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3. James Aldrich
James Aldrich (1810-1856), born in Suffolk County, New York, spent most of his life in New York City. Here he established himself as a merchant, but soon withdrew from business and turned to literary work. In September, 1834, he established the Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles-Lettres, which expired six months later. In 1836 he married Matilda Lyon of Newport, Rhode Island. He became an assistant editor to Park Benjamin on the New World in 1842 and, following a trip to Europe, returned to that position in 1843. In addition to his contributions to that periodical, he occasionally wrote poetry for the Knickerbocker and Graham's and reviews for Freeman Hunt's Merchants’ Magazine. Little is known concerning his later years other than that he was employed for a time by the Home Journal. He apparently made no collection of his works.(1) [page 301:]
Poe's comments on Aldrich are concerned almost exclusively with the insinuation that in writing “A Death Bed” Aldrich had plagiarized from a similar poem by Thomas Hood entitled “The Death Bed.” In reviewing Longfellow's The Waif in the Mirror for January 14, 1845, Poe printed the two poems with the observation that “somebody is a thief.”(2) On February 15 Briggs came to the defense of his friend Aldrich in the Broadway Journal(3) in an article which elicited from Poe a counter reply in the Mirror. Here Poe again presented the poems, pointing out nine “identities” in the two brief compositions.(4) In the Journal for March 22, replying to “Outis,” an anonymous defender of both Aldrich and Longfellow against Poe's charges of plagiarism, he printed the poems once more, now finding fifteen points of correspondence between them.(5) In his lengthy reply to “Outis,” Poe maintained, with technical accuracy, that he had accused, not Aldrich, but either Aldrich or Hood of plagiarism.(6) But, as he probably intended, the stigma of the charge fell on Aldrich. [page 302:] Poe perhaps knew or suspected that Hood's poem had been published long before Aldrich's.(7)
In concluding his remarks on the subject in the Journal, Poe stated that he had made “no charge of moral delinquency against either Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Aldrich, or Mr. Hood” and offered an explanation for “plagiarism” which makes of it a virtue:
... the poetic sentiment ... implies a peculiarly, perhaps an abnormally keen appreciation of the beautiful, with a longing for its assimilation, or absorption, into poetic identity. What the poet intensely admires, becomes thus, in very fact, although only partially, a portion of his own intellect The poet is thus possessed by another's thoughts, and cannot be said to take of it, possession. But he thoroughly feels it as his own — and this feeling is counteracted only by the sensible presence of its true, palpable origin in the volume from which he has derived it — an origin, which, in the long lapse of years it is almost impossible not to forget — for in the mean time the thought itself is forgotten. But the frailest association will regenerate it — it springs up with all the vigor of a new birth — its absolute originality is not even a matter of suspicion — and when the poet has written it and printed it, and on its account is charged with plagiarism, there will be no one in the world more entirely astounded than himself. Now from what I have said it will be evident that the liability to accidents of this character is in the direct ratio of the poetic sentiment — of the susceptibility to the poetic impression; and in fact all literary history demonstrates that, for the most frequent and palpable plagiarisms, we must search the works of the most eminent poets.(8)
Such unconscious reproduction does not appear to be the sort of plagiarism Poe had in mind when he called “somebody” a thief. Perhaps his re-definition of the term was an effort to [page 303:] retire with some grace from an argument which had failed to convince.
Poe continued to associate Aldrich with the less culpable type of plagiarism. In the Democratic Review for April, 1846, he wrote that he thought Aldrich “guilty of plagiarism in the first degree.” But, again noting that “all great poets have been gross imitators,” he added that Aldrich's “penchant for imitation does not show him to be incapable of poetry — as some have asserted. It is my own belief that, at some future day, he will distinguish himself as a lyrist.”(9) The prophecy did not reappear in the “Literati” sketch of Aldrich, where Poe reiterated the charge of plagiarism, in his special sense of the term, and ridiculed Aldrich's slight poetic output.(10)
Poe appears to have had no personal acquaintance with Aldrich.(11)
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 300, running to the bottom of page 301:]
1 R. W. Griswold, Poets and Poetry of America (1842), p. 383; the data on Aldrich in the sketch of Park Benjamin, the Duyckincks’ Cyclopaedia (1880), II, 344; the National Cyclopaedia, IX, 474; Appletons' Cyclopaedia; John Howard Brown, ed., The Cyclopaedia of American Biographies, Boston, 1897-1903, I, 53; Derby, op. cit., p. 23l; and Merle M. Hoover, Park Benjamin; Poet & Editor, New York, 1948, pp. 123-126.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 301:]
2 Poe's account of the affair in the Broadway Journal, I, 147-148 (March 8, 1845); Works, XII, 41-44.
3 I, 109.
4 Broadway Journal, I, 148 (March 8, 1845); Works, XII, 45-46.
5 I, 181-182; Works, XII, 79.
6 I, 163, 181 (March 15, 22, 1845); Works, XII, 65, 79.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 302:]
7 Hood's poem was copied into the Mirror, IX, 360 (May 12, 1832); Aldrich's verses were published as original in the quarto edition of the New World, II, 353 (May 29, 1841).
8 I, 211, 212 (April 5, 1845); Works, XII, 105-106.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 303:]
9 XVIII, 269-270; Works, XVI, 96-97.
10 Godey's, XXXIII, 16-17 (July, 1846); Works, XV, 62-64.
11 A writer for the Mirror, probably Briggs or Hiram Fuller, remarked that in the “Literati” papers Poe “amusingly says of this gentleman [Aldrich] and Mr. Cary, that there is ‘nothing remarkable’ about their persons. The truth is, Mr. Poe knows no more about them than of the man in the moon” (IV, 203; July 4, 1846).
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - PNYL, 1954] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe and the New York Literati (Reece)