97. 32. Jonas Ramus. Professor Woodberry, whose study of Poe's text has been exhaustive, has an interesting note to this effect: Poe used an article in an early edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, in which a passage was taken from Pontoppidan's "The Natural History of Norway" without acknowledgment, this in turn having been taken (with proper acknowledgment) from Ramus. The Britannica, in the ninth edition, after giving Poe credit for "erudition taken solely from a previous edition of this very encyclopedia, which in its turn had stolen the learning from another, quotes the parts that Poe invented out of his own head." See "Whirlpool" in the Britannica.
98. 26-27. Norway mile: a little over four and a half English miles.
99. 19. Phlegethon: a river of Hades in which flowed flames instead of water.
100. 4. Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) was a learned Roman Catholic writer, a native of Germany. See "Whirlpool" in the Britannica.
105. 2. what a scene it was to light up! Interest in the narrative should not hurry the reader too much to appreciate this scene,—the magnificent setting of the adventure.
109. 10. tottering bridge, etc.: Al Sirat, the bridge from earth over the abyss of hell to the Mohammedan paradise. It is as narrow as a sword's edge, and while the good traverse it in safety, the wicked plunge to torment.
111. 35. Archimedes of Syracuse (i.e. 287—212) was the greatest of ancient mathematicians; the work to which Poe refers deals with floating bodies.
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (Page 113)
First published in Graham's Magazine for May, 1842 (see comment in the Introduction, page xxvii).
113. The "Red Death" is a product of Poe's own imagination; there is no record of such a disease in medical history.