cold-blooded
nicety. Every device is used to deepen the impression and to
intensify the agony. In _The Tell-Tale Heart_, so unremitting is
the suspense, as the murderer slowly inch by inch projects his
head round the door in the darkness, that it is well-nigh
intolerable. The close of the story, which errs on the side of
the melodramatic, is less cunningly contrived than Poe's endings
usually are. In _William Wilson_, Poe handles the subject of
conscience in an allegorical form, a theme essayed by Bulwer
Lytton in one of his sketches in _The Student, Monos and
Daimonos_. He probably influenced Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde_.

In _The Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe seems to start from the very
border-line of the most hideous nightmare that the human mind can
conceive, yet there is nothing hazy or indefinite in his analysis
of the feelings of his victim. He speaks as one who has
experienced the sensations himself, not as one who is making a
wild surmise. To read is, indeed, to endure in some measure the
torture of the prisoner; but our pain is alleviated not only by
the realisation that we at least may win respite when we will,
but by our appreciation of Poe's subtle technique. He notices the
readiness of the mind, when racked unendurably, to concentrate on
frivolous trifles--the exact shape and size of the dungeon; or
the sound of the scythe cutting through cloth. Mental and
physical agonies are interchanged with careful art.

Poe's constructive power fitted him admirably to write the
detective story. In _The Mystery of M. Roget_ he adopts a dull
plot without sufficient vigour and originality to rivet our
attention, but _The Murders of the Rue Morgue_ secures our
interest from beginning to end. As in the case of Godwin's _Caleb
Williams_, the end was conceived first and the plot was carefully
woven backwards. No single thread is left loose. Dupin's methods
of ratiocination are similar to those of Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes. Poe never shirks a gory detail, but the train of
reasoning not the imagery absorbs us in his detective stories. In
his treasure story--_The Gold Bug_, which may have suggested
Stevenson's _Treasure Island_--he compels our interest by the
intricacy and elaboration of his problem.

The works of Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin were not unknown
to Poe, and he refers more than once to the halls of Vathek. From
Gothic romance he may perhaps vivid that they make the senses
ache. Like Maturin,