rsh lines or crude
colours.

While Hawthorne in his _Twice-Told Tales_ was toying pensively
with spectral forms and "dark ideas," Edgar Allan Poe was
penetrating intrepidly into trackless regions of terror. Where
Hawthorne would have shrunk back, repelled and disgusted, Poe,
wildly exhilarated by the anticipation of a new and excruciating
thrill, forced his way onwards. He sought untiringly for unusual
situations, inordinately gloomy or terrible, and made them the
starting point for excursions into abnormal psychology. Just as
Hawthorne harps with plaintive insistence on the word "sombre,"
Poe again and again uses the epithet "novel." His tales are
never, as Hawthorne's often are, pathetic. His instinct is always
towards the dramatic. Sometimes he rises to tragic heights,
sometimes he is merely melodramatic. He rejoices in theatrical
effects, like the death-throes of William Wilson, the return of
the lady Ligeia, or the entry, awaited with torturing suspense,
of the "lofty" and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of
Usher. Like Hawthorne, Poe was fascinated by the thought of
death, "the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed him night and
day," but he describes death accompanied by its direst physical
and mental agonies. Hawthorne broods over the idea of sin, but
Poe probes curiously into the psychology of crime. The one is
detached and remote, the other inhuman and passionless. The
contrast in style between Hawthorne and Poe reflects clearly
their difference in temper. Hawthorne writes always with easy,
finished perfection, choosing the right word unerringly, Poe
experiments with language, painfully acquiring a conscious,
studied form of expression which is often remarkably effective,
but which almost invariably suggests a sense of artifice. In
reading _The Scarlet Letter_ we do not think of the style; in
reading _The Masque of the Red Death_ we are forcibly impressed
by the skilful arrangement of words, the alternation of long and
short sentences, the device of repetition and the deliberate
choice of epithets. Hawthorne uses his own natural form of
expression. Poe, with laborious art, fashions an instrument
admirably adapted to his purposes.

Poe's earliest published story, _A Manuscript Found in a
Bottle_--the prize tale for the _Baltimore Saturday Visitor_,
1833--proves that he soon recognised his peculiar vein of talent.
He straightway takes the tale of terror for his own. The
experiences of a sailor, shipwr