[Footnote 8: Poe himself implies this when he says, in an earlier passage of his essay on Hawthorne: "The Tale Proper" (i.e., short-story), "in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent which can be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the highest genius could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its own powers, I should answer, without hesitation, in the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. I need only here say, upon this topic, that in almost all classes of composition the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. _It is clear_, moreover, _that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting_."] Thomas Hood's poem of _The Dream of Eugene Aram_, written at a time when the prose short-story, under the guidance of Hawthorne and Poe, was just beginning to take its place as a separate species of literary art, has never been surpassed for short-story technique by any of the practitioners of prose. Prof. Brander Matthews has pointed out that "there were nine muses in Greece of old, and no one of these daughters of Apollo was expected to inspire the writer of prose-fiction."[9] [Footnote 9: In his introduction to _Materials and Methods of Fiction_, by Clayton Hamilton, published by the Baker & Taylor Co., New York.] He argues from this that "prose seemed to the Greeks, and even to the Latins who followed in their footsteps, as fit only for pedestrian purposes." It is more probable that, as regards prose-fiction, they did not realize that they were called upon to explain the omission of the tenth muse. Her exclusion was based on no reasoned principle, but was due to a sensuous art-instinct: the Greeks felt that the unnatural limitations of the poetic medium were more in keeping with the unnatural[10] brevity of a story which must be short. The exquisite prose tales which have been handed down to us belong to the age of their decadence as a nation; in their great period their tellers of brief tales unconsciously cast their rendering in the poetic mould.[11] In natures of the highest genius the most arduous is instinctively the favorite task. [Footnote 10: "The short-story is artificial, and to a considerable degree unnatural. It could hardly be otherwise, for it takes out of our complex lives a single person or a single incident and treats that as if it were complete in itself. Such isolation is not known to nature."--Page 22 of _Short-Story Writing_, by Charles Raymond Barrett, published by the Baker & Taylor Co., New York.] [Footnote 11: For example, the story told by Demodocus of _The Illicit Love of Ares for Aphrodite, and the Revenge which Hephaestus Planned_--Odyssey, Bk. VIII.]