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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, 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. 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, in WILEY and PUTNAM’s
“Library of American Books,” and in the same series, a collection of
his Poems, including “The Raven,” of which Mr. N. P. WILLIS
observes, that in his opinion “it is the most effective single example
of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed
in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of
versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift.”
“Ulalume,” “Annabel Lee,” and “To ——,” quoted in the following pages,
have been written since the appearance of Mr. POE’s
volume. In poetry, as in prose, he is most successful in the
metaphysical treatment of the passions. His 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 [page 418:] almost faultless in the apprehension of
that sort of beauty most agreeable to his temper.
Besides the volumes I have mentioned, Mr. POE
is the author of “Arthur Gordon Pym,” a romance; “A New Theory of
English Versification;” “Eureka,” an essay on the material and
spiritual universe: a work which he wishes to have “judged as a poem;”
and several extended series of papers in the periodicals, the most
noticeable of which are “Marginalia,” embracing opinions of books and [column
2:] authors; “Secret Writing,” “Autography,” and “Sketches of the
Literati of New York.” He is still an industrious magazinist, and is
one of the few of this class of writers among us who have any real
skill in literary art. A more full account of his contributions to
general literature may be found in my “Prose Writers of America.”
Mr. POE has for
several years resided at Fordham, in the county of Westchester, a few
miles from New York.
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