These things were the toys of a critical spirit, of a critic as artist, of a critic who took up first one and then another form of art, and played with it almost idly, one and then another form of thought, and gave it wings for the pleasure of seeing it in the light; of a man of action with the eyes of a child; of a man of contemplation curious of all the secrets of life, not only of those that serve an end; of a virtuoso with a distaste for the obvious and a delight in disguising subtlety behind a mask of the very obvious that he disliked. His love for the delicate and the rare brought him into the power of things that are vulgar and coarse. His attempt to weave his life as a tapestry clothed him in a soiled and unbeautiful reality. Even this he was able to subdue. Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. He touched nothing that he did not decorate. He touched nothing that he did not turn into a decoration. I do not care to prophesy which in particular of these decorations, of these friezes and tapestries of vision and thought, will enjoy that prolongation of life, insignificant in the eternal progress of time, which, for us, seems immortality. Art is, perhaps, our only method of putting off death's victory, but what does it matter to us if the books that feed the intellectual life of our generation are stones to the next and manna to the generation after that? Of this, at least, we may be sure: whether remembered or no, the works that move us now will have an echo that cannot be denied them, unheard but still disturbing, or, perhaps, carefully listened for and picked out, among the myriad roaring of posterity along the furthest and least imaginable corridors of time. WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH _Uniform with this Volume._ EDGAR ALLAN POE A CRITICAL STUDY BY ARTHUR RANSOME "This very interesting study." TIMES. "This book describes Poe's sad and extremely lonely life, with all its pride and morbidness, and it also gives a subtle and clear analysis of his brilliant gifts." STANDARD. "Mr. Arthur Ransome has given us a workmanlike and readable book." CHRONICLE. "The study is thorough and conscientious, and as entertaining as a whole as it is in parts provocative." SATURDAY REVIEW. "Always interesting, often ingenious, sometimes brilliantly written." NATION. "Prefaced with a biographical account which is quite one of the best sketches of Poe's oddly vagabond life that we have in English." PALL MALL GAZETTE. "It is possible that the grace and charm of Mr. Ransome's style may deceive some as to the serious import of his work; but it seems clear to us that in his critical study of Poe, Mr. Ransome has made a potent but mysterious person much more truthfully visible than before; and, in the larger matters, has shown himself one of the present time's most vital and original writers on philosophic criticism, one in whom the right instincts are mated with an enthusiastic and careful precision of analysis."