He chooses no ordinary crimes. He
considers, without De Quincey's humour, murder as a fine art. In
_The Black Cat_ the terrors are calculated with cold-blooded
nicety. Every device is used to deepen the impression and to
intensify the agony. In _The Tell-Tale Heart_, so unremitting is
the suspense, as the murderer slowly inch by inch projects his
head round the door in the darkness, that it is well-nigh
intolerable. The close of the story, which errs on the side of
the melodramatic, is less cunningly contrived than Poe's endings
usually are. In _William Wilson_, Poe handles the subject of
conscience in an allegorical form, a theme essayed by Bulwer
Lytton in one of his sketches in _The Student, Monos and
Daimonos_. He probably influenced Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde_.
In _The Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe seems to start from the very
border-line of the most hideous nightmare that the human mind can
conceive, yet there is nothing hazy or indefinite in his analysis
of the feelings of his victim. He speaks as one who has
experienced the sensations himself, not as one who is making a
wild surmise. To read is, indeed, to endure in some measure the
torture of the prisoner; but our pain is alleviated not only by
the realisation that we at least may win respite when we will,
but by our appreciation of Poe's subtle technique.
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