[M9] “The Dollar Newspaper,” The Citizen Soldier, June 28, 1843

THE DOLLAR NEWSPAPER.—A capital sheet.  The “Gold-bug, a Prize Story,” by Edgar A. Poe, Esq., is written in the most popular style of the gifted author, characterised by thrilling interest and graphic though sketchy power of description.  It is one of the best stories that Poe ever wrote.  And with regard to the matter of the “Prize,” it is a humbug—a transparent, gauze-lace, cobweb-tissue humbug.  The public well know that name and not merit, constitute the criterion of the board of secret critics.  Were William Shakspeare to write a “Prize Story,” under an anonymous signature, in a disguised hand; were Walter Scott to enter into competititon for the “cool hundred,” hand and name also disguised; were Bulwer to send one of his first productions, nameless and “unmarked for the secret eye of the board,” Shakspeare, Scott and Bulwer, would vanish, we trow, before T. S. Arthur, or some other amiable young man, whose name has been stereotyped by the magazine puffs of the day.  We believe the whole “Prize system,” take it as you will, to be a fraud on the public.  The idea that the board of judges do not know the hand writing of all literary men of celebrity, is—with respect we say it—all fudge.  In such a system, the man of notoriety has all the chances—the man of genius none.  However, with regard to Mr. Poe, we can have but one opinion.  This story is worth the “Prize money,” ten times told.  It is not against the men we war, but against the transparent fraud of this contemptible “Prize Story” humbug.