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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14154 ***
+
+THE TALE OF TERROR
+
+A Study of the Gothic Romance
+
+by
+
+EDITH BIRKHEAD M.A.
+
+Assistant Lecturer in English Literature in the University of Bristol
+Formerly Noble Fellow in the University of Liverpool
+
+London
+Constable & Company Ltd.
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The aim of this book is to give some account of the growth of
+supernatural fiction in English literature, beginning with the
+vogue of the Gothic Romance and Tale of Terror towards the close
+of the eighteenth century. The origin and development of the
+Gothic Romance are set forth in detail from the appearance of
+Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 to the publication of
+Maturin's _Melmoth the Wanderer_ in 1820; and the survey of this
+phase of the novel is continued, in the later chapters, to modern
+times. One of these is devoted to the Tale of Terror in America,
+where in the hands of Hawthorne and Poe its treatment became a
+fine art. In the chapters dealing with the more recent forms of
+the tale of terror and wonder, the scope of the subject becomes
+so wide that it is impossible to attempt an exhaustive survey.
+
+The present work is the outcome of studies begun during my tenure
+of the William Noble Fellowship in the University of Liverpool,
+1916-18. It is a pleasure to express here my thanks to Professor
+R.H. Case and to Dr. John Sampson for valuable help and criticism
+at various stages of the work. Parts of the MS. have also been
+read by Professor C.H. Herford of the University of Manchester
+and by Professor Oliver Elton of the University of Liverpool. To
+Messrs. Constable's reader I am also indebted for several helpful
+suggestions.--E.B.
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL,
+
+December, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+
+The antiquity of the tale of terror; the element of fear in
+myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the
+romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the
+seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the
+renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend
+the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels."
+Pp. 1-15.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.
+
+
+Walpole's admiration for Gothic art and his interest in the
+middle ages; the mediaeval revival at the close of the eighteenth
+century; _The Castle of Otranto_; Walpole's bequest to later
+romance-writers; Smollett's incidental anticipation of the
+methods of Gothic Romance; Clara Reeve's _Old English Baron_ and
+her effort to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
+probability"; Mrs. Barbauld's Gothic fragment; Blake's _Fair
+Elenor_; the critical theories and Gothic experiments of Dr.
+Nathan Drake. Pp. 16-37.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE NOVEL OF SUSPENSE." MRS. RADCLIFFE.
+
+
+The vogue of Mrs. Radcliffe; her tentative beginning in _The
+Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, and her gradual advance in skill
+and power; _The Sicilian Romance_ and her early experiments in
+the "explained" supernatural; _The Romance of the Forest_, and
+her use of suspense; heroines: _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
+illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; _The Italian_;
+villains; her historical accuracy and "unexplained" spectre in
+_Gaston de Blondeville_; her reading; style; descriptions of
+scenery; position in the history of the novel.
+Pp. 38-62.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
+
+
+Lewis's methods contrasted with those of Mrs. Radcliffe; his debt
+to German terror-mongers; _The Monk_; ballads; _The Bravo of
+Venice_; minor works and translations; Scott's review of
+Maturin's _Montorio_; the vogue of the tale of terror between
+Lewis and Maturin; Miss Sarah Wilkinson; the personality of
+Charles Robert Maturin; his literary career; the complicated plot
+of _The Family of Montorio_; Maturin's debt to others; his
+distinguishing gifts revealed in _Montorio_; the influence of
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_ on French literature; a survey of
+_Melmoth_; Maturin's achievement as a novelist. Pp. 63-93.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
+
+
+The Oriental story in France and England in the eighteenth
+century; Beckford's _Vathek_; Beckford's life and character; his
+literary gifts; later Oriental tales. Pp. 94-99.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
+
+Godwin's mind and temper; the plan of _Caleb Williams_ as
+described by Godwin; his methods; the plot of _Caleb Williams_;
+its interest as a story; Godwin's limitations as a novelist; _St.
+Lean_; its origin and purpose; outline of the story; the
+character of Bethlem Gabor; Godwin's treatment of the Rosicrucian
+legend; a parody of _St. Lean_; the supernatural in _Cloudesley_
+and in _Lives of the Necromancers_; Moore's _Epicurean_; Croly's
+_Salathiel_; Shelley's youthful enthusiasm for the tale of
+terror; _Zastrozzi_; its lack of originality; _St. Irvyne_;
+traces of Shelley's early reading in his poems. Pp. 100-127.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+Jane Austen's raillery in _Northanger Abbey_; Barrett's mockery
+in _The Heroine_; Peacock's _Nightmare Abbey_; his praise of C.B.
+Brown in _Gryll Grange_; _The Mystery of the Abbey_, and its
+misleading title; Crabbe's satire in _Belinda Waters_ and _The
+Preceptor Husband_; his ironical attack on the sentimental
+heroine in _The Borough_; his appreciation of folktales; _Sir
+Eustace Grey_. Pp.
+128-144.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+Scott's review of fashionable fiction in the Preface to
+_Waverley_; his early attempts at Gothic story in _Thomas the
+Rhymer_ and _The Lord of Ennerdale_; his enthusiasm for Bürger's
+_Lenore_ and for Lewis's ballads; his interest in demonology and
+witchcraft; his attitude to the supernatural; his hints to the
+writers of ghost-stories; his own experiments; Wandering Willie's
+Tale, a masterpiece of supernatural horror; the use of the
+supernatural in the Waverley Novels; Scott, the supplanter of the
+novel of terror. Pp.
+145-156.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.
+
+
+The exaggeration of the later terror-mongers; innovations; the
+stories of Mary Shelley, Byron and Polidori; _Frankenstein_; its
+purpose; critical estimate; _Valperga_; _The Last Man_; Mrs.
+Shelley's short tales; Polidori's _Ernestus Berchtold_, a
+domestic story with supernatural agency; _The_ FACES _Vampyre_;
+later vampires; De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror;
+Harrison Ainsworth's attempt to revive romance; his early Gothic
+stories; _Rookwood_, an attempt to bring the Radcliffe romance up
+to date; terror in Ainsworth's other novels; Marryat's _Phantom
+Ship_; Bulwer Lytton's interest in the occult; _Zanoni_, and
+Lytton's theory of the Intelligences; _The Haunted and the
+Haunters_; _A Strange Story_ and Lytton's preoccupation with
+mesmerism. Pp. 157-184.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+The chapbook versions of the Gothic romance; the popularity of
+sensational story illustrated in Leigh Hunt's _Indicator_;
+collections of short stories; various types of short story in
+periodicals; stories based on oral tradition; the humourist's
+turn for the terrible; natural terror in tales from _Blackwood_
+and in Conrad; use of terror in Stevenson and Kipling; future
+possibilities of fear as a motive in short stories. Pp. 185-196.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles
+Brockden Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; his
+Godwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving's
+genial tales of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy;
+suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; _Twice-Told
+Tales_; _Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter_;
+Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; _The House of the
+Seven Gables_, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous
+treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of
+Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; _A Manuscript
+found in a Bottle_, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill
+of Poe illustrated in _Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher,
+The Masque of the Red Death_, and _The Cash of Amontillado_;
+Poe's psychology; his technique in _The Pit and the Pendulum_ and
+in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his
+ideal in writing a short story. Pp. 197-220.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
+
+
+The persistence of the tale of terror; the position of the Gothic
+romance in the history of fiction; the terrors of actual life in
+the Brontë's novels; sensational stories of Wilkie Collins, Le
+Fanu and later authors; the element of terror in various types of
+romance; experiments of living authors; the future of the tale of
+terror. Pp
+221-228.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.  Pp. 229-241
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+The history of the tale of terror is as old as the history of
+man. Myths were created in the early days of the race to account
+for sunrise and sunset, storm-winds and thunder, the origin of
+the earth and of mankind. The tales men told in the face of these
+mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. The universal
+myth of a great flood is perhaps the earliest tale of terror.
+During the excavation of Nineveh in 1872, a Babylonian version of
+the story, which forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, was discovered
+in the library of King Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.); and there are
+records of a much earlier version, belonging to the year 1966
+B.C. The story of the Flood, as related on the eleventh tablet of
+the Gilgamesh epic, abounds in supernatural terror. To seek the
+gift of immortality from his ancestor, Ut-napishtim, the hero
+undertakes a weary and perilous journey. He passes the mountain
+guarded by a scorpion man and woman, where the sun goes down; he
+traverses a dark and dreadful road, where never man trod, and at
+last crosses the waters of death. During the deluge, which is
+predicted by his ancestor, the gods themselves are stricken with
+fear:
+
+     "No man beheld his fellow, no more could men know each
+     other. In heaven the gods were afraid ... They drew
+     back, they climbed up into the heaven of Anu. The gods
+     crouched like dogs, they cowered by the walls."[1]
+
+Another episode in the same epic, when Nergal, the god of the
+dead, brings before Gilgamesh an apparition of his friend,
+Eabani, recalls the impressive scene, when the witch of Endor
+summons the spirit of Samuel before Saul.
+
+When legends began to grow up round the names of traditional
+heroes, fierce encounters with giants and monsters were invented
+to glorify their strength and prowess. David, with a stone from
+his sling, slew Goliath. The crafty Ulysses put out the eye of
+Polyphemus. Grettir, according to the Icelandic saga, overcame
+Glam, the malevolent, death-dealing vampire who "went riding the
+roofs." Beowulf fearlessly descended into the turbid mere to
+grapple with Grendel's mother. Folktales and ballads, in which
+incidents similar to those in myths and heroic legends occur, are
+often overshadowed by terror. Figures like the Demon Lover, who
+bears off his mistress in the fatal craft and sinks her in the
+sea, and the cannibal bridegroom, outwitted at last by the
+artfulness of one of his brides, appear in the folk-lore of many
+lands. Through every century there glide uneasy spirits, groaning
+for vengeance. Andrew Lang[2] mentions the existence of a papyrus
+fragment, found attached to a wooden statuette, in which an
+ancient Egyptian scribe addresses a letter to the Khou, or
+spirit, of his dead wife, beseeching her not to haunt him. One of
+the ancestors of the savage were-wolf, who figures in Marryat's
+_Phantom Ship_, may perhaps be discovered in Petronius' _Supper
+of Trimalchio_. The descent of Bram Stoker's infamous vampire
+Dracula may be traced back through centuries of legend.
+Hobgoblins, demons, and witches mingle grotesquely with the
+throng of beautiful princesses, queens in glittering raiment,
+fairies and elves. Without these ugly figures, folk-tales would
+soon lose their power to charm. All tale tellers know that fear
+is a potent spell. The curiosity which drove Bluebeard's wife to
+explore the hidden chamber lures us on to know the worst, and as
+we listen to horrid stories, we snatch a fearful joy. Human
+nature desires not only to be amused and entertained, but moved
+to pity and fear. All can sympathise with the youth, who could
+not shudder and who would fain acquire the gift.
+
+From English literature we gain no more than brief, tantalising
+glimpses of the vast treasury of folk-tales and ballads that
+existed before literature became an art and that lived on side by
+side with it, vitalising and enriching it continually. Yet here
+and there we catch sudden gleams like the fragment in _King
+Lear_:
+
+  "Childe Roland to the dark tower came.
+  His word was still Fie, Foh and Fum,
+  I smell the blood of a British man."
+
+or Benedick's quotation from the _Robber Bridegroom_:
+
+  "It is not so, it was not so, but, indeed, God forbid that
+  it should be so."
+
+which hint at the existence of a hoard as precious and
+inexhaustible as that of the Nibelungs. The chord of terror is
+touched in the eerie visit of the three dead sailor sons "in
+earthly flesh and blood" to the wife of Usher's well, Sweet
+William's Ghost, the rescue of Tarn Lin on Halloween, when
+Fairyland pays a tiend to Hell, the return of clerk Saunders to
+his mistress, True Thomas's ride to Fairyland, when:
+
+  "For forty days and forty nights,
+  He wade through red blood to the knee,
+  And he saw neither sun nor moon,
+  But heard the roaring of the sea."
+
+The mediaeval romances of chivalry, which embody stories handed
+down by oral tradition, are set in an atmosphere of supernatural
+wonder and enchantment. In Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Sir
+Lancelot goes by night into the Chapel Perilous, wherein there is
+only a dim light burning, and steals from the corpse a sword and
+a piece of silk to heal the wounds of a dying knight. Sir Galahad
+sees a fiend leap out of a tomb amid a cloud of smoke; Gawaine's
+ghost, with those of the knights and ladies for whom he has done
+battle in life, appears to warn the king not to begin the fight
+against Modred on a certain day. In the romance of _Sir Amadas_,
+the ghost of a merchant, whose corpse the knight had duteously
+redeemed from the hands of creditors, succours him at need. The
+shadow of terror lurks even amid the beauty of Spenser's
+fairyland. In the windings of its forests we come upon dark
+caves, mysterious castles and huts, from which there start
+fearsome creatures like Despair or the giant Orgoglio, hideous
+hags like Occasion, wicked witches and enchanters or frightful
+beings like the ghostly Maleger, who wore as his helmet a dead
+man's skull and rode upon a tiger swift as the wind. The
+Elizabethan dramatists were fascinated by the terrors of the
+invisible world. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, round whose name are
+clustered legends centuries old concerning bargains between man
+and the devil, the apparitions and witches in _Macbeth_, the dead
+hand, the corpse-like images, the masque of madmen, the tombmaker
+and the passing-bell in Webster's sombre tragedy, _The Duchess of
+Malfi_, prove triumphantly the dramatic possibilities of terror.
+As a foil to his _Masque of Queens_ (1609) Ben Jonson introduced
+twelve loathly witches with Até as their leader, and embellished
+his description of their profane rites, with details culled from
+James I.'s treatise on Demonology and from learned ancient
+authorities.
+
+In _The Pilgrim's Progress_, Despair, who "had as many lives as a
+cat," his wife Diffidence at Doubting Castle, and Maul and
+Slaygood are the ogres of popular story, whose acquaintance
+Bunyan had made in chapbooks during his ungodly youth.
+Hobgoblins, devils and fiends, "sturdy rogues" like the three
+brothers Faintheart, Mistrust and Guilt, who set upon Littlefaith
+in Dead Man's Lane, lend the excitement of terror to Christian's
+journey to the Celestial City. The widespread belief in witches
+and spirits to which Browne and Burton and many others bear
+witness in the seventeenth century, lived on in the eighteenth
+century, although the attitude of the "polite" in the age of
+reason was ostensibly incredulous and superior. A scene in one of
+the _Spectator_ essays illustrates pleasantly the state of
+popular opinion. Addison, lodging with a good-natured widow in
+London, returns home one day to find a group of girls sitting by
+candlelight, telling one another ghost-stories. At his entry they
+are abashed, but, on the widow's assuring them that it is only
+the "gentleman," they resume, while Addison, pretending to be
+absorbed in his book at the far end of the table, covertly
+listens to their tales of
+
+     "ghosts that, pale as ashes, had stood at the feet of
+     the bed or walked over a churchyard by moonlight; and
+     others, who had been conjured into the Red Sea for
+     disturbing people's rest."[3]
+
+In another essay Addison shows that he is strongly inclined to
+believe in the existence of spirits, though he repudiates the
+ridiculous superstitions which prevailed in his day;[4] and Sir
+Roger de Coverley frankly confesses his belief in witches. Defoe,
+in the preface to his _Essay on the History and Reality of
+Apparitions_ (1727) states uncompromisingly:
+
+     "I must tell you, good people, he that is not able to
+     see the devil, in whatever shape he is pleased to
+     appear in, he is not really qualified to live in this
+     world, no, not in the quality of a common inhabitant."
+
+Epworth Rectory, the home of John Wesley's father, was haunted in
+1716-17 by a persevering ghost called Old Jeffrey, whose exploits
+are recorded with a gravity and circumstantial exactitude that
+remind us of Defoe's narrative concerning the ghostly Mrs. Veal
+in her "scoured" silk. John Wesley declares stoutly that he is
+convinced of the literal truth of the story of one Elizabeth
+Hobson, who professed to have been visited on several occasions
+by supernatural beings. He upholds too the authenticity of the
+notorious Drummer of Tedworth, whose escapades are described in
+chapbooks and in Glanvill's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (1666), a
+book in which he was keenly interested. In his journal (May 25th,
+1768) he remarks:
+
+     "It is true that the English in general, and indeed
+     most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up
+     all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere old
+     wives' fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take
+     this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against
+     this violent compliment which so many that believe the
+     Bible pay to those who do not believe it."
+
+The Cock Lane ghost gained very general credit, and was
+considered by Mrs. Nickleby a personage of some importance, when
+she boasted to Miss La Creevy that her great-grandfather went to
+school with him--or her grandmother with the Thirsty Woman of
+Tutbury. The appearance of Lord Lyttleton's ghost in 1779 was
+described by Dr. Johnson, who was also disposed to believe in the
+Cock Lane ghost, as the most extraordinary thing that had
+happened in his day.[5] There is abundant evidence that the
+people of the eighteenth century were extremely credulous, yet,
+in literature, there is a tendency to look askance at the
+supernatural as at something wild and barbaric. Such ghosts as
+presume to steal into poetry are amazingly tame, and even
+elegant, in their speech and deportment. In Mallet's _William and
+Margaret_ (1759). which was founded on a scrap of an old ballad
+out of _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Margaret's wraith
+rebukes her false lover in a long and dignified oration. But
+spirits were shy of appearing in an age when they were more
+likely to be received with banter than with dread. Dr. Johnson
+expresses the attitude of his age when, in referring to Gray's
+poem, _The Bard_, he remarks:
+
+     "To select a singular event and swell it to a giant's
+     bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions
+     has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the
+     probable may always find the marvellous. And it has
+     little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are
+     improved only as we find something to be imitated or
+     declined." (1780.)
+
+The dictum that we are affected only as we believe is open to
+grave doubt. We are often thrown into a state of trepidation
+simply through the power of the imagination. We are wise after
+the event, like Partridge at the play:
+
+     "No, no, sir; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as
+     that neither... And if it was really a ghost, it could
+     do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much
+     company; and yet, if I was frightened, I am not the
+     only person."[6]
+
+The supernatural which persisted always in legends handed down
+from one generation to another on the lips of living people, had
+not lost its power to thrill and alarm, and gradually worked its
+way back into literature. Although Gray and Collins do not
+venture far beyond the bounds of the natural, they were in
+sympathy with the popular feelings of superstitious terror, and
+realised how effective they would be in poetry.
+
+Collins, in his _Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish
+Highlands_, adjures Home, the author of _Douglas_, to sing:
+
+            "how, framing hideous spells,
+  In Sky's lone isle, the gifted wizard-seer
+  Lodged in the wintry cave with Fate's fell spear
+  Or in the depths of Uist's dark forests dwells,
+  How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross
+  With their own vision oft astonished droop
+  When o'er the wintry strath or quaggy moss
+  They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop."
+
+Burns, in the foreword to _Halloween_ (1785), writes in the
+"enlightened" spirit of the eighteenth century, but in the poem
+itself throws himself whole-heartedly into the hopes and fears
+that agitate the lovers. He owed much to an old woman who lived
+in his home in infancy:
+
+  "She had ... the largest collection in the country
+  of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies,
+  brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles,
+  dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted
+  towers, dragons and other trumpery. This
+  cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong
+  an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my
+  nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in
+  suspicious places; it often takes an effort of philosophy
+  to shake off these idle terrors."[7]
+
+_Tam o' Shanter_, written for Captain Grose, was perhaps based on
+a Scottish legend, learnt at the inglenook in childhood, from
+this old wife, or perhaps
+
+  "By some auld houlet-haunted biggin
+  Or kirk deserted by its riggin,"
+
+from Captain Grose himself, who made to quake:
+
+  "Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha' or chamer,
+  Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor,
+  And you, deep-read in hell's black grammar,
+         Warlocks and witches."
+
+In it Burns reveals with lively reality the terrors that assail
+the reveller on his homeward way through the storm:
+
+  "Past the birks and meikle stane
+  Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
+  And through the whins, and by the cairn
+  Where hunters fand the murdered bairn
+  And near the thorn, aboon the well
+  Where Mungo's mither hanged hersell."
+
+For sheer terror the wild, fantastic witch-dance, seen through a
+Gothic window in the ruins of Kirk-Alloway, with the light of
+humour strangely glinting through, has hardly been surpassed. The
+Ballad-collections, beginning with Percy's _Reliques of Ancient
+English Poetry_ (1705), brought poets back to the original
+sources of terror in popular tradition, and helped to revive the
+latent feelings of awe, wonder and fear. In Coleridge's _Ancient
+Manner_ the skeleton-ship with its ghastly crew--the
+spectre-woman and her deathmate--the sensations of the mariner,
+alone on a wide, wide sea, seize on our imagination with
+irresistible power. The very substance of the poem is woven of
+the supernatural. The dream imagery is thrown into relief by
+occasional touches of reality--the lighthouse, the church on the
+cliff, the glimpses of the wedding, the quiet song of the hidden
+brook in the leafy month of June. We, like the mariner, after
+loneliness so awful that
+
+        "God himself
+  Scarce seemèd there to be,"
+
+welcome the firm earth beneath our feet, and the homely sound of
+the vesper bell. In _Christabel_ we float dreamily through scenes
+as unearthly and ephemeral as the misty moonlight, and the words
+in which Coleridge conjures up his vision fall into music of
+magic beauty. The opening of the poem creates a sense of
+foreboding, and the horror of the serpent-maiden is subtly
+suggested through her effect on Christabel. Coleridge hints at
+the terrible with artistic reticence. In _Kubla Khan_ the chasm
+is:
+
+  "A savage place! as holy and enchanted
+  As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
+  By woman wailing for her demon-lover."
+
+The poetry of Keats is often mysterious and suggestive of terror.
+The description of the Gothic hall in _The Eve of St. Agnes_:
+
+  "In all the house was heard no human sound;
+  A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;
+  The arras, rich with horseman, hawk and hound,
+  Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;
+  And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor;"
+
+the serpent-maiden, Lamia, who
+
+  "Seemed at once some penanced lady elf,
+  Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self;"
+
+the grim story in _Isabella_ of Lorenzo's ghost, who
+
+  "Moaned a ghostly undersong
+  Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briers along."
+
+all lead us over the borderland. In a rejected stanza of the _Ode
+on Melancholy_, he abandons the horrible:
+
+  "Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones
+  And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
+  Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
+  To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
+  Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
+  Long severed, yet still hard with agony,
+  Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull
+  Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
+  To find the Melancholy--"
+
+Keats's melancholy is not to be found amid images
+of horror:
+
+  "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die,
+  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
+  Bidding adieu."
+
+In _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ he conveys with delicate touch the
+memory of the vision which haunts the knight, alone and palely
+loitering. We see it through his eyes:
+
+  "I saw pale kings and princes too,
+  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
+  They cried--'La Belle Dame sans Merci
+  Hath thee in thrall!'
+
+  "I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
+  With horrid warning gaped wide,
+  And I awoke and found me here,
+  On the cold hill's side."
+
+From effects so exquisitely wrought as these it seems almost
+profane to turn to the crude attempts of such poets as "Monk"
+Lewis or Southey to sound the note of terror. Yet they too, in
+their fashion, played a part in the "Renascence of Wonder."
+Coleridge, fascinated by the spirit of "gramarye" in Bürger's
+_Lenore_, etherealised and refined it. Scott and Lewis gloried in
+the gruesome details and spirited rhythm of the ballad, and in
+their supernatural poems wish to startle and terrify, not to awe,
+their readers. Those who revel in phosphorescent lights and in
+the rattle of the skeleton are apt to o'erleap themselves; and
+Scott's _Glenfinlas_, Lewis's _Alonzo the Brave and the Fair
+Imogene_ and Southey's _Old Woman of Berkeley_ fall into the
+category of the grotesque. Hogg intentionally mingles the comic
+and the terrible in his poem, _The Witch of Fife_, but his
+prose-stories reveal his power of creating an atmosphere of
+_diablerie_, undisturbed by intrusive mockery. In the poem
+_Kilmeny_, he handles an uncanny theme with dreamy beauty.
+
+From the earliest times to the present day, writers of fiction
+have realised the force of supernatural terror. In the
+_Babylonica_ of Iamblichus, the lovers evade their pursuers by
+passing as spectres; the scene of the romance is laid in tombs,
+caverns, and robbers' dens, a setting remarkably like that of
+Gothic story. Into the English novel of the first half of the
+eighteenth century, however, the ghost dares not venture. The
+innate desire for the marvellous was met at this period not by
+the novel, but by oral tradition and by such works as Galland's
+translation of _The Arabian Nights_, the Countess D'Aulnoy's
+collection of fairy tales, Perrault's _Contes de ma Mère Oie_.
+Chapbooks setting forth mediaeval legends of "The Wandering Jew,"
+the "Demon Frigate," or "Dr. Faustus," and interspersed with
+anecdotes of freaks, monsters and murderers, satisfied the
+craving for excitement among humbler readers.[8] Smollett, who,
+in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom_ (1753), seems to
+have been experimenting with new devices for keeping alive the
+interest of a _picaresque_ novel, anticipates the methods of Mrs.
+Radcliffe. Although he sedulously avoids introducing the
+supernatural, he hovers perilously on the threshold. The
+publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 was not so wild an
+adventure as Walpole would have his readers believe. The age was
+ripe for the reception of the marvellous.
+
+The supernatural had, as we have seen, begun to find its way back
+into poetry, in the work of Gray and Collins. In Macpherson's
+_Ossian_, which was received with acclamation in 1760-3, the
+mountains, heaths and lakes are haunted by shadowy, superstitious
+fears. Dim-seen ghosts wail over the wastes. There is abundant
+evidence that "authentic" stories of ghostly appearances were
+heard with respect. Those who eagerly explored Walpole's Gothic
+castle and who took pleasure in Miss Reeve's well-trained ghost,
+had previously enjoyed the thrill of chimney corner legends. The
+idea of the gigantic apparition was derived, no doubt, from the
+old legend of the figure seen by Wallace on the field of battle.
+The limbs, strewn carelessly about the staircase and the gallery
+of the castle, belong to a giant, very like those who are worsted
+by the heroes of popular story. Godwin, in an unusual flight of
+fancy, amused himself by tracing a certain similitude between
+_Caleb Williams_ and _Bluebeard_, between _Cloudesley_ and _The
+Babes in the Wood_,[9] and planned a story, on the analogy of the
+Sleeping Beauty, in which the hero was to have the faculty of
+unexpectedly falling asleep for twenty, thirty, or a hundred
+years.[10]
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe, who, so far as we may judge, did not draw her
+characters from the creatures of flesh and blood around her,
+seems to have adopted some of the familiar figures of old story.
+Emily's guardian, Montoni, in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, like
+the unscrupulous uncle in Godwin's _Cloudesley_, may well have
+been descended from the wicked uncle of the folk tale. The cruel
+stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in
+_The Sicilian Romance_. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer
+of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method
+of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and
+robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic fiction are time
+honoured figures. Travellers in Thessaly in Apuleius' _Golden
+Ass_, like the fugitives in Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St.
+Irvyne_, find themselves in robbers' caves. The Gothic castle,
+suddenly encountered in a dark forest, is boldly transported from
+fairyland and set down in Italy, Sicily or Spain. The chamber of
+horrors, with its alarming array of scalps or skeletons, is
+civilised beyond recognition and becomes the deserted wing of an
+abbey, concealing nothing worse than one discarded wife,
+emaciated and dispirited, but still alive. The ghost-story, which
+Ludovico reads in the haunted chamber of Udolpho, is described by
+Mrs. Radcliffe as a Provençal tale, but is in reality common to
+the folklore of all countries. The restless ghost, who yearns for
+the burial of his corpse, is as ubiquitous as the Wandering Jew.
+In the _Iliad_ he appears as the shade of Patroclus, pleading
+with Achilles for his funeral rites. According to a letter of the
+younger Pliny,[11] he haunts a house in Athens, clanking his
+chains. He is found in every land, in every age. His feminine
+counterpart presented herself to Dickens' nurse requiring her
+bones, which were under a glass-case, to be "interred with every
+undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound ten, in another
+particular place."[12] Melmoth the Wanderer, when he becomes the
+wooer of Immalee, seems almost like a reincarnation of the Demon
+Lover. The wandering ball of fire that illuminates the dusky
+recesses of so many Gothic abbeys is but another manifestation of
+the Fate-Moon, which shines, foreboding death, after Thorgunna's
+funeral, in the Icelandic saga. The witchcraft and demonology
+that attracted Scott and "Monk" Lewis, may be traced far beyond
+Sinclair's _Satan's Invisible World Discovered_ (1685), Bovet's
+_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_ (1683), or Reginald
+Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584) to Ulysses' invocation of
+the spirits of the dead,[13] to the idylls of Theocritus and to
+the Hebrew narrative of Saul's visit to the Cave of Endor. There
+are incidents in _The Golden Ass_ as "horrid" as any of those
+devised by the writers of Gothic romance. It would, indeed, be no
+easy task to fashion scenes more terrifying than the mutilation
+of Socrates in _The Golden Ass_, by the witch, who tears out his
+heart and stops the wound with a sponge which falls out when he
+stoops to drink at a river, or than the strange apparition of a
+ragged, old woman who vanishes after leading the way to the room,
+where the baker's corpse hangs behind the door. Though the title
+assumes a special literary significance at the close of the
+eighteenth century, the tale of terror appeals to deeply rooted
+instincts, and belongs, therefore, to every age and clime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.
+
+
+To Horace Walpole, whose _Castle of Otranto_ was published on
+Christmas Eve, 1764, must be assigned the honour of having
+introduced the Gothic romance and of having made it fashionable.
+Diffident as to the success of so "wild" a story in an age
+devoted to good sense and reason, he sent forth his mediaeval
+tale disguised as a translation from the Italian of "Onuphrio
+Muralto," by William Marshall. It was only after it had been
+received with enthusiasm that he confessed the authorship. As he
+explained frankly in a letter to his friend Mason: "It is not
+everybody that may in this country play the fool with
+impunity."[14] That Walpole regarded his story merely as a
+fanciful, amusing trifle is clear from the letter he wrote to
+Miss Hannah More reproving her for putting so frantic a thing
+into the hands of a Bristol milkwoman who wrote poetry in her
+leisure hours.[15] _The Castle of Otranto_ was but another
+manifestation of that admiration for the Gothic which had found
+expression fourteen years earlier in his miniature castle at
+Strawberry Hill, with its old armour and "lean windows fattened
+with rich saints."[16] The word "Gothic" in the early eighteenth
+century was used as a term of reproach. To Addison, Siena
+Cathedral was but a "barbarous" building, which might have been a
+miracle of architecture, had our forefathers "only been
+instructed in the right way."[17] Pope in his _Preface to
+Shakespeare_ admits the strength and majesty of the Gothic, but
+deplores its irregularity. In _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_,
+published two years before _The Castle of Otranto_, Hurd pleads
+that Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ should be read and criticised as a
+Gothic, not a classical, poem. He clearly recognises the right of
+the Gothic to be judged by laws of its own. When the nineteenth
+century is reached the epithet has lost all tinge of blame, and
+has become entirely one of praise. From the time when he began to
+build his castle, in 1750, Walpole's letters abound in references
+to the Gothic, and he confesses once: "In the heretical corner of
+my heart I adore the Gothic building."[18] At Strawberry Hill the
+hall and staircase were his special delight and they probably
+formed the background of that dream in which he saw a gigantic
+hand in armour on the staircase of an ancient castle. When Dr.
+Burney visited Walpole's home in 1786 he remarked on the striking
+recollections of _The Castle of Otranto_, brought to mind by "the
+deep shade in which some of his antique portraits were placed and
+the lone sort of look of the unusually shaped apartments in which
+they were hung."[19] We know how in idle moments Walpole loved to
+brood on the picturesque past, and we can imagine his falling
+asleep, after the arrival of a piece of armour for his
+collection, with his head full of plans for the adornment of his
+cherished castle. His story is but an expansion of this
+dilettante's nightmare. His interest in things mediaeval was not
+that of an antiquary, but rather that of an artist who loves
+things old because of their age and beauty. In a delightfully gay
+letter to his friend, George Montagu, referring flippantly to his
+appointment as Deputy Ranger of Rockingham Forest, he writes,
+after drawing a vivid picture of a "Robin Hood reformé":
+
+     "Visions, you know, have always been my pasture; and so
+     far from growing old enough to quarrel with their
+     emptiness, I almost think there is no wisdom comparable
+     to that of exchanging what is called the realities of
+     life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old
+     histories and the babble of old people make one live
+     back into centuries that cannot disappoint one. One
+     holds fast and surely what is past. The dead have
+     exhausted their power of deceiving--one can trust
+     Catherine of Medicis now. In short, you have opened a
+     new landscape to my fancy; and my lady Beaulieu will
+     oblige me as much as you, if she puts the long bow into
+     your hands. I don't know, but the idea may produce some
+     other _Castle of Otranto_."[20]
+
+So Walpole came near to anticipating the greenwood scenes of
+_Ivanhoe_. The decking and trappings of chivalry filled him with
+boyish delight, and he found in the glitter and colour of the
+middle ages a refuge from the prosaic dullness of the eighteenth
+century. A visit from "a Luxembourg, a Lusignan and a Montfort"
+awoke in his whimsical fancy a mental image of himself in the
+guise of a mediaeval baron: "I never felt myself so much in _The
+Castle of Otranto_. It sounded as if a company of noble crusaders
+were come to sojourn with me before they embarked for the Holy
+Land";[21] and when he heard of the marvellous adventures of a
+large wolf who had caused a panic in Lower Languedoc, he was
+reminded of the enchanted monster of old romance and declared
+that, had he known of the creature earlier, it should have
+appeared in _The Castle of Otranto_.[22] "I have taken to
+astronomy," he declares on another occasion,
+
+     "now that the scale is enlarged enough to satisfy my
+     taste, who love gigantic ideas--do not be afraid; I am
+     not going to write a second part to _The Castle of
+     Otranto_, nor another account of the Patagonians who
+     inhabit the new Brobdingnag planet."[23]
+
+These unstudied utterances reveal, perhaps more clearly than
+Walpole's deliberate confessions about his book, the mood of
+irresponsible, light-hearted gaiety in which he started on his
+enterprise. If we may rely on Walpole's account of its
+composition, _The Castle of Otranto_ was fashioned rapidly in a
+white heat of excitement, but the creation of the story probably
+cost him more effort than he would have us believe. The result,
+at least, lacks spontaneity. We never feel for a moment that we
+are living invisible amidst the characters, but we sit aloof like
+Puck, thinking: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" His
+supernatural machinery is as undignified as the pantomime
+properties of Jack the Giant-killer. The huge body scattered
+piecemeal about the castle, the unwieldy sabre borne by a hundred
+men, the helmet "tempestuously agitated," and even the "skeleton
+in a hermit's cowl" are not only unalarming but mildly
+ridiculous. Yet to the readers of his day the story was
+captivating and entrancing. It satisfied a real craving for the
+romantic and marvellous. The first edition of five hundred copies
+was sold out in two months, and others followed rapidly. The
+story was dramatised by Robert Jephson and produced at Covent
+Garden Theatre under the title of _The Count of Narbonne_, with
+an epilogue by Malone. It was staged again later in Dublin,
+Kemble playing the title rôle. It was translated into French,
+German and Italian. In England its success was immediate, though
+several years elapsed before it was imitated. Gray, to whom the
+story was first attributed, wrote of it in March, 1765: "It
+engages our attention here (at Cambridge), makes some of us cry a
+little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights." Mason
+praised it, and Walpole's letters refer repeatedly to the vogue
+it enjoyed. This widespread popularity is an indication of the
+eagerness with which readers of 1765 desired to escape from the
+present and to revel for a time in strange, bygone centuries.
+Although Walpole regarded the composition of his Gothic story as
+a whim, his love of the past was shared by others of his
+generation. Of this Macpherson's _Ossian_ (1760-3), Kurd's
+_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762), and Percy's _Reliques_
+(1765), are, each in its fashion, a sufficient proof. The
+half-century from 1760 to 1810 showed remarkably definite signs
+of a renewed interest in things written between 1100 and 1650,
+which had been neglected for a century or more. _The Castle of
+Otranto_, which was "an attempt to blend the marvellous of old
+story with the natural of modern novels" is an early symptom of
+this revulsion to the past; and it exercised a charm on Scott as
+well as on Mrs. Radcliffe and her school. _The Castle of Otranto_
+is significant, not because of its intrinsic merit, but because
+of its power in shaping the destiny of the novel.
+
+The outline of the plot is worth recording for the sake of
+tracing ancestral likenesses when we reach the later romances.
+The only son of Manfred--the villain of the piece--is discovered
+on his wedding morning dashed to pieces beneath an enormous
+helmet. Determined that his line shall not become extinct,
+Manfred decides to divorce Hippolyta and marry Isabella, his
+son's bride. To escape from her pursuer, Isabella takes flight
+down a "subterraneous passage," where she is succoured by a
+"peasant" Theodore, who bears a curious resemblance to a portrait
+of the "good Alfonso" in the gallery of the castle. The servants
+of the castle are alarmed at intervals by the sudden appearance
+of massive pieces of armour in different parts of the building. A
+clap of thunder, which shakes the castle to its foundations,
+heralds the culmination of the story. A hundred men bear in a
+huge sabre; and an apparition of the illustrious Alfonso--whose
+portrait in the gallery once walks straight out of its
+frame[24]--appears, "dilated to an immense magnitude,"[25] and
+demands that Manfred shall surrender Otranto to the rightful
+heir, Theodore, who has been duly identified by the mark of a
+"bloody arrow." Alfonso, thus pacified, ascends into heaven,
+where he is received into glory by St. Nicholas. As Matilda, who
+was beloved of Theodore, has incidentally been slain by her
+father, Theodore consoles himself with Isabella. Manfred and his
+wife meekly retire to neighbouring convents. With this
+anti-climax the story closes. To present the "dry bones" of a
+romantic story is often misleading, but the method is perhaps
+justifiable in the case of _The Castle of Otranto_, because
+Walpole himself scorned embellishments and declared in his
+grandiloquent fashion:
+
+     "If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader
+     will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. There
+     is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions or
+     unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to
+     the catastrophe."[26]
+
+But with all its faults _The Castle of Otranto_ did not fall
+fruitless on the earth. The characters are mere puppets, yet we
+meet the same types again and again in later Gothic romances.
+Though Clara Reeve renounced such "obvious improbabilities" as a
+ghost in a hermit's cowl and a walking picture, she was an
+acknowledged disciple of Walpole, and, like him, made an
+"interesting peasant" the hero of her story, _The Old English
+Baron_. Jerome is the prototype of many a count disguised as
+father confessor, Bianca the pattern of many a chattering
+servant. The imprisoned wife reappears in countless romances,
+including Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), and Mrs.
+Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798). The tyrannical father--no
+new creation, however--became so inevitable a figure in fiction
+that Jane Austen had to assure her readers that Mr. Morland "was
+not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters," and Miss
+Martha Buskbody, the mantua-maker of Gandercleugh, whom Jedediah
+Cleishbotham ingeniously called to his aid in writing the
+conclusion of _Old Mortality_, assured him, as the fruit of her
+experience in reading through the stock of three circulating
+libraries that, in a novel, young people may fall in love without
+the countenance of their parents, "because it is essential to the
+necessary intricacy of the story." But apart from his characters,
+who are so colourless that they hardly hold our attention,
+Walpole bequeathed to his successors a remarkable collection of
+useful "properties." The background of his story is a Gothic
+castle, singularly unenchanted it is true, but capable of being
+invested by Mrs. Radcliffe with mysterious grandeur. Otranto
+contains underground vaults, ill-fitting doors with rusty hinges,
+easily extinguished lamps and a trap-door--objects trivial and
+insignificant in Walpole's hands, but fraught with terrible
+possibilities. Otranto would have fulfilled admirably the
+requirements of Barrett's Cherubina, who, when looking for
+lodgings demanded--to the indignation of a maidservant, who came
+to the door--old pictures, tapestry, a spectre and creaking
+hinges. Scott, writing in 1821, remarks:
+
+     "The apparition of the skeleton-hermit to the prince of
+     Vicenza was long accounted a masterpiece of the
+     horrible; but of late the valley of Jehosaphat could
+     hardly supply the dry bones necessary for the
+     exhibition of similar spectres."
+
+But Cherubina, whose palate was jaded by a surfeit of the pungent
+horrors of Walpole's successors, would probably have found _The
+Castle of Otranto_ an insipid romance and would have lamented
+that he did not make more effective use of his supernatural
+machinery. His story offered hints and suggestions to those whose
+greater gifts turned the materials he had marshalled to better
+account, and he is to be honoured rather for what he instigated
+others to perform than for what he actually accomplished himself.
+_The Castle of Otranto_ was not intended as a serious
+contribution to literature, but will always survive in literary
+history as the ancestor of a thriving race of romances.
+
+More than ten years before the publication of _The Castle of
+Otranto_, Smollett, in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count
+Fathom_, had chanced upon the devices employed later in the tale
+of terror. The tremors of fear to which his rascally hero is
+subjected lend the spice of alarm to what might have been but a
+monotonous record of villainy. Smollett depicts skilfully the
+imaginary terrors created by darkness and solitude. As the Count
+travels through the forest:
+
+     "The darkness of the night, the silence and solitude of
+     the place, the indistinct images of the trees that
+     appeared on every side, stretching their extravagant
+     arms athwart the gloom, conspired, with the dejection
+     of spirits occasioned by his loss, to disturb his fancy
+     and raise strange phantoms in his imagination. Although
+     he was not naturally superstitious, his mind began to
+     be invaded with an awful horror that gradually
+     prevailed over all the consolations of reason and
+     philosophy; nor was his heart free from the terrors of
+     assassination. In order to dissipate these agreeable
+     reveries, he had recourse to the conversation of his
+     guide, by whom he was entertained with the history of
+     divers travellers who had been robbed and murdered by
+     ruffians, whose retreat was in the recesses of that
+     very wood."[27]
+
+The sighing of the trees, thunder and sudden flashes of lightning
+add to the horror of a journey, which resembles Mrs. Radcliffe's
+description of Emily's approach to Udolpho. When Count Fathom
+takes refuge in a robber's hut, he discovers in his room, which
+has no bolt on the inside of the door, the body of a recently
+murdered man, concealed beneath some bundles of straw. Effecting
+his escape by placing the corpse in his own bed to deceive the
+robbers, the count is mistaken for a phantom by the old woman who
+waits upon him. In carrying out his designs upon Celinda, the
+count aggravates her natural timidity by relating dismal stories
+of omens and apparitions, and then groans piteously outside her
+door and causes the mysterious music of an Æolian harp to sound
+upon the midnight air. Celinda sleeps, too, like the ill-starred
+heroine of the novel of terror, "at the end of a long gallery,
+scarce within hearing of any other inhabited part of the
+house."[28] The scene in _Count Fathom_, in which Renaldo, at
+midnight, visits, as he thinks, the tomb of Monimia, is
+surrounded with circumstances of gloom and mystery:
+
+     "The uncommon darkness of the night, the solemn silence
+     and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the
+     occasion of his coming and the dismal images of his
+     fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy
+     expectation... The clock struck twelve, the owl
+     screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was
+     opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering
+     taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary
+     aisle."
+
+As he watches again on a second night:
+
+     "His ear was suddenly invaded with the sound of some
+     few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed
+     to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason
+     shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which
+     represented this music as the prelude to something
+     strange and supernatural."[29]
+
+The figure of a woman, arrayed in a flowing robe and veil,
+approaches--and proves to be Monimia in the flesh. Although
+Smollett precedes Walpole, in point of time, he is, in these
+scenes, nearer in spirit to Udolpho than Otranto. His use of
+terror, however, is merely incidental; he strays inadvertently
+into the history of Gothic romance. The suspicions and
+forebodings, with which Smollett plays occasionally upon the
+nerves of his readers, become part of the ordinary routine in the
+tale of terror.
+
+Clara Reeve's Gothic story, first issued under the title of _The
+Champion of Virtue_, but later as _The Old English Baron_, was
+published in 1777--twelve years after Walpole's _Castle of
+Otranto_, of which, as she herself asserted, it was the "literary
+offspring." By eliminating all supernatural incidents save one
+ghost, she sought to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
+probability." Walpole, perhaps displeased by the slighting
+references in the preface to some of the more extraordinary
+incidents in his novel, received _The Old English Baron_ with
+disdain, describing it as "totally void of imagination and
+interest."[30] His strictures are unjust. There are certainly no
+wild flights of fancy in Clara Reeve's story, but an even level
+of interest is maintained throughout. Her style is simple and
+refreshingly free from affectation. The plot is neither rapid nor
+exhilarating, but it never actually stagnates. Like Walpole's
+Gothic story, _The Old English Baron_ is supposed to be a
+transcript from an ancient manuscript. The period, we are
+assured, is that of the minority of Henry VI., but despite an
+elaborately described tournament, we never really leave
+eighteenth century England. Edmund Twyford, the reputed son of a
+cottager, is befriended by a benevolent baron Fitzowen, but,
+through his good fortune and estimable qualities, excites the
+envy of Fitzowen's nephews and his eldest son. To prove the
+courage of Edmund, who has been basely slandered by his enemies,
+the baron asks him to spend three nights in the haunted apartment
+of the castle. Up to this point, there has been nothing to
+differentiate the story from an uneventful domestic novel. The
+ghost is of the mechanical variety and does not inspire awe when
+he actually appears, but Miss Reeve tries to prepare our minds
+for the shock, before she introduces him. The rusty locks and the
+sudden extinction of the lamp are a heritage from Walpole, but
+the "hollow, rustling noise" and the glimmering light, naturally
+explained later by the approach of a servant with a faggot,
+anticipate Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Adeline later, in _The Romance of
+the Forest_, Edmund is haunted by prophetic dreams. The second
+night the ghost violently clashes his armour, but still remains
+concealed. The third night dismal groans are heard. The ghost
+does not deign to appear in person until the baron's nephews
+watch, and then:
+
+     "All the doors flew open, a pale glimmering light
+     appeared at the door from the staircase, and a man in
+     complete armour entered the room: he stood with one
+     hand extended pointing to the outward door."
+
+It is to vindicate the rights of this departed spirit that Sir
+Ralph Harclay challenges Sir Walter Lovel to a "mediaeval"
+tournament. Before the story closes, Edmund is identified as the
+owner of Castle Lovel, and is married to Lady Emma, Fitzowen's
+daughter. The narration of the unusual circumstances connected
+with his birth takes some time, as the foster parents suffer from
+what is described by writers on psychology as "total recall," and
+are unable to select the salient details. The characters are
+rather dim and indistinct, the shadowiest of all being Emma, who
+has no personality at all, and is a mere complement to the
+immaculate Edmund's happiness. The good and bad are sharply
+distinguished. There are no "doubtful cases," and consequently
+there is no difficulty in distributing appropriate rewards and
+punishments at the close of the story--the whole "furnishing a
+striking lesson to posterity of the overruling hand of providence
+and the certainty of retribution." Clara Reeve was fifty-two
+years of age when she published her Gothic story, and she writes
+in the spirit of a maiden aunt striving to edify as well as to
+entertain the younger generation. When Edmund takes Fitzowen to
+view the fatal closet and the bones of his murdered father, he
+considers the scene "too solemn for a lady to be present at"; and
+his love-making is as frigid as the supernatural scenes. The hero
+is young in years, but has no youthful ardour. The very ghost is
+manipulated in a half-hearted fashion and fails to produce the
+slightest thrill. The natural inclination of the authoress was
+probably towards domestic fiction with a didactic intention, and
+she attempted a "mediaeval" setting as a _tour de force_, in
+emulation of Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_. The hero, whose birth
+is enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the
+vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic
+spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards
+the romantic. _The Old English Baron_ is an unambitious work, but
+it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity
+of style. It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild
+degree of interest simply as a story, while _The Castle of
+Otranto_ is only tolerable as a literary curiosity. A tragedy,
+_Edmond_, _Orphan of the Castle_ (1799), was founded upon the
+story, which was translated into French in 1800. Miss Reeve
+informs the public in a preface to a late edition of _The Old
+English Baron_ that, in compliance with the suggestion of a
+friend, she had composed _Castle Connor, an Irish Story_, in
+which apparitions were introduced. The manuscript of this tale
+was unfortunately lost. Not even a mouldering fragment has been
+rescued from an ebony cabinet in the deserted chamber of an
+ancient abbey, and we are left wondering whether the ghosts spoke
+with a brogue.
+
+When Walpole wrote disparagingly of Clara Reeve's imitation of
+his Gothic story, he singled out for praise a fragment which he
+attributes to Mrs. Barbauld. The story to which he alludes is
+evidently the unfinished _Sir Bertrand_, which is contained in
+one of the volumes entitled _Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose_,
+published jointly by J. and A.L. Aikin in 1773, and preceded by
+an essay _On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror_. Leigh
+Hunt, who reprinted _Sir Bertrand_, which had impressed him very
+strongly in his boyhood, in his _Book for a Corner_ (1849)
+ascribes the authorship of the tale to Dr. Aikin, commenting on
+the fact that he was "a writer from whom this effusion was hardly
+to have been looked for." It is probably safe to assume that
+Walpole, who was a contemporary of the Aikins and who took a
+lively interest in the literary gossip of the day, was right in
+assigning _Sir Bertrand_ to Miss Aikin,[31] afterwards Mrs.
+Barbauld, though the story is not included in _The Works of Anne
+Letitia Barbauld_, edited by Miss Lucy Aikin in 1825. That the
+minds of the Aikins were exercised about the sources of pleasure
+in romance, especially when connected with horror and distress,
+is clear not only from this essay and the illustrative fragment
+but also from other essays and stories in the same
+collection--_On Romances, an Imitation_, and _An Enquiry into
+those Kinds of Distress which Excite Agreeable Sensations_. In
+the preliminary essay to _Sir Bertrand_ an attempt is made to
+explain why terrible scenes excite pleasurable emotions and to
+distinguish between two different types of horror, as illustrated
+by _The Castle of Otranto_, which unites the marvellous and the
+terrible, and by a scene of mere natural horror in Smollett's
+_Count Fathom_. The story _Sir Bertrand_ is an attempt to combine
+the two kinds of horror in one composition. A knight, wandering
+in darkness on a desolate and dreary moor, hears the tolling of a
+bell, and, guided by a glimmering light, finds "an antique
+mansion" with turrets at the corners. As he approaches the porch,
+the light glides away. All is dark and still. The light reappears
+and the bell tolls. As Sir Bertrand enters the castle, the door
+closes behind him. A bluish flame leads him up a staircase till
+he comes to a wide gallery and a second staircase, where the
+light vanishes. He grasps a dead-cold hand which he severs from
+the wrist with his sword. The blue flame now leads him to a
+vault, where he sees the owner of the hand "completely armed,
+thrusting forwards the bloody stump of an arm, with a terrible
+frown and menacing gesture and brandishing a sword in the
+remaining hand." When attacked, the figure vanishes, leaving
+behind a massive, iron key which unlocks a door leading to an
+apartment containing a coffin, and statues of black marble,
+attired in Moorish costume, holding enormous sabres in their
+right hands. As the knight enters, each of them rears an arm and
+advances a leg and at the same moment the lid of the coffin opens
+and the bell tolls. Sir Bertrand, guided by the flames,
+approaches the coffin from which a lady in a shroud and a black
+veil arises. When he kisses her, the whole building falls asunder
+with a crash. Sir Bertrand is thrown into a trance and awakes in
+a gorgeous room, where he sees a beautiful lady who thanks him as
+her deliverer. At a banquet, nymphs place a laurel wreath on his
+head, but as the lady is about to address him the fragment breaks
+off.
+
+The architecture of the castle, with its gallery, staircase and
+subterranean vaults, closely resembles that of Walpole's Gothic
+structure. The "enormous sabres" too are familiar to readers of
+_The Castle of Otranto_. The gliding light, disquieting at the
+outset of the story but before the close familiar grown, is
+doomed to be the guide of many a distressed wanderer through the
+Gothic labyrinths of later romances. Mrs. Barbauld chose her
+properties with admirable discretion, but lacked the art to use
+them cunningly. A tolling bell, heard in the silence and darkness
+of a lonely moor, will quicken the beatings of the heart, but
+employed as a prompter's signal to herald the advance of a group
+of black statues is only absurd. After the grimly suggestive
+opening, the story gradually loses in power as it proceeds and
+the happy ending, which wings our thoughts back to the Sleeping
+Beauty of childhood, is wholly incongruous. If the fragment had
+ended abruptly at the moment when the lady arises in her shroud
+from the coffin, _Sir Bertrand_ would have been a more effective
+tale of terror. From the historical point of view Mrs. Barbauld's
+curious patchwork is full of interest. She seems to be reaching
+out wistfully towards the mysterious and the unknown. Genuinely
+anxious to awaken a thrill of excitement in the breast of her
+reader, she is hesitating and uncertain as to the best way of
+winning her effect. She is but a pioneer in the art of freezing
+the blood and it were idle to expect that she should rush boldly
+into a forest of horrors. Naturally she prefers to follow the
+tracks trodden by Walpole and Smollett; but with intuitive
+foresight she seems to have realised the limitations of Walpole's
+marvellous machinery, and to have attempted to explore the
+regions of the fearful unknown. Her opening scene works on that
+instinctive terror of the dark and the unseen, upon which Mrs.
+Radcliffe bases many of her most moving incidents.
+
+Among the _Poetical Sketches_ of Blake, written between 1768 and
+1777, and published in 1783, there appears an extraordinary poem
+written in blank verse, but divided into quatrains, and entitled
+_Fair Elenor_. This juvenile production seems to indicate that
+Blake was familiar with Walpole's Gothic story.[32] The heroine,
+wandering disconsolately by night in the castle vaults--a place
+of refuge first rendered fashionable by Isabella in _The Castle
+of Otranto_--faints with horror, thinking that she beholds her
+husband's ghost, but soon:
+
+  "Fancy returns, and now she thinks of bones
+  And grinning skulls and corruptible death
+  Wrapped in his shroud; and now fancies she hears
+  Deep sighs and sees pale, sickly ghosts gliding."
+
+A reality more horrible than her imaginings awaits her. A
+bleeding head is abruptly thrust into her arms by an assassin in
+the employ of a villainous and anonymous "duke." Fair Elenor
+retires to her bed and gives utterance to an outburst of similes
+in praise of her dead lord. Thus encouraged, the bloody head of
+her murdered husband describes its lurid past, and warns Elenor
+to beware of the duke's dark designs. Elenor wisely avoids the
+machinations of the villain, and brings an end to the poem, by
+breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the
+popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her
+lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a
+year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants,
+all headless out of respect to their mistress.
+
+Blake's youthful excursion into the murky gloom of Gothic vaults
+resulted in a poem so crude that even "Monk" Lewis, who was no
+connoisseur, would have declined it regretfully as a contribution
+to his _Tales of Terror_, but _Fair Elenor_ is worthy of
+remembrance as an early indication of Walpole's influence, which
+was to become so potent on the history of Gothic romance.
+
+The Gothic experiments of Dr. Nathan Drake, published in his
+_Literary Hours_ (1798), are extremely instructive as indicating
+the critical standpoint of the time. Drake, like Mrs. Barbauld
+and her brother, was deeply interested in the sources of the
+pleasure derived from tales of terror, and wrote his Gothic
+stories to confirm and illustrate the theories propounded in his
+essays. He discusses gravely and learnedly the kinds of
+fictitious horror that excite agreeable sensations, and then
+proceeds to arrange carefully calculated effects, designed to
+alarm his readers, but not to outrage their sense of decorum. He
+has none of the reckless daring of "Monk" Lewis, who flung
+restraint to the winds and raced in mad career through an orgy of
+horrors. In his enchanted castles we are disturbed by an uneasy
+suspicion that the inhabitants are merely allegorical characters,
+and that the spectre of a moral lurks in some dim recess ready to
+spring out upon us suddenly. Dr. Drake's mind was as a house
+divided against itself: he was a moralist, emulating the "sage
+and serious Spenser" in his desire to exalt virtue and abase
+vice, he was a critic working out, with calm detachment,
+practical illustrations of the theories he had formulated, and he
+was a romantic enthusiast, imbued with a vague but genuine
+admiration for the wild superstitions of a bygone age. His
+stories exhibit painful evidence of the conflict which waged
+between the three sides of his nature. In the essay prefixed to
+_Henry Fitzowen, a Gothic Tale_, he distinguishes between the two
+species of Gothic superstition, the gloomy and the sportive, and
+addresses an ode to the two goddesses of Superstition--one the
+offspring of Fear and Midnight, the other of Hesper and the Moon.
+In his story the spectres of darkness are put to flight by a
+troop of aerial spirits. Dr. Drake knew the Gothic stories of
+Walpole, Mrs. Barbauld, Clara Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe; and
+traces of the influence of each may be found in his work. Henry
+Fitzowen loves Adeline de Montfort, but has a powerful and
+diabolical rival--Walleran--whose character combines the most
+dangerous qualities of Mrs. Radcliffe's villains with the magical
+gifts of a wizard. Fitzowen, not long before the day fixed for
+his wedding, is led astray, while hunting, by an elusive stag, a
+spectral monk and a "wandering fire," and arrives home in a
+thunderstorm to find his castle enveloped in total darkness and
+two of his servants stretched dead at his feet. He learns from
+his mother and sister, who are shut in a distant room, that
+Adeline has been carried off by armed ruffians. Believing
+Walleran to be responsible for this outrage, Fitzowen sets out
+the next day in search of him. After weary wanderings he is
+beguiled into a Gothic castle by a foul witch, who resembles one
+of Spenser's loathly hags, and on his entrance hears peals of
+diabolical laughter. He sees spectres, blue lights, and the
+corpse of Horror herself. When he slays Walleran the enchantments
+disappear. At the end of a winding passage he finds a cavern
+illuminated by a globe of light, and discovers Adeline asleep on
+a couch. He awakes her with a kiss. Thunder shakes the earth, a
+raging whirlwind tears the castle from its foundations, and the
+lovers awake from their trance in a beautiful, moonlit vale where
+they hear enchanting music and see knights, nymphs and spirits. A
+beauteous queen tells them that the spirits of the blest have
+freed them from Horror's dread agents. The music dies away, the
+spirits flee and the lovers find themselves in a country road. A
+story of the same type is told by De La Motte Fouqué in _The
+Field of Terror_.[33] Before the steadfast courage of the
+labourer who strives to till the field, diabolical enchantments
+disappear. It is an ancient legend turned into moral allegory.
+
+In the essay on _Objects of Terror_, which precedes _Montmorenci,
+a Fragment_, Drake discusses that type of terror, which is
+"excited by the interference of a simple, material causation,"
+and which "requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to
+prevent its operating more pain than pleasure." He condemns
+Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ on the ground that the catastrophe
+is only productive of horror and aversion, and regards the old
+ballad, _Edward_, as intolerable to any person of sensibility,
+but praises Dante and Shakespeare for keeping within the "bounds
+of salutary and grateful pleasure." The scene in _The Italian_,
+where Schedoni, about to plunge a dagger into Ellena's bosom,
+recoils, in the belief that he has discovered her to be his own
+daughter, is commended as "appalling yet delighting the reader."
+In the productions of Mrs. Radcliffe, "the Shakespeare of Romance
+Writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the
+softer graces of a Claude," he declares,
+
+     "may be found many scenes truly terrific in their
+     conception, yet so softened down, and the mind so much
+     relieved, by the intermixture of beautiful description,
+     or pathetic incident, that the impression of the whole
+     never becomes too strong, never degenerates into
+     horror, but pleasurable emotion is ever the
+     predominating result."
+
+The famous scene in _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, the description of
+Danger in Collins' _Ode to Fear_, the Scottish ballad of
+_Hardyknute_ are mentioned as admirable examples of the fear
+excited by natural causes. In the fragment called _Montmorenci_,
+Drake aims at combining "picturesque description with some of
+those objects of terror which are independent of supernatural
+agency." As the curfew tolls sullenly, Henry de Montmorenci and
+his two attendants rush from a castle into the darkness of a
+stormy night. They hurry through a savage glen, in which a
+swollen torrent falls over a precipice. After hearing the crash
+of falling armour, they suddenly come upon a dying knight on
+whose pale features every mark of horror is depicted. Led by
+frightful screams of distress, Montmorenci and his men find a
+maiden, who has been captured by banditti. Montmorenci slays the
+leader, but is seized by the rest of the banditti and bound to a
+tree overlooking a stupendous chasm into which he is to be
+hurled. By almost superhuman struggles he effects his escape,
+when suddenly--there at this terror-fraught moment, the fragment
+wisely ends.
+
+In _The Abbey of Clunedale_ Drake experiments feebly and
+ineffectively with the "explained supernatural" in which Mrs.
+Radcliffe was an adept. The ruined abbey, deemed to be haunted,
+is visited at night as an act of penance by a man named Clifford
+who, in a fit of unfounded jealousy, has slain his wife's
+brother. Clifford, accompanied by his sister, and bearing a
+light, kneels at his wife's tomb, and is mistaken for a spectral
+being.
+
+The Gothic tale entitled _Sir Egbert_ is based on an ancient
+legend associated with one of the turrets of Rochester Castle.
+Sir Egbert, searching for his friend, Conrad, who had disappeared
+in suspicious circumstances, hears from the Knights Templars,
+that the wicked Constable is believed to hold two lovers in a
+profound and deathlike sleep. He resolves to make an attempt to
+draw from its sheath the sword which separates them and so
+restore them to life and liberty. Undismayed by the fate of those
+who have fallen in the quest, Sir Egbert enters the castle, where
+he is entertained at a gorgeous feast. When the festivities are
+at their height, and Sir Egbert has momentarily forgotten his
+enterprise, a terrible shriek is heard. The revellers vanish, and
+Sir Egbert is left alone to face a spectral corpse, which beckons
+him onward to a vault, where in flaming characters are inscribed
+the words: "Death to him who violates the mysteries of Gundulph's
+Tower." Nothing daunted, Sir Egbert amid execrations of fiends,
+encounters delusive horrors and at last unsheathes the sword. The
+lovers awake, and the whole apparatus of enchantment vanishes.
+Conrad tells how he and Bertha, six years before, had been lured
+by a wandering fire to a luxurious cavern, where they drank a
+magic potion. The story closes with the marriage of Conrad and
+Bertha, and of Egbert and Matilda, a sister of one of the other
+victims of the same enchanter.
+
+In Dr. Drake's stories are patiently collected all the heirlooms
+necessary for the full equipment of a Gothic castle. Massive
+doors, which sway ponderously on their hinges or are forcibly
+burst open and which invariably close with a resounding crash,
+dark, eerie galleries, broken staircases, decayed apartments,
+mouldering floors, tolling bells, skeletons, corpses, howling
+spectres--all are there; but the possessor, overwhelmed by the
+very profusion which surrounds him, is at a loss how to make use
+of them. He does not realise the true significance of a
+half-stifled groan or an unearthly yell heard in the darkness.
+Each new horror indeed seems but to put new life into the heart
+of the redoubtable Sir Egbert, who, like Spenser's gallant
+knights, advances from triumph to triumph vanquishing evil at
+every step. It is impossible to become absorbed in his
+personages, who have less body than his spectres, and whose
+adventures take the form of a walk through an exhibition of
+horrors, mechanically set in motion to prove their prowess. Dr.
+Drake seems happier when the hideous beings are put to rout, and
+the transformation-scene, which places fairyland before us,
+suddenly descends on the stage. Yet the bungling attempts of Dr.
+Drake are interesting as showing that grave and critical minds
+were prepared to consider the tale of terror as a legitimate form
+of literature, obeying certain definite rules of its own and
+aiming at the excitement of a pleasurable fear. The seed of
+Gothic story, sown at random by Horace Walpole, had by 1798 taken
+firm root in the soil. Drake's enthusiasm for Gothic story was
+associated with his love for older English poetry and with his
+interest in Scandinavian mythology. He was a genuine admirer of
+Spenser and attempted imitations, in modern diction, of old
+ballads. It is for his bent towards the romantic, rather than for
+his actual accomplishments, that Drake is worthy of remembrance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE NOVEL OF SUSPENSE." MRS. RADCLIFFE.
+
+
+The enthusiasm which greeted Walpole's enchanted castle and Miss
+Reeve's carefully manipulated ghost, indicated an eager desire
+for a new type of fiction in which the known and familiar were
+superseded by the strange and supernatural. To meet this end Mrs.
+Radcliffe suddenly came forward with her attractive store of
+mysteries, and it was probably her timely appearance that saved
+the Gothic tale from an early death. The vogue of the novel of
+terror, though undoubtedly stimulated by German influence, was
+mainly due to her popularity and success. The writers of the
+first half of the nineteenth century abound in references to her
+works,[34] and she thus still enjoys a shadowy, ghost-like
+celebrity. Many who have never had the curiosity to explore the
+labyrinths of the underground passages, with which her castles
+are invariably honeycombed, or who have never shuddered with
+apprehension before the "black veil," know of their existence
+through _Northanger Abbey_, and have probably also read how
+Thackeray at school amused himself and his friends by drawing
+illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.
+
+Of Mrs. Radcliffe's life few facts are known, and Christina
+Rossetti, one of her many admirers, was obliged, in 1883, to
+relinquish the plan of writing her biography, because the
+materials were so scanty.[35] From the memoir prefixed to the
+posthumous volumes, published in 1826, containing _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, and various poems, we learn that she was born in
+1764, the very year in which Walpole issued _The Castle of
+Otranto_, and that her maiden name was Ann Ward. In 1787 she
+married William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of
+law, who became editor of a weekly newspaper, _The English
+Chronicle_. Her life was so secluded that biographers did not
+hesitate to invent what they could not discover. The legend that
+she was driven frantic by the horrors that she had conjured up
+was refuted after her death.
+
+It may have been the publication of _The Recess_ by Sophia Lee in
+1785 that inspired Mrs. Radcliffe to try her fortune with a
+historical novel. _The Recess_ is a story of languid interest,
+circling round the adventures of the twin daughters of Mary Queen
+of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk. Yet as we meander gently
+through its mazes we come across an abbey "of Gothic elegance and
+magnificence," a swooning heroine who plays the lute,
+thunderstorms, banditti and even an escape in a coffin--items
+which may well have attracted the notice of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose
+first novel, _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_,[36] appeared
+in 1789. Considered historically, this immature work is full of
+interest, for, with the notable exception of the supernatural, it
+contains in embryo nearly all the elements of Mrs. Radcliffe's
+future novels.
+
+The scene is laid in Scotland, and the period, we are assured, is
+that of the "dark ages"; but almost at the outset we are startled
+rudely from our dreams of the mediaeval by the statement that
+
+     "the wrongfully imprisoned earl, when the sweet
+     tranquillity of evening threw an air of tender
+     melancholy over his mind ... composed the following
+     sonnet, which, having committed it to paper, he, the
+     next evening dropped upon the terrace."
+
+The sonnet consists of four heroic quatrains somewhat curiously
+resembling the manner of Gray. From this episode it may be
+gathered that Mrs. Radcliffe did not aim at, or certainly did not
+achieve, historical accuracy, but evolved most of her
+descriptions, not from original sources in ancient documents, but
+from her own inner consciousness. It was only in her last
+novel--_Gaston de Blondeville_--that she made use of old
+chronicles. Within the Scottish castle we meet a heroine with an
+"expression of pensive melancholy" and a "smile softly clouded
+with sorrow," a noble lord deprived of his rights by a villain
+"whose life is marked with vice and whose death with the
+bitterness of remorse." But these grey and ghostly shadows, who
+flit faintly through our imagination, are less prophetic of
+coming events than the properties with which the castle is
+endowed, a secret but accidently discovered panel, a trap-door,
+subterranean vaults, an unburied corpse, a suddenly extinguished
+lamp and a soft-toned lute--a goodly heritage from _The Castle of
+Otranto_. The situations which a villain of Baron Malcolm's type
+will inevitably create are dimly shadowed forth and involve, ere
+the close, the hairbreadth rescue of a distressed maiden, the
+reinstatement of the lord in his rights, and the identification
+of the long-lost heir by the convenient and time-honoured
+"strawberry mark." These promising materials are handled in a
+childish fashion. The faintly pencilled outlines, the
+characterless figures, the nerveless structure, give little
+presage of the boldly effective scenery, the strong delineations
+and the dexterously managed plots of the later novels. The
+gradual, steady advance in skill and power is one of the most
+interesting features of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. Few could have
+guessed from the slight sketch of Baron Malcolm, a merely slavish
+copy of the traditional villain, that he was to be the ancestor
+of such picturesque and romantic creatures as Montoni and
+Schedoni.
+
+This tentative beginning was quickly followed by the more
+ambitious _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), in which we are transported
+to the palace of Ferdinand, fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the
+north coast of Sicily. This time the date is fixed officially at
+1580. The Marquis has one son and two daughters, the children of
+his first wife, who has been supplanted by a beautiful but
+unscrupulous successor. The first wife is reputed dead, but is,
+in reality, artfully and maliciously concealed in an uninhabited
+wing of the abbey. It is her presence which leads to disquieting
+rumours of the supernatural. Ferdinand, the son, vainly tries to
+solve the enigma of certain lights, which wander elusively about
+the deserted wing, and finds himself perilously suspended, like
+David Balfour in _Kidnapped_, on a decayed staircase, of which
+the lower half has broken away. In this hazardous situation,
+Ferdinand accidentally drops his lamp and is left in total
+darkness. An hour later he is rescued by the ladies of the
+castle, who, alarmed by his long absence, boldly come in search
+of him with a light. During another tour of exploration he hears
+a hollow groan, which, he is told, proceeds from a murdered
+spirit underground, but which is eventually traced to the unhappy
+marchioness. These two incidents plainly reveal that Mrs.
+Radcliffe has now discovered the peculiar vein of mystery towards
+which she was groping in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_.
+From the very first she explained away her marvels by natural
+means. If we scan her romances with a coldly critical eye--an
+almost criminal proceeding--obvious improbabilities start into
+view. For instance, the oppressed marchioness, who has not seen
+her daughter Julia since the age of two, recognises her without a
+moment's hesitation at the age of seventeen, and faints in a
+transport of joy. It is no small tribute to Mrs. Radcliffe's
+gifts that we often accept such incidents as these without demur.
+So unnerved are we by the lurking shadows, the flickering lights,
+the fluttering tapestry and the unaccountable groans with which
+she lowers our vitality, that we tremble and start at the wagging
+of a straw, and have not the spirit, once we are absorbed into
+the atmosphere of her romance, to dispute anything she would have
+us believe. The interest of the _Sicilian Romance_, which is far
+greater than that of her first novel, arises entirely out of the
+situations. There is no gradual unfolding of character and
+motive. The high-handed marquis, the jealous marchioness, the
+imprisoned wife, the vapid hero, the two virtuous sisters, the
+leader of the banditti, the respectable, prosy governess, are a
+set of dolls fitted ingeniously into the framework of the plot.
+They have more substance than the tenuous shadows that glide
+through the pages of Mrs. Radcliffe's first story, but they move
+only as she deftly pulls the strings that set them in motion.
+
+In her third novel, _The Romance of the Forest_, published in
+1792, Mrs. Radcliffe makes more attempt to discuss motive and to
+trace the effect of circumstances on temperament. The opening
+chapter is so alluring that callous indeed would be the reader
+who felt no yearning to pluck out the heart of the mystery. La
+Motte, a needy adventurer fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a
+stormy night in a lonely, sinister-looking house. With startling
+suddenness, a door bursts open, and a ruffian, putting a pistol
+to La Motte's breast with one hand, and, with the other, dragging
+along a beautiful girl, exclaims ferociously,
+
+     "You are wholly in our power, no assistance can reach
+     you; if you wish to save your life, swear that you will
+     convey this girl where I may never see her more... If
+     you return within an hour you will die."
+
+The elucidation of this remarkable occurrence is long deferred,
+for Mrs. Radcliffe appreciates fully the value of suspense in
+luring on her readers, but our attention is distracted in the
+meantime by a series of new events. Treasuring the unfinished
+adventure in the recesses of our memory, we follow the course of
+the story. When La Motte decides impulsively to reside in a
+deserted abbey, "not," as he once remarks, "in all respects
+strictly Gothic," but containing a trap-door and a human skeleton
+in a chest, we willingly take up our abode there and wait
+patiently to see what will happen. Our interest is inclined to
+flag when life at the abbey seems uneventful, but we are ere long
+rewarded by a visit from a stranger, whose approach flings La
+Motte into so violent a state of alarm that he vanishes with
+remarkable abruptness beneath a trapdoor. It proves, however,
+that the intruder is merely La Motte's son, and the timid marquis
+is able to emerge. Meanwhile, La Motte's wife, suspicious of her
+husband's morose habits and his secret visits to a Gothic
+sepulchre, becomes jealous of Adeline, the girl they have
+befriended. It later transpires that La Motte has turned
+highwayman and stores his booty in this secluded spot. The visits
+are so closely shrouded in obscurity, and we have so exhausted
+our imagination in picturing dark possibilities, that the simple
+solution falls disappointingly short of our expectations. The
+next thrill is produced by the arrival of two strangers, the
+wicked marquis and the noble hero, without whom the tale of
+characters in a novel of terror would scarcely be complete. The
+emotion La Motte betrays at the sight of the marquis is due, we
+are told eventually, to the fact that Montalt was the victim of
+his first robbery. Adeline, meanwhile, in a dream sees a
+beckoning figure in a dark cloak, a dying man imprisoned in a
+darkened chamber, a coffin and a bleeding corpse, and hears a
+voice from the coffin. The disjointed episodes and bewildering
+incoherence of a nightmare are suggested with admirable skill,
+and effectually prepare our minds for Adeline's discoveries a few
+nights later. Passing through a door, concealed by the arras of
+her bedroom, into a chamber like that she had seen in her sleep,
+she stumbles over a rusty dagger and finds a roll of mouldering
+manuscripts. This incident is robbed of its effect for readers of
+_Northanger Abbey_ by insistent reminiscences of Catherine
+Morland's discovery of the washing bills. But Adeline, by the
+uncertain light of a candle, reads, with the utmost horror and
+consternation, the harrowing life-story of her father, who has
+been foully done to death by his brother, already known to us as
+the unprincipled Marquis Montalt. La Motte weakly aids and abets
+Montalt's designs against Adeline, and she is soon compelled to
+take refuge in flight. She is captured and borne away to an
+elegant villa, whence she escapes, only to be overtaken again.
+Finally, Theodore arrives, as heroes will, in the nick of time,
+and wounds his rival. Adeline finds a peaceful home in the
+chateau of M. La Luc, who proves to be Theodore's father. Here
+the reader awaits impatiently the final solution of the plot.
+Once we have been inmates of a Gothic abbey, life in a Swiss
+chateau, however idyllic, is apt to seem monotonous. In time Mrs.
+Radcliffe administers justice. The marquis takes poison; La Motte
+is banished but reforms; and Adeline, after dutifully burying her
+father's skeleton in the family vault, becomes mistress of the
+abbey, but prefers to reside in a _châlet_ on the banks of Lake
+Geneva.
+
+Although the _Romance of the Forest_ is considerably shorter than
+the later novels, the plot, which is full of ingenious
+complications, is unfolded in the most leisurely fashion. Mrs.
+Radcliffe's tantalising delays quicken our curiosity as
+effectively as the deliberate calm of a _raconteur_, who, with a
+view to heightening his artistic effect, pauses to light a pipe
+at the very climax of his story. Suspense is the key-note of the
+romance. The characters are still subordinate to incident, but La
+Motte and his wife claim our interest because they are exhibited
+in varying moods. La Motte has his struggles and, like Macbeth,
+is haunted by compunctious visitings of nature. Unlike the
+thorough-paced villain, who glories in his misdeeds, he is
+worried and harassed, and takes no pleasure in his crimes. Madame
+La Motte is not a jealous woman from beginning to end like the
+marchioness in the _Sicilian Romance_. Her character is moulded
+to some extent by environment. She changes distinctly in her
+attitude to Adeline after she has reason to suspect her husband.
+Mrs. Radcliffe's psychology is neither subtle nor profound, but
+the fact that psychology is there in the most rudimentary form is
+a sign of her progress in the art of fiction. Theodore is as
+insipid as the rest of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, who are
+distinguishable from one another only by their names, and Adeline
+is perhaps a shade more emotional and passionless than Emily and
+Ellena in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ and _The Italian_. The
+lachrymose maiden in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, who
+can assume at need "an air of offended dignity," is a preliminary
+sketch of Julia, Emily and Ellena in the later novels. Mrs.
+Radcliffe's heroines resemble nothing more than a composite
+photograph in which all distinctive traits are merged into an
+expressionless "type." They owe something no doubt to
+Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_, but their feelings are not so
+minutely analysed. Their lady-like accomplishments vary slightly.
+In reflective mood one may lightly throw off a sonnet to the
+sunset or to the nocturnal gale, while another may seek refuge in
+her water-colours or her lute. They are all dignified and
+resolute in the most distressing situations, yet they weep and
+faint with wearisome frequency. Their health and spirits are as
+precarious as their easily extinguished candles. Yet these
+exquisitely sensitive, well-bred heroines alienate our sympathy
+by their impregnable self-esteem, a disconcerting trait which
+would certainly have exasperated heroes less perfect and more
+human than Mrs. Radcliffe's Theodores and Valancourts. Their
+sorrows never rise to tragic heights, because they are only
+passive sufferers, and the sympathy they would win as pathetic
+figures is obliterated by their unfailing consciousness of their
+own rectitude. In describing Adeline, Mrs. Radcliffe attempts an
+unusually acute analysis:
+
+     "For many hours she busied herself upon a piece of work
+     which she had undertaken for Madame La Motte, but this
+     she did without the least intention of conciliating her
+     favour, but because she felt there was something in
+     thus repaying unkindness, which was suited to her own
+     temper, her sentiments and her pride. Self-love may be
+     the centre around which human affections move, for
+     whatever motive conduces to self-gratification may be
+     resolved into self-love, yet, some of these affections
+     are in their nature so refined that, though we cannot
+     deny their origin, they almost deserve the name of
+     virtue: of this species was that of Adeline."
+
+It is characteristic of Mrs. Radcliffe's tendency to overlook the
+obvious in searching for the subtle, that the girl who feels
+these recondite emotions expresses slight embarrassment when
+unceremoniously flung on the protection of strangers. Emily, in
+_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, possesses the same protective armour
+as Adeline. When she is abused by Montoni, "Her heart swelled
+with the consciousness of having deserved praise instead of
+censure, and was proudly silent"; or again, in _The Italian_,
+
+     "Ellena was the more satisfied with herself because she
+     had never for an instant forgotten her dignity so far
+     as to degenerate into the vehemence of passion or to
+     falter with the weakness of fear."
+
+Her father, M. St. Aubert, on his deathbed, bids Emily beware of
+"priding herself on the gracefulness of sensibility."
+
+Fortunately the heroine is merely a figurehead in _The Mysteries
+of Udolpho_ (1794). The change of title is significant. The two
+previous works have been romances, but it is now Mrs. Radcliffe's
+intention to let herself go further in the direction of wonder
+and suspense than she had hitherto ventured. She is like Scythrop
+in _Nightmare Abbey_, of whom it was said:
+
+     "He had a strong tendency to love of mystery for its
+     own sake; that is to say, he would employ mystery to
+     serve a purpose, but would first choose his purpose by
+     its capability of mystery."
+
+Yet Mrs. Radcliffe, at the opening of her story, is sparing in
+her use of supernatural elements. We live by faith, and are drawn
+forward by the hope of future mystifications. In the first volume
+we saunter through idyllic scenes of domestic happiness in the
+Chateau le Vert and wander with Emily and her dying father
+through the Apennines, with only faint suggestions of excitement
+to come. The second volume plunges us _in medias res_. The aunt,
+to whose care Emily is entrusted, has imprudently married a
+tempestuous tyrant, Montoni, who, to further his own ends,
+hurries his wife and niece from the gaiety of Venice to the gloom
+of Udolpho. After a journey fraught with terror, amid rugged,
+lowering mountains and through dusky woods, we reach the castle
+of Udolpho at nightfall. The sombre exterior and the shadow
+haunted hall are so ominous that we are prepared for the worst
+when we enter its portals. The anticipation is half pleasurable,
+half fearful, as we shudder at the thought of what may befall us
+within its walls. At every turn something uncanny shakes our
+overwrought nerves; the sighing of the wind, the echo of distant
+footsteps, lurking shadows, gliding forms, inexplicable groans,
+mysterious music torture the sensitive imagination of Emily, who
+is mercilessly doomed to sleep in a deserted apartment with a
+door, which, as so often in the novel of terror, bolts only on
+the outside. More nerve wracking than the unburied corpse or even
+than the ineffable horror concealed behind the black veil are the
+imaginary, impalpable terrors that seize on Emily's tender fancy
+as she crosses the hall on her way to solve the riddle of her
+aunt's disappearance:
+
+     "Emily, deceived by the long shadows of the pillars and
+     by the catching lights between, often stopped,
+     imagining that she saw some person moving in the
+     distant obscurity...and as she passed these pillars she
+     feared to turn her eyes towards them, almost expecting
+     to see a figure start from behind their broad shaft."
+
+Torn from the context, this passage no longer congeals us with
+terror, but in its setting it conveys in a wonderfully vivid
+manner the tricks of a feverish imagination. So exhaustive--and
+exhausting--are the mysteries of Udolpho that it was a mistake to
+introduce another haunted castle, le Blanc, as an appendix.
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe's long deferred explanations of what is apparently
+supernatural have often been adversely criticised. Her method
+varies considerably. Sometimes we are enlightened almost
+immediately. When the garrulous servant, Annette, is relating to
+Emily what she knows of the story of Laurentina, who had once
+lived in the castle, both mistress and servant are wrought up to
+a state of nervous tension:
+
+     "Emily, whom now Annette had infected with her own
+     terrors, listened attentively, but everything was
+     still, and Annette proceeded... 'There again,' cried
+     Annette, suddenly, 'I heard it again.' 'Hush!' said
+     Emily, trembling. They listened and continued to sit
+     quite still. Emily heard a slow knocking against the
+     wall. It came repeatedly. Annette then screamed loudly,
+     and the chamber door slowly opened--It was Caterina,
+     come to tell Annette that her lady wanted her."
+
+It is seldom that the rude awakening comes thus swiftly. More
+often we are left wondering uneasily and fearfully for a
+prolonged stretch of time. The extreme limit of human endurance
+is reached in the episode of the Black Veil. Early in the second
+volume, Emily, for whom the concealed picture had a fatal
+fascination, determined to gaze upon it.
