Text: H. H. J, “E. A. Poe: An Unnoticed Plagiarism,” The Academy (London, UK), vol. LXXVIII, whole no. 1990, June 25, 1910, pp. 612-613

[page 612, column 2, continued:]

THE Edinburgh Review of January, this year, by its really appreciative style, naturally pleased his countrymen in its criticism of Poe. Less successful was the London symposium, which toasted his memory without tasting his quality, on the occasion of the centenary of Edgar's birth, January 19, 1809. But neither the review nor the banqueters — nor, indeed, anyone up to date — has noticed what I found by accident: the source of “The Doomed City “ (1831), called “ The City in the Sea “ when re-edited in 1845. And yet such source should be well known in both Great Britain and the United States, which are nothing if not Bible-reading. For the poem beginning “Lo! Death hath reared himself a throne” is an imitation of Isaiah, xiv., first part. Before pointing this out in detail, I may remark on the immense gain which the 1845 recension gave to the 1831 copy by re-arrangement, by omission of the third stanza (“A heaven that God . . . .”) [page 613:] and by throwing overboard: the last two lines beginning “And Death to some more happy clime . . . “ this jetson lets the poem close full on the diapason of concentrated bitter scorn: —

Now we can turn to Isaiah, xiv., 9: “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to. meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; | it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.” In the next verse but one (11) is the “noise ‘of the viols,” with the “pomp,” answering to Poe's “the “ viol and the vine,” or “ the viol, the violet, and the vine,” ‘in 1831 and 1845 respectively.

The title “Doomed City” (1831)) suits the poem better than “The City in the Sea” (1845), as both Isaiah and Poe tell us, in good set terms, that Babylon is meant, the former in verse 4 and the latter in

The American also refers to the hanging gardens of the Chaldean capital on the Euphrates: —

Again, “The waves have now a redder glow” shows us nothing less than Isaiah's “ golden city” (4). This whole passage of Isaiah — Israel's “triumphant insultation over Babel,” as the A.V. calls it — is evidently the “ Quelle” of | “The Doomed City.” And, given Poe's love of mystification, the points seemingly opposed to this view count for but little. Thus, I may be reminded that Poe's third line locates the city

which does not suit Babylon. But this poem is a companion to “The Valley Nis” (1831), rechristened “The Valley of Unrest” (1845). This lies as far as the day

As Nis, then, is east, so “The Doomed City” is

even as Homer's Hades, the Hesperides or Atlantis. One poem is of the right and one of the left hand. Poe's Babylon is Hades, as well as the City on El Frat, which river is, in Eastern style, a sea in the 1845 version of the verses. But that Edgar Allan “se crée ce monde surnaturel de ses propres suggestions,” as Dr. Emile Lauvriére says (p. 343), is not true; if anyone will read the major prophet here he can see that it is not true. The passage is a famous one (xiv., 4 — 23), and contains the celebrated “feller” and the oft-quoted English hexameter : —

Thus admirers of Poe and of Elizabethan English should have observed this adaptation by the Virginian of the son of Amoz. But the French docteur és lettres and professeur agrégé puts down the “ Valley of Nis” and the “ Doomed City” to alcohol and opium! And quotes De Quincey's “ Confessions,” instead of the seer of visions concerning Judah and Jerusalem; Baudelaire's “Fleurs du Mal,” instead of him who is perhaps the finest of the old Hebrew prophets.

In conclusion, I may perhaps illustrate this adaptation by Poe (of Isaiah) by another (of the same) by Longfellow. As no critic has hitherto noticed Poe's indebtedness, so Poe was unaware apparently of his countryman's use of the same seer. In his “Poetic Principle” he says of Longfellow's proem to “The Waif”: “the idea of the last quatrain is also very effective.” Now, this quatrain is: —

But “the idea” of the simile is Hezekiah's: — “Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent “ (xxxviii., 12.)

H. H. J.