities are certainly striking. The variants show that in quoting the play in the Broadway Journal, Poe read from the original MS, not the slightly revised S. L. M. version.

3-4. Cf. VIII, 31 f

6-7. Quoted with slight changes from Milton's Comus ll. 632-633

8-10. Translated from Homer's Odyssey iv, 566-568

ού νιφετος, ου̋τ'

Professor Campbell and I have failed to discover the source of Poe's lines in any English translation accessible to us, and while many translations of parts of the Homeric poems into English unknown to us must exist, I incline to the belief Poe translated the lines himself. It is notable that lines 9-10 rhyme, which suggests we may have a portion of a school exercise in rhymed translation revamped. The lines are echoed in ll. 11-14 of the newly found Saturday Visiter poem To ——— (Sleep on etc.)

12-13. Seemingly a distinct story.

15. Lalage reads from Webster's Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii, 261-263 with slight changes. (K. C.) In a review of Lamb's Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets in the Broadway Journal, Nov. 15, 1845 (vol. ii, 288) Poe again quotes the passage. While indebted to Lamb for many quotations from the Elizabethans, Poe seems to have known some through other sources, since he cites passages not in Lamb, on occasion, like the line from Marston's llntonio and Mellida (Part I, Act III, ii, 204) erroneously ascribed to The Malcontent in Loss of Breath (H. ii, 161).

23. Lalage reads of the death of Cleopatra, whether in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra V, ii, or Dryden's All for Love V, 490 f, is hard to say. Poe quotes a very famous phrase from the prologue to the latter play in his Letter to B——— (Preface to Poems, New York, 1831, p. 21; also in S. L. M. version reprinted H. vii, p. xxxix) and names it in the Saturday Courier version of The Duc de l’Omelette, and see also introductory notes on VI. Cleopatra's attendants furnish names for the characters in Poe's dialogue The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839) but W. L. Hughes (Contes inédits p. 257) remarks that Shakespeare and Plutarch (Parallel Lives, Antony, lxxxv, 4) both spell the names Iras and Charmian.

31f. “Balm in Gilead” (Jeremiah, viii, 22) is mentioned also in The Raven 1. 89. Cf. the phrasing with The Angel of the Odd (H. vi, 111, 1. 20) “to her wounded spirit I offered the balm of my vows.”

34-35. Quoted from Peele's David and Bethsabe ll. 46-47, and used again in To ——— (Not long ago etc.) 11. 9-10.

Peele's lines are based on Psalm cxxxiii, 3 “As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore,” and are also alluded to in Poe's Lines to Sarah, ll. 16-17.

Poe quotes a different passage from Peele's play in the review cited in my note to l. 15.

57. The story of the farmer who cherished a viper in his bosom and was bitten for his pains is found among Æsop's Fables. A copy of Æsopi Fabulae in Mr. Whitty's collection is the only one of Poe's schoolbooks known to survive. Notable literary uses of the story are in Theognis,1. 602; Shakespeare's Richard II, III, ii, 131; Chapman's Bussy D’Ambois, III, ii, 377-378 (Poe quotes from the play in The Assignation and the review cited on I. 15) and especially Dryden's All for Love IV, 467-469.

See notes to line 23

60. Cf. VI, 60. Poe may have had in mind the celebrated epigram, attributed to Plato (No. 4) or Julian of Egypt — on the mirror of Lais. [page 66:]

[[Greek text]]

to which I may append a recent anonymous version, given in ward Capps From Homer to Theocritus (New York, 1901), p. 154,

Professor La Rue Van Hook calls my attention to other modern translations, by Walter Leaf, Little Poems from the Greek, p. 24; and Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Mythology p. 138. Poe might have seen several Latin and French versions in Sallengré, Mémoires de Littérature, xviii, a work mentioned in Pinakidia, and a possible source for a quotation in The Island of the Fay (H. iv, 196).

66. Cf. The Premature Burial (H. v, 271 l. 10) “The Cherub Hope” and VII, 81, “The Angel Hope.”

67. Cf. Blair's Grave ll. 109-110

and Burns, The Banks o' Doon (2nd version) I. 7

Poe's A Dream ll. 1-2.

and Al Aaraaf (1831) I 23f (more similar than other versions 1. 8)

67-68. Cf. To Zante l. 6

73. Miss Cook had a counterpart of Lalage's monk in her friend to whom the Letters are addressed — cf. the note (l. c. p, 37) where “E. R.” writes “I tried to show her that [a spirit of revenge] was both unwomanly and unchristian. I begged her to consult her bible; for in that alone she would find happiness and peace; and to struggle to subdue her violent passions, which might yet lead her into the commission of dreadful errors.”

76. Cf. Coleridge, Ancient Mariner IV, 21f and Wordsworth Guilt and Sorrow, xxvii, 8 “I could not pray.” Poe quoted from the next stanza in Wordsworth's poem in his January 1837 review of Bryant in S. L. M. (H. ix, 276.)

76ff. Cf. Tamerlane (1827) l. 339f, where the dying king says,

In the Wilmer MS Poe changed l. 339 to “The sound of revelry, to-night” to lessen the borrowing from Byron's Childe Harold III, xxi,1, but in 1829 cancelled the passage.

77. Cf. a line in cancelled passage after I, 49

To the frightful sounds of merriment below.

84. Cf. note on “Lalage” in Cast. This mourning for the past is constantly emphasized in Miss Cook's Letters.

IV.

85. Cf. Tamerlane (18,27) 11. 220f

and also Poe's letter to Mrs. Whitman, Oct. 18,1848 (Last Letters p. 28, l. 11) “the rivulet that ran by the very door” and Landor's Cottage (H. vi, 261, 11. 23f).

86ff. In Beauchamp's Confession p. 99 it is said of Miss Cook that “father, brothers, and friends, by a most strange succession of calamities, had been swept into the grave,” yet perhaps the parallel is not wholly accidental to Kirke White's Sonnet, supposed to have been addressed by a Female Lunatic to a Lady ll. 2-8.

94. Cf. King John IV, iii, 67 “a vow, a holy vow.”

107-8. Cf. King John III, iv, 43-44

105f. The custom of using a sword or dagger as a crucifix was widespread. Poe must have been familiar with the stage tradition in Hamlet I, in, where the actor holds his sword before him as a cross while following the ghost. Poe quotes from Hamlet's speech to the ghost in The Literary Life of Thingum Bob (H. v, 6,1. S).

108-9. Cf. The Assignation (H. ii, 124, 1. 25) “his lips were livid — his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death.”

111. Lalage swears Castiglione's death, not her own — Lauvrière (p. 370) unmindful of Poe's use of the facts of the Beauchamp tragedy, curiously misunderstands the passage.

V. Castiglione seems in Hamlet mood in this scene, as Professor Trent observes, especially 1. 8f.

19. Cf. III 62 “nor learned nor mirthful he.”

36. Cf. Hamlet V, i, 210 “your flashes of merriment.”

40. Cf. Midsummer Night's Dream V, i, 1-2.

and Hamlet 1, ii, 220-221; Poe frequently quotes Byron's famous “Truth is stranger than fiction” (Don Juan XIV, ci, i-2) — e. g. How to Write a Blackwood [page 68:] Article (H. ii 2741. 34 f), 1002nd Tale of Scheherazade (H. vi, 78), Von Kempelen and his Discovery (H. vi, 250 l. 18), Marginalia, (H. xvi, 25).

