94 PROCEEDINGS MANCHESTER INSTITUTE 



calamity like the overhanging pall of black smoke that precedes 

 the bursting volcano of fire. In the representation of this Poe 

 was a master-artist. He had caught, perhaps, some of this se- 

 cret from Lord Byron. He surpassed him in the creation of 

 monstrous souls and monstrous situations, veritable "dragons 

 of the slime," of which the tale of " William Wilson " is an in- 

 stance. But from the night-side of man and nature onl}^ a par- 

 alyzing influence can ever flow. Its ultimate end is ashes. 



(b)In close connection with this m^orbidness of theme is Poe's 

 lack of breadth. He was nothing if not intense. He burned 

 himself out in an exciting and nervous concentration upon a 

 very limited field of imaginative literature. That field he has 

 pretty clearly described in the title he gave to one of his first 

 collections — " Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," and the 

 poems are much of the same sort, together Vvdth an undeniable 

 ear for the music of words. With characteristic perverseness 

 he believed himself equally great in many varieties of com- 

 position, but he was utterly mistaken. His was an etching 

 point rather than a generous broad hand. He worked with 

 thoroughness and in miniature ; all his compositions are short. 

 His imagination was limited to very narrovv? and definite lines. 

 He had no conception of character, but only of situations and 

 conditions. This is why his humor, when he attempts it, is ex- 

 cruciating and farfetched. As in the "Gold Bug," for in- 

 stance : 



"' Stay here tonight, and I will send Jup down for it at sun- 

 rise. It is the loveliest thing in creation ! What? — sunrise? 

 Nonsense ! no ! the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color. * * * 

 The antennae are — " 



"Dey ain't no tin in it, Massa Will, I keep a-tellin' on you," 

 here interrupted Jupiter ; " de bug is a goole bug, solid ebery 

 bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing — neber feel half so heb- 

 by a bug in my life."' 



He was a master of climax, but not of the drama in the large 

 sense. He knew the glooms and the fierceness of the human 

 soul, its shudders and its fearsome dreams, but not its sunni- 

 ness, its hopes, its radiance. He had the most superficial, ba- 