+
+     "Emily passed on with faltering steps and, having
+     paused a moment at the door before she attempted to
+     open it, she then hastily entered the chamber and went
+     towards the picture, which appeared to be enclosed in a
+     frame of uncommon size, that hung in a dark part of the
+     room. She paused again and then, with a timid hand,
+     lifted the veil, but instantly let it fall--perceiving
+     that, what it had concealed was no picture and, before
+     she could leave the chamber, she dropped senseless on
+     the floor."
+
+In time Emily recovers, but the horror of the Black Veil preys on
+her mind until, near the close of the third volume, Mrs.
+Radcliffe mercifully consents to tell us not only what Emily
+thought that she beheld, but what was actually there.
+
+     "There appeared, instead of the picture she had
+     expected, within the recess of the wall, a human figure
+     of ghastly paleness, stretched at its length, and
+     dressed in the habiliments of the grave. What added to
+     the horror of the spectacle was that the face appeared
+     partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were
+     visible on the features and hands... Had she dared to
+     look again, her delusion and her fears would have
+     vanished together, and she would have perceived that
+     the figure before her was not human, but formed of
+     wax... A member of the house of Udolpho, having
+     committed some offence against the prerogative of the
+     church, had been condemned to the penance of
+     contemplating, during certain hours of the day, a waxen
+     image made to resemble a human body in the state to
+     which it is reduced after death ... he had made it a
+     condition in his will that his descendants should
+     preserve the image."
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe, realising that the secret she had so jealously
+guarded is of rather an amazing character, asserts that it is
+"not without example in the records of the fierce severity which
+monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind." But the
+explanation falls so ludicrously short of our expectations and is
+so improbable a possibility, that Mrs. Radcliffe would have been
+wise not to defraud Catherine Morland and other readers of the
+pleasure of guessing aright. Few enjoy being baffled and thwarted
+in so unexpected a fashion. The skeleton of Signora Laurentina
+was the least that could be expected as a reward for suspense so
+patiently endured. But long ere this disclosure, we have learnt
+by bitter experience to distrust Mrs. Radcliffe's secrets and to
+look for ultimate disillusionment. The uncanny voice that
+ominously echoes Montoni's words is not the cry of a bodiless
+visitant striving to awaken "that blushing, shamefaced spirit
+that mutinies in a man's bosom," but belongs to an ordinary human
+being, the prisoner Du Pont, who has discovered one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's innumerable concealed passages. The bed with the
+black velvet pall in the haunted chamber contains, not the
+frightful apparition that flashed upon the inward eye of Emily
+and of Annette, but a stalwart pirate who shrinks from discovery.
+The gliding forms which steal furtively along the ramparts and
+disappear at the end of dark passages become eventually, like the
+nun in Charlotte Bronte's _Villette_, sensible to feeling as to
+sight. The unearthly music which is heard in the woods at
+midnight proceeds, not from the inhabitants of another sphere,
+but from a conscience stricken nun with a lurid past. The corpse,
+which Emily believed to be that of her aunt, foully done to death
+by a pitiless husband, is the body of a man killed in a bandit's
+affray. Here Mrs. Radcliffe seems eager to show that she was not
+afraid of a corpse, but is careful that it shall not be the
+corpse which the reader anticipates. She deliberately excites
+trembling apprehensions in order that she may show how absurd
+they are. We are befooled that she may enjoy a quietly malicious
+triumph. The result is that we become wary and cautious. The
+genuine ghost story, read by Ludovico to revive his fainting
+spirits when he is keeping vigil in the "haunted" chamber, is
+robbed of its effect because we half expect to be disillusioned
+ere the close. It is far more impressive if read as a separate
+story apart from its setting. The idea of explaining away what is
+apparently supernatural may have occurred to Mrs. Radcliffe after
+reading Schiller's popular romance, _Der Geisterseher_ (1789), in
+which the elaborately contrived marvels of the Armenian, who was
+modelled on Cagliostro, are but the feats of a juggler and have a
+physical cause. But more probably Mrs. Radcliffe's imagination
+was held in check by a sensitive conscience, which would not
+allow her to trade on the credulity of simple-minded readers.
+
+It is noteworthy that Mrs. Radcliffe's last work--_The Italian_,
+published in 1797--is more skilfully constructed, and possesses
+far greater unity and concentration than _The Mysteries of
+Udolpho_. The Inquisition scenes towards the end of the book are
+unduly prolonged, but the story is coherent and free from
+digressions. The theme is less fanciful and far fetched than
+those of _The Romance of the Forest_ and _Udolpho_. It seldom
+strays far beyond the bounds of the probable, nor overstrains our
+capacity for belief. The motive of the story is the Marchesa di
+Vivaldi's opposition to her son's marriage on account of Ellena's
+obscure birth. The Marchesa's far reaching designs are forwarded
+by the ambitious monk, Schedoni, who, for his own ends,
+undertakes to murder Ellena. _The Italian_ abounds in dramatic,
+haunting scenes. The strangely effective overture, which
+describes the Confessional of the Black Penitents, the midnight
+watch of Vivaldi and his lively, impulsive servant, Paulo, amid
+the ruins of Paluzzi, the melodramatic interruption of the
+wedding ceremony, the meeting of Ellena and Schedoni on the
+lonely shore, the trial in the halls of the Inquisition, are all
+remarkably vivid. The climax of the story when Schedoni, about to
+slay Ellena, is arrested in the very act by her beauty and
+innocence, and then by the glimpse of the portrait which leads
+him to believe she is his daughter, is finely conceived and
+finely executed. Afterwards, Ellena proves only to be his niece,
+but we have had our thrill and nothing can rob us of it. _The
+Italian_ depends for its effect on natural terror, rather than on
+supernatural suggestions. The monk, who haunts the ruins of
+Paluzzi, and who reappears in the prison of the Inquisition,
+speaks and acts like a being from the world of spectres, but in
+the fulness of time Mrs. Radcliffe ruthlessly exposes his methods
+and kills him by slow poison. She never completely explains his
+behaviour in the halls of the Inquisition nor accounts
+satisfactorily for the ferocity of his hatred of Schedoni. We are
+unintentionally led on false trails.
+
+The character of Schedoni is undeniably Mrs. Radcliffe's
+masterpiece. No one would claim that his character is subtle
+study, but in his interviews with the Marchesa, Mrs. Radcliffe
+reveals unexpected gifts tor probing into human motives. He is an
+imposing figure, theatrical sometimes, but wrought of flesh and
+blood. In fiction, as in life, the villain has always existed,
+but it was Mrs. Radcliffe who first created the romantic villain,
+stained with the darkest crimes, yet dignified and impressive
+withal. Zeluco in Dr. John Moore's novel of that name (1789) is a
+powerful conception, but he has no redeeming features to temper
+our repulsion with pity. The sinister figures of Mrs. Radcliffe,
+with passion-lined faces and gleaming eyes, stalk--or, if
+occasion demand it, glide--through all her romances, and as she
+grows more familiar with the type, her delineations show
+increased power and vigour. When the villain enters, or shortly
+afterwards, a descriptive catalogue is displayed, setting forth,
+in a manner not unlike that of the popular _feuilleton_ of
+to-day, the qualities to be expected, and with this he is let
+loose into the story to play his part and act up to his
+reputation. In the _Sicilian Romance_ there is the tyrannical
+marquis who would force an unwelcome marriage on his daughter and
+who immures his wife in a remote corner of the castle, visiting
+her once a week with a scanty pittance of coarse food. In _The
+Romance of the Forest_ we find a conventional but thorough
+villain in Montalt and a half-hearted, poor-spirited villain in
+La Motte, whose "virtue was such that it could not stand the
+pressure of occasion." Montoni, the desperate leader of the
+condottieri in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, is endued with so
+vigorous a vitality that we always rejoice inwardly at his return
+to the forefront of the story. His abundant energy is refreshing
+after a long sojourn with his garrulous wife and tearful niece.
+
+     "He delighted in the energies of the passions, the
+     difficulties and tempests of life which wreck the
+     happiness of others roused and strengthened all the
+     powers of his mind, and afforded him the highest
+     enjoyment... The fire and keenness of his eye, its
+     proud exaltation, its bold fierceness, its sudden
+     watchfulness as occasion and even slight occasion had
+     called forth the latent soul, she had often observed
+     with emotion, while from the usual expression of his
+     countenance she had always shrunk."
+
+Schedoni is undoubtedly allied to this desperado, but his methods
+are quieter and more subtle:
+
+     "There was something terrible in his air, something
+     almost superhuman. The cowl, too, as it threw a shade
+     over the livid paleness of his face increased its
+     severe character and gave an effect to his large,
+     melancholy eye which approached to horror ... his
+     physiognomy ... bore the traces of many passions which
+     seemed to have fixed the features they no longer
+     animated. An habitual gloom and severity prevailed over
+     the deep lines of his countenance, and his eyes were so
+     piercing that they seemed to penetrate at a single
+     glance into the hearts of men, and to read their most
+     secret thoughts--few persons could endure their
+     scrutiny or even endure to meet them twice ... he could
+     adapt himself to the tempers and passions of persons,
+     whom he wished to conciliate, with astonishing
+     facility."
+
+The type undoubtedly owes something to Milton's Satan. Like
+Lucifer, he is proud and ambitious, and like him he retains
+traces of his original grandeur. Hints from Shakespeare helped to
+fashion him. Like Cassius, seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a
+sort
+
+  "As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
+  That could be moved to smile at anything."
+
+Like King John,
+
+  "The image of a wicked heinous fault
+  Lives in his eye: that close aspect of his
+  Does show the mood of a much-troubled breast."
+
+By the enormity of his crimes he inspires horror and repulsion,
+but by his loneliness he appeals, for a moment, like the
+consummate villain Richard III., to our pity:
+
+  "There is no creature loves me
+  And if I die, no soul will pity me.
+  Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
+  Find in myself no pity to myself?"
+
+Karl von Moor, the famous hero of Schiller's _Die Räuber_ (1781),
+is allied to this desperado. He is thus described in the
+advertisement of the 1795 edition:
+
+     "The picture of a great, misguided soul, endowed with
+     every gift of excellence, yet lost in spite of all its
+     gifts. Unbridled passions and bad companionship corrupt
+     his heart, urge him on from crime to crime, until at
+     last he stands at the head of a band of murderers,
+     heaps horror upon horror, and plunges from precipice to
+     precipice in the lowest depths of despair. Great and
+     majestic in misfortune, by misfortune reclaimed and led
+     back to the paths of virtue. Such a man shall you pity
+     and hate, abhor yet love in the robber Moor."
+
+Among the direct progeny of these grandiose villains are to be
+included those of Lewis and Maturin, and the heroes of Scott and
+Byron. We know them by their world-weariness, as well as by their
+piercing eyes and passion-marked faces, their "verra wrinkles
+Gothic." In _The Giaour_ we are told:
+
+  "Dark and unearthly is the scowl
+  That glares beneath his dusky cowl:
+
+  "The flash of that dilating eye
+  Reveals too much of times gone by.
+  Though varying, indistinct its hue
+  Oft will his glance the gazer rue."
+
+Of the Corsair, it is said:
+
+  "There breathe but few whose aspect might defy
+  The full encounter of his searching eye."
+
+Lara is drawn from the same model:
+
+  "That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last
+  And spoke of passions, but of passions past;
+  The pride but not the fire of early days,
+  Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
+  A high demeanour and a glance that took
+  Their thoughts from others by a single look."
+
+The feminine counterpart of these bold impersonations of evil is
+the tyrannical abbess who plays a part in _The Romance of the
+Forest_ and in _The Italian_, and who was adopted and exaggerated
+by Lewis, but her crimes are petty and malicious, not daring and
+ambitious, like the schemes of Montoni and Schedoni.
+
+One of Mrs. Radcliffe's contemporaries is said to have suggested
+that if she wished to transcend the horror of the Inquisition
+scenes in _The Italian_ she would have to visit hell itself. Like
+her own heroines, Mrs. Radcliffe had too elegant and refined an
+imagination and too fearful a heart to undertake so desperate a
+journey. She would have recoiled with horror from the impious
+suggestion. In _Gaston de Blondeville_, written in 1802, but
+published posthumously with a memoir by Noon Talfourd, she
+ventures to make one or two startling innovations. Her hero is no
+longer a pale, romantic young man of gentle birth, but a stolid,
+worthy merchant. Here, at last, she indulges in a substantial
+spectre, who cannot be explained away as the figment of a
+disordered imagination, since he seriously alarms, not a solitary
+heroine or a scared lady's-maid, but Henry III. himself and his
+assembled barons. Yet apart from this daring escapade, it is
+timidity rather than the spirit of valorous enterprise that is
+urging Mrs. Radcliffe into new and untried paths. Her happy,
+courageous disregard for historical accuracy in describing
+far-off scenes and bygone ages has deserted her. She searches
+painfully in ancient records, instead of in her imagination, for
+mediaeval atmosphere. Her story is grievously overburdened with
+elaborate descriptions of customs and ceremonies, and she adds
+laborious notes, citing passages from learned authorities, such
+as Leland's _Collectanea_, Pegge's dissertation on the obsolete
+office of Esquire of the King's Body, Sir George Bulke's account
+of the coronation of Richard III., Mador's _History of the
+Exchequer_, etc. We are transported from the eighteenth century,
+not actually to mediaeval England, but to a carefully arranged
+pageant displaying mediaeval costumes, tournaments and banquets.
+The actors speak in antique language to accord with the
+picturesque background against which they stand. _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, which is noteworthy as an early attempt to shadow
+forth the days of chivalry, has far more colour than Leland's
+_Longsword_ (1752), Miss Reeve's _Old English Baron_ (1777), or
+Miss Sophia Lee's _Recess_ (1785), from which rather than from
+Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier romances its descent may be traced. The
+attempt to avoid glaring anachronisms and to reproduce an
+accurate picture of a former age points forward to Scott.
+Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_, which Scott completed, was a revolt
+against the unscrupulous inventions of romance-writers, and was
+crammed full of archaeological lore. The story of _Gaston de
+Blondeville_ is tedious, the characters are shadowy and unreal,
+and we become, as the Ettric Shepherd remarked, in _Noctes
+Ambrosianae_, "somewhat too hand and glove with his ghostship";
+yet, regarded simply as a spectacular effect, it is not without
+indications of skill and power. Miss Mitford based a drama on it,
+but it never attained the popularity of Mrs. Radcliffe's other
+novels. It was published when her reputation was on the wane.
+
+Of the materials on which Mrs. Radcliffe drew in fashioning her
+romances it is impossible to speak with any certainty. Doubtless
+she had studied certain old chronicles, and she was deeply read
+in Shakespeare, especially in the tragedies. Much of her leisure,
+we are told, was spent in reading the literary productions of the
+day, especially poetry and novels. At the head of her chapters
+she often quotes Milton as well as the poets of her own
+century--Mason, Gray, Collins, and once "Ossian"--choosing almost
+inevitably passages which deal with the terrible or the ghostly.
+She must have known _The Castle of Otranto_, and in _The Italian_
+she quotes several passages from Walpole's melodrama _The
+Mysterious Mother_. But often she may have been dependent on the
+oral legends clustering round ancient abbeys for the background
+of her stories. Ghostly legends would always appeal to her, and
+she probably amassed a hoard of traditions when she visited
+English castles during her tours with her husband. The background
+of _Gaston de Blondeville_ is Kenilworth Castle. That ancient
+ruins stirred her imagination profoundly is clear from passages
+in her notes on the journeys. In Furness Abbey she sees in her
+mind's eye "a midnight procession of monks," and at Brougham
+Castle:
+
+     "One almost saw the surly keeper descending through
+     this door-case and heard him rattle the keys of the
+     chamber above, listening with indifference to the clank
+     of chains and to the echo of that groan below which
+     seemed to rend the heart it burst from,"
+
+or again:
+
+     "Slender saplings of ash waved over the deserted door
+     cases, where at the transforming hour of twilight, the
+     superstitious eye might mistake them for spectres of
+     some early possessor of the castle, restless from
+     guilt, or of some sufferer persevering for vengeance."
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe's style compares favourably with that of many of
+her contemporaries, with that of Mrs. Roche, for instance, who
+wrote _The Children of the Abbey_ and an array of other forgotten
+romances, but she is too fond of long, imperfectly balanced
+sentences, with as many awkward twists and turns as the winding
+stairways of her ancient turrets. Nobody in the novels, except
+the talkative, comic servant, who is meant to be vulgar and
+ridiculous, ever condescends to use colloquial speech. Even in
+moments of extreme peril the heroines are very choice in their
+diction. Dialogue in Mrs. Radcliffe's world is as stilted and
+unnatural as that of prim, old-fashioned school books. In her
+earliest novel she uses very little conversation, clearly finding
+the indirect form of narrative easier. Sometimes, in the more
+highly wrought passages of description, she slips unawares into a
+more daring phrase, _e.g._ in _Udolpho_, the track of blood
+"glared" upon the stairs, where the word suggests not the actual
+appearance of the bloodstain, but rather its effect on Emily's
+inflamed and disordered imagination. Dickens might have chosen
+the word deliberately in this connection, but he would have used
+it, not once, but several times to ensure his result and to
+emphasise the impression. This is not Mrs. Radcliffe's way. Her
+attention to style is mainly subconscious, her chief interest
+being in situation. Her descriptions of scenery have often been
+praised. Crabb Robinson declared in his diary that he preferred
+them to those of _Waverley_. When Byron visited Venice he found
+no better words to describe its beauty than those of Mrs.
+Radcliffe, who had never seen it:
+
+  "I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+  As from the stroke of an enchanted wand."
+
+In 1794 Mrs. Radcliffe and her husband made a journey through
+Holland and West Germany, of which she wrote an account,
+including with it observations made during a tour of the English
+Lakes. All her novels, except _The Italian_ and _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, had been written before she went abroad, and in
+describing foreign scenery she relied on her imagination, aided
+perhaps by pictures and descriptions as well as by her
+recollections of English mountains and lakes. The attempt to
+blend into a single picture a landscape actually seen and a
+landscape only known at second-hand may perhaps account for the
+lack of distinctness in her pictures. Her descriptions of scenery
+are elaborate, and often prolix, but it is often difficult to
+form a clear image of the scene. In her novels she cares for
+landscape only as an effective background, and paints with the
+broad, careless sweep of the theatrical scene-painter. In the
+_Journeys_, where she depicts scenery for its own sake, her
+delineation is more definite and distinct. She reveals an unusual
+feeling for colour and for the lights and tones of a changing sea
+or sky:
+
+     "It is most interesting to watch the progress of
+     evening and its effect on the waters; streaks of light
+     scattered among the dark, western clouds after the sun
+     had set, and gleaming in long reflection on the sea,
+     while a grey obscurity was drawing over the east, as
+     the vapours rose gradually from the ocean. The air was
+     breathless, the tall sails of the vessel were without
+     motion, and her course upon the deep scarcely
+     perceptible; while above the planet burned with steady
+     dignity and threw a tremulous line of light upon the
+     sea, whose surface flowed in smooth, waveless expanse.
+     Then other planets appeared and countless stars
+     spangled the dark waters. Twilight now pervaded air and
+     ocean, but the west was still luminous where one solemn
+     gleam of dusky red edged the horizon from under heavy
+     vapours."[37]
+
+Sometimes her scenes are disappointingly vague. She describes
+Ingleborough as "rising from elegantly swelling ground," and
+attempts to convey a stretch of country by enumerating a list of
+its features in generalised terms:
+
+     "Gentle swelling slopes, rich in verdure, thick
+     enclosures, woods, bowery hop-grounds, sheltered
+     mansions announcing the wealth, and substantial farms
+     with neat villages, the comfort of the country."
+
+Yet she notices tiny mosses whose hues were "pea green and
+primrose," and sometimes reveals flashes of imaginative insight
+into natural beauty like "the dark sides of mountains marked only
+by the blue smoke of weeds driven in circles near the ground."
+These personal, intimate touches of detail are very different
+from the highly coloured sunrises and sunsets that awaken the
+raptures of her heroines.
+
+With all her limitations, Mrs. Radcliffe is a figure whom it is
+impossible to ignore in the history of the novel. Her influence
+was potent on Lewis and on Maturin as well as on a host of
+forgotten writers. Scott admired her works and probably owed
+something in his craftsmanship to his early study of them. She
+appeals most strongly in youth. The Ettrick Shepherd, who was by
+nature and education "just excessive superstitious," declares:
+
+     "Had I read _Udolpho_ and her other romances in my
+     boyish days my hair would have stood on end like that
+     o' other folk ... but afore her volumes fell into my
+     hauns, my soul had been frichtened by a' kinds of
+     traditionary terrors, and many hunder times hae I maist
+     swarfed wi' fear in lonesome spots in muir and woods at
+     midnight when no a leevin thing was movin but mysel'
+     and the great moon."[38]
+
+There are dull stretches in all her works, but, as Hazlitt justly
+claims, "in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and
+making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and
+fears, she is unrivalled among her countrymen."[39]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
+
+
+To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew
+Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which depends
+for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity, for
+"the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even
+stronger and more primitive instinct of fear. Those who find Mrs.
+Radcliffe's unruffled pace leisurely beyond endurance, or who
+dislike her coldly reasonable methods of accounting for what is
+only apparently supernatural, or who sometimes feel stifled by
+the oppressive air of gentility that broods over her romantic
+world, will find ample reparation in the melodramatic pages of
+"Monk" Lewis. Here, indeed, may those who will and dare sup full
+with horrors. Lewis, in reckless abandonment, throws to the winds
+all restraint, both moral and artistic, that had bound his
+predecessor. The incidents, which follow one another in
+kaleidoscopic variety, are like the disjointed phases of a
+delirium or nightmare, from which there is no escape. We are
+conscious that his story is unreal or even ludicrous, yet Lewis
+has a certain dogged power of driving us unrelentingly through
+it, regardless of our own will. Literary historians have tended
+to over-emphasise the connection between Mrs. Radcliffe and
+Lewis. Their purposes and achievement are so different that it is
+hardly accurate to speak of them as belonging to the same school.
+It is true that in one of his letters Lewis asserts that he was
+induced to go on with his romance, _The Monk_, by reading _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_, "one of the most interesting books that
+has (sic) ever been written," and that he was struck by the
+resemblance of his own character to that of Montoni;[40] but his
+literary debt to Mrs. Radcliffe is comparatively insignificant.
+His depredations on German literature are much more serious and
+extensive. Lewis, indeed, is one of the Dick Turpins of fiction
+and seizes his booty where he will in a high-handed and somewhat
+unscrupulous fashion, but for many of Mrs. Radcliffe's treasures
+he could find no use. Her picturesque backgrounds, her ingenious
+explanations of the uncanny, her uneventful interludes and long
+deferred but happy endings were outside his province. The moments
+in her novels which Lewis admired and strove to emulate were
+those during which the reader with quickened pulse breathlessly
+awaits some startling development. Of these moments, there are,
+it must be frankly owned, few in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Lewis's
+mistake lay in trying to induce a more rapid palpitation, and to
+prolong it almost uninterruptedly throughout his novel. By
+attempting a physical and mental impossibility he courts
+disaster. Mrs. Radcliffe's skeletons are decently concealed in
+the family cupboard, Lewis's stalk abroad in shameless publicity.
+In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just
+when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have
+long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she
+suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of
+reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he
+hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy
+of horrors.
+
+Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year
+spent in Weimar (1792-3), where he zealously studied German, and
+incidentally, met Goethe, seems to have left more obvious marks
+on his literary career. To Lewis, Goethe is pre-eminently the
+author of _The Sorrows of Werther_; and Schiller, he remarks
+casually, "has, written several other plays besides _The
+Robbers."_[41] He probably read Heinse's _Ardinghello_(1787),
+Tieck's _Abdallah_ (1792-3), and _William Lovell_ (1794-6), many
+of the innumerable dramas of Kotzebue, the romances of Weit
+Weber, and other specimens of what Carlyle describes as "the bowl
+and dagger department," where
+
+     "Black Forests and Lubberland, sensuality and horror,
+     the spectre nun and the charmed moonshine, shall not be
+     wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers,
+     and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained
+     sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and
+     the like suspicious characters will be found in
+     abundance."[42]
+
+Throughout his life he seems to have made a hobby of the
+literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or
+lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and
+the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of
+his _Romantic Tales_(1808), such as _My Uncle's Garret Window_,
+are uncommonly tame. Like the painter of a hoarding who must at
+all costs arrest attention, he magnifies, exaggerates and
+distorts. Once when rebuked for introducing black guards into a
+country where they did not exist, he is said to have declared
+that he would have made them sky-blue if he thought they would
+produce any more effect.[43] Referring to _The Monk_, he
+confesses: "Unluckily, in working it up, I thought that the
+stronger my colours, the more effect would my picture
+produce."[44]
+
+One of his early attempts at fiction was a romance which he later
+converted into his popular drama, _The Castle Spectre_. This play
+was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson
+in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish
+hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of
+choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play,
+aptly described by Coleridge as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth
+and Impermanence,"[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to
+those who delight in the pursuit of "parallel passages." At the
+age of twenty, during his residence at the Hague as _attaché_ to
+the British embassy, in the summer of 1794, he composed in ten
+weeks, his notorious romance, _The Monk_. On its publication in
+1795 it was attacked on the grounds of profanity and indecency.
+
+_The Monk_, despite its cleverness, is essentially immature, yet
+it is not a childish work. It is much less youthful, for
+instance, than Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. The
+inflamed imagination, the violent exaggeration of emotion and of
+character, the jeering cynicism and lack of tolerance, the
+incoherent formlessness, are all indications of adolescence. In
+_The Monk_ there are two distinct stories, loosely related. The
+story of Raymond and Agnes, into which the legends of the
+bleeding nun and Wandering Jew are woven with considerable skill,
+was published more than once as a detached and separate work. It
+is concerned with the fate of two unhappy lovers, who are parted
+by the tyranny of their parents and of the church, and who endure
+manifold agonies. The physical torture of Agnes is described in
+revolting detail, for Lewis has no scruple in carrying the ugly
+far beyond the limits within which it is artistic. The happy
+ending of their harrowing story is incredible. By making
+Ambrosio, on the verge of his hideous crimes, harshly condemn
+Agnes for a sin of the same nature as that which he is about to
+commit, Lewis forges a link between the two stories. But the
+connection is superficial, and the novel suffers through the
+distraction of our interest. In the story of Ambrosio, Antonia
+plays no part in her own downfall. She is as helpless as a
+plaster statue demolished by an earthquake. The figure of Matilda
+has more vitality, though Lewis changes his mind about her
+character during the course of the book, and fails to make her
+early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is
+certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a passionate
+soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep:
+"The time will come when you will be convinced that my passion is
+pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole
+weight of my sorrows." But when the devil appears, he declares to
+Ambrosio:
+
+     "I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not
+     principle, and I seized the fit moment for your
+     seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the
+     Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty
+     spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded
+     to the blandishments of Matilda."
+
+The discrepancy is obvious, but this blemish is immaterial, for
+the whole story is unnatural. The deterioration in Ambrosio's
+character--though Lewis uses all his energy in striving to make
+it appear probable by discussing the effect of environment--is
+too swift.
+
+Lewis is at his best when he lets his youthful, high spirits have
+full play. His boyish exaggeration makes Leonella, Antonia's
+aunt, seem like a pantomime character, who has inadvertently
+stepped into a melodrama, but the caricature is amusing by its
+very crudity. She writes in red ink to express "the blushes of
+her cheek," when she sends a message of encouragement to the
+Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable
+than Lewis's attempts to depict passion or describe character.
+Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, passionate
+faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style
+is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short,
+staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are
+engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the
+declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak
+as if they were behind the footlights, shouting to the gallery.
+
+A cold-blooded reviewer, in whom the detective instinct was
+strong, indicated the sources of _The Monk_ so mercilessly, that
+Lewis appears in his critique[46] rather as the perpetrator of a
+series of ingenious thefts than as the creator of a novel:
+
+     "The outline of the Monk Ambrosio's story was suggested
+     by that of the Santon Barissa [Barsisa] in the
+     _Guardian_:[47] the form of temptation is borrowed from
+     _The Devil in Love_ of Canzotte [Cazotte], and the
+     catastrophe is taken from _The Sorcerer_. The
+     adventures of Raymond and Agnes are less obviously
+     imitations, yet the forest scene near Strasburg brings
+     to mind an incident in Smollett's _Count Fathom_; the
+     bleeding nun is described by the author as a popular
+     tale of the Germans,[48] and the convent prison
+     resembles the inflictions of Mrs. Radcliffe."
+
+The industrious reviewer overlooks the legend of the Wandering
+Jew, which might have been added to the list of Lewis's
+"borrowings." It must be admitted that Lewis transforms, or at
+least remodels, what he borrows. Addison's story relates how a
+sage of reputed sanctity seduces and slays a maiden brought to
+him for cure, and later sells his soul. Lewis abandons the
+Oriental setting, converts the santon into a monk and embroiders
+the story according to his fancy. Scott alludes to a Scottish
+version of what is evidently a widespread legend.[49] The
+resemblance of the catastrophe--presumably the appearance of
+Satan in the form of Lucifer--to the scene in Mickle's
+_Sorcerer_, which was published among Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_
+(1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames
+and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two
+scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage
+from _The Romance of the Forest_, but, if so she is exaggerated
+almost beyond recognition.
+
+In fashioning as the villain of her latest novel, _The Italian_,
+a monk, whose birth is wrapt in obscurity, Mrs. Radcliffe may
+have been influenced by Lewis's _Monk_ which had appeared two
+years before. Both Schedoni and Ambrosio are reputed saints, both
+are plunged into the blackest guilt, and both are victims of the
+Inquisition. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is true, recoils from introducing
+the enemy of mankind, but, before the secrets are finally
+revealed, we almost suspect Schedoni of having dabbled in the
+Black Arts, and his actual crime falls short of our expectations.
+The "explained supernatural" plays a less prominent part in _The
+Italian_ than in the previous novels, and Mrs. Radcliffe relies
+for her effect rather on sheer terror. The dramatic scene where
+Schedoni stealthily approaches the sleeping Ellena at midnight
+recalls the more highly coloured, but less impressive scene in
+Antonia's bedchamber. The fate of Bianchi, Ellena's aunt, is
+strangely reminiscent of that of Elvira, Antonia's mother. The
+convent scenes and the overbearing abbess had been introduced
+into Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier novels; but in _The Italian_, the
+anti-Roman feeling is more strongly emphasised than usual. This
+may or may not have been due to the influence of Lewis. There is
+no direct evidence that Mrs. Radcliffe had read _The Monk_, but
+the book was so notorious that a fellow novelist would be almost
+certain to explore its pages. Hoffmann's romance, _Elixir des
+Teufels_ (1816), is manifestly written under its inspiration.
+Coincidence could not account for the remarkable resemblances to
+incidents in the story of Ambrosio.
+
+The far-famed collection of _Tales of Terror_ appeared in 1799,
+_The Tales of Wonder_ in 1801. The rest of Lewis's work consists
+mainly of translations and adaptations from the German. He
+revelled in the horrific school of melodrama. He delighted in the
+kind of German romance parodied by Meredith in _Farina_, where
+Aunt Lisbeth tells Margarita of spectres, smelling of murder and
+the charnel-breath of midnight, who "uttered noises that wintered
+the blood and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet
+long; ay, and kept it stiff." _The Bravo of Venice_ (1805) is a
+translation of Zschokke's _Abellino, der Grosse Bandit_, but
+Lewis invented a superfluous character, Monaldeschi, Rosabella's
+destined bridegroom, apparently with the object that Abellino
+might slay him early in the story--and added a concluding
+chapter. At the outset of the story, Rosalvo, a man after Lewis's
+own heart, declares:
+
+"To astonish is my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can
+never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by
+his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a
+double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and
+by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise
+of a noble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter,
+Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached when Flodoardo,
+under oath to deliver up the bandit Abellino, appears before the
+Doge at the appointed hour and reveals his double identity. He is
+hailed as the saviour of Hungary, and wins Rosabella as his
+bride. In the second edition of _The Bravo of Venice_, a romance
+in four volumes by M. G. Lewis, _Legends of the Nunnery_, is
+announced as in the press. There seems to be no record of it
+elsewhere. _Feudal Tyrants_ (1806), a long romance from the
+German, connected with the story of William Tell, consists of a
+series of memoirs loosely strung together, in which the most
+alarming episode is the apparition of the pale spectre of an aged
+monk. In _Blanche and Osbright, or Mistrust_ (1808),[50] which is
+not avowedly a translation, Lewis depicts an even more revolting
+portrait than that of Abellino in his bravo's disguise. He adds
+detail after detail without considering the final effect on the
+eye:
+
+     "Every muscle in his gigantic form seemed convulsed by
+     some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened
+     every feature; the wind from the unclosed window
+     agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to
+     writhe itself. His eyeballs glared, his teeth
+     chattered, his lips trembled; and yet a smile of
+     satisfied vengeance played horribly around them. His
+     complexion seemed suddenly to be changed to the dark
+     tincture of an African; the expression of his
+     countenance was dreadful, was diabolical. Magdalena, as
+     she gazed upon his face, thought that she gazed upon a
+     demon."
+
+Here, to quote the Lady Hysterica Belamour, we have surely the
+"horrid, horrible, horridest horror." But in _Königsmark the
+Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia_ (1818), Lewis's caste includes
+an enormous yellow-eyed spider, a wolf who changes into a peasant
+and disappears amid a cloud of sulphur, and a ghost who sheds
+three ominous drops of boiling blood. It was probably such
+stories as this that Peacock had in mind when he declared,
+through Mr. Flosky, that the devil had become "too base and
+popular" for the surfeited appetite of readers of fiction. Yet,
+as Carlyle once exclaimed of the German terror-drama, as
+exemplified in Kotzebue, Grillparzer and Klingemann, whose
+stock-in-trade is similar to that of Lewis: "If any man wish to
+amuse himself irrationally, here is the ware for his money."[51]
+Byron, who had himself attempted in _Oscar and Alva_ (_Hours of
+Idleness_, 1807) a ballad in the manner of Lewis, describes with
+irony the triumphs of terror:
+
+  "Oh! wonderworking Lewis! Monk or Bard,
+  Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard!
+  Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
+  Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou;
+  Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand,
+  By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
+  Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page
+  To please the females of our modest age;
+  All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain
+  Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
+  At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds
+  And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds
+  With small grey men--wild yagers and what not,
+  To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
+  Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
+  St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease.
+  Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
+  And in thy skull discern a deeper hell!"[52]
+
+Scott's delightfully discursive review of _The Fatal Revenge or
+The Family of Montorio_ (1810), not only forms a fitting
+introduction to the romances of Maturin, but presents a lively
+sketch of the fashionable reading of the day. It has been
+insinuated that the _Quarterly Review_ was too heavy and serious,
+that it contained, to quote Scott's own words, "none of those
+light and airy articles which a young lady might read while her
+hair was papering." To redeem the reputation of the journal,
+Scott gallantly undertook to review some of the "flitting and
+evanescent productions of the times." After a laborious
+inspection of the contents of a hamper full of novels, he arrived
+at the painful conclusion that "spirits and patience may be as
+completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following
+algebraical calculations." He condemns the authors of the Gothic
+romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for
+their monotony, a deadly sin.
+
+     "We strolled through a variety of castles, each of
+     which was regularly called Il Castello; met with as
+     many captains of condottieri, heard various
+     ejaculations of Santa Maria and Diabolo; read by a
+     decaying lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of
+     legends as stupid as the main history; examined such
+     suites of deserted apartments as might set up a
+     reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights
+     as would make a respectable illumination." It was no
+     easy task to bore Sir Walter Scott, and an excursion
+     into the byeways of early nineteenth century fiction
+     proves abundantly the justice of his satire. Such
+     novelists as Miss Sarah Wilkinson or Mrs. Eliza
+     Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by
+     circulating library readers a hundred years ago,
+     deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of
+     earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of
+     serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing
+     names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as
+     1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superstition
+     and Chivalry_:
+
+     "It is not one of the least objections against these
+     fashionable fictions that the imagery of them is
+     essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands,
+     clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar
+     etcetera are continually tormenting us."
+
+Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny
+chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and
+green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were
+sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a "blue book"
+meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Shelley, not a pamphlet
+filled with statistics, but "a sixpenny shocker."[53] The
+notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is
+said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and
+her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six
+shillings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the
+head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen,
+wearing gold cockades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the
+names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably
+contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps
+two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring titles, _The Priory
+of St. Clair, or The Spectre of the Murdered Nun_; _The Convent
+of the Grey Penitents, or The Apostate Nun_. Perchance, he found
+there Mrs. Henrietta Rouvière's romance, (published in the same
+year as _Montorio_,) _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807), describing
+the reign of King Stephen. Mrs. Rouvière, in her preface,
+
+     "flatters herself that, aided by records and documents,
+     she may have succeeded in a correct though faint sketch
+     of the times she treats, and in affording, if through a
+     dim yet not distorted nor discoloured glass, A Peep at
+     our Ancestors";
+
+but her story is entirely devoid of the colour with which Mrs.
+Radcliffe, her model, contrived to decorate the past. It is,
+moreover, written in a style so opaque that it obscures her
+images from view as effectually as a piece of ground glass. To
+describe the approach of twilight--an hour beloved by writers of
+romance--she attempts a turgid paraphrase of Gray's Elegy:
+
+     "The grey shades of an autumnal evening gradually stole
+     over the horizon, progressively throwing a duskier hue
+     on the surrounding objects till glimmering confusion
+     encompassing the earth shut from the accustomed eye the
+     well-known view, leaving conjecture to mark its
+     boundaries."
+
+The adventures of Adelaide and her lover, Walter of Gloucester,
+are so insufferably tedious that Scott doubtless decided to
+"leave to conjecture" their interminable vicissitudes. The names
+of other novels, whose pages he may impatiently have scanned, may
+be garnered by those who will, from such works as _Living
+Authors_ (1817), or from the four volumes of Watts' elaborate
+compilation, the _Bibliotheca Britannica_ (1824). The titles are,
+indeed, lighter and more entertaining reading than the books
+themselves. Anyone might reasonably expect to read _Midnight
+Horrors, or The Bandit's Daughter_, as Henry Tilney vows he read
+_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, with "hair on end all the time"; but
+the actual story, notwithstanding a wandering ball of fire, that
+acts as guide through the labyrinths of a Gothic castle, is
+conducive of sleep rather than shudders. The notoriety of Lewis's
+monk may be estimated by the procession of monks who followed in
+his train. There were, to select a few names at random, _The New
+Monk_, by one R.S., Esq.; _The Monk of Madrid_, by George Moore
+(1802); _The Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, by T.J. Horsley Curties;
+_Manfroni, the One-handed Monk_, whose history was borrowed,
+together with those of Abellino, the terrific bravo, and Rinaldo
+Rinaldini,[55] by "J.J." from Miss Flinders' library;[56] and
+lastly, as a counter-picture, a monk without a scowl, _The
+Benevolent Monk_, by Theodore Melville (1807). The nuns,
+including "Rosa Matilda's" _Nun of St. Omer's_, Miss Sophia
+Francis's _Nun of Misericordia_ (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's
+_Apostate Nun_, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps
+_The Convent of the Grey Penitents_ would have been a suitable
+abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no
+nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported
+to other climes. We find him in Scotland in _The Mysterious
+Bravo_, or _The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend_, and
+in Austria in _The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest_. No
+country is safe from the raids of banditti. _The Caledonian
+Banditti_ or _The Banditti of the Forest_, or _The Bandit of
+Florence_--all very much alike in their manners and morals--make
+the heroine's journey a perilous enterprise. The romances of Mrs.
+Radcliffe were rifled unscrupulously by the snappers-up of
+unconsidered trifles, and many of the titles are variations on
+hers. In emulation of _The Romance of the Forest_ we find George
+Walker's _Romance of the Cavern_ (1792) and Miss Eleanor Sleath's
+_Mysteries of the Forest_. Novelists appreciated the magnetic
+charm of the word "mystery" on a title-page, and after _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_ we find such seductive names as _Mysterious
+Warnings_ and _Mysterious Visits_, by Mrs. Parsons; _Horrid
+Mysteries_, translated from the German of the Marquis von Grosse,
+by R. Will (1796); _The Mystery of the Black Tower_ and _The
+Mystic Sepulchre_, by John Palmer, a schoolmaster of Bath; _The
+Mysterious Wanderer_ (1807), by Miss Sophia Reeve; _The
+Mysterious Hand or Subterranean Horrors_ (1811), by A.J.
+Randolph; and _The Mysterious Freebooter_ (1805), by Francis
+Lathom. Castles and abbeys were so persistently haunted that Mrs.
+Rachel Hunter, a severely moral writer, advertises one of her
+stories as _Letitia: A Castle Without a Spectre_. Mystery slips,
+almost unawares, into the domestic story. There are, for
+instance, vague hints of it in Charlotte Smith's _Old Manor
+House_ (1793). The author of _The Ghost_ and of _More Ghosts_
+adopts the pleasing pseudonym of Felix Phantom. The gloom of
+night broods over many of the stories, for we know:
+
+      "affairs that walk,
+  As they say spirits do, at midnight, have
+  In them a wilder nature than the business
+  That seeks despatch by day,"
+
+and we are confronted with titles like _Midnight Weddings_, by
+Mrs. Meeke, one of Macaulay's favourite "bad-novel writers," _The
+Midnight Bell_, awakening memories of Duncan's murder, by George
+Walker, or _The Nocturnal Minstrel_ (1809), by Miss Sleath. These
+"dismal treatises" abound in reminiscences of Mrs. Radcliffe and
+of "Monk" Lewis, and many of them hark back as far as _The Castle
+of Otranto_ for some of their situations. The novels of Miss
+Wilkinson may perhaps serve as well as those of any of her
+contemporaries to show that Scott was not unduly harsh in his
+condemnation of the romances fashionable in the first decade of
+the nineteenth century, when "tales of terror jostle on the
+road."[57] The sleeping potion, a boon to those who weave the
+intricate pattern of a Gothic romance, is one of Miss Wilkinson's
+favourite devices, and is employed in at least three of her
+stories. In _The Chateau de Montville_ (1803) it is administered
+to the amiable Louisa to aid Augustine in his sinister designs,
+but she ultimately escapes, and is wedded by Octavius, who has
+previously been borne off by a party of pirates. He "finds the
+past unfortunate vicissitudes of his life amply recompensed by
+her love." In _The Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Rosalthe
+happily avoids the opiate, as she overhears the plans of her
+unscrupulous husband, who, it seems, has "an unquenchable thirst
+of avarice," and desires to win a wealthier bride. She flees to a
+"cottage ornée" on Finchley Common, the home, it may be
+remembered, of Thackeray's Washerwoman; and the thrills we expect
+from a novel of terror are reserved for the second volume, and
+arise out of the adventures of the next generation. After
+Rosalthe's death, spectres, blue flames, corpses, thunderstorms
+and hairbreadth escapes are set forth in generous profusion.
+
+In _The Priory of St. Clair_ (1811), Julietta, who has been
+forced into a convent against her will, like so many other
+heroines, is drugged and conveyed as a corpse to the Count de
+Valvé's Gothic castle. She comes to life only to be slain before
+the high altar, and revenges herself after death by haunting the
+count regularly every night. _The Fugitive Countess or Convent of
+St. Ursula_ (1807) contains three spicy ingredients--a mock
+burial, a concealed wife and a mouldering manuscript. The social
+status of Miss Wilkinson's characters is invariably lofty, for no
+self-respecting ghost ever troubles the middle classes; and her
+manner is as ambitious as her matter. Her personages, in _Lopez
+and Aranthe_, behave and talk thus:
+
+"Heavenly powers!" exclaimed Aranthe, "it is Dorimont, or else my
+eyes deceive me!" Overpowered with surprise and almost
+breathless, she sunk on the carpet. Lopez stood aghast, his
+countenance was of a deadly pale, a glass of wine he had in his
+hand he let fall to the floor, while he articulated: "What an
+alteration in that once beauteous countenance!"
+
+Miss Wilkinson's sentences stagger and lurch uncertainly, but she
+delights in similes and other ornaments of style:
+
+     "Adeline Barnett was fair as a lily, tall as the pine,
+     her fine dark eyes sparkling as diamonds, and she moved
+     with the majestic air of a goddess, but pride and
+     ambition appeared on the brow of this famed maiden, and
+     destroying the effect of her charms."
+
+She is, in fact, more addicted to "gramarye" than to
+"grammar"--the fault with which Byron, in a note to _English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, charged the hero and heroine of
+Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Her heroes do not merely
+love, they are "enamoured to a romantic degree." Her arbours are
+"composed of jasmine, white rose, and other odoriferous sweets of
+Flora." She sprinkles French phrases with an airy nonchalance
+worthy of the Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs are included
+in Barrett's _Heroine_. Her duchesses "figure away with
+_éclat_"--"a party _quarrie_ assemble at their _dejeune_." It is
+noteworthy that by 1820 even Miss Wilkinson had learnt to despise
+the spectres in whom she had gloried during her amazing career.
+In _The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_ (1820) the ghost is
+ignominiously exposed, and proved to be "a tall figure dressed in
+white, and a long, transparent veil flowing over her whole
+figure," while the heroine Amelia speaks almost in the accents of
+Catherine Morland:
+
+     "My governess has been affirming that there are Gothic
+     buildings without spectres or legends of a ghostly
+     nature attached to them; now, what is a castle or abbey
+     worth without such appendage?; do tell me candidly, are
+     none of the turrets of your old family mansion in
+     Monmouth rendered thus terrific by some unquiet,
+     wandering spirit?, dare the peasantry pass it after
+     twilight, or if they are forced into that temerity, do
+     not their teeth chatter, their hair stand erect and
+     their poor knees knock together?"
+
+That Miss Wilkinson, who, for twenty years, had conscientiously
+striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last
+to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a
+piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the
+enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely
+have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more to
+raise their diminished heads.
+
+From a medley of novels, similar to those of Miss Wilkinson,
+Scott singled out for commendation _The Fatal Revenge or The
+Family of Montorio_, by "Jasper Denis Murphy," or the Rev.
+Charles Robert Maturin. Amid the chaos of horror into which
+Maturin hurls his readers, Scott shrewdly discerned the spirit
+and animation which, though often misdirected, pervade his whole
+work. The story is but a grotesque distortion of life, yet Scott
+found himself "insensibly involved in the perusal and at times
+impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the
+author." His generous estimate of Maturin's gifts and his
+prediction of future success is the more impressive, because _The
+Fatal Revenge_ undeniably belongs to the very class of novels he
+was ridiculing.
+
+Maturin was an eccentric Irish clergyman, who diverted himself by
+weaving romances and constructing tragedies. He loved to mingle
+with the gay and frivolous; he affected foppish attire, and
+prided himself on his exceptional skill in dancing. His
+indulgence in literary work was probably but another expression
+of his longing to escape from the strait and narrow way
+prescribed for a Protestant clergyman. Wild anecdotes are told of
+his idiosyncrasies.[58] He preferred to compose his stories in a
+room full of people, and he found a noisy argument especially
+invigorating. To prevent himself from taking part in the
+conversation, he used to cover his mouth with paste composed of
+flour and water. Sometimes, we are told, he would wear a red
+wafer upon his brow, as a signal that he was enduring the throes
+of literary composition and expected forbearance and
+consideration. It is said that he once missed preferment in the
+church because he absentmindedly interviewed his prospective
+vicar with his head bristling with quills like a porcupine. He is
+said to have insisted on his wife's using rouge though she had
+naturally a high colour, and to have gone fishing in a
+resplendent blue coat and silk stockings. Such was the flamboyant
+personality of the man whose first novel attracted the kindly
+attention of Scott. His oddities, which would have rejoiced the
+heart of Dickens, are not without significance in a study of his
+literary work, for his love of emphasis and exaggeration are
+reflected in both the substance and style of his novels.
+
+Maturin's writings fall into three periods. Of his three early
+novels, _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1807),
+_The Wild Irish Boy_ (1808) and _The Milesian Chief_ (1812), the
+first only is a tale of horror. _The Wild Irish Boy_ is a
+domestic story, and forms a suitable companion for Lady Morgan's
+_Wild Irish Girl_. _The Milesian Chief_ is a historical novel,
+and is now chiefly remembered on account of the likeness of the
+opening chapters to Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ (1819). After
+the publication of these novels, Maturin turned his attention to
+the stage. His first tragedy, _Bertram_ (1816), received the
+encouragement of Scott and Byron. The character of Bertram is
+modelled on that of Schiller's robber-chief, Karl von Moor, who
+captivated the imagination of Coleridge himself, and who is
+reflected in _Osorio_ and perhaps in Mrs. Radcliffe's villains.
+The action of the melodrama moves swiftly, and abounds in the
+"moving situations" Maturin loved to handle. _Bertram_ was
+succeeded in 1817 by _Manuel_, and in 1819 by _Fredolfo_.
+Meanwhile Maturin had returned to novel-writing. _Women, or Pour
+et Contre_, with its lifelike sketches of Puritanical society and
+clever characterisation, appeared in 1818, and was favourably
+reviewed by Scott.[59] _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's
+masterpiece, was published in 1820, and was succeeded in 1824 by
+his last work, _The Albigenses_, a historical romance, following
+Scott's design rather than that of Mrs. Radcliffe.
+
+In reviewing _The Family of Montorio_, Scott prudently attempted
+only a brief survey of the plot, and forsook Maturin's sequence
+of events. In his sketch the outline of the story is
+comparatively clear. In the novel itself we wander, bewildered,
+baffled and distracted through labyrinthine mazes. No Ariadne
+awaits on the threshold with the magic ball of twine to guide us
+through the complicated windings. We stumble along blind alleys
+desperately retracing our weary steps, and, after stumbling alone
+and unaided to the very end, reach the darkly concealed clue when
+it has ceased to be either of use or of interest to us. Many an
+adventurer must have lain down, dispirited and exhausted, without
+ever reaching his distant and elusive goal. Disentangled and
+simplified almost beyond recognition, the story runs thus: In
+1670, Count Orazio and his younger brother are the sole
+representatives of the family of Montorio. Orazio has married
+Erminia di Vivaldi, whom he loves devotedly. She does not return
+his love. The younger brother determines to take advantage of
+this circumstance to gain the title and estates for himself, and
+succeeds in arousing Orazio's jealousy against a young officer,
+Verdoni, to whom Erminia had formerly been deeply attached. In a
+violent passion Orazio slays Verdoni before the eyes of Erminia,
+who falls dead at his feet. This part of his design accomplished,
+the younger brother plots to murder Orazio himself, who, however,
+discovers the innocence of his wife and the hideous perfidy of
+his brother. Temporarily bereft of reason, Orazio sojourns alone
+on a desert island. When his senses are restored, he resolves to
+devote the rest of his life to vengeance. For fifteen years he
+buries himself in occult studies, and when his diabolical schemes
+have matured, returns, disguised as the monk Schemoli, to the
+scene of the murder. He becomes confessor to his brother, who has
+assumed the title and estates. It is his intention to compel the
+Count's sons, Annibal and Ippolito, to murder their father. Death
+at the hands of parricides seems to him the only appropriate
+catastrophe for the Count's career of infamy. To reconcile the
+two victims--Annibal and Ippolito--to their task, he "relies
+mainly on the doctrine of fatalism." The most complex and
+ingenious "machinery" is used to work upon their superstitious
+feelings. No device is too tortuous if it aid his purpose. Even
+the pressure of the Inquisition is brought to bear on one of the
+brothers. Each, after protracted agony, submits to his destiny,
+and the swords of the two brothers meet in the Count's body. When
+the murder is safely accomplished, it is proved that Annibal and
+Ippolito are the sons, not of the Count, but of Schemoli and
+Erminia. By the irony of fate the knowledge comes too late for
+Schemoli to save his children from the crime. At the close of a
+lengthy trial the two brothers are released, but deprived of
+their lands. Ultimately they die fighting in the siege of
+Barcelona. Schemoli perishes, in the approved Gothic manner, by
+self-administered poison. Intertwined with the main theme of
+Schemoli's fatal revenge are the love-stories of the two
+brothers. Rosolia, a nun, who seems to have been acquainted with
+Shakespeare's comedies, disguises herself as a page, and devotes
+her life to the service of Ippolito and to the composition of
+sentimental verses. She only reveals her sex just before her
+death, though we have guessed it from her first appearance.
+Ildefonsa, who is beloved of Annibal, has been forced into a
+convent against her will--a fate almost inevitable in the realm
+of Gothic romance. When letters are received authorising her
+release from the vows, a pitiless mother-superior reports that
+she is dead. She is immured, but an earthquake sets her free, for
+Maturin will move heaven and earth to effect his purposes. The
+ill-fated maiden dies shortly afterwards. Ere the close it proves
+that Ildefonsa was the daughter of Erminia, who had been secretly
+married to Verdoni before her union with Orazio. Such is the
+skeleton of Maturin's story, when its scattered members have been
+patiently collected and fitted together. The impressive figure of
+Schemoli, with his unholy power of fascinating his reluctant
+accomplices, lends to the book the only sort of unity it
+possesses. But even he fails to arouse a sense of fear strong
+enough to fix our attention to so wandering a story. Like the
+doomed brothers, we drift dejectedly through inexplicable
+terrors, and we re-echo with fervour Annibal's dolorous cry:
+
+     "Why should I be shut up in this house of horrors to
+     deal with spirits and damned things and the secrets of
+     the infernal world while there are so many paths open
+     to pleasure, the varieties of human intercourse and the
+     enjoyment of life?"
+
+Maturin, a disciple of Mrs. Radcliffe, feels it his duty to
+explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story,
+but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates
+for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets
+which have harassed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred
+explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that
+wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are
+merely waxen images that spout blood automatically.
+Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are
+simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling
+phenomena are accounted for in the same trivial fashion.
+
+Maturin seems to have crowded into his story nearly every
+character and incident that had been employed in earlier Gothic
+romances. Schemoli is a remarkably faithful portrait of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's Schedoni. From beneath his cowl flash the piercing
+eyes, whose very glance will daunt the bravest heart; his sallow
+visage is furrowed with the traces of bygone passions; he shuns
+society, and is dreaded by his associates. The oppressed maiden,
+driven into a nunnery, drugged and immured, the ambitious
+countess, the devoted, loquacious servant, the inhuman
+abbess--all play their accustomed parts. The background shifts
+from the robber's den to the ruined chapel, from the castle vault
+to the dungeon of the Inquisition, each scene being admirably
+suited to the situation contrived, or the emotion displayed.
+Maturin had accurately inspected the passages and trap-doors of
+Otranto. No item, not a rusty lock, not a creaking hinge, had
+escaped his vigilant eye. He knew intimately every nook and
+cranny of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. He had viewed with
+trepidation their blood-stained floors, their skeletons and
+corpses, and had carefully calculated the psychological effect of
+these properties. He had gazed with starting eye on the lurid
+horrors of "Monk" Lewis, and had carried away impressions so
+distinct that he, perhaps unwittingly, transferred them to the
+pages of his own story. But Maturin's reading was not strictly
+confined to the school of terror. He had studied Shakespeare's
+tragedies, and these may have suggested to him the idea of
+enhancing the interest of his story by dissecting human motive
+and describing passionate feeling. In depicting the remorse of
+the count and his wife Zenobia, who had committed a murder to
+gratify their ambition, and who are tormented by ugly dreams,
+Maturin inevitably draws from _Macbeth_. Zenobia, the stronger
+character, reviles her husband for indulging in sickly fancies
+and strives to embolden him:
+
+  "Like a child you run from a mask you have yourself painted."
+
+He replies in a free paraphrase of _Hamlet_:
+
+  "It is this cursed domestic sensibility of guilt that makes
+cowards
+  of us all."
+
+Maturin is distinguished from the incompetent horde of
+romance-writers, whom Scott condemned, by the powerful eloquence
+of his style and by his ability to analyse emotion, to write as
+if he himself were swayed by the feeling he describes. His insane
+extravagances have at least the virtue that they come flaming hot
+from an excited imagination. The passage quoted by
+Scott--Orazio's attempt to depict his state of mind after he had
+heard of his brother's perfidy--may serve to illustrate the force
+and vigour of his language:
+
+     "Oh! that midnight darkness of the soul in which it
+     seeks for something whose loss has carried away every
+     sense but one of utter and desolate deprivation; in
+     which it traverses leagues in motion and worlds in
+     thought without consciousness of relief, yet with a
+     dread of pausing. I had nothing to seek, nothing to
+     recover; the whole world could not restore me an atom,
+     could not show me again a glimpse of what I had been or
+     lost, yet I rushed on as if the next step would reach
+     shelter and peace."
+
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_ has found many admirers. It fascinated
+Rossetti,[60] Thackeray[61] and Miss Mitford.[62] It was praised
+by Balzac, who wrote a satirical sequel--_Melmoth Reconcilié à
+L'Eglise_ (1835), and by Baudelaire, and exercised a considerable
+influence on French literature.[63] It consists of a series of
+tales, strung together in a complicated fashion. In each tale the
+Wanderer, who has bartered his soul in return for prolonged life,
+may, if he can, persuade someone to take the bargain off his
+hands.[64] He visits those who are plunged in despair. His
+approach is heralded by strange music, and his eyes have a
+preternatural lustre that terrifies his victims. No one will
+agree to his "incommunicable condition."
+
+The bird's-eye view of an Edinburgh Reviewer who described
+_Melmoth_ as "the sacrifice of Genius in the Temple of False
+Taste," will give some idea of the bewildering variety of its
+contents:
+
+     "His hero is a modern Faustus, who has bartered his
+     soul with the powers of darkness for protracted life
+     and unlimited worldly enjoyment; his heroine, a species
+     of insular goddess, a virgin Calypso of the Indian
+     Ocean, who, amid flowers and foliage, lives upon figs
+     and tamarinds, associates with peacocks and monkeys, is
+     worshipped by the occasional visitants of her island,
+     finds her way into Spain where she is married to the
+     aforesaid hero by the hand of a dead hermit, the ghost
+     of a murdered domestic being the witness of her
+     nuptials; and finally dies in a dungeon of the
+     Inquisition at Madrid. To complete this phantasmagoric
+     exhibition, we are presented with sybils and misers,
+     parricides, maniacs in abundance, monks with scourges
+     pursuing a naked youth streaming with blood;
+     subterranean Jews surrounded by the skeletons of their
+     wives and children; lovers blasted by lightning, Irish
+     hags, Spanish grandees, shipwrecks, caverns, Donna
+     Claras and Donna Isidoras--all exposed to each other in
+     violent and glaring contrast and all their adventures
+     narrated with the same undeviating display of turgid,
+     vehement, and painfully elaborated language."[65]
+
+This breathless sentence gives some conception of the delirious
+imagery of Maturin's romance, but the book is worthy of a more
+respectful, unhurried survey. _Melmoth_ shows a distinct advance
+on _Montorio_ in constructive power. Each separate story is
+perfectly clear and easy to follow, in spite of the elaborate
+interlacing. The romance opens with the death of a miser in a
+desolate Irish farmstead, with harpies clustering at his bedside.
+His nephew and heir, John Melmoth, is adjured to destroy a
+certain manuscript and a portrait of an ancestor with eyes "such
+as one feels they wish they had never seen and feels they can
+never forget." Alone at midnight, John Melmoth reads the
+manuscript, which is reputed to have been written by Stanton, an
+English traveller in Spain, about 1676. The document relates a
+startling story of a mysterious Englishman who appears at a
+Spanish wedding with disastrous consequences, and reappears
+before Stanton in a madhouse offering release on dreadful
+conditions. After reading it, John Melmoth decides to burn the
+family portrait. He is visited by a sinister form, who proves
+that he is no figment of the imagination by leaving black and
+blue marks on his relative's wrist. The next night a ship is
+wrecked in a storm. The Wanderer appears, and mocks the victims
+with fiendish mirth. The sole survivor, Don Alonzo Monçada,
+unfolds his story to John Melmoth. The son of a great duke, he
+has been forced to become a monk to save his mother's honour. He
+dwells with the excruciating detail in which Maturin is inclined
+to revel, on the horrors of Spanish monasteries. Escaping through
+a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who
+incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers.
+His plan of flight is foiled, and he is borne off to the dungeons
+of the Inquisition. Here the Wanderer, who has a miraculous power
+to enter where he will, offers, on the ineffable condition, to
+procure his freedom. Monçada repudiates the temptation, effects
+his own escape during a great fire, and catches sight of the
+stranger on the summit of a burning building. He takes refuge
+with a Jew, but, to evade the vigilance of the Inquisitors,
+disappears suddenly down an underground passage, where he finds
+Adonijah, another Jew, who obligingly employs him as an
+amanuensis, and sets him to copy a manuscript. This gives Maturin
+the opportunity, for which he has been waiting, to introduce his
+"Tale of the Indian." The story of Immalee, who is visited on her
+desert island by the Wanderer in the guise of a lover as well as
+a tempter, forms the most memorable part of _Melmoth_. In the
+other stories the stranger has been a taciturn creature, relying
+on the lustre of his eyes rather than on his powers of eloquence
+to win over his victims. To Immalee he pours forth floods of
+rhetoric on the sins and follies of mankind. Had she not been one
+of Rousseau's children of nature, and so innocent alike of a
+knowledge of Shakespeare and of the fault of impatience, she
+would surely have exclaimed: "If thou hast news, I prithee
+deliver them like a man of this world." When Immalee is
+transported to Spain and reassumes her baptismal name of Isidora,
+Melmoth follows her and their conversations are continued at dead
+of night through the lattice. Here they discourse on the real
+nature of love. At length the gloomy lover persuades Isidora to
+marry him. Their midnight nuptials take place against a weird
+background. By a narrow, precipitous path they approach the
+ruined chapel, and are united by a hand "as cold as that of
+death." Meanwhile, Don Francisco, Isidora's father, on his way
+home, spends the night at an inn, where a stranger insists on
+telling him "The Tale of Guzman." In this tale the tempter visits
+a father whose family is starving, but who resists the lure of
+wealth. Maturin portrays with extraordinary power the
+deterioration in the character of an old man Walberg, through the
+effects of poverty. At the close of the narration Don Francisco
+falls into a deep slumber, but is sternly awakened by a stranger
+with an awful eye, who insists on becoming his fellow traveller,
+and on telling, in defiance of protests, yet another story. The
+prologue to the Lover's Tale is almost Chaucerian in its humour:
+
+     "It was with the utmost effort of his mixed politeness
+     and fear that he prepared himself to listen to the
+     tale, which the stranger had frequently amid their
+     miscellaneous conversation, alluded to, and showed an
+     evident anxiety to relate. These allusions were
+     attended with unpleasant reminiscences to the
+     hearer--but he saw that it was to be, and armed himself
+     as best he might with courage to hear. 'I would not
+     intrude on you, Senhor,' says the stranger, 'with a
+     narrative in which you can feel but little interest,
+     were I not conscious that its narration may operate as
+     a warning, the most awful, salutary and efficacious to
+     yourself.'"
+
+At this veiled hint Don Francisco discharges a volley of oaths,
+but he is silenced completely by the smile of the stranger--"that
+spoke bitterer and darker things than the fiercest frown that
+ever wrinkled the features of man." After this he cannot choose
+but hear, and the stranger seizes his opportunity to begin an
+uncommonly dull story, connected with a Shropshire family and
+intermingled with historical events. In this tale the Wanderer
+appears to a girl whose lover has lost his reason, and offers to
+restore him if she will accept his conditions. Once more the
+tempter is foiled. The story meanders so sluggishly that our
+sympathies are with Don Francisco, and we cannot help wishing
+that he had adopted more drastic measures to quieten the
+insistent stranger. At the conclusion Francisco mutters
+indignantly:
+
+     "It is inconceivable to me how this person forces
+     himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have
+     no more application to me than the legend of the Cid,
+     and may be as apocryphal as the ballad of
+     Roncesvalles--"
+
+but yet the stranger has not finished. He proceeds to tell him a
+tale in which he will feel a peculiar interest, that of Isidora,
+his own daughter, and finally urges him to hasten to her rescue.
+Don Francisco wanders by easy stages to Madrid, and, on his
+arrival, marries Isidora against her will to Montilla. Melmoth,
+according to promise, appears at the wedding. The bridegroom is
+slain. Isidora, with Melmoth's child, ends her days in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition, murmuring: "Paradise! will he be
+there?" So far as one may judge from the close of the story, it
+seems not.
+
+Monçada and John Melmoth, whom we left, at the beginning of the
+romance, in Ireland, are revisited by the Wanderer, whose time on
+earth has at last run out. He confesses his failure: "I have
+traversed the world in the search, and no one to gain that world,
+would lose his own soul." His words remind us of the text of the
+sermon which suggested to Maturin the idea of the romance. Like
+the companions of Dr. Faustus, Melmoth and Monçada hear terrible
+sounds from the room of the Wanderer in the last throes of agony.
+The next morning the room is empty; but, following a track to the
+sea-cliffs, they see, on a crag beneath, the kerchief the
+Wanderer had worn about his neck. "Melmoth and Monçada exchanged
+looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly
+home."
+
+This extraordinary romance, like _Montorio_, clearly owes much to
+the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and "Monk" Lewis. Immalee, as her
+name implies, is but a glorified Emily with a loxia on her
+shoulder instead of a lute in her hand. The monastic horrors are
+obviously a heritage from _The Monk_. The Rosicrucian legend, as
+handled in _St. Leon_, may have offered hints to Maturin, whose
+treatment is, however, far more imaginative and impressive than
+that of Godwin. The resemblance to the legend of the Wandering
+Jew need not be laboured. Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_ and the first
+part of Goethe's _Faust_ left their impression on the story. The
+closing scenes inevitably remind us of the last act of Marlowe's
+tragedy. But, when all these debts are acknowledged they do but
+serve to enhance the success of Maturin, who out of these varied
+strands could weave so original a romance. _Melmoth_ is not an
+ingenious patchwork of previous stories. It is the outpouring of
+a morbid imagination that has long brooded on the fearful and the
+terrific. Imbued with the grandeur and solemnity of his theme,
+Maturin endeavours to write in dignified, stately language. There
+are frequent lapses into bombast, but occasionally his rhetoric
+is splendidly effective:
+
+     "It was now the latter end of autumn; heavy clouds had
+     all day been passing laggingly and gloomily along the
+     atmosphere, as the hours pass over the human mind and
+     life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
+     portentously off, like ships of war reconnoitring a
+     strong fort, to return with added strength and fury."
+
+He takes pleasure in coining unusual, striking phrases, such as:
+"All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,"
+or "Minutes are hours in the _noctuary_ of terror," or "The
+secret of silence is the only secret. Words are a blasphemy
+against that taciturn and invisible God whose presence enshrouds
+us in our last extremity."
+
+Maturin chooses his similes with discrimination, to heighten the
+effect he aims at producing:
+
+"The locks were so bad and the keys so rusty that it was like the
+cry of the dead in the house when the keys were turned," or:
+
+     "With all my care, however, the lamp declined,
+     quivered, flashed a pale light, like the smile of
+     despair, on me, and was extinguished ... I had watched
+     it like the last beatings of an expiring heart, like
+     the shiverings of a spirit about to depart for
+     eternity."
+
+There are no quiet scenes or motionless figures in _Melmoth_.
+Everything is intensified, exaggerated, distorted. The very
+clouds fly rapidly across the sky, and the moon bursts forth with
+the "sudden and appalling effulgence of lightning." A shower of
+rain is perhaps "the most violent that was ever precipitated on
+the earth." When Melmoth stamps his foot "the reverberation of
+his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with
+the thunder." Maturin's use of words like "callosity,"
+"induration," "defecated," "evanition," and his fondness for
+italics are other indications of his desire to force an
+impression by fair means or foul.
+
+The gift of psychological insight that distinguishes _Montorio_
+reappears in a more highly developed form in _Melmoth the
+Wanderer_. "Emotions," Maturin declares, "are my events," and he
+excels in depicting mental as well as physical torture. The
+monotony of a "timeless day" is suggested with dreary reality in
+the scene where Monçada and his guide await the approach of night
+to effect their escape from the monastery. The gradual surrender
+of resolution before slight, reiterated assaults is cunningly
+described in the analysis of Isidora's state of mind, when a
+hateful marriage is forced upon her. Occasionally Maturin
+astonishes us by the subtlety of his thought:
+
+"While people think it worth while to torment us we are never
+without some dignity, though painful and imaginary."
+
+It is his faculty for describing intense, passionate feeling, his
+power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for
+conveying his thoughts in rolling, rhythmical periods of
+eloquence, that make _Melmoth_ a memory-haunting book. With all
+his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last of the
+Goths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
+
+
+Beckford's _History of the Caliph Vathek_, which was written in
+French, was translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, who had the
+temerity to publish the English version--described as a
+translation from the Arabic--in 1786, before the original had
+appeared. The French version was published in Lausanne and in
+Paris in 1787. An interest in Oriental literature had been
+awakened early in the eighteenth century by Galland's
+epoch-making versions of _The Arabian Nights_ (1704-1717), _The
+Turkish Tales_ (1708) and _The Persian Tales_ (1714), which were
+all translated into English during the reign of Queen Anne. Many
+of the pseudo-translations of French authors, such as Gueulette,
+who compiled _The Chinese Tales_, _Mogul Tales_, _Tartarian
+Tales_, and _Peruvian Tales_, and Jean-Paul Bignon, who presented
+_The Adventures of Abdallah_, were quickly turned into English;
+and the Oriental story became so fashionable a form that didactic
+writers eagerly seized upon it as a disguise for moral or
+philosophical reflection. The Eastern background soon lost its
+glittering splendour and colour, and became a faded, tarnished
+tapestry, across which shadowy figures with outlandish names and
+English manners and morals flit to and fro. Addison's _Vision of
+Mirza_ (1711), Johnson's _Rasselas_ (1759), and various essays in
+_The Rambler_, Dr. Hawkesworth's _Almoran and Hamet_ (1761),
+Langhorne's _Solyman and Almena_ (1762), Ridley's _Tales of the
+Genii_ (1764), and Mrs. Sheridan's _History of Nourjahad_ (1767)
+were among the best and most popular of the Anglo-Oriental
+stories that strove to inculcate moral truths. In their
+oppressive air of gravity, Beckford, with his implacable hatred
+of bores, could hardly have breathed. One of the most amazing
+facts about his wild fantasy is that it was the creation of an
+English brain. The idea of _Vathek_ was probably suggested to
+Beckford by the witty Oriental tales of Count Antony Hamilton and
+of Voltaire. The character of the caliph, who desired to know
+everything, even the sciences which did not exist, is sketched in
+the spirit of the French satirists, who turned Oriental
+extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the
+close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls
+of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set
+out and rose to an exalted solemnity.
+
+Beckford's mind was so richly stored with the jewels of Eastern
+legend that it was inevitable he should shower from his treasury
+things new and old, but everything which passes through the
+alembic of his imagination is transmuted almost beyond
+recognition. The episode of the sinners with the flaming hearts
+has been traced[66] to a scene in the _Mogul Tales_, where Aboul
+Assam saw three men standing mute in postures of sorrow before a
+book on which were inscribed the words: "Let no man touch this
+divine treatise who is not perfectly pure." When Aboul Assam
+enquired of their fate they unbuttoned their waistcoats, and
+through their skin, which appeared like crystal, he saw their
+hearts encompassed with fire. In Beckford's story this grotesque
+scene assumes an awful and moving dignity. From _The Adventure of
+Abdallah, Son of Hanif_, Beckford derived the conception of a
+visit to the regions of Eblis, whom, however, by a wave of his
+wand, he transforms from a revolting ogre to a stately
+prince.[67]
+
+To read _Vathek_ is like falling asleep in a huge Oriental palace
+after wandering alone through great, echoing halls resplendent
+with a gorgeous arras, on which are displayed the adventures of
+the caliph who built the palaces of the five senses. In our dream
+the caliph and his courtiers come to life, and we awake dazzled
+with the memory of a myriad wonders. There throng into our mind a
+crowd of unearthly forms--aged astrologers, hideous Giaours,
+gibbering negresses, graceful boys and maidens, restless, pacing
+figures with their hands on their hearts, and a formidable
+prince--whose adventures are woven into a fantastic but distinct
+and definite pattern around the three central personages, the
+caliph Vathek, his exquisitely wicked mother Carathis, and the
+bewitching Nouronihar. The fatal palace of Eblis, with its lofty
+columns and gloomy towers of an architecture unknown in the
+annals of the earth, looms darkly in our imagination. Beckford
+alludes, with satisfaction, to _Vathek_ as a "story so horrid
+that I tremble while relating it, and have not a nerve in my
+frame but vibrates like an aspen,"[68] and in the _Episodes_
+leads us with an unhallowed pleasure into other abodes of
+horror--a temple adorned with pyramids of skulls festooned with
+human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with human faces, and an
+apartment whose walls were hung with carpets of a thousand kinds
+and a thousand hues, which moved slowly to and fro as if stirred
+by human creatures stifling beneath their weight. But Beckford
+passes swiftly from one mood to another, and was only momentarily
+fascinated by terror. So infinite is the variety of _Vathek_ in
+scenery and in temper that it seems like its wealthy, eccentric,
+author secluded in Fonthill Abbey, to dwell apart in defiant,
+splendid isolation.
+
+It is impossible to understand or appreciate _Vathek_ apart from
+Beckford's life and character, which contain elements almost as
+grotesque and fantastic as those of his romance. He was no
+visionary dreamer, content to build his pleasure-domes in air. He
+revelled in the golden glories of good Haroun-Alraschid,[69] but
+he craved too for solid treasures he could touch and handle, for
+precious jewels, for rare, beautiful volumes, for curious, costly
+furniture. The scenes of splendour portrayed in _Vathek_ were
+based on tangible reality.[70] Beckford's schemes in later
+life--his purchase of Gibbon's entire library, his twice-built
+tower on Lansdown Hill, were as grandiose and ambitious as those
+of an Eastern caliph. The whimsical, Puckish humour, which helped
+to counteract the strain of gloomy bitterness in his nature, was
+early revealed in his _Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary
+Painters_ and in his burlesques of the sentimental novels of the
+day, which were accepted by the compiler of _Living Authors_
+(1817) as a serious contribution to fiction by one Miss Jacquetta
+Agneta Mariana Jenks. Moore,[71] in his _Journal_, October 1818,
+remarks:
+
+     "The two mock novels, _Azemia_ and _The Elegant
+     Enthusiast_, were written to ridicule the novels
+     written by his sister, Mrs. Harvey (I think), who read
+     these parodies on herself quite innocently."
+
+Even in the gloomy regions of Eblis, Beckford will not wholly
+repress his sense of the ridiculous. Carathis, unawed by the
+effulgence of his infernal majesty, behaves like a buffoon,
+shouting at the Dives and actually attempting to thrust a Soliman
+from his throne, before she is finally whirled away with her
+heart aflame. The calm politeness with which the dastardly
+Barkiaroukh consents to a blood-curdling murder, the sardonic
+dialogue between Vathek on the edge of the precipice and the
+Giaour concealed in the abyss, the buoyantly high-spirited
+description of the plump Indian kicked and pursued like "an
+invulnerable football," the oppressive horror of the subterranean
+recesses, the mischievous pleasantry of the Gulchenrouz idyll
+reveal different facets of Beckford's ever-varying temper. In
+_Vathek_, Beckford found expression not only for his devotion to
+the Eastern outlook on life, but also for his own strangely
+coloured, vehement personality. The interpreter walks ever at our
+elbow whispering into our ear his human commentary on Vathek's
+astounding adventures.
+
+Beckford's pictures are remarkable for definite precision of
+outline. There are no vague hints and suggestions, no lurking
+shadows concealing untold horrors. The quaint dwarfs perched on
+Vathek's shoulders, the children chasing blue butterflies,
+Nouronihar and her maidens on tiptoe, with their hair floating in
+the breeze, stand out in clear relief, as if painted on a fresco.
+The imagery is so lucid that we are able to follow with
+effortless pleasure the intricate windings of a plot which at
+Beckford's whim twists and turns through scenes of wonderful
+variety. Amid his wild, erratic excursions he never loses sight
+of the end in view; the story, with all its vagaries, is
+perfectly coherent. This we should expect from one who "loved to
+bark a tough understanding."[72] It is the intellectual strength
+and exuberant vitality behind Beckford's Oriental scenes that
+lend them distinction and power.
+
+_The History of the Caliph Vathek_ did not set a fashion. It is
+true that the Orient sometimes formed the setting of nineteenth
+century novels, as in Disraeli's _Alvoy_ (1833), where for a
+brief moment, when the hero's torch is extinguished by bats on
+his entry into subterranean portals, we find ourselves in the
+abode of wonder and terror; but not till Meredith's _Shaving of
+Shagpal_ (1856) do we meet again Beckford's kinship with the
+East, and his gift for fantastic burlesque.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
+
+
+When Miss Austen was asked to write a historical romance
+"illustrative of the house of Coburg," she airily dismissed the
+suggestion, pleading mirthfully:
+
+     "I could not sit down seriously to write a serious
+     romance under any other motive than to save my life,
+     and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and
+     never relax into laughing at myself or at other people
+     I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the
+     first chapter."[73]
+
+If Godwin had been confronted with the same offer, he would have
+settled himself promptly to plot out a scheme, and within a few
+months a historical romance on the house of Coburg, accompanied
+perchance by a preface setting forth the evils of monarchy, would
+have been in the hands of the publisher. Unlike Miss Austen,
+Godwin had neither a sense of humour nor a fastidious artistic
+conscience to save him from undertaking incongruous tasks. He
+seems never even to have suspected the humour of life, and would
+have perceived nothing ludicrous in the spectacle of the author
+of _Political Justice_ embarking on such a piece of work. Those
+disquieting flashes of self-revelation that more imaginative men
+catch in the mirror of their own minds and that awaken sometimes
+laughter and sometimes tears, never disturbed Godwin's serenity.
+He brooded earnestly over his speculations, quietly ignoring
+inconvenient facts and never shrinking from absurd conclusions.
+In theory he aimed at disorganising the whole of human society,
+yet in actual life he was content to live unobtrusively,
+publishing harmless books for children; and though he abhorred
+the principle of aristocracy, he did not scruple to accept a
+sinecure from government through Lord Grey. Notwithstanding his
+stolid inconsistency and his deficiency in humour, Godwin is a
+figure whom it is impossible to ignore or to despise. He was not
+a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader
+of the trained thinkers of the revolutionary party, a political
+rebel who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the
+manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable
+and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the
+futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the
+aridity of his style. His _Political Justice_ remains,
+nevertheless, a lucidly written, well-ordered piece of
+intellectual reasoning. Shelley spoke of Godwin's _Mandeville_ in
+the same breath with Plato's _Symposium_[74] and the ideas
+expressed in _Political Justice_ inspired him to write not merely
+_Queen Mab_ but the _Revolt of Islam_ and _Prometheus Unbound_.
+Godwin's plea for the freedom of the individual and his belief in
+the perfectibility of man through reason had a far-reaching
+effect that cannot be readily estimated, but, as his theories
+only concern us here in so far as they affect two of his novels,
+it is unnecessary to pursue the trail of his influence further.
+
+That the readers of fiction in the last decade of the eighteenth
+century eagerly desired the mysterious and the terrible, Mrs.
+Radcliffe's widespread popularity proved unmistakably. To satisfy
+this craving, Godwin, who was ever on the alert to discover a
+subject which promised swift and adequate financial return,
+turned to novel-writing, and supplied a tale of mystery, _The
+Adventures of Caleb Williams_ (1794), and a supernatural,
+historical romance, _St. Leon_ (1799). As he was a political
+philosopher by nature and a novelist only by profession, he
+artfully inveigled into his romances the theories he wished to
+promote. The second title of _Caleb Williams_ is significant.
+_Things As They Are_ to Godwin's mind was synonymous with "things
+as they ought not to be." He frankly asserts: "_Caleb Williams_
+was the offspring of that temper of mind in which the composition
+of my _Political Justice_ left me"[75]--a guileless confession
+that may well have deterred many readers who recoil shuddering
+from political treatises decked out in the guise of fiction. But
+alarm is needless; for, although _Caleb Williams_ attempts to
+reveal the oppressions that a poor man may endure under existing
+conditions, and the perversion of the character of an aristocrat
+through the "poison of chivalry," the story may be enjoyed for
+its own sake. We can read it, if we so desire, purely for the
+excitement of the plot, and quietly ignore the underlying
+theories, just as it is possible to enjoy Spenser's sensuous
+imagery without troubling about his allegorical meaning. The
+secret of Godwin's power seems to be that he himself was so
+completely fascinated by the intricate structure of his story
+that he succeeds in absorbing the attention of his readers. He
+bestowed infinite pains on the composition of _Caleb Williams_,
+and conceived the lofty hope that it "would constitute an epoch
+in the mind of every reader."[76] A friend to whom he submitted
+two-thirds of his manuscript advised him to throw it into the
+fire and so safeguard his reputation. The result of this
+criticism on a character less determined or less phlegmatic than
+Godwin's would have been a violent reaction from hope to despair.
+But Godwin, who seems to have been independent of external
+stimulus, was not easily startled from his projects, and plodded
+steadily forward until his story was complete. He would have
+scorned not to execute what his mind had conceived. Godwin's
+businesslike method of planning the story backwards has been
+adopted by Conan Doyle and other writers of the detective story.
+The deliberate, careful analysis of his mode of procedure, so
+characteristic of his mind and temper, is full of interest:
+
+     "I bent myself to the conception of a series of
+     adventures of flight and pursuit: the fugitive in
+     perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the
+     worst calamities and the pursuer by his ingenuity and
+     resources keeping the victim in a state of the most
+     fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume.
+     I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and
+     impressive situation adequate to account for the
+     impulse that the pursuer should feel incessantly to
+     alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable
+     resolution never to allow him the least interval of
+     peace and security. This I apprehended could best be
+     effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of
+     which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
+     unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would
+     thus have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy
+     discoverer that he might deprive him of peace,
+     character and credit, and have him for ever in his
+     power. This constituted the outline of my second
+     volume... To account for the fearful events of the
+     third it was necessary that the pursuer should be
+     invested with every advantage of fortune, with a
+     resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle and with
+     extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my
+     purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale
+     be answered without his appearing to have been
+     originally endowed with a mighty store of amiable
+     dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to
+     the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
+     deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to
+     have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was
+     necessary to make him ... the tenant of an atmosphere
+     of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted
+     almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were
+     ample materials for a first volume."[77]
+
+Godwin hoped that an "entire unity of plot" would be the
+infallible result of this ingenious method of constructing his
+story, and only wrote in a high state of excitement when the
+"afflatus" was upon him. So far as we may judge from his
+description, he seems to have realised his story first as a
+complex psychological situation, not as a series of disconnected
+pictures. He thought in abstractions not in visual images, and he
+had next to make his abstractions concrete by inventing figures
+whose actions should be the result of the mental and moral
+conflict he had conceived. Godwin's attitude to his art forms a
+striking contrast to that of Mrs. Radcliffe. She has her set of
+marionettes, appropriately adorned, ready to move hither and
+thither across her picturesque background as soon as she has
+deftly manipulated the machinery which is to set them in motion.
