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EDGAR ALLAN POE.
[Born, 1811. Died 1849.]
THE family of Mr. POE
is one of the oldest and most respectable in Baltimore. DAVID
POE, his paternal grandfather, was a
quartermaster-general in the Maryland line during the Revolution, and
the intimate friend of LAFAYETTE, who,
during his last visit to the United States, called personally upon the
general's widow, and tendered her his acknowledgments for the services
rendered to him by her husband. His great-grandfather, JOHN
POE, married, in England, JANE,
a daughter of Admiral JAMES McBRIDE,
noted in British naval history, and claiming kindred with some of the
most illustrious English families. His father and mother died within a
few weeks of each other, of consumption, leaving him an orphan, at two
years of age. Mr. JOHN ALLAN,
a wealthy gentleman of Richmond, Virginia, took a fancy to him, and
persuaded General POE, his grandfather,
to suffer him to adopt him. He was brought up in Mr. ALLAN's
family; and as that gentleman had no other children, he was regarded as
his son and heir. In 1816 he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. ALLAN
to Great Britain, visited every portion of it, and afterward passed
four or five years in a school kept at Stoke Newington, near London, by
the Reverend Doctor BRANSBY. He returned
to America in 1822, and in 1825 went to the Jefferson University, at
Charlottesville, in Virginia, where he led a very dissipated life, the
manners of the college being at that time extremely dissolute. He took
the first honours, however, and went home greatly in debt. Mr. ALLAN
refused to pay some of his debts of honour, and he hastily
quitted the country on a Quixotic expedition to join the Greeks, then
struggling for liberty. He did not reach his original destination,
however, but made his way to St. Petersburg, in Russia, where he became
involved in difficulties, from which he was extricated by the late Mr. HENRY
MIDDLETON,
the American minister at that capital. He returned home in 1829, and
immediately afterward entered the military academy at West Point. In
about eighteen months from that time, Mr. ALLAN,
who had lost his first wife while POE was
in Russia, married again. He was sixty-five years of age, and the lady
was young; POE quarrelled with her, and
the veteran husband, taking the part of his wife, addressed him an
angry letter, which was answered in the same spirit. He died soon
after, leaving an infant son the heir to his property, and bequeathed POE
nothing.
The army, in the opinion of the young cadet, was not
a place for a poor man; so he left West Point abruptly, and determined
to maintain himself by authorship. He had printed, while in the
military academy, a small volume of poems, [column 2:] most of
which were written in early youth. They illustrated the character of
his abilities, and justified his anticipations of success. For a
considerable time, however, his writings attracted but little
attention. At length, in 1831, the proprietor of a weekly literary
gazette in Baltimore offered two premiums, one for the best story in
prose, and the other for the best poem. In due time our author sent in
two articles, both of which were successful with the examining
committee, and popular upon their appearance before the public. The
late Mr. THOMAS W. WHITE
had then recently established “The Southern Literary Messenger,” at
Richmond, and upon the warm recommendation of Mr. JOHN
P. KENNEDY, who was a member of the
committee that has been referred to, Mr. POE
was engaged by him to be its editor. He continued in this situation
about a year and a half, in which he wrote many brilliant articles, and
raised the “Messenger” to the first rank of literary periodicals.
He next removed to Philadelphia, to assist Mr. W. E.
BURTON in the editorship of the
“Gentleman’s Magazine,” a miscellany that in 1840 was merged in
“Graham’s Magazine,” of which Mr. POE
became one of the principle
writers, particularly in criticism, in which his papers attracted much
attention, by their careful and skilful analysis, and generally caustic
severity. At this period, however, he appears to have been more
ambitious of securing distinction in romantic fiction, and a collection
of his compositions in this department, published in 1841, under the
title of “Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque,” established his
reputation for ingenuity, imagination, and extraordinary power in
tragical narration.
Near the end of 1844 Mr. POE
removed to New York, where he conducted for several months a literary
miscellany called “The Broadway Journal.” In 1845 he published a volume
of “Tales,” and a collection of his “Poems;” in 1846
wrote a series of literary and personal sketches entitled “The Literati
of New York City,” which commanded much attention; in 1848 gave to the
public, first as a lecture, and afterwards in print, “Eureka, a Prose
Poem;” and in the summer of 1849 delivered several lectures, in
Richmond and other cities, and on the seventh of October,
while on his way to New York, died, suddenly, at Baltimore.
After his death a collection of his works, in three
volumes, was published in New York, edited by me, in fulfilment of
wishes he had expressed on the subject. It embraced nearly all his
writings, except “Arthur Gordon Pym,” a nautical romance, originally
printed in the “Southern Literary Messenger,” and a few pieces of
humorous prose, in which he was less successful than in other kinds of [page
470:] literature. In a memoir which is contained in these volumes I
have endeavored to present, with as much kindly reserve in regard to
his life as was consistent with justice, a view of his extraordinary
intellectual and moral character. Unquestionably he was a man of
genius, and those who are familiar with his melancholy history will not
doubt that his genius was in a singular degree wasted or misapplied.
In poetry, as in prose, he was most successful in
the metaphysical treatment of the passions. His [column 2:]
poems are constructed with wonderful ingenuity, and finished with
consummate art. They illustrate a morbid sensitiveness of feeling, a
shadowy and gloomy imagination, and a taste almost faultless in the
apprehension of that sort of beauty most agreeable to his temper. His
rank as a poet is with the first class of his times. “The Raven,”
“Ulalume,” “The Bells,” and several of his other pieces, will be
remembered as among the finest monuments of the capactities of the
English language.
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