|
EDGAR A. POE.
[Born, 1811.]
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, [column
2:] 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 Mr. MIDDLETON, the American consul at
that place. 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. The proprietor of a weekly literary gazette in Baltimore
offered two premiums, one for the best prose story, and the other for
the best poem. In due time POE sent in
two articles, both of which were successful with the examining
committee, and popular on their publication. He has since been a
constant writer for the magazines, and has published in volumes "Tales
of the Grotesque and the Arabesque," "The Adventures of Arthur Gordon
Pym," "Tales," and "The Raven and other Poems." His poems, like his
prose writings, are highly imaginative, and are eminently distinguished
for their spirituality, and skilful versification. Mr. POE
is now (near the close of 1845) editor of "The Broadway Journal,"
published in New York.
|
|