many tales after this deduction, — tales like 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' 'William Wilson,' 'Eleonora,' and 'The Purloined Letter ' (to say nothing of the more sensational rationcinative tales), which will always attract those who care for artistic expression of the rarer kind in fiction.
It is notable that Scotland, through the medium of Blacliivood' s Magazine, seems, in the first instance, to have had not a little to do with the calling forth of Poe's remarkable faculty as a tale-teller. Half a cen- tury and more ago, in the palmy days of Blackwood, it will be remembered that the short story, sometimes psychological, sometimes humorous, more often simply sensational, formed a strong item in the programme. That these short stories, finding their way with Black- wood to America at a time when there was a dearth of native periodical literature, made a strong impression upon Poe, we have frequent evidence in others beside his Hawthorne essay. In fact, he did not fail on occa- sion to ridicule the weaker points of ' Christopher North ' and the other luminaries of the Nodes Am- brosianw, as in his skit, not better than his other attempts of the kind, ' How to write a Blackwood Article.' To the influence of these tales in Black- wood must be attributed some part, at least, of Poe's acceptance of the more sensational elements of fiction, as in his ' Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,' ' The Black Cat,' ' The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' and other similar sensational tours de force. In his Hawthorne essay, after stating the I'elative legiti- mate scope of the poem and the tale, and saying that pure beauly can be better treated in poetry, he adds — ' Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a multi- tude of such other points. And here it will be seen how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales of effect, many fine examples of which were found in the earlier numbers of Blackwood. The impressions produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legitimate, although sometimes an exaggerated, interest.' In a roundabout way, therefore, the earlier Scottish tale-tellers may claim to have had a share in the development of American magazine fiction — as found, that is, in the form of the short tale — associated with the names of Hawthorne, Poe, and again later, Bret Harte and the remarkable band of younger tale-writers which has followed more or less in the same path.
Poe himself was greatly influenced by Hawthorne, though he would hardly have admitted it. The volume of Hawthorne's collected Twice Told Tales was not published, it is true, before 1S39, but the tales in their first telling had been appearing from time to time in various magazines, while Poe, precariously committed at length to existing by his wits, was anxiously scanning their pages with an eye to the chances of his own contributions. Poe himself, with almost a monomania on the subject of plagiarism, as witness his indictment of Longfellow and other contemporaries, was a master in the art of borrowing, like many other men of genius from Shakespeare onwards. Whatever he borrowed, however, he borrowed well, though he was not always wise in his attempt to disclaim his appropriations afterwards. He owed something to the novels of the time, too, as well as to the shorter tales ; for although he preferred the latter on artistic grounds, he had too much sense, common and uncommon, not to recognise the value of longer works of fiction under certain conditions, and at first he probably learnt much even from the novelists whom, as in the case of Lytton, he afterwards criticised severely. An article by Poe in a Philadelphia paper, in which he took the earlier chapters of Barnaby Riidge, and from them skilfully worked out the plan of the whole novel, long before it was completed, shows how closely he had observed Dickens's method. His later essay on Dickens, and numerous other references in his essays and tales, point the same way. This various indebtedness of Poe's, it may be said, is not of much account ; but it sliows at any rate that he too was not a mere abnormal phenomenon, but as]^truly a part of his time, a student of the conditions of his time, as any one.
Taking up the text, from the Hawthorne essay again, in considering how much Poe's tales have to teach us in the way of directness and sense of form, some further sentences will help to make his theory and its application in his own work still clearer.
' A skilful literary artist,' he continues, ' has con- structed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents ; but having con- ceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then combines such events, as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very first initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted, which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it, with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed ; and this is an end unattainable by the novel.'
Rigorously insisted upon, this may seem to be saying too much, and of course Poe himself in his own tales was not so severely consistent as we might expect from this. He knew that art gains often by its departure from rule, though the rule be ever so insistent. But in the main, his tales are remarkable for their brilliantly efl^ective working out of the rule of directness, of simplicity, of dramatic unity, which he laid down in the text quoted. Take, for example, that sardonic little tragedy — ' The Cask of Amontillado.' The very first sentence tells; 'The thousand injuries of Fortunate I had borne as I best could ; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.' The wonderful art with which Poe expands this simple motive ; his man-
