Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/104

 90 Poe. In 1866, a volume entitled "The Fire-Fiend and other Poems," was published in New York, prefaced by a "Pre-note " to the following effect:

A few—and but a few—words of explanation seem appropriate here, with reference to the poem which gives title to this volume.

The 'Fire-Fiend' was written some six years ago, in consequence of a literary discussion wherein it was asserted, that the marked originality of style, both as to conception and expression, in the poems of the late Edgar Allen (sic) Poe, rendered a successful imitation difficult even to impossibility. The author was challenged to produce a poem, in the manner of The Raven, which should be accepted by the general critic as a genuine composition of Mr. Poe's (sic), and the 'Fire-Fiend' was the result.

This poem was printed as 'from an unpublished MS. of the late Edgar A. Poe,' and the hoax proved sufficiently successful to deceive a number of critics in this country, and also in England, where it was afterwards republished (by Mr. Macready, the tragedian), in the London Star, as an undoubted production of its soi-disant author.

The comments upon it, by the various critics, professional and other (sic), who accepted it as Mr. Poe's, were too flattering to be quoted here, the more especially, since, had the poem appeared simply as the composition of its real author, these gentlemen would probably have been slow to discover in it the same merits. The true history of the poem and its actual authorship being thus succinctly given, there seems