t
this ingenuity is never so simply employed, and it is often artificial
and violent and mechanical. It exists for its own sake, with little
relation to the admitted characteristics of our common humanity. It
stands alone, and it is never accompanied by the apparent ease which
adds charm to Poe's handling of his puzzles.

Consider how often Gaboriau puts us off with a broken-backed narrative,
taking up his curtain on a promising problem, presenting it to us in
aspects of increasing difficulty, only at last to confess his impotence
by starting afresh and slowly detailing the explanatory episodes which
happened before the curtain rose. Consider how frequently Fortune du
Boisgobey failed to play fair. Consider how juiceless was the
documentary method of Wilkie Collins, how mechanical and how arid, how
futilely complicated, how prolonged, and how fatiguing. Consider all the
minor members of the sorry brood hatched out of the same egg, how cheap
and how childish the most of them are. Consider all these; and we are
forced to the conclusion that if the writing of a good detective-story
is so rare and so difficult, if only one of Poe's imitators has been
able really to rival his achievement, if this single success has been
the result of an acceptance of Poe's formula and of a close adherence to
Poe's practise, then, what Poe wrought is really unique; and we must
give him the guerdon of praise due to an artist who has accomplished the
first time of trying that which others have failed to achieve even after
he had shown them how.

(1904.)

MARK TWAIN

[This biographical criticism was written to serve as an introduction to
the complete edition of Mark Twain's Works.]

It is a common delusion of those who discuss contemporary literature
that there is such an entity as the "reading public," possest of a
certain uniformity of taste. There is not one public; there are many
publics,--as many in fact as there are different kinds of taste; and the
extent of an author's popularity is in proportion to the number of these
separate publics he may chance to please. Scott, for example, appealed
not only to those who relished romance and enjoyed excitement, but also
to those who appreciated his honest portrayal of sturdy characters.
Thackeray is preferred by ambitious youths who are insidiously flattered
by his tacit compliments to their knowledge of the world, by the
disenchanted who cannot help seeing the petty meannesses o