Point Lampoon, directed against one of the minor officers at the United States Military Academy who had aroused the poet's displeasure; (4) Lines to Louisa, some crude verses perhaps inspired by the poet's scorn of the second Mrs. Allan; (5) Spiritual Song, a skit of three lines discovered in manuscript in the desk used by Poe while editing the Southern Literary Messenger;1 (6) The Great Man, likewise found in Poe's desk in a manuscript believed to be in his handwriting, but extremely crude and halting;2 (7) To Sarah, a poem which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in August, 1835, above the pseudonym "Sylvio"; (8) Ballad, published anonymously in the Southern Literary Messenger for the same month; (9) a fragment of a campaign song said to have been written by Poe during a visit to New York in 1843 or 1844; (10) Impromptu: To Kate Carol, four lines printed in the Broadway Journal in March, 1845, and inspired by Mrs. Osgood; (11) The Departed, printed in the Broadway Journal for July 12, 1845;3 (12) The Divine Right of Kings, printed in Graham's Magazine for October, 1845; (13) Stanzas, published in Graham's Magazine for December, 1845; and (14) a poem subscribed with Poe's initials and published in an obscure periodical, The Symposia, at Providence, in 1848.*

Three other poems that have been attributed to Poe, but on evidence that is extremely slender, are: (1) Enigma, first published in the Philadelphia Casket in May, 1827, and later copied, with minor changes, in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in May, 1840; (2) The Skeleton Hand, published in the Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette in August, 1829; and (3) The Magician, published in the same magazine in December, 1829.5

1 See Whitty, pp. 138, 283 f.

2 Ibid., pp. 143, 285 f.

8 Attributed to Poe by Thomas Holley Chivers (see the Waverley Magazine, July 30, 1853).

4 For further particulars as to these items see the Notes.

5 See, for a statement of the grounds for doubting the genuineness of these items, an article by the present editor, entitled "The Poe Canon," in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, September, 1912 (XXVII, pp. 325-353).

The list of poems given to Poe in error include the following: (1) several short pieces signed "Edgar" contained in a volume of miscellaneous articles in prose and verse edited by Elizabeth Chase and published at Baltimore in 1821; (2) Hymn in Honor of Harmodius and Aristogiton, a translation published in the Southern Literary Messenger for December, 1835 (II, p. 38), and attributed to Poe by several of his editors, but claimed by Lucian Minor in the Messenger for March, 1848 (XIV, p. 185); (3) Hood's sonnet, Silence, published by Poe in Burton's Magazine (V, p. 144) above his own initial;1 (4) four short poems by A. M. Ide tentatively attributed to Poe on the theory that " Ide" was perhaps a pseudonym used by Poe; (5) The Mammoth Squash, a hoax at Poe's expense, published in the Philadelphia Aristidean for October, 1845; (6) Lavante, a satire in verse, attributed to Poe in the belief that it was the critical treatise on American writers on which Poe was at work in the forties, but which was never published as such; 2 (7) a parody of The Raven by Harriet Winslow; (8) a fragment of Mrs. Lewis's poem, The Forsaken; (9) Lilitha, in imitation of Ulalume, written by F. G. Fairfield; (10) The Fire-Fiend, an imitation at once of The Bells and of The Raven, composed by C. D. Gardette; (11) Leonainie, an early poem of James Whitcomb Riley's; and (12) Rupert and Madelon, a fragment of Mrs. Osgood's Woman's Trust, a Dramatic Sketch.3

It is possible that other poems besides those now ascribed to Poe will ultimately be brought to light, but it is not likely that

1 See the New York Nation for December 30, 1909, and January 20, 1910.

2 See p. xxiv, above.

3 See the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, XXVII, pp. 329 f., for further particulars as to most of these items. The fragment from Mrs. Osgood was included by J. P. Kennedy in Autograph Leaves of our Country's Authors, Baltimore, 1864. Among other items that have been ascribed to Poe are two pieces of doggerel, Kelah and The Murderer, variously attributed to Poe in American periodical publications about 1890, and a not unclever hoax, My Soul, composed by a student of the University of Virginia (see the Richmond Times-Dispatch for January 17, 1909).

they will include anything of importance. There is a tradition that Poe exhibited to a Richmond schoolmaster, in 1823, a manuscript volume of verses,1 which he wished Mr. Allan to have published; but these-granting the tradition to be true- were probably either worked over for the volume of 1827 or discarded. He is said to have delivered an ode of his own composition on the retirement of Master Clarke as principal of his school in Richmond in 1823;2 and there is mention of a youthful satire on the members of a debating society in Richmond with which he was connected, and of some lines To Mary, published in a Baltimore newspaper early in the thirties.*

III. THE TEXT OF POE'S POEMS

The problem of text is one of the most perplexing with which the editor of Poe is confronted. The poet was constantly republishing his verses, and as constantly revising and altering them." In some instances it is difficult to determine which of two texts is the later one; and even where this is not the case, we cannot always be sure which of two texts Poe would ultimately have preferred. The problem is further complicated by numerous typographical errors or apparent typographical errors - and by something of editorial carelessness on the part of Griswold, and by uncertainty as to the date of the manuscript corrections made in the so-called Lorimer Graham copy of 1845. It would

1 Didier, p. 31; Mrs. Weiss, pp. 45 f. 2 Didier, p. 33.

3 Ingram, p. 24.

6

Harper's Monthly Magazine, March, 1889 (LXXVIII, pp. 634 f.). See also Woodberry, II, p. 414, and Publications of the Modern Language Association, XXVII, pp. 349 f.

