Remarkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life of imaginative men, but Mr. Poe’s biography displays a vicissitude and peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with.  The offspring of a romantic marriage, and left an orphan at an early age, he was adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whose barren marriage-bed seemed the warranty of a large estate to the young poet.  Having received a classical education in England, he returned home and entered the University of Virginia, where, after an extravagant course, followed by reformation at the last extremity, he was graduated with the highest honors of his class.  Then came a boyish attempt to join the fortunes of the insurgent Greeks, which ended at St. Petersburg, where he got into difficulties through want of a passport, from which he was rescued by the American consul, and sent home.[1] He now entered the military academy at West Point from which he obtained a dismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his adopted father, by a second marriage, an event which cut off his expectations as an heir.  The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his name was not mentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this regard, and he committed himself at once to authorship for a support.  Previously to this, however, he had published (in 1827) a small volume of poems, which soon ran through three editions, and excited high expectations of its author’s future distinction in the minds of many competent judges.

[Footnote 1:  There is little evidence for this story, which some biographers have dismissed as a myth created by Poe himself.  See Woodberry’s Poe, v. i, p. 337.]

That no certain augury can be drawn from a poet’s earliest lispings there are instances enough to prove.  Shakespeare’s first poems, though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness, give but a very faint promise of the directness, condensation, and overflowing moral of his maturer works.  Perhaps, however, Shakespeare is hardly a case in point, his “Venus and Adonis” having been published, we believe, in his twenty-sixth year.  Milton’s Latin verses show tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint of the author of a new style in poetry.  Pope’s youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later productions.  Collins’ callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterwards displayed.  We have never thought that the world lost more in the “marvellous boy,” Chatterton, than a very ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated dulness.  Where he becomes original (as it is called) the interest of ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid.  Kirke White’s promises were endorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey but surely with no authority from Apollo.  They have the merit of a traditional piety, which, to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less objectionable