[page 814:]

POE’S LEGENDARY YEARS.

THE Legend of Edgar Allan Poe would not be an inappropriate title for his biography. The most striking of the few things that the narratives of Poe’s life have in common is a mythological strain, as if some subtle influence were at work in the minds of men to transform his career into a story stranger than truth, and to make his memory a mere tradition. It appears in that first newspaper article which Griswold wrote before the earth had chilled the body of the dead poet: —

It is as plain to be seen in Baudelaire’s declamatory eulogy over him as the martyr of a raw democracy. In Gilfillan he is the archangel ruined; in Ingram he is the ruined archangel rehabilitated; in all the biographies there is a demoniac element, as if Poe, who nevertheless was a man and an American, were a creature of his own fancy. This change which is worked upon Poe’s human nature by the lurid reflection of his imagination is almost justifiable, since the true impression of him must be not only of a man who ate, slept, and put on his clothes, but of a genius as well, whose significant life was thought. In the legend of him, however, there is also a romantic element, not springing from any idiosyncrasy of his own character, but purely literary, historic; belonging to [column 2:] the time when our fathers wore Byron collars and were on fire for adventure in the corsair line, and all for dying in the sere and yellow leaf of their thirty-sixth year. Thus, in what would sentimentally be called his Wanderjahre, Poe is represented as a young Giaour in Greece, or as a Don Juan in some French provincial town; but always as a scapegrace of the transcendent order, impetuous, chivalric, unfortunate, — in a word, Byronic.

It is an amiable human weakness to believe those we love better than they are; and he, even the humblest of us, who has not profited by such fond idolatry must be a very pitiable creature. The idealization of the illustrious dead is wrought similarly, though rather by the imagination than the heart; and this refining and exalting power is a great privilege of our nature, for it strengthens and supports our faith in perfection, and brings a light of promise on our own lives. Of old, Hercules and Perseus, Roland and St. Francis, were golden names on the lips of youth, and the modern age has not been a mean heir of history. There is a light round Shelley’s head that any saint, the noblest and purest in the calendar, might righteously envy. No man would deny to Poe the honor or affection won by his manhood or his genius, if, in however less a degree, his purpose was of the same high kind. Nay, if the memory that gathers about his name were merely picturesque, were that of a boy-Byron, who rode on until he drank waters of Marah quite different from those mock ones for which the noble lord found hock and soda a sufficient remedy, we would welcome the romance and regret the sorrow of it, and never disturb the tradition of a fine folly. Let the myth increase and flourish if the root be sound and the flower sweet, and [page 815:] let a leaf from it decorate our sober annals; but if the bloom be fleurs du mal, and the root a falsehood, let us keep our literary history plain and unadorned, raw democracy though we be. In the worship of genius, we know, as in that of the gods, there springs up now and then a degraded cult.

“In a biography,” wrote Poe, “the truth is everything;” but he was thinking of other people’s biographies. The speediest discovery that a student of his life makes is that Poe was his own myth-maker. He had a habit of secrecy, and on occasion he could render silence more sure by a misleading word. Thus it happens that in the various versions of his story the incidents seem to share in the legendary character of the hero. The record belongs, one would say, to that early period of literature when our ancestors first termed biographies Veracious Hystories. The three white stones of life, even, — birth, marriage, and death, — are, in Poe’s case, graven with different dates; the first bearing four from his own hand, to which Mr. R. H. Stoddard has thoughtfully contributed a fifth. The most obscure period, however, extends from the Christmas holidays of 1826, when he was just under eighteen years old, to the fall of 1833, when Kennedy found him starving in Baltimore. During this time, from July 1, 1830, to March 7, 1831, he was in the light of day at West Point. To the remainder of the period on each side of his cadet life the romantic element in his myth belongs, and to it this paper will be devoted in order to elucidate somewhat more in detail than was possible in a limited volume the facts of his career.

