S. Z. Z. S.
Portable Altars (Vol. viii., p. 101.).—I am not acquainted with any treatise on the subject of portable altars, from which your correspondent can obtain more information, than from that which occupies forty-six pages in the Decas Dissertationum Historico-Theologicarum, published, for the second time, by Jo. Andr. Schmidt, 4to. Helmstad. 1714.
R. G.
Poem attributed to Shelley (Vol. viii., p. 71.).—The ridiculous extravaganza attributed to Shelley by an American newspaper, was undoubtedly never written by that gifted genius. It bears throughout unmistakeable evidence of its transatlantic origin. No person, who had not actually witnessed that curious vegetable parasite, the Spanish moss of the southern states of America, hanging down in long, hairy-like plumes from the branches of a large tree, would have imagined the lines,—
"The downy clouds droop
Like moss upon a tree."
Who, again, could believe that Shelley, an English gentleman and scholar, could ever, either in writing or conversation, have made use of the common American vulgarism, "play hell!"
The question of the authorship of such a production, apart from its being attributed to Shelley, is, in my humble opinion, a matter of little or no interest. But as a probable guess, I should say that it carries strong internal evidence of having been written by that erratic mortal, Edgar Poe.
W. Pinkerton.