The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1261]
No. 47, Canal Street, N.Y.,
August 27th, 1840.
Dear Sir, — I received your letter this evening, containing a Prospectus of the “Penn Magazine,” which you intend publishing in the City of Philadelphia. My absence from, the City, among the emerald highlands of the beautiful Hudson, prevented my answering it sooner than to-day. In answer to your solicitation for my support for the forthcoming Journal, I must say that I am much pleased with your “Prospectus” — the plan which you have in view — and hope sincerely that you may realize all your anticipations. As it regards myself, I will support you as long as you may continue the Editor of the above-named work. In the Paradise of Literature, I do not know one better calculated than yourself to prune the young scions of their exuberant thoughts. In some instances, let me remark, you seemed to me to lay aside the pruning-knife for the tomahawk, and not only to lop off the redundant limbs, but absolutely to eradicate the entire tree. In such cases there is no hope of its afterwards bearing any fruit. In surgical operations we always use a sharp knife, and wish to be as expeditious as possible; but we never go so far as to cut away so much of a part as to endanger the vitality of the whole. If we find, as in cases of gangrene, that the vital part is so affected that an operation would be unsafe, we then choose to let the patient die a natural death, rather than hasten it by our surgical art. I have seen a little sapling transplanted before now, which had every appearance of dying until it had undergone a gentle pruning and watering, when, to the astonishment of the gardener, it towered above all the rest in the grove, and remained a living monument of his skill and kind attention. The same thing is true in regard to the literary world. Bad treatment to the human economy will make a chronic disease sooner than a functional one, (and) by its own process, will terminate in organic derangement.
Edgar Allan Poe to Thomas H. Chivers — July 6, 1842
Philadelphia
July 6. 1842.
My Dear Sir,
I fear you will have accused me of disrespect in not replying to either of your three last letters; but, if so, you will have wronged me. Among all my correspondents there is not onewhose good opinion I am more anxious to retain than your own. A world of perplexing business has led me to postpone from day to day a duty which it is always a pleasure to perform.
Your two last letters I have now before me. In the first you spoke of my notice of yourself in the autograph article. The paper had scarcely gone to press before I saw and acknowledged to myself the injustice I had done you — an injustice which it is my full purpose to repair at the first opportunity. What I said of your grammatical errors arose from some imperfect recollections of one or two poems sent to the first volume of the S. L. Messenger. But in more important respects I now deeply feel that I have wronged you by a hasty opinion. You will not suppose me insincere in saying that I look upon some of your late pieces as the finest I have ever read.I allude especially to your poem about Shelley, and the one of which the refrainis, “She came from Heaven to tell me she was blest.” Upon reading these compositions I felt the necessity of our being friends. Will you accept my proffer of friendship?
Your last favor is dated June 11, and, in writing it, you were doubtless unaware of my having resigned the editorial charge of Graham’s Magazine.What disposition shall I make of the “Invocation to Spring?” The other pieces are in the hands of my successor, Mr Griswold.
It is my intention now to resume the project of the Penn Magazine.I had made every preparation for the issue of the first number in January, 1841, but relinquished the design at Mr. Graham’s representation of joining me in July, provided I would edit his magazine in the meantime. In July he put me off until January, and in January until July again. He now finally declines, and I am resolved to push forward for myself. I believe I have