Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/67

Rh his mind. On 14 Feb.. 1826, he was matriculated at the University of Virginia, where, though a fair student, he spent much time at the gaming-table, but he was not expelled by the faculty. as lia^ Invn said, nor was he even admonished by them, lie- had incurred heavy gambling debts, which his fos- ter-father refused to pay. and taking the boy from college at the end of the first year, he placed him in his own counting-room : but shortly afterward Poe left Richmond to seek his fortune. He first went to Boston, where, about midsummer of 1827, he madr his first literary venture, the publication of " Tamerlane and other Poems." which he said in the preface had been written in 1821-'2. But his means were soon exhausted, and on 26 May, 1828, he enlisted as a private in the U. S. army, under the name of Edgar A. Perry. He won the good- will of his superiors, and on 1 Jan., 1829, was pro- moted sergeant-major for merit,/! >ut a little later he made his whereabouts known to Mr. Allan, who, with others, procured his discharge and appoint- ment to a cadetship at the U. S. military academy. Before the latter had been obtained Poe published a new edition of his poems with some additions, entitled " Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems " (Baltimore, 1829), which, like the first, possessed little merit, and met with no favor. On 1 July, 1830, he entered on his eadetship at West Point, and at the end of the first half-year stood third in French and seventeenth in mathematics in a class of eighty-seven, but he became dissatisfied, and, as his foster-father refused to sanction his resigna- tion, he purposely neglected his duties and was cashiered early in 1831. Before this he had ob- tained the subscriptions of his fellow-students to a third collection of "Poems" (New York, 1831), which met with nothing but ridicule.

He now sought literary employment in Baltimore, but with little success till in 1833 he was awarded a prize of $100, which had been offered by the Bal- timore "Saturday Visitor," for his tale "'A Manu- script found in a Bottle," the judges being Dr. James H. Miller, John H. B. Latrobe, and John P. Kennedy. A prize of $50 for the best poem was also won by his " Coliseum," but it was ruled out as being by the author of the successful tale. Poe had been in destitution, but he was relieved by Mr. Kennedy, who also procured him literary work, and on Kennedy's recommendation he was 'engaged as editor of the " Southern Literary Messenger "' at Richmond. Here he wrote some of his best tales, developing the gloomy and mystical vein for which he afterward became noted, but he gained more attention by his trenchant criticisms, which made him unpopular, especially in New York. While here he also became engaged to his cousin, Virginia Clemm, then a girl of thirteen years, and on 22 Sept., 1835, he obtained a marriage license in Bal- timore, but the ceremony was not performed pub- licly till the following year. His prospects were now excellent, but in January. 1837, he resigned his post and went to New York. This, as well as the sudden termination of Poe's other editorial engagements, has been the subject of much con- troversy, some authorities saying that his dissipated habits were the cause, and others ascribing it to feeble health or to an invitation that he received from Dr. Francis L. Hawks to become a contribu- tor to the newly established " New York Review." He furnished only one article for this, a review of a book of travels, and then worked on his "Narra- tive of Arthur Gordon Pym," a tale of adventure in antarctic regions, which had been partially pub- lished in the "Messenger" (New York, 1838). At this time the principal income of the family was obtained from the boarders that Mrs. Clemm. Poe's mothi-i'-in-law. received. Among these was Will- iam Gowans, the bibliophile, who has testified to Poe's uniformly sober and courteous demeanor. In the summer of 1838 he went to Philadelphia and compiled the " Conchologist's First Book" (Philadelphia, 1839), which has raised against him many charges of plagiarism. It was said during his lifetime that the text-book was a simple reprint of Capt. Thomas Brown's Conchology." an Eng- lish work; but this is untrue. It has recently be- come known that it was condensed and otherwise altered from Thomas Wyatt's " Manual of Con- chology," at the desire of the author, whose pub- lishers declined to issue a smaller edition of his work. In July, 1839, he became associate editor of William E. Burton's "Gentleman's Magazine" in Philadelphia, and shortly afterward he issued a collection of his prose stories, entitled " Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque " (2 vols.. Boston. 1839). Though these contain some of his finest work, he received nothing from them but the copy- right and twenty copies for private distribution, and the sale was small. His connection with the " Gentleman's Magazine " lasted until the follow- ing year, when he quarrelled with Burton. Poe had previously issued the prospectus of a new periodical, "The Penn Magazine," but it was at first postponed temporarily by his illness, and then indefinitely by his engagement as editor-in- chief of "Graham's Magazine," which had been formed by the purchase of the "Gentleman's " by George R. Graham and its consolidation with Graham's " Casket." About this time he began to take an interest in unravelling difficult problems. He had asserted in an article on " Cryptography " that human ingenuity could construct no crypto- graph that could not be solved. The result was that compositions of this kind were sent to him from all parts of the country, and he solved all that he received, to the number 'of more than 100. Not long afterward he wrote his tale " The Gold- Bug," which was founded on the solution of a cryptograph, and for which he obtained a prize of $100 that had been offered by the " Dollar Maga- zine." In May, 1841, he published a prediction of the plot of "Barnaby Rudge" from the introduc- tory chapters, which is said to have caused Dickens to ask Poe if he was the devil. In April he had published his " Murders in the Rue Morgue," the model of many subsequent detective stones. The tale was afterward stolen by two rival French journals, and a libel suit followed, in the course of which the true author was discovered. This was the beginning of Poe's popularity in France, which became wide and lasting. Meanwhile he continued his critical articles, which, if not always correct, and often apparently spiteful and colored by Poe's peculiar ideas concerning the literary art, were certainly independent.

During his stay in Philadelphia, Poe's wife, who had been always delicate, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing, and she never fully recovered. To his anxiety for her Poe attributed' his failure to withstand his appetite for stimulants. However this may be, his habits grew more and more irregular, and in the spring of 1842 he lost the editorship of "Graham's. He had not abandoned the scheme of issuing a magazine of his own, and early in 1843 appeared the prospectus of " The Stylus." in which Poe was to be associated with Thomas C. Clarke. This was subsequently abandoned, and, after doing some desultory literary work, delivering a few lectures, and suffering much from poverty, Poe returned with his wife and her mother to New York