tly
and even hinted that they had been overpraised. Probably they were easy
writing--for him--and therefore they were not so close to his heart as
certain other of his tales over which he had toiled long and
laboriously. Probably also he felt the detective-story to be an inferior
form. However superior his stories in this kind might be, he knew them
to be unworthy of comparison with his more imaginative tales, which he
had filled with a thrilling weirdness and which attained a soaring
elevation far above any height to be achieved by ingenious narratives
setting forth the solving of a puzzle.

It is in a letter to Philip Pendleton Cooke, written in 1846, that Poe
disparaged his detective-stories and declared that they "owe most of
their popularity to being something in a new key. I do not mean to say
that they are not ingenious--but people think them more ingenious than
they are--on account of their method and _air_ of method. In the
'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' for instance, where is the ingenuity of
unraveling a web which you yourself (the author) have woven for the
express purpose of unraveling? The reader is made to confound the
ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the
story." Here, surely, Poe is over-modest; at least he over-states the
case against himself. The ingenuity of the author obviously lies in his
invention of a web which seemingly cannot be unraveled and which
nevertheless one of the characters of the tale, Legrand or Dupin,
succeeds in unraveling at last. This ingenuity may be, in one way, less
than that required to solve an actual problem in real life; but it is
also, in another way, more, for it had to invent its own puzzle and to
put this together so that the secret seemed to be absolutely hidden,
altho all the facts needed to solve it were plainly presented to the
reader.

In the same letter to Cooke, Poe remarked on the "wide diversity and
variety" of his tales when contrasted one with another; and he asserted
that he did not consider any one better than another. "There is a vast
variety of kinds, and in degree of value these kinds vary--but each tale
is equally good _of its kind_." He added that "the loftiest kind is that
of the highest imagination." For this reason only he considered that
'Ligeia' might be called the best of his stories. Now, after a lapse of
threescore years, the 'Fall of the House of Usher,' with its "serene and
somber beauty," would seem to deserve