The disadvantages of this mystery-mongering have been pointed out by Poe with his wonted acuteness in his criticism of ‘Barnaby Rudge.’  After retelling the plot of Dickens’s contorted narrative, and after putting the successive episodes into their true sequence, Poe asserted that “the thesis of the novel may thus be regarded as based upon curiosity,” and he declared that “every point is so arranged as to perplex the reader and whet his desire for elucidation.”  He insisted “that the secret be well kept is obviously necessary,” because if it leaks out “against the author’s will, his purposes are immediately at odds and ends.”  Then he remarked that altho “there can be no question that ... many points ... which would have been comparatively insipid even if given in full detail in a natural sequence, are endued with the interest of mystery; but neither can it be denied that a vast many more points are at the same time deprived of all effect, and become null, through the impossibility of comprehending them without the key.”  In other words, the novelist has chosen to sacrifice to the fleeting interest which is evoked only by wonder the more abiding interest which is aroused by the clear perception of the inter-play of character and motive.  Poe suggested that even ’Barnaby Rudge’—­in spite of its author’s efforts to keep secret the real springs of action which controlled the characters—­if taken up a second time by a reader put into possession of all that had been concealed, would be found to possess quadruple brilliance, “a brilliance unprofitably sacrificed at the shrine of the keenest interest of mere mystery.”

Dickens was not the last novelist of note to be tempted and to fall into this snare.  In the ‘Disciple,’ and again in ‘Andre Cornelis’ M. Paul Bourget was lured from the path of psychologic analysis into the maze of mystery-mongering; but he had the tact to employ his secrets to excite interest only in the beginning of what were, after all, studies from life, each of them setting forth the struggle of a man with the memory of his crime.  In the ‘Wreckers’ Stevenson and his young collaborator attempted that “form of police novel or mystery-story which consisted in beginning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the end.”  They were attracted by its “peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar difficulties that attend its execution.”  They were “repelled by that appearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone which seems its inevitable drawback,” because “the mind of the reader always bent to pick up clews receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art.”  They hoped to find a new way of handling the old tale of mystery, so that they might get the profit without paying the price.  But already in his criticism of ’Barnaby Rudge’ had Poe showed why disappointment was unavoidable, because the more artfully the dark intimations of horror are held out, the more certain it is that the anticipation must surpass the reality.  No matter how terrific the circumstances may be which shall appear to have occasioned the mystery, “still they will not be able to satisfy the mind of the reader.  He will surely be disappointed.”