of married life, the young widow had a
vain struggle to maintain herself and three little ones, William Henry,
Edgar, and Rosalie. Before her premature death, in December, 1811, the
poet's mother had been reduced to the dire necessity of living on the
charity of her neighbors.

Edgar, the second child of David and Elizabeth Poe, was born at Boston,
in the United States, on the 19th of January, 1809. Upon his mother's
death at Richmond, Virginia, Edgar was adopted by a wealthy Scotch
merchant, John Allan. Mr. Allan, who had married an American lady and
settled in Virginia, was childless. He therefore took naturally to the
brilliant and beautiful little boy, treated him as his son, and made him
take his own surname. Edgar Allan, as he was now styled, after some
elementary tuition in Richmond, was taken to England by his adopted
parents, and, in 1816, placed at the Manor House School,
Stoke-Newington.

Under the Rev. Dr. Bransby, the future poet spent a lustrum of his life
neither unprofitably nor, apparently, ungenially. Dr. Bransby, who is
himself so quaintly portrayed in Poe's tale of 'William Wilson',
described "Edgar Allan," by which name only he knew the lad, as "a quick
and clever boy," who "would have been a very good boy had he not been
spoilt by his parents," meaning, of course, the Allans. They "allowed
him an extravagant amount of pocket-money, which enabled him to get into
all manner of mischief. Still I liked the boy," added the tutor, "but,
poor fellow, his parents spoiled him."

Poe has described some aspects of his school days in his oft cited story
of 'William Wilson'. Probably there is the usual amount of poetic
exaggeration in these reminiscences, but they are almost the only record
we have of that portion of his career and, therefore, apart from their
literary merits, are on that account deeply interesting. The description
of the sleepy old London suburb, as it was in those days, is remarkably
accurate, but the revisions which the story of 'William Wilson' went
through before it reached its present perfect state caused many of the
author's details to deviate widely from their original correctness. His
schoolhouse in the earliest draft was truthfully described as an "old,
irregular, and cottage-built" dwelling, and so it remained until its
destruction a few years ago.

The 'soi-disant' William Wilson, referring to those bygone happy days
spent in the English academy, says,

"The teeming brain o