Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/74

54 In his review of The Sacred Mountains, by J. T. Headley, a prose work, Poe satirizes by calling attention to the familiar omniscience that Headley displays in regard to events in which, thinks Poe, more reverence and more reserve should have been shown. Headley's long passage about the Crucifixion begins: "How heaven regarded this disaster, and the Universe felt at the sight, I cannot tell." Upon which Poe comments thus:

"Mr. Headley is a mathematical man. Moreover he is a modest man; for he confesses (no doubt with tears in his eyes) that really there is one thing that he does not know. 'How Heaven regarded this disaster, and the Universe felt at the sight, I cannot tell.' Only think of that! I cannot!—I, Headley, really cannot tell how the Universe 'felt' once upon a time! This is downright bashfulness on the part of Mr. Headley. He could tell if he would only try. Why did he not inquire? Had he demanded of the Universe how it felt, can any one doubt that the answer would have been—'Pretty well, I thank you, my dear Headley; how do you feel yourself?'"

The trail of Poe's humor may be interestingly traced in his comments on poems modeled upon his own. He has often been accused, and justly, of seeing plagiarism where no one else could see it; but in the following excerpt no reader will question that his scent was true or that the plagiarist got any less than his deserts:

"Here is a passage from another little ballad of mine, called Lenore, first published in 1830: