Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/99

 Rh This startling information invoked a quantity of correspondence, but without eliciting any explanation, as to when and where Mr. Lang had proclaimed his discovery; where the Persian original was to be found, or by whom it had been written? In connection with this Oriental hoax, however, the London paper was made the medium of introducing to the British public one yet more audacious and, for the general reader, more plausible. On the ist September of the same year the Morning Star published the following letter:—

—I have noticed with interest and astonishment the remarks made in different issues of your paper respecting Edgar A. Poe's "Raven," and I think the following fantastic poem (a copy of which I enclose), written by the poet whilst experimenting towards the production of that wonderful and beautiful piece of mechanism, may possibly interest your numerous readers. "The Fire-Fiend" (the title of the poem I enclose) Mr. Poe considered incomplete and threw it aside in disgust. Some months afterwards, finding it amongst his papers, he sent it in a letter to a friend, labelled facetiously, "To be read by firelight at midnight after thirty drops of laudanum." I was intimately acquainted with the mother-in-law of Poe, and have frequently conversed with her respecting "The Raven," and she assured me that he had the idea in his mind for some years, and used frequently to repeat verses of it to her and ask her opinion of them, frequently making alterations and improvements, according to the mood he chanced to be in at the time. Mrs. Clemm, knowing the great study I had given to "The Raven," and the reputation I had gained by its recital through America