THOSE who are curious in tracing the effects of country and lineage in the mental and constitutional peculiarities of men of genius may be interested in such facts as we have been enabled to gather in relation to the ancestry of the Poet. The awakening interest in genealogical researches will make them acceptable to many readers, and in their possible influence on a character so anomalous as that of Edgar Poe they are certainly worthy of note.
John Poe, the great-grandfather of Edgar Poe, left Ireland for America about the middle of the last century. He was of the old Norman family of Le Poer, a name conspicuous in Irish annals. Sir Roger le Poer went to Ireland, as marshal to Prince John, in the reign of Henry II, and became there the founder of a race connected with some of the most romantic and chivalrous incidents of Irish history. The heroic daring of Arnold le Poer, seneschal of Kilkenny Castle, who interposed, at the ultimate sacrifice of his liberty and his life, to save a noble lady from an ecclesiastical trial for witchcraft, the first ever instituted in the kingdom, was chronicled by Geraldus Cambrensis, and has been commemorated by recent historians.
