Baltimore Visiter prize for the best poem in the memorable competition which awarded the prize for the best prose tale to "A MS. found in a Bottle," October 12, 1833. "Scenes from Politian" were, however, not published in the Messenger until December, 1835, and January, 1836, though a fragment from it had appeared in The Visiter, in 1833, and in the Messenger in August, 1835. Chivers' Conrad and Eudora " bears the date 1834 and is a tragedy founded upon the same theme as Poe's. "The incidents of this drama" ["Politian"], says Mr. Ingram, who owns the poet's MS., "were suggested by real events connected with Beauchampe's murder of Sharp, the Solicitor-General of Kentucky [in 1828], the facts of which celebrated case are fully as romantic as the poet's fiction. Poe appears to have written a portion of Politian' as early at least as 1831, and to have first published some fragments of it in the Southern Literary Messenger of 1835-36 as Scenes from an Unpublished Drama.'" (I., 111-114.) The singular part of this circumstance is that, though absolutely unlike, the two tragedies should, by a strange coincidence, have been written by two young poets who had fallen upon the same theme without each other's cognizance, men whose after fates were continually to be thrown into fantastic juxtaposition. The selection of subject was the merest accident : Charles Fenno Hoffman and William Gilmore Simms had also been struck by the tragic and romantic aspects of the murder, and had each written a novel embodying them. There is no suspicion of plagiarism here mere coincidence is the explanation. But in 1831 Poe published his West Point volume VOL. VII. - 18 containing the quaint and beautiful poem Israfel," with the following note: "And the angel Israfel, who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures : Koran." "The passage referred to" (remarks Prof. G. E. Woodberry, Life of Poe, p. 97) is not in the Koran, but in Sale's Preliminary Discourse (iv. 71). Poe derived it from the notes to Moore's Lalla Rookh,' where it is correctly attributed to Sale. later time he interpolated the entire phrase, whose heart-strings are a lute' (the idea on which his poem is founded), which is neither in Moore, Sale, nor the Koran; and with this highly original emendation, the note now stands in his Works as an extract from the Koran.' In Chivers' Lost Pleiad," published in 1845, Israfel is mentioned in the first poem. The book is a thin pamphlet of 32 octavo pages, containing poems dated 1836, 1839, 1840, etc., and, among others, "To Allegra Florence," dated "Oaky Grove, Ga., Dec. 12, 1842." In the " Song to Isa Singing," (undated) occurs the stanza: "Like an Æolian sound Out of an ocean shell With music, such as fell Then follows the note: "The angel Israfel, who has the most melodious voice of all God's creatures." In "Eonchs of Ruby," published in 1851, Israfel is again mentioned, with the same quotation from Sale, in the poem "To Cecilia," p. 81. Again, at p. 167, Israfel crops up in the "Sonnet on Reading Milton's Paradise Lost. Bell" Israfel comes again. But " Virginalia," Phila. : In the poem "Bessie 1853, contains the crowning appropriation of Poe's idea: "Out of the lute-strings of her heart she wove, Like Israfel in Heaven, with her sweet singing, A subtle web of Poesy, which Love Around my heart then wound, wherewith upspringing, She to the Mount of Fame her way with me went winging." Again : Una, p. 15. My knowledge comes to thee down-flowing, As does an angel's free from earthly sin, Out of the life divine of God all-knowing Ours from without thine to thy soul within And Angel-like, although thy lips are mute, Like Israfel in Heaven, thy heartstrings are a lute." The Beautiful Silence, 1851. The "Song of Seralim," dated 1836, is a direct imitation of Poe's Israfel, and the heart-strings motif reappears again at p. 62. the adjective The influence of Poe on Chivers in this one poem " Israfel" was profound, almost ludicrous, for Chivers goes on with his " Israfelia" (actually the name of one of his poems Israfelian" also occurring) after Poe is dead, in "Eonchs of Ruby " and Virginalia," dated respectively 1851 and 1853. The Greek quotation « Αυτό καθ' αυτό μεθ' αυτού, μόνο είδες acet ov" (sic), (from Plato), which is found on the titlepage of Virginalia," is taken from Poe's "MoPoe has poems to " Eulalie," and "To One in Paradise ; so has Chivers. rella." The reader may judge for himself of the Poeän echoes in the following stanzas from the collections of 1851 and 1853: ISADORE. "I approach thee I look dauntless into thine eyes. The soul that loves can dare all things. Shadow, WHILE the world lay round me sleeping, Some one said to me while weeping, And I answered, "I am weeping Then the Voice again said, "Never Wherefore then her loss deplore ? Thou shalt live in Hell forever! Heaven now holds thine Isadore! Like two spirits in one being, Were our souls, dear Isadore! Every object singly seeing In all things, like one, agreeing Up in Heaven, dear Isadore! Myriad Voices still are crying Day and night, dear Isadore! There to rest forever more! Adon-ai! God of Glory! Who dost love mine Isadore! Gone to Heaven forever more! Adon-ai! God of Glory! Take me home to Isadore! Eonchs of Ruby, p. 97. BESSIE BELL. [Second version, from Virginalia: Phila., 1855.] Do you know the modest Maiden, Pretty, bonny Bessie Bell, Queen of all the flowers of Aiden, Whom my heart doth love so well? Ah! her eyelids droop declining Like an unbought Beauty's, pining For the Harem's Paradise. |