• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Your own friend & brother

Edgar

March 1. — 1849

HIRST, HENRY BECK

Edgar Allan Poe to Henry B. Hirst — June 27, 1846

New: York — June 27. 46.

My Dear Hirst,

I presume you have seen what I said about you in “The New-York Literati” and an attack made on me by English, in consequence. Vive la Bagatelle!

I write now, to ask you if you can oblige me by a fair account of your duel with English. I would take it as a great favor, also, if you would get from Sandy Harris a statement of the fracas with him. See Du Solle, also, if you can & ask him if he is willing to give me, for publication, an account of his kicking E. out of his office.

I gave E. a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death — and, luckily, in the presence of witnesses. He thinks to avenge himself by lies — but I shall be a match for him by means of simple truth.

Is it possible to procure me a copy of E’s attack on H. A. Wise?

Truly yours,

Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe to Henry B. Hirst — May 3, 1848

New-York: May 3, 48.

My Dear Hirst,

Your letter came to hand but not your Prospectus — so that I am still in the dark as to what you mean to do. Send me a Prospectus in a letter-envelope. It is more than possible, however, that I will be in Philadelphia before the week is out: — but at all events send the Prospectus.

I am glad to hear that you are getting out “Endymion”, of which you must know that I think highly — very highly — if I did fall asleep while hearing it read.

I live at Fordham, Westchester Co: — 14 miles from the city by rail-road. The cars leave from the City Hall. Should you have any trouble about finding me, inquire at the office of the “Home Journal” — or “Union Magazine.”

Truly your friend

Edgar A Poe.

HOFFMAN, CHARLES FENNO

Edgar Allan Poe to Charles Fenno Hoffman — September 20, 1848

Dear Sir: —

In your paper of July 29, I find some comments on “Eureka,” a late book of my own; and I know you too well to suppose, for a moment, that you will refuse me the privilege of a few words in reply. I feel, even, that I might safely claim, from Mr. Hoffman, the right, which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone — that is to say, of answering your correspondent, flippancy by flippancy and sneer by sneer — but, in the first place, I do not wish to disgrace the “World;” and, in the second, I feel that I never should be done sneering, in the present instance, were I once to begin. Lamartine blames Voltaire for the use which he made of (ruse) misrepresentation, in his attacks on the priesthood; but our young students of Theology do not seem to be aware that in defence, or what they fancy to be defence, of Christianity, there is anything wrong in such gentlemanly peccadillos as the deliberate perversion of an author’s text — to say nothing of the minor indecora of reviewing a book without reading it and without having the faintest suspicion of what it is about.

You will understand that it is merely the misrepresentations of the critique in question to which I claim the privilege of reply: — the mere opinions of the writer can be of no consequence to me — and I should imagine of very little to himself — that is to say if he knows himself, personally, as well as I have the honor of knowing him. The first misrepresentation is contained in this sentence: —”This letter is a keen burlesque on the Aristotelian or Baconian methods of ascertaining Truth, both of which the writer ridicules and despises, and pours forth his rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of the third mode — the noble art of guessing.” What I really say is this: — That there is no absolute certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process — that, for this reason, neither Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself — and that neither has a right to sneer at that seemingly imaginative process called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his laws;) since “Intuition,” after all, “is but the conviction arising from those inductions