Poe left his home at Mr. Allan’s in the beginning of 1827, and he entered West Point in July, 1830. The story which was accredited throughout his lifetime as a true account of his doings during the intervening years first appeared in print in the sketch of him included [column 2:] in Griswold’s Poets and Poetry of America, published in 1842, the materials for which, Griswold said, were furnished by Poe himself. It was as follows: —

The next year, H. B. Hirst, a young Philadelphia poet, repeated this statement in a more extended sketch of Poe:

This was published in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum, with which Poe then had close connections, and the article was written for the express purpose of advancing a scheme which he had in hand, in partnership with the owner of this newspaper, to establish a new periodical. Poe sent the sketch to Lowell [page 816:] a year later as authority for a new life which the latter was to prepare for Graham’s Magazine, and wrote that Hirst had obtained his information from Mr. T. W. White, owner of the Southern Literary Messenger, and Mr. F. W. Thomas, a littérateur, both intimates of Poe; and he added that he believed it was “correct in the main.” Lowell therefore introduced the story as here told into his own article, and sent it to Poe, who revised it with his own hand and forwarded it to Graham’s, where it appeared in February, 1845. Griswold naturally embodied the reiterated and uncontradicted account in his Memoir after Poe’s death.

This, however, was the established version long before 1842. A gentleman who saw Poe last at some time earlier than 1831, at Baltimore, writes to me, “I remember he told me he had left Richmond in a coal vessel, and made his way to Europe, to Russia.” Allan B. Magruder, Esq., who was with him at West Point, also writes, “I am unable to remember whether I derived the information I gave you in a former letter, as to Poe’s rambles in the East and his whaling voyage before the mast, from Poe himself while a classmate at West Point, or from some mutual friend who received the account from him. I certainly learned it while he was at the military academy.” Mr. Magruder goes on to give the story then current as follows: “He made a voyage to sea on some merchant vessel, before the mast. Finding himself in the Mediterranean, he debarked at some Eastern port, and penetrated into Egypt and Arabia. Returning to the United States, he enlisted as a private in the United States army at Fortress Monroe. After some months’ service his whereabouts and position became known to Mr. Allan, who, through the mediation of General Scott, obtained his release from the army, and sent him a cadet’s warrant to West Point.” These letters fix the date of the alleged adventures [column 2:] before July, 1830. The voyage to Greece and the journey to St. Petersburg, however, are stated by Mr. Didier, in his biography, to belong to the life of Poe’s elder brother, William, and have consequently been discredited by later writers.

A second story is at hand, and for it we are indebted to Mr. Ingram, the English biographer. After mentioning that Poe’s first book was printed at Boston, in 1827, on which account he supposes that the young man visited that city in the spring, he continues his narrative as follows: —

This circumstantial narrative was dictated by Poe to Mrs. Maria L. Shew, of New York, “from what,” says Mr. Ingram, “it was deemed at the time might be his death-bed.” That biographer finds it hard to decide whether the story “was fact, or fact and fiction deliriously interwoven, or mere fiction, invented in such a spirit of mischief as, like Byron, he frequently indulged in at the expense of his too inquisitive questioners.” A death-bed is not the place where one expects to find a spirit of mischief, and there is more truth, though not perhaps in the sense meant, in what Mr. Ingram elsewhere remarks of this same matter: “There does not appear to be any reason for doubting the accuracy of this any more than of any other of the poet’s statements.”

A third story develops the tradition referred to by Mr. Magruder, that Poe was in the army; but instead of placing this in the period before he went to West Point, his biographers assign it to the time after he was dismissed from the academy. The first mention of it in print occurs in Griswold’s Memoir as follows: —

Mr. Gill supports this version, on the authority of Mrs. Clemm, Poe’s mother-in-law: —

Mr. Ingram remarks on this period:

Of other writers who have dealt with the problem, Powell states that Poe went to help the Poles against Russia (but this is evidently a misquotation from Hirst); Mr. Didier places him at Richmond in the first period, and at Baltimore [column 2:] in the second; and Mr. Stoddard, while discrediting the early rupture with Mr. Allan on the ground that the latter probably paid for the Boston edition of the poems, discreetly disclaims any faculty for writing imaginary biographies.

