"You don't find Poe wasting time on uncouth monsters who roar like
tigers, bang doors and smear whole rooms with blood. His assassins had
a joy in planning their exploits as well as in the execution of them.
They were intelligent, secret, sure. And in every case they
accomplished their work and escaped detection."
"You must not forget, however," complained Pendleton, "that De
Quincey's assassin, John Williams, was a real person, and his killings
actual occurrences. Poe's workmen were creatures of his imagination,
their crimes, with the possible exception of 'Marie Roget,' were
purely fanciful. The creator of the doer and the deed had a clear
field; and in that, perhaps, lies the superiority of Poe."
Ashton-Kirk sighed humorously.
"Perhaps," said he. "At any rate the select crimes are usually the
conceptions of men who have no idea of putting them into execution.
And that, upon consideration, is a fortunate thing for society. But,
at the same time, it is most irritating to a man of a speculative turn
of mind. Fiction teems with most splendid murders. Captain Marryat, in
Snarleyow, created an almost perfect horror in the attempted slaughter
of the boy Smallbones by the hag mother of Vanslyperken; the lad's
reversal of the situation and his plunging a bayonet into the wrinkled
throat, makes the chapter an accomplishment difficult to displace.
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