5 See, for particulars, the next section of this Introduction, on Poe's Passion for Revising his Text.

This important volume was among the materials to which Griswold had access as literary executor of Poe (Woodberry, II, p. 451); it subsequently passed into the hands of J. Lorimer Graham, a gentleman of New York; and it is now the property of the Century Club of New York City. It contains penciled corrections in Poe's handwriting of ten of the poems,

seem reasonable, however, to follow the text exhibiting the poet's latest revisal; and this policy has, accordingly, been adhered to, so far as possible, in the present edition. Wherever any departure has been made from this policy - as happens in the case of three poems of which the latest texts are covered by copyright,1 and in the case of two poems of which the final text is obviously corrupt this fact has been pointed out in the Notes. Where there is room for doubt as to which of two texts is the final one, this fact also has been noted.

2

The main source of the text is the edition of 1845, in which Poe brought together, four years before his death, thirty of his poems. This, supplemented by the Lorimer Graham copy of the same edition and the text of Griswold (1850), furnishes the ultimate text of more than half of the poems. Other important sources are the edition of 1827, in which appeared four poems that were never republished by the poet; the Broadway Journal, in which he published in 1845 twenty-four of his poems; the Flag of Our Union, in which he published in the last year of his life five poems; and the Richmond Examiner, in which were published what are apparently the latest texts of The Raven and DreamLand, and in which he had arranged to publish several other poems, the proofs for which have been preserved.3

The chief textual imperfections appear in the volume of 1827. Here, besides numerous errors in punctuation, there are sundry verbal omissions and substitutions and a score or more of made presumably with a view to adoption in a new edition. These corrections were apparently noted down in 1849 (Mr. Whitty has adduced evidence tending to show that the revisions made in Lenore came after April, 1849 (Poems, p. 214)); most of them probably belong to the summer of 1849, and it is at least conceivable that some of them were made in the autumn of 1849 shortly before Poe left Richmond on his fateful journey to Baltimore.

1 The Haunted Palace, The Bells, and For Annie. Happily the verbal variations between the copyrighted text and the next latest revision affect but a single word in the case of each of these.

2 See the notes on A Dream within a Dream and Dream-Land.

3 See Whitty, pp. viii f.

-

misprints, one of them, in Dreams, line 16, quite robbing the context of its meaning. There are also a number of misprints in 1829, though mainly in the notes, and a few, likewise, in 1831. The text of 1845 is comparatively free from error. But Griswold's text is marred by several apparently unauthorized omissions of minor importance and by a number of typographical errors, among the latter the unfortunate readings "kinsman" for "kinsmen" in Annabel Lee, line 17, and "mortals" for "mortal" in The Raven, line 26. And some of the newspaper texts, as the Flag text of For Annie and the Providence Journal text of Ulalume, are radically faulty in this respect, the poet having had no opportunity, doubtless, to consult a proof.

Errors in punctuation, which abound in 1827, are also fairly numerous in some of the later texts. Poe is traditionally supposed to have been extremely careful about his pointing; but in reality, though he had certain mannerisms (as the use, in his early years, of the dash as a point of all work,1 and, in later years, of the comma for rhetorical emphasis 2), he was both inconsistent and at times exceedingly reckless with his pointing. To be convinced of this, one has only to compare the various texts of The Raven, or to place side by side the texts of The Haunted Palace as printed in the 1845 edition of the Tales and in the volume of poems published in the same year (1845). In the present edition obvious errors in punctuation have been corrected. The punctuation has also been changed where it was plainly at variance with universally accepted usage at the present time or, in particular, where it obscured the poet's meaning. The spelling, too, has been corrected and normalized; and an attempt has been made to give consistency to the capitalization.*

3

1 See the note on Tamerlane, 1. 2.

2 Cf. The Haunted Palace, 1. 41, and For Annie, ll. 14, 86, 90.

8 Other evidence in plenty is adduced in the Notes.

4 But in the footnote variants the pointing, spelling, and capitalization of the original texts have been retained. This results in some exceedingly slipshod pointing and sundry grotesque spellings; but it has the advantage of making graphic some of the eccentricities of the poet (or of his printers) in these matters.