Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), May 3, 1845, vol. 1, no. 18, p. ???-???

[page 286, column 2, continued:]

POPULAR LECTURES. — We looked into some forty or fifty exchange papers one day last week, and found in every one of them, from city and country, Mrs. Caudle's lectures from Punch. This led us first to read them and then to reflect on the cause of their popularity. They are evidently a hit. Yet they possess no particular interest, no story, no plot, no wit, no puns, nothing thrilling or exciting, but only a few little touches of nature which have found admission into every heart at which they have knocked. We will venture to assert that no lady will see anything to admire or laugh at in Mrs. Caudle's lectures. But they are immensely popular among husbands, who have all heard something like them, and out of pure spite to their Mrs. CaudIes, all who have newspapers under their control, publish the lectures to let the world into secrets that they dare not directly divulge. Leman Blanchard has been named as the author of these popular lectures, but that is an error: they are by another hand. Let him be who he may, he relates his own experiences; there is more truth in Mrs. Caudle's curtain lectures than in any course of scientific lectures that we are acquainted with. Dr. Lardner's were not half so popular because they were not half so true.