The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, No. 1 — 1843 text

The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, No. 1 — 1843 text Local reading text of the 1843 edition, including its title-page wording and all 2 distinct historical text sections linked from the source table of contents. This pamphlet contains The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man That Was Used Up in their 1843 readings. This preserves the specified lifetime-edition readings, distinct from later collected editions already held. It is an electronic historical transcription, not a photographic facsimile. Modern source commentary and double-bracketed correction glosses are excluded; historical author notes are retained. Typography, contents layout and page breaks are simplified. No independent word-by-word proofreading is claimed. CONTENTS The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Man that was Used Up THE PROSE ROMANCES OF EDGAR A. POE, AUTHOR OF “THE GOLD-BUG,” “ARTHUR GORDON PYM,” “TALES OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE,” ETC. ETC. ETC. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UNIFORM SERIAL EDITION. EACH NUMBER COMPLETE IN ITSELF. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No. I. CONTAINING THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. AND THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PHILADELPHIA: PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM H. GRAHAM, NO. 98 CHESTNUT STREET 1843. Price 12½ cents. The Murders in the Rue Morgue THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. Sir Thomas Browne. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IT is not improbable that a few farther steps in phrenological science will lead to a belief in the existence, if not to the actual discovery and location, of an organ of analysis. If this power (which may be described, although not defined, as the capacity for resolving thought into its elements) is not, in fact, an essential portion of what late philosophers term ideality, then there are, indeed, many good reasons for supposing it a primitive faculty. That it may be a constituent of ideality is here suggested in opposition to the vulgar dictum (founded, however, upon the assumptions of grave authority) that the calculating and discriminating powers (causality and comparison) are at variance with the imaginative — that the three, in short, can hardly co-exist. But, although thus opposed to received opinion, the idea will not appear ill-founded when we observe that the processes of invention or creation are strictly akin with the processes of resolution — the former being nearly, if not absolutely, the latter conversed. It cannot be doubted that the mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition. The faculty in question is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations