o its purpose. In
this city I have had upon it the favorable judgments of the best men. All
the error about it was yours. You should have done as I
requested--published it in the _Book_. It is of no use to conceive a plan
if you have to depend upon another for its execution."

Nevertheless, I agree with Mr. Godey. Poe's article was as bad as that of
English. Yet a part of one of its paragraphs is interesting, and it is
here transcribed:

--"Let me not permit any profundity of disgust to induce, even for an
instant, a violation of the dignity of truth. What is _not false_, amid
the scurrility of this man's statements, it is not in my nature to brand
as false, although oozing from the filthy lips of which a lie is the
only natural language. The errors and frailties which I deplore, it
cannot at least be asserted that I have been the coward to deny. Never,
even, have I made attempt at _extenuating_ a weakness which is (or, by
the blessing of God, was) a calamity, although those who did not know me
intimately had little reason to regard it otherwise than a crime. For,
indeed, had my pride, or that of my family permitted, there was
much--very much--there was everything to be offered in extenuation.
Perhaps, even, there was an epoch at which it might not have been wrong
in me to hint--what by the testimony of Dr. Francis and other medical
men I might have demonstrated, had the public, indeed, cared for the
demonstration--that the irregularities so profoundly lamented were the
_effect_ of a terrible evil rather than its cause.--And now let me thank
God that in redemption from the physical ill I have forever got rid of
the moral."

Dr. Francis never gave any such testimony. On one occasion Poe borrowed
fifty dollars from a distinguished literary woman of South Carolina,
promising to return it in a few days, and when he failed to do so, and
was asked for a written acknowledgment of the debt that might be
exhibited to the husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied
all knowledge of it, and threatened to exhibit a correspondence which he
said would make the woman infamous, if she said any more on the subject.
Of course there had never been any such correspondence, but when Poe
heard that a brother of the slandered party was in quest of him for the
purpose of taking the satisfaction supposed to be due in such cases, he
sent for Dr. Francis and induced him to carry to the gentleman his
retraction and apology, with a