45. Cf. I, 74-75.

50. Poe uses’ honest” not in the Elizabethan sense of “chaste” but the more modern “honorable.” See his notes on Dryden's translation of Vergil's Georgics II, 392 in Pinakidia, (H. xiv, 48), and Marginalia (H. xvi, 47); and a comment on “homines honesti” in The Purloined Letter (H. vi, 44).

78. Identical with III, 67.

VI. This, the third scene in the 1845 selections, is one of the best in the play. It is reminiscent however of Shakespeare, especially of Hamlet, though the similarities are rarely close enough for annotation; and my friend Mr. H. W. Wells believes Poe had in mind Dryden's All for Love I, i, end, — where Antony is urged to activity by Ventidius. See notes on IV, 23.

6-7. Perhaps modeled on Hamlet, III, iv, 8-9.

13. See note to I, 28.

21. Cf. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (H. iv, 151, l. 33) “we then busied our souls in dreams” and The Colloquy of Monos and Una (H. iv, 205, ll. 12-13) “we wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams.”

22. Professor Campbell compares Moore's poem beginning “Go, where Glory waits thee. ”

23. Professor Campbell notes the source of “trumpet-tongued” in Macbeth I, vii, 19.

24. Cf. The Fall of the House of Usher (H. iii, 289, 1. 33) “listening to some imaginary sound” and The Assignation (H. ii, 120, 11. 2-5) “he seemed to be listening.... to sounds which must have had existence in his imagination alone.”

25. Cf. Wordsworth, To the Cuckoo, ll. 3-4, 1S-16.

One may also compare Poe's Raven 11. 27-30, and remark that Poe twice quotes the saying “Vox et praeterea nihil” (criticism of Mathews, Graham's, February 1842, H. xi, 33f, and Marginalia, H. xvi, 172) which in the latter instance he wrongly ascribes to Catullus, perhaps confusing it with the one nightingale mentioned by that poet, (lxiv, 9-11 quoted in the notes on VI, 103 f.). The saying is really the Latin translation of one of Plutarch's,4pothegmate Laconica (incert. xiii) and Lipsius at the beginning of his. Adversus Dialogistam Liber has “Lacon quidem ad lusciniam, ‘vox es, praeterea nihil.’” See Notes and Queries to s, ii, 281, and 12 s, viii, 269 for Professor Bensley's comment on King's Classical and Foreign Quotations No. 3116.

25, 56-7. These lines are used as the motto of Mrs. Whitman's poem The Phantom Voice first published in Graham's Magazine vol. xxxvi, p. 91, January 1850; then in her Hours of Life (Providence, George H. Whitney, 1853, pp. 85-88); and her Poems (Boston, Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1879, pp. 83-8S, where it is dated “November 1849”). The Poems have been re-issued [page 69:] — “2nd edition,” Providence, Preston and Rounds Co. 1894,”Third Edition,” 1913 from the Boston plates.

29. Cf. opening of The Pit and the Pendulum (H. v, 67, l. t) “I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony.”

31. One recalls Antony's use of “Bear with me” in Julius Caesar III, ii.

34. “Eternal city” is first found in Tibullus II, v, 23, and again in Ovid, Fasti, III, 72 — see Professor F. G. Moore's article On Urbs Sacra and Urbs Æterna in Transactions, Am. Philological Assn. xxv, 34f.

40. Cf. The City in the Sea, l. 49.

Poe quoted this poem in The Poetic Principle (H. xiv, 269).

41. This beautiful and quotable line was perhaps suggested to Poe by a passage in Wm. Elliot's translation of The Visions of Quevedo, Philadelphia, 1832, in The Palace of Love (p. 73) where it is said Opportunity “took for a cravat an hour glass with golden grains” (a source for certain parts of Bon-Bon may also be discovered in this book, of which a copy purporting to have been Poe's is preserved). Other parallels in Poe's works are A Dream within a Dream ll. 14-15

To — (Sleep on etc.) ll. 15-16

while an opposite idea is found in Al Aaraaf, i, 140.

Poe's line is earlier than Tennyson's Locksley Hall (1842) ll. 31-32.

The parallel is clearly accidental, for Tennyson could hardly have seen Politian prior to 1845 — but a possible echo of Poe is in Miss A. D. Woodbridge's Sonnet (Godey's Lady's Book, January 1844, vol, xxviii, p. 1) I. 3.

Another possible echo of Poe is in the second stanza of The Island of the Soul, a poem (so full of Poesque phraseology as to suggest that it was written after a rereading of Poe) by Thomas Dunn English (to be found in his Select Poems, Newark, 1894, p. 547; and first printed in the N. Y. Independent.)

45-46. Perhaps reminiscent of Milton's Paradise Lost, ii, 400-402

(Note use of “corrosive” in XI, 39.)

45-50. Professor Campbell would see in The Merchant of Venice V, i, a remote parallel to certain lines here.

52-57. This passage is echoed in 1. 13f of The Beleaguered Heart by Mrs. Sarah [Estelle] Anna Lewis: — [page 70:]

The poem was first published in the Democractic [[Democratic ]] Review March 1848 (vol. xxii, 270) and later in her Child of the Sea, and Other Poems, N. Y. 1848, p. 156f and Records of the Heart and Other Poems, N. Y. 1857, p. 199f. In an unsigned review of Mrs. Lewis in Graham's for April 1849 (by Poe, as is shown in Stoddard's Recollections p. 159) some other lines from the poem appear — for Poe's relation to Mrs. Lewis’ poems see Whitty p. 210, and Mrs. Gove-Nichols, Mary Lyndon, N. Y. 1855, p. 342.

52-60. Perhaps influenced by Shelley's Fragments of an Unfinished Drama, ll. 100-102.

55. Cf. Morella (H. ii, 29,1. 20) “oppressed me as a spell” [earlier reading “like”].

57. The phrase “heart of hearts” is used again by Poe, VII, 51; To My Mother 1. 7; Landor's Cottage (H. vi, 269,1. 5); and letter of Oct. 1, 1848 to Mrs. Whitman (Last Letters, p. 15, l. 15). “Heart of heart” is in Hamlet III, ii, 68; and see also Poe's or closely akin phrases in Wordsworth, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality l. 190; and Shelley, Epipsychidion l. 385; Fragment, A Soul Known 1. 2; Cenci V, ii, 126.

60. Cf. IV, 60. To the meter of the speech beginning here Judge Beverley Tucker objected in a letter to Poe of Dec. 5, 1835 (H. xvii, 21 f). See notes on Verse.

70f. Lalage's song is A Suit to his Unkind Mistress not to forsake him by Sir Thomas Wyatt — stanza ii, slightly garbled. (K. C.) The poem, long a favorite with anthologists, perhaps influenced Ballad (ascribed to Poe) 1. 9.

I find Wyatt's lines reprinted in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier Feb. 8, 1840, at a time Poe may have been working for that paper.

