Summary
This manuscript fragment comes from an installment of "Marginalia" that
appeared in Southern Literary Messenger in June of 1849 (vol.
15, no. 6, p. 337, 338). In "Marginialia," Poe offers aphorisms on genius,
authorship, art, philosophy, irrationality, and many other subjects.
Note that the second half of the manuscript represented here ("the
passions are like those Demons...") is a double plagiarism: Poe took the
passage from Horace Binney Wallace's (aka William Landor) "Mems for
Memory," and had previously used it as the concluding paragraph to his
tale "Premature Burial" (Silverman 397-98).
