1
This statement was first printed during Mr. Poe's lifetime, and its truth being questioned in some of the journals, the following certificate was published by a distinguished gentleman of Virginia:
"I was one of several who witnessed this swimming feat. We accompanied Mr. Poe in boats. Messrs. Robert Stannard, John Lyle, (since dead) Robert Saunders, John Munford, I think, and one or two others, were also of the party. Mr. P. did not seem at all fatigued, and walked back to Richmond immediately after the feat—which was undertaken for a wager.
2
The writer of an eulogium upon the life and genius of Mr. Poe, in the Southern Literary Messenger 1 This statement was first printed during Mr. Poe's lifetime, and its truth being questioned in some of the journals, the following certificate was published by a distinguished gentleman of Virginia: "I was one of several who witnessed this swimming feat. We accompanied Mr. Poe in boats. Messrs. Robert Stannard, John Lyle, (since dead) Robert Saunders, John Munford, I think, and one or two others, were also of the party. Mr. P. did not seem at all fatigued, and 2 The writer of an eulogium upon the life and genius of Mr. Poe, in the "The story of the other side is different: and if true, throws a dark shade upon the quarrel, and a very ugly light upon Poe's character. We shall not insert it, because it is one of those relations, which we think, with Sir Thomas Browne, should never be recorded,—being 'verities whose truth we fear and heartily wish there were no truth therein … whose relations honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their history. We do desire no record of enormities: sins should he accounted new. They omit of their monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society…. In things of this nature, silence commendeth history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never arise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.'" 3 THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, OF NANTUCKET; comprising the Details of a Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on board the American Brig Grampus, on her way to the South Seas—with an account of the Re-capture of the Vessel by the Survivors; their Shipwreck, and subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; their Deliverance by means of the British schooner Jane Gray; the brief Cruise of this latter Vessel in the Antarctic ocean; her Capture, and the Massacre of the Crew among a Group of Islands in the 84th parallel of southern latitude; together with the incredible Adventures and Discoveries still further South, to which that distressing calamity gave rise.—I vol. 12mo. pp. 198 New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1838. 4 The controversy is wittily described in the following extract from a Parisian journal, "Un grand journal accusait l'autre jour M. Old-Nick d'avoir volé un orang-outang. Cet intéressant animal flânait dans le feuilleton de 5 Hon. Caleb Cushing, then recently returned from his mission to China. 6 This lady was the late Mrs. Osgood, and a fragment of what she wrote under these circumstances may be found in the last edition of her works under the title of "Lullin, or the Diamond Fay." 7 8 I have neither space, time, nor inclination for a continuation of this subject, and I add but one other instance, in the words of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post," published while Mr. Poe was living: "One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe, late of the Broadway Journal, whose harshness as a critic and assumption of peculiar originality make the fault in his case more glaring. This gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia, published a work on Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, near verbatim, of 'The Text-book of Conchology, by Captain Thomas Brown,' printed in Glasgow in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library, Mr. Poe actually took out a copyright for the American edition of Captain Brown's work, and, omitting all mention of the English original pretended, in the preface, to have been under great obligations to several scientific gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second edition of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr. Poe is withdrawn from the titlepage, and his initials only affixed to the preface. But the affair is one of the most curious on record."
