Text: John Neal to Edgar Allan Poe — June 8, 1840

Portland, June 8, ‘40.

My dear Sir,

Yours of June 4, directed to New York, reached me but yesterday. I am glad to hear of your new enterprise and hope it may be all that you desire; but I cannot help you. I have done with the newspapers — have abandoned the journals — and have involved so many of my friends of late by becoming editor, or associate editor of so many different things for a few months at a time — and always against my will — that I haven’t the face to ask any person to subscribe for anything on earth.

But, as I have said before, I wish you success, and to prove it — allow me to caution you against a style which I observe to my great alarm is beginning to prevail at the South. You say “I will be pardoned,” for I shall be pardoned. “For assurance that I will fulfil” &c., for shall &c. Are you Irish — or have you associated much with the Irish — the well-educated Irish I mean? They always make this mistake, and the Scotch too sometimes; and you, I am persuaded, are either connected by blood or habits with the Irish of the South. Forgive me this liberty I pray you, and take it for granted that I should not complain of these two little errors, if I could find anything else to complain of.

Yours truly,
John Neal