Text: Henry Edward Cain, “Chapter II,” The Poe-Mangan Question (1929), pp. 15-44

[page 15:]

James Clarence Mangan was born May 1, 1803, in Dublin, Ireland. Nearly six years later, January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Mangan was a first-born child; Poe, a second-born child.

Mangan was, of course, a Celt; however, little is known of his direct ancestry. Miss Guiney says:

On the other hand, his ancestry is traced by another authority to the ancient family of O’Brassil, of the Country of Armagh.(2)

O’Donoghue points out that “ the name Mangan was originally O’Mangan, and the tribe belonged to Clare.”(3)

Mangan's mother was a Catherine Smith, who came from Kiltale, near Dunsany, County Meath. His father came from Shana-golden, County Limerick.

Poe's ancestry on his father's side has been traced out by Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley. The conclusions at which he arrives are supported by much good evidence. Edgar Allan Poe's lineage is followed through four generations to David Poe, of Dring, [page 16:] County Cavan, who died probably in the year 1742.(4) Bewley further shows that the original name of the family was Powell, not Power, or Poër, and came earlier from County Armagh. At any rate, it does not appear that Mangan and Poe are at all akin. Certainly they are not closely akin.

The cultural background and early environment of the two men were eminently different. If one looks back upon the formative period in each man's life, he is forced at once to admit that the advantages that accrued to the American were far greater than the meagre ones that fortune brought to the Irishman.

Poe's recollections of his earliest childhood must have been pleasant, for the gracious woman who adopted him, Mrs. Frances Valentine Allan, gave the orphan a mother's love and a mother's care. Her husband, John Allan, was a Scotchman and a strict disciplinarian. Some of Poe's biographers, who wished to romance as much as possible, have made capital of this fact, representing that Poe was cruelly treated. It is evident that there was some antipathy between father and adopted son, but no cruelty, — certainly not enough to make his whole existence miserable. What created this antipathy no one can definitely say; still, one probable solution is that the man did not understand the spirited pride and temperamental disposition of the child. A letter among the Ellis-Allan Papers in the Congressional Library, reprinted in the Sewanee Review (Vol. XX, p. 201) , throws some light on the subject. It was written to William Henry Poe, Edgar's elder brother:

November 1, 1824. Richmond.

Dear Henry

I have just seen your letter of the 25th ult. to Edgar and am much afflicted, that he has not written you. He has had little else to do for me he does nothing & seems quite miserable, sulky and illtempered to all the Family. How we have acted to produce this is beyond my conception why I have put up so long with his conduct is little less wonderful. The boy possesses not a spark of affection for us not a particle of gratitude for all my care and kindness towards him. I have given a much superior Education than ever I received myself. If Rosalie has to relie on any affection [page 17:] from him God in his mercy preserve her-I fear his associates have led him to adopt a line of thinking & acting very contrary to what he possessed when in England. I feel proudly this difference between your principles & his and hence my desire to stand as I ought to do in your estimation. Had I done my duty as faithfully to my God as I have to Edgar, then had death come when he will had no terrors for me, but I must end with this devout wish that God may yet bless him & you. . . .

John Allan.

A true conception of the treatment Poe received in his childhood may be gathered from the following:

“Poe, orphelin recueilli, un peu contre le gré de son mari, par Mrs Frances Valentine Allan, de Richmond (Virginie), conquiert les bonnes grâces d’Allan et de tout son entourage par la gentillesse esquise de ses manières enfantines, par sa beauté et sa hardiesse physiques, par l’éveil précoce de son intelligence. Même succès à Londres où Allan, qui est Ecossais, séjourne avec sa famille pendant cinq ans. Le jeune Edgar Allan, comme on appelle alors l’enfant, y charme également tout le monde, ses parents adoptifs, leurs amis, les misses Dubourg qui sont les premières institutrices qu’il ait eues, au 47 de Southampton Row, Russell Square, avant de fréquenter l’établissement du Reverend Mr. Bransby, à Stoke Newington, the Manor House School.”(5)

“Au retour en Amérique, il a onze ans. L’entente est parfaite entre John Allan, sa femme, sa belle-soeur, Miss Nancy Valentine, qui choient à l’envi le jeune Edgar. Le voici enfin à l’Université nouvellement fondée de Charlottesville. Comme partout où il passe, il travaille, il progresse, il se fait remarquer par des exploits gymnastiques, par sa connaissance particulièrement solide de la littérature latine et de la langue française. C’est à cette époque que se placent ses premiers différends avec son père adoptif. Il aurait contracté l’habitude de boire, il aurait joué, il aurait perdu, fait des dettes assez fortes, et Allan, en se refusant à les acquitter, lui aurait, à la fin de l’année universitaire, aux fètes de Noël 1826, fait abandonner ses études.”(6) [page 18:]

One other circumstance may here be added. There is said to be” an unwritten chapter “ in the life of Poe.(7) As a young boy he became the tool of his foster mother, and was used by her to spy upon Mr. Allan, whom she suspected of infidelity. This may have won for Edgar the ill will of his benefactor.

With regard to Mangan, on the other hand, it is most difficult to determine from the material available just what circumstances conditioned the periods of his early childhood and adolescence. It seems certain that his early environment was not nearly so bad as he has described it in the fragment of his autobiography.(8) Yet, that it was less happy and tranquil than that of Poe is evident.

In the face of so many inconsistencies and so much contradiction as he has bequeathed to posterity in the autobiography, one feels constrained to hold that his mind must have been affected at the time he wrote it; or, as O’Donoghue suggests, it may be that he was then under the influence of opiates. At any rate, the autobiography is not of great value as evidence in this respect, for Mangan, besides being addicted to the use of opium, at this time had entered upon a period of morbid self-pity. In his autobiography, he says:

“. . . I, James Clarence Mangan, came into the world surrounded, if I may so express myself, by an atmosphere of curses and intemperance, of cruelty, infidelity, and blasphemy, and of both secret and open hatred toward the moral government of God — such as few infants, on opening their eyes to the first light of day, had ever known before.”(9)

Speaking of his treatment at home and of his father, whose nature at first he characterizes as “ truly noble,” Mangan says:

“Me, my two brothers, and my sister, he treated habitually as a huntsman would treat refractory hounds. It was his boast, uttered in pure glee of heart, that ‘we would run into a mousehole’ to shun him. If anyone can imagine such an idea as a human boa-constrictor, without his alimentative propensities, he will be [page 19:] able to form some notion of the character of my father. May God assoil his great and mistaken soul and grant him eternal peace and forgiveness! But I have an inward feeling that to him I owe all my misfortunes.”(10)

