world-famous, whilst a fearful domestic calamity wrecked all his hopes,
and caused him to resort to that refuge of the broken-hearted--to that
drink which finally destroyed his prospects and his life.

Edgar Poe's own account of this terrible malady and its cause was made
towards the end of his career. Its truth has never been disproved, and
in its most important points it has been thoroughly substantiated. To a
correspondent he writes in January 1848:

"You say, 'Can you _hint_ to me what was "that terrible evil" which
caused the "irregularities" so profoundly lamented?' Yes, I can do more
than hint. This _evil_ was the greatest which can befall a man. Six
years ago, a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a
blood-vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of
her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered
partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year, the vessel broke
again. I went through precisely the same scene.... Then again--again--
and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the
agonies of her death--and at each accession of the disorder I loved
her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity.
But I am constitutionally sensitive--nervous in a very unusual degree.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these
fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank--God only knows how often or
how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to
the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had, indeed, nearly
abandoned all hope of a permanent cure, when I found one in the
_death_ of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man. It was
the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I
could _not_ longer have endured, without total loss of reason."