+Godwin, on the other hand, first constructs his machinery, and
+afterwards, with laborious effort, carves the figures who are to
+be attached to the wires. He cares little for costume or setting,
+but much for the complicated mechanism that controls the destiny
+of his characters. The effect of this difference in method is
+that we soon forget the details of Mrs. Radcliffe's plots, but
+remember isolated pictures. After reading _Caleb Williams_ we
+recollect the outline of the story in so far as it relates to the
+psychology of Falkland and his secretary; but of the actual
+scenes and people only vague images drift through our memory.
+Godwin's point of view was not that of an artist but of a
+scientist, who, after patiently investigating and analysing
+mental and emotional phenomena, chose to embody his results in
+the form of a novel. He spared no pains to make his narrative
+arresting and convincing. The story is told by Caleb Williams
+himself, who, in describing his adventures, revives the passions
+and emotions that had stirred him in the past. By this device
+Godwin trusted to lend energy and vitality to his story.
+
+Caleb Williams, a raw country youth, becomes secretary to
+Falkland, a benevolent country gentleman, who has come to settle
+in England after spending some years in Italy. Collins, the
+steward, tells Williams his patron's history. Falkland has always
+been renowned for the nobility of his character. In Italy, where
+he inspired the love and devotion of an Italian lady, he avoided,
+by "magnanimity," a duel with her lover. On Falkland's return to
+England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his
+popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him. When Miss
+Melville, Tyrrel's ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who
+had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to
+a boorish, brutal farm-labourer. Though Falkland's timely
+intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died
+as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of
+tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public assembly to
+denounce Tyrrel as her murderer. The squire retaliated by making
+a personal assault on his antagonist. As Falkland "had perceived
+the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel," and as
+duelling according to the Godwinian principles was "the vilest of
+all egotism," he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of
+meeting his assailant in physical or even mental combat. Yet "he
+was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
+chivalry ever to forget the situation"--as Godwin seems to think
+a "man of reason" might have done in these circumstances. Tyrrel
+was stabbed in the dark, and Falkland, on whom suspicion
+naturally fell, was tried, but eventually acquitted without a
+stain on his character. Two men--a father and son called
+Hawkins--whom Falkland had befriended against the overbearing
+Tyrrel, were condemned and executed for the crime. This is the
+state of affairs when Caleb Williams enters Falkland's service
+and takes up the thread of the narrative. On hearing the story of
+the murder, Williams, who has been perplexed by the gloomy moods
+of his master, allows his suspicions to rest on Falkland, and to
+gratify his overmastering passion of curiosity determines to spy
+incessantly until he has solved the problem. One day, after
+having heard a groan of anguish, Williams peers through the
+half-open door of a closet, and catches sight of Falkland in the
+act of opening the lid of a chest. This incident fans his
+smouldering curiosity into flame, and he is soon after detected
+by his master in an attempt to break open the chest in the
+"Bluebeard's chamber." Not without cause, Falkland is furiously
+angry, but for some inexplicable reason confesses to the murder,
+at the same time expressing his passionate determination at all
+costs to preserve his reputation. He is tortured, not by remorse
+for his crime, but by the fear of being found out, and seeks to
+terrorise Williams into silence by declaring:
+
+     "To gratify a foolishly inquisitive humour you have
+     sold yourself. You shall continue in my service, but
+     can never share my affection. If ever an unguarded word
+     escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy
+     or suspicion, expect to pay for it by your death or
+     worse."
+
+From this moment Williams is helpless. Turn where he will, the
+toils of Falkland encompass him. Forester, Falkland's
+half-brother, tries to persuade Williams to enter his service.
+Williams endeavours to flee from his master, who prevents his
+escape by accusing him, in the presence of Forester, of stealing
+some jewellery and bank-notes which have disappeared in the
+confusion arising from an alarm of fire. The plunder has been
+placed in Williams' boxes, and the evidence against him is
+overwhelming. He is imprisoned, and the sordid horror of his life
+in the cells gives Godwin an opportunity of showing "how man
+becomes the destroyer of man." He escapes, and is sheltered by a
+gang of thieves, whose leader, Raymond, a Godwinian theorist,
+listens with eager sympathy to his tale, which he regards as
+"only one fresh instance of the tyranny and perfidiousness
+exercised by the powerful members of the community against those
+who are less privileged than themselves." When a reward is
+offered for the capture of Williams, the thieves are persuaded
+that they must not deliver the lamb to the wolf. After an old
+hag, whose animosity he has aroused, has made a bloodthirsty
+attack on him with a hatchet, Williams feels obliged to leave
+their habitation "abruptly without leave-taking." He then assumes
+beggar's attire and an Irish brogue, but is soon compelled to
+seek a fresh disguise. In Wales as in London, he comes across
+someone who has known Falkland, and is reviled for his treachery
+to so noble a master, and cast forth with ignominy. He discovers
+that Falkland has hired an unscrupulous villain, Gines, to follow
+him from place to place, blackening his reputation. Finally
+desperation drives him to accuse Falkland openly, though, after
+doing so, he praises the murderer, and loathes himself for his
+betrayal:
+
+"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature ... a man worthy of affection
+and kindness ... I am myself the basest and most odious of
+mankind."
+
+The inexorable persecutor in return cries at last:
+
+     "Williams, you have conquered! I see too late the
+     greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it
+     is to my fault and not yours that I owe my ruin ... I
+     am the most execrable of all villains... As reputation
+     was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that
+     death and infamy must seize me together."
+
+Three days later Falkland dies, but instead of experiencing
+relief at the death of his persecutor, Williams becomes the
+victim of remorse, regarding himself as the murderer of a noble
+spirit, who had been inevitably ruined by the corruption of human
+society:
+
+"Thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth,
+and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to
+thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
+madness."
+
+At the conclusion of the story, Godwin has not succeeded in
+making his moral very clear. The "wicked aristocrat" who figures
+in the preface as "carrying into private life the execrable
+principles of kings and ministers" emerges at last almost as a
+saintly figure, who through a false notion of honour has
+unfortunately become the victim of a brutal squire. But, if the
+story does not "rouse men to a sense of the evils of slavery," or
+"constitute an epoch in the mind of every reader," it has
+compensating merits and may be read with unfailing interest
+either as a study of morbid psychology or as a spirited detective
+story. Godwin's originality in his dissection of human motive has
+hardly yet been sufficiently emphasised, perhaps because he is so
+scrupulous in acknowledging literary debts.[78] From Mrs.
+Radcliffe, whose _Romance of the Forest_ was published the year
+before _Caleb Williams_, he borrowed the mysterious chest, the
+nature of whose contents is hinted at but never actually
+disclosed; but Godwin was no wizard, and had neither the gift nor
+the inclination to conjure with Gothic properties. In leaving
+imperfectly explained the incident of the discovery of the heart
+in _The Monastery_, Scott shielded himself behind Godwin's Iron
+Chest, which gave its name to Colman's drama.[79] Godwin's
+peculiar interest was in criminal psychology, and he concentrates
+on the dramatic conflict between the murderer and the detective.
+An unusual turn is given to the story by the fact that the
+criminal is the pursuer instead of the pursued. Godwin intended
+later in life to write a romance based on the story of Eugene
+Aram, the philosophical murderer; and his careful notes on the
+scheme are said to have been utilised by his friend, Bulwer
+Lytton, in his novel of that name.[80] _Caleb Williams_ helped to
+popularise the criminal in fiction, and _Paul Clifford_, the
+story of the chivalrous highwayman, is one of its literary
+descendants.
+
+Godwin was a pioneer breaking new ground in fiction; and, as he
+was a man of talent rather than of genius, it is idle to expect
+perfection of workmanship. The story is full of improbabilities,
+but they are described in so matter-of-fact a style that we
+"soberly acquiesce." After an hour of Godwin's grave society an
+effervescent sense of humour subsides. A mind open to suggestion
+is soon infected by his imperturbable seriousness, which
+effectually stills "obstinate questionings." Even the brigands
+who live with their philanthropic leader are accepted without
+demur. After all, Raymond is only Robin Hood turned political
+philosopher. The ingenious resources of _Caleb Williams_ when he
+strives to elude his pursuer are part of the legitimate
+stock-in-trade of the hero of a novel of adventure. He is not as
+other men are, and comes through perilous escapades with
+miraculous success. It is at first difficult to see why Falkland
+does not realise that his plan of ceaselessly harassing his
+victim is likely to force Williams to accuse him publicly, but
+gradually we begin to regard his mental obliquity as one of the
+decrees of fate. Falkland's obtuseness is of the same nature as
+that of the sleeper who undertakes a voyage to Australia to
+deliver a letter which anywhere but in a dream would have been
+dropped in the nearest pillar-box. The obvious solution that
+would occur to a waking mind is persistently evasive. The plot of
+_Caleb Williams_ hinges on an improbability, but so does that of
+_King Lear_; and if it had not been for Falkland's stupidity, the
+story would have ended with the first volume. Godwin excels in
+the analysis of mental conditions, but fails when he attempts to
+transmute passionate feeling into words. We are conscious that he
+is a cold-blooded spectator _ab extra_ striving to describe what
+he has never felt for himself. It is not even "emotion
+recollected in tranquillity." Men of this world, who are carried
+away by scorn and anger, utter their feelings simply and
+directly. Godwin's characters pause to cull their words from
+dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that
+Williams has basely robbed his master is astonishingly elegant:
+"Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the
+opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed
+from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81]
+The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which
+was meant almost to annihilate Caleb Williams, lies effectually
+concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure
+to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections
+into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven
+impetuously forward by the excitement of his theme, he throws off
+jerky, spasmodic sentences containing but a single clause. His
+style is a curious mixture of these two manners.
+
+The aim of _St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century_, is to
+show that "boundless wealth, freedom from disease, weakness and
+death are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection and
+the charities of private life."[82] For four years Godwin had
+desired to modify what he had said on the subject of private
+affections in _Political Justice_, while he asserted his
+conviction of the general truth of his system. Godwin had argued
+that private affections resulted in partiality, and therefore
+injustice.[83] If a house were on fire, reason would urge a man
+to save Fénelon in preference to his valet; but if the rescuer
+chanced to be the brother or father of the valet, private feeling
+would intervene, unreasonably urging him to save his relative and
+abandon Fénelon. Lest he should be regarded as a wrecker of
+homes, Godwin wished to show that domestic happiness should not
+be despised by the man of reason. Instead of expressing his views
+on this subject in a succinct pamphlet, Godwin, elated by the
+success of _Caleb Williams_, decided to embody them in the form
+of a novel. He at first despaired of finding a theme so rich in
+interest as that of his first novel, but ultimately decided that
+"by mixing human feelings and passions with incredible situations
+he might conciliate the patience even of the severest
+judges."[84] The phrase, "mixing human feelings," betrays in a
+flash Godwin's mechanical method of constructing a story. He
+makes no pretence that _St. Leon_ grew naturally as a work of
+art. He imposed upon himself an unsuitable task, and, though he
+doggedly accomplished it, the result is dull and laboured.
+
+The plot of _St. Leon_ was suggested by Dr. John Campbell's
+_Hermippus Redivivus_,[85] and centres round the theories of the
+Rosicrucians. The first volume describes the early life of the
+knight St. Leon, his soldiering, his dissipations, and his happy
+marriage to Marguerite, whose character is said to have been
+modelled on that of Mary Wollstonecraft. In Paris he is tempted
+into extravagance and into playing for high stakes, with the
+result that he retires to Switzerland the "prey of poverty and
+remorse." Misfortunes pursue him for some time, but he at last
+enjoys six peaceful years, at the end of which he is visited by a
+mysterious old man, whom he conceals in a summer-house, and whom
+he refuses to betray to the Inquisitors in search of him. In
+return the old man reveals to him the secret of the elixir vitæ,
+and of the philosopher's stone. Marguerite becomes suspicious of
+the source of her husband's wealth: "For a soldier you present me
+with a projector and a chemist, a cold-blooded mortal raking in
+the ashes of a crucible for a selfish and solitary advantage."
+His son, Charles, unable to endure the aspersions cast upon his
+father's honour during their travels together in Germany, deserts
+him. St. Leon is imprisoned because he cannot account for the
+death of the stranger and for his own sudden acquisition of
+wealth, but contrives his escape by bribing the jailor. He
+travels to Italy, but is unable to escape from misfortune.
+Suspected of black magic, he becomes an object of hatred to the
+inhabitants of the town where he lives. His house is burnt down,
+his servant and his favourite dog are killed, and he soon hears
+of the death of his unhappy wife. He is imprisoned in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition, but escapes, and takes refuge with a
+Jew, whom he compels to shelter him, until another dose of the
+elixir restores his youthful appearance, and he sets forth again,
+this time disguised as a wealthy Spanish cavalier. He visits his
+own daughters, representing himself as the executor under their
+father's will. He decides to devote himself to the service of
+others, and is revered as the saviour of Hungary, until
+disaffection, caused by a shortage of food, renders him
+unpopular. He makes a friend of Bethlem Gabor, whose wife and
+children have been savagely murdered by a band of marauders. St.
+Leon, we are told, "found an inexhaustible and indescribable
+pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul."
+But Gabor soon conceives a bitter hatred against him, and entraps
+him in a subterranean vault, where he languishes for many months,
+refusing to yield up his secret. At length the castle is
+besieged, and Gabor before his death gives St. Leon his liberty.
+The leader of the expedition proves to be St. Leon's long-lost
+son, Charles, who has assumed the name of De Damville. St. Leon,
+without at first revealing his identity, cultivates the
+friendship of his son, but Charles, on learning of his dealings
+with the supernatural, repudiates his father. Finally the
+marriage of his son to Pandora proves to St. Leon that despite
+his misfortunes "there is something in this world worth living
+for."
+
+The Inquisition scenes of _St. Leon_ were undoubtedly coloured
+faintly by those of Lewis's _Monk_ (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's
+_Italian_ (1798); but it is characteristic of Godwin that instead
+of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses
+rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the
+Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the
+philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye
+so familiar to readers of the novel of terror: "You wished to
+escape from its penetrating power, but you had not the strength
+to move. I began to feel as if it were some mysterious and
+superior being in human form;"[86] but apart from this trait he
+is not an impressive figure. The only character who would have
+felt perfectly at home in the realm of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk"
+Lewis is Bethlem Gabor, who appears for the first time in the
+fourth volume of _St. Leon_. He is akin to Schedoni and his
+compeers in his love of solitude, his independence of
+companionship, and his superhuman aspect, but he is a figure who
+inspires awe and pity as well as terror. Beside this personage
+the other characters pale into insignificance:
+
+     "He was more than six feet in stature ... and he was
+     built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain
+     the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like
+     thunder ... his head and chin were clothed with a thick
+     and shaggy hair, in colour a dead-black. He had
+     suffered considerable mutilation in the services
+     through which he had passed ... Bethlem Gabor, though
+     universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of
+     a soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of
+     reserve and taciturnity... Seldom did he allow himself
+     to open his thoughts but when he did, Great God! what
+     supernatural eloquence seemed to inspire and enshroud
+     him... Bethlem Gabor's was a soul that soared to a
+     sightless distance above the sphere of pity."[87]
+
+The superstitions of bygone ages, which had fired the imagination
+of so many writers of romance, left Godwin cold. He was mildly
+interested in the supernatural as affording insight into the
+"credulity of the human mind," and even compiled a treatise on
+_The Lives of the Necromancers_ (1834).[88] But the hints and
+suggestions, the gloom, the weird lights and shades which help to
+create that romantic atmosphere amid which the alchemist's dream
+seems possible of realisation are entirely lacking in Godwin's
+story. He displays everything in a high light. The transference
+of the gifts takes place not in the darkness of a subterranean
+vault, but in the calm light of a summer evening. No unearthly
+groans, no phosphorescent lights enhance the horror and mystery
+of the scene. Godwin is coolly indifferent to historical
+accuracy, and fails to transport us back far beyond the end of
+the eighteenth century. Rousseau's theories were apparently
+disseminated widely in 1525. _St. Leon_ is remembered now rather
+for its position in the history of the novel than for any
+intrinsic charm. Godwin was the first to embody in a romance the
+ideas of the Rosicrucians which inspired Bulwer Lytton's _Zicci_,
+_Zanoni_ and _A Strange Story_.
+
+_St. Leon_ was travestied, the year after it appeared, in a work
+called _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_,
+by "Count Reginald de St. Leon," which gives a scathing survey of
+the plot, with all its improbabilities exposed. The bombastic
+style of _St. Leon_ is imitated and only slightly exaggerated,
+and the author finally satirises Godwin bitterly:
+
+     "Thinking from my political writings that I was a good
+     hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing.
+     These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I
+     had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine
+     high-sounding periods would assist to make the
+     unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious
+     reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I could invent."[89]
+
+The parodist takes Godwin almost as seriously as he took himself,
+and his attack is needlessly savage. Godwin's political opinions
+may account for the brutality of his assailant who doubtless
+belonged to the other camp. When Godwin attempts the supernatural
+in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of
+mystery. The apparition in _Cloudesley_ appears, fades, and
+reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the
+Cheshire Cat in _Alice in Wonderland_:
+
+     "I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from
+     among the trees as I passed. I saw the features as
+     distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon
+     them... It was by degrees that the features showed
+     themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow.
+     I gazed upon it intently. Presently it faded away by as
+     insensible degrees as those by which it had become
+     agonisingly clear. After a short time it returned."
+
+Godwin describes a ghost as deliberately and exactly as he would
+describe a house, and his delineation causes not the faintest
+tremor. Having little imagination himself, he leaves nothing to
+the imagination of the reader. In his _Lives of the
+Necromancers_, he shows that he is interested in discovering the
+origin of a belief in natural magic; but the life stories of the
+magicians suggest no romantic pictures to his imagination. In
+dealing with the mysterious and the uncanny, Godwin was
+attempting something alien to his mind and temper.
+
+In Godwin's _St. Leon_ the elixir of life is quietly bestowed on
+the hero in a summer-house in his own garden. The poet, Thomas
+Moore, in his romance, _The Epicurean_ (1827), sends forth a
+Greek adventurer to seek it in the secret depths of the catacombs
+beneath the pyramids of Egypt. He originally intended to tell his
+story in verse, but after writing a fragment, _Alciphron_,
+abandoned this design and decided to begin again in prose. His
+story purports to be a translation of a recently discovered
+manuscript buried in the time of Diocletian. Inspired by a dream,
+in which an ancient and venerable man bids him seek the Nile if
+he wishes to discover the secret of eternal life, Alciphron, a
+young Epicurean philosopher of the second century, journeys to
+Egypt. At Memphis he falls in love with a beautiful priestess,
+Alethe, whom he follows into the catacombs. Bearing a glimmering
+lamp, he passes through a gallery, where the eyes of a row of
+corpses, buried upright, glare upon him, into a chasm peopled by
+pale, phantom-like forms. He braves the terrors of a blazing
+grove and of a dark stream haunted by shrieking spectres, and
+finds himself whirled round in chaos like a stone shot in a
+sling. Having at length passed safely through the initiation of
+Fire, Water and Air, he is welcomed into a valley of "unearthly
+sadness," with a bleak, dreary lake lit by a "ghostly glimmer of
+sunshine." He gazes with awe on the image of the god Osiris, who
+presides over the silent kingdom of the dead. Watching within the
+temple of Isis, he suddenly sees before him the priestess,
+Alethe, who guides him back to the realms of day. At the close of
+the story, after Alethe has been martyred for the Christian
+faith, Alciphron himself becomes a Christian.
+
+In _The Epicurean_, Moore shows a remarkable power of describing
+scenes of gloomy terror, which he throws into relief by
+occasional
+glimpses of light and splendour. The journey of Alciphron
+inevitably challenges comparison with that of _Vathek_, but the
+spirit of mockery that animates Beckford's story is wholly
+absent. Moore paints a theatrical panorama of effective scenes,
+but his figures are mere shadows.
+
+The miseries of an existence, prolonged far beyond the allotted
+span, are depicted not only in stories of the elixir of life, but
+in the legends centring round the Wandering Jew. Croly's
+_Salathiel_ (1829), like Eugene Sue's lengthy romance, _Le Juif
+Errant_, won fame in its own day, but is now forgotten. Some of
+Croly's descriptions, such as that of the burning trireme, have a
+certain dazzling magnificence, but the colouring is often crude
+and startling. The figure of the deathless Jew is apt to be lost
+amid the mazes of the author's rhetoric. The conception of a man
+doomed to wander eternally in expiation of a curse is in itself
+an arresting theme likely to attract a romantic writer, but the
+record of his adventures may easily become monotonous.
+
+The "novel of terror" has found few more ardent admirers than the
+youthful Shelley, who saw in it a way of escape from the harsh
+realities and dull routine of ordinary existence. From his
+childhood the world of ideas seems to have been at least as real
+and familiar to him as the material world. The fabulous beings of
+whom he talked to his young sisters--the Great Tortoise in
+Warnham Pond, the snake three hundred years old in the garden at
+Field Place, the grey-bearded alchemist in his garret[90]--had
+probably for him as much meaning and interest as the living
+people around him. Urged by a restless desire to evade the
+natural and encounter the supernatural, he wandered by night
+under the "perilous moonshine," haunted graveyards in the hope of
+"high talk with the departed dead," dabbled in chemical
+experiments and pored over ancient books of magic. It was to be
+expected that an imagination reaching out so eagerly towards the
+unknown should find refuge from the uncongenial life of Sion
+House School in the soul-stirring region of romance. Transported
+by sixpenny "blue books" and the many volumed novels in the
+Brentford circulating library, Shelley's imagination fled
+joyously to that land of unlikelihood, where the earth yawns with
+bandits' caverns inhabited by desperadoes with bloody daggers,
+where the air continually resounds with the shrieks and groans of
+melancholy spectres, and where the pale moon ever gleams on dark
+and dreadful deeds. He had reached that stage of human
+development when fairies, elves, witches and dragons begin to
+lose their charm, when the gentle quiver of fear excited by an
+ogre, who is inevitably doomed to be slain at the last, no longer
+suffices. At the approach of adolescence with its surging
+emotions and quickening intellectual life, there awakens a demand
+for more thrilling incidents, for wilder passions and more
+desperate crimes, and it is at this period that the "novel of
+terror" is likely to make its strongest appeal. Youth, with its
+inexperience, is seldom tempted to bring fiction to the test of
+reality, or to scorn it on the ground of its improbability, and
+we may be sure that Shelley and his cousin, Medwin, as they hung
+spellbound over such treasures as _The Midnight Groan, The
+Mysterious Freebooter_, or _Subterranean Horrors_ did not pause
+to consider whether the characters and adventures were true to
+life. They desired, indeed, not to criticise but to create, and
+in the winter of 1809-1810 united to produce a terrific romance,
+with the title _Nightmare_, in which a gigantic and hideous witch
+played a prominent part. After reading Schubert's _Der Ewige
+Jude_, they began a narrative poem dealing with the legend of the
+Wandering Jew,[91] who lingered in Shelley's imagination in after
+years, and whom he introduced into _Queen Mab, Prometheus
+Unbound_, and _Hellas_. The grim and ghastly legends included in
+"Monk" Lewis's _Tales of Terror_ (1799) and _Tales of Wonder_
+(1801) fascinated Shelley;[92] and the suggestive titles
+_Revenge_;[93] _Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon_;[94] _St. Edmund's
+Eve_;[95] _The Triumph of Conscience_ from the _Poems by Victor
+and Cazire_ (1810), and _The Spectral Horseman_ from _The
+Posthumous Poems of Margaret Nicholson_ (1810), all prove his
+preoccupation with the supernatural. That Shelley's enthusiasm
+for the gruesome and uncanny was not merely morbid and
+hysterical, the mad, schoolboyish letter, written while he was in
+the throes of composing _St. Irvyne_, is sufficient indication.
+In a mood of grotesque fantasy and wild exhilaration, Shelley
+invites his friend Graham to Field Place. The postscript is in
+his handwriting, but is signed by his sister Elizabeth:
+
+     "The avenue is composed of vegetable substances moulded
+     in the form of trees called by the multitude Elm trees.
+     Stalk along the road towards them and mind and keep
+     yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained
+     stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the
+     lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons
+     and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the
+     grave, that occasionally may blast your straining
+     eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction
+     should yawn beneath your feet.
+
+     "Think of all this at the frightful hour of midnight,
+     when the Hell-demon leans over your sleeping form, and
+     inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you
+     to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Sussex
+     solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight--he
+     thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But
+     the day of retribution will arrive. H + D=Hell
+     Devil."[96]
+
+That Shelley could jest thus lightly in the mock-terrific vein
+shows that his mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and
+that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling
+diversion. His _Zastrozzi_ (1810) and _St. Irvyne_ (1811) were
+probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing
+letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish
+ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their
+composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A
+letter to Peacock (Nov. 9, 1818) from Italy re-echoes the note of
+child-like enjoyment in weaving romances:
+
+"We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
+Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any
+purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing
+a novel."
+
+_Zastrozzi_ was published in April, 1810, while Shelley was still
+at Eton, and with the £40 paid for the romance, he is said to
+have given a banquet to eight of his friends. Though the story is
+little more than a _réchauffé_ of previous tales of terror, it
+evidently attained some measure of popularity. It was reprinted
+in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ in 1839. Like Godwin,
+Shelley contrived to smuggle a little contraband theory into his
+novels, but his stock-in-trade is mainly that of the
+terrormongers. The book to which Shelley was chiefly indebted was
+_Zofloya or the Moor_ (1806), by the notorious Charlotte Dacre or
+"Rosa Matilda," but there are many reminiscences of Mrs.
+Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis. The sources of _Zastrozzi_ and
+_St. Irvyne_ have been investigated in the _Modern Language
+Review_ (Jan. 1912), by Mr. A. M. D. Hughes, who gives a complete
+analysis of the plot of _Zofloya_, and indicates many parallels
+with Shelley's novels. The heroine of _Zofloya_ is clearly a
+lineal descendant of Lewis's Matilda, though Victoria di
+Loredani, with all her vices, never actually degenerates into a
+fiend. Victoria, it need hardly be stated, is nobly born, but she
+has been brought up amid frivolous society by a worthless mother,
+and: "The wildest passions predominated in her bosom; to gratify
+them she possessed an unshrinking, relentless soul that would not
+startle at the darkest crime."
+
+Zofloya, who spurs her on, is the Devil himself. The plot is
+highly melodramatic, and contains a headlong flight, an
+earthquake and several violent deaths. In _Zastrozzi_, Shelley
+draws upon the characters and incidents of this story very
+freely. His lack of originality is so obvious as to need no
+comment. The very names he chooses are borrowed. Julia is the
+name of the pensive heroine in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian
+Romance_. Matilda carries with it ugly memories of the lady in
+Lewis's _Monk_; Verezzi occurs in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
+Zastrozzi is formed by prefixing an extra syllable to the name
+Strozzi from _Zofloya_. The incidents are those which happen
+every day in the realm of terror. The villain, the hero, the
+melancholy heroine, and her artful rival, develop no new traits,
+but act strictly in accordance with tradition. They never
+infringe the rigid code of manners and morals laid down for them
+by previous generations. The scenery is invariably appropriate as
+a setting to the incidents, and even the weather may be relied on
+to act in a thoroughly conventional manner. The characters are
+remarkable for their violent emotions and their marvellously
+expressive eyes. When Verezzi's senses are "chilled with the
+frigorific torpidity of despair," his eyes "roll horribly in
+their sockets." When "direst revenge swallows up every other
+feeling" in the soul of Matilda, her eyes "scintillate with a
+fiend-like expression." Incidents follow one another with a wild
+and stupefying rapidity. Every moment is a crisis. The style is
+startlingly abrupt, and the short, disconnected paragraphs are
+fired off like so many pistol shots. The sequence of events is
+mystifying--Zastrozzi's motive for persecuting Verezzi is darkly
+concealed until the end of the story, for reasons known only to
+writers of the novel of terror. Shelley's romance, in short, is
+no better and perhaps even worse than that of the other disciples
+of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis.
+
+_St. Irvyne: or the Rosicrucian_ (1811), though it was written by
+a "Gentleman of the University of Oxford" and not by a schoolboy,
+shows slight advance on _Zastrozzi_ either in matter or manner.
+The plot indeed is more bewildering and baffling than that of
+_Zastrozzi_. The action of the story is double and alternate, the
+scene shifts from place to place, and the characters appear and
+disappear in an unaccountable and disconcerting fashion. This
+time Godwin's _St. Leon_ has to be added to the list of Shelley's
+sources. Ginotti, whose name is stolen from a brigand in
+_Zofloya_, is not the devil but one of his sworn henchmen, who
+has discovered and tasted the elixir vitae. Like Zofloya, he is
+surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery. So that he may himself
+die, Ginotti, like the old stranger in _St. Leon_, is anxious to
+impart his secret to another. He chooses as his victim,
+Wolfstein, a young noble who, like Leonardo in _Zofloya_, has
+allied himself with a band of brigands. The bandit, Ginotti, aids
+Wolfstein to escape with a beautiful captive maiden, for whom
+Shelley adopts the name Megalena from _Zofloya_. While the lovers
+are in Genoa, Megalena, discovering Wolfstein with a lady named
+Olympia, whose "character has been ruined by a false system of
+education," makes him promise to murder her rival. In Olympia's
+bedchamber Wolfstein's hand is stayed for a moment by the sight
+of her beauty--a picture which recalls the powerful scene in Mrs.
+Radcliffe's _Italian_, when Schedoni bends over the sleeping
+Ellena. After Olympia's suicide, Megalena and Wolfstein flee
+together from Genoa. In the tale of terror, as in the modern
+film-play, a flight of some kind is almost indispensable.
+Ginotti, whose habit of disappearing and reappearing reminds us
+of the ghostly monk in the ruins of Paluzzi, tells his history to
+Wolfstein, and, at the destined hour, bestows the prescription
+for the elixir, and appoints a meeting in St. Irvyne's abbey,
+where Wolfstein stumbles over the corpse of Megalena. Wolfstein
+refuses to deny God. Both Ginotti and his victim are blasted by
+lightning, amid which the "frightful prince of terror, borne on
+the pinions of hell's sulphurous whirlwind," stands before them.
+
+     "On a sudden Ginotti's frame, mouldered to a gigantic
+     skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glared in his
+     eyeless sockets. Blackened in terrible convulsions,
+     Wolfstein expired; over him had the power of hell no
+     influence. Yes, endless existence is thine, Ginotti--a
+     dateless and hopeless eternity of horror."
+
+Interspersed with this somewhat inconsequent story are the
+adventures of Eloise, who is first introduced on her return home,
+disconsolate, to a ruined abbey. We are given to understand that
+the story is to unfold the misfortunes which have led to her
+downfall, but she is happily married ere the close. She
+accompanies her dying mother on a journey, as Emily in _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_ accompanied her father, and meets a
+mysterious stranger, Nempère, at a lonely house, where they take
+refuge. Nempère proves to be a less estimable character than
+Valancourt, who fell to Emily's lot in similar circumstances. He
+sells her to an English noble, Mountfort, at whose house she
+meets Fitzeustace, who, like Vivaldi in _The Italian_, overhears
+her confession of love for himself. Nempère is killed in a duel
+by Mountfort. At the close, Shelley states abruptly that Nempère
+is Ginotti, and Eloise is Wolfstein's sister. In springing a
+secret upon us suddenly on the last page, Shelley was probably
+emulating Lewis's _Bravo of Venice_; but the conclusion, which is
+intended to forge a connecting link between the tales, is
+unsatisfying. It is not surprising that the publisher, Stockdale,
+demanded some further elucidation of the mystery. Ginotti,
+apparently, dies twice, and Shelley's letters fail to solve the
+problem. He wrote to Stockdale: "Ginotti, as you will see, did
+_not_ die by Wolfstein's hand, but by the influence of that
+natural magic, which, when the secret was imparted to the latter,
+destroyed him."[97] A few days later he wrote again, evidently in
+reply to further questions: "On a re-examination you will
+perceive that Mountfort physically did kill Ginotti, which must
+appear from the latter's paleness." The truth seems to be that
+Shelley was weary of his puppets, and had no desire to extricate
+them from the tangle in which they were involved, though he was
+impatient to see _St. Irvyne_ in print, and spoke hopefully of
+its "selling mechanically to the circulating libraries."
+
+Shelley took advantage of the privilege of writers of romance to
+palm off on the public some of his earliest efforts at
+versification. These poems, distributed impartially among the
+various characters, are introduced with the same laborious
+artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though
+suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to
+scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed
+be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to
+night or to the moon, however profound her woes. Superhuman
+strength and courage is an endowment necessary to all who would
+dwell in the realms of terror and survive the fierce struggle for
+existence. Peacock, in _Nightmare Abbey_, paints the Shelley of
+1812 in Scythrop, who devours tragedies and German romances, and
+is troubled with a "passion for reforming the world." "He slept
+with _Horrid Mysteries_ under his pillow, and dreamed of
+venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight
+conventions in subterranean caves... He had a certain portion of
+mechanical genius which his romantic projects tended to develop.
+He constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and
+secret passages, that would have baffled the skill of the
+Parisian police." His bearing was that of a romantic villain: "He
+stalked about like the grand Inquisitor, and the servants flitted
+past him like familiars."
+
+Although Shelley outgrew his youthful taste for horrors, his
+early reading left traces on the imagery and diction of his
+poetry. There is an unusual profusion in his vocabulary of such
+words as ghosts, shades, charnel, tomb, torture, agony, etc., and
+supernatural similes occur readily to his mind. In _Alastor_ he
+compares himself to
+
+  "an inspired and desperate alchymist
+  Staking his very life on some dark hope,"
+
+and cries:
+
+  "O that the dream
+  Of dark magician in his visioned cave
+  Raking the cinders of a crucible
+  For life and power, even when his feeble hand
+  Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
+  Of this so lonely world."
+
+In the _Ode to the West Wind_ his memories of an older and finer
+kind of romance suggested the fantastic comparison of the dead
+leaves to
+
+  "ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,"
+
+and in _Prometheus Unbound_ Panthea sees
+
+  "unimaginable shapes
+  Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deeps."
+
+The poem _Ginevra_, which describes an enforced wedding and the
+death of the bride at the sight of her real lover, may well have
+been inspired by reading the romances of terror, where such
+events are an everyday occurrence. The gruesome descriptions in
+_The Revolt of Islam_, the decay of the garden in _The Sensitive
+Plant_, the tortures of Prometheus, all show how Shelley strove
+to work on the instinctive emotion of fear. In _The Cenci_ he
+touches the profoundest depths of human passion, and shows his
+power of finding words, terrible in their simple grandeur, for a
+soul in agony. In the tragedies of Shakespeare and of his
+followers--Ford, Webster and Tourneur--Shelley had heard the true
+language of anguish and despair. The futile, frenzied shrieking
+of Matilda and her kind is forgotten in the passionate nobility
+or fearful calm of the speeches of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to be
+expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published _The
+Italian_, Jane Austen had completed her _Northanger Abbey_,
+ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that
+for the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Mrs. Radcliffe received £500, and
+for _The Italian_ £800; while for the manuscript of _Northanger
+Abbey_, the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of
+£10, selling it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.
+The contrast in market value is significant. The publisher, who,
+it may be added, was not necessarily a literary critic, probably
+realised that if the mock romance were successful, its tendency
+would be to endanger the popularity of the prevailing mode in
+fiction. Hence for many years it was concealed as effectively as
+if it had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. Among Jane Austen's early unpublished
+writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and
+exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly
+romances"; but her spirited defence of the novelist's art in
+_Northanger Abbey_ is clear evidence that her raillery is
+directed not against fiction in general, but rather against such
+"horrid" stories as those included in the list supplied to
+Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the sweetest creatures
+in the world."
+
+It has sometimes been supposed that the more fantastic titles in
+this catalogue were figments of Jane Austen's imagination, but
+the identity of each of the seven stories may be established
+beyond question. Two of the stories--_The Necromancer of the
+Black Forest_, a translation from the German, and _The Castle of
+Wolfenbach_, by Mrs. Eliza Parsons (who was also responsible for
+_Mysterious Warnings_)--may still be read in _The Romancist and
+Novelist's Library_ (1839-1841), a treasure-hoard of forgotten
+fiction. _Clermont_ (1798) was published by Mrs. Regina Maria
+Roche, the authoress of _The Children of the Abbey_ (1798), a
+story almost as famous in its day as _Udolpho_. The author of
+_The Midnight Bell_ was one George Walker of Bath, whose record,
+like that of Miss Eleanor Sleath, who wrote the moving history of
+_The Orphan of the Rhine_ (1798) in four volumes, may be found in
+Watts' _Bibliotheca Britannica_. _Horrid Mysteries_, perhaps the
+least credible of the titles, was a translation from the German
+of the Marquis von Grosse by R. Will. Jane Austen's attack has no
+tinge of bitterness or malice. John Thorpe, who declared all
+novels, except _Tom Jones_ and _The Monk_, "the stupidest things
+in creation," admitted, when pressed by Catherine, that Mrs.
+Radcliffe's were "amusing enough" and "had some fun and nature in
+them"; and Henry Tilney, a better judge, owned frankly that he
+had "read all her works, and most of them with great pleasure."
+From this we may assume that Miss Austen herself was perhaps
+conscious of their charm as well as their absurdity.
+
+Sheridan's Lydia Languish (1775) and Colman's Polly Honeycombe
+(1777) were both demoralised by the follies of sentimental
+fiction, as Biddy Tipkin, in Steele's _Tender Husband_ (1705),
+had been by romances. It was Miss Austen's purpose in creating
+Catherine Morland to present a maiden bemused by Gothic romance:
+
+"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would
+have supposed her born to be a heroine." In almost every detail
+she is a refreshing contrast to the traditional type. Two
+long-lived conventions--the fragile mother, who dies at the
+heroine's birth, and the tyrannical father--are repudiated at the
+very outset; and Catherine is one of a family of seven. We cannot
+conceive that Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines even at the age of ten
+would "love nothing so well in the world as rolling down the
+green slope at the back of the house." Her accomplishments lack
+the brilliance and distinction of those of Adela and Julia, but,
+
+     "Though she could not write sonnets she brought herself
+     to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her
+     throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on
+     the pianoforte, she could listen to other people's
+     performances with very little fatigue. Her greatest
+     deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of
+     drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her
+     lover's profile, that she might be detected in the
+     design. There she fell miserably short of the true
+     heroic height...Not one started with rapturous wonder
+     on beholding her...nor was she once called a divinity
+     by anybody."
+
+She had no lover at the age of seventeen,
+
+     "because there was not a lord in the neighbourhood--not
+     even a baronet. There was not one family among their
+     acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy
+     accidentally found at their door--not one whose origin
+     was unknown."
+
+Nor is Catherine aided in her career by those "improbable
+events," so dear to romance, that serve to introduce a hero--a
+robber's attack, a tempest, or a carriage accident. With a sly
+glance at such dangerous characters as Lady Greystock in _The
+Children of the Abbey_ (1798), Miss Austen creates the inert, but
+good-natured Mrs. Alien as Catherine's chaperone in Bath:
+
+     "It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs.
+     Alien that the reader may be able to judge in what
+     manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the
+     general distress of the work and how she will probably
+     contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the
+     desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is
+     capable, whether by her imprudence, vulgarity or
+     jealousy--whether by intercepting her letters, ruining
+     her character or turning her out of doors."
+
+Amid all the diversions of the gay and beautiful city of Bath,
+Miss Austen does not lose sight entirely of her satirical aim,
+though she turns aside for a time. Catherine's confusion of mind
+is suggested with exquisite art in a single sentence. As she
+drives with John Thorpe she "meditates by turns on broken
+promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys
+and trapdoors." This prepares us for the delightful scene in
+which Tilney, on the way to the abbey, foretells what Catherine
+may expect on her arrival. The hall dimly lighted by the expiring
+embers of a wood fire, the deserted bedchamber "never used since
+some cousin or kin had died in it about twenty years before," the
+single lamp, the tapestry, the funereal bed, the broken lute, the
+ponderous chest, the secret door, the vaulted room, the rusty
+dagger, the cabinet of ebony and gold with its roll of
+manuscripts, prove his intimacy with _The Romance of the Forest_,
+as well as with _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. The black chest and
+the cabinet are there in startling fulfilment of his prophecies,
+and when, just as with beating heart Catherine is about to
+decipher the roll of paper she has discovered in the cabinet
+drawer, she accidentally extinguishes her candle:
+
+     "A lamp could not have expired with more awful
+     effect... Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled
+     the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden
+     fury, added fresh horror to the moment... Human nature
+     could support no more ... groping her way to the bed
+     she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
+     agony by creeping far beneath the clothes... The storm
+     still raged... Hour after hour passed away, and the
+     wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the
+     clocks in the house before the tempest subsided, and
+     she, unknowingly, fell fast asleep. She was awakened
+     the next morning at eight o'clock by the housemaid's
+     opening her window-shutter. She flew to the mysterious
+     manuscript, If the evidence of sight might be trusted
+     she held a washing bill in her hands ... she felt
+     humbled to the dust."
+
+Even this bitter humiliation does not sweep away the cobwebs of
+romance from Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark
+suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether
+inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey
+than the other characters that he might reasonably be expected to
+dabble in the sinister. This time Catherine is misled by memories
+of the _Sicilian Romance_ into weaving a mystery around the fate
+of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her
+husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for
+"glimmering lights," like those in the palace of Mazzini, and
+determines to search for "a fragmented journal continued to the
+last gasp," like that of Adeline's father in _The Romance of the
+Forest_. In this search she encounters Tilney, who has returned
+unexpectedly from Woodston. He dissipates once and for all her
+nervous fancies, and Catherine decides: "Among the Alps and
+Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as
+were not spotless as an angel, might have the dispositions of a
+fiend. But in England it was not so."
+
+Miss Austen's novel is something more than a mock-romance, and
+Catherine is not a mere negative of the traditional heroine, but
+a human and attractive girl, whose fortunes we follow with the
+deepest interest. At the close, after Catherine's ignominious
+journey home, we are back again in the cool world of reality. The
+abbey is abandoned, after it has served its purpose in
+disciplining the heroine, in favour of the unromantic country
+parsonage.
+
+In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen had deftly turned the novels
+of Mrs. Radcliffe to comedy; but, even if her parody had been
+published in 1798, when we are assured that it was completed, her
+satirical treatment was too quiet and subtle, too delicately
+mischievous, to have disturbed seriously the popularity of the
+novel of terror. We can imagine the Isabella Thorpes and Lydia
+Bennets of the day dismissing _Northanger Abbey_ with a yawn as
+"an amazing dull book," and returning with renewed zest to more
+stimulating and "horrid" stories. Maria Edgeworth too had aimed
+her shaft at the sentimental heroine in one of her _Moral
+Tales--Angelina or L'Amie Inconnue_ (1801). Miss Sarah Green, in
+_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_ (1810) had displayed the
+extravagant folly of a clergyman's daughter whose head was turned
+by romances. Ridicule of a more blatant and boisterous kind was
+needed, and this was supplied by Eaton Stannard Barrett, who, in
+1813--five years before _Northanger Abbey_ appeared--published
+_The Heroine or The Adventures of Cherubina_. In this farcical
+romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an
+onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and
+blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like
+Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his
+farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it
+was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a
+madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring
+note in a rollicking high-spirited farce. The plights into which
+Cherubina is plunged are so needlessly cruel, that, while only
+intending to make her ridiculous, Barrett succeeds rather in
+making her pitiable. But many of her adventures are only a shade
+more absurd than those in the romances at which he tilts. Regina
+Maria Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798) would take the wind
+from the sails of any parodist. In protracting _The Heroine_
+almost to wearisome length, Barrett probably acted deliberately
+in mimicry of this and a horde of other tedious romances.
+Certainly the unfortunate Stuart waits no longer for the
+fulfilment of his hopes than Lord Mortimer, the long-suffering
+hero of _The Children of the Abbey_, who early in the first
+volume demands of Amanda Fitzalan, what he calls an
+"éclaircissement," but does not win it until the close of the
+fourth. Barrett does not scruple to mention the titles of the
+books he derides. The following catalogue will show how widely he
+casts his net: _Mysteries of Udolpho, Romance of the Forest,
+Children of the Abbey, Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, Clarissa
+Harlowe, Evelina, Camilla, Cecilia, La Nouvelle Heloïse,
+Rasselas, The Delicate Distress, Caroline of Lichfield_,[98] _The
+Knights of the Swan_,[99] _The Beggar Girl, The Romance of the
+Highlands_.[100] Besides these novels, which he actually names,
+Barrett alludes indirectly to several others, among them
+_Tristram Shandy_ and _Amelia_. From this enumeration it is
+evident that Barrett was satirising the heroine, not merely of
+the "novel of terror," but of the "sentimental novel" from which
+she traced her descent. He organises a masquerade, mindful that
+it is always the scene of the heroine's "best adventure," with
+Fielding's _Amelia_ and Miss Burney's _Cecilia_ and probably
+other novels in view. The precipitate flight of Cherubina,
+"dressed in a long-skirted red coat stiff with tarnished lace, a
+satin petticoat, satin shoes and no stockings," and with hair
+streaming like a meteor, described in Letter XX, is clearly a
+cruel mockery of Cecilia's distressful plight in Miss Burney's
+novel. Even Scott is not immune from Barrett's barbed arrows, and
+Byron is glanced at in the bogus antique language of "Eftsoones."
+Barrett, indeed, jeers at the mediaeval revival in its various
+manifestations and even at "Romanticism" generally, not merely at
+the new school of fiction represented by Mrs. Radcliffe, her
+followers and rivals. Not content with reaching his aim, as he
+does again and again in _The Heroine_, Barrett, like many another
+parodist, sometimes over-reaches it, and sneers at what is not in
+itself ridiculous.
+
+Nominally Cherubina is the butt of Barrett's satire, but the
+permanent interest of the book lies in the skilful stage-managing
+of her lively adventures. There is hardly an attempt at
+characterisation. The people are mere masqueraders, who amuse us
+by their costume and mannerisms, but reveal no individuality. The
+plot is a wild extravaganza, crammed with high-flown,
+mock-romantic episodes. Cherry Wilkinson, as the result of a
+surfeit of romances, perhaps including _The Misanthropic Parent
+or The Guarded Secret_ (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real
+father--a worthy farmer--to look for more aristocratic parents.
+As he is not picturesque enough for a villain, she repudiates him
+with scorn: "Have you the gaunt ferocity of famine in your
+countenance? Can you darken the midnight with a scowl? Have you
+the quivering lip and the Schedoniac contour? In a word, are you
+a picturesque villain full of plot and horror and magnificent
+wickedness? Ah! no, sir, you are only a sleek, good-humoured,
+chuckle-headed, old gentleman." In the course of her search she
+meets with amazing adventures, which she describes in a series of
+letters to her governess. She changes her name to Cherubina de
+Willoughby, and journeys to London, where, mistaking Covent
+Garden Theatre for an ancient castle, she throws herself on the
+protection of a third-rate actor, Grundy. He readily falls in
+with her humour, assuming the name of Montmorenci, and a suit of
+tin armour and a plumed helmet for her delight. Later, Cherubina
+is entertained by Lady Gwyn, who, for the amusement of her
+guests, heartlessly indulges her propensity for the romantic, and
+poses as her aunt. She is introduced in a gruesome scene, which
+recalls the fate of Agnes in Lewis's _Monk_, to her supposed
+mother, Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs, under the title
+_Il Castello di Grimgothico_, are inserted, after the manner of
+Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis, who love an inset tale, into the
+midst of the heroine's adventures. Cherubina determines to live
+in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These
+include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of
+comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and
+Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of
+minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the
+time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking."
+The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where
+she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The
+incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are
+foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend
+them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic
+castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering
+manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed
+barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina,
+for each item in this curious medley revives moving associations
+in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school. When Cherubina
+visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our
+thoughts to _The Sicilian Romance_. In Westminster Abbey she is
+disappointed to find "no cowled monks with scapulars"--a phrase
+which flashes across our memory the sinister figure of Schedoni
+in _The Italian_. At the masquerade she plans to wear a Tuscan
+dress from _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, and, when furnishing
+Monkton Castle she bids Jerry, the Irish comic servant, bring
+"flags stained with the best old blood--feudal, if possible, an
+old lute, lyre or harp, black hangings, curtains, and a velvet
+pall." Even the banditti and condottieri, who enliven so many
+novels of terror, cannot be ignored, and are represented by a
+troop of Irish ruffians. Barrett lets nothing escape him.
+Rousseau's theories are irreverently travestied. The thunder
+rolls "in an awful and Ossianly manner"; the sun, "that
+well-known gilder of eastern turrets," rises in empurpled
+splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates
+superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods;
+the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears
+"spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding,
+flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches
+torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of
+romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are
+exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in
+itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar
+with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying the
+booty, which Barrett rifles unceremoniously from his victims, is
+a fascinating pastime.
+
+Miss Austen, with her swift stiletto, and Barrett, with his
+brutal bludgeon--to use a metaphor of "terror"--had each
+delivered an attack; and in 1818, if we may judge by Peacock's
+_Nightmare Abbey_, there is a change of fashion in fiction. How
+far this change is due to the satirists it is impossible to
+determine. Mr. Flosky, "who has seen too many ghosts himself to
+believe in their external appearance," through whose lips Peacock
+reviles "that part of the reading public which shuns the solid
+food of reason," probably gives the true cause for the waning
+popularity of the novel of terror:
+
+     "It lived upon ghosts, goblins and skeletons till even
+     the devil himself ... became too base, common and
+     popular for its surfeited appetite. The ghosts have
+     therefore been laid, and the devil has been cast into
+     outer darkness."
+
+The novel of terror has been destroyed not by its enemies but by
+its too ardent devotees. The horrid banquet, devoured with
+avidity for so many years, has become so highly seasoned that the
+jaded palate at last cries out for something different, and,
+according to Peacock, finds what it desires in "the vices and
+blackest passions of our nature tricked out in a masquerade dress
+of heroism and disappointed benevolence"--an uncomplimentary
+description of the Byronic hero. Yet sensational fiction has
+lingered on side by side with other forms of fiction all through
+the nineteenth century, because it supplies a human and natural
+craving for excitement. It may not be the dominant type, but it
+will always exist, and will produce its thrill by ever-varying
+devices. Those who scoff may be taken unawares, like the company
+in _Nightmare Abbey_. The conversation turned on the subject of
+ghosts, and Mr. Larynx related his delightfully compact ghost
+story:
+
+     "I once saw a ghost myself in my study, which is the
+     last place any one but a ghost would look for me. I had
+     not been in it for three months and was going to
+     consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a
+     venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in
+     my armchair, reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a
+     moment, and so did I, and what it was and what it
+     wanted, I have never been able to ascertain"
+
+--a quieter, more inoffensive ghost than that described by Defoe
+in his _Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions_: "A
+grave, ancient man, with a full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded
+gown, who changed into the most horrible monster that ever was
+seen, with eyes like two fiery daggers red-hot." Mr. Flosky and
+Mr. Hilary have hardly declared their disbelief in ghosts when:
+
+     "The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure,
+     shrouded in white drapery with the semblance of a
+     bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly
+     up the apartment. Mr. Flosky was not prepared for this
+     apparition, and made the best of his way out at the
+     opposite door. Mr. Hilary and Marionetta followed
+     screaming. The honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of
+     his body, first rolled off the sofa and then under it.
+     Rev. Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much
+     precipitation that he overturned the table on the foot
+     of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears
+     of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his
+     senses that missing the door he threw up one of the
+     windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head
+     and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who
+     were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by
+     the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to
+     land."
+
+In Melincourt Castle a very spacious wing was left free to the
+settlement of a colony of ghosts, and the Rev. Mr. Portpipe often
+passed the night in one of the dreaded apartments over a blazing
+fire, with the same invariable exorcising apparatus of a large
+venison pasty, a little prayer-book, and three bottles of
+Madeira. Yet despite this excellent mockery, Peacock in _Gryll
+Grange_ devotes a chapter to tales of terror and wonder, singling
+out the works of Charles Brockden Brown for praise, especially
+his _Wieland_, "one of the few tales in which the final
+explanation of the apparently supernatural does not destroy or
+diminish the original effect."
+
+The title _Nightmare Abbey_ in a catalogue would undoubtedly have
+caught the eye of Isabella Thorp or her friend Miss Andrews,
+searching eagerly for "horrid mysteries," but they would perhaps
+have detected the note of mockery in the name. They would,
+however, have been completely deceived by the title, _The Mystery
+of the Abbey_, published in Liverpool in 1819 by T.B. Johnson,
+and we can imagine their consternation and disgust on the arrival
+of the book from the circulating library. The abbey is "haunted"
+by the proprietors of a distillery; and the spectre, described in
+horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red
+handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not
+a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a
+_picaresque_ novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a
+hoax.
+
+Belinda Waters, the heroine of one of Crabbe's tales, who was "by
+nature negatively good," is a portrait after Miss Austen's own
+heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of
+circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda tosses
+wearily aside a half-read volume of _Clarissa_, commended by her
+maid, "who had _Clarissa_ for her heart's dear friend."
+
+  "Give me," she said, "for I would laugh or cry,
+  'Scenes from the Life,' and 'Sensibility,'
+  'Winters at Bath': I would that I had one!
+  'The Constant Lover,' 'The Discarded Son,'[101]
+
+  "'The Rose of Raby,'[102] 'Delmore,' or 'The Nun'[103]--
+  These promise something, and may please, perhaps,
+  Like 'Ethelinda'[104] and the dear 'Relapse.'[105]
+  To these her heart the gentle maid resigned
+  And such the food that fed the gentle mind."
+
+But even the "delicate distress" of heroines, like Niobe, all
+tears, palls at last, and Belinda, having wept her fill, craves
+now for "sterner stuff."
+
+  "Yet tales of terror are her dear delight,
+  All in the wintry storm to read at night."
+
+In _The Preceptor Husband_,[106] the pretty wife, whose notions
+of botany are delightfully vague, and who, in English history,
+light-heartedly confuses the Reformation and the Revolution, has
+tastes similar to those of Belinda. Pursued by an instructive
+husband, she turns at bay, and tells her priggish preceptor what
+kind of books she really enjoys:
+
+  "Well, if I must, I will my studies name,
+  Blame if you please--I know you love to blame--
+  When all our childish books were set apart,
+  The first I read was 'Wanderings of the Heart.'[107]
+  It was a story where was done a deed
+  So dreadful that alone I feared to read.
+  The next was 'The Confessions of a Nun'--
+  'Twas quite a shame such evils should be done.
+  Nun of--no matter for the creature's name,
+  For there are girls no nunnery can tame.
+  Then was the story of the Haunted Hall,
+  When the huge picture nodded from the wall,
+
+  "When the old lord looked up with trembling dread,
+  And I grew pale and shuddered as I read.
+  Then came the tales of Winters, Summers, Springs
+  At Bath and Brighton--they were pretty things!
+  No ghosts or spectres there were heard or seen,
+  But all was love and flight to Gretna-green.
+  Perhaps your greater learning may despise
+  What others like--and there your wisdom lies."
+
+To this attractive catalogue the preceptor husband, no doubt,
+listened with the expression of Crabbe's _Old Bachelor_:
+
+  "that kind of cool, contemptuous smile
+  Of witty persons overcharged with bile,"
+
+but she at least succeeds in interrupting his flow of information
+for the time being. He retires routed. Crabbe's close
+acquaintance with "the flowery pages of sublime distress," with
+"vengeful monks who play unpriestly tricks," with banditti
+
+        "who, in forest wide
+  Or cavern vast, indignant virgins hide,"
+
+was, as he confesses, a relic of those unregenerate days, when
+
+  "To the heroine's soul-distracting fears
+  I early gave my sixpences and tears."[108]
+
+He could have groped his way through a Gothic castle without the
+aid of a talkative housekeeper:
+
+  "I've watched a wintry night on castle-walls,
+  I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls,
+  And when the weary world was sunk to rest
+  I've had such sights--as may not be expressed.
+  Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed,
+  The peasants shun it--they are all afraid;
+  For there was done a deed--could walls reveal
+  Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel!
+
+  "Most horrid was it--for, behold, the floor
+  Has stain of blood--and will be clean no more.
+  Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
+  And the long passage send a dismal tune,
+  Music that ghosts delight in--and now heed
+  Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed.
+  See! with majestic sweep she swims alone
+  Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan,
+  Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake
+  And the feet falter every step they take.
+  Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes
+  To find a something which will soon expose
+  The villainies and wiles of her determined foes,
+  And having thus adventured, thus endured,
+  Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured."[109]
+
+Crabbe's Ellen Orford in _The Borough_ (1810) is drawn from life,
+and in grim and bitter irony is intended as a contrast to these
+timorous and triumphant creatures
+
+          "borrowed and again conveyed,
+  From book to book, the shadows of a shade."
+
+Ellen's adventures are sordid and gloomy, without a hint of the
+picturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the
+"air-drawn" fancies that torture the sensitive Angelinas of
+Gothic fiction:
+
+  "But not like them has she been laid
+  In ruined castle sore dismayed,
+  Where naughty man and ghostly sprite
+  Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
+  Stalked round the room, put out the light
+  And shook the curtains round the bed.
+  No cruel uncle kept her land,
+  No tyrant father forced her hand;
+  She had no vixen virgin aunt
+  Without whose aid she could not eat
+  And yet who poisoned all her meat
+  With gibe and sneer and taunt."
+
+Though Crabbe showed scant sympathy with the delicate
+sensibilities of girls who hung enraptured over the high-pitched
+heroics and miraculous escapes of Clementina and her kindred, he
+found pleasure in a robuster school of romance--the adventures of
+mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, and Robin Hood, as set
+forth and embellished in the chapbooks which cottagers treasured
+"on the deal shelf beside the cuckoo-clock."[110] And in his
+poem, _Sir Eustace Grey_, he presents with subtle art a mind
+tormented by terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+In 1775 we find Miss Lydia Languish's maid ransacking the
+circulating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloak
+novels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twenty
+years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost
+from all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of
+_Udolpho_," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in her pocket-book
+the "horrid" titles of romances from the German. In 1814,
+apparently, the vogue of the sentimental, the scandalous, the
+mysterious, and the horrid still persisted. Scott, in the
+introductory chapter to _Waverley_, disrespectfully passes in
+review the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed to be
+supplanted by the series of romances he was then beginning:
+
+     "Had I announced in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, A Tale
+     of Other Days,' must not every novel reader have
+     anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
+     of which the eastern wing has been long uninhabited,
+     and the keys either lost or consigned to the care of
+     some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps
+     about the middle of the second volume were doomed to
+     guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts?
+     Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried
+     in my very title page? and could it have been possible
+     to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce
+     any scene more lively than might be produced by the
+     jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the
+     garrulous narrative of the heroine's
+     _fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of
+     blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's
+     hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance
+     from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image
+     forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
+     and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and
+     Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls,
+     caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and
+     dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my
+     work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
+     sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of
+     auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her
+     solitary hours, which she fortunately always finds
+     means of transporting from castle to cottage, though
+     she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a
+     two-pair-of-stairs window and is more than once
+     bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without
+     any guide but a blowsy peasant girl, whose jargon she
+     can scarcely understand? Or again, if my _Waverley_ had
+     been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst thou not,
+     gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch
+     of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private
+     scandal ... a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero
+     from the Barouche Club or the Four in Hand, with a set
+     of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen
+     Anne Street, East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow
+     Street Office?"
+
+Yet Scott himself had once trodden in these well-worn paths of
+romance. In the general preface to the collected edition of 1829,
+wherein he seeks to "ravel out his weaved-up follies," he refers
+to "a tale of chivalry planned thirty years earlier in the style
+of _The Castle of Otranto_, with plenty of Border characters and
+supernatural incident." His outline of the plot and a fragment of
+the story, which was to be entitled _Thomas the Rhymer_, are
+printed as an appendix to the preface. Scott intended to base his
+story on an ancient legend, found in Reginald Scot's _Discovery
+of Witchcraft_, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas of
+Hercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by a
+mysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a long
+range of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and by
+every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword
+in his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out of
+marble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like the
+halls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancient
+table, a horn and a sword. A voice bade Dick try his courage,
+warning him that much depended upon his first choosing either the
+horn or the sword. Dick, whose stout heart quailed before the
+supernatural terrors of the hall, attempted to blow the horn
+before unsheathing the sword. At the first feeble blast the
+warriors and their steeds started to life, the knights fiercely
+brandishing their weapons and clashing their armour. Dick made a
+fruitless attempt to snatch the sword. After a mysterious voice
+had pronounced his doom he was hurled out of the hall by a
+whirlwind of irresistible fury. He told his story to the
+shepherds, who found him dying on the cold hill side.
+
+Regarding this legend as "an unhappy foundation for a prose
+story," Scott did not complete his fragment, which in style and
+treatment is not unlike the Gothic experiments of Mrs. Barbauld
+and Dr. Nathan Drake. Such a story as that of the magic horn and
+sword might have been told in the simple words that occur
+naturally to a shepherd, "warmed to courage over his third
+tumbler," like the old peasant to whom Stevenson entrusts the
+terrible tale of _Thrawn Janet_, or to Wandering Willie, who
+declared:
+
+     "I whiles mak a tale serve the turn among the country
+     bodies, and I have some fearsome anes, that mak the
+     auld carlines shake on the settle, and bits o' bairns
+     skirl on their minnies out frae their beds."
+
+The personality of the narrator, swayed by the terror of his
+tale, would have cast the spell that Scott's carefully framed
+sentences fail to create. Another of Scott's _disjecta membra_,
+composed at the end of the eighteenth century, is the opening of
+a story called _The Lord of Ennerdale_, in which the family of
+Ratcliffe settle down before the fire to listen to a story
+"savouring not a little of the marvellous." As Lady Ratcliffe and
+her daughters
+
+     "had heard every groan and lifted every trapdoor in
+     company with the noted heroine of Udolpho, had
+     valorously mounted _en croupe_ behind the horseman of
+     Prague through all his seven translators, had followed
+     the footsteps of Moor through the forests of Bohemia,"
+
+and were even suspected of an acquaintance with Lewis's _Monk_,
+Scott was setting himself no easy task when he undertook to
+thrill these seasoned adventurers. After this prologue, which
+leads one to expect a banquet of horrors, only a very brief
+fragment of the story is forthcoming. Though he gently derides
+Lady Ratcliffe's literary tastes, Scott, too, was an admirer of
+Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, and had been so entranced by Burger's
+_Lenore_ that he attempted an English version.[111] It was after
+hearing Taylor's translation of this ballad read aloud that he
+uttered his dismal ejaculation: "I wish to heaven I could get a
+skull and two crossbones"--a whim that was speedily gratified.
+He, too, like Lady Ratcliffe, had read _Die Räuber_; and he
+translated Goethe's _Gëtz von Berlichingen_. He delighted in
+Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) where the verse gallops through
+horrors so fearful that the "lights in the chamber burn blue,"
+and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblin
+dramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, as
+Lewis's _Castle Spectre_ and Maturin's _Bertram_. His Latin
+call-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis or
+Harrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen--the disposal of the
+dead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually added
+to his store of quaint and grisly learning both from popular
+tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's
+_Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Sinclair's
+_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, whence he borrowed the name
+of the jackanapes in _Wandering Willie's Tale_, and the
+horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's
+_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Joseph Taylor's _History of
+Apparitions_, from which he quotes in _Woodstock_. He was
+familiar with all the niceties of ghostly etiquette; he could
+distinguish at a glance the various ranks and orders of demons
+and spirits; he was versed in charms and spells; he knew exactly
+how a wizard ought to be dressed. This lore not only stood him in
+good stead when he compiled his _Letters on Demonology and
+Witchcraft_ (1830), but served to adorn his poems and novels.
+There was nothing unhealthy in his attitude towards the spectral
+world. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double room,
+while a dead man occupied the other. Twice in his life he
+confessed to having felt "eerie"--once at Glamis Castle, which
+was said to be haunted by a Presence in a Secret Chamber, and
+once when he believed that he saw an apparition on his way home
+in the twilight; but he usually jests cheerfully when he speaks
+of the supernatural. He was interested in tracing the sources of
+terror and in studying the mechanism of ghost stories.
+
+The axioms which he lays down are sound and suggestive:
+
+     "Ghosts should not appear too often or become too
+     chatty. The magician shall evoke no spirits, whom he is
+     not capable of endowing with manners and language
+     corresponding to their supernatural character. Perhaps,
+     to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and
+     in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret
+     mode of securing a certain necessary degree of
+     credulity from the hearers of a ghost story... The
+     chord which vibrates and sounds at a touch remains in
+     silent tension under continued pressure."[113]
+
+Scott's ghost story, _The Tapestried Chamber, or the Lady in the
+Sacque_[114] which he heard from Miss Anna Seward, who had an
+unexpected gift for recounting such things at country house
+parties, gives the impression of being carefully planned
+according to rule. As a human being the Lady in the Sacque had a
+black record, but, considered dispassionately as a ghost, her
+manners and deportment are irreproachable. The ghost-seer's
+independence of character are so firmly insisted upon that it
+seems impertinent to doubt the veracity of his story. _My Aunt
+Margaret's Mirror_ was told to Scott in childhood by an ancient
+spinster, whose pleasing fancy it was to read alone in her
+chamber by the light of a taper fixed in a candlestick which she
+had formed out of a human skull, and who was learned in
+superstitious lore. She describes accurately the mood, when "the
+female imagination is in due temperature to enjoy a ghost story":
+
+     "All that is indispensable for the enjoyment of the
+     milder feeling of supernatural awe is that you should
+     be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps
+     over you when you hear a tale of terror--that
+     well-vouched tale which the narrator, having first
+     expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary
+     lore, selects and produces, as having something in it
+     which he has been always obliged to give up as
+     inexplicable. Another symptom is a momentary hesitation
+     to look round you, when the interest of the narrative
+     is at the highest; and the third, a desire to avoid
+     looking into a mirror, when you are alone, in your
+     chamber, for the evening."[115]
+
+In her story "Aunt Margaret" describes how, in a magic mirror
+belonging to Dr. Baptista Damiotti, Lady Bothwell and her sister
+Lady Forester see the wedding ceremony of Sir Philip Forester and
+a young girl in a foreign city interrupted by Lady Forester's
+brother, who is slain in the duel that ensues. Scott regarded
+these two stories as trifles designed to while away a leisure
+hour. On _Wandering Willie's Tale_--a masterpiece of supernatural
+terror--he bestowed unusual care. The ill fa'urd, fearsome
+couple--Sir Robert with his face "gash and ghastly as Satan's,"
+and "Major Weir," the jackanape, in his red-laced coat and
+wig--Steenie's eerie encounter with the "stranger" on horseback,
+the ribald crew of feasters in the hall are described so
+faithfully and in such vivid phrases that it is no wonder Willie
+should remark at one point of the story: "I almost think I was
+there mysell, though I couldna be born at the same time." The
+power of the tale, which fascinates us from beginning to end and
+which can be read again and again with renewed pleasure, depends
+partly on Wandering Willie's gifts as a narrator, partly on the
+emotions that stir him as he talks. With unconscious art, he
+always uses the right word in his descriptions, and chooses those
+details that help us to fix the rapidly changing imagery of his
+scenes; and he reproduces exactly the natural dialogue of the
+speakers. He begins in a tone of calm, unhurried narration, with
+only a hint of fear in his voice, but, at the death of Sir
+Robert, grows breathless with horror and excitement. The uncanny
+incident of the silver whistle that sounds from the dead man's
+chamber is skilfully followed by a matter-of-fact account of
+Steenie's dealings with the new laird. The emotion culminates in
+the terror of the hall of ghastly revellers, whose wild shrieks
+"made Willie's gudesire's very nails grow blue and chilled the
+marrow in his banes." So lifelike is the scene, so full of colour
+and movement, that Steenie's descendants might well believe that
+their gudesire, like Dante, had seen Hell.
+
+The notes, introductions and appendices to Scott's works are
+stored with material for novels of terror. The notes to
+_Marmion_, for instance, contain references to a necromantic
+priest whose story "much resembles that of Ambrosio in the
+_Monk_," to an "Elfin" warrior and to a chest of treasure
+jealously guarded for a century by the Devil in the likeness of a
+huntsman. In _The Lady of the Lake_ there is a note on the
+ancient legend of the Phantom Sire, in _Rokeby_ there is an
+allusion to the Demon Frigate wandering under a curse from
+harbour to harbour. To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion.
+He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poems
+or his romances. In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ he had,
+indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a leading part, but
+the imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the natural
+baseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs into
+the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in _The
+Monastery_ (1830)--a boisterous creature who rides on horseback,
+splashes through streams and digs a grave--was wisely withdrawn
+in the sequel, _The Abbot_. In the Introduction Scott states:
+
+     "The White Lady is scarcely supposed to have possessed
+     either the power or the inclination to do more than
+     inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is always
+     subjected by those mortals who ... could assert
+     superiority over her."
+
+The only apology Scott could offer to the critics who derided his
+wraith was that the readers "ought to allow for the capriccios of
+what is after all but a better sort of goblin." She was suggested
+by the Undine of De La Motte Fouqué. In his next novel, _The
+Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the
+magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch--not one bounce on the drum of
+Tedworth--not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch
+in the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightly
+from his imagination. Apparitions--such as the Bodach Glas who
+warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in _Waverley_, or
+the wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on the
+battlefield in _The Legend of Montrose_--had appeared in his
+earlier novels, and others appear again and again later. In _The
+Bride of Lammermoor_--the only one of Scott's novels which might
+fitly be called a "tale of terror"--the atmosphere of horror and
+the sense of overhanging calamity effectually prepare our minds
+for the supernatural, and the wraith of old Alice who appears to
+the master of Ravenswood is strangely solemn and impressive. But
+even more terrible is the description of the three hags laying
+out her corpse. The appearance of Vanda with the Bloody Finger in
+the haunted chamber of the Saxon manor in _The Betrothed_ is
+skilfully arranged, and Eveline's terror is described with
+convincing reality. In _Woodstock_, Scott adopted the method of
+explaining away the apparently supernatural, although in his
+_Lives of the Novelists_ he expressly disapproves of what he
+calls the "precaution of Snug the joiner." Charged by Ballantyne
+with imitating Mrs. Radcliffe, Scott defended himself by
+asserting:
+
+     "My object is not to excite fear of supernatural things
+     in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon
+     the agents of the story--one a man in sense and
+     firmness, one a man unhinged by remorse, one a stupid,
+     unenquiring clown, one a learned and worthy but
+     superstitious divine."[116]
+
+As Scott in his introduction quotes the passage from a treatise
+entitled _The Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_,
+which reveals that the mysteries were performed by one Joseph
+Collins with the aid of two friends, a concealed trap-door and a
+pound of gunpowder, he cannot justly be accused of deceiving his
+readers. There are suggestions of Mrs. Radcliffe's method in
+others of his novels. In _The Antiquary_, before Lovel retires to
+the Green Room at Monkbar, he is warned by Miss Griselda Oldbuck
+of a "well-fa'urd auld gentleman in a queer old-fashioned dress
+with whiskers turned upward on his upper lip as long as
+baudrons," who is wont to appear at one's bedside. He falls into
+an uneasy slumber, and in the middle of the night is startled to
+see a green huntsman leave the tapestry and turn into the
+"well-fa'urd auld gentleman" before his very eyes. In _Old
+Mortality_, Edith Bellenden mistakes her lover for his
+apparition, just as one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines might have
+done. In _Peveril of the Peak_, Fenella's communications with the
+hero in his prison, when he mistakes her voice for that of a
+spirit, have an air of Gothic mystery. The awe-inspiring villain,
+who appears in _Marmion_ and _Rokeby_, may be distinguished by
+his scowl, his passion-lined face and gleaming eye. Rashleigh, in
+_Rob Roy_, who, understanding Greek, Latin and Hebrew, "need not
+care for ghaist or barghaist, devil or dobbie," and whose
+sequestered apartment the servants durst not approach at
+nightfall for "fear of bogles and brownies and lang-nebbit things
+frae the neist world," is of the same lineage. Sir Robert
+Redgauntlet, too, might have stepped out of one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's romances. His niece is not unlike one of her
+heroines. She speaks in the very accents of Emily when she says:
+
+     "Now I have still so much of our family spirit as
+     enables me to be as composed in danger as most of my
+     sex, and upon two occasions in the course of our
+     journey--a threatened attack by banditti, and the
+     overturn of our carriage--I had the fortune so to
+     conduct myself as to convey to my uncle a very
+     favourable idea of my intrepidity."
+
+Jeanie Deans, the most admirable and the most skilfully drawn of
+Scott's women, is a daring contrast to the traditional heroine of
+romance. The "delicate distresses" of persecuted Emilies shrink
+into insignificance amid the tragedy and comedy of actual life
+portrayed in The Waverley Novels. The tyrannical marquises,
+vindictive stepmothers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks,
+chattering domestics and fierce banditti are thrust aside by a
+motley crowd of living beings--soldiers, lawyers, smugglers,
+gypsies, shepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures,
+guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow with
+sensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folk
+like "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty and
+Peter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our own
+world. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs.
+Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting and
+substantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs.
+Radcliffe's characters habitually discourse descends to some of
+Scott's personages, but is often exchanged for the natural idiom
+of simple people. The Gothic abbey, dropped down in an uncertain,
+haphazard fashion, in some foreign land, is deserted for huts,
+barns inns, cottages and castles, solidly built on Scottish soil.
+We leave the mouldy air of the subterranean vault for the keen
+winds of the moorland. The terrors of the invisible world only
+fill the stray corners of his huge scene. He creates romance out
+of the stuff of real life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.
+
+
+As the novel of terror passes from the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe to
+those of "Monk" Lewis, Maturin and their imitators, there is a
+crashing crescendo of emotion. The villain's sardonic smile is
+replaced by wild outbursts of diabolical laughter, his scowl
+grows darker and darker, and as his designs become more bloody
+and more dangerous, his victims no longer sigh plaintively, but
+give utterance to piercing shrieks and despairing yells; tearful
+Amandas are unceremoniously thrust into the background by
+vindictive Matildas, whose passions rage in all their primitive
+savagery; the fearful ghost "fresh courage takes," and stands
+forth audaciously in the light of day; the very devil stalks
+shamelessly abroad in manifold disguises. We are caught up from
+first to last in the very tempest, torrent and whirlwind of
+passion. When the novel of terror thus throws restraint to the
+winds, outrageously o'ersteps the modesty of nature and indulges
+in a farrago of frightfulness, it begins to defeat its own
+purposes and to fail in its object of freezing the blood. The
+limit of human endurance has been reached--and passed. Emphasis
+and exaggeration have done their worst. Battle, murder, and
+sudden death--even spectres and fiends--can appal no more. If the
+old thrill is to be evoked again, the application of more
+ingenious methods is needed.
+
+Such novels as Maturin's _Family of Montorio_, though "full of
+sound and fury," fail piteously to vibrate the chords of terror,
+which had trembled beneath Mrs. Radcliffe's gentle fingers. The
+instrument, smitten forcibly, repeatedly, desperately, resounds
+not with the answering note expected, but with an ugly, metallic
+jangle. _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's extraordinary
+masterpiece, was to prove--as late as 1820--that there were
+chords in the orchestra of horror as yet unsounded; but in 1816,
+when Mary Shelley and her companions set themselves to compose
+supernatural stories, it was wise to dispense with the shrieking
+chorus of malevolent abbesses, diabolical monks, intriguing
+marquises, Wandering Jews or bleeding spectres, who had been so
+grievously overworked in previous performances. Dr. Polidori's
+skull-headed lady, Byron's vampire-gentleman, Mrs. Shelley's
+man-created monster--a grotesque and gruesome trio--had at least
+the attraction of novelty. It is indeed remarkable that so young
+and inexperienced a writer as Mary Shelley, who was only nineteen
+when she wrote _Frankenstein_, should betray so slight a
+dependence on her predecessors. It is evident from the records of
+her reading that the novel of terror in all its guises was
+familiar to her. She had beheld the majestic horror of the halls
+of Eblis; she had threaded her way through Mrs. Radcliffe's
+artfully constructed Gothic castles; she had braved the terrors
+of the German Ritter-, Räuber- und Schauer-Romane; she had
+assisted, fearful, at Lewis's midnight diablerie; she had
+patiently unravelled the "mystery" novels of Godwin and of
+Charles Brockden Brown.[117] Yet, despite this intimate knowledge
+of the terrible and supernatural in fiction, Mrs. Shelley's theme
+and her way of handling it are completely her own. In an "acute
+mental vision," as real as the visions of Blake and of Shelley,
+she beheld her monster and the "pale student of unhallowed arts"
+who had created him, and then set herself to reproduce the thrill
+of horror inspired by her waking dream. _Frankenstein_ has,
+indeed, been compared to Godwin's _St. Leon_, but the resemblance
+is so vague and superficial, and _Frankenstein_ so immeasurably
+superior, that Mrs. Shelley's debt to her father is negligible.
+St. Leon accepts the gift of immortality, Frankenstein creates a
+new life, and in both novels the main interest lies in tracing
+the effect of the experiment on the soul of the man, who has
+pursued scientific inquiry beyond legitimate limits. But apart
+from this, there is little resemblance. Godwin chose the
+supernatural, because it chanced to be popular, and laboriously
+built up a cumbrous edifice, completing it by a sheer effort of
+will-power. His daughter, with an imagination naturally more
+attuned to the gruesome and fantastic, writes, when once she has
+wound her way into the heart of the story, in a mood of
+breathless excitement that drives the reader forward with
+feverish apprehension.
+
+The name of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ is far-famed; but the
+book itself, overshadowed perhaps by its literary associations,
+seems to have withdrawn into the vast library of famous works
+that are more often mentioned than read. The very fact that the
+name is often bestowed on the monster instead of his creator
+seems to suggest that many are content to accept Mrs. Shelley's
+"hideous phantom" on hearsay evidence rather than encounter for
+themselves the terrors of his presence. The story deserves a
+happier fate, for, if it be read in the spirit of willing
+surrender that a theme so impossible demands, it has still power
+momentarily "to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle
+the blood and to quicken the beatings of the heart." The record
+of the composition of _Frankenstein_ has been so often reiterated
+that it is probably better known than the tale itself. In the
+summer of 1816--when the Shelleys were the neighbours of Byron
+near Lake Geneva--Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori,
+after reading some volumes of ghost stories[118] and discussing
+the supernatural and its manifestations, each agreed to write a
+ghost story. It has been asserted that an interest in spectres
+was stimulated by a visit from "Monk" Lewis, but we have evidence
+that Mrs. Shelley was already writing her story in June,[119] and
+that Lewis did not arrive at the Villa Diodati till August
+14th.[120] The conversation with him about ghosts took place four
+days later. Shelley's story, based on the experiences of his
+early youth, was never completed. Byron's fragment formed the
+basis of Dr. Polidori's _Vampyre_. Dr. Polidori states that his
+supernatural novel, _Ernestus Berchtold_, was begun at this time;
+but the skull-headed lady, alluded to by Mary Shelley as figuring
+in Polidori's story, is disappointingly absent. It was an
+argument between Byron and Shelley about Erasmus Darwin's
+theories that brought before Mary Shelley's sleepless eyes the
+vision of the monster miraculously infused by its creator with
+the spark of life. _Frankenstein_ was begun immediately,
+completed in May, 1817, and published in 1818.
+
+Mrs. Shelley has been censured for setting her tale in a clumsy
+framework, but she tells us in her preface that she began with
+the words: "It was on a dreary night of November." This sentence
+now stands at the opening of Chapter IV., where the plot begins
+to grip our imagination; and it seems not unfair to assume that
+the introductory letters and the first four chapters, which
+contain a tedious and largely unnecessary account of
+Frankenstein's early life, were written in deference to Shelley's
+plea that the idea should be developed at greater length, and did
+not form part of her original plan. The uninteresting student,
+Robert Walton, to whom Frankenstein, discovered dying among
+icebergs, tells his story, is obviously an afterthought. If Mrs.
+Shelley had abandoned the awkward contrivance of putting the
+narrative into the form of a dying man's confession, reported
+verbatim in a series of letters, and had opened her story, as she
+apparently intended, at the point where Frankenstein, after weary
+years of research, succeeds in creating a living being, her novel
+would have gained in force and intensity. From that moment it
+holds us fascinated. It is true that the tension relaxes from
+time to time, that the monster's strange education and the
+Godwinian precepts that fall so incongruously from his lips tend
+to excite our mirth, but, though we are mildly amused, we are no
+longer merely bored. Even the protracted descriptions of domestic
+life assume a new and deeper meaning, for the shadow of the
+monster broods over them. One by one those whom Frankenstein
+loves fall victims to the malice of the being he has endowed with
+life. Unceasingly and unrelentingly the loathsome creature dogs
+our imagination, more awful when he lurks unseen than when he
+stands actually before us. With hideous malignity he slays
+Frankenstein's young brother, and by a fiendish device causes
+Justine, an innocent girl, to be executed for the crime. Yet ere
+long our sympathy, which has hitherto been entirely with
+Frankenstein, is unexpectedly diverted to the monster who, it
+would seem, is wicked only because he is eternally divorced from
+human society. Amid the magnificent scenery of the Valley of
+Chamounix he appears before his creator, and tells the story of
+his wretched life, pleading: "Everywhere I see bliss from which I
+alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery
+made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."
+
+He describes how his physical ugliness repels human beings, who
+fail to realise his benevolent intentions. A father snatches from
+his arms the child he has rescued from death; the virtuous
+family, whom he admires and would fain serve, flee affrighted
+from his presence. To educate the monster, so that his thoughts
+and emotions may become articulate, and, incidentally, to
+accentuate his isolation from society, Mrs. Shelley inserts a
+complicated story about an Arabian girl, Sofie, whose lover
+teaches her to read from Plutarch's _Lives_, Volney's _Ruins of
+Empire, The Sorrows of Werther_, and _Paradise Lost_. The monster
+overhears the lessons, and ponders on this unique library, but,
+as he pleads his own cause the more eloquently because he knows
+Satan's passionate outbursts of defiance and self-pity, who would
+cavil at the method by which he is made to acquire his knowledge?
+"The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
+branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst
+forth amidst the universal stillness. All save I were at rest or
+in enjoyment. I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me." And
+later, near the close of the book: "The fallen angel becomes a
+malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends
+and associates in his desolation; I am alone," His fate reminds
+us of that of _Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude_, who:
+
+  "Over the world wanders for ever
+  Lone as incarnate death."
