merican fiction, and indeed to that of the nineteenth century,
ignoring national boundaries, stands by itself. Whatever his
sources--and no writer appears to derive less from the past--he
practically created on native soil the tale of fantasy,
sensational plot, and morbid impressionism. His cold aloofness,
his lack of spiritual import, unfitted him perhaps for the
broader work of the novelist who would present humanity in its
three dimensions with the light and shade belonging to Life
itself. Confining himself to the tale which he believed could be
more artistic because it was briefer and so the natural mold for
a mono-mood, he had the genius so to handle color, music and
suggestion in an atmosphere intense in its subjectivity, that
confessed masterpieces were the issue. Whether in the objective
detail of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," with its subtle
illusion of realism, or in the nuances and delicatest tonality
of "Ligeia," he has left specimens of the different degrees of
romance which have not been surpassed, conquering in all but
that highest style of romantic writing where the romance lies in
an emphasis upon the noblest traits of mankind. He is, it is not
too much to say, well-nigh as important to the growth of modern
fiction outside the Novel form as he is to that of poetry,
though possibly less unique on his prose side. His fascination
is that of art and intellect: his material and the mastery
wherewith he handles it conjoin to make his particular brand of
magic. While some one story of Hoffman or Bulwer Lytton or
Stevenson may be preferred, no one author of our time has
produced an equal number of successes in the same key. It is
instructive to compare him with Hawthorne because of a
superficial resemblance with an underlying fundamental
distinction. One phase of the Concord romancer's art results in
stories which seem perhaps as somber, strange and morbid as
those of Poe: "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," "Rapacinni's
Daughter," "The Birth Mark." They stand, of course, for but one
side of his power, of which "The Great Stone Face" and "The Snow
Image" are the brighter and sweeter. Thus Hawthorne's is a
broader and more diversified accomplishment in the form of the
tale. But the likeness has to do with subject-matter, not with
the spirit of the work. The gloomiest of Hawthorne's short
stories are spiritually sound and sweet: Poe's, on the contrary,
might be described as unmoral; they seem written by one
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