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from The Living Age, February 28, 1891.
Poe's region is that of pure romance. With the instinct of genius he selected the field for which his powers were peculiarly adapted. From it he rarely wandered. His strangely introverted mind preyed upon itself. His gloom and melancholy were part of his own nature. The world with which he came in contact produced no impression upon him, or, at the most, provoked his sneer. The problems of real life find no place in his pages. Heartless himself, he had no heart for the trials of humanity. He does not draw from observation; his bloodless, spectral figures are not flesh and blood. Almost all his tales are based on the sentiment of terror, excited either by tangible dangers or weird fancies. Anomalies and deformities of human nature, physical decay and decomposition, pseudo-science, and appalling deaths, are his favorite topics. The genius of the man is displayed in his treatment. Compare his effects with those of Brown, and the difference is seen to be enormous. His thought is pure idealism, his method pure realism. And in the fusion of the two lies the secret of his power. He is at once piercingly direct and mysteriously vague. He aimed at vividness of impression, and he obtained it by a careful selection and disposition of every detail. He was, what none of his predecessors had been, a consummate artist. His weird imaginings stand out in the dreamland of fancy with almost dazzling clearness. Mysterious, obscure, elusive, as are the elements with which he works, the picture he produces is as clear and definite as a photograph from real life. The majority of his tales scarcely rise above the level of mechanical cleverness, to which they were condemned by his belief that all literature is a mere trick.
His humor was of the elvish kind which rejoices in mystification. It belongs to that bastard species in which practical joking is classified; it consisted in passing off fictitious narratives as facts, and in elaborate preparation for his drafts on human credulity. The highest kind of work was placed beyond his reach by his entire want of human sympathy. But in such a composition as "The Fall of the House of Usher" he achieves a great literary triumph by the vivid impression and definite sensations which his imaginative realism enables him to produce. In his own narrow field he was an original genius, and, as such, his name will outlive the fame of many who better deserve the wreath of immortality. And he possesses an additional claim to the gratitude of his countrymen. He was for America the founder of the short story which is the characteristic form of the national fiction. He is the progenitor of Hale, Cable, Bret Harte, or Stockton. Complete in itself, the American short story does not, like the English imitation, suggest that it is a portion of a larger whole. It is not fragmentary, but as perfect within its limits as a French conte.