verse, and the finest onomatopoetic poem in the language. Two days
after Poe's death appeared "Annabel Lee," a simple, sincere, and
beautiful ballad, a tribute to his dead wife. Last of all was printed
the brief "Eldorado," a fitting death-song for Poe, in which a gallant
knight sets out, "singing a song," "in search of Eldorado," only to
learn when youth and strength are gone that he must seek his goal
"down the Valley of the Shadow."

The tales, like the poems, are a real contribution to the world's
literature, but more strikingly so, since the type itself is
original. Poe, Hawthorne, and Irving are distinctly the pioneers in
the production of the modern short story, and neither has been
surpassed on his own ground; but Poe has been vastly the greater
influence in foreign countries, especially in France. Poe formed a new
conception of the short story, one which Professor Brander Matthews[1]
has treated formally and explicitly as a distinct literary form,
different from the story that is merely short. Without calling it a
distinct form, Poe implied the idea in a review of Hawthorne's
"Twice-Told Tales":

[Footnote 1: "The Philosophy of the Short-Story," Chapter IV of "Pen
and Ink."]

The ordinary novel is objectionable from its length.... As it cannot
be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense
force derivable from _totality_.... In the brief tale, however,
the author is enabled to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it
what it may. During the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at
the writer's control....