months after her decease, like his contemporary Petöfi, the great Hungarian poet, at the grave of his girl-love Etelka, Poe would go nightly to visit the tomb of his revered friend, and "when the nights were very dreary and cold, when the autumnal rains fell, and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he lingered longest and came away most regretfully."

For years, if not for life, the memory of this unfortunate lady tinged all his fancies and filled his mind with saddening things. In a letter written within a twelvemonth of his death to the truest friend, in all probability, of his "lonesome latter years," Poe broke through his usual reticence as to his early life, and confessed that his exquisite stanzas "To Helen,"* which, strange to note, are omitted from the collected editions of his works, were inspired by the memory of this lady, by "the one idolatrous and purely ideal love" of his tempest-tossed boyhood. In the earliest versions of his boyhood's poems the name Helen frequently recurs, and it was undoubtedly to her that he inscribed "The Paan," a juvenile poem, which he subsequently greatly improved both in rhythm and expression, and republished under the musical name of "Lenore." The description which Poe afterwards gave to a friend of the fantasies that haunted his brain during his desolate vigils in the cemetery, the nameless fears and indescribable phantasms,

66

'Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!"

she compares to those which overwhelmed De Quincey at the burial of his sweet sister and playmate. We linger somewhat over this little known epoch of Poe's story, because we are perfectly convinced that Mrs. Whitman has indeed found a key to much that seems strange and

* Commencing, "Helen, thy beauty is to me.

abnormal in the poet's after life" in "those solitary churchyard vigils with all their associated memories." There can indeed be no doubt that those who would seek the clue to the psychological phenomena of his strange existence, that intellect as Poe himself said-which would try to reduce his "phantasm to the commonplace," must know and even study this phase of his being. The mind which could so steadfastly trace, step by step, the terrible stages of sentience after death, as Edgar Poe's does in his weird" Colloquy of Monos and Una," must, indeed, have been one that frequently had sought to wrest from the charnel-house its earthy secrets.

Returning to the more commonplace records of his history, the future poet is described to us at this period of his life as remarkable for his general cleverness, his feats of activity, his wayward temper, his extreme personal beauty, and his power of extemporaneous tale-telling, and, even at this early stage, as a great classical scholar, and as well versed in mathematics, botany, and other branches of the natural sciences. It is but just that we should refer to Griswold's account of this epoch in the life of Edgar Poe, as that biographist's mendacity is not known to all. "In 1822," says Griswold, "Poe returned to the United States, and after passing a few months at an academy in Richmond, he entered the university at Charlottesville, where he led a very dissipated life; the manners which then prevailed there were extremely dissolute, and he was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class, .. he would have graduated with the highest honours had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices induced his expulsion from the university." The mere fact that, according to Griswold's dates, Poe would only have been at this time in the eleventh or twelfth year of his age, is sufficient to induce doubt as to the correctness of his accusations, but, fortu

nately for the fair fame of the accused, indisputable evidence as to the entire untruth of Griswold's story has been procured. On May 22, 1860, Dr. Socrates Maupin, president of the University of Virginia, in answer to various inquiries made of him relative to Edgar Poe's career at Charlottesville, procured a statement from Mr. William Wertenbaker, secretary of the Faculty, which he further endorsed with the remark that "Mr. Wertenbaker's statement is worthy of entire confidence." I may add," he continues," that there is nothing on the Faculty records to the prejudice of Mr. Poe. He appears to have been a successful student, having obtained distinctions in Latin and French at the closing examinations of 1826. He never graduated here, no provision for conferring degrees of any kind having been made at the time he was a student here.” Dr. Maupin's letter is followed by the said statement, and a most interesting as well as conclusive document it is. Says Mr. Wertenbaker:

“Edgar A. Poe was a student of the University of Virginia during the second session which commenced February 1st 1826, and terminated December 15th of the same year. He signed the matriculation book on the 14th of February, and remained in` good standing as a student till the session closed. He was born on the 19th of January 1809, being a little under seventeen when he entered the institution. He belonged to the schools of ancient and modern languages, and as I was myself a member of the latter, I can testify that he was tolerably regular in attendance, and a very successful student, having obtained distinctions in it at the final examination, the highest honour a student could then obtain, the present regulation in regard to degrees not having been at the time adopted. On one occasion, Professor Blatterman requested his Italian class to render into English verse a portion of the lesson in Tasso, assigned for the next lecture. Mr. Poe was the only one who complied with the request. He was highly complimented by the Professor for his performance.

"Although I had a passing acquaintance with Mr. Poe from an

early period of the session, it was not until near its close that I had any social intercourse with him. After spending an evening together at a private house, he invited me to his room. It was a cold night in December, and his fire having gone nearly out, by the aid of some candle ends and the wreck of a table, he soon rekindled it, and by its comfortable blaze I spent a very pleasant hour with him. On this occasion he spoke with regret of the amount of money he had wasted, and the debts he had contracted. In a biographical sketch of Mr. Poe, I have seen it stated that he was at one time expelled from the university, but that he afterwards returned and graduated with the highest honours. This is entirely a mistake. He spent but one session at the University, and at no time did he fall under the censure of the Faculty. He was not at that time addicted to drinking, but had an ungovernable passion for card-playing. Mr. Poe was several years older than his biographer represents him. His age, I have no doubt, was correctly entered on the matriculation book."

So much for the story started, or at all events promulgated by Griswold, of Edgar Poe's expulsion from the university. This writer admits that Poe was noted at this time for feats of hardihood, strength, and activity, and recounts-but with his usual exaggeration-an aquatic performance of the lad's. On a hot day of June, according to Poe's own statement, he swam from Ludlam's wharf to Warwick, a distance of six miles, against a strong tide; and when the truth of the assertion was publicly questioned, he obtained a certification of the fact from several companions, including his dear classmate Robert Stannard. This document, moreover, declares that "Mr. Poe did not seem at all fatigued, and walked back to Richmond immediately after the feat, which was undertaken for a wager." Our poet had, indeed, no little confidence in his swimming powers, and asserted that, on a favourable day, he believed he could swim the English Channel from Dover to Calais.

In 1827, aroused by the heroic efforts the Greeks were

making to throw off the yoke of their Turkish oppressors, and, doubtless, emulous of Byron, whose example had excited the chivalric boys of both continents, Edgar Poe and an acquaintance, Ebenezer Burling, determined to start. for Greece and offer their aid to the insurgents. Either Mr. Burling's heart failed, or parental authority was too strong for him, for he stayed at home, whilst the embryo poet, doubtless in headstrong opposition to the wishes of his adopted parents, started alone for Europe. Poe was absent for more than a year, but the adventures of his journey have never been told; he seems to have been very reticent upon the subject, and to have left uncontradicted the various stories invented, and even published during his lifetime, to account for the interregnum in his history. That he reached England is probable, but whether he ever beheld, save in his "mind's-eye," the remains of