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By Root 15588 0

as in the long ones, and I am quite content as it is. In “The Sleeper” you have “Forever with unclosed eye” for “Forever with unopen’d eye.” Is it possible to make the correction? I presume you understand that in the repetition of my Lecture on the Poets, (in N.Y.) I left out all that was offensive to yourself. I am ashamed of myself that I ever said anything of you that was so unfriendly or so unjust; but what I did say I am confident has been misrepresented to you. See my notice of C.F. Hoffman’s (?) sketch of you.

Very sincerely yours, POE.

On the twenty-sixth of October, 1845, he wrote:

My dear Griswold: — Will you aid me at a pinch — at one of the greatest pinches conceivable? If you will, I will be indebted to you for life. After a prodigious deal of manoevering, I have succeeded in getting the “Broadway Journal, entirely within my own control. It will be a fortune to me if I can hold it — and I can do it easily with a very trifling aid from my friends. May I count on you as one? Lend me $50, and you shall never have cause to regret it.

Truly yours, EDGAR A. POE.

And on the first of November:

My dear Griswold: — Thank you for the $25. And since you will to draw upon you for the other half of what I asked, if be needed at the end of the month, I am just as grateful as if it were all in hand, — for my friends have acted generously by me. Don’t have any more doubts of my success. I am, by the way, preparing an article about you for the B.J., in which I do you justice — which is all you can ask of any one.

Ever truly yours, EDGAR A. POE.

The next is without date, but appears to have been written early in 1849:

Dear Griswold: — Your uniform kindness leads me to hope that you will attend to this little matter of Mrs. L , to whom I truly think you have done less than justice. I am ashamed to ask favors of you, to whom I am so much indebted, but I have promised Mrs. L — this. They lied to you, (if you told what he says you told him,) upon the subject of my forgotten Lecture on the American Poets, and I take this opportunity to say that what I have always held in conversations about you, and what I believe to be entirely true, as far as it goes, is contained in my notice of your “Female Poets of America,” in the forthcoming “Southern Literary Messenger.” By glancing at what I have published about you, (Aut. in Graham, 1841; Review in Pioneer, 1843; notice in B. Journal, 1845; Letter in Int., 1847; and the Review of your Female Poets,) you will see that I have never hazarded my own reputation by a disrespectful word of you, though there were, as I long ago explained, in consequence of’s false imputation of that beastly article to you, some absurd jokes at your expense in the Lecture in Philadelphia. Come up and see me: the cars pass within a few rods of the New-York Hotel, where I have called two or three times without finding you in.

Yours truly, POE.

I soon visited him at Fordham, and passed two or three hours with him. The only letter he afterward sent me — at least the only one now in my possession — follows:

Dear Griswold: — I inclose perfect copies of the lines “For Annie” and “Annabel Lee,” in hopes that you may make room for them in your new edition. As regards “Lenore,” (which you were kind enough to say you would insert,) I would prefer the concluding stanza to run as here written . . . . It is a point of no great importance, but in one of your editions you have given my sister’s age instead of mine. I was born in Dec. 1813; my sister, Jan. 1811. [The date of his birth to which he refers was printed from his statement in the memoranda referred to in the first letters here printed. — R.W.G] Willis, whose good opinion I value highly, and of whose good word I have a right to be proud, has done me the honor to speak very pointedly in praise of “The ­ Raven.” I inclose what he said, and if you could contrive to introduce it, you would render me an essential favor, and greatly further my literary interests, at a point where I am most anxious they should be advanced.

Truly yours, E.A. POE.

P.S. — Considering