[page 147, continued:]

TO ISAAC LEA

This was written, probably impromptu, in a letter to the publisher Isaac Lea, not long before May 27, 1829, when it was docketed as answered. It was published in transcript with a photographic facsimile by A. H. Quinn in his Edgar Allan Poe (1941), pages 138-143. The “cause” is poetry, and the language of the marriage service of the Church of England is echoed in the verses. Lea (1792-1886) was the son-in-law and partner of the noted publisher Matthew Carey, and the letter concerned a plan (which came to nothing) to have the firm of Carey and Lea publish the Al Aaraaf volume.