"The Gold-Bug," built around the solution of a cryptogram, but also
introducing an element of adventure. Poe's analytical power was real,
not a trick. If he made Legrand solve the cryptogram and boast his
ability to solve others more difficult, Poe himself solved scores sent
him in response to a public magazine challenge; if Dupin solved
mysteries that Poe invented for him, Poe himself wrote in "Marie
Roget," from newspaper accounts, the solution of a real murder
mystery, and astounded Dickens by outlining the entire plot of
"Barnaby Rudge" when only a few of the first chapters had been
published; if he wrote imaginatively of science, he in fact
demonstrated in "Maelzel's Chess Player" that a pretended automaton
was operated by a man. "Hop Frog" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are
old-world stories of revenge. "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain
of Arnheim" are landscape studies, the one of calm loveliness, the
other of Oriental profusion and coloring. "Shadow" and "Silence" are
commonly classed as "prose poems," the former being one of Poe's most
effective productions. "Eleonora," besides having a story to tell, is
both a prose poem and a landscape study, and withal one of Poe's most
exquisite writings.

Although Poe was not a great critic, his critical work is by no means
valueless. He applied for the first time in America a thoroughgoing
scrutiny and able, fearless criticism to contemporary literature,
undoubtedly with good effect. His attacks on didacticism were
especially valuable. His strength as a critic lay in his artistic
temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze
the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His
weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack
of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and profound scholarship; and,
in general, the narrow range of his genius, which has already been