In all that has been laid before the reader in opening the state of the question there is but one sure fact. A book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian, was published in Boston by Calvin F. S. Thomas in 1827. A copy is in the British Museum, and its contents consist of the first drafts of poems since known as Poe’s. On the threshold of investigation, however, I was met by the opinion that the author was John Howard Payne; but this suggestion was altogether too startling, it disclosed too dismal a view of my hero, to be entertained. The volume had contemporary mention in The United States Review and Literary Gazette, August, 1827; The North American Review, October, 1827; and Kettell’s Specimens of American Poetry, 1829. In all these it was only named, but that is enough to show that it was issued before August and had some circulation. The name of Calvin F. S. Thomas is in the Boston Directory, 1827, where he is described as a printer at 70 Washington Street; but he was not a member of the Franklin Typographical Union, nor does any Boston printer of that time remember him except one now in Wisconsin, who merely thinks that he recalls him. His name is found also, crossed off, in a trial tax-list of 1827, in which he is assessed only for a poll-tax. These are meagre facts, nor is much added to them by the statements of his daughter, who, I learned through some obliging strangers, is living in Missouri. She writes that her father resided in Boston with his widowed mother and a sister in 1827, and, being then nineteen years old, had a printer’s shop there; he left the city in 1828, and afterwards lived in New York, [page 819:] Buffalo, and Springfield, Mo., and died in 1876. “None of us,” she says (his wife and sister being still alive), “can remember ever having heard him speak of himself as the publisher of Poe’s early poems; no copy of the book is in the possession of any member of the family, — neither account-books nor letters of that period.” In view of the almost universal publication of reminiscences by those who knew Poe, and of the extraordinary interest of this portion of his life, it may fairly be inferred that Thomas never identified the author of the first book he printed with Poe, or, in other words, that the latter dealt with him under an assumed name.

One other source of information, besides this volume, would naturally occur to the mind, but it is so obvious that resort to it would seem superfluous. If Poe was in the army, the records of the war department would show the facts. Secretary Lincoln had a search made for the name of Poe, or any name with his initials whose bearer’s career in the army corresponded in time and character with that ascribed to him. Adjutant-General Drum took up the subject with great kindness, and it is to his personal efforts, Secretary Lincoln informs me, that the recovery of Poe’s army record is due. The examination of documents both at Washington and elsewhere has been exhaustive.

From these papers it appears that on May 26, 1827, Poe enlisted at Boston in the army of the United States as a private soldier, under the name of Edgar A. Perry. He stated that he was born at Boston, and was by occupation a clerk; and although minors were then accepted into the service he gave his age as twenty-two years. He had, says the record, gray eyes, brown hair, and a fair complexion; was five feet eight inches in height. He was at once assigned to Battery II of the First Artillery, then serving in the harbor at Fort Independence; on October 31 the battery [column 2:] was ordered to Fort Moultrie, Charleston, S. C., and exactly one year later to Fortress Monroe, Va. The officers under whom he served are dead, but it appears that he discharged his duties as company clerk and assistant in the commissariat department so as to win the good-will of his superiors. On January 1, 1829, he was appointed Sergeant-Major, a promotion which, by the invariable custom of the army, was given only for merit. He now made his circumstances known to Mr. Allan, and shortly after Mrs. Allan’s death, February 28, 1829, he returned to Richmond on leave of absence. Of this furlough there is no record, but on February 28 he is reported on the rolls as present for duty. The result of his visit is told in the following letter, which is, however, extraordinarily inaccurate in its details: —

The reply to this was a special order: —

In accordance with this Poe was discharged, by substitute, April 15th. Before leaving his post he obtained the following letters from his officers, which show conclusively that he had already formed the plan of entering West Point, and indicate that this entered into the understanding on which Mr. Allan took him into favor: —

With these credentials in his pocket the discharged Sergeant-Major, aged twenty, went to Richmond, where no time was lost in attempting to place him at West Point.

The following letters were obtained for him: —

Of more interest than all these, however, is Mr. Allan’s own communication: —

From the tenor of these letters it would seem that Poe delivered them in person. On his return from (his journey to Washington he made the closer acquaintance of his blood relations at Baltimore, where he remained, engaged in publishing a new edition of his poems and corresponding with John Neal, the editor of The Yankee, until the end of the year. It must have been at this time that he received help from my unnamed correspondent, and said he had been in Russia, and that he entered into some obscure relations with William Gwynn, the editor of the Baltimore American, and showed him the manuscript of Al Aaraaf. On the issue of his volumes, in which it was stated that the Boston edition had been suppressed through circumstances of a private nature, he went back to Richmond, about Christmas time, and waited for his cadet warrant. His birthday came and went; he was twenty-one, and hence past the legal limit within which he could receive an appointment. This circumstance did not disturb him: he had grown four years older in 1827; he now grew two years younger in 1829, and relying on the fiction he solicited the favor of Powhatan Ellis, a younger brother of Mr. Allan’s partner, and then Senator from Mississippi, who wrote to the Secretary of War in his behalf: —

This letter received immediate attention. The appointment was made, and Mr. Allan, as Poe’s guardian, gave his formal consent to his ward’s enlistment.