97-98. “Your” clashes with “thee,” as in III, 35 and 36, and the Examiner proof sheet text of To ——— (A dream within a dream) ll. 1 and 2. Poe valued euphony above consistency however, and in the MS draft of his Prose Writers of America [[Living Writers of America]] wrote “He who is consistent is a fool.”

103-104. This passage is without quotation marks in MS and S. L. M., and as yet has not been definitely located in the works of any other writer. I half believe that it is a reminiscence only — perhaps of Catullus lxiv, 9-11.

for Poe's inaccurate reference to a nightingale in Catullus suggests a familiarity with this poem. See note to l. 18.

110. Cf. To Helen (1848) ll. 21-24

In this connection it may be well to observe that although Mrs. Whitman destroyed or lost her MS copy of To Helen, I believe she preserves a reading from it (1. 22) “whose earthly name is Sorrow” in her quotation of the line in her To Arcturus, written in . April 1. 19 (Graham's Magazine, June 1850, vol. xxxvi, 383; Hours of Life, p. 80; Poems, p. 97).

VII. This scene, the fourth among the 1845 selections, termed by Professor Campbell “the most spirited in the play,” seems in great part based on fact; compare the following from Miss Cook's Letters, pages 74-75:

“I felt myself driven from society, and an object of scorn and derision.... He offered me his hand. Yes, forlorn and abandoned as I was, he was willing to become my husband as he had been my friend. What could I do? I addressed him candidly and openly. You know my history, said I, and my shame, if you are willing to receive to your bosom a poor outcast, whom the world has stigmatised as guilty and polluted, with a wounded heart and a blighted name, then take me. I am yours forever. My dear Ann, he replied, I regard you as the innocent victim of the most detestable treachery ..... I have long admired the cultivation of your mind, and the proud dignity and elevation of your soul. You were calculated to grace the most brilliant and the most elevated circles of society ..... I am proud to be the object of your choice, humbled as you may be in your own estimation, or .... in that of an unfeeling world. I have never felt for any woman what I feel for you; my attachment is deep, sincere, and ardent, and while we live it shall never become extinct. .... He had given me sufficient proofs of the truth of what he asserted.”

This is in a way confirmed by the following from the statement To the Public of Mrs. Eliza T. Sharp:

“Beauchamp married Miss Cook with a full knowledge of all the circumstances of her shame and of the charges which had been so widely circulated against my husband. It is said he laughed at the delicacy of his family who would have dissuaded him from forming this connection, and [he] evinced the most perfect indifference upon the subject of her character. 16-18. Poe's use of rhyme in passages of high emotion finds parallels below, l. 100, and in some of the prose tales, e. g. Morella (H. ii, 30,11. 27-28); Eleonora (H. iv, 243, 1. 29); The Masque of the Red Death (H. iv, 258, 1. 10). He uses it elsewhere in the tales for humorous effects as in Lionizing (H. ii, 40, 11. 2-8); The Scythe of Time (early version of A Predicament, H. ii, 294, I. 31); Von Jung (early version of Mystification, H. iv, 103 I. 16), X-ing a Paragrab (H. vi, 232,1. 34f) and House Furniture (H. xiv,104,1. 20) — See also Poe's remarks on the distinct uses of rhyme for poetic and humorous effect in his criticisms of Brainerd [[Brainard]] and Longfellow in Graham's (February and March, 1842, H. xi, 24f, 76).

20. In The Poetic Principle (H. xiv, 282) Poe says of lines 7-8 of Moore's song “Come rest in this bosom” (which he probably here had in mind)

that they are “lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all of the divine passion of love — a sentiment which, perhaps, has [page 72:] found its echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any other single sentiment ever embodied in words,” while in a letter of October 18, 1848 to Mrs. Whitman (Last Letters, p. 24) he calls them the “very noblest lines in all human poetry.” See also his remarks on Longfellow's Spanish Student (H. xiii, 68).

28. Cf. The Happiest Day, l. 2, “My seared and blighted heart” — both passages are no doubt reminiscent of Byron's Fare thee well, xiv, 3 “Seared in heart and lone and blighted” but Miss Mary Cook wrote (Ann Cook's Letters p. 28) “My heart is seared and blasted .... but I cannot weep — my eyes are dry but my lips are parched and burning. ”

32. “Ideal” is here used in the sense of “unreal,” from “idea” as opposed to “reality.”

38. Cf. XI, 64; and Tamerlane 1. 178.

On earth of all we hope in Heaven. [K. C. in part]

43-45. Cf. Poe's letter to Mrs. Whitman Oct. 1, 1848 (Last Letters p. 1811. 4-5) “joyfully go down with you into the night of the grave.” Both passages are probably reminiscent of Job vii, 9 “As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall rise up no more.” In Poe's Bible, the 16th verse of this chapter is marked in ink, supposedly by Poe himself. Beside the mark are pencilled the initials R. H. C., those I presume of Mrs. Cromwell, to whom Mrs. Clemm gave the Bible (see the New York Herald June 10, 1883). The Bible, printed by the American Bible Society, N. Y. 1846, 10th edition, small pica, 8 vo. is now preserved in the Poe Cottage at Fordham, where I examined it and found no other markings in ink, but in pencil were marked 2 Samuel xii, 16; St. Luke, xi, 2; xiv, 26; Galatians v, and vi, 14-18.

47. Cf. Letter to Mrs. Whitman Oct. I, 1848 (Last Letters, p. 11, ll. 25-27) “If ever, then, I dared to picture for myself a richer happiness, it was always connected with your image in Heaven. ”

54-56. Cf. William Wilson (H. iii, 302,1. 5) “with step solemn and slow”; The Imp of the Perverse (cancelled passage after H. vi, 15211. 15-16) “I saw — or fancied that I saw — a vast and formless shadow that seemed to dog my footsteps, approaching me from behind, with a cat-like and stealthy pace,” and The Masque of the Red Death (H. iv, 256,1. 17) (with 1. 55) “this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement .... stalked to and fro among the waltzers. ”

The motto to William Wilson

is a possible source, though it does not occur, as Poe says it does in Chamberlayne's Pharronida.

55. Echoed by Mrs. Sarah Anna Lewis, The Beleagured Heart, 1. 6. With a solemn step and slow.

57-58. The words in this line and the manner in which they are employed, seem, like “It is nothing but the wind in the chimney” of The Tell-Tale Heart (H. v, 90 1. 32f.) and the like l. 36 of The Raven, “‘Tis the wind and nothing more,” so strangely akin to the vainly reassuring replies of the father in Goethe's famous Erlkönig, ll. 8, 16, [page 73:]

