[Mabbott states that Griswold “obviously had a revised form” for use in the 1856 volume of Poe’s works.  Mabbott does not substantiate this claim, but it is surely not unreasonable.  An editor, and even typographical errors, may have produced nearly all of the very minor changes made in this version. (Indeed, two very necessary words were clearly dropped by accident.) An editor might have corrected “Wickliffe’s ‘Epigoniad’ " to “Wilkie’s ’Epigoniad’,” but is unlikely to have added “Tuckerman’s ‘Sicily’ " to the list of books read by the narrator.  Griswold was not above forgery (in Poe’s letters) when it suited his purpose, but would have too little to gain by such an effort in this instance.]

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MELLONTA TAUTA

TO THE EDITORS OF THE LADY’S BOOK: 

I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article which I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than I do myself.  It is a translation, by my friend, Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the “Poughkeepsie Seer”) of an odd-looking MS. which I found, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating in the Mare Tenebrarum —­ a sea well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldom visited now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers for crotchets.

Truly yours,

EDGAR A. POE

  {this paragraph not in the volume—­ED}

ON BOARD BALLOON “SKYLARK”

April, 1, 2848

NOW, my dear friend —­ now, for your sins, you are to suffer the infliction of a long gossiping letter.  I tell you distinctly that I am going to punish you for all your impertinences by being as tedious, as discursive, as incoherent and as unsatisfactory as possible.  Besides, here I am, cooped up in a dirty balloon, with some one or two hundred of the canaille, all bound on a pleasure excursion, (what a funny idea some people have of pleasure!) and I have no prospect of touching terra firma for a month at least.  Nobody to talk to.  Nothing to do.  When one has nothing to do, then is the time to correspond with ones friends.  You perceive, then, why it is that I write you this letter —­ it is on account of my ennui and your sins.

Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed.  I mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage.

Heigho! when will any Invention visit the human pericranium?  Are we forever to be doomed to the thousand inconveniences of the balloon?  Will nobody contrive a more expeditious mode of progress?  The jog-trot movement, to my thinking, is little less than positive torture.  Upon my word we have not made more than a hundred miles the hour since leaving home!  The very birds beat us —­ at least some of them.  I assure you that I do not exaggerate at all.  Our motion, no doubt, seems slower than it actually is —­