There is no evidence that General Scott, Judge Marshall, or John Randolph had any hand in securing the appointment, as has been asserted since Hirst wrote his early sketch of Poe. Scott’s wife was a cousin of the young lady whom Mr. Allan was now preparing to marry, but his interest in Poe belongs to a later time. Powhatan Ellis’s letter was plainly the determining influence. The young cadet was furnished by Mr. Allan with whatever was necessary, and started north. He stopped at Baltimore, where he called upon Dr. N. C. Brooks, as that gentleman told [page 823:] me, and read, and engaged to send to him, a poem for a forthcoming annual, and at length entered West Point July 1, 1830, — his age being recorded as at the time of entrance nineteen years and five months, — and there he figured among his classmates as an adventurous boy who had run away from home and sown his wild oats in the East.

In further elucidation of Poe’s life at this period an extract should be added which has only lately been brought within my reach, by the courtesy of Colonel Thomas H. Ellis, the son of Mr. Allan’s partner. It is from an open letter April 22, 1880, from himself to the Richmond Standard, and contains in my judgment the only account of the relations between Poe and Mr. Allan that can pretend to any authority whatever. In this Colonel Ellis quotes from a letter of the second Mrs. Allan to himself (and this is the only published utterance of the Allan family upon the subject) as follows: —

Mrs. Allan was an interested witness, and her prejudices were strongly excited against Poe. If her story be true in its essential part, it explains where Poe might have obtained the money to pay for his second volume of poems, — a bill [column 2:] which Mr. Allan was not likely to meet voluntarily; and since it indicates that his purse was not liberally supplied, it also explains how it happened that during his long stay in Baltimore he was now and then out of funds. This incident, however, may be left one side; nor would k have been revived here had it not seemed necessary to include in this article everything which has been alleged regarding Poe during this period.

The natural construction to be placed on the foregoing story would seem to be this: that Poe’s officers, becoming interested in him, advised him to go to West Point, the only way in which he could rise in the service; and that in compliance with the dying request of Mrs. Allan, with whom Poe kept up some correspondence, Mr. Allan recalled him, provided a substitute, and agreed to befriend him further, on the distinct understanding that he should go to West Point, but with no intention of ever making him his heir; and, finally, that during the fifteen mouths intervening between his discharge at Fortress Monroe and his entrance at West Point Poe lived mainly apart from Mr. Allan, and gave no reason for the latter to trust him more than in years past. It would also appear that Poe invented the account of his travels in the East or in Russia at once, possibly appropriating something from the adventures of his brother, who died in Baltimore, in July, 1831, and that he used this tale in later years to conceal his enlistment. If he ever went on a voyage before the mast, as is not altogether unlikely, it must have been on his way from Richmond to Boston, when he first left Mr. Allan’s counting-room, in 1827. He would then have as the basis of the nautical knowledge he displays in his works his early ocean voyages in boyhood, this hypothetical one, and those with his regiment in its changes from post to post, besides the information he would naturally [page 824:] acquire during a two years’ residence by the sea; nor is it to be forgotten that his later journeys between the North and South were largely by water. His seamanship thus seems to be amply accounted for without assuming that he derived it from any long practical service in the merchant marine. As to Mr. Ingram’s legend of the duel in France, the Scotch lady, and the novel ascribed to Eugene Sue, it requires no discussion.

In the seventh mouth of his cadet life Foe was court-martialed for neglect of duty, and dismissed the service. The sentence went into effect March 6, 1831. The version of this affair that was circulated by Poe has been universally adopted. This was that the birth of an heir to Mr. Allan by his second wife having destroyed Poe’s expectations of inheriting his patron’s estate, and Mr. Allan having refused to allow him to resign his place, he intentionally so acted as to be dismissed, in order to be free to follow some other profession better suited to a poor man than was that of arms. This may be substantially true. Nevertheless, as Mr. Allan was not married until October 5, 1830, there was no heir born in January, when Poe’s offenses against discipline were committed: the marriage alone, therefore, determined him to take so extreme measures, and as it was a near event when he entered West Point he was probably apprised of it from the first. From the tone of Mr. Allan’s letter to the Secretary of War it would seem that he had most likely made it clear to Poe that he did not look upon him as his heir, and meant merely to start him in a military career. Poe left West Point, one can be quite sure, not because he had lost the hope of a large fortune, but because he was restless, willful, and discontented. There is, however, nothing improbable in the statement that his dismissal was sought by him as his only way of exit from army life. [column 2:]

