there is in Gaboriau’s longer fictions, and in those of Fortune du Boisgobey, and in those of Wilkie Collins; but this ingenuity is never so simply employed, and it is often artificial and violent and mechanical.  It exists for its own sake, with little relation to the admitted characteristics of our common humanity.  It stands alone, and it is never accompanied by the apparent ease which adds charm to Poe’s handling of his puzzles.

Consider how often Gaboriau puts us off with a broken-backed narrative, taking up his curtain on a promising problem, presenting it to us in aspects of increasing difficulty, only at last to confess his impotence by starting afresh and slowly detailing the explanatory episodes which happened before the curtain rose.  Consider how frequently Fortune du Boisgobey failed to play fair.  Consider how juiceless was the documentary method of Wilkie Collins, how mechanical and how arid, how futilely complicated, how prolonged, and how fatiguing.  Consider all the minor members of the sorry brood hatched out of the same egg, how cheap and how childish the most of them are.  Consider all these; and we are forced to the conclusion that if the writing of a good detective-story is so rare and so difficult, if only one of Poe’s imitators has been able really to rival his achievement, if this single success has been the result of an acceptance of Poe’s formula and of a close adherence to Poe’s practise, then, what Poe wrought is really unique; and we must give him the guerdon of praise due to an artist who has accomplished the first time of trying that which others have failed to achieve even after he had shown them how.

     (1904.)

MARK TWAIN

[This biographical criticism was written to serve as an introduction to the complete edition of Mark Twain’s Works.]

It is a common delusion of those who discuss contemporary literature that there is such an entity as the “reading public,” possest of a certain uniformity of taste.  There is not one public; there are many publics,—­as many in fact as there are different kinds of taste; and the extent of an author’s popularity is in proportion to the number of these separate publics he may chance to please.  Scott, for example, appealed not only to those who relished romance and enjoyed excitement, but also to those who appreciated his honest portrayal of sturdy characters.  Thackeray is preferred by ambitious youths who are insidiously flattered by his tacit compliments to their knowledge of the world, by the disenchanted who cannot help seeing the petty meannesses of society, and by the less sophisticated in whom sentiment has not gone to seed in sentimentality.  Dickens in his own day bid for the approval of those who liked broad caricature (and were, therefore, pleased with Stiggins and Chadband), of those who fed greedily on plentiful pathos (and were, therefore, delighted with the deathbeds of Smike and Paul Dombey and Little Nell) and also of those who asked for unexpected adventure (and were, therefore, glad to disentangle the melodramatic intrigues of Ralph Nickleby).