"Introduction," "To "To Helen," "Israfel," "The Doomed City," "Fairy Land," "Irene," A Pæan," "The Valley Nis," "Al Aaraaf," and "Tamerlane." Of the whole number in both volumes, Poe re-printed, in 1845, ten among his "Poems written in Youth :" he re-wrote six, which were inserted among the poems of his manhood, the rest he omitted. They are restored here, not in the places they occupied in the original editions, but after his "Poems written in Youth." "Al Aaraaf" and "Tamerlane" are substantially the same in the different editions, though there are minor changes in them, omissions, insertions, and the like. I might add other particulars, but they would be out of place here, where my object is not bibliography, but biography, the biography that I now submit to English readers. THE CENTURY, NEW YORK. R. H. STODDARD. MEMOIR. EDGAR ALLAN POE was well born. The original name of the family, which was an old Norman one, was Le Poer, and it figures prominently in the annals of Ireland. The family was founded in that country by Sir Roger Le Poer, a marshal of Prince John, in the reign of Henry II.; and the pages of Giraldus Cambrensis bear witness to the courage of one of its membersSir Arnold Le Poer, seneschal of Kilkenny Castle, who withstood the power of the Church, as embodied in the person and pretensions of the Bishop of Ossory, from whose holy clutches he rescued the Lady Alice Kyteler, who was accused of, and persecuted for, the heinous sin of witchcraft.* year. Poe's great-grandfather, Jchn Poe, emigrated to America from Ireland, about the middle of the last century, bringing with him his wife Jane, a daughter of Admiral James McBride, and his son David, who was then in his second or third David Poe grew up to manhood, and served, during the Revolution, as a quartermaster-general in the Maryland line. General Poe must have been a man of some note, for he was the intimate friend of Lafayette, who called personally on his widow during his last visit to America, and tendered her his acknowledgments for the services rendered him by her husband. The maiden name of this lady was Cairns. She was a native of Pennsylvania, and is said to have been singularly beautiful. To her were born five children, the names of three of whom have reached us,- -one being David, the father of our Poe, another Samuel, and the third Maria. Of David * The incident may be found in Wright's "Narratives of Sorcery and Magic," and in Ennemoser's "History of Magic." London 1854, vol. ii. page 464, et supra. |