On the morning of March 7, 1831, he was thus a free man. He had, left over from his pay, twelve cents to begin that career which was better fitted for a poor man than the military profession. Possibly additional funds were provided from the subscription of the cadets, at seventy-five cents each, to the new edition of his poems; this money was allowed to be deducted from their pay, but a part only was advanced. Poe went to New York, and may have stayed in the city a while attending to his forthcoming volume, which was not delivered to the cadets until some time after he had departed. It is commonly said that he now went to Richmond to Mr. Allan’s, where he was coldly received, and after a short time banished from the house. One hesitates to reject entirely so generally received a tradition, though it has no evidence in its support. It is unlikely that Poe, who had now made Mr. Allan’s renewed efforts in his behalf wholly futile by violent and disgraceful methods, should present himself as if he expected to remain an inmate of the home where he had not lived for five years past, and to which in the mean time a young wife of thirty had come; nor would Mr. Allan’s letters to him have invited such a course. At all events, the only fact in the matter is that two months after leaving West Point he was in Baltimore, and perhaps that was as far South as he got upon this present journey. On May 6, 1831, he addressed his old acquaintance, William Gwynn, the editor, as follows: —

Poe’s application to Mr. Gwynn was apparently fruitless, and shortly afterwards he wrote to another acquaintance, Dr. Brooks, — to whose annual, it will be remembered, he had promised a contribution, — and asked for a position as teacher in that gentleman’s school at Reisterstown, but there was no vacancy. Dr. Brooks, who told me the incident, recalls perfectly well the time of its occurrence. This is, however, the last definitely dated event in Poe’s life until October 12, 1833, when his name was printed as the winner of a prize for the best story contributed to the Saturday Visiter, a Baltimore literary weekly. During this period, the tradition of the Poe family and the sketches of his life published before he died place him at Baltimore, and there is not in any quarter the slightest bit of evidence on which to base a doubt of the truth of this belief. The fact that Judge Neilson Poe was then living in another town, and that Mrs. Clemm, Poe’s future mother-in-law, had apparently also moved away, may explain why our knowledge of his whereabouts is not more exact, and how he came to fall into such circumstances of poverty as he did. A cousin, however, then Miss Herring, whose reminiscences of Poe have been carefully [column 2:] obtained for me by a member of the Poe family, says that Poe called on her at this time, in the morning or afternoon, when he could see her alone, and used to entertain her by reading, or by writing verses in her album; but her father discouraged these attentions because of the relationship and of Poe’s. habits of drinking. These calls were made at frequent intervals, on flying visits from Philadelphia and other places, and this lady is positive that they extended from 1830 to 1884, when she was herself married. She never heard of his leaving this country during these years. A date that depends only on the memory of a long-past event is always open to question. In this case it was in 1830 that Poe called on his relatives as he passed through Baltimore to West Point; in 1834 he visited Richmond, and possibly Philadelphia, where he was endeavoring to get a book published: and such absences, though few, may have left the impression that he was given to traveling. However this may have been, such are the statements of the only person who claims any personal knowledge of Poe between the summers of 1831 and 1833.

Some inferences may be drawn from the condition in which Poe was found by Kennedy, who befriended him on his reappearance as a prize story-teller. Griswold may have exaggerated the meanness of Poe’s poverty, but notwithstanding the strenuous denials of Mr. Ingram and others, who seem to think Poe degraded by misfortune, there is not the least doubt that he was in extreme distress, as is conclusively shown by this extract from Kennedy’s diary: —

“It is many years ago, I think, perhaps as early as 1833 or ’34, that I found him in Baltimore, in a state of starvation. I gave him clothing, free access to my table, and the use of a horse for exercise whenever he chose; in fact, brought him up from the very verge of despair.” (Tuckerman’s Life [page 826:] of Kennedy.) It is further illustrated by the following self-explanatory note from Poe to that kind-hearted gentleman, who throughout life was seeking out and advancing merit: —

“Your invitation to dinner has wounded me to the quick. I cannot come for reasons of the most humiliating nature — my personal appearance. You may imagine my mortification in making this disclosure to you, but it is necessary.” (Tuckerman’s Life of Kennedy.)

And if further proof be needed it is furnished by a letter of Poe’s, written years afterwards, in which he says, “Mr. Kennedy has been at all times a true friend to me — he was the first true friend I ever had — I am indebted to him for life itself.” (Poe to Thomas. Stoddard.)

