OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 97 



be invented which an attentive intellect could not solve. It is 

 said that for a while he was flooded with secret ciphers from all 

 parts of the country, to which he devoted so much time as to im- 

 peril his proper business. The cipher which he introduces into 

 the story of " The Gold Bug " is not the least effective element 

 in that famous piece of cleverness. 



But united with this clear and cold intellect is a marvelous 

 vigor and richness of imagination. Perhaps fancy is the better 

 term, for it was not a great imagination, but, as we have seen, 

 an imagination narrowly limited and incapable of seeing or rep- 

 resenting life as a whole. Kven this luxuriant fancy of Poe's 

 gives, upon a second reading, the impression of a tour de force; 

 it exhibits a carefully planned attempt to work up a stage 

 effect. Poe was always aware of what he was doing. He 

 never yielded himself wholly to a thought or an emotion. He 

 was not spontaneous, even in his gorgeous dreams. Whether 

 produced by the use of opium or not, his imagination was opi- 

 um-drugged. It was not in any way sensual, but it was sensu- 

 ous. He rioted in "color." PTe loved the highly decorated, 

 though his abundance of color, is usuall}^ held in check by an 

 artist's perception of " color values." 



"Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelt in 

 the Valley of the Many- Coloured Grass ; but a second change 

 had come upon all things. The star- shaped flowers shrank in- 

 to the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of 

 the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels 

 withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by 

 ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever 

 encumbered with dew. And life departed from our paths ; for 

 the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before 

 us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay, 

 glowing birds that had arrived in his compan}^ And the gold- 

 en and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower 

 end of our domain, and bedecked the sweet river never again. 

 And the lulling melody that had been softer than the wind- harp 

 of ^olus, and more divine than all save the voice of Kleonora, 

 it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and low- 

 er, until the stream returned, at length, utterly into the solem- 

 nity of its original silence. And then, lastly, the voluminous 

 cloud uprose, and, abandoning the tops of the mountains to the 



