n the whole composition there should
not be one word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is
not to the one pre-established design." Fourthly, that it must assume
the aspect of _verisimilitude_; "truth is often, and in very great
degree, the aim of the tale--some of the finest tales are tales
of ratiocination." Fifthly, that it must give the impression of
_finality_; the story, and the interest in the characters which it
introduces, must begin with the opening sentence and end with the
last.

These laws, and the technique which they formulate, were first
discovered and worked out for the short-story in the medium of
poetry.[8] The ballad and narrative poem must be, by reason of their
highly artificial form, comparatively short, possessing totality,
immediateness, compression, verisimilitude, and finality. The old
ballad which commemorates the battle of Otterbourne, fought on August
10, 1388, is a fine example of the short-story method. Its opening
stanza speaks the last word in immediateness of narration:

"It felle abowght the Lamasse tyde,
When husbands wynn ther haye,
The dowghtye Dowglasse bowynd hym to ryde
In England to take a praye."

[Footnote 8: Poe himself implies this when he says, in an earlier
passage of his essay on Hawthorne: "The Tale Proper" (i.e.,
short-story), "in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field
for the exercise of the loftiest talent which can be afforded by the
wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the highest
genius could be most advantageously employed for the best display
of its own powers, I should answer, without hesitation, in the
composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be
perused in an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest order of
true poetry exist. I need only here say, upon this topic, that in
almost all classes of composition the unity of effect or impression
is a point of the greatest importance. _It is clear_, moreover, _that
this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal
cannot be completed at one sitting_."]

Thomas Hood's poem of _The Dream of Eugene Aram_, written at a time
when the prose short-story, under the guidance of Hawthorne and Poe,
was just beginning to take its place as a separate species of literary
art, has never been surpassed for short-story technique by any of the
practitioners of prose. Prof. Brander Matthews has pointed out that
"the