. The student of the English drama is
delighted when he can seize firmly the rise and fall of the
tragedy-of-blood for one example, of the comedy-of-humors for another,
and of sentimental-comedy for a third; just as the investigator into the
annals of fiction is pleased to be able to trace the transformations of
the pastoral, of the picaresque romance, and of the later short-story.

The beginnings of a species, or of a subspecies, are obscure more often
than not; and they are rarely to be declared with certainty. "Nothing is
more difficult than to discover who have been in literature the first
inventors" of a new form, so M. Jules Lemaitre once asserted, adding
that innovations have generally been attempted by writers of no great
value, and not infrequently by those who failed in those first efforts,
unable to profit by their own originality. And it is natural enough that
a good many sighting shots should be wasted on a new target before even
an accomplished marksman could plump his bullet in the bull's-eye. The
historical novel as we know it now must be credited to Scott, who
preluded by the rather feeble 'Waverley,' before attaining the more
boldly planned 'Rob Roy' and 'Guy Mannering.' The sea-tale is to be
ascribed to Cooper, whose wavering faith in its successful
accomplishment is reflected in the shifting of the successive episodes
of the 'Pilot' from land to water and back again to land; and it was
only when he came to write the 'Red Rover' that Cooper displayed full
confidence in the form he had been the first to experiment with. But the
history of the detective-story begins with the publication of the
'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' a masterpiece of its kind, which even its
author was unable to surpass; and Poe, unlike most other originators,
rang the bell the very first time he took aim.

II

The detective-story which Poe invented sharply differentiates itself
from the earlier tales of mystery, and also from the later narratives
in which actual detectives figure incidentally. Perhaps the first of
these tales of mystery is Walpole's 'Castle of Otranto,' which appears
to us now clumsy enough, with its puerile attempts to excite terror. The
romances of Mrs. Radcliffe are scarcely more solidly built--indeed, the
fatigue of the sophisticated reader of to-day when he undertakes the
perusal of these old-fashioned and long-winded chronicles may be
ascribed partly to the flimsiness of the foundation which is supposed