um," the
complicate machinery upon which the interest depends is borrowed from a
story entitled "Vivenzio, or Italian Vengeance," by the author of "The
First and Last Dinner," in "Blackwood's Magazine." And I remember having
been shown by Mr. Longfellow, several years ago, a series of papers which
constitute a demonstration that Mr. Poe was indebted to him for the idea
of "The Haunted Palace," one of the most admirable of his poems, which he
so pertinaciously asserted had been used by Mr. Longfellow in the
production of his "Beleaguered City." Mr. Longfellow's poem was written
two or three years before the first publication of that by Poe, and it
was during a portion of this time in Poe's possession; but it was not
printed, I believe, until a few weeks after the appearance of "The
Haunted Palace." "It would be absurd," as Poe himself said many times,
"to believe the similarity of these pieces entirely accidental." This was
the first cause of all that malignant criticism which for so many years
he carried on against Mr. Longfellow. In his "Marginalia" he borrowed
largely, especially from Coleridge, and I have omitted in the
republication of these papers, numerous paragraphs which were rather
compiled than borrowed from one of the profoundest and wisest of our own
scholars.[D]

[Footnote D: I have neither space, time, nor inclination for a
continuation of this subject, and I add but one other instance, in the
words of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post," published while Mr.
Poe was living:

"One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe, late
of the Broadway Journal, whose harshness as a critic and assumption of
peculiar originality make the fault in his case more glaring. This
gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia, published a work on
Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, near verbatim, of
'The Text-book of Conchology, by Captain Thomas Brown,' printed in
Glasgow in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library, Mr. Poe
actually took out a copyright for the American edition of Captain Brown's
work, and, omitting all mention of the English original pretended, in the
preface, to have been under great obligations to several scientific
gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second
edition of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr.
Poe is withdrawn from the titlepage, and his initials only affixed to the
preface. But the affair