accounts of the turkeys. Were I to be seized by a rambling fit, one of my customary passions (nothing less) for vagabondising through the woods for a week or a month together, I would not-in fact I could not-be put out of my mood, were it even to answer a letter from the Grand Mogul informing me that I had fallen heir to his possessions.

Thank you for the compliments.

Were I

in a serious humour just now, I would tell you frankly how your words of appreciation make my nerves thrill - not because you praise me (for others have praised me more lavishly) but because I feel that you comprehend and discriminate. You are right about the hair-splitting of my French friend that is all done for effect. These tales of ratiocination owe most of their popularity to being something in a new key I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious

-

but people think them more in

on account of their In the "Murders

genious than they are method, and air of method. in the Rue Morgue," for instance, where is the ingenuity of unraveling a web which you yourself (the author) have woven for the express purpose of unraveling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story.

Not for the world would I have had any one else to continue Lowell's memoir until I had heard from you. I wish you to do it (if you will be so kind) and nobody else. By the time the

book appears you will be famous (or all my prophecy goes for nothing), and I shall have the éclat of your name to aid my sales. But seriously I do not think that any one so well enters into the poetical portion of my mind as yourself and I deduce this idea from my intense appreciation of those points of your own poetry which seem lost upon others.

--

Should you undertake the work for me, there is one topic there is one particular in which I have had wrong done me, and it may not be indecorous in me to call your attention to it. The last selection of my Tales was made from about seventy, Wiley and Putnam's reader, Duyckinck. He has what he thinks a taste for ratiocination, and has accordingly made up the book mostly of analytic stories. But this is not representing my mind in its various phases it is not giving me fair play. In writing these Tales one by one, at long intervals, I have kept the book-unity always in mind — that is, each has been composed with reference to its effect as part of a whole. In this view, one of my chief aims has been the widest diversity of subject, thought, and especially tone and manner of handling. Were all my tales now before me in a large volume, and as the composition of another, the merit which would principally arrest my attention would be the wide diversity and variety. You will be surprised to hear me say that (omitting one or two of my first efforts) I do not consider any one of my

stories better than another. There is a vast variety of kinds, and, in degree of value, the kinds vary but each tale is equally good of its kind. The loftiest kind is that of the highest imagination and for this reason only "Ligeia" may be called my best tale. I have much improved this last since you saw it, and I mail you a copy, as well as a copy of my best specimen of analysis "The Philosophy of Composition."

POETRY A PASSION, NOT A STUDY

[Southern Literary Messenger, JULY, 1836]

Against the subtleties which would

becomes the metaphysician to reason

Yet Wordsworth and

the poet to protest Coleridge are men in years; the one embued in contemplation from his childhood, the other a giant in intellect and in learning. The diffidence, then, with which I venture to dispute their authority, would be overwhelming did I not feel, from the bottom of my heart, that learning has little to do with the imagination - intellect with the passions or age with poetry.

"Trifles, like straws, upon the surface flow, He who would search for pearls must dive below,"

are lines which have done much mischief. As regards the greater truths, men oftener err by

seeking them at the bottom than at the top; the depth lies in the huge abysses where wisdom is sought not in the palpable places where she is found. The ancients were not always right in hiding the goddess in a well; witness the light which Bacon has thrown upon philosophy; witness the principles of our divine faith that moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of a man.

WRITING EVOKES THOUGHT

Some Frenchman, possibly Montaigne, says: “People talk about thinking, but for my part I never think, except when I sit down to write." It is this never thinking, unless we sit down to write, which is the cause of so much indifferent composition. But perhaps there is something more involved in the Frenchman's observations than meets the eye. It is certain that the mere act of inditing tends, in a great degree, to the logicalisation of thought. Whenever, on account of its vagueness, I am dissatisfied with a conception of the brain, I resort forthwith to the pen, for the purpose of obtaining, through its aid, the necessary form, consequence, and precision.

How very commonly we hear it remarked, that such and such thoughts are beyond the compass of words! I do not believe that any thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of language. I fancy, rather, that where

difficulty in expression is experienced, there is, in the intellect which experiences it, a want either of deliberateness or of method. For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it.

There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language. I use the word fancies at random, and merely because I must use some word; but the idea commonly attached to the term is not even remotely applicable to the shadows in question. They seem rather psychal than intellectual. They arise in the soul (alas, how rarely!) only at its epochs of most intense tranquillity - when the bodily and mental health are in perfection and at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. I am aware of the "fancies" only when I am upon the very brink of sleep, with the consciousness that I am so. I have satisfied myself that this condition exists but for an inappreciable point of time yet it is crowded with those "shadows of shadows"; and for absolute thought there is demanded time's endurance.

How POE REVISED "THE RAVEN"

Poe's Works, edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George E. Woodberry, are pub