If this extreme destitution of Poe be considered in connection with the fact that he had sent in to the competition for prizes six tales, so well finished that the committee advised him to publish all of them, it may fairly be thought that he had been devoting himself to literature for some time previous, and that his garret was in Baltimore. Nevertheless, if any one chooses to suppose that Poe was starving elsewhere, there can be no check to the vagaries of his fancy; for if the unappreciated genius who had now found out what a poor man’s career was like was not at Baltimore, there is as much reason to imagine him in Hong Kong as in any other place.

One other source of information must be glanced at, since it has been relied on to clothe Poe with more respectability when he was in his worst disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes. Mr. Lambert A. Wilmer, whose books, at least, do not entitle him to much regard, since they are scurrilous and filthy, was one of the projectors of the Saturday Visiter. He published reminiscences of Poe several times, but the only article which need be referred to here is one, [column 2:] Recollections of Edgar A. Poe, contributed to the Baltimore Daily Commercial, May 23, 1866. He writes: —

This is all that Wilmer has to say with regard to this particular time. The twelve years’ intimate acquaintance with Poe which he asserts is an absurd claim. [column 2:] He knew Poe well only for a very few months at this time; during six of the twelve years he did not see Poe at all, and for the last five of them he met him only incidentally in Philadelphia. Other statements in this article — for example, the circumstantial account of Poe’s attempt to learn lithographing in Philadelphia about 1841 — are entirely fictitious. Wilmer, therefore, is not a scrupulous and careful witness, and his word would not for a moment stand against Kennedy’s as recorded in his diary. From Wilmer’s book, Our Press Gang, in which he gives an account of his life, but without dates, it appears that he went from Washington to Baltimore to start the Visiter, and was its editor not much longer than six months; he lost his place, and was soon forced to go away from Baltimore in search of a living elsewhere, and did not return until after Poe had left the city. It is possible, of course, that Poe offered his services to the new weekly at once, and that an acquaintance sprang up between the editor and contributor, but this supposition cannot be verified, as no file of the paper is known to exist. It is quite as likely, and the hypothesis reconciles all the facts, that Wilmer’s intimacy with Poe grew out of the latter’s winning the prize, and his reminiscences therefore cover the months just subsequent to Kennedy’s charity, when, after Mrs. Clemm again settled in Baltimore, he went to reside with her. Poe was then, under the stimulation of Kennedy’s friendship and active interest, trying to retrieve his reputation and break off his bad habits.

Whether during these hard years Poe made any application for assistance to Mr. Allan has never been publicly known. The account which Colonel Ellis (whose article, as has been said, is the only one of the slightest authority) has given of the final scene between Poe and his old patron, though it took place six months after Poe’s literary [page 828:] adoption by Kennedy, seems to belong here: —

In this article all that has ever been alleged or is now known in regard to Poe’s life, from his desertion of Mr. Allan’s home in 1827 to his expulsion from it under the circumstances just related, has, I believe, been included. His story, stripped of its fabulous incidents, has turned out to be the commonplace one of a runaway boy, who persistently rejected and at last forfeited the honest kindness of his friends. There [column 2:] is nowhere in it a generous, noble, or picturesque incident. If one desires to build up a transforming legend and to perpetuate the romance of a bygone literary fashion, he can do so only by suppressing the facts and elaborating the myth in the direction of a tawdry and foolish sentimentality. Whether or not, as Poe said, the truth is everything in a biography, justice has a supreme right there as elsewhere: I do not mean the justice that is expressed in verdicts, but that ideal justice, which, however obscured, or lost, or overborne, it may be, by the intrusion of extraneous influences, is nevertheless discernible in human affairs, and brings about a certain consistency in life and character. Shelley’s youth was full of error, and at his death his name was held in dishonor; but, the nobility of his nature always remaining undefiled, ruin could not touch him nor shame live beside his grave. If Poe, on the other hand, was the victim, he was also the servant, as he was the poet, of the evil gods; and the same consistency, the same ideal justice, working itself out to a different end, is to be seen in his life as in Shelley’s. It is not the career of a youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five that has been so minutely examined in this paper; it is rather the sowing-time of a man of genius, whose harvest proved so black a growth that it is deemed hardly natural. But so far from learning to credit any part of the legend that strives to turn Poe into the object of an exceptional fatality, one rises from the exhaustive study of his days from birth to death, with only the more profound conviction that nothing but a man’s own acts can plunge him into the worst of life.

G. E. Woodberry.