that it seems worth while to cite them. The whole question of Poe's Knowledge of German is a very complex one — it has been ably discussed by Gustav Gruener in Modern Philology, ii, I 25f and again in Palmer Cobb's thesis on The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Chapel Hill, 1908, pp. 20-30 and passim, but the last word has not been said on the subject, for some important evidence was inaccessible to former writers. Poe quoted from Goethe's Das veilchen ll. 19-20 in his motto to the version of The Visionary (The Assignation) in the Lady's Book for January 1834, and quite possibly through Carlyle or Coleridge (not to mention Scott) had become interested in and dipped into the language — in a letter of Nov. 26, 1841 to F. W. Thomas (published in Ernest Dressel North's Catalogue N. Y. October, 1905, item 357) he remarks “To the Latin and Greek proficient, the study of all additional languages is mere play” — or he may have used translations, for Monk Lewis had rendered Erlkönig. I do not believe any deep knowledge of German on Poe's part can be proved, and some of Poe's German “sources” must be given up; no man reading Washington Irving's An Unwritten Drama of Lord Byron in The Gift for 1836 (to which Poe was a contributor) will seek farther for the origin of William Wilson, but I have met with no mention of this save in an article by Joel Benton, which was preserved in a newspaper clipping among the Poeana once owned by the late George P. Philes, sold recently at auction in this city, while one or two more of Poe's most learned notes may be traced to non-German sources. E. g. the bit about Dichtkunst, Pinakidia No. 153 (H. xiv, 67) repeated in a criticism of Longfellow from Graham's for April, 1842 (H. xi, 74) may be found in the English and probably the French version of Bielfeld's Universal Erudition II, vi, 5. Yet Poe's use of translated idioms and single words, nay his very emphasis on and repetition of the few simple points which betray how slight his knowledge was, also make it certain that there was “a little knowledge,” which in the case of a genius of Poe's order cannot have been quite contemptible.

62-63. Cf. Dreams ll. 21-22,

63. Cf. Shakespeare, Is You Like It, II, vii, I I I-112,

65. Cf. Byron's Bride of Abydos I, i, I (quoted in The Rationale of Verse H. xiv, 242),

in itself copied from Goethe's Mignon's Song “Kennst du das Land.” From the allusion to Columbus we learn the play is laid about the year 1500. It seems that before the killing Beauchamp did announce his intention to go to Missouri (Confession p. 28).

69. Cf. To One in Paradise, l. 5.

70. Poe's ideal landscapes, in Eleonora, The Island of the Fay, and The Domain of Arnheim should be compared,, though there are no close verbal parallels. [page 74:]

78. Reminiscent of Baldazzar's reproach VI, 4.

79. Cf. Beauchamp's dramatic farewell to his dying wife (Appendix to Confession, p. 133).

She returned no answer. He felt of her pulse, and said, “Physicians, you have deceived me-she is dying.” To the ladies who surrounded the bed she said “from you, ladies, I demand a tear of sympathy. ” He laid conversing with perfect composure, occasionally putting one hand upon his wife's face and feeling her pulse with the other until he had felt the last throb. “Farewell,” said he, “child of sorrow — Farewell child of misfortune and persecution — You are now secure from the tongue of slander — For you I have lived; for you I die.” He then kissed her twice, and said, “I am now ready to go. ” [The italics are mine.] [This is related in much the same way in a note in Miss Cook's Letters, p. 90; Hoffman's Winter in the West, p. 342; Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia July 29, 1826, from Lexington Kentucky Reporter, July 7, 1826, and in some of the more recent articles.]

81. Cf. IV, 66 and note.

82-83. Cf. Letter to Mrs. Whitman, Oct. 18, 1848 (Last Letters p. 21, l. 4 etc.) “whom I love — by one at whose feet I knelt — I still kneel — in deeper worship than ever man offered to God.”

84. Cf. King John, III, iv, 104.

90f. Perhaps modeled on a speech of Dido, in Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage, V, 177 f

95-96. Cf. Arthur Gordon Pym (H. iii, 45,11. 18-22) “he would abandon me — he was gone! He would leave me to perish miserably, to expire in the most horrible and loathsome of dungeons — and one ward — one little syllable would save me — yet that single syllable I could not utter.”

100. See my notes to ll. 16-18 and cf. King Lear, II, iv, 22-23.

VIII. 18. Cf. Tempest I, ii, 389 “sitting upon a bank.”

31. Cf. IV, 3-4

38-41. See notes to II, 28.

44. Cf. Twelfth Night II, v, 158 etc. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness” etc.

52. Cf. Bon Bon (H. ii, 1301. 12) “the particolored velvet of Genoa” and Landor's Cottage (H. vi, 256, l. 19) where the grass is compared to “green Genoese velvet.”

IX. Much of this scene fifth and last in the 1845 selections is closely modelled on passages in Beauchamp's Confession — the parallels are given below.

4. Poe frequently mentions Azrael, Mohammedan angel of death, as in the Saturday Courier version of Metzengerstein, and in Mesmeric Revelation (H. v, 254,1. 16) and Ligeia (H. ii, 255, l. 6). Compare his use of Aidenn in the Raven.

6. Paradisal is the oldest form of the adjective, used as early as 1560.

16. Cf. Macbeth I, iii, 39.

38. Professor Campbell compares Addison's Cato IV, iv, Plato, thou reasonest well and note The Merchant of Venice II, ii, 22

44. Poe cancelled some lines here, hence the metrical imperfection (K. C.).

60-END. Cf. Beauchamp's Confession, pp. 15-17 — a description of an encounter between Beauchamp and Sharp. [The latter said] “My friend .... I never can fight the friend of that worthy injured lady .... I never will raise my hand against you.” [Beauchamp replied] “Now, sir, tell me, will you fight me a duel, (again raising my dagger) .... He then stepped back a step, and I thought from the turn of his eye, was preparing to run. I sprang forward and caught him by the breast of his coat, and said, “Now you damned villain, you shall die.” He then fell upon his knees and said “My life is in your hands, my friend, I beg my life.... . . I then said “Get up, you coward, and go till I meet you in the street to-morrow; .... go arm yourself, for to-morrow I shall horsewhip you in the streets, and repeat it daily till you fight me a duel .... You are about such a whining coward, as I was told you were ....” [Sharp said] “You are the favored possessor of that great and worthy woman's love? Be it so, then, Here, take my life. I deserve it. But do not disgrace me in the streets.” .... [Beauchamp continues.] “I bade him begone from me, or I would abide his offer in one moment (starting towards him.)”

71f. Cf. Beauchamp's poem The Death Scene ll. 17-18 (Confession p. 124)

75. Cf. Confession, p. 35, where describing the actual murder Beauchamp says “I muttered in his face, ‘die, you villain.’ ”

X. This scene shows Poe's grotesque humor at a high level — grim enough in a way, it would yet, I think, be very comical if well acted.

1. “That's flat” is an Elizabethan expression, “that's final.” San Ozzo perhaps plays on the other meaning of flat in the next lines — i. e. “stupid.”

15f. Cf. Marginalia (H. xvi, 175) “it would sing with the Opera heroine

and compare also the early version of Loss of Breath (S. L. M., i, 738, col, 2) “yet never for one moment did I imagine that 1 was not actually dead.” Cf. also A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (H. v, 172, l. 34 f.) “You are not prepared to maintain that you are dead?” where the person questioned. gives no definite answer; but contrast The Pit and the Pendulum, (H. v, 71, l. 18f.) “[To suppose oneself really dead] notwithstanding what we read in fiction is altogether inconsistent with real existence.”

27-29. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, IV, v, 23

66. Paugh — the N. E. D. records no example of this spelling, though “pah” is common. [page 76:]

67ff. Cf. Bon-Bon (H. ii, 143) where Satan remarks to the drunken Bon-Bon, “You must know that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless pickled immediately, (and a pickled spirit is not good), they will-smell-you understand, eh?”

