The first essential value of the detective story lies in this, that it
is the earliest and only form of popular literature in which is
expressed some sense of the poetry of modern life. Men lived among
mighty mountains and eternal forests for ages before they realized that
they were poetical; it may reasonably be inferred that some of our
descendants may see the chimney-pots as rich a purple as the
mountain-peaks, and find the lamp-posts as old and natural as the trees.
Of this realization of a great city itself as something wild and obvious
the detective story is certainly the 'Iliad.' No one can have failed to
notice that in these stories the hero or the investigator crosses London
with something of the loneliness and liberty of a prince in a tale of
elfland, that in the course of that incalculable journey the casual
omnibus assumes the primal colours of a fairy ship. The lights of the
city begin to glow like innumerable goblin eyes, since they are the
guardians of some secret, however crude, which the writer knows and the
reader does not. Every twist of the road is like a finger pointing to
it; every fantastic skyline of chimney-pots seems wildly and derisively
signalling the meaning of the mystery.
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