Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/98



FABRICATIONS.

NE outcome of the immense popularity in its native country of The Raven is the wonderful and continuous series of fabrications to which it has given rise. An American journalist in want of a subject to eke out the scanty interest of his columns appears to revert to Poe and his works as natural prey: he has only to devise a paragraph—the more absurd and palpably false the better for his purpose—about how The Raven was written, or by whom it was written other than Poe, to draw attention to his paper and to get his fabrication copied into the journals of every town in the United States. From time to time these tales are concocted and scattered broadcast over the country: one of them, and one of the most self-evidently absurd, after running the usual rounds of the American press, found its way to England, and was published in the London Star in the summer of 1864. It was to the effect that Mr. Lang, the well-known Oriental traveller, had discovered that Poe's poem of The Raven was a literary imposture. "Poe's sole accomplishment," so ran the announcement, "was a minute and accurate acquaintance with Oriental languages, and that he turned to account by translating, almost literally, the poem of The Raven, from the Persian!"