During his early childhood, Mangan says, he sought refuge [from his father's cruelty] in books.” He locked himself in his room where he remained unapproachable. He admitted not even his nearest relatives and for four years continued to avail himself of the peace of this sanctuary. But at the end of this period, his father having failed in business, the youth was sent out to earn the daily bread. This occurred when Mangan was but fifteen. He writes:

“. . . I was apprenticed to a scrivener. Taken from my books, obliged to relinquish my solitary rambles and musings, and compelled, for the miserable pittance of a few shillings weekly, to herd with the coarsest of associates, and suffer at their hands every sort of rudeness and indignity which their uncultivated and semi-savage natures prompted them to inflict on me!”(11)

Mangan lays great stress upon the torments he was forced to undergo at the hands of his associates while he was in the scrivener's office; but, as O’Donoughue points out,(12) it is most improbable that his surroundings there could have been such as he has represented them to be. It was only later, perhaps, when he was employed in the attorney's office, and when he had passed out of adolescence, that he was subjected to this distasteful environment — when he was forced

Yet, this environment from which Mangan so sensitively recoiled might not have seemed so repulsive to another. Even in early childhood, Mangan evinced a tendency to shrink from companionship. He remarked that while his brothers and sisters were [page 20:] at play, developing their muscles and hardening their bodies, he was isolated in his dingy abode.

However, there is enough in Mangan's writings to convince one that he came early into contact with the harshness of life, and there is an unmistakable note of sincerity in this stanza from “The Nameless One”:

Let us turn to the consideration of training and schooling. A glance assures us that in this field also Poe held the advantage.

No doubt it was from the lips of the refined Mrs. Allan that there fell for Poe the first lessons of living. It was she who touched him with those little elegancies so characteristic of the Southern gentlewoman of the day, and bred in him all those graces of manner that afterward drew the gentlefolk of every drawing room to his side. When Edgar was six years of age, he could “ read, draw, and dance.”(14) He had also by this time been taught to recite verse for the pleasure of his elders. He was taught his first lessons at a private academy in Richmond, though it is not known precisely how long he remained there. On the whole, the atmosphere in which he grew up was one simple refinement. A commentator informs us that “Poe was not reared in great wealth; but in a family of limited means and plain manners. The Allans, nevertheless, belonged to the most cultivated and agreeable society that Virginia knew in the days of her old-fashioned and justly famed courtesy and hospitality, and a boyhood spent in association with such gentlemen as Edgar constantly and familiarly met could not fail to be both pleasant and of the highest utility in forming both manner and character.”(15)

In 1815 the Allans sailed for England, taking Edgar with them. The child was sent first to the fashionable school of the Misses Dubourg at London, and was later placed at the Manor House School, Stoke Newington, a suburb of London. Poe was well satisfied [page 21:] at the latter place especially, and no doubt derived great benefits, both culturally and intellectually, from his stay.

“His residence here,” says Woodberry, seems to have left deep marks of remembrance upon his mind, nor is it unlikely that the delight in the ancient, which afterwards characterized him, sprang from this early familiarity with a memorable past not yet vanished from the eye and hand.”(16)

On returning to America after a stay of five years in England, the Allans again took up their residence at Richmond. Here Poe attended the English and Classical School of Joseph H. Clarke. Master Clarke was an Irishman, and had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He numbered among his pupils James Ryder Randall, the author of “Maryland, My Maryland,” (a poem, by the way, whose meter was fashioned, according to Randall himself, after the pattern of that used by Mangan in his “Karamanian Exile”). It was possibly the rolling voice of this Celt that suggested to Poe his ancestry, and tuned his ear so nicely to the Irish Mode. Clarke was succeeded in 1823 by William Burk, and Poe remained under him until March 1825. At the academy Poe mingled at times with his schoolmates; but for the most part he lived to himself. Nevertheless, he was a member of the Thespian Society and associated with his fellows enough to demonstrate his ability as a runner, boxer, jumper, and swimmer.

On the fourth of February, 1826, he matriculated as a student at the University of Virginia, where he remained until the following Christmas.

Poe received his last training at West Point, which he entered in July, 1830. Here he found the atmosphere of rigorous discipline uncongenial to him and persisted in being continually at loggerheads with his superiors. His stay, therefore, ended as it could only end: he was courtmartialed and dismissed. He left West Point in March, 1831, at the age of twenty-two.

There is little positive evidence to guide one in reckoning what cultural influences tinted Mangan's character in the years of his boyhood. He must have felt a deep spiritual influence from his mother, if we are to believe in the tradition of warm religious zeal which is said to characterize the Irish Roman Catholic mother, and [page 22:] perhaps he was the recipient of some touches of gentleness from her too, for she is described by Miss Guiney as a comely member of a respectable farmer's family near Dunsay [Dunsany] in the County Meath.”(17) But it was in all probability his father who kindled in him his first love of books and learning, for, according to O’Donoghue, the elder Mangan had been a teacher, and “was a man of some education and refinement.”(18) Yet it does not seem probable that his father, who was a grocer, a person of nervous and irritable temperament, contributed anything substantial to the make-up of the son, or fashioned in him any of the nobler qualities of his character. Certainly, nothing that Mangan has said would lead us to believe that the father breathed into his son any nobleness.

Mangan's formal education was meagre. When the boy had reached his seventh year, he was sent to school in Saul's Court, off Fishamble Street, the place where he was born. The school had been opened by the Jesuit, Father Austin. Here he was placed under “ the special guidance of Father Graham, a learned grammarian and classical scholar.”(19) Later he was withdrawn and sent to a less expensive academy, called Courtney's Academy, in Derby Square. The only other schooling Mangan enjoyed seems to have been a brief stay at the academy kept by William Browne in Chancery Lane. Surely the atmosphere which surrounded Mangan in Derby Square could not have compared with that classic environment in which young Edgar Poe lived at Stoke Newington. It is described by Mitchel as a square of dismal brick houses,” and as a place of which no one of respectability in Dublin had any knowledge. This same commentator says:

“The houses are high and dingy: many of the windows are patched with paper; clothes lines extend across from window to window, and on the whole the place has an air of having seen better days — better, but never very good.”(20) [page 23:]

Nevertheless, Mangan speaks of these years of study as fruitful ones. He says, “My schooling during those days stood me in good stead.”(21)

It is apparent that Mangan was to a great extent self-educated. His absorption in books was almost complete even in his earliest years. Sickly and weak from childhood, he never took delight in the popular sports of children; books were his best companions. Even from his dull and arduous labors in the scrivener's office and the attorney's office, he returned to his quiet room at evening to read. Thus it was that he grew to manhood with a body blighted by disease, but with a mind overflowing with all the rich wonders of many books.

In the matter of travel, Poe held a slight advantage over Mangan. As a boy he spent five years in England. It was once thought by many, and is still thought by a few, that Poe travelled in Egypt and Arabia during that period after he left the University of Virginia and before he entered West Point. Others hold that he spent the greater portion of this time in the Army. However, nothing definite is known of his whereabouts during that time. He travelled on the Eastern Coast of the United States and knew the ground from Boston to Richmond very well. Mangan, on the other hand, was never outside of Dublin except, perhaps, on one of his solitary rambles into its suburbs. Mangan's mind did all the travelling: the body stayed at home.

Some light is thrown upon the original genius of Poe and Mangan when one looks at their earliest attempts at rhyming.

Edgar Allan Poe was a child of marked precocity. In his school days under the Masters Clarke and Burk at Richmond he was dreaming and playing the poet. The following lines, written at the age of fourteen, give a better expression of the maturity of his intellect and fancy at that time than could otherwise be given:

SONG

This poem, as it stands, is the same, with the exception of five minor changes, as the one which appeared in the edition of 1827.

Poe's first really good poem is that addressed To Helen, beginning,

Here is an unmistakable note of genius. It was written when he was attending the Richmond Academy under Master Burk, and the subject of it is the mother of one of his schoolmates, Mrs. Stanard, a matron of about thirty years. The piece is set with more gems than might be expected even of a less youthful poet, not only of charm and conception, but also of language and allusion.

Turning to Mangan again, one finds in his autobiography a poem which he tells us was written when he was sixteen. A few lines from it are reprinted here:

This poem, though imperfect in many respects, still gives evidence of startling precocity, and, more than that, delineates for [page 25:] us some of the singular features of a youthful intellect given too early to penetrative introspection.

Still another poem of Mangan's earlier years, entitled “ Lines, written at 17,” are indicative of a budding power:

There is not a great deal to beg choice here, except that the American shows, perhaps, the greater gift of fancy. There is much of the lilting melody that came to characterize the later poetry of both men in the “Lines” of Mangan and in the poem, “To Helen,” of Poe. There is, however, one difference. This lies in the themes. Poe had not yet become so prevailingly morbid as Mangan. While Poe is light and hopeful, Mangan is “coldly bleak,” — shockingly so for one so young — and it is not difficult to understand, after reading these poems, that Mangan, in appearance and act, was an old man before he was thirty.

The personalties of Mangan and Poe, particularly of the latter, have been subjects of extensive discussion and a source of unending confusion. But out of so many allegations and denials as have been put forward concerning them, it is possible to draw a few facts which seem to be well grounded in truth. By careful comparison it may be established that the two men did have much in common. But it will be seen that what they had in common was not the concomitant of racial relationship, the result of previous training or environment, or of the strange working out of a freak play of nature. The phenomena which circumscribe the peculiar, but not unique, correspondence in their personalities have a psycho-physiological basis. Both men happened to be afflicted with the same disease. Thus they manifested the same symptoms. This fact, which accounts for practically all the striking resemblances which Mangan [page 26:] bears to Poe, is the one which the commentators of Mangan have overlooked; and it is important that this be taken into account and demonstrated.

James Clarence Mangan was not an ordinary child. He was endowed with an eager imagination and a precocity of intellect that was extraordinary to a rare degree. Of four children, he alone seems to have enjoyed singular gifts of mind. There were two brothers and one sister, all of whom, like Clarence, died early; though the sister is said not to have died of natural causes, but of a scald. Mangan informs us, as has been noted, that his father abused him at home. “But,” he adds, “ my brothers and sister fared better; they indulged in habits of active exercise, and strengthened their constitutions morally and physically to a degree that even enabled them to present a successful front of opposition to the tyranny exercised over them. But I shut myself up in a close room I isolated myself in such a manner from my own nearest relations that with one voice they proclaimed me ‘ mad.’ Perhaps I was: this much, at least, is certain, that it was precisely at that period (from my tenth to my fourteenth year) that the seeds of moral insanity were developed within me, which afterwards grew up into a tree of giant altitude.”(26)

It is evident from this that his brothers and sister had no sympathy for or understanding of Clarence in his penchant for solitude and books, and that they made up in physique what they lacked in mentality.

Mangan speaks of coming into the world amidst an atmosphere of “ cruelty and intemperance,” as has been said above. It is quite possible that the elder Mangan often indulged too much in intoxicating liquors; indeed, it is an act of kindness to account for his harshness to his children in this way. Moreover, one may regard what has been related of the other children as evidence, however slight, of resultant alcoholic degeneracy.

There is a strain of melancholy running through the poetry of Mangan. He seems to be struggling sometimes for a free and freshening poetic breath; but the stifling, suffocating hand of a congenital depression is forever over his mouth. As a young man, [page 27:] he learned to avoid the monotonous drone by occasionally counterfeiting levity and composing the doggerel that he called “facetiae.” But never when one reads his purest poetry does one feel that it breathes with the free effluence and sprightliness of an unshackled soul. According to the testimony of Mangan himself, as far back as he could remember, he was afflicted with this semi-maniacal torment:

“In my boyhood I was haunted by an indescribable feeling of something terrible. It was as though I stood in the vicinity of some tremendous danger, to which my apprehensions could give neither form nor outline. What it was I know not, but it seemed to include many kinds of pain and bitterness — baffled hopes, and memories full of remorse. Such was my condition from my sixth to my sixteenth year.”(27)

Yet the pain of this mental state was alleviated at times by the solemn visitation of some majestic dream that for a moment disembodied his spirit. In a poem which he wrote before he was sixteen(28) we catch a glimpse of his remarkable imaginative powers. It fixes in rolling words a fancy that might have sprung from the narcotized brain of a Coleridge or a DeQuincey:

Mangan sought the consolation of drink early. At just what year, it is impossible to say; according to Mangan, it was at sometime during his apprenticeship in the scrivener's office — probably in his late “teens.” Referring to the repelling atmosphere of that office, Mangan says:

“In seeking to escape from this misery, I laid the foundation of the evil habit which has since proved so ruinous to me.”(29)

The fact that there exist doubts regarding his drinking habits, [page 28:] such as O’Donoghue refers to(30) leads us to believe that Mangan was not a convivial drinker, and that he did his drinking, not habitually, but at regularly recurring intervals; for it was only. those who happened upon him when they were not expected, or who came upon him in some out-of-the-way spot who alleged that the poet was a drunkard. Mangan admitted the vice of drinking to some of his closest friends. Among these was Charles Gavan Duffy. Referring to the year 1842, Duffy says:

“Unhappily, solitary tippling had become an attraction potent enough to win him from the society of his natural companions and the recreations suitable to his age. But up to this time, when two-thirds of his literary career were past, his conduct in public life was unexceptionable, and there were few, if any, who suspected his private weakness.”(31)

From this we may presume that Mangan did not drink because he liked the taste of liquor, or for the power it has to warm man toward his fellow creatures, but rather for its effects as an anodyne, a helpmate in his battle against recurring attacks of melancholy. This melancholia, which beset him in these later years, and which, we have seen, darkened his younger days, manifested itself in his young manhood. The same morbid traits appeared there as in childhood. Speaking of the period around 1826, O’Donoghue says:

“Even at this period Mangan was subject to those fits of melancholy which he sometimes endeavored to conceal under a mask of enforced merriment. The opinion which has been expressed by some that it was a love-disappointment which changed a happy, gentle Mangan into a wretched, hopeless outcast is an entirely erroneous one. His first poems are as much saturated with mournful feeling as his last.”(32)

Mangan showed signs of some disease throughout his life. Its true nature has nowhere been described. Yet it appears that he [page 29:] was subject to intermittent attacks of it; and in the throes of these attacks he had recourse to alcohol and opium. His biographer says:

“That Mangan was rendered wretched in mind and body by almost chronic ill-health and nervous disturbances there is sufficient evidence to believe. Occasionally, when his condition was unbearable, he was obliged to absent himself from his office, his brother John, who was also employed as a scrivener, acting as his substitute. It must have been for the purpose of deadening pain or of forgetting his troubles that he, like DeQuincey, began to take opium. He never, of course, took the extraordinary quantities that the English opium eater did, but there can be no longer any doubt that somewhat early in his career he took the drug to alleviate his pain. The evidence on this point is quite conclusive. He himself denied (in one place) that he was an opium eater, but in other writings he clearly admits it.”(33)

Duffy, on the other hand, says, “ I am persuaded Mangan was never an opium eater.”(34) He also says that when he questioned Mangan about the habit, he denied it vigorously. But this denial counts no more than the other. It is not natural that he should wish, in his saner moments, anyone to know of his practice. I feel confident that he did take opium, and that he had recourse to it when seized with one of his fits of depression.

One is warranted further in believing that these attacks were periodical by the fact that he seems to have been very irregular in keeping his appointments and in fulfilling his obligations to editors. In a commentary subscribed to a reprint of a letter from Mangan to Theobald A. Purcell, Esq., in the Irish Book Lover, it is remarked that Mangan was a man of erratic habits, who, no doubt, was a trial to many an editor.(35)

Additional testimony to the existence of this peculiar characteristic is given by one of Mangan's best-known critics:

“He would disappear for weeks and months at a time and baffle [page 30:] search. It is evident that he mingled, meanwhile, with those who had snapped all links with society.”(36)

There is something in O’Donoghue's biography of Mangan that may be coupled with this assertion. Quoting Father Meehan, who attempted to dissuade Mangan from the use of liquor, O’Donoghue says:

“Though Mangan had refused, previous to his acquaintance with Father Meehan, to take any temperance pledge . . . he did subsequently take it on several occasions, mainly through Father Meehan's earnest advice, but speedily broke it.”

“‘Withal,’ says that writer, ‘what he had seen of the marvelous revolution wrought by Father Mathew impressed him beneficially; so much so, that for whole months he would avoid the use of alcohol in any form. During these intervals of self-denial, he endeared himself more and more to his young associates, frequented the sacraments, and scrupulously kept faith with those who had secured his literary services. What joyous evenings we had then listening to his anecdotes of crazed Maturin — in some measure his own menechme or alter ego, — whom he used to follow through the streets. . .’” (37)

Here a number of things are clearly implied: That he imbibed periodically; that he was not irregular in his habits when he abstained; and that he underwent a revolution of character with these attacks, that is, that he had a dual personality. It appears that Mangan, after each debauch, made a firm resolution never to commit the offense again, yet always succumbed later to the gnawing desire. All these things, as we shall see later, were likewise true of Poe.

Thus we may see that Mangan was not in the ordinary sense of the words a drunkard or an opium eater. He was drawn to alcohol and to opium by an irresistible craving which he fought as best he could until his spirit was battered down and crushed by its strength and force. It was then, and only then, that he gave himself up to its sinister influence.

O’Donoghue quotes James Price as saying of this period of Mangan's life: [page 31:]

“‘At last his friends could do nothing for him. The ever-gnawing craving for excitement would be satisfied, though self-respect and man's esteem were sacrificed. Pity him, weep for him, but censure him not! His own self-reproaches were abundant punishment for his fault.”“

And O’Donoghue adds:

“He would promise earnestly to change his habits, and really made heroic efforts to carry out his promises, but all without avail.

“Yet he would voluntarily abstain, sometimes for weeks, from drink, though it was evident to all who knew him that he suffered agonies in the effort.”(38)

During his later years Mangan's mind showed in some degree the cumulative effect of this dissipation. There was in these years a marked deterioration in his physical make-up, as bad as-it had been from childhood. This, no doubt, affected him mentally, aggravating his neurosis. Mangan's autobiography, which was written toward the end of his days for Father Meehan, furnishes us several good reasons for believing that his mind gradually suffered an increased abnormality. In the first place, he has stated in it his desire of adhering to “ strict truth.” Yet the whole is dotted with what he must have known would soon be marked as perversions of the truth. An almost insane self-pity permeates every page; and though he says it is written to give warning and guidance to posterity, he does not hold up his own failures and shortcomings to the light so much as he dwells upon the misfortunes that a cruel destiny heaped upon his weakness.

He also speaks of the trials he was forced to undergo in the solicitor's office, and adds:

“My nervous and hypochondriacal feelings almost verged upon

insanity.”(39)

And again he says:

“If my mind had been of a larger and sterner order all this had such as treated of the wonderful and terrible in art, nature, and [page 32:] society. Descriptions of battles and histories of revolutions, accounts of earthquakes, inundations, and tempests, and narrations of moving accidents by flood and field, possessed a charm for me which I could neither resist nor explain. . . .

“If my mind had been of a larger and sterner order all this had been well enough, and I should doubtless have reaped nothing but unmixed advantage from my labours. But, constituted as I was, the effect of these upon me was rather injurious than beneficial. I gradually became disquieted by doubts, not of the great truths of faith, for these I never questioned, but of my own capacity, so to speak, for salvation.”(40)

It is easy to believe that these “ disquieting doubts “ were not of his “ capacity for salvation “ alone but of the capacity of his mind to govern him normally, and so to maintain his rationality. He feared becoming irresponsible for his acts.

One other striking excerpt from his autobiography which may be used to serve as evidence of his abnormality is the story told of his confinement in the hospital:

“There was a poor child in the convalescent ward of the institution who was afflicted from head to foot with an actual leprosy, and there being no vacant bed to be had I was compelled to share that of this miserable being, which, such was my ignorance of the nature of contagion, I did without the slightest suspicion of the inevitable result. But in a few days after my dismissal from the hospital this result but too plainly showed itself on my person in the form of a malady nearly as hideous and loathsome as that of the wretched boy himself; and though all external traces of it have long since disappeared, its moral effects remain incorporated with my mental constitution to this hour, and will probably continue with me through life.”(41)

To just what extent all this can be taken as evidence of abnormality by science, I can not say; but I do not feel that any layman would be willing to accept this as the testimony of a sound mind.

Still another symptom appears. Mangan for years looked forward [page 33:] to death.(42) It is probable that the thought of taking his own life came many times to his mind. Such a thought must have been the shadowy companion of all his hours of deep anguish. He himself mentions the fact of its early presence. Whether the allusion is simply a hyperbole or whether it was uttered in full consciousness of its meaning, we know not. “I was obliged,” he says, “to work for seven years of the ten from five in the morning, winter and summer, to eleven at night, and during the three remaining years nothing but a special Providence could have saved me from suicide.”(43)

In discussing Mangan's personality, the following has so far been pointed out: that Mangan was not an ordinary child, for he displayed remarkable imaginative powers and exhibited a singular precocity; that he was, no doubt, a genius, and that neither of his brothers nor his sister showed any exceptional degree of mentality; that all died young; that the father gave evidence of being an alcoholic, and that Clarence, therefore, might have inherited the tendency from his father, or forefathers; that a strain of melancholy runs through all his poetry, and that his mind was morbid from the first; that in youth he shunned companionship; that he began to drink early; that he was neither a convivial drinker nor a daily drinker, and that he took drink as an anodyne when subject to one of his periodical fits of depression; that he suffered recurring attacks of sickness; that he took opium occasionally in small amounts; that he was erratic in his habits and that he would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time; that he had a dual personality; that he repeatedly made resolutions never to drink again; that in his later years he suffered some derangement of mind; that he feared becoming irresponsible for his acts; and that he occasionally harbored thoughts of suicide.

It is purposed in presenting these facts about Mangan to show that they are symptoms of a disease, and to demonstrate that it was this same disease which victimized Edgar Allan Poe.

During the first decade of the twentieth century the sentiment [page 34:] gained currency among students of Poe that he was at times the subject of a powerful and sinister influence. People spoke of his “Satanic streak “ and called him a “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Late in the decade a short article entitled “The Dual Personality of Edgar Allan Poe” appeared in Current Literature,(44) giving expression and impetus to the rising tide of belief in a psycho-physiological basis for the deflected elements in the genius and writings of Poe. The full-moon assertion of this theory shed its light upon the literary world in 1921, when John W. Robertson, M. D., published the crystallization of medical opinion on the subject under the title, Edgar Allan Poe, a Psychopathic Study.

In this book Dr. Robertson calls the disease “dipsomania” and describes the symptoms as follows:

“In the particular case of Poe, and because alcohol was his usual refuge, the term “dipsomania” can be properly used; for, in his seizures, this disease was typically manifested. Dipsomania necessarily has an alcoholic inheritance. It is characterized by periodical seizures in which the subject, because of changed personality, is temporarily irresponsible, and cannot, at all times, be held accountable for his conduct or his acts. Those with such an inheritance may indulge in excesses, usually alcoholic, often immoral, and, occasionally, criminal. When these seizures pass and the patient recovers, there may be, in the severer and progressive form, complete loss of memory. During the attack there is usually loss of self-control and an abnormal ideation. It is a transmitted disease and has an alcoholic heredity. Not every alcoholic father begets a dipsomaniac child. Many children born of such parents inherit other of the functional neuroses; yet when we find the dipsomaniac obsession, we are certain to find an alcoholic heredity which is marked, or alcohol must have been persisted in through two or three generations.

“Should the parent not have inherited any alcoholic taint and yet drink to excess, the children will show a more or less marked neurosis, especially if begotten when the parent was in a condition of intoxication. In this group are to be included the defective, the [page 35:] criminal, and the crank, as well as those possessing an unstable nervous system that later may develop into insanity. In addition to these, and as truly a part of heredity, are the precocious, and those having that excessive development of certain faculties which we call genius. Among such individuals a tendency to alcoholic excess is frequently a complicating factor, though often slightly marked and controllable . . . .

“. . . . Dipsomaniacs drink because of hereditary compulsion. In no case are they convivial drinkers, in the sense that they drink by reason of good-fellowship. It is true that, in the early period, they may occasionally so indulge; but there is soon established, because of this pre-disposition, an uncontrollable longing, not necessarily for the taste of alcohol, but rather for the effect, although the taste be disagreeable.

