POE.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 50, 12 May 1910, Page 2

POE.

HIS NEW LINES IN THE REGION" OF ROMANCE. / No man has struck out so many, new lines in the region of romance as Edgar Allan Poe. And he was': not merely fruitful himself, he rendered others fruitful. j He was the inventor of the detective story, and Wilkie Collins, Ga-' boriau, Du Boisgobey, Sir A. Conan Doyle, and others like these are all his literary descendants. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," and the Purloined Letter" are perfect examples of their class. If anyone wants to read an engrossing exposition of the value of. deductive reasoning, we commend him to "The Purloined Letter." There he will find a lucid philosophy of the method which has since yielded such vastly popular results in the hands of. all the writers of detective stories. In years to come it might be printed as a preface to "Sherlock Holmes," far it contains virtually all the principles which are there applied with such practical skill, ' Again, Poe originated the story of scientific imagination, Read " The Adventure of One Hans Pfaall," and you see the germ of what Jules Verne wrote thirty years later. The method is exactly that of "A Journey to the Moon," of '"The Voyage of the* Nautilus," and others—bold flights of fancy mingled with judicious parcels of popular science. j Once again, Poe originated (though the model is not quite so definite in this case) the type of story which is half a tale of adventure in savage lands and half a tale of the marvellous. - ."The Narrative of A. Gordoo Pym". was the precursor of Mi 1 . Rider Haggard's "She" and and similar stories, i

Yet again, "The Gold Bug," with its memories of Kidd and buried treasure, and its map and its cryp" tic directions, no doubt suggested the machinery of "Treasure Island," though R. L. Stevenson, of course, elaborated the method.

One might go on for a long time giving examples of Poe's originating genius, but we will only add two more, "William Wilson," that singular study of dual personality, was the prototype of Stevenson's " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." And in developing the realistic method Poe was before Flaubert and Zola. His parades of minate detail gave an intense reality to tb* scenes into which ho introduced hie bizarre and spectral figures. Another kind of story in which Poo is supreme is the story in which modern men move in a dim world of crumbling castles and demoniac ladies, and hear, through magic cus«* ments opening on misty lakes,, the thunders of the storm and the erica of the dying, while even above tho tempest is heard the mutter < ;fc^,.aaa K ceatral voices bewailing the ruin of an ancient line. Others have WM to borrow the light, but have nevet made it burn brighter, or, rather, with a moro lurid intensity.—" Spectator."