70ff. Compare the conclusion of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (H. vi, 1661. 20) for an example of the lengths to which Poe's charnel fancy could go, and the almost equally gruesome passage in Arthur Gordon Pym, (H. III, 140, ll. 15-18).

XI. This, the last scene of the play to be written, is made up principally from Poe's poem The Coliseum — upon the early history of which, as a separate poem, much light was thrown by Professor John C. French in Modern Language Notes for May 1917 (vol. xxxiii, p. 257f.) in an article called Poe and the ‘Baltimore Saturday Visiter.’ Professor French was the first to consult the unique file of the Visiter in the possession of Miss Elizabeth Cloud Seip of Catonsville, Md., and to give exact information where tradition had become confused. While I am deeply indebted to Professor French's article I have personally examined the Poe texts of the Visiter through the courtesy of Miss Seip and my notes on the variants are more correct than any before published.

On June 15, 1833 was first announced an offer of Premiums of “50 dollars for the best Tale and 25 dollars for the best Poem, not exceeding one hundred lines” offered before the first of October, to the Visiter. The paper, formerly edited by Poe's friend Lambert A. Wilmer (see his Our Press Gang, Phila. 1866, p. 22 etc.) was at the time conducted for the proprietors Charles Ferree Cloud and Wm. P. Pouder, on South Gay St., one door from the corner of Market St., by John H. Hewitt, whose relations with Poe were not cordial; but the contest was judged by John P. Kennedy, John H. B. Latrobe, and Dr. James H. Miller. According to an entry in Kennedy's Journal, Nov. 2, 1833, the committee met to judge early in October, having about one hundred tales and poems, (Killis Campbell's Kennedy Papers, 1917, p. 25). Poe submitted several tales and at least one poem, and to quote his own letter of July 20, 1835 to T. W. White (H. xvii, 11) concerning the Premiums “both.... were awarded to me. The award was, however, altered, and the Premium for Poetry awarded to the second best in consideration of my having obtained the higher Prize. This Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Latrobe told me themselves.” White printed in the Messenger for August (vol. i, 716) an editorial note embodying the substance of this, together with a letter from the judges of the contest which had appeared in the Visiter of October 12, 1833. (See Stoddard's edition of Poe, vol. i, 73, and consult Latrobe's account of the proceedings of the committee in Edgar Allan Poe, a Memorial Volume, edited by Sara Sigourney Rice, Baltimore, 1877, pp. 57-60.)

The decision of the judges, as announced October 12, gave the prize for the tale to Poe's MS Found in a Bottle, and for the poem to The Song of the Wind by Henry Wilton, the pen-name assumed by Hewitt, who, as the announcement of the Visiter permitted, chose to receive his prize in the form of a silver goblet. (See Hewitt's Shadows on the Wall or Glimpses of the Past, Baltimore, Turnbull Brothers, 1877, p. 154.) The winning tale and poem [page 77:] were printed October 19, while the Coliseum appeared on the 26th. Hewitt's poem of 68 lines, which has been twice reprinted (in his Miscellaneous Poems, Baltimore, N. Hickman,1838, p. 74; and Shadows on the Wall, p. 157) need hardly be given here in full, but since both volumes are rare, the reader may like to see as a sample the concluding lines.

Some of the poem is better, some worse than this-the earlier lines seem to echo more definitely Shelley's Cloud — on the whole one cannot blame Poe for wanting Hewitt to renounce the honor and keep the money as Gill (Life of Edgar Allan Poe, pp. 69-70) relates. Hewitt evidently disliked Poe both before and after the contest, but wrote a half apologetic poem At the Grave of Edgar A. Poe which may be read in Shadows on the Wall, p. 240 f.

Poe's poem, his most rhetorical production, except the Raven, was early popular, and besides appearing in full in two of Griswold's anthologies, extracts (lines 22-28, 33-39) from the Poets and Poetry of America version were printed in Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale's anthology The Poet's Offering for 1850 (Philadelphia, compiled 1849 — p. 460, s. v. “Ruins”). For the various authorized publications of the poem see the Bibliography. Poe himself rated the poem sixth in a list of his six best poems yet written, in a letter of July 2, 1844 to James Russell Lowell (Woodberry ii, 94).

I have stated that Poe incorporated the poem in Politian because the meter is very different from that of the rest of the play; and because a careful study of the variants seems to me conclusive. The version in the play contains one simile not in the Visiter version, but given in all the others (ll. 52-53), while the abortive readings (11. 19-24 etc.) are to be expected since a study of I. 43 tends to show that the Politian version, and that of the S. L. M. represent two different revisions on the Visiter text, while all subsequent versions are based directly or indirectly on the S. L. M. version. An analogy is to be found in Poe's treatment of the MS Found in a Bottle, where the versions of the Gift for 1836, and the S. L. M. are distinct and separate revisions of the Visiter text, while all other versions are based on the S. L. M.

2-3. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold, IV, cxxviii, 7-8

4. Cf. Gray's Elegy l. 33.

a line earlier echoed by Poe in Tamerlane (1827) l. 355

5-10. Cf. MS found in a Bottle (H. ii, 13,1. 24 f) [I] “have imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin” and Al Aaraaf II, 36 f. Poe in all these passages probably had in mind Shelley's Alastor ll. 109-128, in addition to the passage which in his notes to Al Aaraaf he cites inaccurately from Voltaire's Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations, Chap. V, ¶7 (œuvres, ed. Beuchot, Paris, 1829, xv, 307). [page 78:]

7. In part the same as l. 50.

10. Cf. T. Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming, I, vii, 1-2.

Professor Campbell cites Moore, Loves of the Angels, ll. 1180-1181

and Wordsworth, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, l. 57

Parallels in Poe's works are Romance (1831) l. 47

Eleonora (H. iv, 239, 1. 31) “A prison house of grandeur and of glory,” and The Oval Portrait (H. iv, 245, ll. 4-5) “commingled gloom and grandeur.”

17-18. It has been assumed the allusion is to Christ, but Poe was interested in Jewish history and may have some legend or story about Gethsemane in mind. Poe rarely mentions Our Lord in his poetry, I recall only the cancelled passage of The Sleeper.

19. Cf. Al Aaraaf ii, 42-43

where Poe explains that Eyraco is Chaldea. As only one person is mentioned here perhaps the allusion is to Abraham (cf. Genesis xv, 5) though according to the introduction to Bk. I of the Lives of the Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius with which Poe was acquainted, to judge from Loss of Breath (H. ii, 167.) the Chaldees were priests among the Babylonians and Assyrians.

22. There are many similar passages — e. g. Thomas Warton, Pleasures of Melancholy 1. 263 f

27-28. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold, IV, exl1i for triple use of the “here where” and Manfred III, iv, 22-26

and Mrs. Sigourney's Rome ll. 26-27

29. “Golden throne” cf Lenore l. 22.

33. Cf. Gray's Impromptu (1766) ll. 13-14.

and the expression “tottering to their fall” in The Man of the Crowd (H. iv, 144, l. 9) and The Murders in the Rue Morgue (H. iv, 151, l. 11).

33f. One may compare the architectural description in Al Aaraaf II, 28 f.

