POE AND CHIVERS. ONE of the strangest literary controversies of the time a controversy which has been going on for fifty years, albeit all on one side—is the question whether Poe "stole" the form and rhythm of his "Raven " from Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers' «To Allegra Florence in Heaven.” Through the courtesy of Henry L. Koopman, Esq., librarian of Brown University, the editor has been enabled to study six of Chivers' very rare volumes and reach certain conclusions which are set down in the following pages. These volumes, as far as we know, have not been accessible hitherto to students or have, at least, not been studied. Apparently, they were not accessible to Mr. Joel Benton when he wrote his interesting "In the Poe Circle," or to Mr. W. C. Richardson, who reviewed in a recent Boston Transcript the perpetually recurring question of the "Precursor of Poe. "The following extracts from Griswold's Correspondence, Cambridge, 1898, p. 40 seq., will instructively introduce our remarks: "I have already,' wrote Bayard Taylor in 1871, ⚫ seen one generation [of poets] forgotten, and I fancy I now see the second slipping the cables of their craft, and making ready to drop down stream with the ebb tide. I remember, for instance, that in 1840 there were many well-known and tolerably popular names which are never heard now. Byron and Mrs. Hemans then gave the tone to poetry, and Scott, Bulwer and Cooper to fiction. Willis was by all odds the most popular American author; Longfellow was not known by the multitude, Emerson was only that Transcendentalist,' and Whittier 'that Abolitionist.' We young men used to talk of Rufus Dawes, and Charles Fenno Hoffman, and Grenville Mellen, and Brainard, and Sands. Why, we even had a hope that something wonderful would come out of Chivers ! Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, of Georgia, author of Virginalia,' The Lost Pleiad,' Facets of Diamond' and 'Eonchs of Ruby,' also of Nacoochee, the Beautiful Star,' and there was still another volume, six in all ! The British Museum has the only complete set of his works I remember a stanza of his Rosalie Lee': "Many mellow Cydonian suckets, Was my The refrain of a poem called "The Poet's Vaca "In the music of the morns, Blown through the Conchimarian horns, Crying Come to me! Come to me!' "Dr. Chivers, according to a statement made to me [W. M. Griswold] by one of his daughters, was born at Washington, Georgia, in 1807, and died at Decatur, Georgia, in 1858. Having inherited wealth, however, he practised but little. "While in Springfield, Mass., he fell in love with a Yankee girl sixteen years old. They travelled from one place to another, New York, Boston, New Haven, etc. This second marriage probably took place about 1850. In 1853-54 Chivers dwelt in or near Boston and was a frequent contributor to The Waverley Magazine and The Literary Museum. It is singular that not only Richardson's and the minor histories of American literature ignore Chivers, but that even L. Manly's book, which is devoted exclusively to Southern authors, does the same. "I insert a letter from Chivers to Poe, since it illustrates the spirit of the time, and shows that the influence of transcendentalism was not limited to NewEngland and The Tribune. Chivers' style is here tame and commonplace, having little of the verbal effulgence which later distinguished it, when, even in prose, it unconsciously surpassed the efforts of those most skilful in burlesque. Aside from his poetical pretensions, Chivers seems to have been a person worthy of great respect. His verses appeared in some of the best periodicals of the day, and if we may trust the extracts quoted by the publishers of his Eonchs of Ruby' he was not entirely without appreciation on the part of the critics. Here is the advertisement as it appeared in The Literary World: 1 This is a mistake, as will be seen further on. Eonchs of Ruby. A Gift of Love. By T. H. Chivers, M.D. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "We might quote passages of even beauty throughout the book passages replete with the loveliest developments of the divine poetic idea in the man's soul. From his harp proceed master strains, which seem struck out often as a sort of Pythonic delirium.' Message Bird. ..... The Eonchs of Ruby is a treasure of classic and sublime poetry a rara avis of a rich and ardent imagination. The author's ideas partake more of the celestial than of the terrestrial; and many of the best productions of this book are dedicated to beings who were once dear to him in life, but who were called away in the flower of their age to enjoy a world more glorious and perfect than this miserable earth. These lamentations of an afflicted parent so charmingly and truthfully expressed, may truly be called superior to anything of the kind ever written by any American or English poet.' From l'Eco d'Italia. The New York Quarterly, however, took a somewhat different tone : "The quaint conceits of these title pages [Nos. 6 and 7] are a warning of the affectation and absurdity which nestle within the covers of the present astounding volumes. Such a farrago of pedantry, piety, blasphemy, sensuality, and delirious fancies has seldom before gained the imprint of a respectable publisher. If the reader can imagine the fusion of the Hebrew Prophets, Solomon's Song, Jacob Böhme, Edgar A. Poe, Anacreon, Catullus, Coleridge, and Isaac Watts, into one seething, simmering cauldron of abominations, he may form some idea of these fantastic monstrosities. The prose run mad in the prefaces prepares for the demoniac-celestialbestial character of the poetry." The editor of The Knickerbocker paid his respects to the work as follows : "We have read a little book of poems by a Mr. Chivers (what a crisp, sparkling name!) which is a casket overbrimming with the most incomparable gems that ever sparkled in Heaven's light. The author remarks in his preface, which is itself a prosaic bewilderment of all that is most precious in the verbal domain : As the diamond is the crystalline Revelator of the acromatic white light of Heaven, so is a perfect poem the crystalline revelation of the Divine Idea. There is just the difference between a pure poem and one that is not, that there is between the spiritual concretion of a diamond and the mere glaciation of water into ice. For as the irradiancy of a diamond depends upon its diaphanous translucency, so does the beauty of a poem upon its rhythmical crystallization of the Divine Idea.' We concur with the author in these views, although we never had the power to express them. A single verse from Mr. Chivers will show that he does not lay down principles by which he is not himself guided : — On the beryl-rimmed rebecs of Ruby Brought fresh from the hyaline streams, She played on the banks of the Yuba Such songs as she heard in her dreams, Like the heavens when the stars from their eyries Look down through the ebon night air, Where the groves by the Ouphantic Fairies |