+
+After the long and moving recital of his woes, even the obdurate
+Frankenstein cannot resist the justice of his demand for a
+partner like himself. Yet when the student recoils with horror
+from his half-accomplished task and sees the creature maliciously
+peering through the window, our hatred leaps to life once more
+and burns fiercely as the monster adds to his crimes the murder
+of Clerval, Frankenstein's dearest friend, and of Elizabeth on
+her wedding night. We follow with shuddering anticipation the
+long pursuit of the monster, expectant of a last, fearful
+encounter which shall decide the fate of the demon and his maker.
+Amid the region of eternal ice, Frankenstein catches sight of
+him; but fails to reach him. At last, beside the body of his last
+victim--Frankenstein himself--the creature is filled with remorse
+at the "frightful catalogue" of his sins, and makes a final bid
+for our sympathy in the farewell speech to Walton, before
+climbing on an ice-raft to be "borne away by the waves and lost
+in darkness and distance."
+
+Like _Alastor_, _Frankenstein_ was a plea for human sympathy, and
+was, according to Shelley's preface, intended "to exhibit the
+amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence of universal
+virtue." The monster has the perception and desire of goodness,
+but, by the circumstances of his abnormal existence, is delivered
+over to evil. It is this dual nature that prevents him from being
+a mere automaton. The monster indeed is far more real than the
+shadowy beings whom he pursues. Frankenstein is less an
+individual than a type, and only interests us through the
+emotions which his conflict with the monster arouses. Clerval,
+Elizabeth and Frankenstein's relatives are passive sufferers
+whose psychology does not concern us. Mrs. Shelley rightly
+lavishes her skill on the central figure of the book, and
+succeeds, as effectually as Frankenstein himself, in infusing
+into him the spark of life. Mrs. Shelley's aim is to "awaken
+thrilling horror," and, incidentally, to "exhibit the excellence
+of domestic virtue," and for her purpose the demon is of
+paramount importance. The involved, complex plot of a novel
+seemed to pass beyond Mrs. Shelley's control. A short tale she
+could handle successfully, and Shelley was unwise in inciting her
+to expand _Frankenstein_ into a long narrative. So long as she is
+completely carried away by her subject Mrs. Shelley writes
+clearly, but when she pauses to regard the progress of her story
+dispassionately, she seems to be overwhelmed by the wealth of her
+resources and to have no power of selecting the relevant details.
+The laborious introductory letters, the meticulous record of
+Frankenstein's education, the story of Felix and Sofie, the
+description of the tour through England before the creation of
+the second monster is attempted, are all connected with the main
+theme by very frail links and serve to distract our attention in
+an irritating fashion from what really interests us. In the novel
+of mystery a tantalising delay may be singularly effective. In a
+novel which depends chiefly for its effect on sheer horror,
+delays are merely dangerous. By resting her terrors on a
+pseudo-scientific basis and by placing her story in a definite
+locality, Mrs. Shelley waives her right to an entire suspension
+of disbelief. If it be reduced to its lowest terms, the plot of
+Frankenstein, with its bewildering confusion of the prosaic and
+the fantastic, sounds as crude, disjointed and inconsequent as
+that of a nightmare. Mrs. Shelley's timid hesitation between
+imagination and reality, her attempt to reconcile incompatible
+things and to place a creature who belongs to no earthly land in
+familiar surroundings, prevents _Frankenstein_ from being a
+wholly satisfactory and alarming novel of terror. She loves the
+fantastic, but she also fears it. She is weighted down by
+commonsense, and so flutters instead of soaring, unwilling to
+trust herself far from the material world. But the fact that she
+was able to vivify her grotesque skeleton of a plot with some
+degree of success is no mean tribute to her gifts. The energy and
+vigour of her style, her complete and serious absorption in her
+subject, carry us safely over many an absurdity. It is only in
+the duller stretches of the narrative, when her heart is not in
+her work, that her language becomes vague, indeterminate and
+blurred, and that she muffles her thoughts in words like
+"ascertain," "commencement," "peruse," "diffuse," instead of
+using their simpler Saxon equivalents. Stirred by the excitement
+of the events she describes, she can write forcibly in simple,
+direct language. She often frames short, hurried sentences such
+as a man would naturally utter when breathless with terror or
+with recollections of terror. The final impression that
+_Frankenstein_ leaves with us is not easy to define, because the
+book is so uneven in quality. It is obviously the shapeless work
+of an immature writer who has had no experience in evolving a
+plot. Sometimes it is genuinely moving and impressive, but it
+continually falls abruptly and ludicrously short of its aim. Yet
+when all its faults have been laid bare, the fact remains that
+few readers would abandon the story half-way through. Mrs.
+Shelley is so thoroughly engrossed in her theme that she impels
+her readers onward, even though they may think but meanly of her
+story as a work of art.
+
+Mrs. Shelley's second novel, _Valperga, or the Life and
+Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca_, published in 1823,
+was a work on which she bestowed much care and labour, but the
+result proves that she writes best when the urgency of her
+imagination leaves her no leisure either to display her learning
+or adorn her style. She herself calls _Valperga_ a "child of
+mighty slow growth," and Shelley adds that it was "raked out of
+fifty old books." Mrs. Shelley, always an industrious student,
+made a conscientious survey of original sources before fashioning
+her story of mediaeval Italy, and she is hampered by the
+exuberance of her knowledge. The novel is not a romance of
+terror; but Castruccio, though his character is sketched from
+authentic documents, seems towards the end of the story to
+resemble the picturesque villain who numbered among his ancestry
+Milton's Satan. He has "a majestic figure and a countenance
+beautiful but sad, and tarnished by the expression of pride that
+animated it." Beatrice, the gifted prophetess who falls deep in
+love with Castruccio, ends her days in the dungeons of the
+Inquisition. Mrs. Shelley's aim, however, is not to arouse fear,
+but to trace the gradual deterioration of Castruccio's character
+from an open-hearted youth to a crafty tyrant. The blunt remarks
+of Godwin, who revised the manuscript, are not unjust, but fall
+with an ill grace from the pen of the author of _St. Leon_: "It
+appears in reading, that the first rule you prescribed was: 'I
+will let it be long.' It contains the quantity of four volumes of
+_Waverley_. No hard blow was ever hit with a woodsaw."[121]
+
+In _The Last Man_, which appeared in 1825, Mrs. Shelley attempted
+a stupendous theme, no less then a picture of the devastation of
+the human race by plague and pestilence. She casts her
+imagination forward into the twenty-first century, when the last
+king of England has abdicated the throne and a republic is
+established. Very wisely, she narrows the interest by
+concentrating on the pathetic fate of a group of friends who are
+among the last survivors, and the story becomes an idealised
+record of her own sufferings. The description of the loneliness
+of the bereft has a personal note, and reminds us of her journal,
+where she expresses the sorrow of being herself the last
+survivor, and of feeling like a "cloud from which the light of
+sunset has passed."[122] Raymond, who dies in an attempt to place
+the standard of Greece in Stamboul, is a portrait of Byron; and
+Adrian, the late king's son, who finally becomes Protector, is
+clearly modelled on Shelley. Yet in spite of these personal
+reminiscences, their characters lack distinctness. Idris, Clara
+and Perdita are faintly etched, but Evadne, the Greek artist, who
+cherishes a passion for Raymond, and dies fighting against the
+Turks, has more colour and body than the other women, though she
+is somewhat theatrical. Mrs. Shelley conveys emotion more
+faithfully than character, and the overwrought sensibilities and
+dark forebodings of the diminished party of survivors who leave
+England to distract their minds by foreign travel are artfully
+suggested. The leaping, gesticulating figure, whom their jaded
+nerves and morbid fancy transform into a phantom, is a delirious
+ballet-dancer; and the Black Spectre, mistaken for Death
+Incarnate, proves only to be a plague-stricken noble, who lurks
+near the party for the sake of human society. These "reasonable"
+solutions of the apparently supernatural remind us of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's method, and Mrs. Shelley shows keen psychological
+insight in her delineation of the state of mind which readily
+conjures up imaginary terrors. When Lionel Verney is left alone
+in the universe, her power seems to flag, and instead of the
+final crescendo of horror, which we expect at the end of the
+book, we are left with an ineffective picture of the last man in
+Rome in 2005 deciding to explore the countries he has not yet
+viewed. As he wanders amid the ruins he recalls not only "the
+buried Cæsars," but also the monk in _The Italian_, of whom he
+had read in childhood--a striking proof of Mrs. Shelley's faith
+in the permanence of Mrs. Radcliffe's fame.
+
+Though the style of _The Last Man_ is often tediously prolix and
+is disfigured by patches of florid rhetoric and by inappropriate
+similes scattered broadcast, occasional passages of wonderful
+beauty recall Shelley's imagery; and, in conveying the pathos of
+loneliness, personal feeling lends nobility and eloquence to her
+style. With so ambitious a subject, it was natural that she
+should only partially succeed in carrying her readers with her.
+Though there are oases, the story is a somewhat tedious and
+dreary stretch of narrative that can only be traversed with
+considerable effort.
+
+Mrs. Shelley's later works--_Perkin Warbeck_ (1830), a historical
+novel; _Lodore_ (1835), which describes the early life of Shelley
+and Harriet; _Falkner_ (1837), which was influenced by _Caleb
+Williams_--do not belong to the history of the novel of terror;
+but some of her short tales, contributed to periodicals and
+collected in 1891, have gruesome and supernatural themes. _A Tale
+of the Passions, or the Death of Despina_[123] a story based on
+the struggles of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, contains a
+perfect specimen of the traditional villain of the novel of
+terror:
+
+     "Every feature of his countenance spoke of the struggle
+     of passions and the terrible egotism of one who would
+     sacrifice himself to the establishment of his will: his
+     black eyebrows were scattered, his grey eyes deep-set
+     and scowling, his look at once stern and haggard. A
+     smile seemed never to have disturbed the settled scorn
+     which his lips expressed; his high forehead was marked
+     by a thousand contradictory lines."
+
+This terrific personage spends the last years of his life in
+orthodox fashion as an austere saint in a monastery.
+
+_The Mortal Immortal_, a variation on the theme of _St. Leon_, is
+the record of a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, who drank half of the
+elixir his master had compounded in the belief that it was a
+potion to destroy love. It is written on his three hundred and
+twenty-third birthday. _Transformation_, like _Frankenstein_,
+dwells on the pathos of ugliness and deformity, but the subject
+is treated rather in the spirit of an eastern fairy tale than in
+that of a novel of terror. The dwarf, in return for a chest of
+treasure, borrows a beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the
+love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short
+stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her
+novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the
+books on which she expended great labour.
+
+The literary history of Byron's fragmentary novel and of
+Polidori's short story, _The Vampyre_, is somewhat tangled, but
+the solution is to be found in the diary of Dr. John William
+Polidori, edited and elucidated by William Michael Rossetti. The
+day after that on which Polidori states that all the competitors,
+except himself, had begun their stories, he records the simple
+fact: "Began my ghost-story after tea." He gives no hint as to
+the subject of his tale, but Mrs. Shelley tells us that Polidori
+had some idea of a "skull-headed lady, who was so punished for
+looking through a key-hole, and who was finally buried in the
+tomb of the Capulets." In the introduction to _Ernestus
+Berchtold, or the Modern OEdipus_, he states definitely:
+
+     "The tale here presented to the public is one I began
+     at Coligny, when _Frankenstein_ was planned, and when a
+     noble author, having determined to descend from his
+     lofty range, gave up a few hours to a tale of terror,
+     and wrote the fragment published at the end of
+     Mazeppa."
+
+As no skull-headed lady appears in _Ernestus Berchtold_, it is
+probable that her career was only suggested to the rest of the
+party as an entrancing possibility, and never actually took
+shape. This theme would certainly have proved more frightful and
+possibly more interesting than the one which Polidori eventually
+adopted in _Ernestus Berchtold_, a rambling, leisurely account of
+the adventures of a Swiss soldier, whose wife afterwards proves
+to be his own sister. Their father has accepted from a malignant
+spirit the gift of wealth, but each time that the gift is
+bestowed some great affliction follows. This secret is not
+divulged until we are quite near the close of the story, and have
+waited so long that our interest has begun to wane. _Ernestus
+Berchtold_ is, as a matter of fact, not a novel of terror at all.
+The supernatural agency, which should have been interlaced with
+the domestic story from beginning to end, is only dragged in
+because it was one of the conditions of the competition, as
+indeed Polidori frankly confesses in his introduction:
+
+     "Many readers will think that the same moral and the
+     same colouring might have been given to characters
+     acting under the ordinary agencies of life. I believe
+     it, but I agreed to write a supernatural tale, and that
+     does not allow of a completely everyday narrative."
+
+The candour of this admission forestalls criticism. Strangely
+enough, Polidori adds that he has thrown the "superior agency"
+into the background, because "a tale that rests upon
+improbabilities must generally disgust a rational mind." With so
+decided a preference for the reasonable and probable, it is
+remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend
+successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story
+was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely
+accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based
+his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have
+been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two
+friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who,
+like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a
+prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before his
+death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw
+a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If
+we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the
+survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold
+his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.
+On this foundation Polidori constructed _The Vampyre_. The story
+opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose
+appearance and character excite great interest in London society.
+His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "dead,
+grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to
+penetrate and at one glance to pierce through to the inward
+workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray
+that laid (_sic_) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man
+named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes
+deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he
+joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes
+a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table;
+and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides
+to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds
+in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.
+Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with
+Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes
+to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an
+excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the
+terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting
+to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of
+superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light
+dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become
+the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a
+blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his
+discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.
+While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the
+shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a
+solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he
+knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made
+to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to
+the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's
+possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has
+found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he
+learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.
+When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the
+figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first
+seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost
+demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him
+momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven
+is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His
+warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey
+relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven,
+but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted
+the thirst of a vampyre."
+
+Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of
+fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and
+leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been
+handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and
+would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori
+wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect
+on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the
+verge of the unspeakable.
+
+Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as
+characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A
+writer in the _Dublin University Magazine_ tells of a vampire who
+plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire
+in one of George Macdonald's stories, _Adela Cathcart_. The
+prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, round
+whom centres a story of absorbing interest.
+
+De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many
+admirable illustrations for his essay on _Murder, Considered as
+one of the Fine Arts_, and who seems to have been attracted by
+the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in
+sensational fiction. In _Klosterheim_, a one-volumed novel
+published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of
+an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none
+other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man
+before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a
+usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down
+subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of
+Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the
+exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are
+not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a
+likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's
+story is very different. The adventures of the Masque and of the
+Lady Pauline are cast in Germany amid the confusion of the Thirty
+Years' War. In _The Household Wreck_, published in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, January 1838, De Quincey shows his power of conveying
+a sense of foreboding, that anticipation of horror which is often
+more harrowing than the reality. Another tale of terror, _The
+Avenger_, published in the same year, describes a series of
+bloodcurdling murders which baffle the skill of the police, but
+which eventually prove to have been committed by a son to avenge
+dishonour done to his Jewish mother. For a collection of _Popular
+Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, published in 1823,
+De Quincey translated _Der Freischütz_ from the German of J.A.
+Apel, under the title of _The Fatal Marksman_. By means of
+ill-gotten magic bullets the marksman wins his bride, but by one
+of those little ironies in which the devil delights to indulge,
+she is slain on the wedding-day by a bullet, which is aimed
+straight, but goes askew. In _The Dice_, another short story from
+the German, De Quincey once again exploits the old theme of a
+bargain with the devil.
+
+De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror shrink into
+unimportance beside the rest of his work, and are not in
+themselves remarkable. They are of interest as showing the
+widespread and long-enduring vogue of the species. It is
+noteworthy how many writers, whose main business lay elsewhere,
+have found time to make erratic excursions into the realms of the
+supernatural.
+
+So late as 1834--more than a decade after the appearance of
+_Melmoth_--Harrison Ainsworth, whose imagination was steeped in
+terror, sought once more to revive the "feeble and fluttering
+pulses of old Romance." Among his earliest experiments were tales
+obviously fashioned in the Gothic manner. His Imperishable One,
+the hero of a tale first published in the _European Magazine_ for
+1822, bemoans the burden of immortality in the listless tones of
+Godwin's St. Leon, and is tempted by the fallen angel in the
+self-same guise in which he appeared to Lewis's notorious monk.
+In _The Test of Affection_ (_European Magazine_, 1822) a wealthy
+man avails himself of Mrs. Radcliffe's supernatural trickery to
+test the loyalty of his friends, whom he succeeds in alarming by
+noises and a skeleton apparition. In _Arliss's Pocket Magazine_
+(1822) there appeared _The Spectre Bride_; and in the _European
+Magazine_ (1823) Ainsworth attempted a theme that would have
+attracted Poe in _The Half Hangit_. _The Boeotian_ for 1824
+contained _A Tale of Mystery_, and the _Literary Souvenir_ for
+1825 _The Fortress of Saguntum_, a story in the style of Lewis.
+Ainsworth's first novel, _Rookwood_ (1834), was inspired by a
+visit to Cuckfield Place, an old manor house which had reminded
+Shelley of "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe":
+
+     "Wishing to describe somewhat minutely the trim
+     gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted
+     groves, the gloomy chambers and gloomier galleries of
+     an ancient hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved
+     to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs.
+     Radcliffe, substituting an old English squire, an old
+     manorial residence and an old English highwayman for
+     the Italian marchise, the castle and the brigand of
+     that great mistress of romance... The attempt has
+     succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectation. Romance,
+     if I am not mistaken, is destined shortly to undergo an
+     important change. Modified by the German and French
+     writers--Hoffmann, Tieck, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas,
+     Balzac and Paul Lacroix--the structure commenced in our
+     land by Horace Walpole, 'Monk' Lewis, Mrs. Radcliffe
+     and Maturin, but, left imperfect and inharmonious,
+     requires, now that the rubbish which choked up its
+     approach is removed, only the hand of the skilful
+     architect to its entire renovation and perfection."
+
+In _Rookwood_, Ainsworth disdains Mrs. Radcliffe's reasonable
+elucidations of the supernatural, and introduces spectres whose
+existence it would be impossible to deny. Once, however, a
+supposed ghost becomes substantial, and proves to be none other
+than a human being called Jack Palmer. The sexton, Luke Bradley,
+_alias_ Alan Rookwood, has inherited two of the Wanderer's
+traits--the fear-impelling eyes of intolerable lustre, and the
+habit of indulging in wild, screaming laughter on the most
+inauspicious occasions.
+
+Gothic properties are scattered with indiscriminate
+extravagance--skeleton hands, suddenly extinguished candles,
+sliding panels, sepulchral vaults. The plot of _Rookwood_ is too
+complicated and too overcrowded with incident to keep our
+attention. The terrors are so unremitting that they fail to
+strike home. The only part of the book which holds us enthralled
+is the famous description of Dick Turpin's ride to York. Here we
+forget Ainsworth's slip-shod style in the excitement of the
+chase. In his later novels Ainsworth abandoned the manner of Mrs.
+Radcliffe, but did not fail to make use of the motive of terror
+and mystery. The scenes of horror which he strove to convey in
+words were often more admirably depicted in the illustrations of
+Cruikshank. The sorcerer's sabbath in _Crichton_, the historical
+scenes of horror in _The Tower of London_, the masque of the
+Dance of Death in _Old St. Paul's_, the appearance of Herne the
+Hunter, heralded by phosphoric lights, in _Windsor Castle_, the
+terrible orgies of _The Lancashire Witches_, are described with
+more striking effect because of Ainsworth's early reading in the
+school of terror. In _Auriol_, which was first published in
+_Ainsworth's Magazine_ (1844-5) under the title _Revelations of
+London_, was issued in 1845 as a gratuitous supplement to the
+_New Monthly_, and greeted with derision,[125] Ainsworth handled
+once again the theme that fascinated Lytton. The Prologue (1599)
+describes the death of Dr. Lamb, whose elixir is seized by his
+great-grandson. In 1830 London is haunted by a stranger, who
+involves Auriol in wildly fantastic and frightful adventures. The
+book closes in Dr. Lamb's laboratory; the intervening scenes are
+but dream imagery. Phiz's sketch of the Ruined House is the most
+lasting memory left by the book.
+
+Captain Marryat, whose mind was well stored with sailors' yarns,
+retells in _The Phantom Ship_ (1839) the old legend of the Flying
+Dutchman. At one time the doomed vessel is an unsubstantial
+vision, which can pass clean through the Utrecht; at another she
+is a real craft, whose deck can be boarded by mortal men. The
+one-eyed pilot, Schriften, with his malignant hatred of the hero,
+Philip, is a terrifying figure. The story is embroidered by the
+invention of a wife of Arab extraction, who is constantly
+attempting to recall the half-forgotten magical arts which her
+mother had practised. Marryat makes an opportunity in the history
+of Krantz, the second mate of the _Vrou Katerina_, to introduce
+the Scandinavian legend of the werewolf, which is related with
+grisly detail.
+
+The novel of terror, with all its faults, had seldom been guilty
+of demanding intellectual strain or of overburdening itself with
+erudition. It was the dignified task of Lord Lytton to
+rationalise and elevate the novel of terror, to evolve the "man
+of reason" from the "child of nature." Although time has
+tarnished the brilliance of his reputation, George Edward Bulwer
+was an imposing figure in the history of nineteenth century
+fiction. Throughout his life, in spite of political and social
+distractions and of matrimonial disaster, he continued to engage
+with unwearying industry in literary work. He was not a man of
+genius in whom the creative impulse found its own expression, but
+a versatile and accomplished gentleman who could direct his
+talents into any channel he pleased. Essays, translations,
+verses, plays, novels flowed from his pen in rapid succession,
+and he won his meed of applause and fame, as well as his share of
+execration and derision, in his own lifetime. Quick to discern
+the popular taste of the hour, and eager to gratify it, Lytton,
+with the resourceful agility of a lightning impersonator, turns
+in his novels from Wertherism to dandyism, from criminal
+psychology to fairy folk-lore, from historical romance to
+domestic romance, from pseudo-philosophic occultism to
+pseudo-scientific fantasy. He ranges at will in the past, the
+present or the future, consorting indifferently with impalpable
+wraiths, Vrilya or mysterious Sages. It is to his credit that
+this unusual gift of adaptability does not result in
+incompetency. Though he attempts a variety of manners, it must in
+justice be acknowledged that he does most of them well. He
+constructs his plots with laborious art, and pays a deliberate,
+if sometimes misguided, attention to style. When he fails, it is
+less from lack of effort than from over-elaboration and excess of
+zeal.
+
+Bulwer Lytton's predilection for the supernatural was neither a
+theatrical pose nor a passing folly excited by the fashionable
+craze for psychical research, but a genuine and enduring
+interest, inherited, it may be, from his ancestor, the learned,
+eccentric savant, Dr. Bulwer, who studied the Black Art and
+dabbled in astrology and palmistry. He was a member of the
+society of Rosicrucians, and, to quote the words of his grandson,
+"he certainly did not study magic for the sake of writing about
+it, still less did he write about it, without having studied it,
+merely for the sake of making his readers' flesh creep." From his
+early years Lytton seems to have been keenly interested in
+supernatural manifestations. He was inspired by the deserted
+rooms at the end of a long gallery in Knebworth House to set down
+the story of the ghost, Jenny Spinner, who was said to haunt
+them; and the concealed chamber in _The Haunted and the Haunters_
+may have been a revived memory of the trap-door down which Lytton
+as a boy had "peeped with bristling hair into the shadowy abysses
+of hellhole." In _Glenallan_,[126] an early fragment, we find
+promising material for a tale of mystery--a villain with a
+"strange and sinister expression," a boy who, like the youthful
+Shelley, steals forth by night to graveyards, hoping to attain to
+fearful secrets, and an aged servant, a living chronicle of
+horrors, who relates the doings of an Irish wizard, Morshed
+Tyrone, of such awful power that the spirits of the earth, air
+and ocean ministered to him. In _Godolphin_ (1833) there is an
+astrologer with the furrowed brow and awful eye, so common among
+the people of terror, and a strangely gifted girl, Lucilla, who
+turns soothsayer. But when Bulwer Lytton attempts a supernatural
+romance he leaves far behind him the sphere of Gothic terrors and
+soars into rarefied, exalted regions that inspire awe rather than
+horror. The Dweller of the Threshold in _Zanoni_ is no
+red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a
+deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over
+the crater of Vesuvius.
+
+The romance, _Zanoni_ (1842), which Lytton considered the
+greatest of his works and which Carlyle praised with what now
+seems extravagant fervour, was based on an earlier sketch,
+_Zicci_ (1838), and embodies a complicated theory which he had
+conceived several years earlier after reading some mediaeval
+treatises on astrology and the occult sciences. While his mind
+was occupied with these studies, the character of Mejnour and the
+main outlines of the story were inspired by a dream, which he
+related to his son. According to Lytton's theory, the air is
+peopled with Intelligences, of whom some are favourable, others
+hostile to man. The earth contains certain plants, which, rightly
+used, have power to arrest the decay of the human body, and to
+enable man, by quickening his physical senses and mental gifts,
+to perceive the aerial beings and to discover the secrets of
+nature. This supernatural knowledge is in possession of a
+brotherhood of whom two only, Mejnour and his pupil Zanoni, are
+in existence. The initiation involves the surrender of all
+violent passions and emotions, and the neophyte must be brought
+into contact with the powerful and malignant being called the
+Dweller of the Threshold:
+
+  "Whose form of giant mould
+  No mortal eye can fixed behold,"
+
+Mejnour and Zanoni are supposed to have been initiated--the
+former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
+years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a
+vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual
+youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in
+contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and
+friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences,
+feels sympathy with human beings.
+
+Zanoni, who spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure, after
+fifty centuries at last falls in love with Viola, an Italian
+opera-singer. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, Zanoni is reluctant to
+bind the woman he loves to his own fate. He tries to renounce
+Viola to an Englishman, Glyndon, who eventually chooses to
+relinquish love for the sake of achieving the unearthly knowledge
+of Mejnour. Glyndon, however, fails in the trial, and is
+consequently haunted by the horror of the Dweller of the
+Threshold. Meanwhile Zanoni is united to Viola; and because he
+has succumbed to the force of love, his peculiar powers begin to
+fail. He can no longer see the beautiful, aerial intelligence,
+Adon-Ai. To save from death Viola and the child who is born to
+them, Zanoni ere long yields to the Dweller of the Threshold his
+gift of communion with the inhabitants of heaven. Later Viola,
+who incidentally typifies Superstition deserting Faith, leaves
+Zanoni at the call of Glyndon, and in Paris, during the Reign of
+Terror, is doomed to die. Zanoni invokes the aid of the
+mysterious Intelligences, and his courage at length brings
+Adon-Ai again to his side. He wins a day's reprieve for Viola,
+and is executed in her stead. The death of Robespierre releases
+the prisoners, but Viola dies the next day.
+
+The compact between Zanoni and the Dweller of the Threshold is a
+renovation of the time-worn legend of the bargain with an evil
+spirit, but Lytton transforms it almost beyond recognition.
+Zanoni is no criminal. He has attained his secrets through
+will-power, self-conquest, and the subordination of the flesh to
+the spirit, and he surrenders his gifts willingly for the sake of
+another. Both Mejnour and Zanoni disclaim miraculous powers, yet
+Zanoni is ready to stake his mistress on a cast of the dice, and
+can cause the death of three sanguinary marauders without
+stirring from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursues his
+chemical studies. From such incidents as these it would seem as
+if Lytton, for the actual craftsmanship of _Zanoni_, may have
+gleaned stray hints from the novel of terror; but the spirit and
+intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton
+expressly declares that his _Zanoni_ is not an allegory, he
+confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to
+assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse
+subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice
+that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that
+Lytton first conceived his theories and then created personages
+to illustrate them. His characters have no power to act of their
+own volition or to do unexpected things, but must move along the
+lines laid down for them.
+
+In _The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain_,
+which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1859, Bulwer Lytton
+lays aside the sin of over-elaboration and ornamentation that so
+easily besets him, and relies for his effect on the impalpable
+horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the
+accurate description of the position of the house in a street off
+the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the
+matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage
+of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony,
+all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie
+child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands,
+the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly
+outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb with
+ruffles, lace, and buckles, the hideous phantom of the drowned
+man, the dark figure with malignant serpent eyes, shadow forth
+the story hinted at in the letters found in an old drawer.
+Haunted by loathly presences, the watcher experiences a sensation
+of almost intolerable horror, but saves himself at the worst by
+opposing his will to that of the haunters. He rightly surmises
+that the evil influences, which seem in some way to emanate from
+a small empty room, really proceed from a living being. His
+interpretation is skilful and subtle enough not to detract from
+the simple horror of the tale. A miniature, certain volatile
+essences, a compass, a lodestone and other properties are found
+in a room below that which appeared to be the source of the
+horrors. It proves that the man, whose face is portrayed on the
+miniature has been able through the exertion of will-power to
+prolong his life for two centuries, and to preserve a curse in a
+magical vessel. He is actually interviewed by the watcher, to
+whom he unfolds his remarkable history, and whom he mesmerises
+into silence on the subject of his experiences in the haunted
+house for a space of three months.
+
+Lytton realises that it is not only what is told but what is left
+unsaid that requires consideration in a ghost story. His
+reticence and the entire absence of any note of mockery or doubt
+secure the "willing suspension of disbelief" necessary to the
+appreciation of the apparently supernatural.
+
+In _A Strange Story_, which, at Dickens's invitation, appeared in
+_All the Year Round_ (1861-2), Bulwer Lytton further elaborates
+his theories of mesmerism and willpower. He explains his purpose
+in the Preface:
+
+     "When the reader lays down this strange story, perhaps
+     he will detect, through all the haze of Romance, the
+     outlines of these images suggested to his reason:
+     Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such
+     as the Materialist had conceived it. Secondly, the
+     image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its
+     inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence and
+     destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplexity
+     and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation
+     before it settles at last into the simple faith which
+     unites the philosopher and the infant. And thirdly, the
+     image of the erring but pure-thoughted Visionary,
+     seeking overmuch on this earth to separate soul from
+     mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom
+     and reason is lost in the space between earth and the
+     stars."
+
+These three conceptions are embodied in Margrave, who has renewed
+his life far beyond the limits allotted to man; a young doctor,
+Fenwick, who represents the intellectual divorced from the
+spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies
+the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the
+story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to
+wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately
+tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the
+wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose,
+there is a fascination about the book which compels us to go
+forward.
+
+In Lytton's hands the barbarity of the novel of terror has been
+gracefully smoothed away. It has, indeed, become almost
+unrecognisably refined and elevated, and something of its native
+vigour is lost in the process. Amid all the amenities of Vrilya
+and Intelligences, we miss the vulgar blatancy of an honest,
+old-fashioned spectre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+For the readers of their own day the Gothic romances of Walpole,
+Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe possessed the charm of novelty.
+Before the close of the century we may trace, in the
+conversations of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in
+_Northanger Abbey_, symptoms of a longing for more poignant
+excitement. It was at this time that Mrs. Radcliffe, after the
+publication of _The Italian_ in 1797, retired quietly from the
+field. From her obscurity she viewed no doubt with some disdain
+the vulgar achievements of "Monk" Lewis and a tribe of imitators,
+who compounded a farrago of horrors as thick and slab as the
+contents of a witch's cauldron. Until the appearance in 1820 of
+Maturin's _Melmoth_, which was redeemed by its psychological
+insight and its vigorous style, the Gothic romance maintained a
+disreputable existence in the hands of those who looked upon
+fiction as a lucrative trade, not as an art. In the meantime,
+however, an easy device had been discovered for pandering to the
+popular craving for excitement. Ingenious authors realised that
+it was possible to compress into the five pages of a short story
+as much sensation as was contained in the five volumes of a
+Gothic romance. For the brevity of the tales, which were issued
+in chapbooks, readers were compensated by gaudily coloured
+illustrations and by double-barrelled titles. An anthology called
+"Wild Roses" (published by Anne Lemoine, Coleman Street, n.d.)
+included: _Twelve O'Clock or the Three Robbers, The Monks of
+Cluny, or Castle Acre Monastery, The Tomb of Aurora, or The
+Mysterious Summons, The Mysterious Spaniard, or The Ruins of St.
+Luke's Abbey_, and lastly, as a _bonne bouche_, _Barbastal, or
+The Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_.[127] There are
+many collections of this kind, some of them dating back to 1806,
+among the chapbooks in the British Museum. It is in these brief,
+blood-curdling romances that we may find the origin of the short
+tale of terror, which became so popular a form of literature in
+the nineteenth century. The taste for these delicious morsels has
+lingered long. Dante Gabriel Rossetti delighted in _Brigand
+Tales, Tales of Chivalry, Tales of Wonder, Legends of Terror_;
+and it was in search of such booty, "a penny plain and twopence
+coloured" that, more than fifty years later, Robert Louis
+Stevenson and his companions ransacked the stores of a certain
+secluded stationer's shop in Edinburgh.
+
+It was probably the success of the chapbook that encouraged the
+editors of periodicals early in the nineteenth century to enliven
+their pages with sensational fiction. The literary hack, who, if
+he had lived a century earlier, would have been glad to turn a
+Turkish tale for half-a-crown, now cheerfully furnished a
+"fireside horror" for the Christmas number. In his search after
+novelty he was often driven to wild and desperate expedients.
+Leigh Hunt, who showed scant sympathy with Lewis's bleeding nun
+and scoffed mercilessly at his "little grey men who sit munching
+hearts," was bound to admit: "A man who does not contribute his
+quota of grim story, now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of the
+republic of letters." Accordingly, so that he too might wear a
+death's head as part of his _insignia_, he included in _The
+Indicator_ (1819-21) a supernatural story, entitled _A Tale for a
+Chimney Corner_. Scorning to "measure talents with a leg of veal
+or a German sausage," he unfortunately dismissed from his
+imagination the nightmarish hordes of
+
+     "Haunting Old Women and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary
+     Lean Hands, and Empusas on one leg, and Ladies growing
+     Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through
+     Keyholes; and Plaintive Heads and Shrieking Statues and
+     Shocking Anomalies of Shape and Things, which, when
+     seen, drove people mad,"
+
+and in their place he conjured up a placid, ladylike ghost from a
+legend quoted in Sandys' commentary on Ovid. Leigh Hunt's story
+has the air of having been written by one who cared for none of
+these things; but there were others who wrote with more gusto.
+
+Many of the tales in such collections as _The Story-Teller_
+(1833) or _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ (1839-42) show
+the persistence of Gothic story. In these periodicals the grave
+and the gay are intermingled, and when we are weary of dark
+intrigues and impenetrable secrets we may turn to lighter
+reading. Yet it is significant of the taste of our ancestors that
+we cannot venture far without encountering a spectre of some
+sort, or a villain with the baleful eye, disguised, it may be, as
+a Spanish gipsy, a German necromancer or a Russian count. Many of
+the stories are Gothic novels, reduced in size, but with room for
+all the old machinery:
+
+  "A novel now is nothing more
+  Than an old castle, and a creaking door,
+    A distant hovel,
+  Clanking of chains--a galley--a light--
+  Old armour, and a phantom all in white,
+    And there's a novel."
+
+In _The Story-Teller_, a magazine which reprinted many popular
+tales, we find German legends like _The Three Students of
+Göttingen_, a "True Story Very Strange and Very Pitiful"; _The
+Wood Demon; The Wehr-Wolf; The Sexton of Cologne, or Lucifer_, a
+striking story of an Italian artist who was haunted by a terrible
+figure he had painted in the church at Arezzo. Yet the first tale
+in the collection, _The Story-Haunted_, which describes the sad
+fate of a youth brought up in a solitary library reading romances
+to his mother, was intended, like _The Spectre-Smitten_, in
+_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_,[128] as a solemn
+warning against over-indulgence in fictitious terrors. The mother
+dies in an agony of horror, as her son reads aloud the account of
+the Gentleman of Florence, who was pursued by a spectre of
+himself, which vanished with him finally into the earth, as the
+priest endeavoured to bless him. The son, left alone, enters the
+world, and judges the people around him by the standard of books.
+The story-haunted youth falls in love with the phantom of his own
+imagination, whom he endows with all the graces of the heroines
+of romance. He finds her embodied at last, but she dies before
+they are united. _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_, in ten
+volumes, contains a comprehensive selection of tales of terror by
+the "best authors." Walpole, Miss Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk"
+Lewis, Maturin, Mrs. Shelley, and Charles Brockden Brown are all
+represented; and there are many translations of tales by French
+and German authors. We may take our choice of _The Spectre
+Barber_ or _The Spectre Bride_, or, if we are inclined to
+incredulity, see _The Spectre Unmasked_. The entertainment
+offered is of bewildering variety. Some of the stories, such as
+D.F. Hayne's _Romance of the Castle_, seem like familiar,
+well-tried friends, and conceal no surprises for the readers of
+Gothic romance. Others, like _The Sleepless Woman_, by W. Jerdan,
+are more piquant. The hero is warned by his dying uncle to beware
+of women's bright eyes. In spite of this he marries a lady, whose
+eyes unite the qualities of the robin and the falcon. After the
+wedding he makes the awful discovery that she is of too noble a
+lineage ever to sleep. Turn where he may, her eyes are always
+upon him. At last, we find him pallid, haggard, and emaciated,
+wandering alone in an avenue of cedar trees beside a silent lake:
+
+     "At this moment a breath of wind blew a branch aside--a
+     sunbeam fell upon the baron's face; he took it for the
+     eyes of his wife. Alas! his remedy lay temptingly
+     before him, the still, the profound, the shadowy lake.
+     De Launaye took one plunge--it was into eternity."
+
+The writer foolishly ruins the effect of this climax by
+super-imposing an allegorical interpretation.
+
+Like the _Story-Teller, The Romancist and Novelist's Library_
+should be read
+
+  "At night when doors are shut,
+  And the wood-worm pricks,
+  And the death-watch ticks,
+  And the bar has a flag of smut,--
+  And the cat's in the water-butt--
+  And the socket floats and flares,
+  And the housebeams groan,
+  And a foot unknown
+  Is surmised on the garret stairs,
+  And the locks slip unawares."
+
+But "tales of terror" lose some of their power when read one
+after another; they are most effective read singly in
+periodicals. _Blackwood's Magazine_ was especially famous for its
+tales, the best of which have been collected and published
+separately. The editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_ shows
+a marked preference for tales of a supernatural or sensational
+cast. Le Fanu, who claimed that his stories, like those of Sir
+Walter Scott, belonged to the "legitimate school of English
+tragic romance," was one of the best-known contributors. _All the
+Year Round_ and _Household Words_, under the editorship of
+Dickens, often found room for the occult and the uncanny. Wilkie
+Collins' fascinating serial, _The Moonstone_, was published in
+_All the Year Round_ in 1868; _The Woman in White_ had appeared
+six years earlier in _Blackwood_. The stories included in these
+magazines are of various types. The old-fashioned spook gradually
+declines in popularity. He is ousted in a scientific age by more
+recondite forms of terror. Before 1875, with a few belated
+exceptions:
+
+  "Ghosts, wandering here and there
+  Troop home to churchyards, damned spirits all,
+  That in crossways and floods have burial,
+  Already to their wormy beds are gone."
+
+The "explained supernatural" is skilfully improved and developed.
+Le Fanu's _Green Tea_ is a story from the diary of a German
+doctor, concerning a patient who was dogged by a black monkey.
+The creature, "whose green eyes glow with an expression of
+unfathomable malignity," is medically explained to be an
+illusion; but it is so vividly presented that it fastens on our
+imagination with remarkable tenacity. Wilkie Collins' short
+story, _The Yellow Mask_, included in the series called _After
+Dark_, is another experiment in the same kind. A jealous woman
+appears among the dancers at a ball, wearing a waxen cast of the
+face of the man's dead wife. The short story, in which the author
+deliberately shakes our nerves and then soothes away our fears by
+accounting naturally for startling phenomena, is an amazingly
+popular type. It reappears continually in different guises.
+Occasionally it merges into pleasant buffoonery. _Die
+Geistertodtenglocke_, for instance, a story in the _Dublin
+University Magazine_ (1862), is a burlesque, in which the
+mysterious tolling of a bell is explained by the discovery that a
+cow strolled into the ruin to eat the hay with which the rope was
+mended. But, judiciously handled, this type of story makes a
+strong appeal to human beings who like to know how much of the
+terrible and painful they can endure, and who yet must ultimately
+be reassured.
+
+Another group of short tales of terror consists of those which
+purport to be faithful renderings of the beliefs of simple
+people. To this category belong Allan Cunningham's _Traditional
+Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_, which first
+appeared, with one exception, in the _London Magazine_ (1821-23).
+Cunningham has the tact to preserve the legends of elves,
+fairies, ghosts and bogles, as they were passed down from one
+generation to another on the lips of living beings. Later he
+attempted, in a novel, _Sir Michael Scott_ (1828), a kind of
+Gothic romance; but there is no trace in the _Traditional Tales_
+of the influence of the terrormongers with whose works he was
+familiar. Perhaps the finest story of the collection is _The
+Haunted Ships_, in which are embodied the traditions associated
+with two black and decayed hulls, half immersed in the quicksands
+of the Solway. Lewis would have dragged us on board ship, and
+would have shown us the devil in his own person. Cunningham
+wisely keeps ashore, and repeats the tales that are told
+concerning the fiendish mirth and revelry to be heard, when, at
+certain seasons of the year, they arise in their former beauty,
+with forecastle and deck, with sail and pennon and shroud. James
+Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who was a friend of Cunningham, was
+steeped in the same folk-lore. _The Mysterious Bride_, printed
+among his _Tales and Sketches_, tells of a beautiful spirit-lady,
+dressed in white and green, who appears three times on St.
+Lawrence's Eve to the Laird of Birkendelly. On the morning, after
+the night on which she had promised to wed him, he is found, a
+blackened corpse, on Birky Brow. _Mary Burnet_ is the story of a
+maiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. She
+returns to earth, like Kilmeny, and assures her parents of her
+welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts
+her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his
+legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very
+stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems
+ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most
+memorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_
+(1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with
+religious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by a
+mysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations and
+weird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seen
+at daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders,
+dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsbury
+has suggested that Lockhart probably had the principal hand in
+this story. "Christopher North" was another member of the
+_Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of the
+unearthly.
+
+The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift for
+story-telling made Dickens call her his Scheherazade, were, like
+those of Cunningham, based directly on tradition. She was always
+attracted by the subject of witchcraft; and she had collected a
+store of "creepy" legends of the kind which made the nervous
+ladies of Cranford bid their sedan-chairmen hasten rapidly down
+Darkness Lane at nights. The best of Mrs. Gaskell's short tales
+is perhaps _The Nurse's Story_, which appeared in the Christmas
+number of _Household Words_ in 1852. Mrs. Gaskell has a happy
+gift for preserving the natural aroma of a tale of bygone days.
+_The Nurse's Story_ has a hint of the old-world grace of Lamb's
+_Dream Children_. The carefully disposed tableau of ghosts--the
+unforgiving old man, and the vindictive sister, spurning the lady
+and her child from the hall--is too definite and distinct, but
+the conception of the wraith of the dead child outside the manor,
+pleading piteously to be let in, and luring away the living
+child, is delicately wrought. The tale is told in the rambling,
+circumstantial style, suitable to the fireside and the long
+leisure of a winter's evening. Dickens tells a very different
+nurse's story in one of the chapters of _An Uncommercial
+Traveller_. The tone of Mrs. Gaskell's nurse is kindly and
+protective; that of Dickens' nurse severe, admonitory and
+emphatic. She, who told the grim legend of Captain Murderer,
+meant, clearly, to scare as well as to entertain her hearer. She
+leads up to the climax of her story, the deadly revenge of the
+dark twin's poisoned pie, with admirable art. The nurse's name
+was Mercy, but, as Dickens remarks, she showed none to him.
+Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful
+stories, he himself, like the fat boy in _Pickwick_, sometimes
+"wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait
+of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety,
+and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs,
+besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us _The Monkey's
+Paw_; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, _Told in the Dark_, are
+as forcible as any of his humours to be read in the daylight.
+Dickens, in his excursions into the supernatural, does not,
+however, always cast off his mood of jocularity. His treatment of
+Marley's ghost lacks dignity and decorum. Clanking its chains in
+a remote cellar of the silent, empty house, it has the power to
+disturb us, but we lose our respect for the shade when we gaze
+upon it eye to eye. Applied to the spirit world, there is much
+truth in the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. The
+account of the thirteenth juryman, in _Dr. Marigold's
+Prescriptions_, is much more alarming. The story of the
+signalman, No. 1 Branch line, in _Mugby Junction_, is indefinably
+horrible. The signalman's anguish of mind, his exact description
+of the Appearance, his sense of overhanging calamity, are all
+strangely disquieting. The coincidence of the manner of his
+death, with which the story closes, is wisely left to make its
+own inevitable impression.
+
+Some of the stories in _Blackwood_ are the more striking because
+they depend for their effect on natural, not supernatural,
+horror. We may feel we are immune from the visits of ghosts, but
+the accident in _The Man in the Bell_ (1821) is one which might
+happen to anyone. The maddening clangour of sound, the frightful
+images that crowd into the reeling brain of the man suspended in
+the belfry, are described with an unflinching realism that
+reminds us of _The Pit and the Pendulum_. To the same class
+belongs the skilfully constructed _Iron Shroud_ (1830), by
+William Mudford, an author who, as Scott remarks in his journal,
+"loves to play at cherry-pit with Satan." The suspense is
+ingeniously maintained as, one by one, the windows of the iron
+dungeon disappear, until, at last, the massive walls and
+ponderous roof contract into the victim's iron shroud. Wilkie
+Collins' story, _A Terribly Strange Bed_, which describes the
+stratagem of a gang of cardsharpers for getting rid of those who
+happen to win money from them, is in the same vein. The canopy
+slowly descends during the night, and smothers its victim. A
+similar motive is used, with immeasurably finer effect, by Joseph
+Conrad in his story of the disappearance of the sailor at the
+lonely inn in the mountains of Spain. The experience of Byrne in
+_The Inn of the Two Witches_[129] is a masterpiece in the
+psychology of terror. The dense darkness, in which the young
+naval officer "steers his course only by the feel of the wind,"
+the scene when the door of the inn bursts open and reveals in the
+candlelight the savage beauty of the gipsy girl with evil,
+slanting eyes, and the inhuman ugliness of the old hags, are a
+fitting prelude to the horrors of the chamber, where the corpse
+of the missing sailor is found in the wardrobe. We pass with
+Byrne through the different stages of suspicion and dread until,
+completely baffled in his attempt to account for the manner in
+which Tom Corbin was done to death, we feel "the hot terror that
+plays upon the heart like a tongue of flame that touches and
+withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes."
+
+In the short stories of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century, it is hard to escape from the terrible. We light upon it
+suddenly, here, there and everywhere. We find it in Stevenson's
+_New Arabian Nights_, in his _Merry Men_, and his stories of the
+South Seas, as indeed we should expect, when we recall the
+tapping of the blind man's stick in _Treasure Island_, the scene
+with the candles in the snow after the duel between the two
+brothers in _The Master of Ballantrae_, or David Balfour's
+perilous adventure on the broken staircase in _Kidnapped_.
+Kipling is another expert in the art of eeriness, and has a wide
+range. His Indian backgrounds are peculiarly adapted for tales of
+terror. The loathsome horror of _The Mark of the Beast_, with its
+intangible suggestion of mystery, the quiet restraint of _The
+Return of Imray_, in which so much is left unsaid, are two
+admirable illustrations of his gift.
+
+The tale of terror wins its effect by ever-varying means.
+Scientific discoveries open up new vistas, and the twentieth
+century will evolve many fresh devices for torturing the nerves.
+The telephone set ringing by a ghostly hand, the aeroplane with a
+phantom pilot, will replace the Gothic machinery of ruined abbeys
+and wandering lights. The possibilities of terror are manifold,
+and it is impracticable here to do more than pick up a few
+threads in the tangled skein. Terror becomes inextricably
+interwoven with other motives according to the bent of the
+author. It is allied with psychology in James' sinister _Turn of
+the Screw_, with scientific phantasy in Wells' _Invisible Man_.
+It may enhance the excitement of a spy story, add zest to the
+study of crime, or act as a foil to a romantic love interest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+In 1797 we are told that in America "the dairymaid and hired man
+no longer weep over the ballad of the cruel stepmother, but amuse
+themselves into an agreeable terror with the haunted houses and
+hobgoblins of Mrs. Radcliffe."[130] In _The Asylum, or Alonzo and
+Melissa_, published in Ploughkeepsie in 1811, the Gothic castle,
+with its full equipment of "explained ghosts," has been safely
+conveyed across the Atlantic and set up in South Carolina; and
+_The Sicilian Pirate or the Pillar of Mystery: a Terrific
+Romance_, is, if we may trust its title, a hair-raising story, in
+the style of "Monk" Lewis. Charles Brockden Brown, one of the
+earliest American novelists, prides himself on "calling forth the
+passions and engaging the sympathy of the reader by means not
+hitherto employed by preceding authors," and speaks slightingly
+of "puerile superstitions and exploded manners, Gothic castles
+and chimeras."[131] Brown, who, like Shelley, was an enthusiastic
+admirer of Godwin, sought to embody the theories of _Political
+Justice_ in romances describing American life. The works, which
+are said by Peacock to have taken deepest root in Shelley's mind
+and to have had the strongest influence in the formation of his
+character, are Schiller's _Robbers_, Goethe's _Faust_, and four
+novels--_Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly_, and _Mervyn_--by C.B.
+Brown.[132]
+
+Notwithstanding his lofty scorn for "Gothic castles and
+chimeras," even Brown himself condescended to take over from the
+despised Mrs. Radcliffe the device of introducing apparently
+supernatural occurrences which are ultimately traced to natural
+causes. Like Mrs. Radcliffe he is at the mercy of a conscience
+which forbids him to thrust upon his readers spectres in which he
+himself does not believe. He lacks Lewis's reckless mendacity. In
+_Wieland_ mysterious voices are heard at intervals by various
+members of the family. To the hero, who has inherited a tendency
+to religious fanaticism, they seem to be of divine origin, and
+when a voice bids him sacrifice those who are dearest to him, he
+obeys implicitly. He slays his wife and children, and his sister
+only escapes death by accident. After this catastrophe it proves
+that the voices are produced by a skilled ventriloquist, Carwin,
+who has been admitted as an intimate friend of the family.
+Realising that this explanation may seem somewhat incredible,
+Brown seeks to make it appear more plausible by dwelling on
+Wieland's abnormal state of mind, which would render him
+peculiarly open to suggestion. Carwin's motive for thus
+persecuting the Wieland family with his accursed gift is never
+satisfactorily explained. His attitude is apparently that of an
+obtuse psychologist, who does not realise how serious the
+consequence of his experiments may be.
+
+In _Ormond_ and _Arthur Mervyn_, Brown describes the ravages of
+the yellow fever, of which he had personal experience in New York
+and Philadelphia. The hero of _Ormond_ is a member of a society
+similar to that of the Illuminati, whose ceremonies and beliefs
+are set forth in _Horrid Mysteries_ (1796). The heroine,
+Constantia Dudley, who was Shelley's ideal feminine character, is
+the embodiment of a theory, not a human being. She "walks always
+in the light of reason," and decides that "to marry in extreme
+youth would be a proof of pernicious and opprobrious temerity."
+The most memorable of Brown's novels is _Edgar Huntly_, which
+bears an obvious resemblance to _Caleb Williams_. Like Godwin,
+Brown is deeply interested in morbid psychology. He finds
+pleasure in tracing the workings of the brain in times of
+emotional stress. The description of a sleepwalker digging a
+grave--a picture which captivated Shelley's imagination--is the
+starting-point of the book. Edgar Huntly is impelled by curiosity
+to track him down. The somnambulist, Clithero, has, in
+self-defence, killed the twin-brother of his patron, Mrs,
+Lorimer, to whom he is deeply attached. Obsessed by the idea of
+the misery his deed will arouse in her mind, he attempts, in a
+moment of frenzy, to slay her. Believing that Mrs. Lorimer has
+died after hearing of the murder, Clithero flees to America. When
+he disappears from his home, Huntly resolves to follow him, and
+in his search loses himself amid wild and desolate country. He is
+attacked by Indians, and after frightful adventures at length
+reaches his home. Clithero, whom he believed dead, has been
+rescued. Mrs. Lorimer is still alive, and is married to a former
+lover. This news, however, fails to restore Clithero, who, in a
+fit of insanity, flings himself overboard when he is in a ship in
+charge of Huntly.
+
+Brown's plots, which often open well, are spoilt by hasty,
+careless conclusions. It was his habit to write two or three
+novels simultaneously. He was beset by the problem that exercised
+even Scott's brain: "The devil of a difficulty is that one
+puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot
+disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have
+raised."
+
+Brown takes very little trouble over his dénouements, but his
+characters leave so faint an impression on our minds that we are
+not deeply concerned in their fates. He is interested rather in
+conveying states of mind than in portraying character. We search
+the windings of Clithero's tormented conscience without realising
+him as an individual. The background of rugged scenery, though it
+is described in vague, turgid language, is more definite and
+distinct than the human figures. We feel that Brown is struggling
+through the obscurity of his Latinised diction to depict
+something he has actually seen. An air of dreadful solemnity
+hangs heavily over each story. Every being is in deadly earnest.
+Brown has Godwin's power of hypnotising us by his serious
+persistence, and of reducing us to a mood of awestruck gravity by
+the sonority of his pompous periods.
+
+From the oppressive gloom of Brown's "novels with a purpose," it
+is a relief to turn to the irresponsible gaiety of "Geoffrey
+Crayon," whose tales of terror, published some twenty years
+later, are usually fashioned in a jovial spirit, only faintly
+tinged with awe and dread. In _The Spectre Bridegroom_, included
+in _The Sketch Book_ (1820), the ghostly rider of Bürger's
+far-famed ballad is set amid new surroundings and pleasantly
+turned to ridicule. The "supernatural" wooer, who now and again
+arouses a genuine thrill of fear, is merely playing a practical
+joke on the princess by impersonating the dead bridegroom, and
+all ends happily. The story of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy
+Hollow is set against so picturesque a background that we are
+almost inclined to quarrel with those who laughed and said that
+Ichabod Crane was still alive, and that Bram Jones, the lovely
+Katrina's bridegroom, knew more of the spectre than he chose to
+tell. The drowsy atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow makes us see visions
+and dream dreams. The group of "Strange Stories by a Nervous
+Gentleman" in _Tales of a Traveller_ (1824) prove that Washington
+Irving was well versed in ghostly lore. He, as well as any, can
+call spirits from the vasty deep, but, when they appear in answer
+to his summons, he can seldom refrain from receiving them in a
+jocose, irreverent mood, ill befitting the solemn, dignified
+spectre of a German legend. Even the highly qualified,
+irrepressibly loquacious ghost of Lewis Carroll's
+_Phantasmagoria_ would have resented his genial familiarity. The
+strange stories are told at a hunting-party in a country-house, a
+cheerful, comfortable background for ghost stories. A hoary,
+one-eyed gentleman, "the whole side of whose head was dilapidated
+and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted," sets
+the ball rolling with the old story of a spectre who glides into
+the room, wringing her hands, and is later identified, like
+Scott's Lady in the Sacque, by her resemblance to an ancestral
+portrait in the gallery. The "knowing" gentleman tells of a
+picture that winked in a startling and alarming fashion, and
+immediately explains away this phenomenon by the presence of a
+thief who has cut a spy-hole in the canvas. _The Bold Dragoon_ is
+a spirited, riotous nightmare in which the furniture dances to
+the music of the bellows played by an uncanny musician in a long
+flannel gown and a nightcap. The _Story of the German Student_ is
+in a different key. Here Irving strikes a note of real horror.
+The student falls in love with an imaginary lady, woven out of
+his dreams. He finds her in distress one night in the streets of
+Paris, takes her home, only to find her a corpse in the morning.
+A police-officer informs him that the lady was guillotined the
+day before, and the student discovers the truth of this statement
+when he unrolls a bandage and her head falls to the floor. The
+young man loses his reason, and is tormented by the belief that
+an evil spirit has reanimated a dead body to ensnare him. The
+morning after the recital of this gruesome story, the host reads
+aloud to his guests a manuscript entrusted to him, together with
+a portrait, by a young Italian. This youth, it chances, learnt
+painting with a monk, who, as a penance, drew pictures, or
+modelled waxen images, representing death and corruption, a
+detail which reminds us of what was concealed by the Black Veil
+in _Udolpho_. He later falls in love with his model, Bianca, who,
+during his absence abroad, marries his friend Filippo. In a
+jealous rage the young Italian slays his rival, and is
+unceasingly haunted by his phantom. Washington Irving has no
+desire to endure for long the atmosphere of mystery and horror
+his story has created, and quickly relieves the tension by a
+return to ordinary life. The host promises to show the picture,
+which is said to affect all beholders in an extraordinary
+fashion, to each of his guests in turn. They all profess
+themselves remarkably affected by it, until the host confesses
+that he has too sincere a regard for the feelings of the young
+Italian to reveal the actual picture to any of them; With this
+moment of disillusionment the strange stories come to an end. The
+title, _Tales of a Traveller_, under which Irving placed his
+tales of terror, indicates the mood in which he fashioned them.
+He regarded them much as he would regard the wonderful adventures
+of Baron Munchausen. They were to be taken, like one of Dr.
+Marigold's prescriptions, with a grain of salt. The idea of
+blending levity with horror, suggested perhaps by German
+influence, was very popular in England and France at this period.
+Balzac's _L'Auberge Rouge_ and _L'Elixir de la Longue Vie_ are
+written in a similar mood.
+
+It is not always the boldest and most adventurous beings who
+elect to dwell amid "calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire."
+The "virtuous mind," whom supernatural horrors may "startle well
+but not astound," sometimes finds a melancholy pleasure in
+beguiling weaker mortals into haunted ruins to watch their firm
+nerves tremble. Sometimes too, though a man be wholly innocent of
+the desire to alarm, he is led astray, whether he will or not,
+among the terrors of the invisible world. Grey ghosts steal into
+his imagination unawares. It was so that they came to Nathaniel
+Hawthorne, who speaks sorrowfully of "gaily dressed fantasies
+turning to ghostly and black-clad images of themselves." He would
+gladly have written a "sunshiny" book, but was capriciously fated
+to live ever in the twilight, haunted by spectres and by "dark
+ideas." He fashions his tales of terror delicately and
+reluctantly, not riotously and shamelessly like Lewis and
+Maturin.
+
+An innate reticence and shyness of temper held Hawthorne, as if
+by a spell, somewhat aloof from life, and no one realised more
+clearly than he the limitations that his detachment from humanity
+imposed upon his art.
+
+Of _Twice-Told Tales_ he writes regretfully:
+
+     "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in
+     too retired a shade... Instead of passion there is
+     sentiment and even in what purport to be pictures of
+     actual life we have allegory, not always so warmly
+     dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be
+     taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether
+     from lack of power or an inconquerable reserve, the
+     author's touches have often an effect of tameness. The
+     book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be
+     read in the clear, brown twilight atmosphere in which
+     it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to
+     look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages";
+
+and in his _Notebook_ (1840) he confesses:
+
+     "I used to think I could imagine all the passions, all
+     feelings and states of the heart and mind, but how
+     little did I know! Indeed we are but shadows, we are
+     not endowed with real life, and all that seems most
+     real about us is but the thinnest shadow of a
+     dream--till the heart be touched."
+
+Whether he is threading the labyrinths of his imagination or
+watching the human shadows come and go, Hawthorne lingers longer
+in the shadow than in the sunshine. He was not a man of morose
+and gloomy temper, disenchanted with life and driven by distress
+or thwarted passion to brood in solitude. An irresistible,
+inexplicable impulse drives him towards the sombre and the
+gloomy. The delicacy and wistful charm of the words in which
+Hawthorne criticises his own work and character reveal how
+impossible it would have been for him to force his wayward
+genius. His imagination hovers with curious persistence round
+eerie, fantastic themes:
+
+"An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making
+all the images reflected in it pass again across its surface"--a
+hint skilfully introduced into the history of old Esther Dudley
+in _The Legends of the Province House_, or:
+
+     "A dreadful secret to be communicated to several
+     persons of various character--grave or gay--and they
+     all to become insane, according to their characters, by
+     the influence of the secret"
+
+--an idea modified and adapted in _The Marble Faun_. "An ice-cold
+hand--which people ever afterwards remember when once they have
+grasped it"--is bestowed on the Wandering Jew, the owner of the
+marvellous _Virtuoso's Collection_, whose treasures include the
+blood-encrusted pen with which Dr. Faustus signed away his
+salvation, Peter Schlemihl's shadow, the elixir of life, and the
+philosopher's stone. The form of a vampire, who apparently never
+took shape on paper, flitted through the twilight of Hawthorne's
+imagination:
+
+     "Stories to be told of a certain person's appearance in
+     public, of his having been seen in various situations,
+     and his making visits in private circles; but finally
+     on looking for this person, to come upon his old grave
+     and mossy tombstone."
+
+With so many alluring suggestions floating shadowwise across his
+mind, it is not wonderful that Hawthorne should have been
+fascinated by the dream of a human life prolonged far beyond the
+usual span--a dream, which, if realised, would have enabled him
+to capture in words more of those "shapes that haunt thought's
+wildernesses."
+
+Although among the sketches collected in _Twice-Told Tales_ (vol.
+i. 1837, vol. ii. 1842) some are painted in gay and lively hues,
+the prevailing tone of the book is sad and mournful. The
+light-hearted philosophy of the wanderers in _The Seven
+Vagabonds_, the pretty, brightly coloured vignettes in _Little
+Annie's Rambles_, the quiet cheerfulness of _Sunday at Home_ or
+_The Rill from the Town Pump_, only serve to throw into darker
+relief gloomy legends like that of _Ethan Brand_, the man who
+went in search of the Unpardonable Sin, or dreary stories like
+that of _Edward Fane's Rosebud_, or the ghostly _White Old Maid_.
+One of the most carefully wrought sketches in _Twice-Told Tales_
+is the weird story of _The Hollow of the Three Hills_. By means
+of a witch's spell, a lady hears the far-away voices of her aged
+parents--her mother querulous and tearful, her father calmly
+despondent--and amid the fearful mirth of a madhouse
+distinguishes the accents and footstep of the husband she has
+wronged. At last she listens to the death-knell tolled for the
+child she has left to die. The solemn rhythm of Hawthorne's
+skilfully ordered sentences is singularly haunting and
+impressive:
+
+     "The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the
+     hills, but deep shades obscured the hollow and the
+     pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to
+     overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
+     weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till
+     the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals of
+     her words, like a clang that had travelled far over
+     valley and rising ground and was just ready to die in
+     the air... Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened
+     into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from
+     some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of
+     mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to
+     the solitary wayfarer that all might weep for the doom
+     appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread,
+     passing slowly, slowly on as of mourners with a coffin,
+     their garments trailing the ground so that the ear
+     could measure the length of their melancholy array.
+     Before them went the priest reading the burial-service,
+     while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
+     breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak
+     aloud, still here were revilings and anathemas
+     whispered, but distinct, from women and from men... The
+     sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a
+     thin vapour and the wind that just before had seemed to
+     shake the coffin-pall moaned sadly round the verge of
+     the hollow between three hills."
+
+In a later collection of Hawthorne's short stories, _Mosses from
+an Old Manse_, the grave and the gay, the terrific and the
+sportive, are once more intermingled. Side by side with a forlorn
+attempt at humorous allegory, Mrs. _Bullfrog_, we find the
+serious moral allegories of _The Birthmark_ and _The
+Bosom-Serpent_, the wild, mysterious forest-revels in _Goodman
+Brown_, and the evil, sinister beauty of _Dr. Rappacini's
+Daughter_, a modern rehandling of the ancient legend of the
+poison-maiden, who was perhaps the prototype of Oliver Wendell
+Holmes' heroine in _Elsie Venner_ (1861). The quiet grace and
+natural ease of Hawthorne's style lend even to his least
+ambitious tales a distinctive charm. If he chooses a slight and
+simple theme, his touch is deft and sure. _Dr. Heidegger's
+Experiment_, in which Hawthorne's delicate, whimsical fancy plays
+round the idea of the elixir of life, is almost like a series of
+miniature pictures, distinct and lifelike in form and colour,
+seen through the medium of an old-fashioned magic-lantern. Yet
+even in this fantastic trifle we can discern the feeling for
+words and the sense of proportion that characterise Hawthorne's
+longer works.
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_ (1850) was originally intended to be one of
+several short stories, but Hawthorne was persuaded to expand it
+into a novel. He felt some misgivings as to the success of the
+work:
+
+  "Keeping so close to the point as the tale does, and
+  diversified in no otherwise than by turning different
+  sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it will
+  weary very many people and disgust some."
+
+The plot bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Lockhart's
+striking novel, _Adam Blair_. The "dark idea" that fascinates
+Hawthorne is the psychological state of Hester Prynne and her
+lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, in the long years that follow their
+lawless passion. Their love story hardly concerns him at all. The
+interest of the novel does not depend on the development of the
+plot. No attempt is made to complicate the story by concealing
+the identity of Hester's lover or of her husband. The action
+takes place within the souls and minds of the characters, not in
+their outward circumstances. The central chapter of the book is
+named significantly: "The Interior of a Heart." The moral
+situation described in _The Scarlet Letter_ did not present
+itself to Hawthorne abstractly, but as a series of pictures. He
+habitually thought in images, and he brooded so long over his
+conceptions that his descriptions are almost as definite in
+outline and as vivid in colour as things actually seen. His
+pictures do not waver or fade elusively as the mind seeks to
+realise them. The prison door, studded with pikes, before which
+Hester Prynne first stands with the letter on her breast, the
+pillory where Dimmesdale keeps vigil at midnight, the
+forest-trees with pale, fitful gleams of sunshine glinting
+through their leaves, are so distinct that we almost put out our
+hands to touch them. Hawthorne's dream-imagery has the same
+convincing reality. The phantasmagoric visions which float
+through Hester's consciousness--the mirrored reflection of her
+own face in girlhood, her husband's thin, scholar-like visage,
+the grey houses of the cathedral city where she had spent her
+early years--are more real to her and to us than the blurred
+faces of the Puritans who throng the marketplace to gaze on her
+ignominy. Although the moral tone of the book is one of almost
+unrelieved gloom, the actual scenes are full of colour and light.
+Pearl's scarlet frock with its fantastic embroideries, the
+magnificent velvet gown and white ruff of the old dame who rides
+off by night to the witch-revels in the forest, the group of Red
+Indians in their deer-skin robes and wampum belts of red and
+yellow ochre, the bronzed faces and gaudy attire of the Spanish
+pirates, all stand out in bold relief among the sober greys and
+browns of the Puritans. The tense, emotional atmosphere is
+heightened by the festive brightness of the outer world.
+
+The light of Hawthorne's imagination is directed mainly on three
+characters--Hester, Arthur, and the elf-like child Pearl, the
+living symbol of their union. Further in the background lurks the
+malignant figure of Roger Chillingworth, contriving his fiendish
+scheme of vengeance, "violating in cold blood the sanctity of a
+human heart." The blaze of the Scarlet Letter compels us by a
+strange magnetic power to follow Hester Prynne wherever she goes,
+but her suffering is less acute and her character less intricate
+than her lover's. She bears the outward badge of shame, but after
+"wandering without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind," wins a
+dull respite from anguish as she glides "like a grey and sober
+shadow" over the threshold of those who are visited by sorrow. At
+the last, when Dimmesdale's spirit is "so shattered and subdued
+that it could hardly hold itself erect," Hester has still energy
+to plan and to act. His character is more twisted and tortuous
+than hers, and to understand him we must visit him apart. The
+sensitive nature that can endure physical pain but shrinks
+piteously from moral torture, the capacity for deep and
+passionate feeling, the strange blending of pride and abject
+self-loathing, of cowardice and resolve, are portrayed with
+extraordinary skill. The different strands of his character are
+"intertwined in an inextricable knot." His is a living soul,
+complicated and varying in its moods, but ever pursued by a sense
+of sin. By one of Hawthorne's swift, uncanny flashes of insight,
+as Dimmesdale goes home after the forest-meeting, we hear nothing
+of the wild beatings of hope and dreary revulsions to despair,
+but only of foul, grotesque temptations that assail him, just as
+earlier--on the pillory--it is the grim humour and not the
+frightful shame of the situation that strikes him, when by an odd
+trick of his imagination he suddenly pictures a "whole tribe of
+decorous personages starting into view with the disorder of a
+nightmare in their aspects," to look upon their minister.
+
+Hawthorne's delineation of character and motive is as
+scrupulously accurate and scientific as Godwin's, but there is
+none of Godwin's inhumanity in his attitude. His complete
+understanding of human weakness makes pity superfluous and
+undignified. He pronounces no judgment and offers no plea for
+mercy. His instinct is to present the story as it appeared
+through the eyes of those who enacted the drama or who witnessed
+it. Stern and inexorable as one of his own witch-judging
+ancestors, Hawthorne foils the lovers' plan of escape across the
+sea, lets the minister die as soon as he has made the revelation
+that gives him his one moment of victory, and in the conclusion
+brings Hester back to take up her long-forsaken symbol of shame.
+Pearl alone Hawthorne sets free, the spell which bound her human
+sympathies broken by the kiss she bestows on her guilty father.
+There are few passionate outbursts of feeling, save when Hester
+momentarily unlocks her heart in the forest--and even here
+Hawthorne's language is extraordinarily restrained:
+
+     "'What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it
+     so! We said so to each other. Hast thou forgotten it?'
+     'Hush, Hester!' said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the
+     ground. 'No; I have not forgotten.'"
+
+Or again, after Dimmesdale has confessed that he has neither
+strength nor courage left him to venture into the world: "'Thou
+shalt not go alone!' answered she, in a deep whisper. Then all
+was spoken."
+
+In _The House of the Seven Gables_ (1851), as in _The Scarlet
+Letter_, Hawthorne again presents his scenes in the light of a
+single, pervading idea, this time an ancestral curse, symbolised
+by the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, who condemned an innocent
+man for witchcraft.
+
+     "To the thoughtful man there will be no tinge of
+     superstition in what we figuratively express, by
+     affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps
+     as a portion of his own punishment--is often doomed to
+     become the Evil Genius of his family."
+
+Hawthorne wins his effect by presenting the idea to our minds
+from different points of view, until we are obsessed by the curse
+that broods heavily over the old house. Even the aristocratic
+breed of fowls, of "queer, rusty, withered aspect," are an emblem
+of the decay of the Pyncheon family. The people are apt to be
+merged into the dense shadows that lurk in the gloomy passages,
+but when the sun shines on them they stand out with arresting
+distinctness. The heroic figure of Hepzibah Pyncheon, a little
+ridiculous and a little forbidding of aspect, but cherishing
+through weary years a passionate devotion to her brother, is
+described with a gentle blending of humour and pathos. Clifford
+Pyncheon--the sybarite made for happiness and hideously cheated
+of his destiny--is delineated with curious insight and sympathy.
+It is Judge Jaffery Pyncheon, with his "sultry" smile of
+"elaborate benevolence"--unrelenting and crafty as his infamous
+ancestor--who lends to _The House of Seven Gables_ the element of
+terror. Hour after hour, Hawthorne, with grim and bitter irony,
+mocks and taunts the dead body of the hypocritical judge until
+the ghostly pageantry of dead Pyncheons--including at last Judge
+Jaffery himself with the fatal crimson stain on his
+neckcloth--fades away with the oncoming of daylight.
+
+Hawthorne's mind was richly stored with "wild chimney-corner
+legends," many of them no doubt gleaned from an old woman
+mentioned in one of his _Tales and Sketches_. He takes over the
+fantastic superstitions in which his ancestors had believed, and
+uses them as the playthings of his fancy, picturing with
+malicious mirth the grey shadows of his stern, dark-browed
+forefathers sadly lamenting his lapse from grace and saying one
+to the other:
+
+     "A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in
+     life, what manner of glorifying God, or being
+     serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may
+     that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have
+     been a fiddler."
+
+The story of Alice Pyncheon, the maiden under the dreadful power
+of a wizard, who, to wreak his revenge, compelled her to
+surrender her will to his and to do whatsoever he list, the
+legends of ghosts and spectres in the _Twice-Told Tales_, the
+allusions to the elixir of life in his _Notebooks_, the
+introduction of witches into _The Scarlet Letter_, of mesmerism
+into _The Blithedale Romance_, show how often Hawthorne was
+pre-occupied with the terrors of magic and of the invisible
+world. He handles the supernatural in a half-credulous,
+half-sportive spirit, neither affirming nor denying his belief.
+One of his artful devices is wilfully to cast doubt upon his
+fancies, and so to pique us into the desire to be momentarily at
+least one of the foolish and imaginative.
+
+After writing _The Blithedale Romance_, in which he embodied his
+experiences at Brook Farm, and his Italian romance,
+_Transformation, or The Marble Faun_, Hawthorne, when his health
+was failing, strove to find expression for the theme of
+immortality, which had always exercised a strange fascination
+upon him. In August, 1855, during his consulate in Liverpool, he
+visited Smithell's Hall, near Bolton, and heard the legend of the
+Bloody Footstep. He thought of uniting this story with that of
+the elixir of life, but ultimately decided to treat the story of
+the footstep in _Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, of which only a
+fragment was written, and to embody the elixir idea in a separate
+work, _Septimius Felton_, of which two unfinished versions exist.
+Septimius Felton, a young man living in Concord at the time of
+the war of the Revolution, tries to brew the potion of eternity
+by adding to a recipe, which his aunt has derived from the
+Indians, the flowers which spring from the grave of a man whom he
+has slain. In _Dr. Dolliver's Romance_, Hawthorne, so far as we
+may judge from the fragment which remains, seems to be working
+out an idea jotted down in his notebook several years earlier:
+
+     "A man arriving at the extreme point of old age grows
+     young again at the same pace at which he had grown old,
+     returning upon his path throughout the whole of life,
+     and thus taking the reverse view of matters. Methinks
+     it would give rise to some odd concatenations."
+
+The story, which opens with a charming description of Dr.
+Dolliver and his great-grandchild, Pansie, breaks off so abruptly
+that it is impossible to forecast the "odd concatenations" that
+had flashed through Hawthorne's mind.
+
+Although Hawthorne is preoccupied continually with the thought of
+death, his outlook is melancholy, not morbid. He recoils
+fastidiously from the fleshly and loses himself in the spiritual.
+He is concerned with mournful reflections, not frightful events.
+It is the mystery of death, not its terror, that fascinates him.
+Sensitive and susceptible himself, he never startles us with
+physical horrors. He does not search with curious ingenuity for
+recondite terrors. He was compelled as if by some wizard's
+strange power, to linger in earth's shadowed places; but the
+scenes that throng his memory are reflected in quiet, subdued
+tones. His pictures are never marred by harsh lines or crude
+colours.
+
+While Hawthorne in his _Twice-Told Tales_ was toying pensively
+with spectral forms and "dark ideas," Edgar Allan Poe was
+penetrating intrepidly into trackless regions of terror. Where
+Hawthorne would have shrunk back, repelled and disgusted, Poe,
+wildly exhilarated by the anticipation of a new and excruciating
+thrill, forced his way onwards. He sought untiringly for unusual
+situations, inordinately gloomy or terrible, and made them the
+starting point for excursions into abnormal psychology. Just as
+Hawthorne harps with plaintive insistence on the word "sombre,"
+Poe again and again uses the epithet "novel." His tales are
+never, as Hawthorne's often are, pathetic. His instinct is always
+towards the dramatic. Sometimes he rises to tragic heights,
+sometimes he is merely melodramatic. He rejoices in theatrical
+effects, like the death-throes of William Wilson, the return of
+the lady Ligeia, or the entry, awaited with torturing suspense,
+of the "lofty" and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of
+Usher. Like Hawthorne, Poe was fascinated by the thought of
+death, "the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed him night and
+day," but he describes death accompanied by its direst physical
+and mental agonies. Hawthorne broods over the idea of sin, but
+Poe probes curiously into the psychology of crime. The one is
+detached and remote, the other inhuman and passionless. The
+contrast in style between Hawthorne and Poe reflects clearly
+their difference in temper. Hawthorne writes always with easy,
+finished perfection, choosing the right word unerringly, Poe
+experiments with language, painfully acquiring a conscious,
+studied form of expression which is often remarkably effective,
+but which almost invariably suggests a sense of artifice. In
+reading _The Scarlet Letter_ we do not think of the style; in
+reading _The Masque of the Red Death_ we are forcibly impressed
+by the skilful arrangement of words, the alternation of long and
+short sentences, the device of repetition and the deliberate
+choice of epithets. Hawthorne uses his own natural form of
+expression. Poe, with laborious art, fashions an instrument
+admirably adapted to his purposes.
+
+Poe's earliest published story, _A Manuscript Found in a
+Bottle_--the prize tale for the _Baltimore Saturday Visitor_,
+1833--proves that he soon recognised his peculiar vein of talent.
+He straightway takes the tale of terror for his own. The
+experiences of a sailor, shipwrecked in the Simoom and hurled on
+the crest of a towering billow into a gigantic ship manned by a
+hoary crew who glide uneasily to and fro "like the ghosts of
+buried centuries," forecast the more frightful horrors of _A
+Descent into the Maelstrom_ (1841). Poe's method in both stories
+is to induce belief by beginning with a circumstantial narrative
+of every-day events, and by proceeding to relate the most
+startling phenomena in the same calm, matter-of-fact manner. The
+whirling abyss of the Maelstrom in which the tiny boat is
+engulfed, and the sensations of the fishermen--awe, wonder,
+horror, curiosity, hope, alternating or intermingled--are
+described with the same quiet precision as the trivial
+preliminary adventures. The man's dreary expectation of
+incredulity seals our conviction of the truth of his story. In
+_The Manuscript Found in a Bottle_, too, we may trace the first
+suggestion of that idea which finds its most complete and
+memorable expression in _Ligeia_ (1837). The antique ship, with
+its preternaturally aged crew "doomed to hover continually upon
+the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the
+abyss," is an early foreshadowing of the fulfilment of Joseph
+Glanvill's declaration so strikingly illustrated in the return of
+Ligeia: "Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death
+utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." In
+_Ligeia_, Poe concentrates on this idea with singleness of
+purpose. He had striven to embody it in his earlier sketches, in
+_Morella_, where the beloved is reincarnated in the form of her
+own child, in the musical, artificial _Eleonora_ and in the
+gruesome _Berenice_. In _Ligeia_, at last, it finds its
+appropriate setting in the ebony bridal-chamber, hung with gold
+tapestries grotesquely embroidered with fearful shapes and
+constantly wafted to and fro, like those in one of the _Episodes
+of Vathek_. In _The Fall of the House of Usher_ he adapts the
+theme which he had approached in the sketch entitled _Premature
+Burial_, and unites with it a subtler conception, the sentience
+of the vegetable world. Like the guest of Roderick Usher, as we
+enter the house we fall immediately beneath the overmastering
+sway of its irredeemable, insufferable gloom. The melancholy
+building, Usher's wild musical improvisations, his vague but
+awful paintings, his mystical reading and his eerie verses with
+the last haunting stanza:
+
+  "And travellers now within that valley
+  Through the red-litten windows, see
+  Vast forms that move fantastically
+  To a discordant melody;
+  While, like a rapid, ghastly river,
+  Through the pale door,
+  A hideous throng rush out forever
+  And laugh--but smile no more,"
+
+are all in harmony with the fate that broods over the family of
+Usher. Poe's gift for avoiding all impressions alien to his
+effect lends to his tales extraordinary unity of tone and colour.
+He leads up to his crisis with a gradual crescendo of emotion.
+The climax, hideous and terrifying, relieves the intensity of our
+feelings, and once it is past Poe rapidly hastens to the only
+possible conclusion. The dreary house with its vacant, eye-like
+windows reflected at the outset in the dark, unruffled tarn,
+disappears for ever beneath its surface.
+
+In _The Masque of the Red Death_ the imagery changes from moment
+to moment, each scene standing out clear in colour and sharp in
+outline; but from first to last the perspective of the whole is
+kept steadily in view. No part is disproportionate or
+inappropriate. The arresting overture describing the swift and
+sudden approach of the Red Death, the gay, thoughtless security
+of Prince Prospero and his guests within the barricaded abbey,
+the voluptuous masquerade held in a suite of seven rooms of seven
+hues, the disconcerting chime of the ebony clock that momentarily
+stills the grotesque figures of the dancers, prepare us for the
+dramatic climax, the entry of the audacious guest, the Red Death,
+and his struggle with Prince Prospero. The story closes as it
+began with the triumph of the Red Death. Poe achieves his
+powerful effect with rigid economy of effort. He does not add an
+unnecessary touch.
+
+In _The Cask of Amontillado_--perhaps the most terrible and the
+most perfectly executed of all Poe's tales--the note of grim
+irony is sustained throughout. The jingling of the bells and the
+devilish profanity of the last three words--_Requiescat in
+pace_--add a final touch of horror to a revenge, devised and
+carried out with consummate artistry.
+
+Poe, like Hawthorne, loved to peer curiously into the dim
+recesses of conscience. Hawthorne was concerned with the effect
+of remorse on character. Poe often exhibits a conscience
+possessed by the imp of the perverse, and displays no interest in
+the character of his victim. He chooses no ordinary crimes. He
+considers, without De Quincey's humour, murder as a fine art. In
+_The Black Cat_ the terrors are calculated with cold-blooded
+nicety. Every device is used to deepen the impression and to
+intensify the agony. In _The Tell-Tale Heart_, so unremitting is
+the suspense, as the murderer slowly inch by inch projects his
+head round the door in the darkness, that it is well-nigh
+intolerable. The close of the story, which errs on the side of
+the melodramatic, is less cunningly contrived than Poe's endings
+usually are. In _William Wilson_, Poe handles the subject of
+conscience in an allegorical form, a theme essayed by Bulwer
+Lytton in one of his sketches in _The Student, Monos and
+Daimonos_. He probably influenced Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde_.
+
+In _The Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe seems to start from the very
+border-line of the most hideous nightmare that the human mind can
+conceive, yet there is nothing hazy or indefinite in his analysis
+of the feelings of his victim. He speaks as one who has
+experienced the sensations himself, not as one who is making a
+wild surmise. To read is, indeed, to endure in some measure the
+torture of the prisoner; but our pain is alleviated not only by
+the realisation that we at least may win respite when we will,
+but by our appreciation of Poe's subtle technique. He notices the
+readiness of the mind, when racked unendurably, to concentrate on
+frivolous trifles--the exact shape and size of the dungeon; or
+the sound of the scythe cutting through cloth. Mental and
+physical agonies are interchanged with careful art.
