Edgar Allan Poe to George W. Eveleth — 1848-01-04

Edgar Allan Poe to George W. Eveleth — 1848-01-04 Historical printed letter from University of Virginia edition, 1924. Catalog identity RCL-694. The final scan page also begins the next letter; the searchable excerpt stops before that next letter. The separately preserved Stylus prospectus and any text absent from this historical printing are not included. The local PDF preserves the selected source pages unchanged. Searchable text is unreviewed repository OCR and retains recognition errors and historical editorial notes. This is a historical printed witness, not an autograph manuscript or a modern critical text. [Source scan page 23] V New York, Jan. 4, 1848. Good Friend: Your last, dated July 26th,1 ends with — “Write, will you not?” I have been living ever since in a con¬ stant state of intention to write, and finally concluded not to write at all, until I could say something definite about “The Stylus” and other matters. You perceive that I now send you a Prospectus. But before I speak further on this topic, let me succinctly reply to various points in your letter. 1. “Hawthorne” is out.2 How do you like it? 2. “The Rationale of Verse” 3 was found to come down too heavily (as I forewarned you it did) upon some of poor Col¬ ton’s personal friends in Frogpondium — the “pundits,” you know; so I gave him “a song” for it, and took it back. The song was “Ulalume — a Ballad,” published in the December number of the Am. Review. I enclose it, as copied by the Home Journal (Willis’s paper), with the editor’s remarks. Please let me know how you like “Ulalume.” As for the “Rat. of Verse,” I sold it to “Graham” at a round advance on Colton’s price, and in Graham’s hands it is still — but not to lier letter in a post-script, he makes no reply to Eveleth’s inquiry, made in the same paragraph, as to the English and French publica¬ tions that Poe had “written articles for.” 1. Poe answers quite fully, but not in order, the questions of Eve¬ leth’s letter of July 27, 1847, (Note. Poe gives date as July 26), (Letter VII, Mabbott). In Volume II, page 132, Ingram prints this letter as far as “5;” continues from “6” to “8,” then leaps to closing paragraph and gives to end of letter. Answer “5” is printed, In¬ gram, Vol. II, p. 86. Answer “8” is printed, in part only, Ingram, Vol. I, p. 235. Answer “9” is printed, Ingram, Vol. I, 244. Answer “11” is printed with one phrase omitted and “not” of the next to last line in italics, Ingram, Vol. I, 215. Some parts of this letter are, therefore, not given in Ingram. 2. See note 6, Letter IV. 3. “The Rationale of Verse” in an earlier form entitled “Notes on English Verse” appeared in The Pioneer, Lowell’s short-lived magazine, March 1843. Rewritten and expanded, it was published under the later title in The Southern Literary Messenger, October-November, 1848. Re¬ printed, Harrison, Volume XIV, pp. 209 seq. [15] [Source scan page 24] remain even there; for I mean to get it back, revise or re¬ write it (since “Evangeline” has been published), and deliver it as a lecture when I go South and West on my Magazine expedition. 3. I have been “so still” on account of preparation for the Magazine campaign; also have been working at my book — nevertheless I have written some trifles not yet published- — some which have been. 4. My health is better — best. I have never been so well. 5. I do not well see how I could have otherwise replied to English.4 You must know him (English) before you can well estimate my reply. He is so thorough a “blatherskite” that