He banished the little essays, the moralizing,
and the philosophizing, which his predecessors, and even his great
contemporary, Hawthorne, had scattered through their short stories. Poe's
aim in writing a short story was to secure by the shortest air-line passage
the precise effect which he desired. He was a great literary critic, and
his essays, _The Philosophy of Composition_ and _The Poetic Principle_,
with all their aberrations, have become classic; but his most famous piece
of criticism--almost epoch-making, so far as the short story is
concerned--is the following:--
"A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not
fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having
conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single _effect_ to
be wrought out, he then invents such incidents,--he then combines such
events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If
his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect,
then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there
should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is
not to the one pre-established design.
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