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of subscribers for his proposed magazine, there is an entry for "Franklin Lit. Soc. Jefferson Col. Canonsburg, Pa. / see let." (See Alexander G. Rose III and Jeffrey A. Savoye, Such Friends as These, Baltimore: E. A. Poe Society of Baltimore, 1986, p. 24.)]

OSBORN, LAUGHTON

Laughton Osborn to Edgar Allan Poe — August 14, 1845

219, Eighth Avenue,

Thursday morn’g (morning), Aug. 14th, ‘45.

Sir;

I left the other night by misadventure at yr.(your) lodgings the draught (draft) of the preface for the comedy. I had wrapped it around the parcel of the Journal which I held in my hand, & must have laid them down together (on) your table. Will you have the goodness to search for it, & return it at yr. convenience with the comedy? To lose it would give me the trouble of a new composition, >>and<< which, you may easily conceive, might not result so much to my satisfact. (satisfaction.) Yesterday when I rec’d the parcel itself at yr. door, I supposed, seeing the latter had apparently been opened & then tied up, that I should find the notes within: a mistake I greatly regret, because otherwise I should have simply written my request on a card, & thus been spared the pain of writing what now follows.

With the copy of Arthur Cl. (Arthur Carryl) which you had permitted me to present you, I took the liberty of enclosing likewise the Confess. of a Poet, this being the novel whose misfortune, following a similar one of its predecessor, Jery. Jevis (Jeremy Jevis), was the immediate cause of the penning of the Vision, (Stone (Rubeta,) ()) who had abused Jeremy, having said of the Confess., — I hope he has not gone to answer for it, — that it had all the immorality of Falkland, without any of its redeeming traits & was worse even than ludicrous itself; King (Petron.), that it was a record of >>liberalism<< licentiousness & infidelity (I had to tear out his notice from the American, lest my sister should see it!); & Waldies’ critic (Margites), that it was mere balderdash, & a disgrace to the city where it was published.) To this >>bok<< book, which (because it has never been corrected, & therefore in parts offends me) I never present to any but those I confide in & love, I added 3 copies of a little episode published (only to be withdrawn a week afterwards, not one copy selling) to test if possible the nature of the persecution with which my books are visited. The ingenious author of the Gold-Bug would not, I thought, be puzzled to decypher the cryptograph of the first motto, & thus understand the wherefore of the D. D. appended to the assumed name on the title page, as well as of the pomposity of the two solemn mottoes which follow & give additional mystifict. (mystification) to the false one. When enclosing these books I was under the delusion that Mr. Poe would take an interest in them because of their connection with the Vision. You may judge then my surprise, when the first thing, that struck my eyes, on opening the nos. of the “Journal”, was that delectable & dainty passage: —

. . . . “What is the ‘Vision of Rubeta’ but an illimitable gilded swill trough overflowing with Dunciad and water?” above which stands with its associate names the name of “Edgar A. Poe” as editor. Whoever the writer of this squib, I arranged myself simply by drawing a pencil-line from it to the motto from Locke in the adjoining column, & another from the rhymes of P. Benjamin to the unconsidered or else interested eulogy that precedes them; & my letter was made. Whoever of yr. associates was the writer (for I will not do you the injustice to suppose that you were more than cognizant of the matter) I shall never take any public notice of it though I should now be able to complete the Vision, but I can no more forget it than I can any other act of injustice & >>(indeciperable)<< of curious banter, by which so many of my countrymen have chosen to wrong me who never yet wronged any man, & to libel a critic who even now bears so little malice in his nature that he has several times now missed & to refer to his book