My Virtual Reading Room

To an Undiscerning Critic

Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,
'Where are the limits of human stupidity?'

Here is a critic who says as a platitude
That I am guilty because 'in ingratitude
Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe's Dupin as very "inferior".'

Have you not learned, my esteemed commentator,
That the created is not the creator?

As the creator I've praised to satiety
Poe's Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.

But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?

He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical.


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A reply to Arthur Guitermann's poem, "To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle",
on the Holmes-Dupin-Lecoq Controversy.