he even resorts to italics to enforce his
effect. He crashes down heavily on a chord which would resound at
a touch. He is liable too to descend into vulgarity in his choice
of phrases. His tales consequently gain in style in the
translations of Baudelaire. But these aberrations occur mainly in
his inferior work. In his most highly wrought stories, such as
_Amontillado_, _The House of Usher_, or _The Masque of the Red
Death_, the execution is flawless. In these, Poe never lost sight
of the ideal, which, in his admirable review of Hawthorne's
_Twice-Told Tales_ and _Mosses from an Old Manse_, he set before
the writer of short stories:

"A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale ...
having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain
unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then
invents such incidents--he then combines such
events--as may best aid him in establishing this
preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend
not to the outbringing of this effect, he has failed in
the first step. In the whole composition there should
be no word written of which the tendency direct or
indirect is not to the one pre-established design."

While he was writing, Poe did not for a moment let his
imagination run riot. The outline of the story was so distinctly
conceived, its atmosphere so familiar to him, that he had leisure
to choose his words accurately, and to dispose his sentences
harmoniously, with the final effect ever steadily in view. The
impression that he swiftly flashes across our minds is deep and
enduring.

CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.

This book is an attempt to trace in outline the origin and
development of the Gothic romance and the tale of terror. Such a
survey is necessarily incomplete. For more than fifty years after
the publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ the Gothic Romance
remained a definitely recognised kind of fiction; but, as the
scope of the novel gradually came to include the whole range of
human expression, it lost its individuality, and was merged into
other forms. To follow every trail of its influence would lead us
far afield. The Tale of Terror, if we use the term in its wider
sense, may be said to include the magnificent story of the
Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar's Feast, the Book of Job, the
legends of the Deluge and of the Tower of Babel, and Saul's Visit
to the Witch of Endor, which Byron regarded as the best ghos