The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1419]
My reasons for declining it, relate as much to yourself, individually, as to the Magazine. I feel exceedingly desirous that you should be even more favorably known to the public than you are at present, and that this object should be accomplished thro’ the medium of the Messenger. I have frequently seen pieces from your pen which I would have been happy to insert — one long poem, especially, whose title I cannot recall to mind — and some lines lately printed in the Baltimore Athenaeum — that great bowl of Editorial skimmed milk and water. I think you will agree with me that “The Consumptive Girl” is not, by any means, a fair specimen of your talents. Like all I have seen of your composition, it breathes the true spirit of poetic sentiment and feeling — it has fine and original images — and has the proper material of the Muse, but it is deficient in the outward habiliments. The versification, in especial, is not what you can make it. The lines in most instances, are rough, owing to your frequent choice of words abounding in consonants. Thus in the beginning:
“One burning spot blush’d on her smooth fair cheek”.
In some cases the verses are more seriously defective, and cannot be scanned — or even read. For example:
“To the heart — Hope’s death, love’s blight, faded joys”
and again —
“Long hair unbound fell o’er her swan-like neck wildly”
I know you will reply, and with some appearance of justice, that much worse verses have appeared, in the Messenger, since my Editorship, and are still appearing. But these are poems which have been long on hand, and to the publication of which Mr. W. had bound himself by promises to their respective authors, before my time. Such difficulties shall not occur again.
Suppose you were to try a series of brief poems — say sonnets — one to appear regularly in each number of the Magazine. Embodying multum in parvo — laboured out with scrupulous care in their metre — and signed with your initials — they will not fail, (if done as well as I know you can do them) to gain you a high and permanent position.
Your sincere well wisher,
Edgar A. Poe.
John C. McCabe, Esqr Richmond.
March 3d. 1836
MCJILTON, REV. JOHN NELSON
Edgar Allan Poe, "Secret Writing [Addendum II]," Graham's Magazine, October, 1841, 19:192
[page 192, column 2:]
SECRET WRITING.
On the tenth of August, a letter addressed to us by some gentleman who had assumed the nom de guerre of Timotheus Whackemwell, was received at this office, from Baltimore. It enclosed a cipher, and says, "if you succeed with it I will set you down as perfect in the art." Thinking that in the chirography we recognized the hand of our friend, Mr. J. N. McJilton, of Baltimore, we addressed him by return of mail, with the solution desired. Mr. McJilton, it appears, however, was not the correspondent. The solution ran thus--
"This specimen of secret writing is sent you for explanation. If you succeed in divining its meaning, I will believe that you are some kin to Old Nick."
Mr. Whackemwell, whoever or whatever he is, will acknowledge this reading to be correct.
The cipher submitted through Mr. F. W. Thomas, by Dr. Frailey, of Washington, and deciphered by us, also in return of mail, as stated in our August number, has not yet been read by any of our innumerable readers. We now append its solution, together with the whole of that letter of the Doctor's, of which we gave only a portion in the August number.
SOLUTION.
In one of those peripatetic circumrotations I obviated a rustic whom I subjected to catechetical interrogation respecting the nosocomical