THE romantic side of crime—and it must be admitted that it occasionally has a romantic side—has often been seized upon by writers for the purposes of fiction. But seldom or never do we hear of the poetical side. And yet dark deeds have been done which, when viewed from a certain standpoint, seem to possess all the elements of a poem—a tragic poem, it must be confessed. It is impossible, of course, to associate the villainy begotten of sordidness or the vulgar wickedness born of hungering greed with any of the sentiment which finds its expression in the poet’s fancy; but where love—which, next to hate, is the strongest passion of the human heart—drives its victim to the commission of wrong- doing, the harshness and bitterness which one feels under ordinary circumstances are changed into pit