+
+Poe's constructive power fitted him admirably to write the
+detective story. In _The Mystery of M. Roget_ he adopts a dull
+plot without sufficient vigour and originality to rivet our
+attention, but _The Murders of the Rue Morgue_ secures our
+interest from beginning to end. As in the case of Godwin's _Caleb
+Williams_, the end was conceived first and the plot was carefully
+woven backwards. No single thread is left loose. Dupin's methods
+of ratiocination are similar to those of Conan Doyle's Sherlock
+Holmes. Poe never shirks a gory detail, but the train of
+reasoning not the imagery absorbs us in his detective stories. In
+his treasure story--_The Gold Bug_, which may have suggested
+Stevenson's _Treasure Island_--he compels our interest by the
+intricacy and elaboration of his problem.
+
+The works of Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin were not unknown
+to Poe, and he refers more than once to the halls of Vathek. From
+Gothic romance he may perhaps vivid that they make the senses
+ache. Like Maturin, he even resorts to italics to enforce his
+effect. He crashes down heavily on a chord which would resound at
+a touch. He is liable too to descend into vulgarity in his choice
+of phrases. His tales consequently gain in style in the
+translations of Baudelaire. But these aberrations occur mainly in
+his inferior work. In his most highly wrought stories, such as
+_Amontillado_, _The House of Usher_, or _The Masque of the Red
+Death_, the execution is flawless. In these, Poe never lost sight
+of the ideal, which, in his admirable review of Hawthorne's
+_Twice-Told Tales_ and _Mosses from an Old Manse_, he set before
+the writer of short stories:
+
+     "A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale ...
+     having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain
+     unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then
+     invents such incidents--he then combines such
+     events--as may best aid him in establishing this
+     preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend
+     not to the outbringing of this effect, he has failed in
+     the first step. In the whole composition there should
+     be no word written of which the tendency direct or
+     indirect is not to the one pre-established design."
+
+While he was writing, Poe did not for a moment let his
+imagination run riot. The outline of the story was so distinctly
+conceived, its atmosphere so familiar to him, that he had leisure
+to choose his words accurately, and to dispose his sentences
+harmoniously, with the final effect ever steadily in view. The
+impression that he swiftly flashes across our minds is deep and
+enduring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
+
+
+This book is an attempt to trace in outline the origin and
+development of the Gothic romance and the tale of terror. Such a
+survey is necessarily incomplete. For more than fifty years after
+the publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ the Gothic Romance
+remained a definitely recognised kind of fiction; but, as the
+scope of the novel gradually came to include the whole range of
+human expression, it lost its individuality, and was merged into
+other forms. To follow every trail of its influence would lead us
+far afield. The Tale of Terror, if we use the term in its wider
+sense, may be said to include the magnificent story of the
+Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar's Feast, the Book of Job, the
+legends of the Deluge and of the Tower of Babel, and Saul's Visit
+to the Witch of Endor, which Byron regarded as the best ghost
+story in the world. In the Hebrew writings fear is used to endow
+a hero with superhuman powers or to instil a moral truth. The sun
+stands still in the heavens that Joshua may prevail over his
+enemies. In modern days the tale of terror is told for its own
+sake. It has become an end in itself, and is probably appreciated
+most fully by those who are secure from peril. It satisfies the
+human desire to experience new emotions and sensations, without
+actual danger.
+
+There is little doubt that the Gothic Romance primarily made its
+appeal to women readers, though we know that Mrs. Radcliffe had
+many men among her admirers, and that Cherubina of _The Heroine_
+had a companion in folly, The Story-Haunted Youth. It is remotely
+allied, as its name implies, to the mediaeval romances, at which
+Cervantes tilts in _Don Quixote_. It was more closely akin,
+however, to the heroic romances satirised in Mrs. Charlotte
+Lennox's _Female Quixote_ (1752). When the voluminous works of Le
+Calprenède and of Mademoiselle de Scudéry were translated into
+English, they found many imitators and admirers, and their vogue
+outlasted the seventeenth century. _Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus_,
+out of which Mrs. Pepys told her husband long stories, "though
+nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner," is to be found,
+with a pin stuck through one of the middle leaves, in the lady's
+library described by Addison in the _Spectator_, Mrs. Aphra Behn,
+in _Oroonoko_ and _The Fair Jilt_, had made some attempt to bring
+romance nearer to real life; but it was not until the middle of
+the eighteenth century, when the novel, with the rise of
+Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, took firm root on
+English soil, that the popularity of Cassandra, Parthenissa and
+Aretina was superseded. Then, if we may trust the evidence of
+Colman's farce, _Polly Honeycombe_, first acted in 1760, Pamela,
+Clarissa Harlowe and Sophia Western reigned in their stead. For
+the reader who had patiently followed the eddying, circling
+course of the heroic romance, with its high-flown language and
+marvellous adventures, Richardson's novel of sentiment probably
+held more attraction than Fielding's novel of manners. Fielding,
+on his broad canvas, paints the life of his day on the highway,
+in coaches, taverns, sponging-houses or at Vauxhall masquerades.
+Every class of society is represented, from the vagabond to the
+noble lord. Richardson, in describing the shifts and subterfuges
+of Mr. B--and the elaborate intrigue of Lovelace, moves within a
+narrow circle, devoting himself, not to the portrayal of
+character, but to the minute analysis of a woman's heart. The
+sentiment of Richardson descends to Mrs. Radcliffe. Her heroines
+are fashioned in the likeness of Clarissa Harlowe; her heroes
+inherit many of the traits of the immaculate Grandison. She adds
+zest to her plots by wafting her heroines to distant climes and
+bygone centuries, and by playing on their nerves with
+superstitious fears. Since human nature often looks to fiction
+for a refuge from the world, there is always room for the
+illusion of romance side by side with the picture of actual life.
+Fanny Burney's spirited record of Evelina's visit to her vulgar,
+but human, relatives, the Branghtons, in London, is not enough.
+We need too the sojourn of Emily, with her thick-coming fancies,
+in the castle of Udolpho.
+
+The Gothic Romance did not reflect real life, or reveal
+character, or display humour. Its aim was different. It was full
+of sentimentality, and it stirred the emotions of pity and fear.
+The ethereal, sensitive heroine, suffering through no fault of
+her own, could not fail to win sympathy. The hero was pale,
+melancholy, and unfortunate enough to be attractive. The villain,
+bold and desperate in his crimes, was secretly admired as well as
+feared. Hairbreadth escapes and wicked intrigues in castles built
+over beetling precipices were sufficiently outside the reader's
+own experience to produce a thrill. Ghosts, and rumours of
+ghosts, touched nearly the eighteenth century reader, who had
+often listened, with bated breath, to winter's tales of spirits
+seen on Halloween in the churchyard, or white-robed spectres
+encountered in dark lanes and lonely ruins. In country houses
+like those described in Miss Austen's novels, where life was
+diversified only by paying calls, dining out, taking gentle
+exercise or playing round games like "commerce" or "word-making
+and work-taking," the Gothic Romances must have proved a welcome
+source of pleasurable excitement. Mr. Woodhouse, with his
+melancholy views on the effects of wedding cake and muffin, would
+have condemned them, no doubt, as unwholesome; Lady Catherine de
+Bourgh would have been too impatient to read them; but Lydia
+Bennet, Elinor Dashwood and Isabella Thorpe must have found in
+them an inestimable solace. Their fame was soon overshadowed by
+that of the Waverley Novels, but they had served their turn in
+providing an entertaining interlude before the arrival of Sir
+Walter Scott. Even at the very height of his vogue, they probably
+enjoyed a surreptitious popularity, not merely in the servants'
+hall, but in the drawing room. Nineteenth century literature
+abounds in references to the vogue of this school of fiction.
+There were spasmodic attempts at a revival in an anonymous work
+called _Forman_ (1819), dedicated to Scott, and in Ainsworth's
+_Rookwood_ (1834); and terror has never ceased to be used as a
+motive in fiction.
+
+In _Villette_, Lucy Snowe, whose nerves Ginevra describes as
+"real iron and bend leather," gazes steadily for the space of
+five minutes at the spectral "nun." This episode indicates a
+change of fashion; for the lady of Gothic romance could not have
+submitted to the ordeal for five seconds without fainting. A more
+robust heroine, who thinks clearly and yet feels strongly, has
+come into her own. In _Jane Eyre_ many of the situations are
+fraught with terror, but it is the power of human passion,
+transcending the hideous scenes, that grips our imagination.
+Terror is used as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. In
+_Wuthering Heights_ the windswept Yorkshire moors are the
+background for elemental feelings. We no longer "tremble with
+delicious dread" or "snatch a fearful joy." The gloom never
+lightens. We live ourselves beneath the shadow of Heathcliff's
+awe-inspiring personality, and there is no escape from a terror,
+which passes almost beyond the bounds of speech. The Brontës do
+not trifle with emotion or use supernatural elements to increase
+the tension. Theirs are the terrors of actual life.
+
+Other novelists, contemporary with the Brontës, revel in terror
+for its own sake. Wilkie Collins weaves elaborate plots of
+hair-raising events. The charm of _The Moonstone_ and the _Woman
+in White_ is independent of character or literary finish. It
+consists in the unravelling of a skilfully woven fabric. Le Fanu,
+who resented the term "sensational" which was justly applied to
+his works, plays pitilessly on our nerves with both real and
+fictitious horrors. He, like Wilkie Collins, made a cult of
+terror. Their literary descendants may perhaps be found in such
+authors as Richard Marsh or Bram Stoker, or Sax Rohmer. In Bram
+Stoker's _Dracula_ the old vampire legend is brought up to date,
+and we are held from beginning to end in a state of frightful
+suspense. No one who has read the book will fail to remember the
+picture of Dracula climbing up the front of the castle in
+Transylvania, or the scene in the tomb when a stake is driven
+through the heart of the vampire who has taken possession of
+Lucy's form. The ineffable horror of the "Un-Dead" would repel us
+by its painfulness, if it were not made endurable by the love,
+hope and faith of the living characters, particularly of the old
+Dutch doctor, Van Helsing. The matter-of-fact style of the
+narrative, which is compiled of letters, diaries and journals,
+and the mention of such familiar places as Whitby and Hampstead,
+help to enhance the illusion.
+
+The motive of terror has often been mingled with other motives in
+the novel as well as in the short tale. In unwinding the
+complicated thread of the modern detective story, which follows
+the design originated by Godwin and perfected by Poe, we are
+frequently kept to our task by the force of terror as well as of
+curiosity. In _The Sign of Four_ and in _The Hound of the
+Baskervilles_, to choose two entirely different stories, Conan
+Doyle realises that darkness and loneliness place us at the mercy
+of terror, and he works artfully on our fears of the unknown.
+Phillips Oppenheim and William Le Queux, in romances which have
+sometimes a background of international politics, maintain our
+interest by means of mystifications, which screw up our
+imagination to the utmost pitch, and then let us down gently with
+a natural but not too obvious explanation. A certain amount of
+terror is almost essential to heighten the interest of a novel of
+costume and adventure, like _The Prisoner of Zenda_ or _Rupert of
+Hentzau_, or of the fantastic, exciting romances of Jules Verne.
+Rider Haggard's African romances, _She_ and _King Solomon's
+Mines_, belong to a large group of supernatural tales with a
+foreign setting. They combine strangeness, wonder, mystery and
+horror. The ancient theme of bartering souls is given a new twist
+in Robert Hichens' novel, _The Flames_. E.F. Benson, in _The
+Image in the Sand_, experiments with Oriental magic. The
+investigations of the Society for Psychical Research gave a new
+impulse to stories of the occult and the uncanny. Algernon
+Blackwood is one of the most ingenious exponents of this type of
+story. By means of psychical explanations, he succeeds in
+revivifying many ancient superstitions. In _Dr. John Silence_,
+even the werewolf, whom we believed extinct, manifests himself in
+modern days among a party of cheerful campers on a lonely island,
+and brings unspeakable terror in his trail. Sometimes terror is
+used nowadays, as Bulwer Lytton used it, to serve a moral
+purpose. Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ is intended to
+show that sin must ultimately affect the soul; and the Sorrows of
+Satan, in Miss Corelli's novel, are caused by the wickedness of
+the world. But apart from any ulterior motive there is still a
+desire for the unusual, there is still pleasure to be found in a
+thrill, and so long as this human instinct endures devices will
+be found for satisfying it. Of the making of tales of terror
+there is no end; and almost every novelist of note has, at one
+time or another, tried his hand at the art. Early in his career
+Arnold Bennett fashioned a novelette, _Hugo_, which may be read
+as a modernised version of the Gothic romance. Instead of
+subterranean vaults in a deserted abbey, we have the strong rooms
+of an enterprising Sloane Street emporium. The coffin, containing
+an image of the heroine, is buried not in a mouldering chapel,
+but in a suburban cemetery. The lovely but harassed heroine has
+fallen, indeed, from her high estate, for Camilla earns her
+living as a milliner. There are, it is true, no sonnets and no
+sunsets, but the excitement of the plot, which is partially
+unfolded by means of a phonographic record, renders them
+superfluous. H.G. Wells makes excursions into quasi-scientific,
+fantastic realms of grotesque horror in his _First Men in the
+Moon_, and in some of his sketches and short stories. Joseph
+Conrad has the power of fear ever at the command of his romantic
+imagination. In _The Nigger of the Narcissus_, in _Typhoon_, and,
+above all, in _The Shadow-Line_, he shows his supreme mastery
+over inexpressible mystery and nameless terror. The voyage of the
+schooner, doomed by the evil influence of her dead captain, is
+comparable only in awe and horror to that of _The Ancient
+Mariner_. Conrad touches unfathomable depths of human feelings,
+and in his hands the tale of terror becomes a finished work of
+art.
+ The future of the tale of terror it is impossible to predict;
+but the experiments of living authors, who continually find new
+outlets with the advance of science and of psychological enquiry,
+suffice to prove that its powers are not yet exhausted. Those who
+make the 'moving accident' their trade will no doubt continue to
+assail us with the shock of startling and sensational events.
+Others with more insidious art, will set themselves to devise
+stories which evoke subtler refinements of fear. The interest has
+already been transferred from 'bogle-wark' to the effect of the
+inexplicable, the mysterious and the uncanny on human thought and
+emotion. It may well be that this track will lead us into
+unexplored labyrinths of terror.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES:
+
+
+[1: Frazer, _Folklore of the Old Testament_, I. iv. § 2.]
+
+[2: _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, 1894.]
+
+[3: _Spectator_, No. 12.]
+
+[4: _Spectator_, No. 110.]
+
+[5: Boswell, _Life of Johnson_, June 12th, 1784.]
+
+[6: _Tom Jones_, Bk. xvi. ch. v.]
+
+[7: Letter to Dr. Moore, Aug. 2, 1787.]
+
+[8: Ashton, _Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century_, 1882.]
+
+[9: Advertisement to _Cloudesley_, 1830.]
+
+[10: Preface to _Mandeville_, Oct. 25, 1817.]
+
+[11: Letters, vii. 27.]
+
+[12: _The Uncommercial Traveller_.]
+
+[13: _Odyssey_, xi.]
+
+[14: April 17, 1765.]
+
+[15: Nov. 13, 1784.]
+
+[16: June 12, 1753.]
+
+[17: _Remarks on Italy_.]
+
+[18: Aug. 4, 1753.]
+
+[19: _Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay_, vol. ii. Appendix
+ii.: _A
+     Visit to Strawberry Hill in 1786_.]
+
+[20: Jan. 5, 1766.]
+
+[21: July 15, 1783.]
+
+[22: March 26, 1765.]
+
+[23: Nov. 5, 1782.]
+
+[24: It has been pointed out (Scott, _Lives of the Novelists_,
+note)
+     that in Lope de Vega's _Jerusalem_ the picture of Noradine
+stalks
+     from its panel and addresses Saladine.]
+
+[25: Cf. Wallace, _Blind Harry_.]
+
+[26: _Preface_, 1764.]
+
+[27: Ch. XX.]
+
+[28: Ch. XXXIV.]
+
+[29: Ch. lxii.]
+
+[30: Jan. 27, 1780.]
+
+[31: _Letters_, April 8, 1778, and Jan. 27, 1780.]
+
+[32: _Poetical Works_, ed. Sampson, p. 8.]
+
+[33: Translated _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1820 (Nov.). Cf. Scott,
+     _Bridal of Triermain_.]
+
+[34: _E.g. Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay_, June 18, 1795;
+     Mathias, _Pursuits of Literature_, 14th ed. 1808, p. 56;
+Scott,
+     _Lives of the Novelists_; Extracts from the _Diary of a
+Lover of
+     Literature_ (1810); Byron, _Childe Harold_, iv. xviii.;
+     Thackeray, _Newcomes_, chs. xi., xxviii.; Brontë, _Shirley_,
+ch.
+     xxvii; Trollope, _Barchester Towers_, ch. xv., etc.]
+
+[35: Family Letters, 1908.]
+
+[36: Reprinted, Romancist and Novelist's Library.]
+
+[37: _Journeys of Mrs. Radcliffe_, 2nd ed., 1795, vol. ii. p.
+171.]
+
+[38: _Noctes Ambrosianae_, ed. 1855, vol. i. p. 201.]
+
+[39: Lecture on _The English Novelists_.]
+
+[40: _Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis_, 1839, i. 122.]
+
+[41: _Life and Correspondence_, July 22nd, 1794.]
+
+[42: Essay on _The State of German Literature_.]
+
+[43: Southey, Preface to _Madoc_.]
+
+[44: _Life and Correspondence_, Feb. 23, 1798.]
+
+[45: Letter to John Murray, Aug. 23rd, 1814.]
+
+[46: _Monthly Review_, June, 1797.]
+
+[47: No. 148.]
+
+[48: Cf. Musaeus: _Die Entführung_.]
+
+[49: _Marmion_, Canto ii. Intro.]
+
+[50: Reprinted, Romancist and Novelist's Library, vol. i. 1839.]
+
+[51: _Essay on German Playwrights_.]
+
+[52: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (1809).]
+
+[53: Many of these were issued by B. Crosby, Stationers' Court.]
+
+[54: _Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers_, 1856, p.
+     138.]
+
+[55: Trans. from the German of Christian August Vulpius.]
+
+[56: Cf. Thackeray, "Tunbridge Toys" (Roundabout Papers).]
+
+[57: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_.]
+
+[58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1825; and memoir prefixed to the
+edition
+     of _Melmoth the Wanderer_, published in 1892.]
+
+[59: Prose Works, 1851, vol. xviii.]
+
+[60: _Letters and Memoir_, 1895, vol. i. p. 101.]
+
+[61: _Life_ (Melville), 1909, vol. i. p. 79.]
+
+[62: _Letters_, 2nd Series, 1872, vol. i. p. 101.]
+
+[63: Gustave Planche, _Portraits Littéraires_.]
+
+[64: Cf. Stevenson's _Bottle-Imp._]
+
+[65: _Edinburgh Review_, July 1821.]
+
+[66: Conant, _The Oriental Tale in England_, pp. 36-38.]
+
+[67: Conant, _The Oriental Tale in England_, pp. 36-38.]
+
+[68: Letter to Henley, Jan. 29, 1782.]
+
+[69: _Life and Letters_, Melville, 1910, p. 20.]
+
+[70: _Life and Letters_, 1910, p. 20.]
+
+[71: _Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore_, 1853,
+     vol. ii. p. 197.]
+
+[72: Nov. 24, 1777, _Life and Letters_, p. 40.]
+
+[73: Austen Leigh, _Memoir of Jane Austen_.]
+
+[74: Letter to William Godwin, Dec. 7, 1817.]
+
+[75: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_. Kegan
+Paul,
+     1876, vol. i. p. 78.]
+
+[76: Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832.]
+
+[77:  Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832.]
+
+[78:  Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832, p. xi: "I read over a little
+old
+      book entitled _The Adventures of Mme. De St. Phale_, I
+turned
+      over the pages of a tremendous compilation entitled _God's
+      Revenge against Murder_, where the beam of the eye of
+      omniscience was represented as perpetually pursuing the
+      guilty... I was extremely conversant with _The Newgate
+      Calendar_ and _The Lives of the Pirates_. I rather amused
+myself
+      with tracing a certain similitude between the story of
+_Caleb
+      Williams_ and the tale of _Bluebeard_;" and Preface to
+      _Cloudesley_: "The present publication may in the same
+sense be
+      denominated a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Children
+in
+      the Wood."]
+
+[79: Scott, Introduction to _The Abbot_, 1831.]
+
+[80: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, 1876, vol.
+ii.
+     p. 304.]
+
+[81: _Caleb Williams_, ch. x.]
+
+[82: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, vol. i.
+pp.
+     330-1.]
+
+[83: _Political Justice_, bk. ii, ch. ii.]
+
+
+[84: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, vol. i.
+pp.
+     330-1; Preface to 1st edition, 1799.]
+
+[85: _Hermippus Redivivus_; or _The Sage's Triumph over Old Age
+and
+     the Grave_ (translated from the Latin of Cohausen, with
+     annotations), 1743. Dr. Johnson pronounced the volume "very
+     entertaining as an account of the hermetic philosophy and as
+     furnishing a curious history of the extravagancies of the
+human
+     mind," adding "if it were merely imaginary it would be
+nothing at
+     all."]
+
+[86: _St. Leon_, vol. iv. ch, xiii.]
+
+[87: _St. Leon_, Bk. iv, ch. v.]
+
+[88: _Lives of the Necromancers_, 1834, Preface. "The main purpose
+of
+     this book is to exhibit a fair delineation of the credulity
+of
+     the human mind. Such an exhibition cannot fail to be
+productive
+     of the most salutary lessons."]
+
+[89: _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_, by
+Count
+     Reginald de St. Leon, 1800, p. 234.]
+
+[90: Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 10.]
+
+[91: Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 44.]
+
+[92: Hogg, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 15.]
+
+[93: Cf. Castle of Lindenberg story in _The Monk_, and ballad of
+Alonzo the Brave.]
+
+[94: A versification of the story of the Wandering Jew, Bleeding
+Nun
+     and Don Raymond in _The Monk_.]
+
+[95: This poem was borrowed from Lewis's _Tales of Terror_
+(without
+     Shelley's knowledge), where it is entitled _The Black Canon
+of
+     Elmham, or St. Edmond's Eve_.]
+
+[96: Letter to Edward Fergus Graham, Ap. 23, 1810 (_Letters_, ed.
+     Ingpen, 1909, vol. i, pp. 4-6).]
+
+[97: Letter to John Joseph Stockdale, Nov. 14, 1810.]
+
+[98: Mme. de Montolieu, _Caroline de Lichfield_, translated by
+Thos.
+     Holcroft, 1786.]
+
+[99: Mme. de Genlis, translated by Rev. Beresford, 1796.]
+
+[100: Peter Middleton Darling, _Romance of the Highlands_, 1810.]
+
+[101: Regina Maria Roche, _The Discarded Son, or The Haunt of the
+      Banditti_, 1806.]
+
+[102: Agnes Musgrave, _Cicely, or The Rose of Raby_.]
+
+[103: Aphra Behn, _The Nun_.]
+
+[104: Charlotte Smith, _Ethelinde, or The Recluse of the Lake_,
+1790.]
+
+[105: _The Relapse: a novel_, 1780.]
+
+[106: _Tales of the Hall_.]
+
+[107: Crébillon, _Les Égarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_.]
+
+[108: _The Borough_, Ellen Orford, Letter xx.]
+
+[109: _The Borough_, xx, ll. 56 _seqq._]
+
+[110: _Parish Register_.]
+
+[111: _William and Helen_, 1796.]
+
+[112: _House of Aspen_, 1799 (Keepsake, 1830). _Doom of
+Devorgoil_,
+      1817 (Keepsake, 1830).]
+
+[113: Scott, _Lives of the Novelists_ (on Clara Reeve and Mrs.
+      Radcliffe and Maturin).]
+
+[114: Keepsake, 1828.]
+
+[115: Keepsake, 1828.]
+
+[116: _Journal_, Feb. 23, 1826.]
+
+[117: List of books read 1814-1816.]
+
+[118: _Fantasmagoriana: ou Recueil d'Histoires d'Apparitions, de
+      Spectres, de Revenans, trad. d'Allemand par un Amateur_.
+Paris,
+      1812.]
+
+[119: _Diary of John William Polidori_, June 17, 1816.]
+
+[120: Byron, _Letters and Journals_, 1899, iii. 446. Mary
+Shelley,
+      _Life and Letters_, 1889, i. 586. Extract from Mary
+Shelley's
+      _Diary_, Aug. 14, 1816.]
+
+[121: Nov. 15, 1823, _Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
+Shelley_
+      (Marshall), ii. 52.]
+
+[122: _Life and Letters_, ii. 88. ]
+
+[123: _Romancist and Novelist's Library_.]
+
+[124: Reprinted in _Treasure House of Tales by Great Authors_,
+ed.
+      Garnett, 1891.]
+
+[125: _Punch_, vol. x. p. 31:
+
+        "Says Ainsworth to Colburn
+        A plan in my pate is
+        To give my romance, as
+        A supplement gratis.
+        Says Colburn to Ainsworth
+        'Twill do very nicely,
+        For that will be charging
+        Its value precisely."]
+
+[126: _Life, Letters and Literary Remains_, 1883, vol. ii. pp. 70
+      _seqq_.]
+
+[127: _Dublin University Magazine_, 1862. "Forgotten Novels."]
+
+[128: _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1830-1837.]
+
+[129: _Within the Tides_, 1915.]
+
+[130: Preface to _The Algerine Captive_ (Walpole, Vermont, 1797)
+      quoted Loshe, _Early American Novel_, N.Y. 1907.]
+
+[131: Preface to _Edgar Huntly_.]
+
+[132: Peacock, _Memoirs of Shelley_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Abbey of Clunedale_, Drake's, 35.
+
+_Abbot_, Scott's, 109 note, 153.
+
+_Abdallah_, Tieck's, 65.
+
+_Abellino_, Zschokke's, 70.
+
+_Adam Blair_, Lockhart's, 207.
+
+Addison, Joseph, 5, 17, 69, 95, 222.
+
+_Adela Cathcart_, Macdonald's, 173.
+
+_Adventures of Abdallah_, Bignon's, 94, 96.
+
+_Adventures of Mme. de St. Phale_, 109 note.
+
+_After Dark_, Wilkie Collins', 190.
+
+Aikin, A.L. (see Barbauld, Mrs. A.L.).
+
+Aikin, Dr. J., 28.
+
+Aikin, Lucy, 28.
+
+Ainsworth, Harrison, 149, 174-177.
+
+_Alastor_, Shelley's, 127, 163.
+
+_Albigenses_, Maturin's, 82.
+
+_Alciphron_, Moore's, 117.
+
+_Algerine Captive_, 197 note.
+
+_Alice in Wonderland_, Lewis Carroll's, 116.
+
+_All the Year Round_, 183, 190.
+
+_Almoran and Hamet_, Hawkesworth's, 95.
+
+_Alonzo and Melissa_, 197.
+
+_Alonzo the Brave_, Lewis's, n, 120 note.
+
+_Amadas, Sir_, 4.
+
+_Amelia_, Fielding's, 134, 135.
+
+_Ancient Mariner_, Coleridge's, 9, 227.
+
+_Angelina_, Maria Edgeworth's, 133.
+
+_Annual Review_, 73.
+
+_Antiquary_, Scott's, 154.
+
+Apel, J.A., 174.
+
+_Apostate Nun_ (see _Convent of Grey Penitents)_.
+
+
+_Apparitions, History and Reality of_, Defoe's, 5, 139.
+
+_Apparitions, History of_, Taylor's, 149.
+
+Apuleius, 13.
+
+_Arabian Nights_, 12, 94.
+
+_Ardinghello_, Heinse's, 65.
+
+_Arliss's Pocket Magazine_, 175.
+
+_Arlamène ou le Grand Cyrus_, Mme. de Scudéry's, 222.
+
+_Arthur Mervyn_, C.B. Brown's, 198.
+
+_Asylum or Alonzo and Melissa_, 197.
+
+_Auberge Rouge_, Balzac's, 203.
+
+_Auriol_, Ainsworth's, 176-177.
+
+Austen, Jane, 100, 125-133, 138, 140, 223.
+
+_Avenger_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_Avenging Demon_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Azemia_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+Babel, Tower of, 221.
+
+_Babes in the Wood_, 13, 109 note.
+
+_Babylonica_, Iamblichus', 12.
+
+Ballad collections, 9.
+
+_Baltimore Saturday Visitor_, 214.
+
+Balzac, Honoré de, 86, 203.
+
+_Bandit of Florence_, 76.
+
+_Banditti of the Forest_, 76.
+
+_Barbastal, or the Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_,
+186.
+
+Barbauld, Mrs. A.L., 28-31, 32, 33, 147.
+
+_Barchester Towers_, Trollope's, 38 note.
+
+_Bard_, Gray's, 7.
+
+Barrett, E.S., 22, 79, 133-137, 138.
+
+Baudelaire, Charles, 86, 220.
+
+Beckford, William, 94-99, 118.
+
+Beggar Girl and her Benefactors, Mrs. Bennett's, 74, 134.
+
+Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 141 note, 222.
+
+_Benevolent Monk_, Melville's, 75.
+
+Bennett, Mrs. A.M., 74.
+
+Bennett, Arnold, 227.
+
+Benson, E.F., 226.
+
+_Beowulf_, 2.
+
+_Berenice_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Bertram_, Maturin's, 81, 149.
+
+_Betrothed_, Scott's, 153.
+
+_Bibliotheca Britannica_, Watt's, 75, 129.
+
+Bignon, Jean-Paul, 94.
+
+_Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+_Black Canon of Elmham (Tales of Terror_), 120 note.
+
+_Black Cat_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Black Forest_, 76.
+
+Blackwood, Algernon, 226.
+
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, 34 note, 174, 182, 189, 190, 194.
+
+Blake, William, 31-32.
+
+_Blanche and Osbright_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+"Blind Harry," 21 note.
+
+_Blithedale Romance_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, Horsley Curteis', 75.
+
+_Bluebeard_, 3, 13, 109 note.
+
+_Boeotian_, 175.
+
+_Bold Dragoon_, Irving's, 201.
+
+Boleyn, Anne, 31.
+
+_Book for a Corner_, Leigh Hunt's, 28.
+
+_Borough_, Crabbe's, 142, 143.
+
+_Bosom-Serpent_, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Bottle-Imp_, Stevenson's, 87 note.
+
+Bovet, 14, 149.
+
+_Bravo of Bohemia_ or _Black Forest_, 76.
+
+_Bravo of Venice_, Lewis's, 70, 71, 125.
+
+_Bridal of Triermain_, Scott's, 34 note.
+
+_Bride of Lammermoor_, Scott's, 81, 153.
+
+_Brigand Tales_, 186.
+
+Brontë, Charlotte, 38 note, 51, 224.
+
+Bronté, Emily, 224-225.
+
+Brown, Charles Brockden, 140, 188, 197-200.
+
+Browne, Sir Thomas, 5.
+
+Bulke, Sir George, 57.
+
+_Bullfrog, Mrs_., Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+Bunyan, John, 5.
+
+Bürger, Gottfried, II, 148, 200.
+
+Burney, Dr. Charles, 17.
+
+Burney, Fanny, 38 note, 135, 223.
+
+Burns, Robert, 8, 9.
+
+Burton, Robert, 5.
+
+Byron, Lord, 38 note, 55, 59, 72, 79, 81, 135, 158, 160, 167,
+169,
+  171, 221.
+
+_Caleb Williams_, Godwin's, 13, 102-111, 168, 199, 218.
+
+_Caledonian Banditti_, 76.
+
+_Camilla_, Fanny Burney's, 134.
+
+Campbell, Dr. John, 112.
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, 65, 72.
+
+_Caroline of Lichfield_, Mme. de Montolieu's, 134.
+
+Carroll, Lewis, 201.
+
+_Cask of Amontillado_, Poe's, 217, 220.
+
+_Castle Connor_, Clara Reeve's, 28.
+
+_Castle of Otranto_, Walpole's, 12, 16-23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30,
+31, 39,
+  40, 58, 77, 146, 221.
+
+_Castle of Wolfenbach_, Mrs. Parson's, 129.
+
+_Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 39-41, 45.
+
+_Castle Spectre_, Lewis's, 66, 149.
+
+_Castle without a Spectre_, Mrs. Hunter's, 76.
+
+Cazotte, Jacques, 68.
+
+_Cecilia_, Fanny Burney's, 134, 135.
+
+_Cenci_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+Cervantes, 222.
+
+_Chateau de Montville_, Sarah Wilkinson's, 77.
+
+_Cherubina, Adventures of_ (see _Heroine_).
+
+_Childe Harold_, Byron's, 38 note.
+
+_Children of the Abbey_, Mrs. Roche's, 22, 59, 129, 130, 134.
+
+_Chinese Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+_Christabel_, Coleridge's, 9, 10.
+
+"Christopher North" (Wilson, John), 192.
+
+_Cicely or The Rose of Raby_, Miss Agnes Musgrave's, 141 note.
+
+_Clarissa Harlowe_, Richardson's, 46, 134, 140.
+
+_Clerk Saunders_, 3.
+
+_Clermont_, Mrs. Roche's, 129.
+
+_Cock Lane and Commonsense_, Andrew Lang's, 2 note.
+
+"Cock Lane Ghost," 6.
+
+Coleridge, S.T., 9, 10, 66, 81.
+
+_Collectanea_, Leland's, 57.
+
+Collins, Wilkie, 190, 194, 225.
+
+Collins, William, 7, 8, 12, 35, 58.
+
+Colman, George, the younger, 109.
+
+Colman, George, the elder, 129, 222.
+
+Conant, Martha, 95 note.
+
+_Confessions of a Fanatic_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+Conrad, Joseph, 194, 195, 227.
+
+_Contes de ma Mère Oie_, Perrault's, 12.
+
+_Convent of St. Ursula_, Miss Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+_Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 76, 77-78.
+
+Corelli, Marie, 226.
+
+_Corsair_, Byron's, 56.
+
+_Count of Narbonne_, Jephson's, 19.
+
+"Count Reginald de St. Leon," 116.
+
+Coverley, Sir Roger de, 5.
+
+Crabbe, George, 76, 140-144.
+
+Crébillon, C.P.J., 141 note.
+
+_Crichton_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+Croly, George, 118.
+
+Cruikshank, 176.
+
+Cunningham, Allan, 191-192.
+
+Curteis, T.J. Horsley, 75.
+
+Dacre, Charlotte ("Rosa Matilda"), 75, 122.
+
+D'Arblay, Mme. (see Burney, Fanny).
+
+Darwin, Erasmus, 160.
+
+D'Aulnoy, Countess, 12.
+
+David, 2.
+
+_Death of Despina_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 5, 6, 139.
+
+_Delicate Distress_, 134.
+
+"Demon Frigate," 12.
+
+"Demon Lover," 2, 14.
+
+_Demonology and Witchcraft, Letters on_, Scott's, 149.
+
+_Demonology, Treatise on_, James I.'s, 4.
+
+De Quincey, 173-174.
+
+De Scudéry, Mme., 222.
+
+_Descent into the Maelstrom_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Devil in Love_, Cazotte's, 68.
+
+_Diary of a Lover of Literature_, Green's, 38 note.
+
+_Dice_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+Dickens, Charles, 14, 59, 81, 190, 192, 193.
+
+_Discarded Son_, Mrs. Roche's, 140 note.
+
+_Discovery of Witchcraft_, Scot's, 14, 147.
+
+Disraeli, Benjamin, 99.
+
+_Distress, Kinds of, which Excite Agreeable Sensations_,
+Barbauld's, 29.
+
+_Dr. Dolliver's Romance_, Hawthorne's, 212-213.
+
+_Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Hawthorne's, 207.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, Stevenson's, 218.
+
+_Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions_, Dickens', 194.
+
+_Don Quixote_, Cervantes', 222.
+
+_Doom of Devorgoil_, Scott's, 149 note.
+
+_Douglas_, Home's, 8.
+
+Doyle, Sir A. Conan, 103, 218, 226.
+
+_Dracula_, Bram Stoker's, 2, 173, 225.
+
+Drake, Dr. Nathan, 32-37, 147.
+
+_Dream Children_, Lamb's, 193.
+
+_Dublin University Magazine_, 173, 186 note, 190, 191.
+
+Dumas, Alexandre, 175.
+
+_Edgar Huntly_, C.B. Brown's, 197, 198, 199-200.
+
+Edgeworth, Maria, 133.
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 87 note.
+
+_Edmond, Orphan of the Castle_, 28.
+
+_Edward_, 34.
+
+_Edward Fane's Rosebud_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_, Crébillon's, 141 note.
+
+_Elegant Enthusiast_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+_Eleanora_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Elixir de la Longue Vie_, Balzac's, 203.
+
+_Elixir des Teufels_, Hoffmann's, 70.
+
+_Elsie Venner_, Holmes', 207.
+
+Endor, Witch of, 2, 221.
+
+_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, Byron's, 72 note, 79.
+
+_English Chronicle_, 39.
+
+_English Novelists, Lectures on_, Hazlitt's, 62.
+
+_Entführung_, Musaeus', 68 note.
+
+_Epicurean_, Moore's, 117, 118.
+
+_Ernestus Berchtold_, Polidori's, 160, 170-171.
+
+_Ethan Brand_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Ethelinde_, Charlotte Smith's, 141.
+
+"Ettrick Shepherd" (see Hogg, James).
+
+_European Magazine_, 175.
+
+_Evelina_, Fanny Burney's, 134.
+
+_Eve of St. Agnes_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Ewige Jude_, Schubart's, 120.
+
+_Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Faerie Queene_, Spenser's, 17.
+
+_Fair Elenor_, Blake's, 31-32.
+
+_Fair Jilt_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 222.
+
+_Falkner_, Godwin's, 168.
+
+_Fall of the House of Usher_, Poe's, 216, 220.
+
+_Family of Montorio_, 72, 74, 80, 81, 82-86, 88, 91, 93, 158.
+
+_Fantasmagoriana_, 160 note.
+
+_Farina_, Meredith's, 70.
+
+_Fatal Marksman_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_Fatal Revenge_ (see _Family of Montorio_).
+
+_Faust_, Goethe's, 92, 198.
+
+_Faustus, Dr._, Marlowe's, 4, 12, 91, 92.
+
+_Fear, Ode to_, Collins', 35.
+
+"Felix Phantom," 77.
+
+_Female Quixote_, Mrs. Lennox's, 222.
+
+_Ferdinand, Count Fathom, Adventures of_, Smollett's, 12, 23-25,
+29,
+  35, 68.
+
+_Feudal Tyrants_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+Fielding, Henry, 222.
+
+_Field of Terror_, De La Motte Fouqué's, 34.
+
+_First Men in the Moon_, Wells', 227.
+
+_Flames_, Hichens', 226.
+
+_Fleetwood_, Godwin's, 102 note, 104 note, 109 note.
+
+Flood, Story of, 1, 221.
+
+Ford, John, 127.
+
+_Forman_, 224.
+
+_Fortress of Saguntum_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+_Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott's, 153.
+
+Fouqué, De la Motte, 34, 153.
+
+Francis, Sophia, 76.
+
+_Frankenstein_, Mrs. Shelley's, 158-165, 169.
+
+Frazer, 2 note.
+
+_Fredolfo_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Freischütz_, Apel's, 174.
+
+_Fugitive Countess_, Miss Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+Galland, Antoine, 12, 94.
+
+Gaskell, Mrs., 192-193.
+
+_Gaston de Blondeville_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 39, 40, 56-58, 60.
+
+_Geisterseher_, Schiller's, 51.
+
+_Geistertodtenglocke_, 191.
+
+"Geoffrey Crayon" (see Irving, Washington).
+
+_German Literature, Essay on_, Carlyle's, 65.
+
+_German Playwrights, Essay on_, Carlyle's, 72 note.
+
+_German Student, Story of a_, 201.
+
+_Ghasta_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Ghost_, "Felix Phantom's," 77.
+
+_Giaour_, Byron's, 55.
+
+Gilgamesh epic, 1-2.
+
+_Ginevra_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+Glanvill, Joseph, 6, 215.
+
+_Glenallan_, Lytton's, 179.
+
+_Glenfinlas_, Scott's, 11.
+
+_Godolphin_, Lytton's, 179.
+
+_God's Revenge Against Murder_, 109 note.
+
+Godwin, William, 13, 92, 100-117, 124, 158, 166, 175, 197, 199,
+200, 209, 218, 226.
+
+Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 65, 92, 148, 198.
+
+_Golden Ass_, Apuleius', 13, 14, 15.
+
+_Goodman Brown_, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Götz van Berlichingen_, Goethe's, 148.
+
+_Grand Cyrus_, Mme. de Scudéry's, 222.
+
+_Grandison, Sir Charles_, Richardson's, 134.
+
+Green, Sarah, 133.
+
+_Green Tea_, Le Fanu's, 190.
+
+Gray, Thomas, 7, 12, 20, 40, 58, 75.
+
+Grillparzer, Franz, 72.
+
+Grosse, Marquis von, 76, 129.
+
+_Guardian_, 68.
+
+Gueulette, 94.
+
+Haggard, Rider, 226.
+
+_Half Hangit_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+_Halloween_, Burns', 8.
+
+Hamilton, Count Antony, 95.
+
+_Hamlet_, Shakespeare's, 86.
+
+_Hardyknute_, 35.
+
+_Haunted and the Haunters_, Lytton's, 179, 182-183.
+
+_Haunted Ships_, Cunningham's, 191.
+
+Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 95.
+
+Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 203-213, 214, 217, 220.
+
+Hayne, D.F., 188.
+
+Hazlitt, William, 62.
+
+Heinse, Wilhelm, 65.
+
+_Hellas_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+Henley, Rev. S., 94.
+
+_Henry Fitzowen_, Drake's, 33.
+
+_Hermippus Redivivus_, Campbell's, 112.
+
+_Heroine_, Barrett's, 79, 133-137.
+
+Heywood, Thomas, 149.
+
+_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Heywood's, 149.
+
+_History of Nourjahad_, Mrs. Sheridan's, 95.
+
+_History of the Exchequer_, Mador's, 57.
+
+Hobson, Elizabeth, 6.
+
+Hoffmann, E.T.A., 70, 175.
+
+Hogg, James, 11, 58, 61, 191, 192.
+
+_Hollow of the Three Hills_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 207,
+
+Home, John, 8.
+
+_Horrid Mysteries_, Marquis von Grosse's, 76, 126, 129, 199.
+
+_Hound of the Baskervilles_, 226.
+
+_Hours of Idleness_, Byron's, 72.
+
+_Household Words_, 190, 193.
+
+_Household Wreck_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_House of Aspen_, Scott, 149 note.
+
+_House of the Seven Gables_, Hawthorne's, 210-211.
+
+Hughes, A.M.D., 122.
+
+_Hugo_, Bennett's, 227.
+
+Hugo, Victor, 175.
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 28, 186.
+
+Hunter, Mrs. Rachel, 76.
+
+Hurd, Bishop, 17, 20.
+
+Iamblichus, 12.
+
+Icelandic saga, 2, 14.
+
+_Iliad_, 14.
+
+_Image in the Sand_, Benson's, 226.
+
+_Indicator_, Leigh Hunt's, 187.
+
+_Inn of the Two Witches_, Conrad's, 195.
+
+_Invisible Man_, Wells', 196.
+
+_Iron Shroud_, Mudford's, 194.
+
+Irving, Washington, 200-203.
+
+_Isabella_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Italian_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 34, 45, 47, 52-56, 58, 60, 69, 70,
+114, 124, 125, 128, 137, 168, 185.
+
+_Ivanhoe_, Scott's, 18.
+
+_Jack the Giant-Killer_, 19.
+
+Jacobs, W.W., 193.
+
+James I., 4.
+
+James, Henry, 196.
+
+_Jane Eyre_, Charlotte Brontë's, 224.
+
+_Jekyll and Hyde_, Stevenson's, 218.
+
+"Jenny Spinner," 179.
+
+Jephson, Robert, 19.
+
+Jerdan, W., 189.
+
+_Jerusalem_, Lope de Vega's, 21 note.
+
+_Job, Book of_, 221.
+
+_John Silence_, Blackwood's, 226.
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 6, 7, 95.
+
+Johnson, T.B., 140.
+
+Jonson, Ben, 4.
+
+_Journal_, Moore's, 97.
+
+_Journeys of Mrs. Radcliffe_, 60-61.
+
+_Juif Errant_, Sue's, 118.
+
+Keats, John, 10.
+
+_Keepsake_, 149 note, 150 note, 151 note.
+
+Kemble, John, 19.
+
+_Kidnapped_, Stevenson, 41, 195.
+
+_Kilmeny_, Hogg's, 11.
+
+_King John_, Shakespeare's, 55.
+
+_King Lear_, Shakespeare's, 3, 110.
+
+_King Solomon's Mines_, Haggard's, 226.
+
+Kipling, Rudyard, 195.
+
+Klingemann, 72.
+
+_Klosterheim_, De Quincey's, 173.
+
+_Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Beaumont and Fletcher's, 7.
+
+_Knights of the Swan_, Mme. de Genlis', 134.
+
+_Königsmark the Robber_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+Kotzebue, August von, 65, 72.
+
+_Kubla Khan_, 10.
+
+_La Belle Dame sans Merci_, Keats', 11.
+
+Lacroix, Paul, 175.
+
+_Lady in the Sacque_, Scott's, 150, 201.
+
+_Lady of the Lake_, Scott's, 152.
+
+Lamb, Charles, 193.
+
+_Lamia_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Lancashire Witches_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+Lang, Andrew, 2.
+
+Langhorne, John, 95.
+
+_Lara_, Byron's, 56.
+
+_Last Man_, Mrs. Shelley's, 166-168.
+
+Lathom, Francis, 76.
+
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Scott's, 79, 152.
+
+Le Calprenède, 222.
+
+Lee, Sophia, 39, 57.
+
+Le Fanu, Sheridan, 190, 225.
+
+_Legend of Montrose_, Scott's, 153.
+
+_Legends of a Nunnery_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+_Legends of Terror_, 186.
+
+_Legends of the Province House_, Hawthorne's, 204.
+
+Leland, John, 57.
+
+Lemoine, Anne, 186.
+
+Lennox, Mrs. Charlotte, 222.
+
+_Lenore_, Bürger's, 11, 148.
+
+Le Queux, William, 226.
+
+_Letitia_, Mrs. Rachel Hunter's, 76.
+
+_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_, Hurd's, 17, 20.
+
+Lewis, M.G. ("Monk"), 11, 14, 32, 55, 56, 61, 63-72, 76, 77, 85,
+91,
+  114, 120, 122, 123, 125, 136, 148, 157, 158, 174, 175, 185,
+186,
+  188, 197, 203, 218.
+
+_Ligeia_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Literary Hours_, Drake's, 32.
+
+_Literary Souvenir_, 175.
+
+_Little Annie's Rambles_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Lives of the Necromancers_, Godwin's, 115, 117.
+
+_Lives of the Novelists_, Scott's, 21 note, 38 note, 150 note,
+153.
+
+_Lives of the Pirates_, 109 note.
+
+_Lives_, Plutarch's, 162.
+
+Lockhart, John, 192, 207.
+
+_Lodore_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+_London Magazine_, 191.
+
+_Longsword_, Leland's, 57.
+
+Lope de Vega, 21 note.
+
+_Lopez and Aranthe_, Miss Sarah Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+_Lord of Ennerdale_, Scott's, 148.
+
+Loshe, 197.
+
+_Lucifer_, 188.
+
+Lyttleton, Lord, 6.
+
+Lytton, Bulwer, 109, 116, 178-184, 226.
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 77.
+
+_Macbeth_, Shakespeare's, 4, 85.
+
+Macpherson, James, 12, 20.
+
+_Madoc_, Southey's, 65 note.
+
+Mador, 57.
+
+_Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_, 186.
+
+_Malfi, Duchess of_, Webster's, 4.
+
+Mallet, David, 7.
+
+Malone, Edmund, 19.
+
+Malory, Sir Thomas, 4.
+
+_Manuscript Found in a Bottle_, Poe's, 214, 215.
+
+_Mandeville_, Godwin's, 101.
+
+_Manfroni_, 75.
+
+_Manuel_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Man in the Bell_, 194.
+
+_Marble Faun_, Hawthorne's, 204, 212.
+
+_Margaret Nicholson, Posthumous Poems of_, 120.
+
+_Mark of the Beast_, Kipling's, 195.
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 4, 92.
+
+_Marmion_, Scott's, 69 note.
+
+Marryat, Captain, 2, 177.
+
+Marsh, Richard, 225.
+
+_Mary Burnet_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+Mason, 16, 20, 58.
+
+_Masque of Queens_, Ben Jonson's, 4.
+
+_Masque of the Red Death_, Poe's, 214, 216, 217, 220.
+
+_Master of Ballantrae_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+Mathias, T.J., 38 note.
+
+Maturin, C.R., 55, 61, 72, 80-93, 150 note, 157, 158, 175, 185,
+188, 203, 218, 220.
+
+Medwin, Thomas, 74, 120.
+
+Meeke, Mrs., 77.
+
+_Melancholy, Ode on_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Melmoth Reconcilié à l'Église_, Balzac's, 86.
+
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's, 14, 80 note, 82, 86-93, 158,
+174, 185.
+
+Melville, Theodore, 75.
+
+Meredith, George, 70, 99.
+
+_Merry Men_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+Mickle, William Julius, 69.
+
+_Midnight Bell_, George Walker's, 77, 129.
+
+_Midnight Groan_, 120.
+
+_Midnight Horrors_, 75.
+
+_Midnight Weddings_, Mrs. Meeke's, 77.
+
+_Milesian Chief_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+Milton, John, 54, 58.
+
+Minerva Press, 74.
+
+_Misanthropic Parent_, Miss Smith's, 135.
+
+Mitford, Miss Mary Russell, 58, 86.
+
+_Modern Language Review_, 122.
+
+_Modern Oedipus_, Polidori's, 160, 170-171.
+
+_Mogul Tales_, Gueulette's, 94, 95.
+
+_Monastery_, Scott's, 109, 152.
+
+_Monk_, Lewis's, 64, 65, 66-70, 91, 114, 120 note, 123, 129, 136,
+148, 152.
+
+_Monk of Madrid_, George Moore's, 75.
+
+_Monkey's Paw_, Jacobs', 193.
+
+_Monks of Cluny or Castle Acre Monastery_, 186.
+
+_Monos and Daimonos_, Lytton's, 217.
+
+Montagu, George, 18.
+
+_Monthly Review_, 68 note.
+
+_Montmorenci_, Drake's, 34, 35.
+
+_Moonstone_, Wilkie Collins', 190, 225.
+
+Moore, George, 75.
+
+Moore, Dr. John, 53.
+
+Moore, Thomas, 97, 117, 118.
+
+_Moral Tales_, Maria Edgeworth's, 133.
+
+_More Ghosts_, "Felix Phantom's," 77.
+
+More, Hannah, 16.
+
+_Morella_, Poe's, 215.
+
+Morgan, Lady, 81.
+
+_Mortal Immortal_, Mrs. Shelley's, 169.
+
+_Morte D'Arthur_, Malory's, 4.
+
+_Mosses from an old Manse_, Hawthorne's, 206, 220.
+
+Mudford, William, 194.
+
+_Mugby Junction_, Dickens', 194.
+
+_Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts_, De Quincey's, 173.
+
+_Murders of the Rue Morgue_, Poe's, 218.
+
+Musaeus, Johann, 68 note.
+
+Musgrave, Agnes, 141 note.
+
+_My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, Scott's, 150.
+
+_Mysteries of the Forest_, Miss Eleanor Sleath's, 76.
+
+_Mysteries of Udolpho_ (see _Udolpho, Mysteries of_).
+
+_Mysterious Bravo_, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Bride_, James Hogg's, 191.
+
+_Mysterious Freebooter_, Lathom's, 76, 120.
+
+_Mysterious Hand_, Randolph's, 76, 120.
+
+_Mysterious Mother_, Walpole's, 34, 58.
+
+_Mysterious Spaniard_, 186.
+
+_Mysterious Summons_, 186.
+
+_Mysterious Visits_, Mrs. Parson's, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Wanderer_, Miss Sophia Reeve's, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Warnings_, Mrs. Parson's, 76, 129.
+
+_Mystery of M. Roget_, Poe's, 218.
+
+_Mystery of the Abbey_, T.B. Johnson's, 140.
+
+_Mystery of the Black Tower_, Palmer's, 76.
+
+_Mystic Sepulchre_, Palmer's, 76.
+
+_My Uncle's Garret Window_, Lewis's, 65.
+
+_Necromancer of the Black Forest_, 129.
+
+_New Arabian Nights_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+_Newcomes_, Thackeray's, 38 note.
+
+_Newgate Calendar_, 109 note.
+
+_New Monk_, "R.S.'s" 75.
+
+_New Monthly_, 177.
+
+_Nigger of the Narcissus_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+_Nightmare_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Nightmare Abbey_, Peacock's, 47, 126, 138, 140.
+
+_Noctes Ambrosianae_, 58, 62 note, 192.
+
+_Nocturnal Minstrel_, Miss Sleath's, 77.
+
+_Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen's, 44, 128, 129-133, 185.
+
+_Notebooks_, Hawthorne's, 204, 212, 213.
+
+_Nouvelle Heloïse_, Rousseau's, 134.
+
+_Nun_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 141.
+
+_Nun of Misericordia_, Miss Sophia Francis's, 76.
+
+_Nun of St. Omer's_, "Rosa Matilda's," 75.
+
+_Nurse's Story_, Mrs. Gaskell's, 192, 193.
+
+_Objects of Terror_, Drake's essay on, 34.
+
+_Oblong Box_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Old Bachelor_, Crabbe's, 142.
+
+_Old English Baron_, Clara Reeve's, 22, 25-28, 57.
+
+"Old Jeffrey," 6.
+
+_Old Manor House_, Charlotte Smith's, 77.
+
+_Old Mortality_, Scott's, 22, 154.
+
+_Old St. Paul's_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Old Woman of Berkeley_, Southey's, 11.
+
+Oppenheim, Phillips, 226.
+
+_Oriental Tale in England_, Conant's, 95 note, 96 note.
+
+_Ormond_, T.B. Brown's, 198.
+
+_Oroonoko_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 222.
+
+_Orphan of the Rhine_, Miss Sleath's, 129.
+
+_Oscar and Alva_, Byron's, 72.
+
+_Osorio_, Coleridge's, 81.
+
+_Ossian_, Macpherson's, 12, 20, 58.
+
+_Oval Portrait_, Poe's, 219.
+
+Pain, Barry, 193.
+
+Palmer, John, 76.
+
+_Pamela_, Richardson's, 134.
+
+_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Bovet's, 14, 149.
+
+_Paradise Lost_, Milton's, 162.
+
+_Parish Register_, Crabbe's, 144 note.
+
+Parsons, Mrs. Eliza, 73, 74, 76, 129.
+
+_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_, Warren's, 188.
+
+_Paul Clifford_, Lytton's, 109.
+
+Peacock, T.L., 72, 126, 138-140, 197.
+
+_Peep at our Ancestors_, Mrs. Rouvière's, 74, 75.
+
+Pegge, Samuel, 57.
+
+Pepys, Mrs., 222.
+
+Percy, Bishop, 9, 20.
+
+_Perkin Warbeck_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+Perrault, Charles, 12.
+
+_Persian Tales_, Galland's, 94.
+
+_Peruvian Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+Petronius, 2.
+
+_Peveril of the Peak_, Scott's, 154.
+
+_Phantasmagoria_, Lewis Carroll's, 201.
+
+_Phantom Ship_, Marryat's, 2, 177.
+
+_Pickwick_, Dickens', 193.
+
+_Picture of Dorian Gray_, Oscar Wilde's, 226.
+
+_Pilgrim's Progress_, Bunyan's, 5.
+
+_Pillar of Mystery_, 197.
+
+_Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe's, 194, 218.
+
+Planche, Gustave, 86 note.
+
+Plato, 101.
+
+_Pleasure derived from Objects of Terror_, Mrs. Barbauld's essay
+on, 28.
+
+Pliny, 14.
+
+Plutarch, 162.
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, 149, 175, 213-220, 226.
+
+_Poetical Sketches_, Blake's, 31.
+
+Polidori, Dr., 158, 160, 169-173.
+
+_Political Justice_, Godwin's, 100, 101, 102, 111, 197.
+
+_Polly Honeycombe_, Colman's, 222.
+
+Polyphemus, 2.
+
+Pope, Alexander, 17.
+
+_Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, 174.
+
+_Portraits Littèraires_, Planche's, 86 note.
+
+_Pour et Contre_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Preceptor Husband_, Crabbe's, 141.
+
+_Preface to Shakespeare_, Pope's, 17.
+
+_Premature Burial_, Poe's, 216.
+
+_Priory of St. Clair_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 78.
+
+_Prisoner of Zenda_, Hope's, 226.
+
+_Prometheus Unbound_, Shelley's, 101, 120, 127.
+
+_Pursuits of Literature_, Mathias', 38 note.
+
+_Quarterly Review_, 72.
+
+_Queenhoo Hall_, Strutt's, 57.
+
+_Queen Mab_, 101, 120.
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 12, 13, 14, 20, 22, 24, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35,
+  38-62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 76, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85, 91, 101,
+104,
+  105, 109, 114, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 136,
+137,
+  148, 150 note, 154, 155, 157, 158, 167, 168, 173, 175, 176,
+185,
+  188, 197, 198, 218, 219, 222, 223.
+
+_Rambler_, Johnson's, 94.
+
+Randolph, A.J., 76.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter, Dr._, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Rasselas_, Johnson's, 94, 134.
+
+_Räuber_, Schiller's, 55, 65, 148, 198.
+
+_Raven_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Recess_, Sophia Lee's, 39, 57.
+
+Reeve, Clara, 13, 21, 25-28, 33, 38, 57, 150 note.
+
+Reeve, Sophia, 76.
+
+_Relapse_, 141.
+
+_Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, Percy's, 9, 20.
+
+_Return of Imray_, Kipling's, 195.
+
+_Revelations of London_ (see _Auriol_).
+
+_Revenge_ (Poems of Victor and Cazire), 120.
+
+_Revolt of Islam_, Shelley's, 101, 127.
+
+_Richard III._, Shakespeare's, 55.
+
+Richardson, Samuel, 46, 222, 223.
+
+Ridley, James, 95.
+
+_Rill from the Town Pump_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Robber Bridegroom_, 3.
+
+_Robbers_ (see _Räuber_).
+
+Robinson, Crabb, 59.
+
+_Rob Roy_, Scott's, 154.
+
+Roche, Mrs. Regina Maria, 22, 59, 129, 134, 140 note.
+
+Rogers, Samuel, 74.
+
+Rohmer, Sax, 225.
+
+_Rokeby_, Scott's, 152, 154.
+
+_Romance of the Castle_, D.F. Hayne's, 188.
+
+_Romance of the Cavern_, George Walker's, 76.
+
+_Romance of the Forest_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 26, 42-46, 52, 53, 56,
+69, 76, 109, 131, 132, 134.
+
+_Romance of the Highlands_, Peter Darling's, 134.
+
+_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_, Sarah Green's, 133.
+
+_Romances_, an Imitation, 29.
+
+_Romancist and Novelist's Library_, 39 note, 122, 129, 168 note,
+187, 188, 189.
+
+_Rookwood_, Ainsworth's, 175-176, 224.
+
+"Rosa Matilda" (see Dacre).
+
+_Rose of Raby_, Miss Agnes Musgrave's, 141.
+
+Rossetti, Christina, 39.
+
+Rossetti, D.G., 86, 186.
+
+Rossetti, W.M., 169.
+
+_Roundabout Papers_, Thackeray's, 75 note.
+
+Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 89, 115, 137.
+
+Rouvière, Mrs. Henrietta, 74, 75.
+
+_Ruins of Empire_, Volney's, 162.
+
+_Ruins of St. Luke's Abbey_, 186.
+
+_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Glanvill's, 6.
+
+_St. Edmond's Eve_ (Tales of Terror), 120 note.
+
+_St. Edmund's Eve_ (Poems by Victor and Cazire), 120.
+
+_St. Godwin_, 116.
+
+_St. Irvyne_, Shelley's, 13, 66, 120, 121, 122, 123-126.
+
+_St. Leon_, Godwin's, 91, 102, 111-116, 117, 124, 166, 169.
+
+Saintsbury, George, 192.
+
+_Salathiel_, Croly's, 118.
+
+_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, Sinclair's, 14, 149.
+
+_Scarlet Letter_, Hawthorne's, 207-210, 212.
+
+Schiller, Friedrich, 51, 65.
+
+Schubart, 120.
+
+Scot, Reginald, 14, 147.
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 14, 20, 21 note, 22, 38 note, 55, 57, 69,
+72,
+  73, 74, 75, 77, 80, 81, 82, 86, 109, 135, 145-156, 190, 194,
+200,
+  201, 224.
+
+_Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_, 154.
+
+_Sensitive Plant_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+_Septimius Felton_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Seven Vagabonds_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+Seward, Anna, 150.
+
+_Sexton of Cologne_, 188.
+
+_Shadow Line_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+Shakespeare, 54, 55, 58, 85, 89, 127.
+
+_Shaving of Shagpat_, Meredith's, 99.
+
+_She_, Rider Haggard's, 226.
+
+Shelley, Mary, 158-169, 188.
+
+Shelley, P.B., 13, 66, 74, 101, 118-127, 160, 167, 168, 175, 197,
+198, 199.
+
+Sheridan, Mrs. Frances, 95.
+
+Sheridan, R.B., 129.
+
+_Shirley_, Charlotte Brontë's, 38 note.
+
+_Shrine of St. Alstice_, 76.
+
+_Sicilian Pirate_, 197.
+
+_Sicilian Romance_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 13, 22, 41-42, 45, 53, 123,
+132,
+  137.
+
+_Sign of Four_, Conan Doyle's, 226.
+
+Sinclair, George, 14, 149.
+
+_Sir Bertrand_, Mrs. Barbauld's, 28-31.
+
+_Sir Egbert_, Drake's, 35.
+
+_Sir Eustace Grey_, Crabbe's, 144.
+
+_Sir Michael Scott_, Cunningham's, 191.
+
+_Sketch Book_, Irving's, 200.
+
+Sleath, Eleanor, 76, 77, 129.
+
+_Sleepless Woman_, Jerdan's, 189.
+
+Smith, Mrs. Charlotte, 77, 141 note.
+
+Smollett, Tobias, 12, 23-25, 29, 31, 68, 222.
+
+_Solyman and Almena_, Langhorne's, 95.
+
+_Sorcerer_, Mickle's, 68, 69.
+
+Southey, Robert, 11, 65.
+
+_Spectator_, 5, 222.
+
+_Spectral Horseman_, 120.
+
+_Spectre Barber_, 188.
+
+_Spectre Bride_, 175, 188.
+
+_Spectre Bridegroom_, 200.
+
+_Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_, Miss Wilkinson's, 79.
+
+_Spectre of the Murdered Nun_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 78.
+
+_Spectre-Smitten_, 188.
+
+_Spectre Unmasked_, 188.
+
+Spenser, Edmund, 4, 17, 32, 33, 36, 37, 102.
+
+Steele, Richard, 129.
+
+Sterne, Laurence, 222.
+
+Stevenson, R.L., 87 note, 147, 186, 195, 218.
+
+Stoker, Bram, 2, 225.
+
+_Story-Haunted_, 188, 222.
+
+_Story Teller_, 187, 188, 189.
+
+_Strange Story_, Lytton's, 116, 183-184.
+
+Strutt, Joseph, 57.
+
+_Student_, 217.
+
+_Subterranean Horrors_, Randolph's, 76, 120.
+
+Sue, Eugène, 118.
+
+_Sunday at Home_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, Ode on the_, Collins',
+8.
+
+_Sweet William's Ghost_, 3.
+
+_Symposium_, Plato's, 101.
+
+_Tales for a Chimney Corner_, Leigh Hunt's, 187.
+
+_Tale of Mystery_, 175.
+
+_Tale of the Passions_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+_Tales and Sketches_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+_Tales and Sketches_, Hawthorne's, 211.
+
+_Tales of a Traveller_, Irving's, 201-202.
+
+_Tales of Chivalry_, 186.
+
+_Tales of Superstition and Chivalry_, 73.
+
+_Tales of Terror_, Lewis's, 32, 70, 120.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, Ridley's, 95.
+
+_Tales of the Hall_, Crabbe's, 141.
+
+_Tales of Wonder_, Lewis's, 69, 70, 120, 148, 186.
+
+_Tam Lin_, 3.
+
+_Tam o' Shanter_, Burns', 8.
+
+_Tapestried Chamber_, Scott's, 150, 201.
+
+_Tartarian Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+Taylor, Joseph, 149.
+
+Taylor, William (of Norwich), 148.
+
+Tedworth, Drummer of, 6, 153.
+
+_Tell-Tale Heart_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Tender Husband_, Steele's, 129.
+
+_Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins', 194.
+
+_Test of Affection_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+Thackeray, W.M., 38 note, 39, 75 note, 78, 86.
+
+Theocritus, 14.
+
+_Thomas the Rhymer_, 147.
+
+Thorgunna, 14.
+
+_Thrawn Janet_, Stevenson's, 147.
+
+_Three Students of Göttingen_, 188.
+
+Tieck, Ludwig, 65, 175.
+
+_Told in the Dark_, Barry Pain's, 193.
+
+_Tomb of Aurora_, 186.
+
+_Tom Jones_, Fielding's, 7 note, 126 note.
+
+Tourneur, Cyril, 127.
+
+_Tower of London_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_,
+Cunningham's, 191.
+
+_Transformation_, Hawthorne's (see _Marble Faun_).
+
+_Transformation_, Mrs. Shelley's, 169.
+
+_Treasure House of Tales by Great Authors_, Garnett's, 169 note.
+
+_Treasure Island_, Stevenson's, 195, 218.
+
+_Trimalchio, Supper of_, Petronius', 2.
+
+_Tristram Shandy_, Sterne's, 134.
+
+_Triumph of Conscience_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+Trollope, Anthony, 38 note.
+
+_True Thomas_, 3.
+
+_Tunbridge Toys_, Thackeray's, 75 note.
+
+_Turkish Tales_, Galland's, 94.
+
+_Turn of the Screw_, James', 196.
+
+_Twelve o'clock, or The Three Robbers_, 186.
+
+_Twice-Told Tales_, Hawthorne's, 203, 205-206, 212, 213, 220.
+
+_Typhoon_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+_Udolpho, Mysteries of_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 13, 14, 25, 45, 47-51,
+52,
+  53. 59, 61, 64, 75, 76, 123, 125, 128, 129, 131, 134, 137, 145,
+202.
+
+Ulysses, 2, 14.
+
+_Uncommercial Traveller_, Dickens', 193.
+
+_Usher's Well, Wife of_, 3.
+
+_Valperga_, Mrs. Shelley's, 165-166.
+
+_Vampyre_, Polidori's, 169, 171-173.
+
+_Vathek, Episodes of_, Beckford's, 96, 216.
+
+_Vathek, History of the Caliph_, Beckford's, 94-99, 118.
+
+_Veal, Mrs._, Defoe's, 6.
+
+Verne, Jules, 226.
+
+_Victor and Cazire, Poems by_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Villette_, Charlotte Brontë's, 51, 224.
+
+_Virtuoso's Collection_, Hawthorne's, 204.
+
+_Vision of Mirza_, Addison's, 94.
+
+Volney, Count de, 162.
+
+Voltaire, 95.
+
+Walker, George, 76, 77, 129.
+
+Wallace, Sir William, 13, 21 note.
+
+Walpole, Horace, 12, 13, 16-23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37,
+39, 175, 185, 188.
+
+Wandering Jew, 12, 14, 68, 92, 118, 120, 158.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Scott's, 147, 148, 149, 151-152.
+
+Watt, Robert, 75, 129.
+
+_Waverley_, Scott's, 59, 145, 146, 153, 166.
+
+Webster, John, 4, 127.
+
+_Wehr-Wolf_, 188.
+
+Weit Weber, 65.
+
+Wells, H.G., 196, 227.
+
+_Werther, Sorrows of_, Goethe's, 65, 162.
+
+Wesley, John, 6.
+
+_West Wind, Ode to the_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+_White Old Maid_, Hawthorne's,
+
+_Wieland_, C.B. Brown's, 140, 198.
+
+Wilde, Oscar, 226.
+
+_Wild Irish Boy_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Wild Irish Girl_, Lady Morgan's, 81.
+
+"Wild Roses," 186.
+
+Wilkinson, Miss Sarah, 66, 73, 74, 76, 77-80.
+
+Will, R., 76, 129.
+
+_William and Margaret_, Mallet's, 7.
+
+_William Lovell_, Tieck's, 65.
+
+_William Wilson_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Windsor Castle_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Witch of Fife_, Hogg's, 11.
+
+_Woman in White_, Wilkie Collins', 190, 225.
+
+_Women_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Wood-Demon_, 188.
+
+_Woodstock_, Scott's, 149, 153, 154.
+
+"Writing on the Wall," 221.
+
+_Wuthering Heights_, Emily Brontë's, 224.
+
+_Yellow Mask_, Wilkie Collins', 190.
+
+_Zanoni_, Lytton's, 116, 179, 180-182.
+
+_Zastrozzi_, Shelley's, 13, 66, 121, 122-123.
+
+_Zeluco_, Dr. John Moore's, 53.
+
+_Zicci_, Lytton's, 116, 180.
+
+_Zofloya_, Miss Charlotte Dacre's, 122-123, 124.
+
+Zschokke, Heinrich, 70.
+
+
+
+
+Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose and
+Co. Ltd.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14154 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14154 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14154)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tale of Terror, by Edith Birkhead
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Tale of Terror
+
+Author: Edith Birkhead
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2004  [eBook #14154]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TERROR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF TERROR
+
+A Study of the Gothic Romance
+
+by
+
+EDITH BIRKHEAD M.A.
+
+Assistant Lecturer in English Literature in the University of Bristol
+Formerly Noble Fellow in the University of Liverpool
+
+London
+Constable & Company Ltd.
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The aim of this book is to give some account of the growth of
+supernatural fiction in English literature, beginning with the
+vogue of the Gothic Romance and Tale of Terror towards the close
+of the eighteenth century. The origin and development of the
+Gothic Romance are set forth in detail from the appearance of
+Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 to the publication of
+Maturin's _Melmoth the Wanderer_ in 1820; and the survey of this
+phase of the novel is continued, in the later chapters, to modern
+times. One of these is devoted to the Tale of Terror in America,
+where in the hands of Hawthorne and Poe its treatment became a
+fine art. In the chapters dealing with the more recent forms of
+the tale of terror and wonder, the scope of the subject becomes
+so wide that it is impossible to attempt an exhaustive survey.
+
+The present work is the outcome of studies begun during my tenure
+of the William Noble Fellowship in the University of Liverpool,
+1916-18. It is a pleasure to express here my thanks to Professor
+R.H. Case and to Dr. John Sampson for valuable help and criticism
+at various stages of the work. Parts of the MS. have also been
+read by Professor C.H. Herford of the University of Manchester
+and by Professor Oliver Elton of the University of Liverpool. To
+Messrs. Constable's reader I am also indebted for several helpful
+suggestions.--E.B.
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL,
+
+December, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+
+The antiquity of the tale of terror; the element of fear in
+myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the
+romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the
+seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the
+renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend
+the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels."
+Pp. 1-15.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.
+
+
+Walpole's admiration for Gothic art and his interest in the
+middle ages; the mediaeval revival at the close of the eighteenth
+century; _The Castle of Otranto_; Walpole's bequest to later
+romance-writers; Smollett's incidental anticipation of the
+methods of Gothic Romance; Clara Reeve's _Old English Baron_ and
+her effort to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
+probability"; Mrs. Barbauld's Gothic fragment; Blake's _Fair
+Elenor_; the critical theories and Gothic experiments of Dr.
+Nathan Drake. Pp. 16-37.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE NOVEL OF SUSPENSE." MRS. RADCLIFFE.
+
+
+The vogue of Mrs. Radcliffe; her tentative beginning in _The
+Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, and her gradual advance in skill
+and power; _The Sicilian Romance_ and her early experiments in
+the "explained" supernatural; _The Romance of the Forest_, and
+her use of suspense; heroines: _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
+illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; _The Italian_;
+villains; her historical accuracy and "unexplained" spectre in
+_Gaston de Blondeville_; her reading; style; descriptions of
+scenery; position in the history of the novel.
+Pp. 38-62.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
+
+
+Lewis's methods contrasted with those of Mrs. Radcliffe; his debt
+to German terror-mongers; _The Monk_; ballads; _The Bravo of
+Venice_; minor works and translations; Scott's review of
+Maturin's _Montorio_; the vogue of the tale of terror between
+Lewis and Maturin; Miss Sarah Wilkinson; the personality of
+Charles Robert Maturin; his literary career; the complicated plot
+of _The Family of Montorio_; Maturin's debt to others; his
+distinguishing gifts revealed in _Montorio_; the influence of
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_ on French literature; a survey of
+_Melmoth_; Maturin's achievement as a novelist. Pp. 63-93.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
+
+
+The Oriental story in France and England in the eighteenth
+century; Beckford's _Vathek_; Beckford's life and character; his
+literary gifts; later Oriental tales. Pp. 94-99.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
+
+Godwin's mind and temper; the plan of _Caleb Williams_ as
+described by Godwin; his methods; the plot of _Caleb Williams_;
+its interest as a story; Godwin's limitations as a novelist; _St.
+Lean_; its origin and purpose; outline of the story; the
+character of Bethlem Gabor; Godwin's treatment of the Rosicrucian
+legend; a parody of _St. Lean_; the supernatural in _Cloudesley_
+and in _Lives of the Necromancers_; Moore's _Epicurean_; Croly's
+_Salathiel_; Shelley's youthful enthusiasm for the tale of
+terror; _Zastrozzi_; its lack of originality; _St. Irvyne_;
+traces of Shelley's early reading in his poems. Pp. 100-127.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+Jane Austen's raillery in _Northanger Abbey_; Barrett's mockery
+in _The Heroine_; Peacock's _Nightmare Abbey_; his praise of C.B.
+Brown in _Gryll Grange_; _The Mystery of the Abbey_, and its
+misleading title; Crabbe's satire in _Belinda Waters_ and _The
+Preceptor Husband_; his ironical attack on the sentimental
+heroine in _The Borough_; his appreciation of folktales; _Sir
+Eustace Grey_. Pp.
+128-144.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+Scott's review of fashionable fiction in the Preface to
+_Waverley_; his early attempts at Gothic story in _Thomas the
+Rhymer_ and _The Lord of Ennerdale_; his enthusiasm for Bürger's
+_Lenore_ and for Lewis's ballads; his interest in demonology and
+witchcraft; his attitude to the supernatural; his hints to the
+writers of ghost-stories; his own experiments; Wandering Willie's
+Tale, a masterpiece of supernatural horror; the use of the
+supernatural in the Waverley Novels; Scott, the supplanter of the
+novel of terror. Pp.
+145-156.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.
+
+
+The exaggeration of the later terror-mongers; innovations; the
+stories of Mary Shelley, Byron and Polidori; _Frankenstein_; its
+purpose; critical estimate; _Valperga_; _The Last Man_; Mrs.
+Shelley's short tales; Polidori's _Ernestus Berchtold_, a
+domestic story with supernatural agency; _The_ FACES _Vampyre_;
+later vampires; De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror;
+Harrison Ainsworth's attempt to revive romance; his early Gothic
+stories; _Rookwood_, an attempt to bring the Radcliffe romance up
+to date; terror in Ainsworth's other novels; Marryat's _Phantom
+Ship_; Bulwer Lytton's interest in the occult; _Zanoni_, and
+Lytton's theory of the Intelligences; _The Haunted and the
+Haunters_; _A Strange Story_ and Lytton's preoccupation with
+mesmerism. Pp. 157-184.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+The chapbook versions of the Gothic romance; the popularity of
+sensational story illustrated in Leigh Hunt's _Indicator_;
+collections of short stories; various types of short story in
+periodicals; stories based on oral tradition; the humourist's
+turn for the terrible; natural terror in tales from _Blackwood_
+and in Conrad; use of terror in Stevenson and Kipling; future
+possibilities of fear as a motive in short stories. Pp. 185-196.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles
+Brockden Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; his
+Godwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving's
+genial tales of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy;
+suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; _Twice-Told
+Tales_; _Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter_;
+Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; _The House of the
+Seven Gables_, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous
+treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of
+Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; _A Manuscript
+found in a Bottle_, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill
+of Poe illustrated in _Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher,
+The Masque of the Red Death_, and _The Cash of Amontillado_;
+Poe's psychology; his technique in _The Pit and the Pendulum_ and
+in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his
+ideal in writing a short story. Pp. 197-220.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
+
+
+The persistence of the tale of terror; the position of the Gothic
+romance in the history of fiction; the terrors of actual life in
+the Brontë's novels; sensational stories of Wilkie Collins, Le
+Fanu and later authors; the element of terror in various types of
+romance; experiments of living authors; the future of the tale of
+terror. Pp
+221-228.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.  Pp. 229-241
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+The history of the tale of terror is as old as the history of
+man. Myths were created in the early days of the race to account
+for sunrise and sunset, storm-winds and thunder, the origin of
+the earth and of mankind. The tales men told in the face of these
+mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. The universal
+myth of a great flood is perhaps the earliest tale of terror.
+During the excavation of Nineveh in 1872, a Babylonian version of
+the story, which forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, was discovered
+in the library of King Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.); and there are
+records of a much earlier version, belonging to the year 1966
+B.C. The story of the Flood, as related on the eleventh tablet of
+the Gilgamesh epic, abounds in supernatural terror. To seek the
+gift of immortality from his ancestor, Ut-napishtim, the hero
+undertakes a weary and perilous journey. He passes the mountain
+guarded by a scorpion man and woman, where the sun goes down; he
+traverses a dark and dreadful road, where never man trod, and at
+last crosses the waters of death. During the deluge, which is
+predicted by his ancestor, the gods themselves are stricken with
+fear:
+
+     "No man beheld his fellow, no more could men know each
+     other. In heaven the gods were afraid ... They drew
+     back, they climbed up into the heaven of Anu. The gods
+     crouched like dogs, they cowered by the walls."[1]
+
+Another episode in the same epic, when Nergal, the god of the
+dead, brings before Gilgamesh an apparition of his friend,
+Eabani, recalls the impressive scene, when the witch of Endor
+summons the spirit of Samuel before Saul.
+
+When legends began to grow up round the names of traditional
+heroes, fierce encounters with giants and monsters were invented
+to glorify their strength and prowess. David, with a stone from
+his sling, slew Goliath. The crafty Ulysses put out the eye of
+Polyphemus. Grettir, according to the Icelandic saga, overcame
+Glam, the malevolent, death-dealing vampire who "went riding the
+roofs." Beowulf fearlessly descended into the turbid mere to
+grapple with Grendel's mother. Folktales and ballads, in which
+incidents similar to those in myths and heroic legends occur, are
+often overshadowed by terror. Figures like the Demon Lover, who
+bears off his mistress in the fatal craft and sinks her in the
+sea, and the cannibal bridegroom, outwitted at last by the
+artfulness of one of his brides, appear in the folk-lore of many
+lands. Through every century there glide uneasy spirits, groaning
+for vengeance. Andrew Lang[2] mentions the existence of a papyrus
+fragment, found attached to a wooden statuette, in which an
+ancient Egyptian scribe addresses a letter to the Khou, or
+spirit, of his dead wife, beseeching her not to haunt him. One of
+the ancestors of the savage were-wolf, who figures in Marryat's
+_Phantom Ship_, may perhaps be discovered in Petronius' _Supper
+of Trimalchio_. The descent of Bram Stoker's infamous vampire
+Dracula may be traced back through centuries of legend.
+Hobgoblins, demons, and witches mingle grotesquely with the
+throng of beautiful princesses, queens in glittering raiment,
+fairies and elves. Without these ugly figures, folk-tales would
+soon lose their power to charm. All tale tellers know that fear
+is a potent spell. The curiosity which drove Bluebeard's wife to
+explore the hidden chamber lures us on to know the worst, and as
+we listen to horrid stories, we snatch a fearful joy. Human
+nature desires not only to be amused and entertained, but moved
+to pity and fear. All can sympathise with the youth, who could
+not shudder and who would fain acquire the gift.
+
+From English literature we gain no more than brief, tantalising
+glimpses of the vast treasury of folk-tales and ballads that
+existed before literature became an art and that lived on side by
+side with it, vitalising and enriching it continually. Yet here
+and there we catch sudden gleams like the fragment in _King
+Lear_:
+
+  "Childe Roland to the dark tower came.
+  His word was still Fie, Foh and Fum,
+  I smell the blood of a British man."
+
+or Benedick's quotation from the _Robber Bridegroom_:
+
+  "It is not so, it was not so, but, indeed, God forbid that
+  it should be so."
+
+which hint at the existence of a hoard as precious and
+inexhaustible as that of the Nibelungs. The chord of terror is
+touched in the eerie visit of the three dead sailor sons "in
+earthly flesh and blood" to the wife of Usher's well, Sweet
+William's Ghost, the rescue of Tarn Lin on Halloween, when
+Fairyland pays a tiend to Hell, the return of clerk Saunders to
+his mistress, True Thomas's ride to Fairyland, when:
+
+  "For forty days and forty nights,
+  He wade through red blood to the knee,
+  And he saw neither sun nor moon,
+  But heard the roaring of the sea."
+
+The mediaeval romances of chivalry, which embody stories handed
+down by oral tradition, are set in an atmosphere of supernatural
+wonder and enchantment. In Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Sir
+Lancelot goes by night into the Chapel Perilous, wherein there is
+only a dim light burning, and steals from the corpse a sword and
+a piece of silk to heal the wounds of a dying knight. Sir Galahad
+sees a fiend leap out of a tomb amid a cloud of smoke; Gawaine's
+ghost, with those of the knights and ladies for whom he has done
+battle in life, appears to warn the king not to begin the fight
+against Modred on a certain day. In the romance of _Sir Amadas_,
+the ghost of a merchant, whose corpse the knight had duteously
+redeemed from the hands of creditors, succours him at need. The
+shadow of terror lurks even amid the beauty of Spenser's
+fairyland. In the windings of its forests we come upon dark
+caves, mysterious castles and huts, from which there start
+fearsome creatures like Despair or the giant Orgoglio, hideous
+hags like Occasion, wicked witches and enchanters or frightful
+beings like the ghostly Maleger, who wore as his helmet a dead
+man's skull and rode upon a tiger swift as the wind. The
+Elizabethan dramatists were fascinated by the terrors of the
+invisible world. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, round whose name are
+clustered legends centuries old concerning bargains between man
+and the devil, the apparitions and witches in _Macbeth_, the dead
+hand, the corpse-like images, the masque of madmen, the tombmaker
+and the passing-bell in Webster's sombre tragedy, _The Duchess of
+Malfi_, prove triumphantly the dramatic possibilities of terror.
