Mr. Allan was childless and wealthy, and, it would seem, injudiciously indulgent to the boy, yielding quite too much to his arrogance, and far too lenient to his outbreaks of temper. But it must be borne in mind that the young Edgar was living in a society in which spirit was ranked as the test of manliness, where coercion was reserved, like the whip, for the slave only, and where the assertion that “he who ruleth himself is greater than he who taketh a city,” is a musty, old-fogy view, unbecoming a gentleman.
At length Mr. Allan, tired of the caprices and outrages of the boy–genius, and having married a, second time, and now become a father, turns him out of doors, without a cent in the world; and so this child of genius, reared in luxury, after having been born in the hot–bed of excitement, with his keen, precocious intellect and sensitive nerves, is a houseless beggar.
Mr. Allan died, as rich men can, peacefully in his bed; and men praise him as the “patron” of Edgar Poe. To my eyes he committed a grievous wrong. When he had once assumed the responsibility of this boy, it was his duty to carry it through, and to see how the world went with him. After he had denuded him by his indulgence, it was the height of cruelty for him to cast him, defenseless as he was, upon the hard bosses of the world. It must be borne in mind that he was but a boy of sixteen, and if this youth had become such a monster, he had been ripened under the very eye of his guardian. Where was the fault?
At the time when he was associated in Richmond with the excellent and simple-hearted Mr. White, as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, he was but nineteen. Thus, three years after having been turned adrift in the world by his guardian, he is of sound mind enough and respectable enough in appearance to be taken into the family of Mr. White as assistant editor.
