_Dear Sir_,—In reply to your query touching the “authenticity of a
singular incident,” related in one of my poems, I have to inform you
that the incident in question is purely a fiction.
With respect, your obedient servant,
[Illustration: G. Mellen]
JOSEPH E. F. MILLER, Esq.
The hand-writing of Mr. Mellen is somewhat peculiar, and partakes
largely of the character of the signature annexed. It would require no
great stretch of fancy to imagine the writer (from what we see of his
MS.) a man of excessive sensibility, amounting nearly to disease—of
unbounded ambition, greatly interfered with by frequent moods of doubt
and depression, and by unsettled ideas of the beautiful. The formation
of the G in his signature alone, might warrant us in supposing his
composition to have great force, frequently impaired by an undue
straining after effect. Paper excellent—red seal.