"Having allowed our youthful writer to be heard in his own behalf, what more can we do for the lov ers of genuine poetry? Nothing. They who are judges will not need more; and they who are not why waste words upon them? We shall not." 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 fol lowing 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 (266) 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, The refrain of a poem called "The Poet's Vaca tion" was: 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 1807,1 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. 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. 66 666 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, |