+As a foil to his _Masque of Queens_ (1609) Ben Jonson introduced
+twelve loathly witches with Até as their leader, and embellished
+his description of their profane rites, with details culled from
+James I.'s treatise on Demonology and from learned ancient
+authorities.
+
+In _The Pilgrim's Progress_, Despair, who "had as many lives as a
+cat," his wife Diffidence at Doubting Castle, and Maul and
+Slaygood are the ogres of popular story, whose acquaintance
+Bunyan had made in chapbooks during his ungodly youth.
+Hobgoblins, devils and fiends, "sturdy rogues" like the three
+brothers Faintheart, Mistrust and Guilt, who set upon Littlefaith
+in Dead Man's Lane, lend the excitement of terror to Christian's
+journey to the Celestial City. The widespread belief in witches
+and spirits to which Browne and Burton and many others bear
+witness in the seventeenth century, lived on in the eighteenth
+century, although the attitude of the "polite" in the age of
+reason was ostensibly incredulous and superior. A scene in one of
+the _Spectator_ essays illustrates pleasantly the state of
+popular opinion. Addison, lodging with a good-natured widow in
+London, returns home one day to find a group of girls sitting by
+candlelight, telling one another ghost-stories. At his entry they
+are abashed, but, on the widow's assuring them that it is only
+the "gentleman," they resume, while Addison, pretending to be
+absorbed in his book at the far end of the table, covertly
+listens to their tales of
+
+     "ghosts that, pale as ashes, had stood at the feet of
+     the bed or walked over a churchyard by moonlight; and
+     others, who had been conjured into the Red Sea for
+     disturbing people's rest."[3]
+
+In another essay Addison shows that he is strongly inclined to
+believe in the existence of spirits, though he repudiates the
+ridiculous superstitions which prevailed in his day;[4] and Sir
+Roger de Coverley frankly confesses his belief in witches. Defoe,
+in the preface to his _Essay on the History and Reality of
+Apparitions_ (1727) states uncompromisingly:
+
+     "I must tell you, good people, he that is not able to
+     see the devil, in whatever shape he is pleased to
+     appear in, he is not really qualified to live in this
+     world, no, not in the quality of a common inhabitant."
+
+Epworth Rectory, the home of John Wesley's father, was haunted in
+1716-17 by a persevering ghost called Old Jeffrey, whose exploits
+are recorded with a gravity and circumstantial exactitude that
+remind us of Defoe's narrative concerning the ghostly Mrs. Veal
+in her "scoured" silk. John Wesley declares stoutly that he is
+convinced of the literal truth of the story of one Elizabeth
+Hobson, who professed to have been visited on several occasions
+by supernatural beings. He upholds too the authenticity of the
+notorious Drummer of Tedworth, whose escapades are described in
+chapbooks and in Glanvill's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (1666), a
+book in which he was keenly interested. In his journal (May 25th,
+1768) he remarks:
+
+     "It is true that the English in general, and indeed
+     most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up
+     all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere old
+     wives' fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take
+     this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against
+     this violent compliment which so many that believe the
+     Bible pay to those who do not believe it."
+
+The Cock Lane ghost gained very general credit, and was
+considered by Mrs. Nickleby a personage of some importance, when
+she boasted to Miss La Creevy that her great-grandfather went to
+school with him--or her grandmother with the Thirsty Woman of
+Tutbury. The appearance of Lord Lyttleton's ghost in 1779 was
+described by Dr. Johnson, who was also disposed to believe in the
+Cock Lane ghost, as the most extraordinary thing that had
+happened in his day.[5] There is abundant evidence that the
+people of the eighteenth century were extremely credulous, yet,
+in literature, there is a tendency to look askance at the
+supernatural as at something wild and barbaric. Such ghosts as
+presume to steal into poetry are amazingly tame, and even
+elegant, in their speech and deportment. In Mallet's _William and
+Margaret_ (1759). which was founded on a scrap of an old ballad
+out of _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Margaret's wraith
+rebukes her false lover in a long and dignified oration. But
+spirits were shy of appearing in an age when they were more
+likely to be received with banter than with dread. Dr. Johnson
+expresses the attitude of his age when, in referring to Gray's
+poem, _The Bard_, he remarks:
+
+     "To select a singular event and swell it to a giant's
+     bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions
+     has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the
+     probable may always find the marvellous. And it has
+     little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are
+     improved only as we find something to be imitated or
+     declined." (1780.)
+
+The dictum that we are affected only as we believe is open to
+grave doubt. We are often thrown into a state of trepidation
+simply through the power of the imagination. We are wise after
+the event, like Partridge at the play:
+
+     "No, no, sir; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as
+     that neither... And if it was really a ghost, it could
+     do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much
+     company; and yet, if I was frightened, I am not the
+     only person."[6]
+
+The supernatural which persisted always in legends handed down
+from one generation to another on the lips of living people, had
+not lost its power to thrill and alarm, and gradually worked its
+way back into literature. Although Gray and Collins do not
+venture far beyond the bounds of the natural, they were in
+sympathy with the popular feelings of superstitious terror, and
+realised how effective they would be in poetry.
+
+Collins, in his _Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish
+Highlands_, adjures Home, the author of _Douglas_, to sing:
+
+            "how, framing hideous spells,
+  In Sky's lone isle, the gifted wizard-seer
+  Lodged in the wintry cave with Fate's fell spear
+  Or in the depths of Uist's dark forests dwells,
+  How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross
+  With their own vision oft astonished droop
+  When o'er the wintry strath or quaggy moss
+  They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop."
+
+Burns, in the foreword to _Halloween_ (1785), writes in the
+"enlightened" spirit of the eighteenth century, but in the poem
+itself throws himself whole-heartedly into the hopes and fears
+that agitate the lovers. He owed much to an old woman who lived
+in his home in infancy:
+
+  "She had ... the largest collection in the country
+  of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies,
+  brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles,
+  dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted
+  towers, dragons and other trumpery. This
+  cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong
+  an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my
+  nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in
+  suspicious places; it often takes an effort of philosophy
+  to shake off these idle terrors."[7]
+
+_Tam o' Shanter_, written for Captain Grose, was perhaps based on
+a Scottish legend, learnt at the inglenook in childhood, from
+this old wife, or perhaps
+
+  "By some auld houlet-haunted biggin
+  Or kirk deserted by its riggin,"
+
+from Captain Grose himself, who made to quake:
+
+  "Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha' or chamer,
+  Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor,
+  And you, deep-read in hell's black grammar,
+         Warlocks and witches."
+
+In it Burns reveals with lively reality the terrors that assail
+the reveller on his homeward way through the storm:
+
+  "Past the birks and meikle stane
+  Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
+  And through the whins, and by the cairn
+  Where hunters fand the murdered bairn
+  And near the thorn, aboon the well
+  Where Mungo's mither hanged hersell."
+
+For sheer terror the wild, fantastic witch-dance, seen through a
+Gothic window in the ruins of Kirk-Alloway, with the light of
+humour strangely glinting through, has hardly been surpassed. The
+Ballad-collections, beginning with Percy's _Reliques of Ancient
+English Poetry_ (1705), brought poets back to the original
+sources of terror in popular tradition, and helped to revive the
+latent feelings of awe, wonder and fear. In Coleridge's _Ancient
+Manner_ the skeleton-ship with its ghastly crew--the
+spectre-woman and her deathmate--the sensations of the mariner,
+alone on a wide, wide sea, seize on our imagination with
+irresistible power. The very substance of the poem is woven of
+the supernatural. The dream imagery is thrown into relief by
+occasional touches of reality--the lighthouse, the church on the
+cliff, the glimpses of the wedding, the quiet song of the hidden
+brook in the leafy month of June. We, like the mariner, after
+loneliness so awful that
+
+        "God himself
+  Scarce seemèd there to be,"
+
+welcome the firm earth beneath our feet, and the homely sound of
+the vesper bell. In _Christabel_ we float dreamily through scenes
+as unearthly and ephemeral as the misty moonlight, and the words
+in which Coleridge conjures up his vision fall into music of
+magic beauty. The opening of the poem creates a sense of
+foreboding, and the horror of the serpent-maiden is subtly
+suggested through her effect on Christabel. Coleridge hints at
+the terrible with artistic reticence. In _Kubla Khan_ the chasm
+is:
+
+  "A savage place! as holy and enchanted
+  As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
+  By woman wailing for her demon-lover."
+
+The poetry of Keats is often mysterious and suggestive of terror.
+The description of the Gothic hall in _The Eve of St. Agnes_:
+
+  "In all the house was heard no human sound;
+  A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;
+  The arras, rich with horseman, hawk and hound,
+  Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;
+  And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor;"
+
+the serpent-maiden, Lamia, who
+
+  "Seemed at once some penanced lady elf,
+  Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self;"
+
+the grim story in _Isabella_ of Lorenzo's ghost, who
+
+  "Moaned a ghostly undersong
+  Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briers along."
+
+all lead us over the borderland. In a rejected stanza of the _Ode
+on Melancholy_, he abandons the horrible:
+
+  "Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones
+  And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
+  Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
+  To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
+  Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
+  Long severed, yet still hard with agony,
+  Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull
+  Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
+  To find the Melancholy--"
+
+Keats's melancholy is not to be found amid images
+of horror:
+
+  "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die,
+  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
+  Bidding adieu."
+
+In _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ he conveys with delicate touch the
+memory of the vision which haunts the knight, alone and palely
+loitering. We see it through his eyes:
+
+  "I saw pale kings and princes too,
+  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
+  They cried--'La Belle Dame sans Merci
+  Hath thee in thrall!'
+
+  "I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
+  With horrid warning gaped wide,
+  And I awoke and found me here,
+  On the cold hill's side."
+
+From effects so exquisitely wrought as these it seems almost
+profane to turn to the crude attempts of such poets as "Monk"
+Lewis or Southey to sound the note of terror. Yet they too, in
+their fashion, played a part in the "Renascence of Wonder."
+Coleridge, fascinated by the spirit of "gramarye" in Bürger's
+_Lenore_, etherealised and refined it. Scott and Lewis gloried in
+the gruesome details and spirited rhythm of the ballad, and in
+their supernatural poems wish to startle and terrify, not to awe,
+their readers. Those who revel in phosphorescent lights and in
+the rattle of the skeleton are apt to o'erleap themselves; and
+Scott's _Glenfinlas_, Lewis's _Alonzo the Brave and the Fair
+Imogene_ and Southey's _Old Woman of Berkeley_ fall into the
+category of the grotesque. Hogg intentionally mingles the comic
+and the terrible in his poem, _The Witch of Fife_, but his
+prose-stories reveal his power of creating an atmosphere of
+_diablerie_, undisturbed by intrusive mockery. In the poem
+_Kilmeny_, he handles an uncanny theme with dreamy beauty.
+
+From the earliest times to the present day, writers of fiction
+have realised the force of supernatural terror. In the
+_Babylonica_ of Iamblichus, the lovers evade their pursuers by
+passing as spectres; the scene of the romance is laid in tombs,
+caverns, and robbers' dens, a setting remarkably like that of
+Gothic story. Into the English novel of the first half of the
+eighteenth century, however, the ghost dares not venture. The
+innate desire for the marvellous was met at this period not by
+the novel, but by oral tradition and by such works as Galland's
+translation of _The Arabian Nights_, the Countess D'Aulnoy's
+collection of fairy tales, Perrault's _Contes de ma Mère Oie_.
+Chapbooks setting forth mediaeval legends of "The Wandering Jew,"
+the "Demon Frigate," or "Dr. Faustus," and interspersed with
+anecdotes of freaks, monsters and murderers, satisfied the
+craving for excitement among humbler readers.[8] Smollett, who,
+in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom_ (1753), seems to
+have been experimenting with new devices for keeping alive the
+interest of a _picaresque_ novel, anticipates the methods of Mrs.
+Radcliffe. Although he sedulously avoids introducing the
+supernatural, he hovers perilously on the threshold. The
+publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 was not so wild an
+adventure as Walpole would have his readers believe. The age was
+ripe for the reception of the marvellous.
+
+The supernatural had, as we have seen, begun to find its way back
+into poetry, in the work of Gray and Collins. In Macpherson's
+_Ossian_, which was received with acclamation in 1760-3, the
+mountains, heaths and lakes are haunted by shadowy, superstitious
+fears. Dim-seen ghosts wail over the wastes. There is abundant
+evidence that "authentic" stories of ghostly appearances were
+heard with respect. Those who eagerly explored Walpole's Gothic
+castle and who took pleasure in Miss Reeve's well-trained ghost,
+had previously enjoyed the thrill of chimney corner legends. The
+idea of the gigantic apparition was derived, no doubt, from the
+old legend of the figure seen by Wallace on the field of battle.
+The limbs, strewn carelessly about the staircase and the gallery
+of the castle, belong to a giant, very like those who are worsted
+by the heroes of popular story. Godwin, in an unusual flight of
+fancy, amused himself by tracing a certain similitude between
+_Caleb Williams_ and _Bluebeard_, between _Cloudesley_ and _The
+Babes in the Wood_,[9] and planned a story, on the analogy of the
+Sleeping Beauty, in which the hero was to have the faculty of
+unexpectedly falling asleep for twenty, thirty, or a hundred
+years.[10]
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe, who, so far as we may judge, did not draw her
+characters from the creatures of flesh and blood around her,
+seems to have adopted some of the familiar figures of old story.
+Emily's guardian, Montoni, in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, like
+the unscrupulous uncle in Godwin's _Cloudesley_, may well have
+been descended from the wicked uncle of the folk tale. The cruel
+stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in
+_The Sicilian Romance_. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer
+of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method
+of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and
+robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic fiction are time
+honoured figures. Travellers in Thessaly in Apuleius' _Golden
+Ass_, like the fugitives in Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St.
+Irvyne_, find themselves in robbers' caves. The Gothic castle,
+suddenly encountered in a dark forest, is boldly transported from
+fairyland and set down in Italy, Sicily or Spain. The chamber of
+horrors, with its alarming array of scalps or skeletons, is
+civilised beyond recognition and becomes the deserted wing of an
+abbey, concealing nothing worse than one discarded wife,
+emaciated and dispirited, but still alive. The ghost-story, which
+Ludovico reads in the haunted chamber of Udolpho, is described by
+Mrs. Radcliffe as a Provençal tale, but is in reality common to
+the folklore of all countries. The restless ghost, who yearns for
+the burial of his corpse, is as ubiquitous as the Wandering Jew.
+In the _Iliad_ he appears as the shade of Patroclus, pleading
+with Achilles for his funeral rites. According to a letter of the
+younger Pliny,[11] he haunts a house in Athens, clanking his
+chains. He is found in every land, in every age. His feminine
+counterpart presented herself to Dickens' nurse requiring her
+bones, which were under a glass-case, to be "interred with every
+undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound ten, in another
+particular place."[12] Melmoth the Wanderer, when he becomes the
+wooer of Immalee, seems almost like a reincarnation of the Demon
+Lover. The wandering ball of fire that illuminates the dusky
+recesses of so many Gothic abbeys is but another manifestation of
+the Fate-Moon, which shines, foreboding death, after Thorgunna's
+funeral, in the Icelandic saga. The witchcraft and demonology
+that attracted Scott and "Monk" Lewis, may be traced far beyond
+Sinclair's _Satan's Invisible World Discovered_ (1685), Bovet's
+_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_ (1683), or Reginald
+Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584) to Ulysses' invocation of
+the spirits of the dead,[13] to the idylls of Theocritus and to
+the Hebrew narrative of Saul's visit to the Cave of Endor. There
+are incidents in _The Golden Ass_ as "horrid" as any of those
+devised by the writers of Gothic romance. It would, indeed, be no
+easy task to fashion scenes more terrifying than the mutilation
+of Socrates in _The Golden Ass_, by the witch, who tears out his
+heart and stops the wound with a sponge which falls out when he
+stoops to drink at a river, or than the strange apparition of a
+ragged, old woman who vanishes after leading the way to the room,
+where the baker's corpse hangs behind the door. Though the title
+assumes a special literary significance at the close of the
+eighteenth century, the tale of terror appeals to deeply rooted
+instincts, and belongs, therefore, to every age and clime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.
+
+
+To Horace Walpole, whose _Castle of Otranto_ was published on
+Christmas Eve, 1764, must be assigned the honour of having
+introduced the Gothic romance and of having made it fashionable.
+Diffident as to the success of so "wild" a story in an age
+devoted to good sense and reason, he sent forth his mediaeval
+tale disguised as a translation from the Italian of "Onuphrio
+Muralto," by William Marshall. It was only after it had been
+received with enthusiasm that he confessed the authorship. As he
+explained frankly in a letter to his friend Mason: "It is not
+everybody that may in this country play the fool with
+impunity."[14] That Walpole regarded his story merely as a
+fanciful, amusing trifle is clear from the letter he wrote to
+Miss Hannah More reproving her for putting so frantic a thing
+into the hands of a Bristol milkwoman who wrote poetry in her
+leisure hours.[15] _The Castle of Otranto_ was but another
+manifestation of that admiration for the Gothic which had found
+expression fourteen years earlier in his miniature castle at
+Strawberry Hill, with its old armour and "lean windows fattened
+with rich saints."[16] The word "Gothic" in the early eighteenth
+century was used as a term of reproach. To Addison, Siena
+Cathedral was but a "barbarous" building, which might have been a
+miracle of architecture, had our forefathers "only been
+instructed in the right way."[17] Pope in his _Preface to
+Shakespeare_ admits the strength and majesty of the Gothic, but
+deplores its irregularity. In _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_,
+published two years before _The Castle of Otranto_, Hurd pleads
+that Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ should be read and criticised as a
+Gothic, not a classical, poem. He clearly recognises the right of
+the Gothic to be judged by laws of its own. When the nineteenth
+century is reached the epithet has lost all tinge of blame, and
+has become entirely one of praise. From the time when he began to
+build his castle, in 1750, Walpole's letters abound in references
+to the Gothic, and he confesses once: "In the heretical corner of
+my heart I adore the Gothic building."[18] At Strawberry Hill the
+hall and staircase were his special delight and they probably
+formed the background of that dream in which he saw a gigantic
+hand in armour on the staircase of an ancient castle. When Dr.
+Burney visited Walpole's home in 1786 he remarked on the striking
+recollections of _The Castle of Otranto_, brought to mind by "the
+deep shade in which some of his antique portraits were placed and
+the lone sort of look of the unusually shaped apartments in which
+they were hung."[19] We know how in idle moments Walpole loved to
+brood on the picturesque past, and we can imagine his falling
+asleep, after the arrival of a piece of armour for his
+collection, with his head full of plans for the adornment of his
+cherished castle. His story is but an expansion of this
+dilettante's nightmare. His interest in things mediaeval was not
+that of an antiquary, but rather that of an artist who loves
+things old because of their age and beauty. In a delightfully gay
+letter to his friend, George Montagu, referring flippantly to his
+appointment as Deputy Ranger of Rockingham Forest, he writes,
+after drawing a vivid picture of a "Robin Hood reformé":
+
+     "Visions, you know, have always been my pasture; and so
+     far from growing old enough to quarrel with their
+     emptiness, I almost think there is no wisdom comparable
+     to that of exchanging what is called the realities of
+     life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old
+     histories and the babble of old people make one live
+     back into centuries that cannot disappoint one. One
+     holds fast and surely what is past. The dead have
+     exhausted their power of deceiving--one can trust
+     Catherine of Medicis now. In short, you have opened a
+     new landscape to my fancy; and my lady Beaulieu will
+     oblige me as much as you, if she puts the long bow into
+     your hands. I don't know, but the idea may produce some
+     other _Castle of Otranto_."[20]
+
+So Walpole came near to anticipating the greenwood scenes of
+_Ivanhoe_. The decking and trappings of chivalry filled him with
+boyish delight, and he found in the glitter and colour of the
+middle ages a refuge from the prosaic dullness of the eighteenth
+century. A visit from "a Luxembourg, a Lusignan and a Montfort"
+awoke in his whimsical fancy a mental image of himself in the
+guise of a mediaeval baron: "I never felt myself so much in _The
+Castle of Otranto_. It sounded as if a company of noble crusaders
+were come to sojourn with me before they embarked for the Holy
+Land";[21] and when he heard of the marvellous adventures of a
+large wolf who had caused a panic in Lower Languedoc, he was
+reminded of the enchanted monster of old romance and declared
+that, had he known of the creature earlier, it should have
+appeared in _The Castle of Otranto_.[22] "I have taken to
+astronomy," he declares on another occasion,
+
+     "now that the scale is enlarged enough to satisfy my
+     taste, who love gigantic ideas--do not be afraid; I am
+     not going to write a second part to _The Castle of
+     Otranto_, nor another account of the Patagonians who
+     inhabit the new Brobdingnag planet."[23]
+
+These unstudied utterances reveal, perhaps more clearly than
+Walpole's deliberate confessions about his book, the mood of
+irresponsible, light-hearted gaiety in which he started on his
+enterprise. If we may rely on Walpole's account of its
+composition, _The Castle of Otranto_ was fashioned rapidly in a
+white heat of excitement, but the creation of the story probably
+cost him more effort than he would have us believe. The result,
+at least, lacks spontaneity. We never feel for a moment that we
+are living invisible amidst the characters, but we sit aloof like
+Puck, thinking: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" His
+supernatural machinery is as undignified as the pantomime
+properties of Jack the Giant-killer. The huge body scattered
+piecemeal about the castle, the unwieldy sabre borne by a hundred
+men, the helmet "tempestuously agitated," and even the "skeleton
+in a hermit's cowl" are not only unalarming but mildly
+ridiculous. Yet to the readers of his day the story was
+captivating and entrancing. It satisfied a real craving for the
+romantic and marvellous. The first edition of five hundred copies
+was sold out in two months, and others followed rapidly. The
+story was dramatised by Robert Jephson and produced at Covent
+Garden Theatre under the title of _The Count of Narbonne_, with
+an epilogue by Malone. It was staged again later in Dublin,
+Kemble playing the title rôle. It was translated into French,
+German and Italian. In England its success was immediate, though
+several years elapsed before it was imitated. Gray, to whom the
+story was first attributed, wrote of it in March, 1765: "It
+engages our attention here (at Cambridge), makes some of us cry a
+little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights." Mason
+praised it, and Walpole's letters refer repeatedly to the vogue
+it enjoyed. This widespread popularity is an indication of the
+eagerness with which readers of 1765 desired to escape from the
+present and to revel for a time in strange, bygone centuries.
+Although Walpole regarded the composition of his Gothic story as
+a whim, his love of the past was shared by others of his
+generation. Of this Macpherson's _Ossian_ (1760-3), Kurd's
+_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762), and Percy's _Reliques_
+(1765), are, each in its fashion, a sufficient proof. The
+half-century from 1760 to 1810 showed remarkably definite signs
+of a renewed interest in things written between 1100 and 1650,
+which had been neglected for a century or more. _The Castle of
+Otranto_, which was "an attempt to blend the marvellous of old
+story with the natural of modern novels" is an early symptom of
+this revulsion to the past; and it exercised a charm on Scott as
+well as on Mrs. Radcliffe and her school. _The Castle of Otranto_
+is significant, not because of its intrinsic merit, but because
+of its power in shaping the destiny of the novel.
+
+The outline of the plot is worth recording for the sake of
+tracing ancestral likenesses when we reach the later romances.
+The only son of Manfred--the villain of the piece--is discovered
+on his wedding morning dashed to pieces beneath an enormous
+helmet. Determined that his line shall not become extinct,
+Manfred decides to divorce Hippolyta and marry Isabella, his
+son's bride. To escape from her pursuer, Isabella takes flight
+down a "subterraneous passage," where she is succoured by a
+"peasant" Theodore, who bears a curious resemblance to a portrait
+of the "good Alfonso" in the gallery of the castle. The servants
+of the castle are alarmed at intervals by the sudden appearance
+of massive pieces of armour in different parts of the building. A
+clap of thunder, which shakes the castle to its foundations,
+heralds the culmination of the story. A hundred men bear in a
+huge sabre; and an apparition of the illustrious Alfonso--whose
+portrait in the gallery once walks straight out of its
+frame[24]--appears, "dilated to an immense magnitude,"[25] and
+demands that Manfred shall surrender Otranto to the rightful
+heir, Theodore, who has been duly identified by the mark of a
+"bloody arrow." Alfonso, thus pacified, ascends into heaven,
+where he is received into glory by St. Nicholas. As Matilda, who
+was beloved of Theodore, has incidentally been slain by her
+father, Theodore consoles himself with Isabella. Manfred and his
+wife meekly retire to neighbouring convents. With this
+anti-climax the story closes. To present the "dry bones" of a
+romantic story is often misleading, but the method is perhaps
+justifiable in the case of _The Castle of Otranto_, because
+Walpole himself scorned embellishments and declared in his
+grandiloquent fashion:
+
+     "If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader
+     will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. There
+     is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions or
+     unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to
+     the catastrophe."[26]
+
+But with all its faults _The Castle of Otranto_ did not fall
+fruitless on the earth. The characters are mere puppets, yet we
+meet the same types again and again in later Gothic romances.
+Though Clara Reeve renounced such "obvious improbabilities" as a
+ghost in a hermit's cowl and a walking picture, she was an
+acknowledged disciple of Walpole, and, like him, made an
+"interesting peasant" the hero of her story, _The Old English
+Baron_. Jerome is the prototype of many a count disguised as
+father confessor, Bianca the pattern of many a chattering
+servant. The imprisoned wife reappears in countless romances,
+including Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), and Mrs.
+Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798). The tyrannical father--no
+new creation, however--became so inevitable a figure in fiction
+that Jane Austen had to assure her readers that Mr. Morland "was
+not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters," and Miss
+Martha Buskbody, the mantua-maker of Gandercleugh, whom Jedediah
+Cleishbotham ingeniously called to his aid in writing the
+conclusion of _Old Mortality_, assured him, as the fruit of her
+experience in reading through the stock of three circulating
+libraries that, in a novel, young people may fall in love without
+the countenance of their parents, "because it is essential to the
+necessary intricacy of the story." But apart from his characters,
+who are so colourless that they hardly hold our attention,
+Walpole bequeathed to his successors a remarkable collection of
+useful "properties." The background of his story is a Gothic
+castle, singularly unenchanted it is true, but capable of being
+invested by Mrs. Radcliffe with mysterious grandeur. Otranto
+contains underground vaults, ill-fitting doors with rusty hinges,
+easily extinguished lamps and a trap-door--objects trivial and
+insignificant in Walpole's hands, but fraught with terrible
+possibilities. Otranto would have fulfilled admirably the
+requirements of Barrett's Cherubina, who, when looking for
+lodgings demanded--to the indignation of a maidservant, who came
+to the door--old pictures, tapestry, a spectre and creaking
+hinges. Scott, writing in 1821, remarks:
+
+     "The apparition of the skeleton-hermit to the prince of
+     Vicenza was long accounted a masterpiece of the
+     horrible; but of late the valley of Jehosaphat could
+     hardly supply the dry bones necessary for the
+     exhibition of similar spectres."
+
+But Cherubina, whose palate was jaded by a surfeit of the pungent
+horrors of Walpole's successors, would probably have found _The
+Castle of Otranto_ an insipid romance and would have lamented
+that he did not make more effective use of his supernatural
+machinery. His story offered hints and suggestions to those whose
+greater gifts turned the materials he had marshalled to better
+account, and he is to be honoured rather for what he instigated
+others to perform than for what he actually accomplished himself.
+_The Castle of Otranto_ was not intended as a serious
+contribution to literature, but will always survive in literary
+history as the ancestor of a thriving race of romances.
+
+More than ten years before the publication of _The Castle of
+Otranto_, Smollett, in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count
+Fathom_, had chanced upon the devices employed later in the tale
+of terror. The tremors of fear to which his rascally hero is
+subjected lend the spice of alarm to what might have been but a
+monotonous record of villainy. Smollett depicts skilfully the
+imaginary terrors created by darkness and solitude. As the Count
+travels through the forest:
+
+     "The darkness of the night, the silence and solitude of
+     the place, the indistinct images of the trees that
+     appeared on every side, stretching their extravagant
+     arms athwart the gloom, conspired, with the dejection
+     of spirits occasioned by his loss, to disturb his fancy
+     and raise strange phantoms in his imagination. Although
+     he was not naturally superstitious, his mind began to
+     be invaded with an awful horror that gradually
+     prevailed over all the consolations of reason and
+     philosophy; nor was his heart free from the terrors of
+     assassination. In order to dissipate these agreeable
+     reveries, he had recourse to the conversation of his
+     guide, by whom he was entertained with the history of
+     divers travellers who had been robbed and murdered by
+     ruffians, whose retreat was in the recesses of that
+     very wood."[27]
+
+The sighing of the trees, thunder and sudden flashes of lightning
+add to the horror of a journey, which resembles Mrs. Radcliffe's
+description of Emily's approach to Udolpho. When Count Fathom
+takes refuge in a robber's hut, he discovers in his room, which
+has no bolt on the inside of the door, the body of a recently
+murdered man, concealed beneath some bundles of straw. Effecting
+his escape by placing the corpse in his own bed to deceive the
+robbers, the count is mistaken for a phantom by the old woman who
+waits upon him. In carrying out his designs upon Celinda, the
+count aggravates her natural timidity by relating dismal stories
+of omens and apparitions, and then groans piteously outside her
+door and causes the mysterious music of an Æolian harp to sound
+upon the midnight air. Celinda sleeps, too, like the ill-starred
+heroine of the novel of terror, "at the end of a long gallery,
+scarce within hearing of any other inhabited part of the
+house."[28] The scene in _Count Fathom_, in which Renaldo, at
+midnight, visits, as he thinks, the tomb of Monimia, is
+surrounded with circumstances of gloom and mystery:
+
+     "The uncommon darkness of the night, the solemn silence
+     and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the
+     occasion of his coming and the dismal images of his
+     fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy
+     expectation... The clock struck twelve, the owl
+     screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was
+     opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering
+     taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary
+     aisle."
+
+As he watches again on a second night:
+
+     "His ear was suddenly invaded with the sound of some
+     few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed
+     to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason
+     shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which
+     represented this music as the prelude to something
+     strange and supernatural."[29]
+
+The figure of a woman, arrayed in a flowing robe and veil,
+approaches--and proves to be Monimia in the flesh. Although
+Smollett precedes Walpole, in point of time, he is, in these
+scenes, nearer in spirit to Udolpho than Otranto. His use of
+terror, however, is merely incidental; he strays inadvertently
+into the history of Gothic romance. The suspicions and
+forebodings, with which Smollett plays occasionally upon the
+nerves of his readers, become part of the ordinary routine in the
+tale of terror.
+
+Clara Reeve's Gothic story, first issued under the title of _The
+Champion of Virtue_, but later as _The Old English Baron_, was
+published in 1777--twelve years after Walpole's _Castle of
+Otranto_, of which, as she herself asserted, it was the "literary
+offspring." By eliminating all supernatural incidents save one
+ghost, she sought to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
+probability." Walpole, perhaps displeased by the slighting
+references in the preface to some of the more extraordinary
+incidents in his novel, received _The Old English Baron_ with
+disdain, describing it as "totally void of imagination and
+interest."[30] His strictures are unjust. There are certainly no
+wild flights of fancy in Clara Reeve's story, but an even level
+of interest is maintained throughout. Her style is simple and
+refreshingly free from affectation. The plot is neither rapid nor
+exhilarating, but it never actually stagnates. Like Walpole's
+Gothic story, _The Old English Baron_ is supposed to be a
+transcript from an ancient manuscript. The period, we are
+assured, is that of the minority of Henry VI., but despite an
+elaborately described tournament, we never really leave
+eighteenth century England. Edmund Twyford, the reputed son of a
+cottager, is befriended by a benevolent baron Fitzowen, but,
+through his good fortune and estimable qualities, excites the
+envy of Fitzowen's nephews and his eldest son. To prove the
+courage of Edmund, who has been basely slandered by his enemies,
+the baron asks him to spend three nights in the haunted apartment
+of the castle. Up to this point, there has been nothing to
+differentiate the story from an uneventful domestic novel. The
+ghost is of the mechanical variety and does not inspire awe when
+he actually appears, but Miss Reeve tries to prepare our minds
+for the shock, before she introduces him. The rusty locks and the
+sudden extinction of the lamp are a heritage from Walpole, but
+the "hollow, rustling noise" and the glimmering light, naturally
+explained later by the approach of a servant with a faggot,
+anticipate Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Adeline later, in _The Romance of
+the Forest_, Edmund is haunted by prophetic dreams. The second
+night the ghost violently clashes his armour, but still remains
+concealed. The third night dismal groans are heard. The ghost
+does not deign to appear in person until the baron's nephews
+watch, and then:
+
+     "All the doors flew open, a pale glimmering light
+     appeared at the door from the staircase, and a man in
+     complete armour entered the room: he stood with one
+     hand extended pointing to the outward door."
+
+It is to vindicate the rights of this departed spirit that Sir
+Ralph Harclay challenges Sir Walter Lovel to a "mediaeval"
+tournament. Before the story closes, Edmund is identified as the
+owner of Castle Lovel, and is married to Lady Emma, Fitzowen's
+daughter. The narration of the unusual circumstances connected
+with his birth takes some time, as the foster parents suffer from
+what is described by writers on psychology as "total recall," and
+are unable to select the salient details. The characters are
+rather dim and indistinct, the shadowiest of all being Emma, who
+has no personality at all, and is a mere complement to the
+immaculate Edmund's happiness. The good and bad are sharply
+distinguished. There are no "doubtful cases," and consequently
+there is no difficulty in distributing appropriate rewards and
+punishments at the close of the story--the whole "furnishing a
+striking lesson to posterity of the overruling hand of providence
+and the certainty of retribution." Clara Reeve was fifty-two
+years of age when she published her Gothic story, and she writes
+in the spirit of a maiden aunt striving to edify as well as to
+entertain the younger generation. When Edmund takes Fitzowen to
+view the fatal closet and the bones of his murdered father, he
+considers the scene "too solemn for a lady to be present at"; and
+his love-making is as frigid as the supernatural scenes. The hero
+is young in years, but has no youthful ardour. The very ghost is
+manipulated in a half-hearted fashion and fails to produce the
+slightest thrill. The natural inclination of the authoress was
+probably towards domestic fiction with a didactic intention, and
+she attempted a "mediaeval" setting as a _tour de force_, in
+emulation of Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_. The hero, whose birth
+is enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the
+vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic
+spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards
+the romantic. _The Old English Baron_ is an unambitious work, but
+it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity
+of style. It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild
+degree of interest simply as a story, while _The Castle of
+Otranto_ is only tolerable as a literary curiosity. A tragedy,
+_Edmond_, _Orphan of the Castle_ (1799), was founded upon the
+story, which was translated into French in 1800. Miss Reeve
+informs the public in a preface to a late edition of _The Old
+English Baron_ that, in compliance with the suggestion of a
+friend, she had composed _Castle Connor, an Irish Story_, in
+which apparitions were introduced. The manuscript of this tale
+was unfortunately lost. Not even a mouldering fragment has been
+rescued from an ebony cabinet in the deserted chamber of an
+ancient abbey, and we are left wondering whether the ghosts spoke
+with a brogue.
+
+When Walpole wrote disparagingly of Clara Reeve's imitation of
+his Gothic story, he singled out for praise a fragment which he
+attributes to Mrs. Barbauld. The story to which he alludes is
+evidently the unfinished _Sir Bertrand_, which is contained in
+one of the volumes entitled _Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose_,
+published jointly by J. and A.L. Aikin in 1773, and preceded by
+an essay _On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror_. Leigh
+Hunt, who reprinted _Sir Bertrand_, which had impressed him very
+strongly in his boyhood, in his _Book for a Corner_ (1849)
+ascribes the authorship of the tale to Dr. Aikin, commenting on
+the fact that he was "a writer from whom this effusion was hardly
+to have been looked for." It is probably safe to assume that
+Walpole, who was a contemporary of the Aikins and who took a
+lively interest in the literary gossip of the day, was right in
+assigning _Sir Bertrand_ to Miss Aikin,[31] afterwards Mrs.
+Barbauld, though the story is not included in _The Works of Anne
+Letitia Barbauld_, edited by Miss Lucy Aikin in 1825. That the
+minds of the Aikins were exercised about the sources of pleasure
+in romance, especially when connected with horror and distress,
+is clear not only from this essay and the illustrative fragment
+but also from other essays and stories in the same
+collection--_On Romances, an Imitation_, and _An Enquiry into
+those Kinds of Distress which Excite Agreeable Sensations_. In
+the preliminary essay to _Sir Bertrand_ an attempt is made to
+explain why terrible scenes excite pleasurable emotions and to
+distinguish between two different types of horror, as illustrated
+by _The Castle of Otranto_, which unites the marvellous and the
+terrible, and by a scene of mere natural horror in Smollett's
+_Count Fathom_. The story _Sir Bertrand_ is an attempt to combine
+the two kinds of horror in one composition. A knight, wandering
+in darkness on a desolate and dreary moor, hears the tolling of a
+bell, and, guided by a glimmering light, finds "an antique
+mansion" with turrets at the corners. As he approaches the porch,
+the light glides away. All is dark and still. The light reappears
+and the bell tolls. As Sir Bertrand enters the castle, the door
+closes behind him. A bluish flame leads him up a staircase till
+he comes to a wide gallery and a second staircase, where the
+light vanishes. He grasps a dead-cold hand which he severs from
+the wrist with his sword. The blue flame now leads him to a
+vault, where he sees the owner of the hand "completely armed,
+thrusting forwards the bloody stump of an arm, with a terrible
+frown and menacing gesture and brandishing a sword in the
+remaining hand." When attacked, the figure vanishes, leaving
+behind a massive, iron key which unlocks a door leading to an
+apartment containing a coffin, and statues of black marble,
+attired in Moorish costume, holding enormous sabres in their
+right hands. As the knight enters, each of them rears an arm and
+advances a leg and at the same moment the lid of the coffin opens
+and the bell tolls. Sir Bertrand, guided by the flames,
+approaches the coffin from which a lady in a shroud and a black
+veil arises. When he kisses her, the whole building falls asunder
+with a crash. Sir Bertrand is thrown into a trance and awakes in
+a gorgeous room, where he sees a beautiful lady who thanks him as
+her deliverer. At a banquet, nymphs place a laurel wreath on his
+head, but as the lady is about to address him the fragment breaks
+off.
+
+The architecture of the castle, with its gallery, staircase and
+subterranean vaults, closely resembles that of Walpole's Gothic
+structure. The "enormous sabres" too are familiar to readers of
+_The Castle of Otranto_. The gliding light, disquieting at the
+outset of the story but before the close familiar grown, is
+doomed to be the guide of many a distressed wanderer through the
+Gothic labyrinths of later romances. Mrs. Barbauld chose her
+properties with admirable discretion, but lacked the art to use
+them cunningly. A tolling bell, heard in the silence and darkness
+of a lonely moor, will quicken the beatings of the heart, but
+employed as a prompter's signal to herald the advance of a group
+of black statues is only absurd. After the grimly suggestive
+opening, the story gradually loses in power as it proceeds and
+the happy ending, which wings our thoughts back to the Sleeping
+Beauty of childhood, is wholly incongruous. If the fragment had
+ended abruptly at the moment when the lady arises in her shroud
+from the coffin, _Sir Bertrand_ would have been a more effective
+tale of terror. From the historical point of view Mrs. Barbauld's
+curious patchwork is full of interest. She seems to be reaching
+out wistfully towards the mysterious and the unknown. Genuinely
+anxious to awaken a thrill of excitement in the breast of her
+reader, she is hesitating and uncertain as to the best way of
+winning her effect. She is but a pioneer in the art of freezing
+the blood and it were idle to expect that she should rush boldly
+into a forest of horrors. Naturally she prefers to follow the
+tracks trodden by Walpole and Smollett; but with intuitive
+foresight she seems to have realised the limitations of Walpole's
+marvellous machinery, and to have attempted to explore the
+regions of the fearful unknown. Her opening scene works on that
+instinctive terror of the dark and the unseen, upon which Mrs.
+Radcliffe bases many of her most moving incidents.
+
+Among the _Poetical Sketches_ of Blake, written between 1768 and
+1777, and published in 1783, there appears an extraordinary poem
+written in blank verse, but divided into quatrains, and entitled
+_Fair Elenor_. This juvenile production seems to indicate that
+Blake was familiar with Walpole's Gothic story.[32] The heroine,
+wandering disconsolately by night in the castle vaults--a place
+of refuge first rendered fashionable by Isabella in _The Castle
+of Otranto_--faints with horror, thinking that she beholds her
+husband's ghost, but soon:
+
+  "Fancy returns, and now she thinks of bones
+  And grinning skulls and corruptible death
+  Wrapped in his shroud; and now fancies she hears
+  Deep sighs and sees pale, sickly ghosts gliding."
+
+A reality more horrible than her imaginings awaits her. A
+bleeding head is abruptly thrust into her arms by an assassin in
+the employ of a villainous and anonymous "duke." Fair Elenor
+retires to her bed and gives utterance to an outburst of similes
+in praise of her dead lord. Thus encouraged, the bloody head of
+her murdered husband describes its lurid past, and warns Elenor
+to beware of the duke's dark designs. Elenor wisely avoids the
+machinations of the villain, and brings an end to the poem, by
+breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the
+popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her
+lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a
+year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants,
+all headless out of respect to their mistress.
+
+Blake's youthful excursion into the murky gloom of Gothic vaults
+resulted in a poem so crude that even "Monk" Lewis, who was no
+connoisseur, would have declined it regretfully as a contribution
+to his _Tales of Terror_, but _Fair Elenor_ is worthy of
+remembrance as an early indication of Walpole's influence, which
+was to become so potent on the history of Gothic romance.
+
+The Gothic experiments of Dr. Nathan Drake, published in his
+_Literary Hours_ (1798), are extremely instructive as indicating
+the critical standpoint of the time. Drake, like Mrs. Barbauld
+and her brother, was deeply interested in the sources of the
+pleasure derived from tales of terror, and wrote his Gothic
+stories to confirm and illustrate the theories propounded in his
+essays. He discusses gravely and learnedly the kinds of
+fictitious horror that excite agreeable sensations, and then
+proceeds to arrange carefully calculated effects, designed to
+alarm his readers, but not to outrage their sense of decorum. He
+has none of the reckless daring of "Monk" Lewis, who flung
+restraint to the winds and raced in mad career through an orgy of
+horrors. In his enchanted castles we are disturbed by an uneasy
+suspicion that the inhabitants are merely allegorical characters,
+and that the spectre of a moral lurks in some dim recess ready to
+spring out upon us suddenly. Dr. Drake's mind was as a house
+divided against itself: he was a moralist, emulating the "sage
+and serious Spenser" in his desire to exalt virtue and abase
+vice, he was a critic working out, with calm detachment,
+practical illustrations of the theories he had formulated, and he
+was a romantic enthusiast, imbued with a vague but genuine
+admiration for the wild superstitions of a bygone age. His
+stories exhibit painful evidence of the conflict which waged
+between the three sides of his nature. In the essay prefixed to
+_Henry Fitzowen, a Gothic Tale_, he distinguishes between the two
+species of Gothic superstition, the gloomy and the sportive, and
+addresses an ode to the two goddesses of Superstition--one the
+offspring of Fear and Midnight, the other of Hesper and the Moon.
+In his story the spectres of darkness are put to flight by a
+troop of aerial spirits. Dr. Drake knew the Gothic stories of
+Walpole, Mrs. Barbauld, Clara Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe; and
+traces of the influence of each may be found in his work. Henry
+Fitzowen loves Adeline de Montfort, but has a powerful and
+diabolical rival--Walleran--whose character combines the most
+dangerous qualities of Mrs. Radcliffe's villains with the magical
+gifts of a wizard. Fitzowen, not long before the day fixed for
+his wedding, is led astray, while hunting, by an elusive stag, a
+spectral monk and a "wandering fire," and arrives home in a
+thunderstorm to find his castle enveloped in total darkness and
+two of his servants stretched dead at his feet. He learns from
+his mother and sister, who are shut in a distant room, that
+Adeline has been carried off by armed ruffians. Believing
+Walleran to be responsible for this outrage, Fitzowen sets out
+the next day in search of him. After weary wanderings he is
+beguiled into a Gothic castle by a foul witch, who resembles one
+of Spenser's loathly hags, and on his entrance hears peals of
+diabolical laughter. He sees spectres, blue lights, and the
+corpse of Horror herself. When he slays Walleran the enchantments
+disappear. At the end of a winding passage he finds a cavern
+illuminated by a globe of light, and discovers Adeline asleep on
+a couch. He awakes her with a kiss. Thunder shakes the earth, a
+raging whirlwind tears the castle from its foundations, and the
+lovers awake from their trance in a beautiful, moonlit vale where
+they hear enchanting music and see knights, nymphs and spirits. A
+beauteous queen tells them that the spirits of the blest have
+freed them from Horror's dread agents. The music dies away, the
+spirits flee and the lovers find themselves in a country road. A
+story of the same type is told by De La Motte Fouqué in _The
+Field of Terror_.[33] Before the steadfast courage of the
+labourer who strives to till the field, diabolical enchantments
+disappear. It is an ancient legend turned into moral allegory.
+
+In the essay on _Objects of Terror_, which precedes _Montmorenci,
+a Fragment_, Drake discusses that type of terror, which is
+"excited by the interference of a simple, material causation,"
+and which "requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to
+prevent its operating more pain than pleasure." He condemns
+Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ on the ground that the catastrophe
+is only productive of horror and aversion, and regards the old
+ballad, _Edward_, as intolerable to any person of sensibility,
+but praises Dante and Shakespeare for keeping within the "bounds
+of salutary and grateful pleasure." The scene in _The Italian_,
+where Schedoni, about to plunge a dagger into Ellena's bosom,
+recoils, in the belief that he has discovered her to be his own
+daughter, is commended as "appalling yet delighting the reader."
+In the productions of Mrs. Radcliffe, "the Shakespeare of Romance
+Writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the
+softer graces of a Claude," he declares,
+
+     "may be found many scenes truly terrific in their
+     conception, yet so softened down, and the mind so much
+     relieved, by the intermixture of beautiful description,
+     or pathetic incident, that the impression of the whole
+     never becomes too strong, never degenerates into
+     horror, but pleasurable emotion is ever the
+     predominating result."
+
+The famous scene in _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, the description of
+Danger in Collins' _Ode to Fear_, the Scottish ballad of
+_Hardyknute_ are mentioned as admirable examples of the fear
+excited by natural causes. In the fragment called _Montmorenci_,
+Drake aims at combining "picturesque description with some of
+those objects of terror which are independent of supernatural
+agency." As the curfew tolls sullenly, Henry de Montmorenci and
+his two attendants rush from a castle into the darkness of a
+stormy night. They hurry through a savage glen, in which a
+swollen torrent falls over a precipice. After hearing the crash
+of falling armour, they suddenly come upon a dying knight on
+whose pale features every mark of horror is depicted. Led by
+frightful screams of distress, Montmorenci and his men find a
+maiden, who has been captured by banditti. Montmorenci slays the
+leader, but is seized by the rest of the banditti and bound to a
+tree overlooking a stupendous chasm into which he is to be
+hurled. By almost superhuman struggles he effects his escape,
+when suddenly--there at this terror-fraught moment, the fragment
+wisely ends.
+
+In _The Abbey of Clunedale_ Drake experiments feebly and
+ineffectively with the "explained supernatural" in which Mrs.
+Radcliffe was an adept. The ruined abbey, deemed to be haunted,
+is visited at night as an act of penance by a man named Clifford
+who, in a fit of unfounded jealousy, has slain his wife's
+brother. Clifford, accompanied by his sister, and bearing a
+light, kneels at his wife's tomb, and is mistaken for a spectral
+being.
+
+The Gothic tale entitled _Sir Egbert_ is based on an ancient
+legend associated with one of the turrets of Rochester Castle.
+Sir Egbert, searching for his friend, Conrad, who had disappeared
+in suspicious circumstances, hears from the Knights Templars,
+that the wicked Constable is believed to hold two lovers in a
+profound and deathlike sleep. He resolves to make an attempt to
+draw from its sheath the sword which separates them and so
+restore them to life and liberty. Undismayed by the fate of those
+who have fallen in the quest, Sir Egbert enters the castle, where
+he is entertained at a gorgeous feast. When the festivities are
+at their height, and Sir Egbert has momentarily forgotten his
+enterprise, a terrible shriek is heard. The revellers vanish, and
+Sir Egbert is left alone to face a spectral corpse, which beckons
+him onward to a vault, where in flaming characters are inscribed
+the words: "Death to him who violates the mysteries of Gundulph's
+Tower." Nothing daunted, Sir Egbert amid execrations of fiends,
+encounters delusive horrors and at last unsheathes the sword. The
+lovers awake, and the whole apparatus of enchantment vanishes.
+Conrad tells how he and Bertha, six years before, had been lured
+by a wandering fire to a luxurious cavern, where they drank a
+magic potion. The story closes with the marriage of Conrad and
+Bertha, and of Egbert and Matilda, a sister of one of the other
+victims of the same enchanter.
+
+In Dr. Drake's stories are patiently collected all the heirlooms
+necessary for the full equipment of a Gothic castle. Massive
+doors, which sway ponderously on their hinges or are forcibly
+burst open and which invariably close with a resounding crash,
+dark, eerie galleries, broken staircases, decayed apartments,
+mouldering floors, tolling bells, skeletons, corpses, howling
+spectres--all are there; but the possessor, overwhelmed by the
+very profusion which surrounds him, is at a loss how to make use
+of them. He does not realise the true significance of a
+half-stifled groan or an unearthly yell heard in the darkness.
+Each new horror indeed seems but to put new life into the heart
+of the redoubtable Sir Egbert, who, like Spenser's gallant
+knights, advances from triumph to triumph vanquishing evil at
+every step. It is impossible to become absorbed in his
+personages, who have less body than his spectres, and whose
+adventures take the form of a walk through an exhibition of
+horrors, mechanically set in motion to prove their prowess. Dr.
+Drake seems happier when the hideous beings are put to rout, and
+the transformation-scene, which places fairyland before us,
+suddenly descends on the stage. Yet the bungling attempts of Dr.
+Drake are interesting as showing that grave and critical minds
+were prepared to consider the tale of terror as a legitimate form
+of literature, obeying certain definite rules of its own and
+aiming at the excitement of a pleasurable fear. The seed of
+Gothic story, sown at random by Horace Walpole, had by 1798 taken
+firm root in the soil. Drake's enthusiasm for Gothic story was
+associated with his love for older English poetry and with his
+interest in Scandinavian mythology. He was a genuine admirer of
+Spenser and attempted imitations, in modern diction, of old
+ballads. It is for his bent towards the romantic, rather than for
+his actual accomplishments, that Drake is worthy of remembrance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE NOVEL OF SUSPENSE." MRS. RADCLIFFE.
+
+
+The enthusiasm which greeted Walpole's enchanted castle and Miss
+Reeve's carefully manipulated ghost, indicated an eager desire
+for a new type of fiction in which the known and familiar were
+superseded by the strange and supernatural. To meet this end Mrs.
+Radcliffe suddenly came forward with her attractive store of
+mysteries, and it was probably her timely appearance that saved
+the Gothic tale from an early death. The vogue of the novel of
+terror, though undoubtedly stimulated by German influence, was
+mainly due to her popularity and success. The writers of the
+first half of the nineteenth century abound in references to her
+works,[34] and she thus still enjoys a shadowy, ghost-like
+celebrity. Many who have never had the curiosity to explore the
+labyrinths of the underground passages, with which her castles
+are invariably honeycombed, or who have never shuddered with
+apprehension before the "black veil," know of their existence
+through _Northanger Abbey_, and have probably also read how
+Thackeray at school amused himself and his friends by drawing
+illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.
+
+Of Mrs. Radcliffe's life few facts are known, and Christina
+Rossetti, one of her many admirers, was obliged, in 1883, to
+relinquish the plan of writing her biography, because the
+materials were so scanty.[35] From the memoir prefixed to the
+posthumous volumes, published in 1826, containing _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, and various poems, we learn that she was born in
+1764, the very year in which Walpole issued _The Castle of
+Otranto_, and that her maiden name was Ann Ward. In 1787 she
+married William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of
+law, who became editor of a weekly newspaper, _The English
+Chronicle_. Her life was so secluded that biographers did not
+hesitate to invent what they could not discover. The legend that
+she was driven frantic by the horrors that she had conjured up
+was refuted after her death.
+
+It may have been the publication of _The Recess_ by Sophia Lee in
+1785 that inspired Mrs. Radcliffe to try her fortune with a
+historical novel. _The Recess_ is a story of languid interest,
+circling round the adventures of the twin daughters of Mary Queen
+of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk. Yet as we meander gently
+through its mazes we come across an abbey "of Gothic elegance and
+magnificence," a swooning heroine who plays the lute,
+thunderstorms, banditti and even an escape in a coffin--items
+which may well have attracted the notice of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose
+first novel, _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_,[36] appeared
+in 1789. Considered historically, this immature work is full of
+interest, for, with the notable exception of the supernatural, it
+contains in embryo nearly all the elements of Mrs. Radcliffe's
+future novels.
+
+The scene is laid in Scotland, and the period, we are assured, is
+that of the "dark ages"; but almost at the outset we are startled
+rudely from our dreams of the mediaeval by the statement that
+
+     "the wrongfully imprisoned earl, when the sweet
+     tranquillity of evening threw an air of tender
+     melancholy over his mind ... composed the following
+     sonnet, which, having committed it to paper, he, the
+     next evening dropped upon the terrace."
+
+The sonnet consists of four heroic quatrains somewhat curiously
+resembling the manner of Gray. From this episode it may be
+gathered that Mrs. Radcliffe did not aim at, or certainly did not
+achieve, historical accuracy, but evolved most of her
+descriptions, not from original sources in ancient documents, but
+from her own inner consciousness. It was only in her last
+novel--_Gaston de Blondeville_--that she made use of old
+chronicles. Within the Scottish castle we meet a heroine with an
+"expression of pensive melancholy" and a "smile softly clouded
+with sorrow," a noble lord deprived of his rights by a villain
+"whose life is marked with vice and whose death with the
+bitterness of remorse." But these grey and ghostly shadows, who
+flit faintly through our imagination, are less prophetic of
+coming events than the properties with which the castle is
+endowed, a secret but accidently discovered panel, a trap-door,
+subterranean vaults, an unburied corpse, a suddenly extinguished
+lamp and a soft-toned lute--a goodly heritage from _The Castle of
+Otranto_. The situations which a villain of Baron Malcolm's type
+will inevitably create are dimly shadowed forth and involve, ere
+the close, the hairbreadth rescue of a distressed maiden, the
+reinstatement of the lord in his rights, and the identification
+of the long-lost heir by the convenient and time-honoured
+"strawberry mark." These promising materials are handled in a
+childish fashion. The faintly pencilled outlines, the
+characterless figures, the nerveless structure, give little
+presage of the boldly effective scenery, the strong delineations
+and the dexterously managed plots of the later novels. The
+gradual, steady advance in skill and power is one of the most
+interesting features of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. Few could have
+guessed from the slight sketch of Baron Malcolm, a merely slavish
+copy of the traditional villain, that he was to be the ancestor
+of such picturesque and romantic creatures as Montoni and
+Schedoni.
+
+This tentative beginning was quickly followed by the more
+ambitious _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), in which we are transported
+to the palace of Ferdinand, fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the
+north coast of Sicily. This time the date is fixed officially at
+1580. The Marquis has one son and two daughters, the children of
+his first wife, who has been supplanted by a beautiful but
+unscrupulous successor. The first wife is reputed dead, but is,
+in reality, artfully and maliciously concealed in an uninhabited
+wing of the abbey. It is her presence which leads to disquieting
+rumours of the supernatural. Ferdinand, the son, vainly tries to
+solve the enigma of certain lights, which wander elusively about
+the deserted wing, and finds himself perilously suspended, like
+David Balfour in _Kidnapped_, on a decayed staircase, of which
+the lower half has broken away. In this hazardous situation,
+Ferdinand accidentally drops his lamp and is left in total
+darkness. An hour later he is rescued by the ladies of the
+castle, who, alarmed by his long absence, boldly come in search
+of him with a light. During another tour of exploration he hears
+a hollow groan, which, he is told, proceeds from a murdered
+spirit underground, but which is eventually traced to the unhappy
+marchioness. These two incidents plainly reveal that Mrs.
+Radcliffe has now discovered the peculiar vein of mystery towards
+which she was groping in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_.
+From the very first she explained away her marvels by natural
+means. If we scan her romances with a coldly critical eye--an
+almost criminal proceeding--obvious improbabilities start into
+view. For instance, the oppressed marchioness, who has not seen
+her daughter Julia since the age of two, recognises her without a
+moment's hesitation at the age of seventeen, and faints in a
+transport of joy. It is no small tribute to Mrs. Radcliffe's
+gifts that we often accept such incidents as these without demur.
+So unnerved are we by the lurking shadows, the flickering lights,
+the fluttering tapestry and the unaccountable groans with which
+she lowers our vitality, that we tremble and start at the wagging
+of a straw, and have not the spirit, once we are absorbed into
+the atmosphere of her romance, to dispute anything she would have
+us believe. The interest of the _Sicilian Romance_, which is far
+greater than that of her first novel, arises entirely out of the
+situations. There is no gradual unfolding of character and
+motive. The high-handed marquis, the jealous marchioness, the
+imprisoned wife, the vapid hero, the two virtuous sisters, the
+leader of the banditti, the respectable, prosy governess, are a
+set of dolls fitted ingeniously into the framework of the plot.
+They have more substance than the tenuous shadows that glide
+through the pages of Mrs. Radcliffe's first story, but they move
+only as she deftly pulls the strings that set them in motion.
+
+In her third novel, _The Romance of the Forest_, published in
+1792, Mrs. Radcliffe makes more attempt to discuss motive and to
+trace the effect of circumstances on temperament. The opening
+chapter is so alluring that callous indeed would be the reader
+who felt no yearning to pluck out the heart of the mystery. La
+Motte, a needy adventurer fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a
+stormy night in a lonely, sinister-looking house. With startling
+suddenness, a door bursts open, and a ruffian, putting a pistol
+to La Motte's breast with one hand, and, with the other, dragging
+along a beautiful girl, exclaims ferociously,
+
+     "You are wholly in our power, no assistance can reach
+     you; if you wish to save your life, swear that you will
+     convey this girl where I may never see her more... If
+     you return within an hour you will die."
+
+The elucidation of this remarkable occurrence is long deferred,
+for Mrs. Radcliffe appreciates fully the value of suspense in
+luring on her readers, but our attention is distracted in the
+meantime by a series of new events. Treasuring the unfinished
+adventure in the recesses of our memory, we follow the course of
+the story. When La Motte decides impulsively to reside in a
+deserted abbey, "not," as he once remarks, "in all respects
+strictly Gothic," but containing a trap-door and a human skeleton
+in a chest, we willingly take up our abode there and wait
+patiently to see what will happen. Our interest is inclined to
+flag when life at the abbey seems uneventful, but we are ere long
+rewarded by a visit from a stranger, whose approach flings La
+Motte into so violent a state of alarm that he vanishes with
+remarkable abruptness beneath a trapdoor. It proves, however,
+that the intruder is merely La Motte's son, and the timid marquis
+is able to emerge. Meanwhile, La Motte's wife, suspicious of her
+husband's morose habits and his secret visits to a Gothic
+sepulchre, becomes jealous of Adeline, the girl they have
+befriended. It later transpires that La Motte has turned
+highwayman and stores his booty in this secluded spot. The visits
+are so closely shrouded in obscurity, and we have so exhausted
+our imagination in picturing dark possibilities, that the simple
+solution falls disappointingly short of our expectations. The
+next thrill is produced by the arrival of two strangers, the
+wicked marquis and the noble hero, without whom the tale of
+characters in a novel of terror would scarcely be complete. The
+emotion La Motte betrays at the sight of the marquis is due, we
+are told eventually, to the fact that Montalt was the victim of
+his first robbery. Adeline, meanwhile, in a dream sees a
+beckoning figure in a dark cloak, a dying man imprisoned in a
+darkened chamber, a coffin and a bleeding corpse, and hears a
+voice from the coffin. The disjointed episodes and bewildering
+incoherence of a nightmare are suggested with admirable skill,
+and effectually prepare our minds for Adeline's discoveries a few
+nights later. Passing through a door, concealed by the arras of
+her bedroom, into a chamber like that she had seen in her sleep,
+she stumbles over a rusty dagger and finds a roll of mouldering
+manuscripts. This incident is robbed of its effect for readers of
+_Northanger Abbey_ by insistent reminiscences of Catherine
+Morland's discovery of the washing bills. But Adeline, by the
+uncertain light of a candle, reads, with the utmost horror and
+consternation, the harrowing life-story of her father, who has
+been foully done to death by his brother, already known to us as
+the unprincipled Marquis Montalt. La Motte weakly aids and abets
+Montalt's designs against Adeline, and she is soon compelled to
+take refuge in flight. She is captured and borne away to an
+elegant villa, whence she escapes, only to be overtaken again.
+Finally, Theodore arrives, as heroes will, in the nick of time,
+and wounds his rival. Adeline finds a peaceful home in the
+chateau of M. La Luc, who proves to be Theodore's father. Here
+the reader awaits impatiently the final solution of the plot.
+Once we have been inmates of a Gothic abbey, life in a Swiss
+chateau, however idyllic, is apt to seem monotonous. In time Mrs.
+Radcliffe administers justice. The marquis takes poison; La Motte
+is banished but reforms; and Adeline, after dutifully burying her
+father's skeleton in the family vault, becomes mistress of the
+abbey, but prefers to reside in a _châlet_ on the banks of Lake
+Geneva.
+
+Although the _Romance of the Forest_ is considerably shorter than
+the later novels, the plot, which is full of ingenious
+complications, is unfolded in the most leisurely fashion. Mrs.
+Radcliffe's tantalising delays quicken our curiosity as
+effectively as the deliberate calm of a _raconteur_, who, with a
+view to heightening his artistic effect, pauses to light a pipe
+at the very climax of his story. Suspense is the key-note of the
+romance. The characters are still subordinate to incident, but La
+Motte and his wife claim our interest because they are exhibited
+in varying moods. La Motte has his struggles and, like Macbeth,
+is haunted by compunctious visitings of nature. Unlike the
+thorough-paced villain, who glories in his misdeeds, he is
+worried and harassed, and takes no pleasure in his crimes. Madame
+La Motte is not a jealous woman from beginning to end like the
+marchioness in the _Sicilian Romance_. Her character is moulded
+to some extent by environment. She changes distinctly in her
+attitude to Adeline after she has reason to suspect her husband.
+Mrs. Radcliffe's psychology is neither subtle nor profound, but
+the fact that psychology is there in the most rudimentary form is
+a sign of her progress in the art of fiction. Theodore is as
+insipid as the rest of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, who are
+distinguishable from one another only by their names, and Adeline
+is perhaps a shade more emotional and passionless than Emily and
+Ellena in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ and _The Italian_. The
+lachrymose maiden in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, who
+can assume at need "an air of offended dignity," is a preliminary
+sketch of Julia, Emily and Ellena in the later novels. Mrs.
+Radcliffe's heroines resemble nothing more than a composite
+photograph in which all distinctive traits are merged into an
+expressionless "type." They owe something no doubt to
+Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_, but their feelings are not so
+minutely analysed. Their lady-like accomplishments vary slightly.
+In reflective mood one may lightly throw off a sonnet to the
+sunset or to the nocturnal gale, while another may seek refuge in
+her water-colours or her lute. They are all dignified and
+resolute in the most distressing situations, yet they weep and
+faint with wearisome frequency. Their health and spirits are as
+precarious as their easily extinguished candles. Yet these
+exquisitely sensitive, well-bred heroines alienate our sympathy
+by their impregnable self-esteem, a disconcerting trait which
+would certainly have exasperated heroes less perfect and more
+human than Mrs. Radcliffe's Theodores and Valancourts. Their
+sorrows never rise to tragic heights, because they are only
+passive sufferers, and the sympathy they would win as pathetic
+figures is obliterated by their unfailing consciousness of their
+own rectitude. In describing Adeline, Mrs. Radcliffe attempts an
+unusually acute analysis:
+
+     "For many hours she busied herself upon a piece of work
+     which she had undertaken for Madame La Motte, but this
+     she did without the least intention of conciliating her
+     favour, but because she felt there was something in
+     thus repaying unkindness, which was suited to her own
+     temper, her sentiments and her pride. Self-love may be
+     the centre around which human affections move, for
+     whatever motive conduces to self-gratification may be
+     resolved into self-love, yet, some of these affections
+     are in their nature so refined that, though we cannot
+     deny their origin, they almost deserve the name of
+     virtue: of this species was that of Adeline."
+
+It is characteristic of Mrs. Radcliffe's tendency to overlook the
+obvious in searching for the subtle, that the girl who feels
+these recondite emotions expresses slight embarrassment when
+unceremoniously flung on the protection of strangers. Emily, in
+_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, possesses the same protective armour
+as Adeline. When she is abused by Montoni, "Her heart swelled
+with the consciousness of having deserved praise instead of
+censure, and was proudly silent"; or again, in _The Italian_,
+
+     "Ellena was the more satisfied with herself because she
+     had never for an instant forgotten her dignity so far
+     as to degenerate into the vehemence of passion or to
+     falter with the weakness of fear."
+
+Her father, M. St. Aubert, on his deathbed, bids Emily beware of
+"priding herself on the gracefulness of sensibility."
+
+Fortunately the heroine is merely a figurehead in _The Mysteries
+of Udolpho_ (1794). The change of title is significant. The two
+previous works have been romances, but it is now Mrs. Radcliffe's
+intention to let herself go further in the direction of wonder
+and suspense than she had hitherto ventured. She is like Scythrop
+in _Nightmare Abbey_, of whom it was said:
+
+     "He had a strong tendency to love of mystery for its
+     own sake; that is to say, he would employ mystery to
+     serve a purpose, but would first choose his purpose by
+     its capability of mystery."
+
+Yet Mrs. Radcliffe, at the opening of her story, is sparing in
+her use of supernatural elements. We live by faith, and are drawn
+forward by the hope of future mystifications. In the first volume
+we saunter through idyllic scenes of domestic happiness in the
+Chateau le Vert and wander with Emily and her dying father
+through the Apennines, with only faint suggestions of excitement
+to come. The second volume plunges us _in medias res_. The aunt,
+to whose care Emily is entrusted, has imprudently married a
+tempestuous tyrant, Montoni, who, to further his own ends,
+hurries his wife and niece from the gaiety of Venice to the gloom
+of Udolpho. After a journey fraught with terror, amid rugged,
+lowering mountains and through dusky woods, we reach the castle
+of Udolpho at nightfall. The sombre exterior and the shadow
+haunted hall are so ominous that we are prepared for the worst
+when we enter its portals. The anticipation is half pleasurable,
+half fearful, as we shudder at the thought of what may befall us
+within its walls. At every turn something uncanny shakes our
+overwrought nerves; the sighing of the wind, the echo of distant
+footsteps, lurking shadows, gliding forms, inexplicable groans,
+mysterious music torture the sensitive imagination of Emily, who
+is mercilessly doomed to sleep in a deserted apartment with a
+door, which, as so often in the novel of terror, bolts only on
+the outside. More nerve wracking than the unburied corpse or even
+than the ineffable horror concealed behind the black veil are the
+imaginary, impalpable terrors that seize on Emily's tender fancy
+as she crosses the hall on her way to solve the riddle of her
+aunt's disappearance:
+
+     "Emily, deceived by the long shadows of the pillars and
+     by the catching lights between, often stopped,
+     imagining that she saw some person moving in the
+     distant obscurity...and as she passed these pillars she
+     feared to turn her eyes towards them, almost expecting
+     to see a figure start from behind their broad shaft."
+
+Torn from the context, this passage no longer congeals us with
+terror, but in its setting it conveys in a wonderfully vivid
+manner the tricks of a feverish imagination. So exhaustive--and
+exhausting--are the mysteries of Udolpho that it was a mistake to
+introduce another haunted castle, le Blanc, as an appendix.
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe's long deferred explanations of what is apparently
+supernatural have often been adversely criticised. Her method
+varies considerably. Sometimes we are enlightened almost
+immediately. When the garrulous servant, Annette, is relating to
+Emily what she knows of the story of Laurentina, who had once
+lived in the castle, both mistress and servant are wrought up to
+a state of nervous tension:
+
+     "Emily, whom now Annette had infected with her own
+     terrors, listened attentively, but everything was
+     still, and Annette proceeded... 'There again,' cried
+     Annette, suddenly, 'I heard it again.' 'Hush!' said
+     Emily, trembling. They listened and continued to sit
+     quite still. Emily heard a slow knocking against the
+     wall. It came repeatedly. Annette then screamed loudly,
+     and the chamber door slowly opened--It was Caterina,
+     come to tell Annette that her lady wanted her."
+
+It is seldom that the rude awakening comes thus swiftly. More
+often we are left wondering uneasily and fearfully for a
+prolonged stretch of time. The extreme limit of human endurance
+is reached in the episode of the Black Veil. Early in the second
+volume, Emily, for whom the concealed picture had a fatal
+fascination, determined to gaze upon it.
+
+     "Emily passed on with faltering steps and, having
+     paused a moment at the door before she attempted to
+     open it, she then hastily entered the chamber and went
+     towards the picture, which appeared to be enclosed in a
+     frame of uncommon size, that hung in a dark part of the
+     room. She paused again and then, with a timid hand,
+     lifted the veil, but instantly let it fall--perceiving
+     that, what it had concealed was no picture and, before
+     she could leave the chamber, she dropped senseless on
+     the floor."
+
+In time Emily recovers, but the horror of the Black Veil preys on
+her mind until, near the close of the third volume, Mrs.
+Radcliffe mercifully consents to tell us not only what Emily
+thought that she beheld, but what was actually there.
+
+     "There appeared, instead of the picture she had
+     expected, within the recess of the wall, a human figure
+     of ghastly paleness, stretched at its length, and
+     dressed in the habiliments of the grave. What added to
+     the horror of the spectacle was that the face appeared
+     partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were
+     visible on the features and hands... Had she dared to
+     look again, her delusion and her fears would have
+     vanished together, and she would have perceived that
+     the figure before her was not human, but formed of
+     wax... A member of the house of Udolpho, having
+     committed some offence against the prerogative of the
+     church, had been condemned to the penance of
+     contemplating, during certain hours of the day, a waxen
+     image made to resemble a human body in the state to
+     which it is reduced after death ... he had made it a
+     condition in his will that his descendants should
+     preserve the image."
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe, realising that the secret she had so jealously
+guarded is of rather an amazing character, asserts that it is
+"not without example in the records of the fierce severity which
+monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind." But the
+explanation falls so ludicrously short of our expectations and is
+so improbable a possibility, that Mrs. Radcliffe would have been
+wise not to defraud Catherine Morland and other readers of the
+pleasure of guessing aright. Few enjoy being baffled and thwarted
+in so unexpected a fashion. The skeleton of Signora Laurentina
+was the least that could be expected as a reward for suspense so
+patiently endured. But long ere this disclosure, we have learnt
+by bitter experience to distrust Mrs. Radcliffe's secrets and to
+look for ultimate disillusionment. The uncanny voice that
+ominously echoes Montoni's words is not the cry of a bodiless
+visitant striving to awaken "that blushing, shamefaced spirit
+that mutinies in a man's bosom," but belongs to an ordinary human
+being, the prisoner Du Pont, who has discovered one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's innumerable concealed passages. The bed with the
+black velvet pall in the haunted chamber contains, not the
+frightful apparition that flashed upon the inward eye of Emily
+and of Annette, but a stalwart pirate who shrinks from discovery.
+The gliding forms which steal furtively along the ramparts and
+disappear at the end of dark passages become eventually, like the
+nun in Charlotte Bronte's _Villette_, sensible to feeling as to
+sight. The unearthly music which is heard in the woods at
+midnight proceeds, not from the inhabitants of another sphere,
+but from a conscience stricken nun with a lurid past. The corpse,
+which Emily believed to be that of her aunt, foully done to death
+by a pitiless husband, is the body of a man killed in a bandit's
+affray. Here Mrs. Radcliffe seems eager to show that she was not
+afraid of a corpse, but is careful that it shall not be the
+corpse which the reader anticipates. She deliberately excites
+trembling apprehensions in order that she may show how absurd
+they are. We are befooled that she may enjoy a quietly malicious
+triumph. The result is that we become wary and cautious. The
+genuine ghost story, read by Ludovico to revive his fainting
+spirits when he is keeping vigil in the "haunted" chamber, is
+robbed of its effect because we half expect to be disillusioned
+ere the close. It is far more impressive if read as a separate
+story apart from its setting. The idea of explaining away what is
+apparently supernatural may have occurred to Mrs. Radcliffe after
+reading Schiller's popular romance, _Der Geisterseher_ (1789), in
+which the elaborately contrived marvels of the Armenian, who was
+modelled on Cagliostro, are but the feats of a juggler and have a
+physical cause. But more probably Mrs. Radcliffe's imagination
+was held in check by a sensitive conscience, which would not
+allow her to trade on the credulity of simple-minded readers.
+
+It is noteworthy that Mrs. Radcliffe's last work--_The Italian_,
+published in 1797--is more skilfully constructed, and possesses
+far greater unity and concentration than _The Mysteries of
+Udolpho_. The Inquisition scenes towards the end of the book are
+unduly prolonged, but the story is coherent and free from
+digressions. The theme is less fanciful and far fetched than
+those of _The Romance of the Forest_ and _Udolpho_. It seldom
+strays far beyond the bounds of the probable, nor overstrains our
+capacity for belief. The motive of the story is the Marchesa di
+Vivaldi's opposition to her son's marriage on account of Ellena's
+obscure birth. The Marchesa's far reaching designs are forwarded
+by the ambitious monk, Schedoni, who, for his own ends,
+undertakes to murder Ellena. _The Italian_ abounds in dramatic,
+haunting scenes. The strangely effective overture, which
+describes the Confessional of the Black Penitents, the midnight
+watch of Vivaldi and his lively, impulsive servant, Paulo, amid
+the ruins of Paluzzi, the melodramatic interruption of the
+wedding ceremony, the meeting of Ellena and Schedoni on the
+lonely shore, the trial in the halls of the Inquisition, are all
+remarkably vivid. The climax of the story when Schedoni, about to
+slay Ellena, is arrested in the very act by her beauty and
+innocence, and then by the glimpse of the portrait which leads
+him to believe she is his daughter, is finely conceived and
+finely executed. Afterwards, Ellena proves only to be his niece,
+but we have had our thrill and nothing can rob us of it. _The
+Italian_ depends for its effect on natural terror, rather than on
+supernatural suggestions. The monk, who haunts the ruins of
+Paluzzi, and who reappears in the prison of the Inquisition,
+speaks and acts like a being from the world of spectres, but in
+the fulness of time Mrs. Radcliffe ruthlessly exposes his methods
+and kills him by slow poison. She never completely explains his
+behaviour in the halls of the Inquisition nor accounts
+satisfactorily for the ferocity of his hatred of Schedoni. We are
+unintentionally led on false trails.
+
+The character of Schedoni is undeniably Mrs. Radcliffe's
+masterpiece. No one would claim that his character is subtle
+study, but in his interviews with the Marchesa, Mrs. Radcliffe
+reveals unexpected gifts tor probing into human motives. He is an
+imposing figure, theatrical sometimes, but wrought of flesh and
+blood. In fiction, as in life, the villain has always existed,
+but it was Mrs. Radcliffe who first created the romantic villain,
+stained with the darkest crimes, yet dignified and impressive
+withal. Zeluco in Dr. John Moore's novel of that name (1789) is a
+powerful conception, but he has no redeeming features to temper
+our repulsion with pity. The sinister figures of Mrs. Radcliffe,
+with passion-lined faces and gleaming eyes, stalk--or, if
+occasion demand it, glide--through all her romances, and as she
+grows more familiar with the type, her delineations show
+increased power and vigour. When the villain enters, or shortly
+afterwards, a descriptive catalogue is displayed, setting forth,
+in a manner not unlike that of the popular _feuilleton_ of
+to-day, the qualities to be expected, and with this he is let
+loose into the story to play his part and act up to his
+reputation. In the _Sicilian Romance_ there is the tyrannical
+marquis who would force an unwelcome marriage on his daughter and
+who immures his wife in a remote corner of the castle, visiting
+her once a week with a scanty pittance of coarse food. In _The
+Romance of the Forest_ we find a conventional but thorough
+villain in Montalt and a half-hearted, poor-spirited villain in
+La Motte, whose "virtue was such that it could not stand the
+pressure of occasion." Montoni, the desperate leader of the
+condottieri in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, is endued with so
+vigorous a vitality that we always rejoice inwardly at his return
+to the forefront of the story. His abundant energy is refreshing
+after a long sojourn with his garrulous wife and tearful niece.
+
+     "He delighted in the energies of the passions, the
+     difficulties and tempests of life which wreck the
+     happiness of others roused and strengthened all the
+     powers of his mind, and afforded him the highest
+     enjoyment... The fire and keenness of his eye, its
+     proud exaltation, its bold fierceness, its sudden
+     watchfulness as occasion and even slight occasion had
+     called forth the latent soul, she had often observed
+     with emotion, while from the usual expression of his
+     countenance she had always shrunk."
+
+Schedoni is undoubtedly allied to this desperado, but his methods
+are quieter and more subtle:
+
+     "There was something terrible in his air, something
+     almost superhuman. The cowl, too, as it threw a shade
+     over the livid paleness of his face increased its
+     severe character and gave an effect to his large,
+     melancholy eye which approached to horror ... his
+     physiognomy ... bore the traces of many passions which
+     seemed to have fixed the features they no longer
+     animated. An habitual gloom and severity prevailed over
+     the deep lines of his countenance, and his eyes were so
+     piercing that they seemed to penetrate at a single
+     glance into the hearts of men, and to read their most
+     secret thoughts--few persons could endure their
+     scrutiny or even endure to meet them twice ... he could
+     adapt himself to the tempers and passions of persons,
+     whom he wished to conciliate, with astonishing
+     facility."
+
+The type undoubtedly owes something to Milton's Satan. Like
+Lucifer, he is proud and ambitious, and like him he retains
+traces of his original grandeur. Hints from Shakespeare helped to
+fashion him. Like Cassius, seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a
+sort
+
+  "As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
+  That could be moved to smile at anything."
+
+Like King John,
+
+  "The image of a wicked heinous fault
+  Lives in his eye: that close aspect of his
+  Does show the mood of a much-troubled breast."
+
+By the enormity of his crimes he inspires horror and repulsion,
+but by his loneliness he appeals, for a moment, like the
+consummate villain Richard III., to our pity:
+
+  "There is no creature loves me
+  And if I die, no soul will pity me.
+  Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
+  Find in myself no pity to myself?"
+
+Karl von Moor, the famous hero of Schiller's _Die Räuber_ (1781),
+is allied to this desperado. He is thus described in the
+advertisement of the 1795 edition:
+
+     "The picture of a great, misguided soul, endowed with
+     every gift of excellence, yet lost in spite of all its
+     gifts. Unbridled passions and bad companionship corrupt
+     his heart, urge him on from crime to crime, until at
+     last he stands at the head of a band of murderers,
+     heaps horror upon horror, and plunges from precipice to
+     precipice in the lowest depths of despair. Great and
+     majestic in misfortune, by misfortune reclaimed and led
+     back to the paths of virtue. Such a man shall you pity
+     and hate, abhor yet love in the robber Moor."
+
+Among the direct progeny of these grandiose villains are to be
+included those of Lewis and Maturin, and the heroes of Scott and
+Byron. We know them by their world-weariness, as well as by their
+piercing eyes and passion-marked faces, their "verra wrinkles
+Gothic." In _The Giaour_ we are told:
+
+  "Dark and unearthly is the scowl
+  That glares beneath his dusky cowl:
+
+  "The flash of that dilating eye
+  Reveals too much of times gone by.
+  Though varying, indistinct its hue
+  Oft will his glance the gazer rue."
+
+Of the Corsair, it is said:
+
+  "There breathe but few whose aspect might defy
+  The full encounter of his searching eye."
+
+Lara is drawn from the same model:
+
+  "That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last
+  And spoke of passions, but of passions past;
+  The pride but not the fire of early days,
+  Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
+  A high demeanour and a glance that took
+  Their thoughts from others by a single look."
+
+The feminine counterpart of these bold impersonations of evil is
+the tyrannical abbess who plays a part in _The Romance of the
+Forest_ and in _The Italian_, and who was adopted and exaggerated
+by Lewis, but her crimes are petty and malicious, not daring and
+ambitious, like the schemes of Montoni and Schedoni.
+
+One of Mrs. Radcliffe's contemporaries is said to have suggested
+that if she wished to transcend the horror of the Inquisition
+scenes in _The Italian_ she would have to visit hell itself. Like
+her own heroines, Mrs. Radcliffe had too elegant and refined an
+imagination and too fearful a heart to undertake so desperate a
+journey. She would have recoiled with horror from the impious
+suggestion. In _Gaston de Blondeville_, written in 1802, but
+published posthumously with a memoir by Noon Talfourd, she
+ventures to make one or two startling innovations. Her hero is no
+longer a pale, romantic young man of gentle birth, but a stolid,
+worthy merchant. Here, at last, she indulges in a substantial
+spectre, who cannot be explained away as the figment of a
+disordered imagination, since he seriously alarms, not a solitary
+heroine or a scared lady's-maid, but Henry III. himself and his
+assembled barons. Yet apart from this daring escapade, it is
+timidity rather than the spirit of valorous enterprise that is
+urging Mrs. Radcliffe into new and untried paths. Her happy,
+courageous disregard for historical accuracy in describing
+far-off scenes and bygone ages has deserted her. She searches
+painfully in ancient records, instead of in her imagination, for
+mediaeval atmosphere. Her story is grievously overburdened with
+elaborate descriptions of customs and ceremonies, and she adds
+laborious notes, citing passages from learned authorities, such
+as Leland's _Collectanea_, Pegge's dissertation on the obsolete
+office of Esquire of the King's Body, Sir George Bulke's account
+of the coronation of Richard III., Mador's _History of the
+Exchequer_, etc. We are transported from the eighteenth century,
+not actually to mediaeval England, but to a carefully arranged
+pageant displaying mediaeval costumes, tournaments and banquets.
