ABSTRACT
‘The Gold-Bug’. This is the title of the story written by our friend Edgar A. Poe, Esq., which has been very justly designated as the most remarkable ‘American work of fiction that has been published within the last fifteen years. ’ The period might very safely have been extended back to a period much more remote for so singular a concatenation of incongruous and improbable, nay, impossible absurdities, were never before interwoven in any single or half dozen works of fancy, fact or fiction; and never before, we venture to say, were such mysterious materials so adroitly managed, or a train of incongruities dovetailed together with such masterly ingenuity. Indeed the intense interest which the fiction awakens arises from the skillful management of the several improbabilities, which are so presented as to wear all the semblance of sober reality. It is the unique work of a singularly constituted, but indubitably great intellect, and we give, in another part of our paper, the substance of ‘The Gold-Bug’, omitting the abstruse and elaborate details in which the plot is involved. 1 We may add that the train of reasoning is throughout of a clear, strong, and highly ingenious character, such in fact as would do credit to the highest order of talent that ever puzzled a judge or mystified a jury.