“There is, in the beginning of the attack, a sensation of nervousness and unrest, frequently accompanied by depression of spirits. At times this amounts to actual mental pain, which, while not seriously interfering with the normal functioning of the intellectual processes, can profoundly influence the moral faculties and may result in inability to judge rightly of their own condition. The will power of such patients, inhibited from carrying out habitual and customary acts, may unfit them for social intercourse. Occasionally this goes to the extent of actual, if slight, mental disturbance which most insistently demands some form of narcotic control, or at least immoral excitement. They will seek surroundings which in their better moods would be disgusting, and for days or weeks will disappear, to return seared by the marks of their dissipation, repentant and protesting a horror of alcohol, certain they never again will relapse. Many of the milder cases show no serious moral change and, except for these occasional outbreaks, attract but slight attention even among their intimates.”(45)

With regard to the more serious forms of morbidity Dr. Robertson then quotes an eminent authority on insanity, Spitzka:

Dr. Robertson then adds:

“After an attack the patient will return to his home and business haunted by the bitter memory of his misdeeds; most earnest and honest in his profession of reform, and he cannot be persuaded to taste alcohol in any form. When such patients assert that they have reformed they are in earnest, and, at the time, nothing can induce them to break their pledge. Yet, when the seizure returns, the impulse becomes irresistible, although for days they may fight off the impending catastrophe. When the break occurs usually they attribute it to some trivial cause of circumstance in no way responsible — some family disagreement, business disappointment, or other minor matter. Nothing is too trivial to allege in their attempt at explanation.”(47)

Doctor Robertson then gives at length much of what is apparently conclusive evidence that Edgar Allan Poe suffered from the disease which he describes in the foregoing quotations, and attention may now be called to certain features of Poe's heredity, personality, character, and life which have been indicated by this biographer, and it will be remarked that, in the main and in each [page 37:] case in some degree, these tally with the features of Mangan's heredity, personality, character, and life as already set forth.

Poe had an alcoholic inheritance on his father's side. This fact is substantiated partially by the fact that all the children were in some way marked by this inheritance. The brother William showed signs of degeneracy, and the sister Rosalie was a moron — strong of body but mentally weak.(48)

Poe began to drink while he was attending the University of Virginia. Even at this early stage he showed that he took drink, not for the taste, but for the effect.(49)

In his later years, Poe suffered from some disease. To quote Robertson on this score: “ From this time [1833] on we know every important event of Poe's life, and both his misfortunes and successes have been minutely described. We find running through these statements accounts of intercurrent attacks of sickness which incapacitated him for days or weeks, at first infrequent but slowly increasing in number and severity until we have a classical picture of typical dipsomania, with its accompanying depressions and mental abnormalities. This tells the story of the evil that pursued him and continually thwarted the best of intentions, and which made his life a series of financial struggles and failures.”(50)

Though not an addict, and though he did not have recourse to it except as a relief from mental pain, Poe did occasionally use opium.(51)

By 1835 there was definite evidence that Poe was subject to periodical seizures and fits of depression during which he underwent mental obsession.(52) Additional evidence of this appears from the fact that he became erratic in his habits at this time, as when he was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.(53)

He was not a drunkard in the popular sense of the term, but [page 38:] drank only at intervals,(54) and fought against each recurring attack.(55)

There is in Poe's case an abundance of evidence from which one may draw the conclusion that he exhibited the dual personality, which Dr. Robertson says is variously explained.(56) It is also noted that Poe was subject at times to mental aberrations(57) and that in his case alcohol hastened the mental degeneration(58) which finally became a marked abnormality.(59) He also was the victim of hallucinations.(60) He usually made firm resolutions after each debauch never to commit the offense again. In a letter to Eleveth (February, 1848) , from which Robertson quotes, Poe says, “. . . But enough of this; the causes which maddened me to the drinking point are no more, and I am done drinking forever.”(61)

While there is no direct evidence that Poe ever planned suicide, Dr. Robertson quotes from a letter from T. W. White, who was the owner and manager of the Southern Literary Messenger at the time, to Lucian Minor, in which White says:

“Poe has flew the track already. His habits were not good. He is in addition a victim of meloncholy. I should not be astonished to hear that he had been guilty of suicide.”(62)

Thus it will be seen that the major elements of similarity in the life and genius of Mangan and Poe appear to have resulted from their being dipsomaniacs; this disease left its characteristic and distinguishing impress upon both of them.

The main differences in the manner in which the disease manifested itself are that Mangan showed an earlier and more marked tendency toward morbidity than Poe, and that Poe's obsessions appear to have been more gripping and powerful, especially in the later stages, than Mangan's.

There is little doubt, then, that this inherited disease, dipsomania, explains best the doleful subjects upon which these two men dwelt in their poetry.

Thus are accounted for the chief points of likeness in Mangan and Poe. There are some minor points of resemblance, but these [page 39:] are so inconsequential that it will at once be seen that, had it not been for the dipsomaniacal character of each, these similarities would in all probability have been disregarded.

As has been seen, Mangan was born six years earlier than Poe. Both died in 1849 in public hospitals.

Both had the language gift. Mangan “ had a very creditable knowledge of the Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish languages.”(63) He knew German also very well as is made clear in a later chapter, and he may have dabbled in the Semitic languages. Poe, while a student in the University of Virginia, “obtained distinction in Latin and French at the closing examinations of 1826.”(64) He also excelled in Italian.(65) Furthermore, it has been made clear by Professor Gruener that Poe had a wide knowledge of German.(66)

It is not unaccountable or singular that Mangan displays a “vast half-knowledge of many things “ such as Poe exhibited, since it is known that Mangan was an inveterate reader from early childhood, and continued to read almost up to his last days.

They both achieved a single marked success: Poe, The Raven; Mangan, Dark Rosaleen. There are thousands who have read The Raven who have never heard of The Conqueror Worm or Ulalume. At the same time, some of the literary histories which mention Mangan refer to him as “the author of Dark Rosaleen,” scarcely making any other distinction.

Both poets were lovers of Byron. O’Donoghue says Mangan knew the writings of Shakespeare and Byron so well “that he could almost repeat everything of theirs by heart.”(67) Poe was considerably influenced by Byron, so that it shows quite visibly in his work.(68)

There is, as against this, one particular respect in which Poe [page 40:] differed widely from Mangan, and that is in his conception of God and in his religious philosophy.