+The actors speak in antique language to accord with the
+picturesque background against which they stand. _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, which is noteworthy as an early attempt to shadow
+forth the days of chivalry, has far more colour than Leland's
+_Longsword_ (1752), Miss Reeve's _Old English Baron_ (1777), or
+Miss Sophia Lee's _Recess_ (1785), from which rather than from
+Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier romances its descent may be traced. The
+attempt to avoid glaring anachronisms and to reproduce an
+accurate picture of a former age points forward to Scott.
+Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_, which Scott completed, was a revolt
+against the unscrupulous inventions of romance-writers, and was
+crammed full of archaeological lore. The story of _Gaston de
+Blondeville_ is tedious, the characters are shadowy and unreal,
+and we become, as the Ettric Shepherd remarked, in _Noctes
+Ambrosianae_, "somewhat too hand and glove with his ghostship";
+yet, regarded simply as a spectacular effect, it is not without
+indications of skill and power. Miss Mitford based a drama on it,
+but it never attained the popularity of Mrs. Radcliffe's other
+novels. It was published when her reputation was on the wane.
+
+Of the materials on which Mrs. Radcliffe drew in fashioning her
+romances it is impossible to speak with any certainty. Doubtless
+she had studied certain old chronicles, and she was deeply read
+in Shakespeare, especially in the tragedies. Much of her leisure,
+we are told, was spent in reading the literary productions of the
+day, especially poetry and novels. At the head of her chapters
+she often quotes Milton as well as the poets of her own
+century--Mason, Gray, Collins, and once "Ossian"--choosing almost
+inevitably passages which deal with the terrible or the ghostly.
+She must have known _The Castle of Otranto_, and in _The Italian_
+she quotes several passages from Walpole's melodrama _The
+Mysterious Mother_. But often she may have been dependent on the
+oral legends clustering round ancient abbeys for the background
+of her stories. Ghostly legends would always appeal to her, and
+she probably amassed a hoard of traditions when she visited
+English castles during her tours with her husband. The background
+of _Gaston de Blondeville_ is Kenilworth Castle. That ancient
+ruins stirred her imagination profoundly is clear from passages
+in her notes on the journeys. In Furness Abbey she sees in her
+mind's eye "a midnight procession of monks," and at Brougham
+Castle:
+
+     "One almost saw the surly keeper descending through
+     this door-case and heard him rattle the keys of the
+     chamber above, listening with indifference to the clank
+     of chains and to the echo of that groan below which
+     seemed to rend the heart it burst from,"
+
+or again:
+
+     "Slender saplings of ash waved over the deserted door
+     cases, where at the transforming hour of twilight, the
+     superstitious eye might mistake them for spectres of
+     some early possessor of the castle, restless from
+     guilt, or of some sufferer persevering for vengeance."
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe's style compares favourably with that of many of
+her contemporaries, with that of Mrs. Roche, for instance, who
+wrote _The Children of the Abbey_ and an array of other forgotten
+romances, but she is too fond of long, imperfectly balanced
+sentences, with as many awkward twists and turns as the winding
+stairways of her ancient turrets. Nobody in the novels, except
+the talkative, comic servant, who is meant to be vulgar and
+ridiculous, ever condescends to use colloquial speech. Even in
+moments of extreme peril the heroines are very choice in their
+diction. Dialogue in Mrs. Radcliffe's world is as stilted and
+unnatural as that of prim, old-fashioned school books. In her
+earliest novel she uses very little conversation, clearly finding
+the indirect form of narrative easier. Sometimes, in the more
+highly wrought passages of description, she slips unawares into a
+more daring phrase, _e.g._ in _Udolpho_, the track of blood
+"glared" upon the stairs, where the word suggests not the actual
+appearance of the bloodstain, but rather its effect on Emily's
+inflamed and disordered imagination. Dickens might have chosen
+the word deliberately in this connection, but he would have used
+it, not once, but several times to ensure his result and to
+emphasise the impression. This is not Mrs. Radcliffe's way. Her
+attention to style is mainly subconscious, her chief interest
+being in situation. Her descriptions of scenery have often been
+praised. Crabb Robinson declared in his diary that he preferred
+them to those of _Waverley_. When Byron visited Venice he found
+no better words to describe its beauty than those of Mrs.
+Radcliffe, who had never seen it:
+
+  "I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+  As from the stroke of an enchanted wand."
+
+In 1794 Mrs. Radcliffe and her husband made a journey through
+Holland and West Germany, of which she wrote an account,
+including with it observations made during a tour of the English
+Lakes. All her novels, except _The Italian_ and _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, had been written before she went abroad, and in
+describing foreign scenery she relied on her imagination, aided
+perhaps by pictures and descriptions as well as by her
+recollections of English mountains and lakes. The attempt to
+blend into a single picture a landscape actually seen and a
+landscape only known at second-hand may perhaps account for the
+lack of distinctness in her pictures. Her descriptions of scenery
+are elaborate, and often prolix, but it is often difficult to
+form a clear image of the scene. In her novels she cares for
+landscape only as an effective background, and paints with the
+broad, careless sweep of the theatrical scene-painter. In the
+_Journeys_, where she depicts scenery for its own sake, her
+delineation is more definite and distinct. She reveals an unusual
+feeling for colour and for the lights and tones of a changing sea
+or sky:
+
+     "It is most interesting to watch the progress of
+     evening and its effect on the waters; streaks of light
+     scattered among the dark, western clouds after the sun
+     had set, and gleaming in long reflection on the sea,
+     while a grey obscurity was drawing over the east, as
+     the vapours rose gradually from the ocean. The air was
+     breathless, the tall sails of the vessel were without
+     motion, and her course upon the deep scarcely
+     perceptible; while above the planet burned with steady
+     dignity and threw a tremulous line of light upon the
+     sea, whose surface flowed in smooth, waveless expanse.
+     Then other planets appeared and countless stars
+     spangled the dark waters. Twilight now pervaded air and
+     ocean, but the west was still luminous where one solemn
+     gleam of dusky red edged the horizon from under heavy
+     vapours."[37]
+
+Sometimes her scenes are disappointingly vague. She describes
+Ingleborough as "rising from elegantly swelling ground," and
+attempts to convey a stretch of country by enumerating a list of
+its features in generalised terms:
+
+     "Gentle swelling slopes, rich in verdure, thick
+     enclosures, woods, bowery hop-grounds, sheltered
+     mansions announcing the wealth, and substantial farms
+     with neat villages, the comfort of the country."
+
+Yet she notices tiny mosses whose hues were "pea green and
+primrose," and sometimes reveals flashes of imaginative insight
+into natural beauty like "the dark sides of mountains marked only
+by the blue smoke of weeds driven in circles near the ground."
+These personal, intimate touches of detail are very different
+from the highly coloured sunrises and sunsets that awaken the
+raptures of her heroines.
+
+With all her limitations, Mrs. Radcliffe is a figure whom it is
+impossible to ignore in the history of the novel. Her influence
+was potent on Lewis and on Maturin as well as on a host of
+forgotten writers. Scott admired her works and probably owed
+something in his craftsmanship to his early study of them. She
+appeals most strongly in youth. The Ettrick Shepherd, who was by
+nature and education "just excessive superstitious," declares:
+
+     "Had I read _Udolpho_ and her other romances in my
+     boyish days my hair would have stood on end like that
+     o' other folk ... but afore her volumes fell into my
+     hauns, my soul had been frichtened by a' kinds of
+     traditionary terrors, and many hunder times hae I maist
+     swarfed wi' fear in lonesome spots in muir and woods at
+     midnight when no a leevin thing was movin but mysel'
+     and the great moon."[38]
+
+There are dull stretches in all her works, but, as Hazlitt justly
+claims, "in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and
+making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and
+fears, she is unrivalled among her countrymen."[39]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
+
+
+To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew
+Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which depends
+for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity, for
+"the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even
+stronger and more primitive instinct of fear. Those who find Mrs.
+Radcliffe's unruffled pace leisurely beyond endurance, or who
+dislike her coldly reasonable methods of accounting for what is
+only apparently supernatural, or who sometimes feel stifled by
+the oppressive air of gentility that broods over her romantic
+world, will find ample reparation in the melodramatic pages of
+"Monk" Lewis. Here, indeed, may those who will and dare sup full
+with horrors. Lewis, in reckless abandonment, throws to the winds
+all restraint, both moral and artistic, that had bound his
+predecessor. The incidents, which follow one another in
+kaleidoscopic variety, are like the disjointed phases of a
+delirium or nightmare, from which there is no escape. We are
+conscious that his story is unreal or even ludicrous, yet Lewis
+has a certain dogged power of driving us unrelentingly through
+it, regardless of our own will. Literary historians have tended
+to over-emphasise the connection between Mrs. Radcliffe and
+Lewis. Their purposes and achievement are so different that it is
+hardly accurate to speak of them as belonging to the same school.
+It is true that in one of his letters Lewis asserts that he was
+induced to go on with his romance, _The Monk_, by reading _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_, "one of the most interesting books that
+has (sic) ever been written," and that he was struck by the
+resemblance of his own character to that of Montoni;[40] but his
+literary debt to Mrs. Radcliffe is comparatively insignificant.
+His depredations on German literature are much more serious and
+extensive. Lewis, indeed, is one of the Dick Turpins of fiction
+and seizes his booty where he will in a high-handed and somewhat
+unscrupulous fashion, but for many of Mrs. Radcliffe's treasures
+he could find no use. Her picturesque backgrounds, her ingenious
+explanations of the uncanny, her uneventful interludes and long
+deferred but happy endings were outside his province. The moments
+in her novels which Lewis admired and strove to emulate were
+those during which the reader with quickened pulse breathlessly
+awaits some startling development. Of these moments, there are,
+it must be frankly owned, few in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Lewis's
+mistake lay in trying to induce a more rapid palpitation, and to
+prolong it almost uninterruptedly throughout his novel. By
+attempting a physical and mental impossibility he courts
+disaster. Mrs. Radcliffe's skeletons are decently concealed in
+the family cupboard, Lewis's stalk abroad in shameless publicity.
+In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just
+when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have
+long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she
+suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of
+reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he
+hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy
+of horrors.
+
+Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year
+spent in Weimar (1792-3), where he zealously studied German, and
+incidentally, met Goethe, seems to have left more obvious marks
+on his literary career. To Lewis, Goethe is pre-eminently the
+author of _The Sorrows of Werther_; and Schiller, he remarks
+casually, "has, written several other plays besides _The
+Robbers."_[41] He probably read Heinse's _Ardinghello_(1787),
+Tieck's _Abdallah_ (1792-3), and _William Lovell_ (1794-6), many
+of the innumerable dramas of Kotzebue, the romances of Weit
+Weber, and other specimens of what Carlyle describes as "the bowl
+and dagger department," where
+
+     "Black Forests and Lubberland, sensuality and horror,
+     the spectre nun and the charmed moonshine, shall not be
+     wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers,
+     and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained
+     sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and
+     the like suspicious characters will be found in
+     abundance."[42]
+
+Throughout his life he seems to have made a hobby of the
+literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or
+lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and
+the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of
+his _Romantic Tales_(1808), such as _My Uncle's Garret Window_,
+are uncommonly tame. Like the painter of a hoarding who must at
+all costs arrest attention, he magnifies, exaggerates and
+distorts. Once when rebuked for introducing black guards into a
+country where they did not exist, he is said to have declared
+that he would have made them sky-blue if he thought they would
+produce any more effect.[43] Referring to _The Monk_, he
+confesses: "Unluckily, in working it up, I thought that the
+stronger my colours, the more effect would my picture
+produce."[44]
+
+One of his early attempts at fiction was a romance which he later
+converted into his popular drama, _The Castle Spectre_. This play
+was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson
+in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish
+hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of
+choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play,
+aptly described by Coleridge as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth
+and Impermanence,"[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to
+those who delight in the pursuit of "parallel passages." At the
+age of twenty, during his residence at the Hague as _attaché_ to
+the British embassy, in the summer of 1794, he composed in ten
+weeks, his notorious romance, _The Monk_. On its publication in
+1795 it was attacked on the grounds of profanity and indecency.
+
+_The Monk_, despite its cleverness, is essentially immature, yet
+it is not a childish work. It is much less youthful, for
+instance, than Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. The
+inflamed imagination, the violent exaggeration of emotion and of
+character, the jeering cynicism and lack of tolerance, the
+incoherent formlessness, are all indications of adolescence. In
+_The Monk_ there are two distinct stories, loosely related. The
+story of Raymond and Agnes, into which the legends of the
+bleeding nun and Wandering Jew are woven with considerable skill,
+was published more than once as a detached and separate work. It
+is concerned with the fate of two unhappy lovers, who are parted
+by the tyranny of their parents and of the church, and who endure
+manifold agonies. The physical torture of Agnes is described in
+revolting detail, for Lewis has no scruple in carrying the ugly
+far beyond the limits within which it is artistic. The happy
+ending of their harrowing story is incredible. By making
+Ambrosio, on the verge of his hideous crimes, harshly condemn
+Agnes for a sin of the same nature as that which he is about to
+commit, Lewis forges a link between the two stories. But the
+connection is superficial, and the novel suffers through the
+distraction of our interest. In the story of Ambrosio, Antonia
+plays no part in her own downfall. She is as helpless as a
+plaster statue demolished by an earthquake. The figure of Matilda
+has more vitality, though Lewis changes his mind about her
+character during the course of the book, and fails to make her
+early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is
+certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a passionate
+soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep:
+"The time will come when you will be convinced that my passion is
+pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole
+weight of my sorrows." But when the devil appears, he declares to
+Ambrosio:
+
+     "I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not
+     principle, and I seized the fit moment for your
+     seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the
+     Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty
+     spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded
+     to the blandishments of Matilda."
+
+The discrepancy is obvious, but this blemish is immaterial, for
+the whole story is unnatural. The deterioration in Ambrosio's
+character--though Lewis uses all his energy in striving to make
+it appear probable by discussing the effect of environment--is
+too swift.
+
+Lewis is at his best when he lets his youthful, high spirits have
+full play. His boyish exaggeration makes Leonella, Antonia's
+aunt, seem like a pantomime character, who has inadvertently
+stepped into a melodrama, but the caricature is amusing by its
+very crudity. She writes in red ink to express "the blushes of
+her cheek," when she sends a message of encouragement to the
+Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable
+than Lewis's attempts to depict passion or describe character.
+Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, passionate
+faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style
+is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short,
+staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are
+engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the
+declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak
+as if they were behind the footlights, shouting to the gallery.
+
+A cold-blooded reviewer, in whom the detective instinct was
+strong, indicated the sources of _The Monk_ so mercilessly, that
+Lewis appears in his critique[46] rather as the perpetrator of a
+series of ingenious thefts than as the creator of a novel:
+
+     "The outline of the Monk Ambrosio's story was suggested
+     by that of the Santon Barissa [Barsisa] in the
+     _Guardian_:[47] the form of temptation is borrowed from
+     _The Devil in Love_ of Canzotte [Cazotte], and the
+     catastrophe is taken from _The Sorcerer_. The
+     adventures of Raymond and Agnes are less obviously
+     imitations, yet the forest scene near Strasburg brings
+     to mind an incident in Smollett's _Count Fathom_; the
+     bleeding nun is described by the author as a popular
+     tale of the Germans,[48] and the convent prison
+     resembles the inflictions of Mrs. Radcliffe."
+
+The industrious reviewer overlooks the legend of the Wandering
+Jew, which might have been added to the list of Lewis's
+"borrowings." It must be admitted that Lewis transforms, or at
+least remodels, what he borrows. Addison's story relates how a
+sage of reputed sanctity seduces and slays a maiden brought to
+him for cure, and later sells his soul. Lewis abandons the
+Oriental setting, converts the santon into a monk and embroiders
+the story according to his fancy. Scott alludes to a Scottish
+version of what is evidently a widespread legend.[49] The
+resemblance of the catastrophe--presumably the appearance of
+Satan in the form of Lucifer--to the scene in Mickle's
+_Sorcerer_, which was published among Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_
+(1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames
+and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two
+scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage
+from _The Romance of the Forest_, but, if so she is exaggerated
+almost beyond recognition.
+
+In fashioning as the villain of her latest novel, _The Italian_,
+a monk, whose birth is wrapt in obscurity, Mrs. Radcliffe may
+have been influenced by Lewis's _Monk_ which had appeared two
+years before. Both Schedoni and Ambrosio are reputed saints, both
+are plunged into the blackest guilt, and both are victims of the
+Inquisition. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is true, recoils from introducing
+the enemy of mankind, but, before the secrets are finally
+revealed, we almost suspect Schedoni of having dabbled in the
+Black Arts, and his actual crime falls short of our expectations.
+The "explained supernatural" plays a less prominent part in _The
+Italian_ than in the previous novels, and Mrs. Radcliffe relies
+for her effect rather on sheer terror. The dramatic scene where
+Schedoni stealthily approaches the sleeping Ellena at midnight
+recalls the more highly coloured, but less impressive scene in
+Antonia's bedchamber. The fate of Bianchi, Ellena's aunt, is
+strangely reminiscent of that of Elvira, Antonia's mother. The
+convent scenes and the overbearing abbess had been introduced
+into Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier novels; but in _The Italian_, the
+anti-Roman feeling is more strongly emphasised than usual. This
+may or may not have been due to the influence of Lewis. There is
+no direct evidence that Mrs. Radcliffe had read _The Monk_, but
+the book was so notorious that a fellow novelist would be almost
+certain to explore its pages. Hoffmann's romance, _Elixir des
+Teufels_ (1816), is manifestly written under its inspiration.
+Coincidence could not account for the remarkable resemblances to
+incidents in the story of Ambrosio.
+
+The far-famed collection of _Tales of Terror_ appeared in 1799,
+_The Tales of Wonder_ in 1801. The rest of Lewis's work consists
+mainly of translations and adaptations from the German. He
+revelled in the horrific school of melodrama. He delighted in the
+kind of German romance parodied by Meredith in _Farina_, where
+Aunt Lisbeth tells Margarita of spectres, smelling of murder and
+the charnel-breath of midnight, who "uttered noises that wintered
+the blood and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet
+long; ay, and kept it stiff." _The Bravo of Venice_ (1805) is a
+translation of Zschokke's _Abellino, der Grosse Bandit_, but
+Lewis invented a superfluous character, Monaldeschi, Rosabella's
+destined bridegroom, apparently with the object that Abellino
+might slay him early in the story--and added a concluding
+chapter. At the outset of the story, Rosalvo, a man after Lewis's
+own heart, declares:
+
+"To astonish is my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can
+never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by
+his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a
+double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and
+by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise
+of a noble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter,
+Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached when Flodoardo,
+under oath to deliver up the bandit Abellino, appears before the
+Doge at the appointed hour and reveals his double identity. He is
+hailed as the saviour of Hungary, and wins Rosabella as his
+bride. In the second edition of _The Bravo of Venice_, a romance
+in four volumes by M. G. Lewis, _Legends of the Nunnery_, is
+announced as in the press. There seems to be no record of it
+elsewhere. _Feudal Tyrants_ (1806), a long romance from the
+German, connected with the story of William Tell, consists of a
+series of memoirs loosely strung together, in which the most
+alarming episode is the apparition of the pale spectre of an aged
+monk. In _Blanche and Osbright, or Mistrust_ (1808),[50] which is
+not avowedly a translation, Lewis depicts an even more revolting
+portrait than that of Abellino in his bravo's disguise. He adds
+detail after detail without considering the final effect on the
+eye:
+
+     "Every muscle in his gigantic form seemed convulsed by
+     some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened
+     every feature; the wind from the unclosed window
+     agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to
+     writhe itself. His eyeballs glared, his teeth
+     chattered, his lips trembled; and yet a smile of
+     satisfied vengeance played horribly around them. His
+     complexion seemed suddenly to be changed to the dark
+     tincture of an African; the expression of his
+     countenance was dreadful, was diabolical. Magdalena, as
+     she gazed upon his face, thought that she gazed upon a
+     demon."
+
+Here, to quote the Lady Hysterica Belamour, we have surely the
+"horrid, horrible, horridest horror." But in _Königsmark the
+Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia_ (1818), Lewis's caste includes
+an enormous yellow-eyed spider, a wolf who changes into a peasant
+and disappears amid a cloud of sulphur, and a ghost who sheds
+three ominous drops of boiling blood. It was probably such
+stories as this that Peacock had in mind when he declared,
+through Mr. Flosky, that the devil had become "too base and
+popular" for the surfeited appetite of readers of fiction. Yet,
+as Carlyle once exclaimed of the German terror-drama, as
+exemplified in Kotzebue, Grillparzer and Klingemann, whose
+stock-in-trade is similar to that of Lewis: "If any man wish to
+amuse himself irrationally, here is the ware for his money."[51]
+Byron, who had himself attempted in _Oscar and Alva_ (_Hours of
+Idleness_, 1807) a ballad in the manner of Lewis, describes with
+irony the triumphs of terror:
+
+  "Oh! wonderworking Lewis! Monk or Bard,
+  Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard!
+  Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
+  Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou;
+  Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand,
+  By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
+  Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page
+  To please the females of our modest age;
+  All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain
+  Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
+  At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds
+  And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds
+  With small grey men--wild yagers and what not,
+  To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
+  Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
+  St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease.
+  Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
+  And in thy skull discern a deeper hell!"[52]
+
+Scott's delightfully discursive review of _The Fatal Revenge or
+The Family of Montorio_ (1810), not only forms a fitting
+introduction to the romances of Maturin, but presents a lively
+sketch of the fashionable reading of the day. It has been
+insinuated that the _Quarterly Review_ was too heavy and serious,
+that it contained, to quote Scott's own words, "none of those
+light and airy articles which a young lady might read while her
+hair was papering." To redeem the reputation of the journal,
+Scott gallantly undertook to review some of the "flitting and
+evanescent productions of the times." After a laborious
+inspection of the contents of a hamper full of novels, he arrived
+at the painful conclusion that "spirits and patience may be as
+completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following
+algebraical calculations." He condemns the authors of the Gothic
+romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for
+their monotony, a deadly sin.
+
+     "We strolled through a variety of castles, each of
+     which was regularly called Il Castello; met with as
+     many captains of condottieri, heard various
+     ejaculations of Santa Maria and Diabolo; read by a
+     decaying lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of
+     legends as stupid as the main history; examined such
+     suites of deserted apartments as might set up a
+     reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights
+     as would make a respectable illumination." It was no
+     easy task to bore Sir Walter Scott, and an excursion
+     into the byeways of early nineteenth century fiction
+     proves abundantly the justice of his satire. Such
+     novelists as Miss Sarah Wilkinson or Mrs. Eliza
+     Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by
+     circulating library readers a hundred years ago,
+     deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of
+     earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of
+     serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing
+     names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as
+     1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superstition
+     and Chivalry_:
+
+     "It is not one of the least objections against these
+     fashionable fictions that the imagery of them is
+     essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands,
+     clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar
+     etcetera are continually tormenting us."
+
+Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny
+chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and
+green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were
+sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a "blue book"
+meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Shelley, not a pamphlet
+filled with statistics, but "a sixpenny shocker."[53] The
+notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is
+said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and
+her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six
+shillings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the
+head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen,
+wearing gold cockades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the
+names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably
+contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps
+two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring titles, _The Priory
+of St. Clair, or The Spectre of the Murdered Nun_; _The Convent
+of the Grey Penitents, or The Apostate Nun_. Perchance, he found
+there Mrs. Henrietta Rouvière's romance, (published in the same
+year as _Montorio_,) _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807), describing
+the reign of King Stephen. Mrs. Rouvière, in her preface,
+
+     "flatters herself that, aided by records and documents,
+     she may have succeeded in a correct though faint sketch
+     of the times she treats, and in affording, if through a
+     dim yet not distorted nor discoloured glass, A Peep at
+     our Ancestors";
+
+but her story is entirely devoid of the colour with which Mrs.
+Radcliffe, her model, contrived to decorate the past. It is,
+moreover, written in a style so opaque that it obscures her
+images from view as effectually as a piece of ground glass. To
+describe the approach of twilight--an hour beloved by writers of
+romance--she attempts a turgid paraphrase of Gray's Elegy:
+
+     "The grey shades of an autumnal evening gradually stole
+     over the horizon, progressively throwing a duskier hue
+     on the surrounding objects till glimmering confusion
+     encompassing the earth shut from the accustomed eye the
+     well-known view, leaving conjecture to mark its
+     boundaries."
+
+The adventures of Adelaide and her lover, Walter of Gloucester,
+are so insufferably tedious that Scott doubtless decided to
+"leave to conjecture" their interminable vicissitudes. The names
+of other novels, whose pages he may impatiently have scanned, may
+be garnered by those who will, from such works as _Living
+Authors_ (1817), or from the four volumes of Watts' elaborate
+compilation, the _Bibliotheca Britannica_ (1824). The titles are,
+indeed, lighter and more entertaining reading than the books
+themselves. Anyone might reasonably expect to read _Midnight
+Horrors, or The Bandit's Daughter_, as Henry Tilney vows he read
+_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, with "hair on end all the time"; but
+the actual story, notwithstanding a wandering ball of fire, that
+acts as guide through the labyrinths of a Gothic castle, is
+conducive of sleep rather than shudders. The notoriety of Lewis's
+monk may be estimated by the procession of monks who followed in
+his train. There were, to select a few names at random, _The New
+Monk_, by one R.S., Esq.; _The Monk of Madrid_, by George Moore
+(1802); _The Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, by T.J. Horsley Curties;
+_Manfroni, the One-handed Monk_, whose history was borrowed,
+together with those of Abellino, the terrific bravo, and Rinaldo
+Rinaldini,[55] by "J.J." from Miss Flinders' library;[56] and
+lastly, as a counter-picture, a monk without a scowl, _The
+Benevolent Monk_, by Theodore Melville (1807). The nuns,
+including "Rosa Matilda's" _Nun of St. Omer's_, Miss Sophia
+Francis's _Nun of Misericordia_ (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's
+_Apostate Nun_, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps
+_The Convent of the Grey Penitents_ would have been a suitable
+abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no
+nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported
+to other climes. We find him in Scotland in _The Mysterious
+Bravo_, or _The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend_, and
+in Austria in _The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest_. No
+country is safe from the raids of banditti. _The Caledonian
+Banditti_ or _The Banditti of the Forest_, or _The Bandit of
+Florence_--all very much alike in their manners and morals--make
+the heroine's journey a perilous enterprise. The romances of Mrs.
+Radcliffe were rifled unscrupulously by the snappers-up of
+unconsidered trifles, and many of the titles are variations on
+hers. In emulation of _The Romance of the Forest_ we find George
+Walker's _Romance of the Cavern_ (1792) and Miss Eleanor Sleath's
+_Mysteries of the Forest_. Novelists appreciated the magnetic
+charm of the word "mystery" on a title-page, and after _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_ we find such seductive names as _Mysterious
+Warnings_ and _Mysterious Visits_, by Mrs. Parsons; _Horrid
+Mysteries_, translated from the German of the Marquis von Grosse,
+by R. Will (1796); _The Mystery of the Black Tower_ and _The
+Mystic Sepulchre_, by John Palmer, a schoolmaster of Bath; _The
+Mysterious Wanderer_ (1807), by Miss Sophia Reeve; _The
+Mysterious Hand or Subterranean Horrors_ (1811), by A.J.
+Randolph; and _The Mysterious Freebooter_ (1805), by Francis
+Lathom. Castles and abbeys were so persistently haunted that Mrs.
+Rachel Hunter, a severely moral writer, advertises one of her
+stories as _Letitia: A Castle Without a Spectre_. Mystery slips,
+almost unawares, into the domestic story. There are, for
+instance, vague hints of it in Charlotte Smith's _Old Manor
+House_ (1793). The author of _The Ghost_ and of _More Ghosts_
+adopts the pleasing pseudonym of Felix Phantom. The gloom of
+night broods over many of the stories, for we know:
+
+      "affairs that walk,
+  As they say spirits do, at midnight, have
+  In them a wilder nature than the business
+  That seeks despatch by day,"
+
+and we are confronted with titles like _Midnight Weddings_, by
+Mrs. Meeke, one of Macaulay's favourite "bad-novel writers," _The
+Midnight Bell_, awakening memories of Duncan's murder, by George
+Walker, or _The Nocturnal Minstrel_ (1809), by Miss Sleath. These
+"dismal treatises" abound in reminiscences of Mrs. Radcliffe and
+of "Monk" Lewis, and many of them hark back as far as _The Castle
+of Otranto_ for some of their situations. The novels of Miss
+Wilkinson may perhaps serve as well as those of any of her
+contemporaries to show that Scott was not unduly harsh in his
+condemnation of the romances fashionable in the first decade of
+the nineteenth century, when "tales of terror jostle on the
+road."[57] The sleeping potion, a boon to those who weave the
+intricate pattern of a Gothic romance, is one of Miss Wilkinson's
+favourite devices, and is employed in at least three of her
+stories. In _The Chateau de Montville_ (1803) it is administered
+to the amiable Louisa to aid Augustine in his sinister designs,
+but she ultimately escapes, and is wedded by Octavius, who has
+previously been borne off by a party of pirates. He "finds the
+past unfortunate vicissitudes of his life amply recompensed by
+her love." In _The Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Rosalthe
+happily avoids the opiate, as she overhears the plans of her
+unscrupulous husband, who, it seems, has "an unquenchable thirst
+of avarice," and desires to win a wealthier bride. She flees to a
+"cottage ornée" on Finchley Common, the home, it may be
+remembered, of Thackeray's Washerwoman; and the thrills we expect
+from a novel of terror are reserved for the second volume, and
+arise out of the adventures of the next generation. After
+Rosalthe's death, spectres, blue flames, corpses, thunderstorms
+and hairbreadth escapes are set forth in generous profusion.
+
+In _The Priory of St. Clair_ (1811), Julietta, who has been
+forced into a convent against her will, like so many other
+heroines, is drugged and conveyed as a corpse to the Count de
+Valvé's Gothic castle. She comes to life only to be slain before
+the high altar, and revenges herself after death by haunting the
+count regularly every night. _The Fugitive Countess or Convent of
+St. Ursula_ (1807) contains three spicy ingredients--a mock
+burial, a concealed wife and a mouldering manuscript. The social
+status of Miss Wilkinson's characters is invariably lofty, for no
+self-respecting ghost ever troubles the middle classes; and her
+manner is as ambitious as her matter. Her personages, in _Lopez
+and Aranthe_, behave and talk thus:
+
+"Heavenly powers!" exclaimed Aranthe, "it is Dorimont, or else my
+eyes deceive me!" Overpowered with surprise and almost
+breathless, she sunk on the carpet. Lopez stood aghast, his
+countenance was of a deadly pale, a glass of wine he had in his
+hand he let fall to the floor, while he articulated: "What an
+alteration in that once beauteous countenance!"
+
+Miss Wilkinson's sentences stagger and lurch uncertainly, but she
+delights in similes and other ornaments of style:
+
+     "Adeline Barnett was fair as a lily, tall as the pine,
+     her fine dark eyes sparkling as diamonds, and she moved
+     with the majestic air of a goddess, but pride and
+     ambition appeared on the brow of this famed maiden, and
+     destroying the effect of her charms."
+
+She is, in fact, more addicted to "gramarye" than to
+"grammar"--the fault with which Byron, in a note to _English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, charged the hero and heroine of
+Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Her heroes do not merely
+love, they are "enamoured to a romantic degree." Her arbours are
+"composed of jasmine, white rose, and other odoriferous sweets of
+Flora." She sprinkles French phrases with an airy nonchalance
+worthy of the Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs are included
+in Barrett's _Heroine_. Her duchesses "figure away with
+_éclat_"--"a party _quarrie_ assemble at their _dejeune_." It is
+noteworthy that by 1820 even Miss Wilkinson had learnt to despise
+the spectres in whom she had gloried during her amazing career.
+In _The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_ (1820) the ghost is
+ignominiously exposed, and proved to be "a tall figure dressed in
+white, and a long, transparent veil flowing over her whole
+figure," while the heroine Amelia speaks almost in the accents of
+Catherine Morland:
+
+     "My governess has been affirming that there are Gothic
+     buildings without spectres or legends of a ghostly
+     nature attached to them; now, what is a castle or abbey
+     worth without such appendage?; do tell me candidly, are
+     none of the turrets of your old family mansion in
+     Monmouth rendered thus terrific by some unquiet,
+     wandering spirit?, dare the peasantry pass it after
+     twilight, or if they are forced into that temerity, do
+     not their teeth chatter, their hair stand erect and
+     their poor knees knock together?"
+
+That Miss Wilkinson, who, for twenty years, had conscientiously
+striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last
+to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a
+piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the
+enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely
+have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more to
+raise their diminished heads.
+
+From a medley of novels, similar to those of Miss Wilkinson,
+Scott singled out for commendation _The Fatal Revenge or The
+Family of Montorio_, by "Jasper Denis Murphy," or the Rev.
+Charles Robert Maturin. Amid the chaos of horror into which
+Maturin hurls his readers, Scott shrewdly discerned the spirit
+and animation which, though often misdirected, pervade his whole
+work. The story is but a grotesque distortion of life, yet Scott
+found himself "insensibly involved in the perusal and at times
+impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the
+author." His generous estimate of Maturin's gifts and his
+prediction of future success is the more impressive, because _The
+Fatal Revenge_ undeniably belongs to the very class of novels he
+was ridiculing.
+
+Maturin was an eccentric Irish clergyman, who diverted himself by
+weaving romances and constructing tragedies. He loved to mingle
+with the gay and frivolous; he affected foppish attire, and
+prided himself on his exceptional skill in dancing. His
+indulgence in literary work was probably but another expression
+of his longing to escape from the strait and narrow way
+prescribed for a Protestant clergyman. Wild anecdotes are told of
+his idiosyncrasies.[58] He preferred to compose his stories in a
+room full of people, and he found a noisy argument especially
+invigorating. To prevent himself from taking part in the
+conversation, he used to cover his mouth with paste composed of
+flour and water. Sometimes, we are told, he would wear a red
+wafer upon his brow, as a signal that he was enduring the throes
+of literary composition and expected forbearance and
+consideration. It is said that he once missed preferment in the
+church because he absentmindedly interviewed his prospective
+vicar with his head bristling with quills like a porcupine. He is
+said to have insisted on his wife's using rouge though she had
+naturally a high colour, and to have gone fishing in a
+resplendent blue coat and silk stockings. Such was the flamboyant
+personality of the man whose first novel attracted the kindly
+attention of Scott. His oddities, which would have rejoiced the
+heart of Dickens, are not without significance in a study of his
+literary work, for his love of emphasis and exaggeration are
+reflected in both the substance and style of his novels.
+
+Maturin's writings fall into three periods. Of his three early
+novels, _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1807),
+_The Wild Irish Boy_ (1808) and _The Milesian Chief_ (1812), the
+first only is a tale of horror. _The Wild Irish Boy_ is a
+domestic story, and forms a suitable companion for Lady Morgan's
+_Wild Irish Girl_. _The Milesian Chief_ is a historical novel,
+and is now chiefly remembered on account of the likeness of the
+opening chapters to Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ (1819). After
+the publication of these novels, Maturin turned his attention to
+the stage. His first tragedy, _Bertram_ (1816), received the
+encouragement of Scott and Byron. The character of Bertram is
+modelled on that of Schiller's robber-chief, Karl von Moor, who
+captivated the imagination of Coleridge himself, and who is
+reflected in _Osorio_ and perhaps in Mrs. Radcliffe's villains.
+The action of the melodrama moves swiftly, and abounds in the
+"moving situations" Maturin loved to handle. _Bertram_ was
+succeeded in 1817 by _Manuel_, and in 1819 by _Fredolfo_.
+Meanwhile Maturin had returned to novel-writing. _Women, or Pour
+et Contre_, with its lifelike sketches of Puritanical society and
+clever characterisation, appeared in 1818, and was favourably
+reviewed by Scott.[59] _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's
+masterpiece, was published in 1820, and was succeeded in 1824 by
+his last work, _The Albigenses_, a historical romance, following
+Scott's design rather than that of Mrs. Radcliffe.
+
+In reviewing _The Family of Montorio_, Scott prudently attempted
+only a brief survey of the plot, and forsook Maturin's sequence
+of events. In his sketch the outline of the story is
+comparatively clear. In the novel itself we wander, bewildered,
+baffled and distracted through labyrinthine mazes. No Ariadne
+awaits on the threshold with the magic ball of twine to guide us
+through the complicated windings. We stumble along blind alleys
+desperately retracing our weary steps, and, after stumbling alone
+and unaided to the very end, reach the darkly concealed clue when
+it has ceased to be either of use or of interest to us. Many an
+adventurer must have lain down, dispirited and exhausted, without
+ever reaching his distant and elusive goal. Disentangled and
+simplified almost beyond recognition, the story runs thus: In
+1670, Count Orazio and his younger brother are the sole
+representatives of the family of Montorio. Orazio has married
+Erminia di Vivaldi, whom he loves devotedly. She does not return
+his love. The younger brother determines to take advantage of
+this circumstance to gain the title and estates for himself, and
+succeeds in arousing Orazio's jealousy against a young officer,
+Verdoni, to whom Erminia had formerly been deeply attached. In a
+violent passion Orazio slays Verdoni before the eyes of Erminia,
+who falls dead at his feet. This part of his design accomplished,
+the younger brother plots to murder Orazio himself, who, however,
+discovers the innocence of his wife and the hideous perfidy of
+his brother. Temporarily bereft of reason, Orazio sojourns alone
+on a desert island. When his senses are restored, he resolves to
+devote the rest of his life to vengeance. For fifteen years he
+buries himself in occult studies, and when his diabolical schemes
+have matured, returns, disguised as the monk Schemoli, to the
+scene of the murder. He becomes confessor to his brother, who has
+assumed the title and estates. It is his intention to compel the
+Count's sons, Annibal and Ippolito, to murder their father. Death
+at the hands of parricides seems to him the only appropriate
+catastrophe for the Count's career of infamy. To reconcile the
+two victims--Annibal and Ippolito--to their task, he "relies
+mainly on the doctrine of fatalism." The most complex and
+ingenious "machinery" is used to work upon their superstitious
+feelings. No device is too tortuous if it aid his purpose. Even
+the pressure of the Inquisition is brought to bear on one of the
+brothers. Each, after protracted agony, submits to his destiny,
+and the swords of the two brothers meet in the Count's body. When
+the murder is safely accomplished, it is proved that Annibal and
+Ippolito are the sons, not of the Count, but of Schemoli and
+Erminia. By the irony of fate the knowledge comes too late for
+Schemoli to save his children from the crime. At the close of a
+lengthy trial the two brothers are released, but deprived of
+their lands. Ultimately they die fighting in the siege of
+Barcelona. Schemoli perishes, in the approved Gothic manner, by
+self-administered poison. Intertwined with the main theme of
+Schemoli's fatal revenge are the love-stories of the two
+brothers. Rosolia, a nun, who seems to have been acquainted with
+Shakespeare's comedies, disguises herself as a page, and devotes
+her life to the service of Ippolito and to the composition of
+sentimental verses. She only reveals her sex just before her
+death, though we have guessed it from her first appearance.
+Ildefonsa, who is beloved of Annibal, has been forced into a
+convent against her will--a fate almost inevitable in the realm
+of Gothic romance. When letters are received authorising her
+release from the vows, a pitiless mother-superior reports that
+she is dead. She is immured, but an earthquake sets her free, for
+Maturin will move heaven and earth to effect his purposes. The
+ill-fated maiden dies shortly afterwards. Ere the close it proves
+that Ildefonsa was the daughter of Erminia, who had been secretly
+married to Verdoni before her union with Orazio. Such is the
+skeleton of Maturin's story, when its scattered members have been
+patiently collected and fitted together. The impressive figure of
+Schemoli, with his unholy power of fascinating his reluctant
+accomplices, lends to the book the only sort of unity it
+possesses. But even he fails to arouse a sense of fear strong
+enough to fix our attention to so wandering a story. Like the
+doomed brothers, we drift dejectedly through inexplicable
+terrors, and we re-echo with fervour Annibal's dolorous cry:
+
+     "Why should I be shut up in this house of horrors to
+     deal with spirits and damned things and the secrets of
+     the infernal world while there are so many paths open
+     to pleasure, the varieties of human intercourse and the
+     enjoyment of life?"
+
+Maturin, a disciple of Mrs. Radcliffe, feels it his duty to
+explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story,
+but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates
+for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets
+which have harassed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred
+explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that
+wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are
+merely waxen images that spout blood automatically.
+Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are
+simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling
+phenomena are accounted for in the same trivial fashion.
+
+Maturin seems to have crowded into his story nearly every
+character and incident that had been employed in earlier Gothic
+romances. Schemoli is a remarkably faithful portrait of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's Schedoni. From beneath his cowl flash the piercing
+eyes, whose very glance will daunt the bravest heart; his sallow
+visage is furrowed with the traces of bygone passions; he shuns
+society, and is dreaded by his associates. The oppressed maiden,
+driven into a nunnery, drugged and immured, the ambitious
+countess, the devoted, loquacious servant, the inhuman
+abbess--all play their accustomed parts. The background shifts
+from the robber's den to the ruined chapel, from the castle vault
+to the dungeon of the Inquisition, each scene being admirably
+suited to the situation contrived, or the emotion displayed.
+Maturin had accurately inspected the passages and trap-doors of
+Otranto. No item, not a rusty lock, not a creaking hinge, had
+escaped his vigilant eye. He knew intimately every nook and
+cranny of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. He had viewed with
+trepidation their blood-stained floors, their skeletons and
+corpses, and had carefully calculated the psychological effect of
+these properties. He had gazed with starting eye on the lurid
+horrors of "Monk" Lewis, and had carried away impressions so
+distinct that he, perhaps unwittingly, transferred them to the
+pages of his own story. But Maturin's reading was not strictly
+confined to the school of terror. He had studied Shakespeare's
+tragedies, and these may have suggested to him the idea of
+enhancing the interest of his story by dissecting human motive
+and describing passionate feeling. In depicting the remorse of
+the count and his wife Zenobia, who had committed a murder to
+gratify their ambition, and who are tormented by ugly dreams,
+Maturin inevitably draws from _Macbeth_. Zenobia, the stronger
+character, reviles her husband for indulging in sickly fancies
+and strives to embolden him:
+
+  "Like a child you run from a mask you have yourself painted."
+
+He replies in a free paraphrase of _Hamlet_:
+
+  "It is this cursed domestic sensibility of guilt that makes
+cowards
+  of us all."
+
+Maturin is distinguished from the incompetent horde of
+romance-writers, whom Scott condemned, by the powerful eloquence
+of his style and by his ability to analyse emotion, to write as
+if he himself were swayed by the feeling he describes. His insane
+extravagances have at least the virtue that they come flaming hot
+from an excited imagination. The passage quoted by
+Scott--Orazio's attempt to depict his state of mind after he had
+heard of his brother's perfidy--may serve to illustrate the force
+and vigour of his language:
+
+     "Oh! that midnight darkness of the soul in which it
+     seeks for something whose loss has carried away every
+     sense but one of utter and desolate deprivation; in
+     which it traverses leagues in motion and worlds in
+     thought without consciousness of relief, yet with a
+     dread of pausing. I had nothing to seek, nothing to
+     recover; the whole world could not restore me an atom,
+     could not show me again a glimpse of what I had been or
+     lost, yet I rushed on as if the next step would reach
+     shelter and peace."
+
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_ has found many admirers. It fascinated
+Rossetti,[60] Thackeray[61] and Miss Mitford.[62] It was praised
+by Balzac, who wrote a satirical sequel--_Melmoth Reconcilié à
+L'Eglise_ (1835), and by Baudelaire, and exercised a considerable
+influence on French literature.[63] It consists of a series of
+tales, strung together in a complicated fashion. In each tale the
+Wanderer, who has bartered his soul in return for prolonged life,
+may, if he can, persuade someone to take the bargain off his
+hands.[64] He visits those who are plunged in despair. His
+approach is heralded by strange music, and his eyes have a
+preternatural lustre that terrifies his victims. No one will
+agree to his "incommunicable condition."
+
+The bird's-eye view of an Edinburgh Reviewer who described
+_Melmoth_ as "the sacrifice of Genius in the Temple of False
+Taste," will give some idea of the bewildering variety of its
+contents:
+
+     "His hero is a modern Faustus, who has bartered his
+     soul with the powers of darkness for protracted life
+     and unlimited worldly enjoyment; his heroine, a species
+     of insular goddess, a virgin Calypso of the Indian
+     Ocean, who, amid flowers and foliage, lives upon figs
+     and tamarinds, associates with peacocks and monkeys, is
+     worshipped by the occasional visitants of her island,
+     finds her way into Spain where she is married to the
+     aforesaid hero by the hand of a dead hermit, the ghost
+     of a murdered domestic being the witness of her
+     nuptials; and finally dies in a dungeon of the
+     Inquisition at Madrid. To complete this phantasmagoric
+     exhibition, we are presented with sybils and misers,
+     parricides, maniacs in abundance, monks with scourges
+     pursuing a naked youth streaming with blood;
+     subterranean Jews surrounded by the skeletons of their
+     wives and children; lovers blasted by lightning, Irish
+     hags, Spanish grandees, shipwrecks, caverns, Donna
+     Claras and Donna Isidoras--all exposed to each other in
+     violent and glaring contrast and all their adventures
+     narrated with the same undeviating display of turgid,
+     vehement, and painfully elaborated language."[65]
+
+This breathless sentence gives some conception of the delirious
+imagery of Maturin's romance, but the book is worthy of a more
+respectful, unhurried survey. _Melmoth_ shows a distinct advance
+on _Montorio_ in constructive power. Each separate story is
+perfectly clear and easy to follow, in spite of the elaborate
+interlacing. The romance opens with the death of a miser in a
+desolate Irish farmstead, with harpies clustering at his bedside.
+His nephew and heir, John Melmoth, is adjured to destroy a
+certain manuscript and a portrait of an ancestor with eyes "such
+as one feels they wish they had never seen and feels they can
+never forget." Alone at midnight, John Melmoth reads the
+manuscript, which is reputed to have been written by Stanton, an
+English traveller in Spain, about 1676. The document relates a
+startling story of a mysterious Englishman who appears at a
+Spanish wedding with disastrous consequences, and reappears
+before Stanton in a madhouse offering release on dreadful
+conditions. After reading it, John Melmoth decides to burn the
+family portrait. He is visited by a sinister form, who proves
+that he is no figment of the imagination by leaving black and
+blue marks on his relative's wrist. The next night a ship is
+wrecked in a storm. The Wanderer appears, and mocks the victims
+with fiendish mirth. The sole survivor, Don Alonzo Monçada,
+unfolds his story to John Melmoth. The son of a great duke, he
+has been forced to become a monk to save his mother's honour. He
+dwells with the excruciating detail in which Maturin is inclined
+to revel, on the horrors of Spanish monasteries. Escaping through
+a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who
+incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers.
+His plan of flight is foiled, and he is borne off to the dungeons
+of the Inquisition. Here the Wanderer, who has a miraculous power
+to enter where he will, offers, on the ineffable condition, to
+procure his freedom. Monçada repudiates the temptation, effects
+his own escape during a great fire, and catches sight of the
+stranger on the summit of a burning building. He takes refuge
+with a Jew, but, to evade the vigilance of the Inquisitors,
+disappears suddenly down an underground passage, where he finds
+Adonijah, another Jew, who obligingly employs him as an
+amanuensis, and sets him to copy a manuscript. This gives Maturin
+the opportunity, for which he has been waiting, to introduce his
+"Tale of the Indian." The story of Immalee, who is visited on her
+desert island by the Wanderer in the guise of a lover as well as
+a tempter, forms the most memorable part of _Melmoth_. In the
+other stories the stranger has been a taciturn creature, relying
+on the lustre of his eyes rather than on his powers of eloquence
+to win over his victims. To Immalee he pours forth floods of
+rhetoric on the sins and follies of mankind. Had she not been one
+of Rousseau's children of nature, and so innocent alike of a
+knowledge of Shakespeare and of the fault of impatience, she
+would surely have exclaimed: "If thou hast news, I prithee
+deliver them like a man of this world." When Immalee is
+transported to Spain and reassumes her baptismal name of Isidora,
+Melmoth follows her and their conversations are continued at dead
+of night through the lattice. Here they discourse on the real
+nature of love. At length the gloomy lover persuades Isidora to
+marry him. Their midnight nuptials take place against a weird
+background. By a narrow, precipitous path they approach the
+ruined chapel, and are united by a hand "as cold as that of
+death." Meanwhile, Don Francisco, Isidora's father, on his way
+home, spends the night at an inn, where a stranger insists on
+telling him "The Tale of Guzman." In this tale the tempter visits
+a father whose family is starving, but who resists the lure of
+wealth. Maturin portrays with extraordinary power the
+deterioration in the character of an old man Walberg, through the
+effects of poverty. At the close of the narration Don Francisco
+falls into a deep slumber, but is sternly awakened by a stranger
+with an awful eye, who insists on becoming his fellow traveller,
+and on telling, in defiance of protests, yet another story. The
+prologue to the Lover's Tale is almost Chaucerian in its humour:
+
+     "It was with the utmost effort of his mixed politeness
+     and fear that he prepared himself to listen to the
+     tale, which the stranger had frequently amid their
+     miscellaneous conversation, alluded to, and showed an
+     evident anxiety to relate. These allusions were
+     attended with unpleasant reminiscences to the
+     hearer--but he saw that it was to be, and armed himself
+     as best he might with courage to hear. 'I would not
+     intrude on you, Senhor,' says the stranger, 'with a
+     narrative in which you can feel but little interest,
+     were I not conscious that its narration may operate as
+     a warning, the most awful, salutary and efficacious to
+     yourself.'"
+
+At this veiled hint Don Francisco discharges a volley of oaths,
+but he is silenced completely by the smile of the stranger--"that
+spoke bitterer and darker things than the fiercest frown that
+ever wrinkled the features of man." After this he cannot choose
+but hear, and the stranger seizes his opportunity to begin an
+uncommonly dull story, connected with a Shropshire family and
+intermingled with historical events. In this tale the Wanderer
+appears to a girl whose lover has lost his reason, and offers to
+restore him if she will accept his conditions. Once more the
+tempter is foiled. The story meanders so sluggishly that our
+sympathies are with Don Francisco, and we cannot help wishing
+that he had adopted more drastic measures to quieten the
+insistent stranger. At the conclusion Francisco mutters
+indignantly:
+
+     "It is inconceivable to me how this person forces
+     himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have
+     no more application to me than the legend of the Cid,
+     and may be as apocryphal as the ballad of
+     Roncesvalles--"
+
+but yet the stranger has not finished. He proceeds to tell him a
+tale in which he will feel a peculiar interest, that of Isidora,
+his own daughter, and finally urges him to hasten to her rescue.
+Don Francisco wanders by easy stages to Madrid, and, on his
+arrival, marries Isidora against her will to Montilla. Melmoth,
+according to promise, appears at the wedding. The bridegroom is
+slain. Isidora, with Melmoth's child, ends her days in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition, murmuring: "Paradise! will he be
+there?" So far as one may judge from the close of the story, it
+seems not.
+
+Monçada and John Melmoth, whom we left, at the beginning of the
+romance, in Ireland, are revisited by the Wanderer, whose time on
+earth has at last run out. He confesses his failure: "I have
+traversed the world in the search, and no one to gain that world,
+would lose his own soul." His words remind us of the text of the
+sermon which suggested to Maturin the idea of the romance. Like
+the companions of Dr. Faustus, Melmoth and Monçada hear terrible
+sounds from the room of the Wanderer in the last throes of agony.
+The next morning the room is empty; but, following a track to the
+sea-cliffs, they see, on a crag beneath, the kerchief the
+Wanderer had worn about his neck. "Melmoth and Monçada exchanged
+looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly
+home."
+
+This extraordinary romance, like _Montorio_, clearly owes much to
+the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and "Monk" Lewis. Immalee, as her
+name implies, is but a glorified Emily with a loxia on her
+shoulder instead of a lute in her hand. The monastic horrors are
+obviously a heritage from _The Monk_. The Rosicrucian legend, as
+handled in _St. Leon_, may have offered hints to Maturin, whose
+treatment is, however, far more imaginative and impressive than
+that of Godwin. The resemblance to the legend of the Wandering
+Jew need not be laboured. Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_ and the first
+part of Goethe's _Faust_ left their impression on the story. The
+closing scenes inevitably remind us of the last act of Marlowe's
+tragedy. But, when all these debts are acknowledged they do but
+serve to enhance the success of Maturin, who out of these varied
+strands could weave so original a romance. _Melmoth_ is not an
+ingenious patchwork of previous stories. It is the outpouring of
+a morbid imagination that has long brooded on the fearful and the
+terrific. Imbued with the grandeur and solemnity of his theme,
+Maturin endeavours to write in dignified, stately language. There
+are frequent lapses into bombast, but occasionally his rhetoric
+is splendidly effective:
+
+     "It was now the latter end of autumn; heavy clouds had
+     all day been passing laggingly and gloomily along the
+     atmosphere, as the hours pass over the human mind and
+     life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
+     portentously off, like ships of war reconnoitring a
+     strong fort, to return with added strength and fury."
+
+He takes pleasure in coining unusual, striking phrases, such as:
+"All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,"
+or "Minutes are hours in the _noctuary_ of terror," or "The
+secret of silence is the only secret. Words are a blasphemy
+against that taciturn and invisible God whose presence enshrouds
+us in our last extremity."
+
+Maturin chooses his similes with discrimination, to heighten the
+effect he aims at producing:
+
+"The locks were so bad and the keys so rusty that it was like the
+cry of the dead in the house when the keys were turned," or:
+
+     "With all my care, however, the lamp declined,
+     quivered, flashed a pale light, like the smile of
+     despair, on me, and was extinguished ... I had watched
+     it like the last beatings of an expiring heart, like
+     the shiverings of a spirit about to depart for
+     eternity."
+
+There are no quiet scenes or motionless figures in _Melmoth_.
+Everything is intensified, exaggerated, distorted. The very
+clouds fly rapidly across the sky, and the moon bursts forth with
+the "sudden and appalling effulgence of lightning." A shower of
+rain is perhaps "the most violent that was ever precipitated on
+the earth." When Melmoth stamps his foot "the reverberation of
+his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with
+the thunder." Maturin's use of words like "callosity,"
+"induration," "defecated," "evanition," and his fondness for
+italics are other indications of his desire to force an
+impression by fair means or foul.
+
+The gift of psychological insight that distinguishes _Montorio_
+reappears in a more highly developed form in _Melmoth the
+Wanderer_. "Emotions," Maturin declares, "are my events," and he
+excels in depicting mental as well as physical torture. The
+monotony of a "timeless day" is suggested with dreary reality in
+the scene where Monçada and his guide await the approach of night
+to effect their escape from the monastery. The gradual surrender
+of resolution before slight, reiterated assaults is cunningly
+described in the analysis of Isidora's state of mind, when a
+hateful marriage is forced upon her. Occasionally Maturin
+astonishes us by the subtlety of his thought:
+
+"While people think it worth while to torment us we are never
+without some dignity, though painful and imaginary."
+
+It is his faculty for describing intense, passionate feeling, his
+power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for
+conveying his thoughts in rolling, rhythmical periods of
+eloquence, that make _Melmoth_ a memory-haunting book. With all
+his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last of the
+Goths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
+
+
+Beckford's _History of the Caliph Vathek_, which was written in
+French, was translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, who had the
+temerity to publish the English version--described as a
+translation from the Arabic--in 1786, before the original had
+appeared. The French version was published in Lausanne and in
+Paris in 1787. An interest in Oriental literature had been
+awakened early in the eighteenth century by Galland's
+epoch-making versions of _The Arabian Nights_ (1704-1717), _The
+Turkish Tales_ (1708) and _The Persian Tales_ (1714), which were
+all translated into English during the reign of Queen Anne. Many
+of the pseudo-translations of French authors, such as Gueulette,
+who compiled _The Chinese Tales_, _Mogul Tales_, _Tartarian
+Tales_, and _Peruvian Tales_, and Jean-Paul Bignon, who presented
+_The Adventures of Abdallah_, were quickly turned into English;
+and the Oriental story became so fashionable a form that didactic
+writers eagerly seized upon it as a disguise for moral or
+philosophical reflection. The Eastern background soon lost its
+glittering splendour and colour, and became a faded, tarnished
+tapestry, across which shadowy figures with outlandish names and
+English manners and morals flit to and fro. Addison's _Vision of
+Mirza_ (1711), Johnson's _Rasselas_ (1759), and various essays in
+_The Rambler_, Dr. Hawkesworth's _Almoran and Hamet_ (1761),
+Langhorne's _Solyman and Almena_ (1762), Ridley's _Tales of the
+Genii_ (1764), and Mrs. Sheridan's _History of Nourjahad_ (1767)
+were among the best and most popular of the Anglo-Oriental
+stories that strove to inculcate moral truths. In their
+oppressive air of gravity, Beckford, with his implacable hatred
+of bores, could hardly have breathed. One of the most amazing
+facts about his wild fantasy is that it was the creation of an
+English brain. The idea of _Vathek_ was probably suggested to
+Beckford by the witty Oriental tales of Count Antony Hamilton and
+of Voltaire. The character of the caliph, who desired to know
+everything, even the sciences which did not exist, is sketched in
+the spirit of the French satirists, who turned Oriental
+extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the
+close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls
+of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set
+out and rose to an exalted solemnity.
+
+Beckford's mind was so richly stored with the jewels of Eastern
+legend that it was inevitable he should shower from his treasury
+things new and old, but everything which passes through the
+alembic of his imagination is transmuted almost beyond
+recognition. The episode of the sinners with the flaming hearts
+has been traced[66] to a scene in the _Mogul Tales_, where Aboul
+Assam saw three men standing mute in postures of sorrow before a
+book on which were inscribed the words: "Let no man touch this
+divine treatise who is not perfectly pure." When Aboul Assam
+enquired of their fate they unbuttoned their waistcoats, and
+through their skin, which appeared like crystal, he saw their
+hearts encompassed with fire. In Beckford's story this grotesque
+scene assumes an awful and moving dignity. From _The Adventure of
+Abdallah, Son of Hanif_, Beckford derived the conception of a
+visit to the regions of Eblis, whom, however, by a wave of his
+wand, he transforms from a revolting ogre to a stately
+prince.[67]
+
+To read _Vathek_ is like falling asleep in a huge Oriental palace
+after wandering alone through great, echoing halls resplendent
+with a gorgeous arras, on which are displayed the adventures of
+the caliph who built the palaces of the five senses. In our dream
+the caliph and his courtiers come to life, and we awake dazzled
+with the memory of a myriad wonders. There throng into our mind a
+crowd of unearthly forms--aged astrologers, hideous Giaours,
+gibbering negresses, graceful boys and maidens, restless, pacing
+figures with their hands on their hearts, and a formidable
+prince--whose adventures are woven into a fantastic but distinct
+and definite pattern around the three central personages, the
+caliph Vathek, his exquisitely wicked mother Carathis, and the
+bewitching Nouronihar. The fatal palace of Eblis, with its lofty
+columns and gloomy towers of an architecture unknown in the
+annals of the earth, looms darkly in our imagination. Beckford
+alludes, with satisfaction, to _Vathek_ as a "story so horrid
+that I tremble while relating it, and have not a nerve in my
+frame but vibrates like an aspen,"[68] and in the _Episodes_
+leads us with an unhallowed pleasure into other abodes of
+horror--a temple adorned with pyramids of skulls festooned with
+human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with human faces, and an
+apartment whose walls were hung with carpets of a thousand kinds
+and a thousand hues, which moved slowly to and fro as if stirred
+by human creatures stifling beneath their weight. But Beckford
+passes swiftly from one mood to another, and was only momentarily
+fascinated by terror. So infinite is the variety of _Vathek_ in
+scenery and in temper that it seems like its wealthy, eccentric,
+author secluded in Fonthill Abbey, to dwell apart in defiant,
+splendid isolation.
+
+It is impossible to understand or appreciate _Vathek_ apart from
+Beckford's life and character, which contain elements almost as
+grotesque and fantastic as those of his romance. He was no
+visionary dreamer, content to build his pleasure-domes in air. He
+revelled in the golden glories of good Haroun-Alraschid,[69] but
+he craved too for solid treasures he could touch and handle, for
+precious jewels, for rare, beautiful volumes, for curious, costly
+furniture. The scenes of splendour portrayed in _Vathek_ were
+based on tangible reality.[70] Beckford's schemes in later
+life--his purchase of Gibbon's entire library, his twice-built
+tower on Lansdown Hill, were as grandiose and ambitious as those
+of an Eastern caliph. The whimsical, Puckish humour, which helped
+to counteract the strain of gloomy bitterness in his nature, was
+early revealed in his _Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary
+Painters_ and in his burlesques of the sentimental novels of the
+day, which were accepted by the compiler of _Living Authors_
+(1817) as a serious contribution to fiction by one Miss Jacquetta
+Agneta Mariana Jenks. Moore,[71] in his _Journal_, October 1818,
+remarks:
+
+     "The two mock novels, _Azemia_ and _The Elegant
+     Enthusiast_, were written to ridicule the novels
+     written by his sister, Mrs. Harvey (I think), who read
+     these parodies on herself quite innocently."
+
+Even in the gloomy regions of Eblis, Beckford will not wholly
+repress his sense of the ridiculous. Carathis, unawed by the
+effulgence of his infernal majesty, behaves like a buffoon,
+shouting at the Dives and actually attempting to thrust a Soliman
+from his throne, before she is finally whirled away with her
+heart aflame. The calm politeness with which the dastardly
+Barkiaroukh consents to a blood-curdling murder, the sardonic
+dialogue between Vathek on the edge of the precipice and the
+Giaour concealed in the abyss, the buoyantly high-spirited
+description of the plump Indian kicked and pursued like "an
+invulnerable football," the oppressive horror of the subterranean
+recesses, the mischievous pleasantry of the Gulchenrouz idyll
+reveal different facets of Beckford's ever-varying temper. In
+_Vathek_, Beckford found expression not only for his devotion to
+the Eastern outlook on life, but also for his own strangely
+coloured, vehement personality. The interpreter walks ever at our
+elbow whispering into our ear his human commentary on Vathek's
+astounding adventures.
+
+Beckford's pictures are remarkable for definite precision of
+outline. There are no vague hints and suggestions, no lurking
+shadows concealing untold horrors. The quaint dwarfs perched on
+Vathek's shoulders, the children chasing blue butterflies,
+Nouronihar and her maidens on tiptoe, with their hair floating in
+the breeze, stand out in clear relief, as if painted on a fresco.
+The imagery is so lucid that we are able to follow with
+effortless pleasure the intricate windings of a plot which at
+Beckford's whim twists and turns through scenes of wonderful
+variety. Amid his wild, erratic excursions he never loses sight
+of the end in view; the story, with all its vagaries, is
+perfectly coherent. This we should expect from one who "loved to
+bark a tough understanding."[72] It is the intellectual strength
+and exuberant vitality behind Beckford's Oriental scenes that
+lend them distinction and power.
+
+_The History of the Caliph Vathek_ did not set a fashion. It is
+true that the Orient sometimes formed the setting of nineteenth
+century novels, as in Disraeli's _Alvoy_ (1833), where for a
+brief moment, when the hero's torch is extinguished by bats on
+his entry into subterranean portals, we find ourselves in the
+abode of wonder and terror; but not till Meredith's _Shaving of
+Shagpal_ (1856) do we meet again Beckford's kinship with the
+East, and his gift for fantastic burlesque.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
+
+
+When Miss Austen was asked to write a historical romance
+"illustrative of the house of Coburg," she airily dismissed the
+suggestion, pleading mirthfully:
+
+     "I could not sit down seriously to write a serious
+     romance under any other motive than to save my life,
+     and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and
+     never relax into laughing at myself or at other people
+     I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the
+     first chapter."[73]
+
+If Godwin had been confronted with the same offer, he would have
+settled himself promptly to plot out a scheme, and within a few
+months a historical romance on the house of Coburg, accompanied
+perchance by a preface setting forth the evils of monarchy, would
+have been in the hands of the publisher. Unlike Miss Austen,
+Godwin had neither a sense of humour nor a fastidious artistic
+conscience to save him from undertaking incongruous tasks. He
+seems never even to have suspected the humour of life, and would
+have perceived nothing ludicrous in the spectacle of the author
+of _Political Justice_ embarking on such a piece of work. Those
+disquieting flashes of self-revelation that more imaginative men
+catch in the mirror of their own minds and that awaken sometimes
+laughter and sometimes tears, never disturbed Godwin's serenity.
+He brooded earnestly over his speculations, quietly ignoring
+inconvenient facts and never shrinking from absurd conclusions.
+In theory he aimed at disorganising the whole of human society,
+yet in actual life he was content to live unobtrusively,
+publishing harmless books for children; and though he abhorred
+the principle of aristocracy, he did not scruple to accept a
+sinecure from government through Lord Grey. Notwithstanding his
+stolid inconsistency and his deficiency in humour, Godwin is a
+figure whom it is impossible to ignore or to despise. He was not
+a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader
+of the trained thinkers of the revolutionary party, a political
+rebel who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the
+manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable
+and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the
+futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the
+aridity of his style. His _Political Justice_ remains,
+nevertheless, a lucidly written, well-ordered piece of
+intellectual reasoning. Shelley spoke of Godwin's _Mandeville_ in
+the same breath with Plato's _Symposium_[74] and the ideas
+expressed in _Political Justice_ inspired him to write not merely
+_Queen Mab_ but the _Revolt of Islam_ and _Prometheus Unbound_.
+Godwin's plea for the freedom of the individual and his belief in
+the perfectibility of man through reason had a far-reaching
+effect that cannot be readily estimated, but, as his theories
+only concern us here in so far as they affect two of his novels,
+it is unnecessary to pursue the trail of his influence further.
+
+That the readers of fiction in the last decade of the eighteenth
+century eagerly desired the mysterious and the terrible, Mrs.
+Radcliffe's widespread popularity proved unmistakably. To satisfy
+this craving, Godwin, who was ever on the alert to discover a
+subject which promised swift and adequate financial return,
+turned to novel-writing, and supplied a tale of mystery, _The
+Adventures of Caleb Williams_ (1794), and a supernatural,
+historical romance, _St. Leon_ (1799). As he was a political
+philosopher by nature and a novelist only by profession, he
+artfully inveigled into his romances the theories he wished to
+promote. The second title of _Caleb Williams_ is significant.
+_Things As They Are_ to Godwin's mind was synonymous with "things
+as they ought not to be." He frankly asserts: "_Caleb Williams_
+was the offspring of that temper of mind in which the composition
+of my _Political Justice_ left me"[75]--a guileless confession
+that may well have deterred many readers who recoil shuddering
+from political treatises decked out in the guise of fiction. But
+alarm is needless; for, although _Caleb Williams_ attempts to
+reveal the oppressions that a poor man may endure under existing
+conditions, and the perversion of the character of an aristocrat
+through the "poison of chivalry," the story may be enjoyed for
+its own sake. We can read it, if we so desire, purely for the
+excitement of the plot, and quietly ignore the underlying
+theories, just as it is possible to enjoy Spenser's sensuous
+imagery without troubling about his allegorical meaning. The
+secret of Godwin's power seems to be that he himself was so
+completely fascinated by the intricate structure of his story
+that he succeeds in absorbing the attention of his readers. He
+bestowed infinite pains on the composition of _Caleb Williams_,
+and conceived the lofty hope that it "would constitute an epoch
+in the mind of every reader."[76] A friend to whom he submitted
+two-thirds of his manuscript advised him to throw it into the
+fire and so safeguard his reputation. The result of this
+criticism on a character less determined or less phlegmatic than
+Godwin's would have been a violent reaction from hope to despair.
+But Godwin, who seems to have been independent of external
+stimulus, was not easily startled from his projects, and plodded
+steadily forward until his story was complete. He would have
+scorned not to execute what his mind had conceived. Godwin's
+businesslike method of planning the story backwards has been
+adopted by Conan Doyle and other writers of the detective story.
+The deliberate, careful analysis of his mode of procedure, so
+characteristic of his mind and temper, is full of interest:
+
+     "I bent myself to the conception of a series of
+     adventures of flight and pursuit: the fugitive in
+     perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the
+     worst calamities and the pursuer by his ingenuity and
+     resources keeping the victim in a state of the most
+     fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume.
+     I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and
+     impressive situation adequate to account for the
+     impulse that the pursuer should feel incessantly to
+     alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable
+     resolution never to allow him the least interval of
+     peace and security. This I apprehended could best be
+     effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of
+     which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
+     unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would
+     thus have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy
+     discoverer that he might deprive him of peace,
+     character and credit, and have him for ever in his
+     power. This constituted the outline of my second
+     volume... To account for the fearful events of the
+     third it was necessary that the pursuer should be
+     invested with every advantage of fortune, with a
+     resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle and with
+     extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my
+     purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale
+     be answered without his appearing to have been
+     originally endowed with a mighty store of amiable
+     dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to
+     the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
+     deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to
+     have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was
+     necessary to make him ... the tenant of an atmosphere
+     of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted
+     almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were
+     ample materials for a first volume."[77]
+
+Godwin hoped that an "entire unity of plot" would be the
+infallible result of this ingenious method of constructing his
+story, and only wrote in a high state of excitement when the
+"afflatus" was upon him. So far as we may judge from his
+description, he seems to have realised his story first as a
+complex psychological situation, not as a series of disconnected
+pictures. He thought in abstractions not in visual images, and he
+had next to make his abstractions concrete by inventing figures
+whose actions should be the result of the mental and moral
+conflict he had conceived. Godwin's attitude to his art forms a
+striking contrast to that of Mrs. Radcliffe. She has her set of
+marionettes, appropriately adorned, ready to move hither and
+thither across her picturesque background as soon as she has
+deftly manipulated the machinery which is to set them in motion.
+Godwin, on the other hand, first constructs his machinery, and
+afterwards, with laborious effort, carves the figures who are to
+be attached to the wires. He cares little for costume or setting,
+but much for the complicated mechanism that controls the destiny
+of his characters. The effect of this difference in method is
+that we soon forget the details of Mrs. Radcliffe's plots, but
+remember isolated pictures. After reading _Caleb Williams_ we
+recollect the outline of the story in so far as it relates to the
+psychology of Falkland and his secretary; but of the actual
+scenes and people only vague images drift through our memory.
+Godwin's point of view was not that of an artist but of a
+scientist, who, after patiently investigating and analysing
+mental and emotional phenomena, chose to embody his results in
+the form of a novel. He spared no pains to make his narrative
+arresting and convincing. The story is told by Caleb Williams
+himself, who, in describing his adventures, revives the passions
+and emotions that had stirred him in the past. By this device
+Godwin trusted to lend energy and vitality to his story.
+
+Caleb Williams, a raw country youth, becomes secretary to
+Falkland, a benevolent country gentleman, who has come to settle
+in England after spending some years in Italy. Collins, the
+steward, tells Williams his patron's history. Falkland has always
+been renowned for the nobility of his character. In Italy, where
+he inspired the love and devotion of an Italian lady, he avoided,
+by "magnanimity," a duel with her lover. On Falkland's return to
+England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his
+popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him. When Miss
+Melville, Tyrrel's ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who
+had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to
+a boorish, brutal farm-labourer. Though Falkland's timely
+intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died
+as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of
+tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public assembly to
+denounce Tyrrel as her murderer. The squire retaliated by making
+a personal assault on his antagonist. As Falkland "had perceived
+the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel," and as
+duelling according to the Godwinian principles was "the vilest of
+all egotism," he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of
+meeting his assailant in physical or even mental combat. Yet "he
+was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
+chivalry ever to forget the situation"--as Godwin seems to think
+a "man of reason" might have done in these circumstances. Tyrrel
+was stabbed in the dark, and Falkland, on whom suspicion
+naturally fell, was tried, but eventually acquitted without a
+stain on his character. Two men--a father and son called
+Hawkins--whom Falkland had befriended against the overbearing
+Tyrrel, were condemned and executed for the crime. This is the
+state of affairs when Caleb Williams enters Falkland's service
+and takes up the thread of the narrative. On hearing the story of
+the murder, Williams, who has been perplexed by the gloomy moods
+of his master, allows his suspicions to rest on Falkland, and to
+gratify his overmastering passion of curiosity determines to spy
+incessantly until he has solved the problem. One day, after
+having heard a groan of anguish, Williams peers through the
+half-open door of a closet, and catches sight of Falkland in the
+act of opening the lid of a chest. This incident fans his
+smouldering curiosity into flame, and he is soon after detected
+by his master in an attempt to break open the chest in the
+"Bluebeard's chamber." Not without cause, Falkland is furiously
+angry, but for some inexplicable reason confesses to the murder,
+at the same time expressing his passionate determination at all
+costs to preserve his reputation. He is tortured, not by remorse
+for his crime, but by the fear of being found out, and seeks to
+terrorise Williams into silence by declaring:
+
+     "To gratify a foolishly inquisitive humour you have
+     sold yourself. You shall continue in my service, but
+     can never share my affection. If ever an unguarded word
+     escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy
+     or suspicion, expect to pay for it by your death or
+     worse."
+
+From this moment Williams is helpless. Turn where he will, the
+toils of Falkland encompass him. Forester, Falkland's
+half-brother, tries to persuade Williams to enter his service.
+Williams endeavours to flee from his master, who prevents his
+escape by accusing him, in the presence of Forester, of stealing
+some jewellery and bank-notes which have disappeared in the
+confusion arising from an alarm of fire. The plunder has been
+placed in Williams' boxes, and the evidence against him is
+overwhelming. He is imprisoned, and the sordid horror of his life
+in the cells gives Godwin an opportunity of showing "how man
+becomes the destroyer of man." He escapes, and is sheltered by a
+gang of thieves, whose leader, Raymond, a Godwinian theorist,
+listens with eager sympathy to his tale, which he regards as
+"only one fresh instance of the tyranny and perfidiousness
+exercised by the powerful members of the community against those
+who are less privileged than themselves." When a reward is
+offered for the capture of Williams, the thieves are persuaded
+that they must not deliver the lamb to the wolf. After an old
+hag, whose animosity he has aroused, has made a bloodthirsty
+attack on him with a hatchet, Williams feels obliged to leave
+their habitation "abruptly without leave-taking." He then assumes
+beggar's attire and an Irish brogue, but is soon compelled to
+seek a fresh disguise. In Wales as in London, he comes across
+someone who has known Falkland, and is reviled for his treachery
+to so noble a master, and cast forth with ignominy. He discovers
+that Falkland has hired an unscrupulous villain, Gines, to follow
+him from place to place, blackening his reputation. Finally
+desperation drives him to accuse Falkland openly, though, after
+doing so, he praises the murderer, and loathes himself for his
+betrayal:
+
+"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature ... a man worthy of affection
+and kindness ... I am myself the basest and most odious of
+mankind."
+
+The inexorable persecutor in return cries at last:
+
+     "Williams, you have conquered! I see too late the
+     greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it
+     is to my fault and not yours that I owe my ruin ... I
+     am the most execrable of all villains... As reputation
+     was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that
+     death and infamy must seize me together."
+
+Three days later Falkland dies, but instead of experiencing
+relief at the death of his persecutor, Williams becomes the
+victim of remorse, regarding himself as the murderer of a noble
+spirit, who had been inevitably ruined by the corruption of human
+society:
+
+"Thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth,
+and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to
+thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
+madness."
+
+At the conclusion of the story, Godwin has not succeeded in
+making his moral very clear. The "wicked aristocrat" who figures
+in the preface as "carrying into private life the execrable
+principles of kings and ministers" emerges at last almost as a
+saintly figure, who through a false notion of honour has
+unfortunately become the victim of a brutal squire. But, if the
+story does not "rouse men to a sense of the evils of slavery," or
+"constitute an epoch in the mind of every reader," it has
+compensating merits and may be read with unfailing interest
+either as a study of morbid psychology or as a spirited detective
+story. Godwin's originality in his dissection of human motive has
+hardly yet been sufficiently emphasised, perhaps because he is so
+scrupulous in acknowledging literary debts.[78] From Mrs.
+Radcliffe, whose _Romance of the Forest_ was published the year
+before _Caleb Williams_, he borrowed the mysterious chest, the
+nature of whose contents is hinted at but never actually
+disclosed; but Godwin was no wizard, and had neither the gift nor
+the inclination to conjure with Gothic properties. In leaving
+imperfectly explained the incident of the discovery of the heart
+in _The Monastery_, Scott shielded himself behind Godwin's Iron
+Chest, which gave its name to Colman's drama.[79] Godwin's
+peculiar interest was in criminal psychology, and he concentrates
+on the dramatic conflict between the murderer and the detective.
+An unusual turn is given to the story by the fact that the
+criminal is the pursuer instead of the pursued. Godwin intended
+later in life to write a romance based on the story of Eugene
+Aram, the philosophical murderer; and his careful notes on the
+scheme are said to have been utilised by his friend, Bulwer
+Lytton, in his novel of that name.[80] _Caleb Williams_ helped to
+popularise the criminal in fiction, and _Paul Clifford_, the
+story of the chivalrous highwayman, is one of its literary
+descendants.
+
+Godwin was a pioneer breaking new ground in fiction; and, as he
+was a man of talent rather than of genius, it is idle to expect
+perfection of workmanship. The story is full of improbabilities,
+but they are described in so matter-of-fact a style that we
+"soberly acquiesce." After an hour of Godwin's grave society an
+effervescent sense of humour subsides. A mind open to suggestion
+is soon infected by his imperturbable seriousness, which
+effectually stills "obstinate questionings." Even the brigands
+who live with their philanthropic leader are accepted without
+demur. After all, Raymond is only Robin Hood turned political
+philosopher. The ingenious resources of _Caleb Williams_ when he
+strives to elude his pursuer are part of the legitimate
+stock-in-trade of the hero of a novel of adventure. He is not as
+other men are, and comes through perilous escapades with
+miraculous success. It is at first difficult to see why Falkland
+does not realise that his plan of ceaselessly harassing his
+victim is likely to force Williams to accuse him publicly, but
+gradually we begin to regard his mental obliquity as one of the
+decrees of fate. Falkland's obtuseness is of the same nature as
+that of the sleeper who undertakes a voyage to Australia to
+deliver a letter which anywhere but in a dream would have been
+dropped in the nearest pillar-box. The obvious solution that
+would occur to a waking mind is persistently evasive. The plot of
+_Caleb Williams_ hinges on an improbability, but so does that of
+_King Lear_; and if it had not been for Falkland's stupidity, the
+story would have ended with the first volume. Godwin excels in
+the analysis of mental conditions, but fails when he attempts to
+transmute passionate feeling into words. We are conscious that he
+is a cold-blooded spectator _ab extra_ striving to describe what
+he has never felt for himself. It is not even "emotion
+recollected in tranquillity." Men of this world, who are carried
+away by scorn and anger, utter their feelings simply and
+directly. Godwin's characters pause to cull their words from
+dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that
+Williams has basely robbed his master is astonishingly elegant:
+"Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the
+opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed
+from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81]
+The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which
+was meant almost to annihilate Caleb Williams, lies effectually
+concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure
+to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections
+into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven
+impetuously forward by the excitement of his theme, he throws off
+jerky, spasmodic sentences containing but a single clause. His
+style is a curious mixture of these two manners.
+
+The aim of _St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century_, is to
+show that "boundless wealth, freedom from disease, weakness and
+death are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection and
+the charities of private life."[82] For four years Godwin had
+desired to modify what he had said on the subject of private
+affections in _Political Justice_, while he asserted his
+conviction of the general truth of his system. Godwin had argued
+that private affections resulted in partiality, and therefore
+injustice.[83] If a house were on fire, reason would urge a man
+to save Fénelon in preference to his valet; but if the rescuer
+chanced to be the brother or father of the valet, private feeling
+would intervene, unreasonably urging him to save his relative and
+abandon Fénelon. Lest he should be regarded as a wrecker of
+homes, Godwin wished to show that domestic happiness should not
+be despised by the man of reason. Instead of expressing his views
+on this subject in a succinct pamphlet, Godwin, elated by the
+success of _Caleb Williams_, decided to embody them in the form
+of a novel. He at first despaired of finding a theme so rich in
+interest as that of his first novel, but ultimately decided that
+"by mixing human feelings and passions with incredible situations
+he might conciliate the patience even of the severest
+judges."[84] The phrase, "mixing human feelings," betrays in a
+flash Godwin's mechanical method of constructing a story. He
+makes no pretence that _St. Leon_ grew naturally as a work of
+art. He imposed upon himself an unsuitable task, and, though he
+doggedly accomplished it, the result is dull and laboured.
+
+The plot of _St. Leon_ was suggested by Dr. John Campbell's
+_Hermippus Redivivus_,[85] and centres round the theories of the
+Rosicrucians. The first volume describes the early life of the
+knight St. Leon, his soldiering, his dissipations, and his happy
+marriage to Marguerite, whose character is said to have been
+modelled on that of Mary Wollstonecraft. In Paris he is tempted
+into extravagance and into playing for high stakes, with the
+result that he retires to Switzerland the "prey of poverty and
+remorse." Misfortunes pursue him for some time, but he at last
+enjoys six peaceful years, at the end of which he is visited by a
+mysterious old man, whom he conceals in a summer-house, and whom
+he refuses to betray to the Inquisitors in search of him. In
+return the old man reveals to him the secret of the elixir vitæ,
+and of the philosopher's stone. Marguerite becomes suspicious of
+the source of her husband's wealth: "For a soldier you present me
+with a projector and a chemist, a cold-blooded mortal raking in
+the ashes of a crucible for a selfish and solitary advantage."
+His son, Charles, unable to endure the aspersions cast upon his
+father's honour during their travels together in Germany, deserts
+him. St. Leon is imprisoned because he cannot account for the
+death of the stranger and for his own sudden acquisition of
+wealth, but contrives his escape by bribing the jailor. He
+travels to Italy, but is unable to escape from misfortune.
+Suspected of black magic, he becomes an object of hatred to the
+inhabitants of the town where he lives. His house is burnt down,
+his servant and his favourite dog are killed, and he soon hears
+of the death of his unhappy wife. He is imprisoned in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition, but escapes, and takes refuge with a
+Jew, whom he compels to shelter him, until another dose of the
+elixir restores his youthful appearance, and he sets forth again,
+this time disguised as a wealthy Spanish cavalier. He visits his
+own daughters, representing himself as the executor under their
+father's will. He decides to devote himself to the service of
+others, and is revered as the saviour of Hungary, until
+disaffection, caused by a shortage of food, renders him
+unpopular. He makes a friend of Bethlem Gabor, whose wife and
+children have been savagely murdered by a band of marauders. St.