36. Professor Campbell compares Byron's Childe Harold IV, cxlv, 8

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill

and the passage may be vaguely influenced by Gaunt's speech in Richard II [page 79:] II, i, 40-60, or the sonnet of Bellay, translated by Edmund Spenser, The Ruins of Rome, iii, of which l. 5 reads

A parallel cited by Professor Campbell (p. 220) from a translation published by Mrs. Ellet, in December 1833 is rendered improbable by the dates.

39. “Corrosive hours” — the phrase recurs in The Colloquy of Monos and Una, (H. iv, 206,1. 5) see also note to VI, 45-46. With the other part of the line cf Gray's Elegy, l. 4.

and The Assignation (H. ii, 118,1. 18) “has left to silence and to me.”

43. Memnon, son of Tithonus and Eos (Aurora or Dawn) is mentioned by Homer, and other ancient writers. The Greeks gave his name to one of the two Colossi of Amenhotep III at Thebes in Egypt, because it was believed to salute the dawn with a musical sound (described as resembling the breaking of a harp-string.) Allusions to this are countless in literature — see Gayley's Classic Myths pp. 179, 512, and Campbell p. 221. The allusion in Henry B. Hirst's sonnet La Chanteuse 1. 4 (The Penance of Roland etc., Boston 1849, p. 64) seems to echo Poe's phrasing.

44f. In connection with these lines Lauvrière (Edgar Poe, p. 373) cites Byron, Manfred III, iv, 40-41.

51. Seemingly echoed in Hirst's sonnet No More 1. 6 (published in Ladies’ Garland, Phila. Feb. 1848, vol. xiii, p. 46; and in Penance etc., p. 88).

52-53. Cf. Wordsworth, Sonnet upon Westminster Bridge ll. 4-S.

and Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, V, 7

and Shelley, PrinceAthanase, ll. 288-289

and Psalms, civ, 2, 6. “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment” .... “Thou coverest it with the deep as with a garment.”

56. Perhaps an echo of Milton, Paradise Regain'd i, 257

61-62. Cf. Miss Cook's words, July 4, 18 26 (Letters, p. 84) “I suggest it would be better to plunge the dagger into his heart while folded in the arms of her for whom he had deserted me. ”

64. Cf. VII, 38 and note thereon.

[page 80, unnumbered:]

CRITICISM

Politian — or rather the scenes from it published by Poe, did not prove a favorite with the critics. The first opinions expressed of it which have survived are those of the contemporary press, and since Poe himself collected a large number of notices of the Southern Literary Messenger which he published in a Supplement (January 1836, vol. ii, 133 f) those which relate to the extracts from the drama should not be ignored. Only four give anything beyond a passing mention to the drama — and I give the passages in full, adding such bibliographical notes as I can.

The United States Telegraph [Washington City, Dec. 5, 1835, vol. x, No. 316, p. 126-25 — edited by an unknown writer during the absence of the regular editor Duff Green, benefactor of Poe's friend Wilmer, and sometime friend of President Andrew Jackson — see Wilmer's Our Press Gang passim] says “We were disappointed in a “Dramatic Extract” from the pen of Mr. Edgar A. Poe. He had taught us to expect much, for his prose is often high wrought poetry; but his poetry is prose, not in thought but in measure. This is a defect of ear alone, which can only be corrected by more study than the thing is worth.”

The Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser [Dec. 15, 1835, vol. vii, No. 103, p. 13, by Pleasants and Abbott] quotes Major M. M. Noah as saying (evidently in the New York Evening Star of slightly prior date, but I can locate no files of the Star for the first half of December 1835) “Mr. Poe's “Unpublished Drama” does not suit our taste. Why eternally ring the changes on those everlasting and hackneyed Venetian Doges and Italian counts — latticed balconies and verandas — time out of mind exhausted?”

The Lynchburg Virginian [Dec. 10, 1835, vol. xiv, No. 38, p. 32, edited by Fletcher and Toler] said “Scenes from Politian” like the prose productions from the same pen (Mr. Poe) evince great powers, wasted on trifles. Why, (to adopt the catechetical style of his own criticisms,) why does Mr. Poe throw away his strength on shafts and columns, instead of building a temple to his fame? Can he not execute as well as design? No one can doubt it who is conversant with his writings. Eschew affectation, Mr. Poe. It is a blot upon genius as well as upon beauty.

And in a notice of the Messenger under the heading Our Table, probably from the pen of the editor, Horace Greeley The New Yorker (Dec. 12, 1835, whole No. 90, p. 1 1-2) said — “Scraps from an Unpublished Drama, by Edgar A. Poe “contains one or two stirring and many beautiful passages — but we are not partial to dramatic poetry.”

Besides these printed criticisms, there were some strictures made on the versification, by judge Beverley Tucker, whose letter Dec. 5, 1835 to Poe, is printed (H. xvii, 21-24), but Poe's reply defending his meter has not been published, altho’ it was read at the opening ceremonies of the Poe Shrine at Richmond, April 26, 1922. Poe's remarks are not very specific but resemble those on verse in his S. L. M. review of Bryant, January 1837 (H. ix 268 f.) [page 81:]

Of other contemporary criticisms and allusions to the play few survive. Of Poe's other correspondents only Eveleth seems to have mentioned the play, in a letter to Poe, January 19, 1847 (see my edition of The Letters from Geo. W. Eveleth, p. 11) — this with a few harsh words in a letter from Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning, Jan. 26, 1846 (Letters Harper & Bros. 1899, p. 429), the unkindly remarks in the London Atheneum Feb. 28, 1846 (No. 957, p. 215) and a passing reference in Hiram Fuller's attack on Poe in the N. Y. Evening Mirror, May 26, 1846, comprise all the notices which I have found.

In my notes I have pointed out the certain or probable imitations of or references to the play in the works of Chivers, English, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Whitman. Passing to more recent opinions, beyond those mentioned elsewhere in this book I may note that while James Hannay (The Poetical Works of .... Poe, London 1853, p. 73) characterized the play as “a juvenile production and the least meritorious work Poe has left,” Professor J. P. Fruit (The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry, New York, 1899, p. 108) says it shows Poe's “ability to appreciate dramatic situations.” See also Stoddard, Memoir, p. 73, and Campbell, p. 229. It is perhaps worth noting that the old selections have been translated into French, Italian, and German.

[page 82, unnumbered:]

THE VERSE

Poe's blank verse in Politian is extraordinarily free. It is true, the rule of five stresses to a line is scrupulously preserved — there are few cases of fragmentary lines, except the first and last lines of scenes, or where a cancellation has caused the break — and there are scarce half a dozen lines of prose in the play. The following passages deserve comment: — I, 97 and 99 are probably prose, II, 55-57 is arranged as Poe wrote it, though the meter is uncertain, as it is in VIII, 7-8. Since Poe avoided imperfect lines I count the beginning of the song as part of VI, 79. Finally, while I have not ventured to change Poe's text, I would point out that it might be more correct, metrically, to divide II, 102-103 “why don’t/You bring etc” and V, 30-31 “Baldazzar having / Just etc.” But with the preservation of stress, the conventionality ends. About one third of the lines have feminine terminations (a very high rate, though less than Fletcher's) and about two fifths of all lines contain one or more resolutions of the iambus each. Poe resolves especially where two vowels come together, and where the speaker is changed within the verse, but does not confine himself to such cases. He has a tendency to balance irregularities in adjacent lines, as well as feminine endings. The very few lines ending in a definite trisyllable (usually the name Lalage) are otherwise very regular, only two out of nineteen showing resolutions in my count. The use of a pause to replace a syllable is very rare. There is no attempt to end speeches with a full line — Poe almost seems to prefer transitions within the verse, and divides some lines between several speakers.

