Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/106

92 not knowing what I did. I signed my name to it and thus it went to the printer, and was published.

"The sensation it produced made me dishonest enough to conceal the name of the real author, who had died, as you know, some time before it came out, and by that means I now enjoy all the credit and applause myself. I simply make this statement to you for the * * *. I shall probably go to New York to-morrow, but will be back by Oct. 12th, I think."

The utter falsity and absurdity of this story need not detain us so long in its refutation as it did several of Poe's countrymen. It need not be asked whether such persons as the "Rev. J. Shaver," or "Mr. Daniels of Philadelphia," ever existed, or why Poe should make so damaging a confession of dishonesty and in slip-shod English, so different from his usual terse and expressive style, it is only, at the most, necessary to point out that far from publishing The Raven in The Review with his name appended to it, Poe issued it in The American Review as by "."

A myth as ridiculous as any is that fathered by some of the United States journals on a "Colonel Du Solle." According to the testimony of this military-titled gentleman, shortly before the publication of The Raven Poe was wont to meet him and other literary contemporaries at mid-day "for a budget of gossip and a glass of ale at Sandy Welsh's cellar in Anne Street." According to the further deposition of the Colonel the poem of The Raven was produced by Poe, at Sandy Welsh's cellar, "stanza by stanza at small intervals, and submitted piecemeal to the criticism and emendations of his intimates, who suggested various alterations and substitutions. Poe adopted