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The Case of the Sublime Purloin; or
Burke’s Inquiry as the Source of an Anecdote in “The Purloined Letter”

S. L. Varnado

University of South Alabama

A passage from Edmund Burke’s famous esthetic treatise A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) may be the source for a short anecdote that Poe integrates into “The Purloined Letter.” It will be recalled that in Poe’s tale the detective-hero Dupin relates a story about an eight-year-old boy who is proficient at a guessing game called “even and odd.” The boy’s uncanny skill is due to his trick of gauging his opponent’s mental powers by closely imitating their facial expressions. In Poe’s account, Dupin explains the boy’s method as follows:

The anecdote is not original with Poe. It is, in fact, based on a legendary event in the heresy trial of the sixteenth-century [column 2:] philosopher Tommaso Campanella, whom Poe mentions. Several accounts of Campanella’s trick are in existence, including that of Cyrano de Bergerac, as Professor T. O. Mabbott points out (2). The version of the story that Poe seems to follow, however, is that of Burke. Burke writes:

External evidence that Poe adapted his anecdote from Burke is inconclusive, although Poe was evidently familiar with the general body of Burke’s political writing, for he refers knowledgeably to it several times in his critical reviews; and once, in a review, he quotes from a passage referring to the Inquiry (4).

The internal evidence is stronger. A comparison of the two passages suggests several similarities of thought and structure. It will be noted that in Poe’s version the boy’s answer begins with a “when” clause; so does Burke’s account. Each sentence contains a series of direct objects; there is a similar subject-verb-complement relation in both sentences (”I fashion the expression of my face” / “he composed his face”), and a similar adverbial modifier (”as accurately as possible” / “as nearly as he could”), and a similar conclusion to the main sentence (”and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise” / “and then carefully observed what turn of mind he seemed to acquire” ).

If Burke’s version of the tale is indeed Poe’s source, we are perhaps able to learn a bit about Poe’s method of “adapting” his sources. Poe’s account, while similar to Burke in decorum and polish, is more concrete. For Burke’s somewhat abstract phrase “When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations” Poe substitutes “When I wished to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one.” In place of Burke’s phrase “he was able to enter into the dispositions and thoughts of people,” Poe uses “and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart. . . .” The changes one sees are, in the main, only those necessary to turn the anecdote into a part of the work of fiction.

NOTES

(1)  The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison (New York, 1902), VI, 41.

(2)  The Selected Prose and Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. T. O. Mabbott (New York, 1951), p. 424n.

(3)  “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Boston, 1826), I, 178-179. Burke cites the “Récherches d ’Antiquité” [Lyon, 1683] of [Jacob] Spon as his source for the “curious story of the celebrated physiognomist Campanella.” I cite this 1826 American edition of Burke’s Works [”Re-printed from the Last London Edition”] as the one to which Poe would most likely have had access.

(4)  Works, IX, 31, see also X, 173, and especially VIII, 328, where Poe discusses, interestingly enough, the physiognomy of Burke.