There are, I think, but two or three intentional rhymes, but a curious jingling phrase in VII, 42 should be noticed, for such things appealed to Poe and he sought after them.

The verse of the last scene (XI) is far more conventional than that of the rest of the play, and I regard its low proportion of resolutions (one-tenth) and of feminine endings (one-fifth) as compared with the rest of the play as an added indication that the Coliseum is an earlier poem incorporated in the play, for Poe's later blank verse is only slightly if at all more regular than most portions of Politian. Almost all Poe's later blank verse dates from 1847-1848, To Helen, To M. L. S —; and To ——— (Not long ago etc.)though he wrote five lines in 1844-5 (H. xii, 24).

It seems to me that while often following Shakespeare closely, Poe was moderately successful in his attempt to reproduce “with some improvements” the verse of such Jacobean writers as Ford whose work he knew through Lamb's Specimens, and in the best portions of the play, he has perhaps “almost if not quite conquered the dangerous redundance of blank verse” as Saintsbury, History of English Prosody, iii, 485, says he has done in To Helen. Certainly the close of Scene IV is forcible, such a passage as VI, 39 f is very lovely, and that at VII, 53 is indeed thrillingly beautiful. [page 83:]

Although no mention of Politian is made in Prof. C. Alphonso Smith's study, Repetition and Parallelism in English Verse, pp. 44-56, there are many cases of repetition and parallelism even in this play, though less than in some of Poe's later lyrics.

In particular one should examine I, 13-16, 23-24, 28-29, S9-61, 109-111; II, 74-80, 114-115; IV, 3-4, 24-25, 59-60, 83 f, 93 f; V, S9-61; VI, 16-17, 108-109; VII, 1-2, 12-13, 21-22, 55-56, 91 f; VIII, 34-37; IX, 73-74; X, 32-33 XI, 17-19, 22-30, 33-37, 47-51, 55. While this includes the more notable passages, this list is not exhaustive, and an interesting example in the cancelled passage after IX, 44 should be pointed out.

There is perhaps room for a thorough study of Poe's prosody (Mr. Saintsbury's remarks though excellent, are few) and fortunately we have a synopsis of Poe's own views on the subject in The Rationale of Verse, an essay based on a careful observation of his own practice. When the study is made however, the student will do well to remember that Poe's verse came first and theories later, and that these theories changed somewhat with the years, as is apparent to any one reading the remarks on verse in Poe's review of Bryant, S. L. M. January 1837, (H. ix, 268 f), and in Some Notes on English Verse in Lowell's Pioneer March, 1843 (i, 102) compared with the Rationale (of 1848.) That the Rationale did not give Poe's final views is shown by his violation of one of his own dicta (H. xiv, 247) in 1849 in l. 91 of The Bells.

[page 84, unnumbered:]

APPENDIX I
 
On Chivers’ “Conrad and Eudora”

Through the courtesy of Mr. H. L. Koopman, Librarian of Brown University, I have recently examined the copy of Dr. Chivers’ Conrad and Eudora in the Harris Collection. It is a small 12 mo of 144 pages with title page reading as follows: — “Conrad and Eudora; | or, | the death of Alonzo. | A Tragedy. | In five acts. | Founded on the murder of Sharp, by Beauchamp, | in Kentucky. | — | By Thomas Holley Chivers, M. D. Philadelphia. | 1834.” The play occupies pp. [5]-82, the rest of the volume containing a collection of lyrics under the title Songs of the Heart. Chivers (who had studied medicine at Transylvania University) probably learned of the story while in Kentucky, and keeps the scene of his drama there, rarely altering the original facts. Considering that both plays have a single series of incidents as a common basis, surprisingly few parallels can be found. The similarity between the scenes (Conrad and Eudora III, i and ii; Politian IX) describing the preliminary encounters of Sharp and Beauchamp, is due to the fact both poets kept close to the Confession. Chivers’ play is less strange than his later work, but the lack of a publisher's name argues that the volume was privately printed. It is very unlikely that Poe knew of the little book when he wrote Politian, for his friendship with Chivers was not begun until much later.

[pages 85-89:]

INDEX

[The Index aims to include all persons named in the book, save those merely thanked for aid, and those publishers mentioned only in the interest of bibliographical accuracy. References to Poe's other writings, to periodicals, and a few topical references have been added.]

A

Abbreviations: 40.

Abraham: 78.

Adams, John Quincy: 59.

Addison: 75.

Æsop: 65.

Aidenn: 74.

Amenhotep III: 79.

America: 26.

American Folk Lore: 57.

Anderson Galleries: 44.

Antony: 68, 69.

Apollo: 62.

Atheneum (London): 81.

Autograph (N. Y.): 44, 49.

Azrael: 31, 74.

B

Balbec: 77.

Ballads: 57.

Baltimore Saturday Visiter: 43 etc.

Beauchamp, Jereboam O.: 51 etc.

Beauchamp, Jereboam: uncle of preceding, 52.

Beaumont and Fletcher: 63.

Bellay: 79.

Bensley: 68.

Benton, Joel: 73.

Beuchot: 77.

Bible, Poe's: 72.

Bibliography: 43 f.

Bibliophile (London): 44.

Bielfeld: 73.

Bigongiari, Dino: 60.

Blair, Robert: 66.

Brainerd: 71.

Broadway Journal: 43 etc.

Broglie, duc de: 60.

Brownings, the: 81.

Bryant, W. C.: 66, 80, 83.

Burns, Robert: 66.

Burns, Wm.: 61.

Burton: 63.

Burton's Magazine: 56.

Byron, Lord: 59, 60.

C

Caesar: 38.

Calcondila: 59.

Campbell, Killis: 56 and passim.

Campbell, Thos.: 78.

Capps, Edward: 66.

Carlyle, Thos.: 73.

Castiglione: 60.

Catullus: 68, 70.

Chaldea: 78.

Chaldees: 37, 78.

Chamberlayne: 61, 72.

Chapman: 65.

Charmian: 65.

Chivers, T. H.: 56, 61, 81.

Christ: 78.

Clason, Isaac Starr: 57.

Clemm, Mrs.: 72.

Cleopatra: 65.

Cloud, C. F.: 76.

Cobb, Palmer: 73.

Coleridge: 66, 73.

Columbus: 26, 45, 73.

Combs, J. H.: 57.

Cook, Ann, wife of Beauchamp: 51 etc.

Cook, Mary: sister of Ann, 72.

Cosmopolitan Art Journal: 62.

Criticisms of Politian: 80.

Criticisms by Poe listed under persons criticised.

Cromwell, Mrs. R. H.: 72.

D

Dana, J. G.: 53.

Darby, P. H.: 52, 53, 65.

Date of composition of play: 58.

Date of play: 45.

Democratic Review: 64, 70.

Dido: 74.

