Text: Charles Gordon Greene (???), “[Comment on Poe's performance at the Boston Lyceum],” Boston Post (Boston, MA), vol. XXVIII, no. 12, January 14, 1846, p. 1, col. 6

[page 1, column 6:]

The Knickerbocker for January. Boston: Jordan & Wiley — Our old friend of the Knickerbocker begins the year in his best style. [[. . .]]

One of the best sober contributions to the number is Polygon's “Elder and Modern Poetry of England” — it is a very elegant paper and it contains an excellent estimate of Byron and Wordsworth. “Our Knickerbocker Fathers,” “Ned Buntline's Life Yarn,” “A Dissertation on Sacks,” “Adventures of a Yankee Doodle,” and “Peter Funk's Revenge,” are the other prose articles of the number. We come now to the “literary notices,” commencing with a very fair critique on the “Poem of Mr Poe.” By the way, the Knickerbocker says, “we have heard, that in the paper of which he (Mr Poe) is editor, he has stated that he wrote ‘Al Aaraaf,’ the poem with which he professes to have humbugged the Bostonians, in his tenth year.” Now in reference to this “humbugging,” the plain truth is as follows. Mr Poe delivered a poem which he said was not “didactic,” before a large audience in this city. He spoke in a baby voice, and but a very small proportion of those present could have heard more than one word in ten, while very could have told whether the piece was prose or verse, had it not been for the sing-song reading of the author. Among those who did hear it, there was but one opinion of its demerits, during its delivery, as expressed b y nods, winks, smiles and yawns. Nearly if not quite half the audience actually left the hall ere the conclusion of the reading, and those who remained were actuated by feelings of politeness towards a stranger, who, though sadly disappointing them, had done perhaps as well as he was able. If Mr Poe has ever humbugged anybody in this city into the believe that what he delivered was poetry, because it came from him, we should like to see the person. It is true that the audience did not know that the poem was written in the “tenth year” of the author — they knew only that it was sad stuff. Moreover, we defy Mr Poe to find twenty people in the land out of his immediate circle, (if he has one,) a majority of whom have ever seen or heard of half ot the verses he has manufactured. Let us hear no more of this “humbugging” the Bostonians, who from kindly feelings to a stranger, heard in silence that which they knew was balderdash, or who silently left a place from which they felt the “poet” ought to have been expelled. And yet he boasts of his conduct!

But to come to a more pleasant topic. The Editor's Table contains a capital story upon the “abolition of capital punishment.” It is a fine thing [[. . .]]