Chapter XV: Letter XXIX

_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,

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.