Diogenes Laertius: 78.

doggerel by Poe: 62.

Dondore, Dorothy: 56.

Dryden: iv, 61.

Dudley: 60.

Duyckinck: 57.

E

Eames, Wilberforce: 52.

Elizabeth, Queen: 60.

Ellet, Mrs. E. F.: 79.

Elliot, Wm.: 69.

Emendations, editor's: 45.

Emendations, Poe's: 46-50.

Emmet, Robert: 60.

English, T. D.: 69, 81.

Eos: 79.

“Eternal city”: 69.

Eveleth, G. W.: 61, 81.

Eyraco: 78.

F

Fletcher: 63, 82.

folksongs: 57.

Ford, John: 82.

Foscolo, Ugo: 61.

French, John C.: 76.

Fruit, J. P.: 81.

Fuller, Hiram: 81.

G

Garnett, Richard: iv.

Gaunt: 78.

Gayley: 79.

Geraldine: 60.

German: Poe's knowledge of, 72.

Gethsemane: 37, 78.

The Gift for 1836: 73, 77.

Gill, W.F.: 77.

Godey's Lady's Book: 56 etc.

Goethe: 72, 73.

Gove-Nichols, Mrs.: 70.

Graham, J. Lorimer: 41.

Graham's Magazine: 55 etc.

Grammar, bad: 63.

Gray, Thos.: Elegy 77, 79.

Greeley, Horace: 80.

Green, Duff: 80.

Griswold, R. W.: 43, 50, 56, 77.

Gruener, Gustav: 73.

Guendel, G. Edmund: iv.

H

Hale, Sarah J.: 43, 57, 77.

Hannay, James: 81.

Harrison: 81.

Heberton: 54.

Hermon, Mt.: 65.

Hewitt, John H.: 76, 77.

Hirst, Henry B.: 79.

Hoffman, Charles Fenno: 54, 55, 56, 60, 74.

Hoffman, E. T. A.: 73.

Homer: 60, 64, 79.

Horace: 59.

Howard, Claire: 60.

Howard, Henry: 60.

Hughes, W. L.: iv, 61, 64, 65.

I

Ingram, John H.: iii, 42, 44, 51.

Iras: 65.

Irving, Washington: 73.

J

Jackson, Andrew: 80.

James, C. E.: 54.

Johnson, L. F.: 54.

Julian of Egypt: 65.

K

Keats, John: 63.

Kendall, Amos: 54.

Kennedy, John P.: 58, 76.

King's Classical and Foreign Quotations: 68.

L

Ladies’ Garland: 79.

Lais: 65.

Lamb, Chas.: 65, 82.

Landor, W. S.: 59.

Lascari, Giov.: 59.

Latrobe, J. H. B.: 76.

Lauvrière: 61, 67, 79.

Leaf, Walter: 66.

Leicester: 60.

Lewis, “Monk”: 73.

Lewis, Mrs. S. A.: iii, 49, 69, 70, 72, 81.

Lipsius: 68.

Longfellow: 64, 71, 72, 73.

Lowell, J. R.: 77, 83.

Lucas, E. V.: iii.

Lungo, Isidoro del: 59.

M

Mackail: 66.

MacMichael, Mary E.: 56.

Madigan: 44, 49.

Magazine of History: 56.

Manly, John M.: 62.

Marlowe: 74.

Marston: 65.

Marullo: 59.

Mathews, Cornelius: 68.

Memnon: 38, 78.

Meter: 61, 82.

Miller, James H.: 76.

Milton, John.

Moore, F. G.: 69.

Moore, Thos.: 68, 71, 78.

Morgan, J. P.: iii, 43.

Mowatt, Anna Cora: 61.

N

Nero: 78.

nevermore: 62.

New English Dictionary: 61, 75.

Newspapers.

Noah, M. M.: 80.

Notes and Queries: 68.

O

Opera heroine: 75.

Osgood, Mrs. F. S.: 62.

Ovid: 59, 69.

P

Peele, Geo.: 65.

Perrow, E. C.: 57.

Persepolis: 77.

Philes, Geo. P.: 73.

Pioneer: 83.

Plato: 65.

Plutarch: 65, 68.

Poe, Edgar A., his

Poetry of the Sentiments: 43, 50.

Poets’ Offering: 43, 50.

Poets and Poetry of America: 43, 50.

Poliziano, Angel: 59, 60.

Pouder, Wm. P.: 76.

Prose Writers of America: 56.

punctuation: 41.

puns: 62.

Q

Quevedo: 69.

R

Radcliffe, Mrs.: 61.

rhyme: 71, 82.

Rice, Miss S. S.: 76.

R—n, Ellen: 52, 66.

R—n, W.: 52.

Rossetti, W. M.: iii.

Royster, Sarah Elmira: 59.

Rufus, Wm., of Charleston: 60.

S

Saintsbury, G. E.: 82, 83.

Salerno wine: 63.

Sallengré: 66.

Saturday Evening Post: 43, 74.

Scala, Alessandra: 59.

Scott, Eliza T.: 52.

Scott, Sir Walter: 60, 73.

Seip, Miss E. C.: 76.

Servius: 62.

Sibyl: 62.

Sharp, Eliza T. S.: 52, 54, 71.

Sharp, Leander J.: 54.

Sharp, Solomon P.: 51 etc.

Shearin, H. G.: 56, 57.

Shelley, P. B.: iii, 59, 69, 70, 77, 79.

Shirley, James: 59.

Sidney, Sir Philip: 60.

Sigourney, Mrs.: 78.

Simms, Wm. G.: 55, 56.

Smith, C. Alphonso: 57, 83.

Sources of plot: 51.

Sources of text: 41.

Southern Literary Messenger: 43 etc.

Southern Magazine: 44.

Spenser, Edmund: 60, 79.

Standard Dictionary: 61.

Stedman, E. C.: 44.

Stoddard, R. H.: 70, 76, 81.

Surrey: 60.

T

Tadmor: 77.

Tennyson: 69.

Text: 41 f.

Theognis: 65.

Thomas, F. W.: 73.

Thomas, R. S.: 53.

Tibullus: 69.

Ticknor, Caroline: 59.

Tithonus: 78.

Translations of Politian: 81.

Trent W. P.: 57, 67.

Transactions of the American Philological Association: 69.

Tucker, Beverley: 70, 80.

V

Valentine Museum letters: 58.

Van Hook: 66.

Variorum: 46.

Vatican: 32, 49.

velvet, Genoa: 74.

Ventidius: 68.

Vergil: 62, 68.

Verse: 81.

Voltaire: 77.

W

Walsh, R. A.: 60.

Warton, Thos.: 78.

Webster: 65.

Wells, H. W.: 68.

White, H. Kirke: 67.

White, T. W.: 41, 58, 76.

Whitman, Mrs. S. H.: 59, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 81.

Whitty, J. H.: 44, 70.

Williamson: 61.

Wilmer, L. A.: 67, 76, 80.

Wilton, Henry (pen-name): 76.

Woodberry, G. E.: 62.

Woodbridge, Miss A. D.: 69.

Wordsworth, Wm.: 66, 68, 70, 78, 79.

Wyatt, Sir Thos.: 60, 70.

Z

Zecchin: 63.