As far as is known, Poe professed no religion, and there is no direct proof that he ever went to church. Yet it seems more than likely that he must have gone to some church in early childhood, must have gone to chapel while at Stoke Newington, and also while under the care of the Misses Dubourg, and probably was compelled to attend chapel while at West Point. One of his latest critics expresses the following opinion:

This critic pursues the question further:

“Here we are left in no doubt. Not monotheism, not even theism, underlies the work, but pantheism. The universe has emanated from an eternal Essence. Ultimately it will be drawn back into the same Essence. Thence in eons of the future it will proceed again. Even to eternity of eternity and infinity of infinity will the cycles of emanation and absorption, of re-emanation and re-absorption go on. Let us hear Poe's own words in brief:

But one who examines his works finds scarcely anything about them which smacks of the orthodox. His conceptions of God are so widely divergent and contradictory as to baffle comprehension. [page 41:] His notions of the Supreme Being are summed up by Heinz Caspari in the following:

“Also erst ist Gott ‘ no matter,’ dann ‘ material and spiritual,’ und zuletzt findet sich sogar die dritte Möglichkeit, ein rein materieller Gott: in MESMERIC REVELATION wird ausdrücklich betont, Gott sei kein Geist (‘for he exists’) , sondern die ‘unpartikulierte Materie.’ ”(71)

On the other hand, there are evidences in his life and work that reflect a belief in a God or a Fate, in the immortality of the soul, in the goodness of God, and in a life hereafter.(72)

It will be seen from this, that, while Poe was not consistent in the expression of his religious philosophy, its main current surged away from Christianity.

As we scan our other subject in making this comparison, we find that Mangan was a Christian. He was baptized a Roman Catholic(73) and received the last sacraments of the Church on his deathbed. As has been noted, he never questioned any of “the great truths of faith,” though he did for a while abandon the formal practice of his religion. His ideas of God as exemplified in his works are wholly orthodox and Christian. He saw in all creation the working of His hand and he applied this conception to his poetry. In a footnote in his autobiography he said:

“My reader will pardon the frequent allusions to God and Providence which occur in the course of these memoirs. But as Malebranche saw all things in GOD, so I see GOD in all things. GOD is the idea of my mind.”(74)

However, viewing the question of God and religion from another angle and scanning the practical side, we find not a difference between Mangan and Poe, but a resemblance, albeit a negative one. Poe and Mangan showed distinctly an apathetic attitude toward religion. While neither of them ever denied the existence of a [page 42:] Supreme Being, or openly assailed the citadel of Christian belief, they were both of one mind in so far as practical religion was concerned. God was not the close companion of Poe's thoughts. Religion was to him a tradition in which he discerned a singular beauty, and upon which he placed an aesthetic value in excess of any other. Mangan was likewise indifferent toward religion, and, during the latter years of his life, neglected even the formal practice of it; though finally, on his deathbed, he welcomed the priest with open arms.

One other feature of the lives of these two men calls for some discussion here. It has been said that, like Edgar Allan Poe, Mangan “‘loved and lost’ and like him, too, he fell into despair.”

Mangan, so far as it is positively known, had but one romance. In “The Nameless One” he relates that he was “befooled in love,” and this is perhaps the aptest expression that he could have found to describe this unfortunate affair. Miss Guiney says that, after it was over, “He was ineffably unhappy and in his loneliness poured his unhappiness into verse. It would be unjust to call his attitude a pose; for he was sincere. Yet he must have expressed a little more than he felt, as did every poet of that melodramatic generation. After his rebuff he worked back into some show of moral. courage and indifferentism; and it is said that no fair face ever appealed to him again.”(75) Yet Duffy later said:

“.. An opinion has been created that Mangan, when he was still a boy, had a disappointment in love, and that after the tragic event he kept sternly aloof from all female attractions. This is not merely an inaccurate, it is an impossible, theory of the poet's life. The poetic fancy is often and easily kindled, and the indispensable heroine, if she does not present herself in his daily life, is borrowed from the region of vision or often from some casual and momentary encounter with an attractive face. . .

“The great disappointment which clouded his life did not occur in his youth, as has been rashly assumed, but after his thirtieth year, and so far was he from severing himself forever from the sex of the deluder that he maintained an intimacy even with the betrayer herself after the transaction.”(76) [page 43:]

However, this insinuation seems to be its own negation, for the very fact that he continued “to maintain an intimacy” with his love indicates that he kept her ideally enshrined in his heart.

Duffy then tells the story of this affair as he wrote it in his memoirs, and as he told it to Mitchel, who garbled it in the biography of 1859:

“Shortly after our acquaintance commenced, he [Mangan] brought me to visit a County Clare family, Mrs. Stacpoole and her daughters, living, I think, in Mount Street. I found them agreeable and accomplished, and I repeated my visit several times, always with Mangan. One night, coming away, he suddenly stopped in the moonlit street, and, laying his hands on my shoulders and looking into my face, demanded: ‘Isn’t it true that you are becoming attached to Margaret?” and, finally, he said: ‘I will save you from my fate by telling you a tragic history; when I knew Margaret first, I was greatly attracted by her charming manners and vivid esprit. I talked to her of everything I did and thought and hoped, and she listened as willingly, it seemed, as Desdemona to the Moor. I am not a self-confident man — far from it; but when I besought her to be my wife I believed I was not asking in vain. What think you that I heard? That she was already two years a wife and was living under her maiden name till her husband returned from an adventure which he had undertaken to improve their fortune.’ ‘ You cannot think,’ I said, ‘ that she deceived you intentionally, since you have not broken with her?’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘ she has made my life desolate, but I cannot help returning like the moth to the flame.’”(77)

From the foregoing it is evident that Mangan idealized this woman beyond all reasonable limits, and that he worshipped servilely at her shrine. Also it seems that he did not fall into utter despair afterwards, for he appears to have been buoyed up by some far-off hope, some faith, solitary and beautiful, in the goodness of woman.

Limitation of space precludes any attempt at a complete, or even partially complete, consideration of Edgar Allan Poe's love affairs. Suffice it to say, he had many; yet only a few that palpably affected his career, or throw light upon his conception of woman. [page 44:]

His first and only purely ideal love was for Mrs. Helen Stanard, an elderly woman, relatively speaking, who was to his youthful eyes the incarnation of faultless womanhood; and he carried his adoration of her to the point of idolatry.

Another woman, Miss Elmira Royster, who had been the playmate of his boyhood, furnished his first real romance. This lovebud of his childish dreams was full-blown when Edgar was ready to go to the University, but the flower was plucked from its green stem by disastrous parental interference.

The brightest star in the firmament of Poe's love was Virginia Clemm, his first cousin, whom he married in 1836, when she was thirteen and he, twenty-six. It was a happy marriage. Poe reverenced and served this child-wife with a slavish fidelity. Especially was his devotion to her manifest in his attendance on her during her failing years. In January, 1847, this “happiest dream of all” passed into the folds of memory, and Poe found himself in the grip of dejection.

