clique? - gentlemen who doubtless “know a hawk from a handsaw when the wind was southerly,” and who suggested That the poem was produced line by line, stanza by stanza, and submitted by Poe, piecemeal, to the criticism and emendation of theĪnn-st. Who were in the habit of meeting him at midday for a cozy chat in Sandy Welch’s cellar. Fairfield assures us that he has the evidence of Poe’s literary contemporaries on this matter - gentlemen For how could “The Raven” have been composed at a single Illustrative of Poe’s epileptic tendency to habitual lying. Fairfield naively accepts this story as a choice bit of veritable history, “The Raven” was printed and published, Mr. Clemm as the result of his evening’s incubation! Unmindful of the fact that Poe did not reside in Fordham until long after Clemm told him that Poe, once on a time, after walking all the way from New-York to Fordham, swallowed upĪ cup of tea, sat down to his writing-desk, and dashed off “The Raven” substantially as it is now printed, and submitted it Here is the instance: A gentleman who professed to have received the Single instance, he says, may suffice to prove the many. AssumingĬhronic lying as symptomatic of the disease, he gravely quotes the following story in evidence of Poe’s habitual mendacity. Letters,” in which he selects the author of “The Raven” as a favorable specimen of the epileptic type. In the October number of Scribner’s this gentleman has an article entitled “A Mad Man of Interesting, but does not his theory threaten to cover too much ground?
Fairfield’s researches in the nebulous atmosphere of peripheral nerve-auras. He intimates that “habitual lying” is one of its most trustworthy exponents. He frankly confesses in his book of mediums that he has himself had personal experience of the malady. If there is method in their madness, there is also Æschylus, from Æschylus to Coleridge, are all as mad as March hares. Mania, has recently turned his attention to poets and men of inspirational genius, and finds that they, too, from Ezekiel to Fairfield, a gentleman who has had the temerity to pass “ten yearsĪmong spiritual mediums” in the cause of science, having demonstrated that they are all more or less afflicted with epileptic CERTAIN HARD FACTS WHICH HAVE BEEN OVERLOOKED IN THE SEARCH FOR AN EPILEPTIC SUBJECT.