Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/101

 of the title page is "Copyright secured. Matchett & Woods, Printers." "Tamerlane" had been entirely rewritten, and some of the minor poems together with "Al Aaraaf" had been singing themselves into words during the two years of artillery service.

Poe's acquaintance with John Neal, to whom he dedicated "Tamerlane" dates from his visit to Baltimore to arrange for this book, and the correspondence between them is published in Neal's paper, "The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette." With it are two poems by Poe not hitherto found among his works, but which Dr. Harrison gives in the "Virginia Edition."

More than fifteen months elapsed after leaving the army before the commission for West Point was received, and in obtaining it as much influence was exerted by Poe's military record as by the letters which he secured from prominent Virginians. On July I, 1830, Poe entered the Military Academy, and from the first stood high in his studies: third in French and seventeenth in mathematics in a class of eighty-seven, but in singular contradiction to his devotion to his duties while in the artillery, he neglected and disobeyed the regulations of West Point.

For this much dwelt upon episode in Poe's life, his dismissal from the Academy, the most that investigation elucidates is that he sought it, choosing no flagrant offense as a means of obtaining his release, but simply the omission of daily duties exacted by the severe discipline of the Academy. Circumstances had greatly changed for Poe since entering in July. Mr. Allan had married again, and Poe felt he would from henceforth be an outsider in the new family, with a penniless future except for the