The mother died when Poe was two years old, and Edgar, one of her three children, was adopted by a childless pair, the Allans, wealthy Scotch folk of Richmond in Virginia. Four years later the Allans made a tour through Ireland, Scotland and England. They settled in England for a while, and young Edgar Allan, now six years of age, was given five years' schooling at Stoke Newington. Ke was eleven when he returned to America with the Allans, and we hear of him afterwards as a youngster at the Richmond school, brilliant indeed, but defiant, irritable and solitary—" a descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable," as he says, in what seems to be an autobiographical note.

Poe, as a youth, had a rare aptitude for athletic feats, and

Baudelaire notes with satisfaction that, though made with the feet and hands of a woman, Poe was capable of great muscular exertion; as a youth he excelled his contemporaries in swim ming. He had high personal distinction; he was graceful, good-looking, and endowed with noticeable eloquence. He was fond of dramatic recitation. Once he recited some speeches out of Julius Ceesar, impersonating Cassius, and he gave his audience the impression that he was "a born actor." This evidence of declamatory power is interesting, and the reminiscence of the theatre accounts for a great deal in Poe's work. At seventeen he was sent to the University of Virginia. Here he won high honours in Latin and French, but within a year he was withdrawn on account of some gambling trans actions. We may be sure that Edgar Allan Poe was loth to let his eighteenth year pass unmarked; unlike most young literary aspirants he succeeded in making it memorable. He went up to Boston and published a book—verse, of course— Tamer lane and Other Poems (1827). Mr. Allan seems to have in terested himself in this volume, but soon after the publication of Tamerlane there came a breach between the poet and his patron. Edgar Allan Poe now entered the army of the United States, and in two years he had risen to the rank of sergeant-major. He was now twenty; his foster-mother died, and then there came a reconciliation between Edgar and Mr. Allan. In 1830 he entered the College at West Point as a military cadet. Meanwhile (1829) he had published his second volume. It contained Tamerlane (re-written) and Al Aaraaf. His conduct at the Military College was considered irregular, and he was dismissed in 1831. Affairs had now taken a serious turn. Mr. Allan had married again; this time he was blessed with offspring, and his wife knew not Edgar Allan. Poe insisted upon seeing his foster-parent, but the interview led only to a definite breach. When he left Allan's house he seems to have turned his back on settled ways of living. It is curious that he did not at this point try the stage; it would have fitted his temperament and his gifts; but perhaps the career of his parents had biassed him against the theatre. He published a third book of verse, poems old and new, and we hear of him next in Baltimore. He went into the office of the Saturday Visitor to claim a prize he had won with the story, A MS. found in a Bottle, and it was noticed that his coat was fastened to hide a lack of shirt, and that his face bore traces of illness and destitution. Afterwards he got an engagement on

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the Southern Literary Messenger, and he returned to his native Richmond.