who have first read the poems of this strange being, and then read any of the biographies of him which pretend to anything like an accurate account of his life. Like his own Raven, he is to his readers, "bird or fiend”— they know not which. But a close study of his works will reveal the fact, which may serve in some degree to remove this embarrassment, that there is nowhere discoverable in them a consciousness of moral responsibility. They are full of the subtleties of passion, of grief, despair and longing, but they contain nothing that indicates a sense of moral rectitude. They are the productions of one whose religion was a worship of the Beautiful, and who knew no beauty but that which was purely sensuous. There were but two kinds of beauty for him, and they were Form and Color. He revelled in an ideal world of perfect shows, and was made wretched by any imperfections of art. The Lenore whose loss he deplores was a being fair to the eye-a beautiful creature, like Undine, without a soul. With this key to the character of the poet, there is no difficulty in fully comprehending the strange inconsistencies, the basenesses and nobleness which his wayward life exhibited. Some of the biographers of Poe have been harshly judged for the view given of his character; and it has naturally been supposed that private pique has led to the exaggeration of his personal defects. But such imputations are unjust. A truthful delineation of his career would give a darker hue to his charac ter than it has received from any of his bio graphers. In fact, he has been more fortunate Lowell and than most poets in his historians. Willis have sketched him with gentleness, and a reverent feeling for his genius; and Griswold, his literary executor, in his fuller biography, has generously suppressed much that he might have given. This is neither the proper time nor place to write a full history of this unhappy genius. Those who scan his marvellous poems closely may find therein the man, for it is impossible for the true poet to veil himself from his readers. What he writes he is. The waywardness of Poe was an inheritance. Though descended from a family of great respectability, his immediate parents were dis solute in their morals, and members of a profession which always begets irregularity of habits. The paternal grandfather of the poet was a distinguished officer in the Maryland line during the war of the Revolution; and his great-grandfather, John Poe, married a daughter of Admiral McBride, of the British Navy. His father, the fourth son of the Revolutionary officer, was a native of Maryland, and studied for the bar, but becoming enamored of a beautiful actress, named Elizabeth Arnold, he abandoned the law, and adopted the stage as a profession. They lived together six or seven years, wandering from theatre to theatre, when they both died within a very short time of each other, in Richmond, Virginia, leaving three children in utter destitution. Edgar, the second child, who was born in Baltimore, in January, 1811, was a remarkably bright and beautiful boy; and he attracted the attention of a wealthy merchant in Richmond who had known his parents, and who had no children of his own. Mr. Allan adopted the little orphan, and he was afterwards called Edgar Allan. The precocious child was petted by his adopted parents, who took pride in his forwardness and beauty; he was sent to the best schools, and was regarded as the heir to their property. In 1816, Mr. and Mrs. Allan made a journey to Europe, and Edgar accompanied them. He was placed at the school of the Rev. Dr. Bransby, at Stoke Newington, near London, where he remained some four or five years; but all we know of him during this |