I do not positively say that the point you put might not have been done in your manner; but I have a very strong conviction that it would have been overdone in that manner—too elaborately trapped, baited, and prepared—in the main anticipated, and its interest wasted. This is quite apart from the peculiarity of the Doctor’s [Dr. Manette—_A Tale of Two Cities_] character, as affected by his imprisonment; which of itself would, to my thinking, render it quite out of the question to put the reader inside of him before the proper time, in respect of matters that were dim to himself through being, in a diseased way, morbidly shunned by him. _I think the business of art is to lay all that ground carefully_, _not with the care that conceals itself—to show_, _by a backward light_, _what everything has been working to_,—_but only to suggest_, _until the fulfilment comes_. _These are the ways of Providence_, _of which ways all art is but a little imitation_. {92b} EDGAR ALLAN POE AND DICKENS: A MYSTIFICATION Could Dickens keep his secrets well? In other words, could he prevent his readers from fathoming a mystery till the proper moment of the _dénouement_? An important help to the answering of this question will be found in the essay on Charles Dickens by Edgar Allan Poe, who was a critic of extraordinary penetration. If any one could detect a secret it was he. But he was also much given to mystification, and it is not wise to accept anything he says without verifying it. The essay on Dickens turns largely on _Barnaby Rudge_, and, to the best of my belief, it has not been strictly examined. POE’S CLAIM Poe says: We are not prepared to say, so positively as we could wish, whether by the public at large, the whole _mystery_ of the murder committed by Rudge, with the identity of the Maypole ruffian with Rudge himself, was fathomed at any period previous to the period intended, or, if so, whether at a period so early as materially to interfere with the interest designed; but we are forced, through sheer modesty, to suppose this the case; since, by ourselves individually, the secret was distinctly understood immediately upon the perusal of the story of Solomon Daisy, which occurs at the seventh page of this volume of three hundred and twenty-three. In the number of the Philadelphia _Saturday Evening Post_ for 1st May 1841 (the tale having then only begun), will be found a prospective notice of some length, in which we make use of the following words: