∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
One of Poe's early footnotes deserves collection here. We now know that his quotations from memory were sometimes extraordinarily free; for example, his mottoes for “William Wilson” and “The Gold-Bug” bear only the slightest resemblance to their “originals.” It is quite likely that they were composed by Poe himself. The language of the quotation in Poe's note on “Al Aaraaf,” II, 124, definitely resembles the Chattertonian jargon in the wholly imagined story of The Mad Tryst in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and may be “quoted” for a similar creation. See Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829), p. 31; Poems (1831), p. 101; and The Raven and Other Poems (1845), pp. 67-68. The two earlier versions show slight misprints; but there are no author's changes in the final text here reprinted:
I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am now unable to obtain and quote from memory: — “The verie essence and, as it were, springe-heade and origine of all musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of the forest do make when they growe.”
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:1 - TOM2T, 1978] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions-The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (T. O. Mabbott) (An Old English Tale)