OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 93 



it exists for the sake of the sensation that it causes. It fur- 

 nishes excitement, makes an impression, rouses and stirs the 

 blase and sluggish mind. This may possibly be of tempo- 

 rary use ; it may on rare occasions be justified. But it is com- 

 pany in which a man cannot keep his health and poise. of soul 

 or body. 



Poe found that his power told best in this direction, and the 

 temptation was great to strain it to the utmost. Hardly can 

 you find a thoroughly healthy subject in the whole range of his 

 poems or his tales. He took possession of the borderland 

 between sanity and insanity, as his province, and his congenial 

 themes are close to death and dissolution. He excels in the de- 

 scription of those conditions of mind and feeling in which the 

 gruesome and grisly appear vivid and real. We seem some- 

 times in his writings to be watching the human spirit on the 

 verge of attenuation and disappearance. Perhaps it does us no 

 harm once in a while to feel the sensation of horror, the symp- 

 toms of a scare. But it must be taken in limited doses. It is 

 increasingly difficult to make us creep in these days, but so far 

 as the imagination can do it Poe almost and sometimes quite 

 succeeds in doing it. The " Masque of the Red Death," the 

 " Fall of the House of Usher" and " lyigeia " may be men- 

 tioned as typical of this success, though the illusion depends, of 

 course, on the imagination of the reader quite as much as on the 

 author. But this success is not vital or vitalizing. It has no 

 power to stir and stimulate the heart of human nature and cre- 

 ate a larger life. It is somber horror, vain supernaturalism, a 

 mere thrill of the nerves. Or, to put the same thought in an- 

 other way, Poe lived and deliberately sought to live in the 

 night-side of nature and humanity. He tried to work that vein 

 to the utmost it would bear. There is a night-side to nature 

 and life, one of its mysteries surpassing knowledge. There is a 

 peculiar spell in watching a great fire. It is the spectacle of 

 unbridled energy, the flaming horror of destructive force ; but 

 its end is ashes. Nothing comes of it. On the part of human- 

 ity there is the parallel exhibition of passion, fierce fear, sin, 

 crime and remorse. There is an energy of gloom, of brooding 