Other affairs Poe had with Mrs. Shew, Mrs. Lewis, Miss Stalley, Mrs. Whitman, and Mrs. Shelton. That with Mrs. Whitman terminated about a year before his death, and seems to have been the most disappointing affair of his career. Yet, neither in this case, nor in any other, is there any evidence that Poe was ever embittered either toward a woman, or toward womankind in general.

There is not in the poetry of Poe or Mangan an impure line. No eroticism or love in the physical sense has blemished it. Their love is purely aesthetic and ideal.

Thus we see that there is good ground upon which to compare Poe and Mangan here.

Extraneous circumstances produced in them different religious strains; but wherever there is manifested a personal religious attitude, one which is of the mind of man himself, we find that it has something in common with that of the other man.

Likewise, in their conception and treatment of woman and womanhood, they were similar.

Thus it seems that Poe and Mangan were much alike, particularly with respect to their mentality and their philosophy of life, and this was because they suffered from the same disease, which brewed in them the same symptoms, and at length sent their minds coursing along the same channel.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 15:]

1 James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with a Study. By Louise Imogen Guiney, Boston, 1897, p. 6.

2 Irish Pedigrees, by John O’Hart, American Edition, Washington, 1918, Vol. 1, p. 608.

3 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 2.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 16:]

4 Origin and early history of the family of Poe or Poë, by Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley, Dublin, 1906. Diagram facing p. 51.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 17:]

5 Mercure de France, Edgar Poe Adolescent et Son Père Adoptif, by André Fontainas, Vol. 187, April 15, 1926, p. 328.

6 Ibid., p. 328-9.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 18:]

7 Edgar Allan Poe, a Psychopathic Study, by John W. Robertson, M. D., New York, 1922, p. 17.

8 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 675.

9 Ibid., p. 678.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 19:]

10 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 678.

11 Ibid., p. 680.

12 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 15.

13 The Poems of James Clarence Mangan, with biographical introduction by John Mitchel, New York, 1881, p. 453.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 20:]

14 Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary, by G. E. Woodberry, Vol. 1, p. 18, New York, 1909.

15 Ibid., p. 4.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 21:]

16 Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary, by G. E. Woodberry, Vol. 1, p. 20.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 22:]

17 James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with a Study, by Louise Imogen Guiney, Boston, 1897, p. 7.

18 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 2.

19 Poets and Poetry of Munster, with J. C. Mangan's English version, by J. O’Daly. Preface to the third edition, 1860, p. 7.

20 Poems by James Clarence Mangan, Biographical Introduction, by John Mitchel, New York, 1881 (Biography written 1859 ) , p. 9.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 23:]

21 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 679.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 24:]

22 The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, J. H. Whitty, Boston, 1911, p. 117.

23 Ibid., p. 134.

24 “ Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 681.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 25:]

25 “Some Unpublished Mangan MSS.”, George O’Neill, S. J., Studies, Vol. 9, p. 127.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 26:]

26 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 679.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 27:]

27 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 676.

28 James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with a Study, by Louise Imogen Guiney, Boston, 1897, p. 9.

29 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol, 10, p. 679.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 28:]

30 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 16.

31 “Personal Memories of James Clarence Mangan,” by Charles Gavan Duffy, Dublin Review, April, 1908, Vol. 142, p. 288.

32 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 17.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 29:]

33 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 20.

34 “Personal Memories of James Clarence Mangan,” by Charles Gavan Duffy, Dublin Review, April, 1908, Vol. 142, p. 288.

35 “Mangan and the ‘Monthly Magazine,’” Irish Book Lover, April, 1915, Vol. 6, No. 9, p. 1 ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 30:]

36 James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with a Study, by Louise Imogen Guiney, Boston, 1897, p. 18.

37 Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 147.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 31:]

38 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 164.

39 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 685.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 32:]

40 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 686.

41 Ibid., p. 682.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 33:]

42 Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 163.

43 Ibid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 34:]

44 “The Dual Personality of Edgar Allan Poe,” Current Literature, Vol. 43, p. 287.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 35:]

45 Edgar Allan Poe, A Psychopathic Study, by John W. Robertson, M. D., San Francisco, 1921, p. 4 ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 36:]

46 Edgar Allan Poe, A Psychopathic Study, by John W. Robertson, M. D., San Francisco, 1921 , p. 7 f.

47 Ibid., p. 9.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 37:]

48 Edgar Allan Poe, A Psychopathic Study, by John W. Robertson, M. D., San Francisco, 1921 , p. 14.

49 Ibid., p. 17.

50 Ibid., p. 24.

51 Ibid., p. 65.

52 Ibid., p. 26.

53 Ibid., p. 34 f.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 38:]

54 Edgar Allan Poe, A Psychopathic Study, by John W. Robertson, M. D., San Francisco, 1921 , p. 39.

55 Ibid., p. 43.

56 Ibid., p. 57.

57 Ibid., p. 58.

58 Ibid., p. 102.

59 Ibid. p. 109.

60 Ibid., p. 123.

61 Ibid., p. 44.

62 Ibid., p. 35.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 39:]

63 The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 6.

64 “ Memoir and Vindication,” by John H. Ingram, Prefixed to Vol. 1. Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Armstrong edition, New York, 1884, p. xxviii.

65 Ibid., p. xxix.

66 “ Poe's Knowledge of German,” by G. Gruener, Modern Philology, Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 125.

67 Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan, by D. J. O’Donoghue, Dublin, 1897, p. 22.

68 “Poe's Indebtedness to Byron,” by Killis Campbell, Nation, Vol. 88, p. 248.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 40:]

69 Biblical Allusions in Poe, by William Mentzel Forrest, New York, 1928, p. 13.

70 Ibid., p. 19.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 41:]

71 Edgar Allan Poes Verhältnis zum Okkultismus, by Heinz Caspari, Hannover, 1923, p. 237.

72 Ibid., p. 16 f.

73 Poets and Poetry of Munster, with J. C. Mangan's English version, by John O’Daly. Preface to the third edition, p. iv, Dublin, 1860.

74 “Fragment of an Unpublished Autobiography,” Irish Monthly, Vol. 10, p. 678.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 42:]

75 James Clarence Mangan. His Selected Poems, with a Study, by Louise Imogen Guiney, Boston, 1897, p. 17.

76 “Personal Memories of James Clarence Mangan,” by Charles Gavan Duffy, Dublin Review, April, 1908, Vol. 142, No. 285, p. 285.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 43:]

77 “Personal Memories of James Clarence Mangan,” by Charles Gavan Duffy, Dublin Review, April, 1908, Vol. 142, No. 285, p. 286.