Poe's tales are of two very different sorts: those that are in the likeness of his poetry and those that were done in the analytical spirit of his criticism. "Ligeia" is an example of the poet's work, and, indeed, includes, as some others do, one of his own lyrics, "The Conqueror Worm." This is cast in the misty mid-region between life and death, with none of the pleasures of the one except as foils to the reduplicated horrors of the other. In all the laws of construction it is one with "The Raven" and "Ulalume," as it is also in general effect. Like the poems, too, these narratives contain no human interest, unless this is derived from the consciousness that the "I" narrator is made in the image of Poe and hence is partly his spokesman,--a claim on the attention to which the stories, if considered as works of art, have no title. Once again these tales and poems are of the same family in the degree to which they subordinate any kind of event to the dominant mood and in the painstaking use of every accessory that will contribute to a sense of shivery horror. Perhaps, to indulge in the type of classification that is after the manner of Poe, a connecting group should be mentioned between the two extreme types. This includes the kind of story that substitutes the horrors of crime and its consequences for the horrors of death, giving over any elevation of soul for the thrill derived from the malignance of fear or hatred. They deal with crime as quite distinct from sin, and when they involve conscience at all, introduce the conscience that doth make cowards of us, rather than the voice of guidance or correction. Of this sort are "The Imp of the Perverse"--less a tale than an essaylet with an illustrative anecdote--and "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado." In some ways this story of cold-blooded vengeance comes nearer than any other of Poe's tales to completely representing its author's artistic designs. In the matter of its contrivance it is cut on the pattern of "The Raven." One can apply "The Philosophy of Composition" by replacing each allusion to the poem with a parallel from the story. Montresor, the avenger, is an incarnate devil; Fortunato, the victim, is a piece of walking vanity not worth bothering to destroy. The slow murder is conceived during "the supreme madness of the carnival season," is pursued in a tone of grim mockery, and concluded with ironic laughter and the jingling of the fool's-cap bells. And finally, to free the tale from any least relation to life, the assassination does "trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease, success."