+Leon, we are told, "found an inexhaustible and indescribable
+pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul."
+But Gabor soon conceives a bitter hatred against him, and entraps
+him in a subterranean vault, where he languishes for many months,
+refusing to yield up his secret. At length the castle is
+besieged, and Gabor before his death gives St. Leon his liberty.
+The leader of the expedition proves to be St. Leon's long-lost
+son, Charles, who has assumed the name of De Damville. St. Leon,
+without at first revealing his identity, cultivates the
+friendship of his son, but Charles, on learning of his dealings
+with the supernatural, repudiates his father. Finally the
+marriage of his son to Pandora proves to St. Leon that despite
+his misfortunes "there is something in this world worth living
+for."
+
+The Inquisition scenes of _St. Leon_ were undoubtedly coloured
+faintly by those of Lewis's _Monk_ (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's
+_Italian_ (1798); but it is characteristic of Godwin that instead
+of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses
+rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the
+Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the
+philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye
+so familiar to readers of the novel of terror: "You wished to
+escape from its penetrating power, but you had not the strength
+to move. I began to feel as if it were some mysterious and
+superior being in human form;"[86] but apart from this trait he
+is not an impressive figure. The only character who would have
+felt perfectly at home in the realm of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk"
+Lewis is Bethlem Gabor, who appears for the first time in the
+fourth volume of _St. Leon_. He is akin to Schedoni and his
+compeers in his love of solitude, his independence of
+companionship, and his superhuman aspect, but he is a figure who
+inspires awe and pity as well as terror. Beside this personage
+the other characters pale into insignificance:
+
+     "He was more than six feet in stature ... and he was
+     built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain
+     the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like
+     thunder ... his head and chin were clothed with a thick
+     and shaggy hair, in colour a dead-black. He had
+     suffered considerable mutilation in the services
+     through which he had passed ... Bethlem Gabor, though
+     universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of
+     a soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of
+     reserve and taciturnity... Seldom did he allow himself
+     to open his thoughts but when he did, Great God! what
+     supernatural eloquence seemed to inspire and enshroud
+     him... Bethlem Gabor's was a soul that soared to a
+     sightless distance above the sphere of pity."[87]
+
+The superstitions of bygone ages, which had fired the imagination
+of so many writers of romance, left Godwin cold. He was mildly
+interested in the supernatural as affording insight into the
+"credulity of the human mind," and even compiled a treatise on
+_The Lives of the Necromancers_ (1834).[88] But the hints and
+suggestions, the gloom, the weird lights and shades which help to
+create that romantic atmosphere amid which the alchemist's dream
+seems possible of realisation are entirely lacking in Godwin's
+story. He displays everything in a high light. The transference
+of the gifts takes place not in the darkness of a subterranean
+vault, but in the calm light of a summer evening. No unearthly
+groans, no phosphorescent lights enhance the horror and mystery
+of the scene. Godwin is coolly indifferent to historical
+accuracy, and fails to transport us back far beyond the end of
+the eighteenth century. Rousseau's theories were apparently
+disseminated widely in 1525. _St. Leon_ is remembered now rather
+for its position in the history of the novel than for any
+intrinsic charm. Godwin was the first to embody in a romance the
+ideas of the Rosicrucians which inspired Bulwer Lytton's _Zicci_,
+_Zanoni_ and _A Strange Story_.
+
+_St. Leon_ was travestied, the year after it appeared, in a work
+called _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_,
+by "Count Reginald de St. Leon," which gives a scathing survey of
+the plot, with all its improbabilities exposed. The bombastic
+style of _St. Leon_ is imitated and only slightly exaggerated,
+and the author finally satirises Godwin bitterly:
+
+     "Thinking from my political writings that I was a good
+     hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing.
+     These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I
+     had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine
+     high-sounding periods would assist to make the
+     unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious
+     reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I could invent."[89]
+
+The parodist takes Godwin almost as seriously as he took himself,
+and his attack is needlessly savage. Godwin's political opinions
+may account for the brutality of his assailant who doubtless
+belonged to the other camp. When Godwin attempts the supernatural
+in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of
+mystery. The apparition in _Cloudesley_ appears, fades, and
+reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the
+Cheshire Cat in _Alice in Wonderland_:
+
+     "I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from
+     among the trees as I passed. I saw the features as
+     distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon
+     them... It was by degrees that the features showed
+     themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow.
+     I gazed upon it intently. Presently it faded away by as
+     insensible degrees as those by which it had become
+     agonisingly clear. After a short time it returned."
+
+Godwin describes a ghost as deliberately and exactly as he would
+describe a house, and his delineation causes not the faintest
+tremor. Having little imagination himself, he leaves nothing to
+the imagination of the reader. In his _Lives of the
+Necromancers_, he shows that he is interested in discovering the
+origin of a belief in natural magic; but the life stories of the
+magicians suggest no romantic pictures to his imagination. In
+dealing with the mysterious and the uncanny, Godwin was
+attempting something alien to his mind and temper.
+
+In Godwin's _St. Leon_ the elixir of life is quietly bestowed on
+the hero in a summer-house in his own garden. The poet, Thomas
+Moore, in his romance, _The Epicurean_ (1827), sends forth a
+Greek adventurer to seek it in the secret depths of the catacombs
+beneath the pyramids of Egypt. He originally intended to tell his
+story in verse, but after writing a fragment, _Alciphron_,
+abandoned this design and decided to begin again in prose. His
+story purports to be a translation of a recently discovered
+manuscript buried in the time of Diocletian. Inspired by a dream,
+in which an ancient and venerable man bids him seek the Nile if
+he wishes to discover the secret of eternal life, Alciphron, a
+young Epicurean philosopher of the second century, journeys to
+Egypt. At Memphis he falls in love with a beautiful priestess,
+Alethe, whom he follows into the catacombs. Bearing a glimmering
+lamp, he passes through a gallery, where the eyes of a row of
+corpses, buried upright, glare upon him, into a chasm peopled by
+pale, phantom-like forms. He braves the terrors of a blazing
+grove and of a dark stream haunted by shrieking spectres, and
+finds himself whirled round in chaos like a stone shot in a
+sling. Having at length passed safely through the initiation of
+Fire, Water and Air, he is welcomed into a valley of "unearthly
+sadness," with a bleak, dreary lake lit by a "ghostly glimmer of
+sunshine." He gazes with awe on the image of the god Osiris, who
+presides over the silent kingdom of the dead. Watching within the
+temple of Isis, he suddenly sees before him the priestess,
+Alethe, who guides him back to the realms of day. At the close of
+the story, after Alethe has been martyred for the Christian
+faith, Alciphron himself becomes a Christian.
+
+In _The Epicurean_, Moore shows a remarkable power of describing
+scenes of gloomy terror, which he throws into relief by
+occasional
+glimpses of light and splendour. The journey of Alciphron
+inevitably challenges comparison with that of _Vathek_, but the
+spirit of mockery that animates Beckford's story is wholly
+absent. Moore paints a theatrical panorama of effective scenes,
+but his figures are mere shadows.
+
+The miseries of an existence, prolonged far beyond the allotted
+span, are depicted not only in stories of the elixir of life, but
+in the legends centring round the Wandering Jew. Croly's
+_Salathiel_ (1829), like Eugene Sue's lengthy romance, _Le Juif
+Errant_, won fame in its own day, but is now forgotten. Some of
+Croly's descriptions, such as that of the burning trireme, have a
+certain dazzling magnificence, but the colouring is often crude
+and startling. The figure of the deathless Jew is apt to be lost
+amid the mazes of the author's rhetoric. The conception of a man
+doomed to wander eternally in expiation of a curse is in itself
+an arresting theme likely to attract a romantic writer, but the
+record of his adventures may easily become monotonous.
+
+The "novel of terror" has found few more ardent admirers than the
+youthful Shelley, who saw in it a way of escape from the harsh
+realities and dull routine of ordinary existence. From his
+childhood the world of ideas seems to have been at least as real
+and familiar to him as the material world. The fabulous beings of
+whom he talked to his young sisters--the Great Tortoise in
+Warnham Pond, the snake three hundred years old in the garden at
+Field Place, the grey-bearded alchemist in his garret[90]--had
+probably for him as much meaning and interest as the living
+people around him. Urged by a restless desire to evade the
+natural and encounter the supernatural, he wandered by night
+under the "perilous moonshine," haunted graveyards in the hope of
+"high talk with the departed dead," dabbled in chemical
+experiments and pored over ancient books of magic. It was to be
+expected that an imagination reaching out so eagerly towards the
+unknown should find refuge from the uncongenial life of Sion
+House School in the soul-stirring region of romance. Transported
+by sixpenny "blue books" and the many volumed novels in the
+Brentford circulating library, Shelley's imagination fled
+joyously to that land of unlikelihood, where the earth yawns with
+bandits' caverns inhabited by desperadoes with bloody daggers,
+where the air continually resounds with the shrieks and groans of
+melancholy spectres, and where the pale moon ever gleams on dark
+and dreadful deeds. He had reached that stage of human
+development when fairies, elves, witches and dragons begin to
+lose their charm, when the gentle quiver of fear excited by an
+ogre, who is inevitably doomed to be slain at the last, no longer
+suffices. At the approach of adolescence with its surging
+emotions and quickening intellectual life, there awakens a demand
+for more thrilling incidents, for wilder passions and more
+desperate crimes, and it is at this period that the "novel of
+terror" is likely to make its strongest appeal. Youth, with its
+inexperience, is seldom tempted to bring fiction to the test of
+reality, or to scorn it on the ground of its improbability, and
+we may be sure that Shelley and his cousin, Medwin, as they hung
+spellbound over such treasures as _The Midnight Groan, The
+Mysterious Freebooter_, or _Subterranean Horrors_ did not pause
+to consider whether the characters and adventures were true to
+life. They desired, indeed, not to criticise but to create, and
+in the winter of 1809-1810 united to produce a terrific romance,
+with the title _Nightmare_, in which a gigantic and hideous witch
+played a prominent part. After reading Schubert's _Der Ewige
+Jude_, they began a narrative poem dealing with the legend of the
+Wandering Jew,[91] who lingered in Shelley's imagination in after
+years, and whom he introduced into _Queen Mab, Prometheus
+Unbound_, and _Hellas_. The grim and ghastly legends included in
+"Monk" Lewis's _Tales of Terror_ (1799) and _Tales of Wonder_
+(1801) fascinated Shelley;[92] and the suggestive titles
+_Revenge_;[93] _Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon_;[94] _St. Edmund's
+Eve_;[95] _The Triumph of Conscience_ from the _Poems by Victor
+and Cazire_ (1810), and _The Spectral Horseman_ from _The
+Posthumous Poems of Margaret Nicholson_ (1810), all prove his
+preoccupation with the supernatural. That Shelley's enthusiasm
+for the gruesome and uncanny was not merely morbid and
+hysterical, the mad, schoolboyish letter, written while he was in
+the throes of composing _St. Irvyne_, is sufficient indication.
+In a mood of grotesque fantasy and wild exhilaration, Shelley
+invites his friend Graham to Field Place. The postscript is in
+his handwriting, but is signed by his sister Elizabeth:
+
+     "The avenue is composed of vegetable substances moulded
+     in the form of trees called by the multitude Elm trees.
+     Stalk along the road towards them and mind and keep
+     yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained
+     stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the
+     lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons
+     and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the
+     grave, that occasionally may blast your straining
+     eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction
+     should yawn beneath your feet.
+
+     "Think of all this at the frightful hour of midnight,
+     when the Hell-demon leans over your sleeping form, and
+     inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you
+     to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Sussex
+     solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight--he
+     thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But
+     the day of retribution will arrive. H + D=Hell
+     Devil."[96]
+
+That Shelley could jest thus lightly in the mock-terrific vein
+shows that his mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and
+that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling
+diversion. His _Zastrozzi_ (1810) and _St. Irvyne_ (1811) were
+probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing
+letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish
+ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their
+composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A
+letter to Peacock (Nov. 9, 1818) from Italy re-echoes the note of
+child-like enjoyment in weaving romances:
+
+"We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
+Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any
+purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing
+a novel."
+
+_Zastrozzi_ was published in April, 1810, while Shelley was still
+at Eton, and with the £40 paid for the romance, he is said to
+have given a banquet to eight of his friends. Though the story is
+little more than a _réchauffé_ of previous tales of terror, it
+evidently attained some measure of popularity. It was reprinted
+in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ in 1839. Like Godwin,
+Shelley contrived to smuggle a little contraband theory into his
+novels, but his stock-in-trade is mainly that of the
+terrormongers. The book to which Shelley was chiefly indebted was
+_Zofloya or the Moor_ (1806), by the notorious Charlotte Dacre or
+"Rosa Matilda," but there are many reminiscences of Mrs.
+Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis. The sources of _Zastrozzi_ and
+_St. Irvyne_ have been investigated in the _Modern Language
+Review_ (Jan. 1912), by Mr. A. M. D. Hughes, who gives a complete
+analysis of the plot of _Zofloya_, and indicates many parallels
+with Shelley's novels. The heroine of _Zofloya_ is clearly a
+lineal descendant of Lewis's Matilda, though Victoria di
+Loredani, with all her vices, never actually degenerates into a
+fiend. Victoria, it need hardly be stated, is nobly born, but she
+has been brought up amid frivolous society by a worthless mother,
+and: "The wildest passions predominated in her bosom; to gratify
+them she possessed an unshrinking, relentless soul that would not
+startle at the darkest crime."
+
+Zofloya, who spurs her on, is the Devil himself. The plot is
+highly melodramatic, and contains a headlong flight, an
+earthquake and several violent deaths. In _Zastrozzi_, Shelley
+draws upon the characters and incidents of this story very
+freely. His lack of originality is so obvious as to need no
+comment. The very names he chooses are borrowed. Julia is the
+name of the pensive heroine in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian
+Romance_. Matilda carries with it ugly memories of the lady in
+Lewis's _Monk_; Verezzi occurs in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
+Zastrozzi is formed by prefixing an extra syllable to the name
+Strozzi from _Zofloya_. The incidents are those which happen
+every day in the realm of terror. The villain, the hero, the
+melancholy heroine, and her artful rival, develop no new traits,
+but act strictly in accordance with tradition. They never
+infringe the rigid code of manners and morals laid down for them
+by previous generations. The scenery is invariably appropriate as
+a setting to the incidents, and even the weather may be relied on
+to act in a thoroughly conventional manner. The characters are
+remarkable for their violent emotions and their marvellously
+expressive eyes. When Verezzi's senses are "chilled with the
+frigorific torpidity of despair," his eyes "roll horribly in
+their sockets." When "direst revenge swallows up every other
+feeling" in the soul of Matilda, her eyes "scintillate with a
+fiend-like expression." Incidents follow one another with a wild
+and stupefying rapidity. Every moment is a crisis. The style is
+startlingly abrupt, and the short, disconnected paragraphs are
+fired off like so many pistol shots. The sequence of events is
+mystifying--Zastrozzi's motive for persecuting Verezzi is darkly
+concealed until the end of the story, for reasons known only to
+writers of the novel of terror. Shelley's romance, in short, is
+no better and perhaps even worse than that of the other disciples
+of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis.
+
+_St. Irvyne: or the Rosicrucian_ (1811), though it was written by
+a "Gentleman of the University of Oxford" and not by a schoolboy,
+shows slight advance on _Zastrozzi_ either in matter or manner.
+The plot indeed is more bewildering and baffling than that of
+_Zastrozzi_. The action of the story is double and alternate, the
+scene shifts from place to place, and the characters appear and
+disappear in an unaccountable and disconcerting fashion. This
+time Godwin's _St. Leon_ has to be added to the list of Shelley's
+sources. Ginotti, whose name is stolen from a brigand in
+_Zofloya_, is not the devil but one of his sworn henchmen, who
+has discovered and tasted the elixir vitae. Like Zofloya, he is
+surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery. So that he may himself
+die, Ginotti, like the old stranger in _St. Leon_, is anxious to
+impart his secret to another. He chooses as his victim,
+Wolfstein, a young noble who, like Leonardo in _Zofloya_, has
+allied himself with a band of brigands. The bandit, Ginotti, aids
+Wolfstein to escape with a beautiful captive maiden, for whom
+Shelley adopts the name Megalena from _Zofloya_. While the lovers
+are in Genoa, Megalena, discovering Wolfstein with a lady named
+Olympia, whose "character has been ruined by a false system of
+education," makes him promise to murder her rival. In Olympia's
+bedchamber Wolfstein's hand is stayed for a moment by the sight
+of her beauty--a picture which recalls the powerful scene in Mrs.
+Radcliffe's _Italian_, when Schedoni bends over the sleeping
+Ellena. After Olympia's suicide, Megalena and Wolfstein flee
+together from Genoa. In the tale of terror, as in the modern
+film-play, a flight of some kind is almost indispensable.
+Ginotti, whose habit of disappearing and reappearing reminds us
+of the ghostly monk in the ruins of Paluzzi, tells his history to
+Wolfstein, and, at the destined hour, bestows the prescription
+for the elixir, and appoints a meeting in St. Irvyne's abbey,
+where Wolfstein stumbles over the corpse of Megalena. Wolfstein
+refuses to deny God. Both Ginotti and his victim are blasted by
+lightning, amid which the "frightful prince of terror, borne on
+the pinions of hell's sulphurous whirlwind," stands before them.
+
+     "On a sudden Ginotti's frame, mouldered to a gigantic
+     skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glared in his
+     eyeless sockets. Blackened in terrible convulsions,
+     Wolfstein expired; over him had the power of hell no
+     influence. Yes, endless existence is thine, Ginotti--a
+     dateless and hopeless eternity of horror."
+
+Interspersed with this somewhat inconsequent story are the
+adventures of Eloise, who is first introduced on her return home,
+disconsolate, to a ruined abbey. We are given to understand that
+the story is to unfold the misfortunes which have led to her
+downfall, but she is happily married ere the close. She
+accompanies her dying mother on a journey, as Emily in _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_ accompanied her father, and meets a
+mysterious stranger, Nempère, at a lonely house, where they take
+refuge. Nempère proves to be a less estimable character than
+Valancourt, who fell to Emily's lot in similar circumstances. He
+sells her to an English noble, Mountfort, at whose house she
+meets Fitzeustace, who, like Vivaldi in _The Italian_, overhears
+her confession of love for himself. Nempère is killed in a duel
+by Mountfort. At the close, Shelley states abruptly that Nempère
+is Ginotti, and Eloise is Wolfstein's sister. In springing a
+secret upon us suddenly on the last page, Shelley was probably
+emulating Lewis's _Bravo of Venice_; but the conclusion, which is
+intended to forge a connecting link between the tales, is
+unsatisfying. It is not surprising that the publisher, Stockdale,
+demanded some further elucidation of the mystery. Ginotti,
+apparently, dies twice, and Shelley's letters fail to solve the
+problem. He wrote to Stockdale: "Ginotti, as you will see, did
+_not_ die by Wolfstein's hand, but by the influence of that
+natural magic, which, when the secret was imparted to the latter,
+destroyed him."[97] A few days later he wrote again, evidently in
+reply to further questions: "On a re-examination you will
+perceive that Mountfort physically did kill Ginotti, which must
+appear from the latter's paleness." The truth seems to be that
+Shelley was weary of his puppets, and had no desire to extricate
+them from the tangle in which they were involved, though he was
+impatient to see _St. Irvyne_ in print, and spoke hopefully of
+its "selling mechanically to the circulating libraries."
+
+Shelley took advantage of the privilege of writers of romance to
+palm off on the public some of his earliest efforts at
+versification. These poems, distributed impartially among the
+various characters, are introduced with the same laborious
+artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though
+suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to
+scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed
+be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to
+night or to the moon, however profound her woes. Superhuman
+strength and courage is an endowment necessary to all who would
+dwell in the realms of terror and survive the fierce struggle for
+existence. Peacock, in _Nightmare Abbey_, paints the Shelley of
+1812 in Scythrop, who devours tragedies and German romances, and
+is troubled with a "passion for reforming the world." "He slept
+with _Horrid Mysteries_ under his pillow, and dreamed of
+venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight
+conventions in subterranean caves... He had a certain portion of
+mechanical genius which his romantic projects tended to develop.
+He constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and
+secret passages, that would have baffled the skill of the
+Parisian police." His bearing was that of a romantic villain: "He
+stalked about like the grand Inquisitor, and the servants flitted
+past him like familiars."
+
+Although Shelley outgrew his youthful taste for horrors, his
+early reading left traces on the imagery and diction of his
+poetry. There is an unusual profusion in his vocabulary of such
+words as ghosts, shades, charnel, tomb, torture, agony, etc., and
+supernatural similes occur readily to his mind. In _Alastor_ he
+compares himself to
+
+  "an inspired and desperate alchymist
+  Staking his very life on some dark hope,"
+
+and cries:
+
+  "O that the dream
+  Of dark magician in his visioned cave
+  Raking the cinders of a crucible
+  For life and power, even when his feeble hand
+  Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
+  Of this so lonely world."
+
+In the _Ode to the West Wind_ his memories of an older and finer
+kind of romance suggested the fantastic comparison of the dead
+leaves to
+
+  "ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,"
+
+and in _Prometheus Unbound_ Panthea sees
+
+  "unimaginable shapes
+  Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deeps."
+
+The poem _Ginevra_, which describes an enforced wedding and the
+death of the bride at the sight of her real lover, may well have
+been inspired by reading the romances of terror, where such
+events are an everyday occurrence. The gruesome descriptions in
+_The Revolt of Islam_, the decay of the garden in _The Sensitive
+Plant_, the tortures of Prometheus, all show how Shelley strove
+to work on the instinctive emotion of fear. In _The Cenci_ he
+touches the profoundest depths of human passion, and shows his
+power of finding words, terrible in their simple grandeur, for a
+soul in agony. In the tragedies of Shakespeare and of his
+followers--Ford, Webster and Tourneur--Shelley had heard the true
+language of anguish and despair. The futile, frenzied shrieking
+of Matilda and her kind is forgotten in the passionate nobility
+or fearful calm of the speeches of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to be
+expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published _The
+Italian_, Jane Austen had completed her _Northanger Abbey_,
+ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that
+for the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Mrs. Radcliffe received £500, and
+for _The Italian_ £800; while for the manuscript of _Northanger
+Abbey_, the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of
+£10, selling it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.
+The contrast in market value is significant. The publisher, who,
+it may be added, was not necessarily a literary critic, probably
+realised that if the mock romance were successful, its tendency
+would be to endanger the popularity of the prevailing mode in
+fiction. Hence for many years it was concealed as effectively as
+if it had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. Among Jane Austen's early unpublished
+writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and
+exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly
+romances"; but her spirited defence of the novelist's art in
+_Northanger Abbey_ is clear evidence that her raillery is
+directed not against fiction in general, but rather against such
+"horrid" stories as those included in the list supplied to
+Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the sweetest creatures
+in the world."
+
+It has sometimes been supposed that the more fantastic titles in
+this catalogue were figments of Jane Austen's imagination, but
+the identity of each of the seven stories may be established
+beyond question. Two of the stories--_The Necromancer of the
+Black Forest_, a translation from the German, and _The Castle of
+Wolfenbach_, by Mrs. Eliza Parsons (who was also responsible for
+_Mysterious Warnings_)--may still be read in _The Romancist and
+Novelist's Library_ (1839-1841), a treasure-hoard of forgotten
+fiction. _Clermont_ (1798) was published by Mrs. Regina Maria
+Roche, the authoress of _The Children of the Abbey_ (1798), a
+story almost as famous in its day as _Udolpho_. The author of
+_The Midnight Bell_ was one George Walker of Bath, whose record,
+like that of Miss Eleanor Sleath, who wrote the moving history of
+_The Orphan of the Rhine_ (1798) in four volumes, may be found in
+Watts' _Bibliotheca Britannica_. _Horrid Mysteries_, perhaps the
+least credible of the titles, was a translation from the German
+of the Marquis von Grosse by R. Will. Jane Austen's attack has no
+tinge of bitterness or malice. John Thorpe, who declared all
+novels, except _Tom Jones_ and _The Monk_, "the stupidest things
+in creation," admitted, when pressed by Catherine, that Mrs.
+Radcliffe's were "amusing enough" and "had some fun and nature in
+them"; and Henry Tilney, a better judge, owned frankly that he
+had "read all her works, and most of them with great pleasure."
+From this we may assume that Miss Austen herself was perhaps
+conscious of their charm as well as their absurdity.
+
+Sheridan's Lydia Languish (1775) and Colman's Polly Honeycombe
+(1777) were both demoralised by the follies of sentimental
+fiction, as Biddy Tipkin, in Steele's _Tender Husband_ (1705),
+had been by romances. It was Miss Austen's purpose in creating
+Catherine Morland to present a maiden bemused by Gothic romance:
+
+"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would
+have supposed her born to be a heroine." In almost every detail
+she is a refreshing contrast to the traditional type. Two
+long-lived conventions--the fragile mother, who dies at the
+heroine's birth, and the tyrannical father--are repudiated at the
+very outset; and Catherine is one of a family of seven. We cannot
+conceive that Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines even at the age of ten
+would "love nothing so well in the world as rolling down the
+green slope at the back of the house." Her accomplishments lack
+the brilliance and distinction of those of Adela and Julia, but,
+
+     "Though she could not write sonnets she brought herself
+     to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her
+     throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on
+     the pianoforte, she could listen to other people's
+     performances with very little fatigue. Her greatest
+     deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of
+     drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her
+     lover's profile, that she might be detected in the
+     design. There she fell miserably short of the true
+     heroic height...Not one started with rapturous wonder
+     on beholding her...nor was she once called a divinity
+     by anybody."
+
+She had no lover at the age of seventeen,
+
+     "because there was not a lord in the neighbourhood--not
+     even a baronet. There was not one family among their
+     acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy
+     accidentally found at their door--not one whose origin
+     was unknown."
+
+Nor is Catherine aided in her career by those "improbable
+events," so dear to romance, that serve to introduce a hero--a
+robber's attack, a tempest, or a carriage accident. With a sly
+glance at such dangerous characters as Lady Greystock in _The
+Children of the Abbey_ (1798), Miss Austen creates the inert, but
+good-natured Mrs. Alien as Catherine's chaperone in Bath:
+
+     "It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs.
+     Alien that the reader may be able to judge in what
+     manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the
+     general distress of the work and how she will probably
+     contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the
+     desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is
+     capable, whether by her imprudence, vulgarity or
+     jealousy--whether by intercepting her letters, ruining
+     her character or turning her out of doors."
+
+Amid all the diversions of the gay and beautiful city of Bath,
+Miss Austen does not lose sight entirely of her satirical aim,
+though she turns aside for a time. Catherine's confusion of mind
+is suggested with exquisite art in a single sentence. As she
+drives with John Thorpe she "meditates by turns on broken
+promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys
+and trapdoors." This prepares us for the delightful scene in
+which Tilney, on the way to the abbey, foretells what Catherine
+may expect on her arrival. The hall dimly lighted by the expiring
+embers of a wood fire, the deserted bedchamber "never used since
+some cousin or kin had died in it about twenty years before," the
+single lamp, the tapestry, the funereal bed, the broken lute, the
+ponderous chest, the secret door, the vaulted room, the rusty
+dagger, the cabinet of ebony and gold with its roll of
+manuscripts, prove his intimacy with _The Romance of the Forest_,
+as well as with _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. The black chest and
+the cabinet are there in startling fulfilment of his prophecies,
+and when, just as with beating heart Catherine is about to
+decipher the roll of paper she has discovered in the cabinet
+drawer, she accidentally extinguishes her candle:
+
+     "A lamp could not have expired with more awful
+     effect... Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled
+     the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden
+     fury, added fresh horror to the moment... Human nature
+     could support no more ... groping her way to the bed
+     she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
+     agony by creeping far beneath the clothes... The storm
+     still raged... Hour after hour passed away, and the
+     wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the
+     clocks in the house before the tempest subsided, and
+     she, unknowingly, fell fast asleep. She was awakened
+     the next morning at eight o'clock by the housemaid's
+     opening her window-shutter. She flew to the mysterious
+     manuscript, If the evidence of sight might be trusted
+     she held a washing bill in her hands ... she felt
+     humbled to the dust."
+
+Even this bitter humiliation does not sweep away the cobwebs of
+romance from Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark
+suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether
+inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey
+than the other characters that he might reasonably be expected to
+dabble in the sinister. This time Catherine is misled by memories
+of the _Sicilian Romance_ into weaving a mystery around the fate
+of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her
+husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for
+"glimmering lights," like those in the palace of Mazzini, and
+determines to search for "a fragmented journal continued to the
+last gasp," like that of Adeline's father in _The Romance of the
+Forest_. In this search she encounters Tilney, who has returned
+unexpectedly from Woodston. He dissipates once and for all her
+nervous fancies, and Catherine decides: "Among the Alps and
+Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as
+were not spotless as an angel, might have the dispositions of a
+fiend. But in England it was not so."
+
+Miss Austen's novel is something more than a mock-romance, and
+Catherine is not a mere negative of the traditional heroine, but
+a human and attractive girl, whose fortunes we follow with the
+deepest interest. At the close, after Catherine's ignominious
+journey home, we are back again in the cool world of reality. The
+abbey is abandoned, after it has served its purpose in
+disciplining the heroine, in favour of the unromantic country
+parsonage.
+
+In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen had deftly turned the novels
+of Mrs. Radcliffe to comedy; but, even if her parody had been
+published in 1798, when we are assured that it was completed, her
+satirical treatment was too quiet and subtle, too delicately
+mischievous, to have disturbed seriously the popularity of the
+novel of terror. We can imagine the Isabella Thorpes and Lydia
+Bennets of the day dismissing _Northanger Abbey_ with a yawn as
+"an amazing dull book," and returning with renewed zest to more
+stimulating and "horrid" stories. Maria Edgeworth too had aimed
+her shaft at the sentimental heroine in one of her _Moral
+Tales--Angelina or L'Amie Inconnue_ (1801). Miss Sarah Green, in
+_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_ (1810) had displayed the
+extravagant folly of a clergyman's daughter whose head was turned
+by romances. Ridicule of a more blatant and boisterous kind was
+needed, and this was supplied by Eaton Stannard Barrett, who, in
+1813--five years before _Northanger Abbey_ appeared--published
+_The Heroine or The Adventures of Cherubina_. In this farcical
+romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an
+onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and
+blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like
+Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his
+farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it
+was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a
+madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring
+note in a rollicking high-spirited farce. The plights into which
+Cherubina is plunged are so needlessly cruel, that, while only
+intending to make her ridiculous, Barrett succeeds rather in
+making her pitiable. But many of her adventures are only a shade
+more absurd than those in the romances at which he tilts. Regina
+Maria Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798) would take the wind
+from the sails of any parodist. In protracting _The Heroine_
+almost to wearisome length, Barrett probably acted deliberately
+in mimicry of this and a horde of other tedious romances.
+Certainly the unfortunate Stuart waits no longer for the
+fulfilment of his hopes than Lord Mortimer, the long-suffering
+hero of _The Children of the Abbey_, who early in the first
+volume demands of Amanda Fitzalan, what he calls an
+"éclaircissement," but does not win it until the close of the
+fourth. Barrett does not scruple to mention the titles of the
+books he derides. The following catalogue will show how widely he
+casts his net: _Mysteries of Udolpho, Romance of the Forest,
+Children of the Abbey, Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, Clarissa
+Harlowe, Evelina, Camilla, Cecilia, La Nouvelle Heloïse,
+Rasselas, The Delicate Distress, Caroline of Lichfield_,[98] _The
+Knights of the Swan_,[99] _The Beggar Girl, The Romance of the
+Highlands_.[100] Besides these novels, which he actually names,
+Barrett alludes indirectly to several others, among them
+_Tristram Shandy_ and _Amelia_. From this enumeration it is
+evident that Barrett was satirising the heroine, not merely of
+the "novel of terror," but of the "sentimental novel" from which
+she traced her descent. He organises a masquerade, mindful that
+it is always the scene of the heroine's "best adventure," with
+Fielding's _Amelia_ and Miss Burney's _Cecilia_ and probably
+other novels in view. The precipitate flight of Cherubina,
+"dressed in a long-skirted red coat stiff with tarnished lace, a
+satin petticoat, satin shoes and no stockings," and with hair
+streaming like a meteor, described in Letter XX, is clearly a
+cruel mockery of Cecilia's distressful plight in Miss Burney's
+novel. Even Scott is not immune from Barrett's barbed arrows, and
+Byron is glanced at in the bogus antique language of "Eftsoones."
+Barrett, indeed, jeers at the mediaeval revival in its various
+manifestations and even at "Romanticism" generally, not merely at
+the new school of fiction represented by Mrs. Radcliffe, her
+followers and rivals. Not content with reaching his aim, as he
+does again and again in _The Heroine_, Barrett, like many another
+parodist, sometimes over-reaches it, and sneers at what is not in
+itself ridiculous.
+
+Nominally Cherubina is the butt of Barrett's satire, but the
+permanent interest of the book lies in the skilful stage-managing
+of her lively adventures. There is hardly an attempt at
+characterisation. The people are mere masqueraders, who amuse us
+by their costume and mannerisms, but reveal no individuality. The
+plot is a wild extravaganza, crammed with high-flown,
+mock-romantic episodes. Cherry Wilkinson, as the result of a
+surfeit of romances, perhaps including _The Misanthropic Parent
+or The Guarded Secret_ (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real
+father--a worthy farmer--to look for more aristocratic parents.
+As he is not picturesque enough for a villain, she repudiates him
+with scorn: "Have you the gaunt ferocity of famine in your
+countenance? Can you darken the midnight with a scowl? Have you
+the quivering lip and the Schedoniac contour? In a word, are you
+a picturesque villain full of plot and horror and magnificent
+wickedness? Ah! no, sir, you are only a sleek, good-humoured,
+chuckle-headed, old gentleman." In the course of her search she
+meets with amazing adventures, which she describes in a series of
+letters to her governess. She changes her name to Cherubina de
+Willoughby, and journeys to London, where, mistaking Covent
+Garden Theatre for an ancient castle, she throws herself on the
+protection of a third-rate actor, Grundy. He readily falls in
+with her humour, assuming the name of Montmorenci, and a suit of
+tin armour and a plumed helmet for her delight. Later, Cherubina
+is entertained by Lady Gwyn, who, for the amusement of her
+guests, heartlessly indulges her propensity for the romantic, and
+poses as her aunt. She is introduced in a gruesome scene, which
+recalls the fate of Agnes in Lewis's _Monk_, to her supposed
+mother, Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs, under the title
+_Il Castello di Grimgothico_, are inserted, after the manner of
+Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis, who love an inset tale, into the
+midst of the heroine's adventures. Cherubina determines to live
+in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These
+include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of
+comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and
+Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of
+minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the
+time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking."
+The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where
+she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The
+incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are
+foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend
+them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic
+castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering
+manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed
+barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina,
+for each item in this curious medley revives moving associations
+in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school. When Cherubina
+visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our
+thoughts to _The Sicilian Romance_. In Westminster Abbey she is
+disappointed to find "no cowled monks with scapulars"--a phrase
+which flashes across our memory the sinister figure of Schedoni
+in _The Italian_. At the masquerade she plans to wear a Tuscan
+dress from _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, and, when furnishing
+Monkton Castle she bids Jerry, the Irish comic servant, bring
+"flags stained with the best old blood--feudal, if possible, an
+old lute, lyre or harp, black hangings, curtains, and a velvet
+pall." Even the banditti and condottieri, who enliven so many
+novels of terror, cannot be ignored, and are represented by a
+troop of Irish ruffians. Barrett lets nothing escape him.
+Rousseau's theories are irreverently travestied. The thunder
+rolls "in an awful and Ossianly manner"; the sun, "that
+well-known gilder of eastern turrets," rises in empurpled
+splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates
+superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods;
+the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears
+"spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding,
+flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches
+torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of
+romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are
+exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in
+itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar
+with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying the
+booty, which Barrett rifles unceremoniously from his victims, is
+a fascinating pastime.
+
+Miss Austen, with her swift stiletto, and Barrett, with his
+brutal bludgeon--to use a metaphor of "terror"--had each
+delivered an attack; and in 1818, if we may judge by Peacock's
+_Nightmare Abbey_, there is a change of fashion in fiction. How
+far this change is due to the satirists it is impossible to
+determine. Mr. Flosky, "who has seen too many ghosts himself to
+believe in their external appearance," through whose lips Peacock
+reviles "that part of the reading public which shuns the solid
+food of reason," probably gives the true cause for the waning
+popularity of the novel of terror:
+
+     "It lived upon ghosts, goblins and skeletons till even
+     the devil himself ... became too base, common and
+     popular for its surfeited appetite. The ghosts have
+     therefore been laid, and the devil has been cast into
+     outer darkness."
+
+The novel of terror has been destroyed not by its enemies but by
+its too ardent devotees. The horrid banquet, devoured with
+avidity for so many years, has become so highly seasoned that the
+jaded palate at last cries out for something different, and,
+according to Peacock, finds what it desires in "the vices and
+blackest passions of our nature tricked out in a masquerade dress
+of heroism and disappointed benevolence"--an uncomplimentary
+description of the Byronic hero. Yet sensational fiction has
+lingered on side by side with other forms of fiction all through
+the nineteenth century, because it supplies a human and natural
+craving for excitement. It may not be the dominant type, but it
+will always exist, and will produce its thrill by ever-varying
+devices. Those who scoff may be taken unawares, like the company
+in _Nightmare Abbey_. The conversation turned on the subject of
+ghosts, and Mr. Larynx related his delightfully compact ghost
+story:
+
+     "I once saw a ghost myself in my study, which is the
+     last place any one but a ghost would look for me. I had
+     not been in it for three months and was going to
+     consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a
+     venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in
+     my armchair, reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a
+     moment, and so did I, and what it was and what it
+     wanted, I have never been able to ascertain"
+
+--a quieter, more inoffensive ghost than that described by Defoe
+in his _Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions_: "A
+grave, ancient man, with a full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded
+gown, who changed into the most horrible monster that ever was
+seen, with eyes like two fiery daggers red-hot." Mr. Flosky and
+Mr. Hilary have hardly declared their disbelief in ghosts when:
+
+     "The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure,
+     shrouded in white drapery with the semblance of a
+     bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly
+     up the apartment. Mr. Flosky was not prepared for this
+     apparition, and made the best of his way out at the
+     opposite door. Mr. Hilary and Marionetta followed
+     screaming. The honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of
+     his body, first rolled off the sofa and then under it.
+     Rev. Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much
+     precipitation that he overturned the table on the foot
+     of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears
+     of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his
+     senses that missing the door he threw up one of the
+     windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head
+     and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who
+     were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by
+     the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to
+     land."
+
+In Melincourt Castle a very spacious wing was left free to the
+settlement of a colony of ghosts, and the Rev. Mr. Portpipe often
+passed the night in one of the dreaded apartments over a blazing
+fire, with the same invariable exorcising apparatus of a large
+venison pasty, a little prayer-book, and three bottles of
+Madeira. Yet despite this excellent mockery, Peacock in _Gryll
+Grange_ devotes a chapter to tales of terror and wonder, singling
+out the works of Charles Brockden Brown for praise, especially
+his _Wieland_, "one of the few tales in which the final
+explanation of the apparently supernatural does not destroy or
+diminish the original effect."
+
+The title _Nightmare Abbey_ in a catalogue would undoubtedly have
+caught the eye of Isabella Thorp or her friend Miss Andrews,
+searching eagerly for "horrid mysteries," but they would perhaps
+have detected the note of mockery in the name. They would,
+however, have been completely deceived by the title, _The Mystery
+of the Abbey_, published in Liverpool in 1819 by T.B. Johnson,
+and we can imagine their consternation and disgust on the arrival
+of the book from the circulating library. The abbey is "haunted"
+by the proprietors of a distillery; and the spectre, described in
+horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red
+handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not
+a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a
+_picaresque_ novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a
+hoax.
+
+Belinda Waters, the heroine of one of Crabbe's tales, who was "by
+nature negatively good," is a portrait after Miss Austen's own
+heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of
+circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda tosses
+wearily aside a half-read volume of _Clarissa_, commended by her
+maid, "who had _Clarissa_ for her heart's dear friend."
+
+  "Give me," she said, "for I would laugh or cry,
+  'Scenes from the Life,' and 'Sensibility,'
+  'Winters at Bath': I would that I had one!
+  'The Constant Lover,' 'The Discarded Son,'[101]
+
+  "'The Rose of Raby,'[102] 'Delmore,' or 'The Nun'[103]--
+  These promise something, and may please, perhaps,
+  Like 'Ethelinda'[104] and the dear 'Relapse.'[105]
+  To these her heart the gentle maid resigned
+  And such the food that fed the gentle mind."
+
+But even the "delicate distress" of heroines, like Niobe, all
+tears, palls at last, and Belinda, having wept her fill, craves
+now for "sterner stuff."
+
+  "Yet tales of terror are her dear delight,
+  All in the wintry storm to read at night."
+
+In _The Preceptor Husband_,[106] the pretty wife, whose notions
+of botany are delightfully vague, and who, in English history,
+light-heartedly confuses the Reformation and the Revolution, has
+tastes similar to those of Belinda. Pursued by an instructive
+husband, she turns at bay, and tells her priggish preceptor what
+kind of books she really enjoys:
+
+  "Well, if I must, I will my studies name,
+  Blame if you please--I know you love to blame--
+  When all our childish books were set apart,
+  The first I read was 'Wanderings of the Heart.'[107]
+  It was a story where was done a deed
+  So dreadful that alone I feared to read.
+  The next was 'The Confessions of a Nun'--
+  'Twas quite a shame such evils should be done.
+  Nun of--no matter for the creature's name,
+  For there are girls no nunnery can tame.
+  Then was the story of the Haunted Hall,
+  When the huge picture nodded from the wall,
+
+  "When the old lord looked up with trembling dread,
+  And I grew pale and shuddered as I read.
+  Then came the tales of Winters, Summers, Springs
+  At Bath and Brighton--they were pretty things!
+  No ghosts or spectres there were heard or seen,
+  But all was love and flight to Gretna-green.
+  Perhaps your greater learning may despise
+  What others like--and there your wisdom lies."
+
+To this attractive catalogue the preceptor husband, no doubt,
+listened with the expression of Crabbe's _Old Bachelor_:
+
+  "that kind of cool, contemptuous smile
+  Of witty persons overcharged with bile,"
+
+but she at least succeeds in interrupting his flow of information
+for the time being. He retires routed. Crabbe's close
+acquaintance with "the flowery pages of sublime distress," with
+"vengeful monks who play unpriestly tricks," with banditti
+
+        "who, in forest wide
+  Or cavern vast, indignant virgins hide,"
+
+was, as he confesses, a relic of those unregenerate days, when
+
+  "To the heroine's soul-distracting fears
+  I early gave my sixpences and tears."[108]
+
+He could have groped his way through a Gothic castle without the
+aid of a talkative housekeeper:
+
+  "I've watched a wintry night on castle-walls,
+  I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls,
+  And when the weary world was sunk to rest
+  I've had such sights--as may not be expressed.
+  Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed,
+  The peasants shun it--they are all afraid;
+  For there was done a deed--could walls reveal
+  Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel!
+
+  "Most horrid was it--for, behold, the floor
+  Has stain of blood--and will be clean no more.
+  Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
+  And the long passage send a dismal tune,
+  Music that ghosts delight in--and now heed
+  Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed.
+  See! with majestic sweep she swims alone
+  Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan,
+  Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake
+  And the feet falter every step they take.
+  Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes
+  To find a something which will soon expose
+  The villainies and wiles of her determined foes,
+  And having thus adventured, thus endured,
+  Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured."[109]
+
+Crabbe's Ellen Orford in _The Borough_ (1810) is drawn from life,
+and in grim and bitter irony is intended as a contrast to these
+timorous and triumphant creatures
+
+          "borrowed and again conveyed,
+  From book to book, the shadows of a shade."
+
+Ellen's adventures are sordid and gloomy, without a hint of the
+picturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the
+"air-drawn" fancies that torture the sensitive Angelinas of
+Gothic fiction:
+
+  "But not like them has she been laid
+  In ruined castle sore dismayed,
+  Where naughty man and ghostly sprite
+  Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
+  Stalked round the room, put out the light
+  And shook the curtains round the bed.
+  No cruel uncle kept her land,
+  No tyrant father forced her hand;
+  She had no vixen virgin aunt
+  Without whose aid she could not eat
+  And yet who poisoned all her meat
+  With gibe and sneer and taunt."
+
+Though Crabbe showed scant sympathy with the delicate
+sensibilities of girls who hung enraptured over the high-pitched
+heroics and miraculous escapes of Clementina and her kindred, he
+found pleasure in a robuster school of romance--the adventures of
+mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, and Robin Hood, as set
+forth and embellished in the chapbooks which cottagers treasured
+"on the deal shelf beside the cuckoo-clock."[110] And in his
+poem, _Sir Eustace Grey_, he presents with subtle art a mind
+tormented by terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+In 1775 we find Miss Lydia Languish's maid ransacking the
+circulating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloak
+novels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twenty
+years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost
+from all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of
+_Udolpho_," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in her pocket-book
+the "horrid" titles of romances from the German. In 1814,
+apparently, the vogue of the sentimental, the scandalous, the
+mysterious, and the horrid still persisted. Scott, in the
+introductory chapter to _Waverley_, disrespectfully passes in
+review the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed to be
+supplanted by the series of romances he was then beginning:
+
+     "Had I announced in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, A Tale
+     of Other Days,' must not every novel reader have
+     anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
+     of which the eastern wing has been long uninhabited,
+     and the keys either lost or consigned to the care of
+     some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps
+     about the middle of the second volume were doomed to
+     guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts?
+     Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried
+     in my very title page? and could it have been possible
+     to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce
+     any scene more lively than might be produced by the
+     jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the
+     garrulous narrative of the heroine's
+     _fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of
+     blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's
+     hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance
+     from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image
+     forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
+     and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and
+     Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls,
+     caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and
+     dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my
+     work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
+     sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of
+     auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her
+     solitary hours, which she fortunately always finds
+     means of transporting from castle to cottage, though
+     she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a
+     two-pair-of-stairs window and is more than once
+     bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without
+     any guide but a blowsy peasant girl, whose jargon she
+     can scarcely understand? Or again, if my _Waverley_ had
+     been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst thou not,
+     gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch
+     of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private
+     scandal ... a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero
+     from the Barouche Club or the Four in Hand, with a set
+     of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen
+     Anne Street, East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow
+     Street Office?"
+
+Yet Scott himself had once trodden in these well-worn paths of
+romance. In the general preface to the collected edition of 1829,
+wherein he seeks to "ravel out his weaved-up follies," he refers
+to "a tale of chivalry planned thirty years earlier in the style
+of _The Castle of Otranto_, with plenty of Border characters and
+supernatural incident." His outline of the plot and a fragment of
+the story, which was to be entitled _Thomas the Rhymer_, are
+printed as an appendix to the preface. Scott intended to base his
+story on an ancient legend, found in Reginald Scot's _Discovery
+of Witchcraft_, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas of
+Hercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by a
+mysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a long
+range of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and by
+every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword
+in his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out of
+marble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like the
+halls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancient
+table, a horn and a sword. A voice bade Dick try his courage,
+warning him that much depended upon his first choosing either the
+horn or the sword. Dick, whose stout heart quailed before the
+supernatural terrors of the hall, attempted to blow the horn
+before unsheathing the sword. At the first feeble blast the
+warriors and their steeds started to life, the knights fiercely
+brandishing their weapons and clashing their armour. Dick made a
+fruitless attempt to snatch the sword. After a mysterious voice
+had pronounced his doom he was hurled out of the hall by a
+whirlwind of irresistible fury. He told his story to the
+shepherds, who found him dying on the cold hill side.
+
+Regarding this legend as "an unhappy foundation for a prose
+story," Scott did not complete his fragment, which in style and
+treatment is not unlike the Gothic experiments of Mrs. Barbauld
+and Dr. Nathan Drake. Such a story as that of the magic horn and
+sword might have been told in the simple words that occur
+naturally to a shepherd, "warmed to courage over his third
+tumbler," like the old peasant to whom Stevenson entrusts the
+terrible tale of _Thrawn Janet_, or to Wandering Willie, who
+declared:
+
+     "I whiles mak a tale serve the turn among the country
+     bodies, and I have some fearsome anes, that mak the
+     auld carlines shake on the settle, and bits o' bairns
+     skirl on their minnies out frae their beds."
+
+The personality of the narrator, swayed by the terror of his
+tale, would have cast the spell that Scott's carefully framed
+sentences fail to create. Another of Scott's _disjecta membra_,
+composed at the end of the eighteenth century, is the opening of
+a story called _The Lord of Ennerdale_, in which the family of
+Ratcliffe settle down before the fire to listen to a story
+"savouring not a little of the marvellous." As Lady Ratcliffe and
+her daughters
+
+     "had heard every groan and lifted every trapdoor in
+     company with the noted heroine of Udolpho, had
+     valorously mounted _en croupe_ behind the horseman of
+     Prague through all his seven translators, had followed
+     the footsteps of Moor through the forests of Bohemia,"
+
+and were even suspected of an acquaintance with Lewis's _Monk_,
+Scott was setting himself no easy task when he undertook to
+thrill these seasoned adventurers. After this prologue, which
+leads one to expect a banquet of horrors, only a very brief
+fragment of the story is forthcoming. Though he gently derides
+Lady Ratcliffe's literary tastes, Scott, too, was an admirer of
+Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, and had been so entranced by Burger's
+_Lenore_ that he attempted an English version.[111] It was after
+hearing Taylor's translation of this ballad read aloud that he
+uttered his dismal ejaculation: "I wish to heaven I could get a
+skull and two crossbones"--a whim that was speedily gratified.
+He, too, like Lady Ratcliffe, had read _Die Räuber_; and he
+translated Goethe's _Gëtz von Berlichingen_. He delighted in
+Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) where the verse gallops through
+horrors so fearful that the "lights in the chamber burn blue,"
+and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblin
+dramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, as
+Lewis's _Castle Spectre_ and Maturin's _Bertram_. His Latin
+call-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis or
+Harrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen--the disposal of the
+dead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually added
+to his store of quaint and grisly learning both from popular
+tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's
+_Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Sinclair's
+_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, whence he borrowed the name
+of the jackanapes in _Wandering Willie's Tale_, and the
+horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's
+_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Joseph Taylor's _History of
+Apparitions_, from which he quotes in _Woodstock_. He was
+familiar with all the niceties of ghostly etiquette; he could
+distinguish at a glance the various ranks and orders of demons
+and spirits; he was versed in charms and spells; he knew exactly
+how a wizard ought to be dressed. This lore not only stood him in
+good stead when he compiled his _Letters on Demonology and
+Witchcraft_ (1830), but served to adorn his poems and novels.
+There was nothing unhealthy in his attitude towards the spectral
+world. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double room,
+while a dead man occupied the other. Twice in his life he
+confessed to having felt "eerie"--once at Glamis Castle, which
+was said to be haunted by a Presence in a Secret Chamber, and
+once when he believed that he saw an apparition on his way home
+in the twilight; but he usually jests cheerfully when he speaks
+of the supernatural. He was interested in tracing the sources of
+terror and in studying the mechanism of ghost stories.
+
+The axioms which he lays down are sound and suggestive:
+
+     "Ghosts should not appear too often or become too
+     chatty. The magician shall evoke no spirits, whom he is
+     not capable of endowing with manners and language
+     corresponding to their supernatural character. Perhaps,
+     to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and
+     in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret
+     mode of securing a certain necessary degree of
+     credulity from the hearers of a ghost story... The
+     chord which vibrates and sounds at a touch remains in
+     silent tension under continued pressure."[113]
+
+Scott's ghost story, _The Tapestried Chamber, or the Lady in the
+Sacque_[114] which he heard from Miss Anna Seward, who had an
+unexpected gift for recounting such things at country house
+parties, gives the impression of being carefully planned
+according to rule. As a human being the Lady in the Sacque had a
+black record, but, considered dispassionately as a ghost, her
+manners and deportment are irreproachable. The ghost-seer's
+independence of character are so firmly insisted upon that it
+seems impertinent to doubt the veracity of his story. _My Aunt
+Margaret's Mirror_ was told to Scott in childhood by an ancient
+spinster, whose pleasing fancy it was to read alone in her
+chamber by the light of a taper fixed in a candlestick which she
+had formed out of a human skull, and who was learned in
+superstitious lore. She describes accurately the mood, when "the
+female imagination is in due temperature to enjoy a ghost story":
+
+     "All that is indispensable for the enjoyment of the
+     milder feeling of supernatural awe is that you should
+     be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps
+     over you when you hear a tale of terror--that
+     well-vouched tale which the narrator, having first
+     expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary
+     lore, selects and produces, as having something in it
+     which he has been always obliged to give up as
+     inexplicable. Another symptom is a momentary hesitation
+     to look round you, when the interest of the narrative
+     is at the highest; and the third, a desire to avoid
+     looking into a mirror, when you are alone, in your
+     chamber, for the evening."[115]
+
+In her story "Aunt Margaret" describes how, in a magic mirror
+belonging to Dr. Baptista Damiotti, Lady Bothwell and her sister
+Lady Forester see the wedding ceremony of Sir Philip Forester and
+a young girl in a foreign city interrupted by Lady Forester's
+brother, who is slain in the duel that ensues. Scott regarded
+these two stories as trifles designed to while away a leisure
+hour. On _Wandering Willie's Tale_--a masterpiece of supernatural
+terror--he bestowed unusual care. The ill fa'urd, fearsome
+couple--Sir Robert with his face "gash and ghastly as Satan's,"
+and "Major Weir," the jackanape, in his red-laced coat and
+wig--Steenie's eerie encounter with the "stranger" on horseback,
+the ribald crew of feasters in the hall are described so
+faithfully and in such vivid phrases that it is no wonder Willie
+should remark at one point of the story: "I almost think I was
+there mysell, though I couldna be born at the same time." The
+power of the tale, which fascinates us from beginning to end and
+which can be read again and again with renewed pleasure, depends
+partly on Wandering Willie's gifts as a narrator, partly on the
+emotions that stir him as he talks. With unconscious art, he
+always uses the right word in his descriptions, and chooses those
+details that help us to fix the rapidly changing imagery of his
+scenes; and he reproduces exactly the natural dialogue of the
+speakers. He begins in a tone of calm, unhurried narration, with
+only a hint of fear in his voice, but, at the death of Sir
+Robert, grows breathless with horror and excitement. The uncanny
+incident of the silver whistle that sounds from the dead man's
+chamber is skilfully followed by a matter-of-fact account of
+Steenie's dealings with the new laird. The emotion culminates in
+the terror of the hall of ghastly revellers, whose wild shrieks
+"made Willie's gudesire's very nails grow blue and chilled the
+marrow in his banes." So lifelike is the scene, so full of colour
+and movement, that Steenie's descendants might well believe that
+their gudesire, like Dante, had seen Hell.
+
+The notes, introductions and appendices to Scott's works are
+stored with material for novels of terror. The notes to
+_Marmion_, for instance, contain references to a necromantic
+priest whose story "much resembles that of Ambrosio in the
+_Monk_," to an "Elfin" warrior and to a chest of treasure
+jealously guarded for a century by the Devil in the likeness of a
+huntsman. In _The Lady of the Lake_ there is a note on the
+ancient legend of the Phantom Sire, in _Rokeby_ there is an
+allusion to the Demon Frigate wandering under a curse from
+harbour to harbour. To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion.
+He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poems
+or his romances. In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ he had,
+indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a leading part, but
+the imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the natural
+baseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs into
+the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in _The
+Monastery_ (1830)--a boisterous creature who rides on horseback,
+splashes through streams and digs a grave--was wisely withdrawn
+in the sequel, _The Abbot_. In the Introduction Scott states:
+
+     "The White Lady is scarcely supposed to have possessed
+     either the power or the inclination to do more than
+     inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is always
+     subjected by those mortals who ... could assert
+     superiority over her."
+
+The only apology Scott could offer to the critics who derided his
+wraith was that the readers "ought to allow for the capriccios of
+what is after all but a better sort of goblin." She was suggested
+by the Undine of De La Motte Fouqué. In his next novel, _The
+Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the
+magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch--not one bounce on the drum of
+Tedworth--not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch
+in the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightly
+from his imagination. Apparitions--such as the Bodach Glas who
+warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in _Waverley_, or
+the wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on the
+battlefield in _The Legend of Montrose_--had appeared in his
+earlier novels, and others appear again and again later. In _The
+Bride of Lammermoor_--the only one of Scott's novels which might
+fitly be called a "tale of terror"--the atmosphere of horror and
+the sense of overhanging calamity effectually prepare our minds
+for the supernatural, and the wraith of old Alice who appears to
+the master of Ravenswood is strangely solemn and impressive. But
+even more terrible is the description of the three hags laying
+out her corpse. The appearance of Vanda with the Bloody Finger in
+the haunted chamber of the Saxon manor in _The Betrothed_ is
+skilfully arranged, and Eveline's terror is described with
+convincing reality. In _Woodstock_, Scott adopted the method of
+explaining away the apparently supernatural, although in his
+_Lives of the Novelists_ he expressly disapproves of what he
+calls the "precaution of Snug the joiner." Charged by Ballantyne
+with imitating Mrs. Radcliffe, Scott defended himself by
+asserting:
+
+     "My object is not to excite fear of supernatural things
+     in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon
+     the agents of the story--one a man in sense and
+     firmness, one a man unhinged by remorse, one a stupid,
+     unenquiring clown, one a learned and worthy but
+     superstitious divine."[116]
+
+As Scott in his introduction quotes the passage from a treatise
+entitled _The Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_,
+which reveals that the mysteries were performed by one Joseph
+Collins with the aid of two friends, a concealed trap-door and a
+pound of gunpowder, he cannot justly be accused of deceiving his
+readers. There are suggestions of Mrs. Radcliffe's method in
+others of his novels. In _The Antiquary_, before Lovel retires to
+the Green Room at Monkbar, he is warned by Miss Griselda Oldbuck
+of a "well-fa'urd auld gentleman in a queer old-fashioned dress
+with whiskers turned upward on his upper lip as long as
+baudrons," who is wont to appear at one's bedside. He falls into
+an uneasy slumber, and in the middle of the night is startled to
+see a green huntsman leave the tapestry and turn into the
+"well-fa'urd auld gentleman" before his very eyes. In _Old
+Mortality_, Edith Bellenden mistakes her lover for his
+apparition, just as one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines might have
+done. In _Peveril of the Peak_, Fenella's communications with the
+hero in his prison, when he mistakes her voice for that of a
+spirit, have an air of Gothic mystery. The awe-inspiring villain,
+who appears in _Marmion_ and _Rokeby_, may be distinguished by
+his scowl, his passion-lined face and gleaming eye. Rashleigh, in
+_Rob Roy_, who, understanding Greek, Latin and Hebrew, "need not
+care for ghaist or barghaist, devil or dobbie," and whose
+sequestered apartment the servants durst not approach at
+nightfall for "fear of bogles and brownies and lang-nebbit things
+frae the neist world," is of the same lineage. Sir Robert
+Redgauntlet, too, might have stepped out of one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's romances. His niece is not unlike one of her
+heroines. She speaks in the very accents of Emily when she says:
+
+     "Now I have still so much of our family spirit as
+     enables me to be as composed in danger as most of my
+     sex, and upon two occasions in the course of our
+     journey--a threatened attack by banditti, and the
+     overturn of our carriage--I had the fortune so to
+     conduct myself as to convey to my uncle a very
+     favourable idea of my intrepidity."
+
+Jeanie Deans, the most admirable and the most skilfully drawn of
+Scott's women, is a daring contrast to the traditional heroine of
+romance. The "delicate distresses" of persecuted Emilies shrink
+into insignificance amid the tragedy and comedy of actual life
+portrayed in The Waverley Novels. The tyrannical marquises,
+vindictive stepmothers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks,
+chattering domestics and fierce banditti are thrust aside by a
+motley crowd of living beings--soldiers, lawyers, smugglers,
+gypsies, shepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures,
+guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow with
+sensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folk
+like "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty and
+Peter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our own
+world. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs.
+Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting and
+substantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs.
+Radcliffe's characters habitually discourse descends to some of
+Scott's personages, but is often exchanged for the natural idiom
+of simple people. The Gothic abbey, dropped down in an uncertain,
+haphazard fashion, in some foreign land, is deserted for huts,
+barns inns, cottages and castles, solidly built on Scottish soil.
+We leave the mouldy air of the subterranean vault for the keen
+winds of the moorland. The terrors of the invisible world only
+fill the stray corners of his huge scene. He creates romance out
+of the stuff of real life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.
+
+
+As the novel of terror passes from the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe to
+those of "Monk" Lewis, Maturin and their imitators, there is a
+crashing crescendo of emotion. The villain's sardonic smile is
+replaced by wild outbursts of diabolical laughter, his scowl
+grows darker and darker, and as his designs become more bloody
+and more dangerous, his victims no longer sigh plaintively, but
+give utterance to piercing shrieks and despairing yells; tearful
+Amandas are unceremoniously thrust into the background by
+vindictive Matildas, whose passions rage in all their primitive
+savagery; the fearful ghost "fresh courage takes," and stands
+forth audaciously in the light of day; the very devil stalks
+shamelessly abroad in manifold disguises. We are caught up from
+first to last in the very tempest, torrent and whirlwind of
+passion. When the novel of terror thus throws restraint to the
+winds, outrageously o'ersteps the modesty of nature and indulges
+in a farrago of frightfulness, it begins to defeat its own
+purposes and to fail in its object of freezing the blood. The
+limit of human endurance has been reached--and passed. Emphasis
+and exaggeration have done their worst. Battle, murder, and
+sudden death--even spectres and fiends--can appal no more. If the
+old thrill is to be evoked again, the application of more
+ingenious methods is needed.
+
+Such novels as Maturin's _Family of Montorio_, though "full of
+sound and fury," fail piteously to vibrate the chords of terror,
+which had trembled beneath Mrs. Radcliffe's gentle fingers. The
+instrument, smitten forcibly, repeatedly, desperately, resounds
+not with the answering note expected, but with an ugly, metallic
+jangle. _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's extraordinary
+masterpiece, was to prove--as late as 1820--that there were
+chords in the orchestra of horror as yet unsounded; but in 1816,
+when Mary Shelley and her companions set themselves to compose
+supernatural stories, it was wise to dispense with the shrieking
+chorus of malevolent abbesses, diabolical monks, intriguing
+marquises, Wandering Jews or bleeding spectres, who had been so
+grievously overworked in previous performances. Dr. Polidori's
+skull-headed lady, Byron's vampire-gentleman, Mrs. Shelley's
+man-created monster--a grotesque and gruesome trio--had at least
+the attraction of novelty. It is indeed remarkable that so young
+and inexperienced a writer as Mary Shelley, who was only nineteen
+when she wrote _Frankenstein_, should betray so slight a
+dependence on her predecessors. It is evident from the records of
+her reading that the novel of terror in all its guises was
+familiar to her. She had beheld the majestic horror of the halls
+of Eblis; she had threaded her way through Mrs. Radcliffe's
+artfully constructed Gothic castles; she had braved the terrors
+of the German Ritter-, Räuber- und Schauer-Romane; she had
+assisted, fearful, at Lewis's midnight diablerie; she had
+patiently unravelled the "mystery" novels of Godwin and of
+Charles Brockden Brown.[117] Yet, despite this intimate knowledge
+of the terrible and supernatural in fiction, Mrs. Shelley's theme
+and her way of handling it are completely her own. In an "acute
+mental vision," as real as the visions of Blake and of Shelley,
+she beheld her monster and the "pale student of unhallowed arts"
+who had created him, and then set herself to reproduce the thrill
+of horror inspired by her waking dream. _Frankenstein_ has,
+indeed, been compared to Godwin's _St. Leon_, but the resemblance
+is so vague and superficial, and _Frankenstein_ so immeasurably
+superior, that Mrs. Shelley's debt to her father is negligible.
+St. Leon accepts the gift of immortality, Frankenstein creates a
+new life, and in both novels the main interest lies in tracing
+the effect of the experiment on the soul of the man, who has
+pursued scientific inquiry beyond legitimate limits. But apart
+from this, there is little resemblance. Godwin chose the
+supernatural, because it chanced to be popular, and laboriously
+built up a cumbrous edifice, completing it by a sheer effort of
+will-power. His daughter, with an imagination naturally more
+attuned to the gruesome and fantastic, writes, when once she has
+wound her way into the heart of the story, in a mood of
+breathless excitement that drives the reader forward with
+feverish apprehension.
+
+The name of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ is far-famed; but the
+book itself, overshadowed perhaps by its literary associations,
+seems to have withdrawn into the vast library of famous works
+that are more often mentioned than read. The very fact that the
+name is often bestowed on the monster instead of his creator
+seems to suggest that many are content to accept Mrs. Shelley's
+"hideous phantom" on hearsay evidence rather than encounter for
+themselves the terrors of his presence. The story deserves a
+happier fate, for, if it be read in the spirit of willing
+surrender that a theme so impossible demands, it has still power
+momentarily "to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle
+the blood and to quicken the beatings of the heart." The record
+of the composition of _Frankenstein_ has been so often reiterated
+that it is probably better known than the tale itself. In the
+summer of 1816--when the Shelleys were the neighbours of Byron
+near Lake Geneva--Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori,
+after reading some volumes of ghost stories[118] and discussing
+the supernatural and its manifestations, each agreed to write a
+ghost story. It has been asserted that an interest in spectres
+was stimulated by a visit from "Monk" Lewis, but we have evidence
+that Mrs. Shelley was already writing her story in June,[119] and
+that Lewis did not arrive at the Villa Diodati till August
+14th.[120] The conversation with him about ghosts took place four
+days later. Shelley's story, based on the experiences of his
+early youth, was never completed. Byron's fragment formed the
+basis of Dr. Polidori's _Vampyre_. Dr. Polidori states that his
+supernatural novel, _Ernestus Berchtold_, was begun at this time;
+but the skull-headed lady, alluded to by Mary Shelley as figuring
+in Polidori's story, is disappointingly absent. It was an
+argument between Byron and Shelley about Erasmus Darwin's
+theories that brought before Mary Shelley's sleepless eyes the
+vision of the monster miraculously infused by its creator with
+the spark of life. _Frankenstein_ was begun immediately,
+completed in May, 1817, and published in 1818.
+
+Mrs. Shelley has been censured for setting her tale in a clumsy
+framework, but she tells us in her preface that she began with
+the words: "It was on a dreary night of November." This sentence
+now stands at the opening of Chapter IV., where the plot begins
+to grip our imagination; and it seems not unfair to assume that
+the introductory letters and the first four chapters, which
+contain a tedious and largely unnecessary account of
+Frankenstein's early life, were written in deference to Shelley's
+plea that the idea should be developed at greater length, and did
+not form part of her original plan. The uninteresting student,
+Robert Walton, to whom Frankenstein, discovered dying among
+icebergs, tells his story, is obviously an afterthought. If Mrs.
+Shelley had abandoned the awkward contrivance of putting the
+narrative into the form of a dying man's confession, reported
+verbatim in a series of letters, and had opened her story, as she
+apparently intended, at the point where Frankenstein, after weary
+years of research, succeeds in creating a living being, her novel
+would have gained in force and intensity. From that moment it
+holds us fascinated. It is true that the tension relaxes from
+time to time, that the monster's strange education and the
+Godwinian precepts that fall so incongruously from his lips tend
+to excite our mirth, but, though we are mildly amused, we are no
+longer merely bored. Even the protracted descriptions of domestic
+life assume a new and deeper meaning, for the shadow of the
+monster broods over them. One by one those whom Frankenstein
+loves fall victims to the malice of the being he has endowed with
+life. Unceasingly and unrelentingly the loathsome creature dogs
+our imagination, more awful when he lurks unseen than when he
+stands actually before us. With hideous malignity he slays
+Frankenstein's young brother, and by a fiendish device causes
+Justine, an innocent girl, to be executed for the crime. Yet ere
+long our sympathy, which has hitherto been entirely with
+Frankenstein, is unexpectedly diverted to the monster who, it
+would seem, is wicked only because he is eternally divorced from
+human society. Amid the magnificent scenery of the Valley of
+Chamounix he appears before his creator, and tells the story of
+his wretched life, pleading: "Everywhere I see bliss from which I
+alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery
+made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."
+
+He describes how his physical ugliness repels human beings, who
+fail to realise his benevolent intentions. A father snatches from
+his arms the child he has rescued from death; the virtuous
+family, whom he admires and would fain serve, flee affrighted
+from his presence. To educate the monster, so that his thoughts
+and emotions may become articulate, and, incidentally, to
+accentuate his isolation from society, Mrs. Shelley inserts a
+complicated story about an Arabian girl, Sofie, whose lover
+teaches her to read from Plutarch's _Lives_, Volney's _Ruins of
+Empire, The Sorrows of Werther_, and _Paradise Lost_. The monster
+overhears the lessons, and ponders on this unique library, but,
+as he pleads his own cause the more eloquently because he knows
+Satan's passionate outbursts of defiance and self-pity, who would
+cavil at the method by which he is made to acquire his knowledge?
+"The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
+branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst
+forth amidst the universal stillness. All save I were at rest or
+in enjoyment. I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me." And
+later, near the close of the book: "The fallen angel becomes a
+malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends
+and associates in his desolation; I am alone," His fate reminds
+us of that of _Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude_, who:
+
+  "Over the world wanders for ever
+  Lone as incarnate death."
+
+After the long and moving recital of his woes, even the obdurate
+Frankenstein cannot resist the justice of his demand for a
+partner like himself. Yet when the student recoils with horror
+from his half-accomplished task and sees the creature maliciously
+peering through the window, our hatred leaps to life once more
+and burns fiercely as the monster adds to his crimes the murder
+of Clerval, Frankenstein's dearest friend, and of Elizabeth on
+her wedding night. We follow with shuddering anticipation the
+long pursuit of the monster, expectant of a last, fearful
+encounter which shall decide the fate of the demon and his maker.
+Amid the region of eternal ice, Frankenstein catches sight of
+him; but fails to reach him. At last, beside the body of his last
+victim--Frankenstein himself--the creature is filled with remorse
+at the "frightful catalogue" of his sins, and makes a final bid
+for our sympathy in the farewell speech to Walton, before
+climbing on an ice-raft to be "borne away by the waves and lost
+in darkness and distance."
+
+Like _Alastor_, _Frankenstein_ was a plea for human sympathy, and
+was, according to Shelley's preface, intended "to exhibit the
+amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence of universal
+virtue." The monster has the perception and desire of goodness,
+but, by the circumstances of his abnormal existence, is delivered
+over to evil. It is this dual nature that prevents him from being
+a mere automaton. The monster indeed is far more real than the
+shadowy beings whom he pursues. Frankenstein is less an
+individual than a type, and only interests us through the
+emotions which his conflict with the monster arouses. Clerval,
+Elizabeth and Frankenstein's relatives are passive sufferers
+whose psychology does not concern us. Mrs. Shelley rightly
+lavishes her skill on the central figure of the book, and
+succeeds, as effectually as Frankenstein himself, in infusing
+into him the spark of life. Mrs. Shelley's aim is to "awaken
+thrilling horror," and, incidentally, to "exhibit the excellence
+of domestic virtue," and for her purpose the demon is of
+paramount importance. The involved, complex plot of a novel
+seemed to pass beyond Mrs. Shelley's control. A short tale she
+could handle successfully, and Shelley was unwise in inciting her
+to expand _Frankenstein_ into a long narrative. So long as she is
+completely carried away by her subject Mrs. Shelley writes
+clearly, but when she pauses to regard the progress of her story
+dispassionately, she seems to be overwhelmed by the wealth of her
+resources and to have no power of selecting the relevant details.
+The laborious introductory letters, the meticulous record of
+Frankenstein's education, the story of Felix and Sofie, the
+description of the tour through England before the creation of
+the second monster is attempted, are all connected with the main
+theme by very frail links and serve to distract our attention in
+an irritating fashion from what really interests us. In the novel
+of mystery a tantalising delay may be singularly effective. In a
+novel which depends chiefly for its effect on sheer horror,
+delays are merely dangerous. By resting her terrors on a
+pseudo-scientific basis and by placing her story in a definite
+locality, Mrs. Shelley waives her right to an entire suspension
+of disbelief. If it be reduced to its lowest terms, the plot of
+Frankenstein, with its bewildering confusion of the prosaic and
+the fantastic, sounds as crude, disjointed and inconsequent as
+that of a nightmare. Mrs. Shelley's timid hesitation between
+imagination and reality, her attempt to reconcile incompatible
+things and to place a creature who belongs to no earthly land in
+familiar surroundings, prevents _Frankenstein_ from being a
+wholly satisfactory and alarming novel of terror. She loves the
+fantastic, but she also fears it. She is weighted down by
+commonsense, and so flutters instead of soaring, unwilling to
+trust herself far from the material world. But the fact that she
+was able to vivify her grotesque skeleton of a plot with some
+degree of success is no mean tribute to her gifts. The energy and
+vigour of her style, her complete and serious absorption in her
+subject, carry us safely over many an absurdity. It is only in
+the duller stretches of the narrative, when her heart is not in
+her work, that her language becomes vague, indeterminate and
+blurred, and that she muffles her thoughts in words like
+"ascertain," "commencement," "peruse," "diffuse," instead of
+using their simpler Saxon equivalents. Stirred by the excitement
+of the events she describes, she can write forcibly in simple,
+direct language. She often frames short, hurried sentences such
+as a man would naturally utter when breathless with terror or
+with recollections of terror. The final impression that
+_Frankenstein_ leaves with us is not easy to define, because the
+book is so uneven in quality. It is obviously the shapeless work
+of an immature writer who has had no experience in evolving a
+plot. Sometimes it is genuinely moving and impressive, but it
+continually falls abruptly and ludicrously short of its aim. Yet
+when all its faults have been laid bare, the fact remains that
+few readers would abandon the story half-way through. Mrs.
+Shelley is so thoroughly engrossed in her theme that she impels
+her readers onward, even though they may think but meanly of her
+story as a work of art.
+
+Mrs. Shelley's second novel, _Valperga, or the Life and
+Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca_, published in 1823,
+was a work on which she bestowed much care and labour, but the
+result proves that she writes best when the urgency of her
+imagination leaves her no leisure either to display her learning
+or adorn her style. She herself calls _Valperga_ a "child of
+mighty slow growth," and Shelley adds that it was "raked out of
+fifty old books." Mrs. Shelley, always an industrious student,
+made a conscientious survey of original sources before fashioning
+her story of mediaeval Italy, and she is hampered by the
+exuberance of her knowledge. The novel is not a romance of
+terror; but Castruccio, though his character is sketched from
+authentic documents, seems towards the end of the story to
+resemble the picturesque villain who numbered among his ancestry
+Milton's Satan. He has "a majestic figure and a countenance
+beautiful but sad, and tarnished by the expression of pride that
+animated it." Beatrice, the gifted prophetess who falls deep in
+love with Castruccio, ends her days in the dungeons of the
+Inquisition. Mrs. Shelley's aim, however, is not to arouse fear,
+but to trace the gradual deterioration of Castruccio's character
+from an open-hearted youth to a crafty tyrant. The blunt remarks
+of Godwin, who revised the manuscript, are not unjust, but fall
+with an ill grace from the pen of the author of _St. Leon_: "It
+appears in reading, that the first rule you prescribed was: 'I
+will let it be long.' It contains the quantity of four volumes of
+_Waverley_. No hard blow was ever hit with a woodsaw."[121]
+
+In _The Last Man_, which appeared in 1825, Mrs. Shelley attempted
+a stupendous theme, no less then a picture of the devastation of
+the human race by plague and pestilence. She casts her
+imagination forward into the twenty-first century, when the last
+king of England has abdicated the throne and a republic is
+established. Very wisely, she narrows the interest by
+concentrating on the pathetic fate of a group of friends who are
+among the last survivors, and the story becomes an idealised
+record of her own sufferings. The description of the loneliness
+of the bereft has a personal note, and reminds us of her journal,
+where she expresses the sorrow of being herself the last
+survivor, and of feeling like a "cloud from which the light of
+sunset has passed."[122] Raymond, who dies in an attempt to place
+the standard of Greece in Stamboul, is a portrait of Byron; and
+Adrian, the late king's son, who finally becomes Protector, is
+clearly modelled on Shelley. Yet in spite of these personal
+reminiscences, their characters lack distinctness. Idris, Clara
+and Perdita are faintly etched, but Evadne, the Greek artist, who
+cherishes a passion for Raymond, and dies fighting against the
+Turks, has more colour and body than the other women, though she
+is somewhat theatrical. Mrs. Shelley conveys emotion more
+faithfully than character, and the overwrought sensibilities and
+dark forebodings of the diminished party of survivors who leave
+England to distract their minds by foreign travel are artfully
+suggested. The leaping, gesticulating figure, whom their jaded
+nerves and morbid fancy transform into a phantom, is a delirious
+ballet-dancer; and the Black Spectre, mistaken for Death
+Incarnate, proves only to be a plague-stricken noble, who lurks
+near the party for the sake of human society. These "reasonable"
+solutions of the apparently supernatural remind us of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's method, and Mrs. Shelley shows keen psychological
+insight in her delineation of the state of mind which readily
+conjures up imaginary terrors. When Lionel Verney is left alone
+in the universe, her power seems to flag, and instead of the
+final crescendo of horror, which we expect at the end of the
+book, we are left with an ineffective picture of the last man in
+Rome in 2005 deciding to explore the countries he has not yet
+viewed. As he wanders amid the ruins he recalls not only "the
+buried Cæsars," but also the monk in _The Italian_, of whom he
+had read in childhood--a striking proof of Mrs. Shelley's faith
+in the permanence of Mrs. Radcliffe's fame.
+
+Though the style of _The Last Man_ is often tediously prolix and
+is disfigured by patches of florid rhetoric and by inappropriate
+similes scattered broadcast, occasional passages of wonderful
+beauty recall Shelley's imagery; and, in conveying the pathos of
+loneliness, personal feeling lends nobility and eloquence to her
+style. With so ambitious a subject, it was natural that she
+should only partially succeed in carrying her readers with her.
+Though there are oases, the story is a somewhat tedious and
+dreary stretch of narrative that can only be traversed with
+considerable effort.
+
+Mrs. Shelley's later works--_Perkin Warbeck_ (1830), a historical
+novel; _Lodore_ (1835), which describes the early life of Shelley
+and Harriet; _Falkner_ (1837), which was influenced by _Caleb
+Williams_--do not belong to the history of the novel of terror;
+but some of her short tales, contributed to periodicals and
+collected in 1891, have gruesome and supernatural themes. _A Tale
+of the Passions, or the Death of Despina_[123] a story based on
+the struggles of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, contains a
+perfect specimen of the traditional villain of the novel of
+terror:
+
+     "Every feature of his countenance spoke of the struggle
+     of passions and the terrible egotism of one who would
+     sacrifice himself to the establishment of his will: his
+     black eyebrows were scattered, his grey eyes deep-set
+     and scowling, his look at once stern and haggard. A
+     smile seemed never to have disturbed the settled scorn
+     which his lips expressed; his high forehead was marked
+     by a thousand contradictory lines."
+
+This terrific personage spends the last years of his life in
+orthodox fashion as an austere saint in a monastery.
+
+_The Mortal Immortal_, a variation on the theme of _St. Leon_, is
+the record of a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, who drank half of the
+elixir his master had compounded in the belief that it was a
+potion to destroy love. It is written on his three hundred and
+twenty-third birthday. _Transformation_, like _Frankenstein_,
+dwells on the pathos of ugliness and deformity, but the subject
+is treated rather in the spirit of an eastern fairy tale than in
+that of a novel of terror. The dwarf, in return for a chest of
+treasure, borrows a beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the
+love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short
+stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her
+novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the
+books on which she expended great labour.
+
+The literary history of Byron's fragmentary novel and of
+Polidori's short story, _The Vampyre_, is somewhat tangled, but
+the solution is to be found in the diary of Dr. John William
+Polidori, edited and elucidated by William Michael Rossetti. The
+day after that on which Polidori states that all the competitors,
+except himself, had begun their stories, he records the simple
+fact: "Began my ghost-story after tea." He gives no hint as to
+the subject of his tale, but Mrs. Shelley tells us that Polidori
+had some idea of a "skull-headed lady, who was so punished for
+looking through a key-hole, and who was finally buried in the
+tomb of the Capulets." In the introduction to _Ernestus
+Berchtold, or the Modern OEdipus_, he states definitely:
+
+     "The tale here presented to the public is one I began
+     at Coligny, when _Frankenstein_ was planned, and when a
+     noble author, having determined to descend from his
+     lofty range, gave up a few hours to a tale of terror,
+     and wrote the fragment published at the end of
+     Mazeppa."
+
+As no skull-headed lady appears in _Ernestus Berchtold_, it is
+probable that her career was only suggested to the rest of the
+party as an entrancing possibility, and never actually took
+shape. This theme would certainly have proved more frightful and
+possibly more interesting than the one which Polidori eventually
+adopted in _Ernestus Berchtold_, a rambling, leisurely account of
+the adventures of a Swiss soldier, whose wife afterwards proves
+to be his own sister. Their father has accepted from a malignant
+spirit the gift of wealth, but each time that the gift is
+bestowed some great affliction follows. This secret is not
+divulged until we are quite near the close of the story, and have
+waited so long that our interest has begun to wane. _Ernestus
+Berchtold_ is, as a matter of fact, not a novel of terror at all.
+The supernatural agency, which should have been interlaced with
+the domestic story from beginning to end, is only dragged in
+because it was one of the conditions of the competition, as
+indeed Polidori frankly confesses in his introduction:
+
+     "Many readers will think that the same moral and the
+     same colouring might have been given to characters
+     acting under the ordinary agencies of life. I believe
+     it, but I agreed to write a supernatural tale, and that
+     does not allow of a completely everyday narrative."
+
+The candour of this admission forestalls criticism. Strangely
+enough, Polidori adds that he has thrown the "superior agency"
+into the background, because "a tale that rests upon
+improbabilities must generally disgust a rational mind." With so
+decided a preference for the reasonable and probable, it is
+remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend
+successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story
+was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely
+accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based
+his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have
+been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two
+friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who,
+like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a
+prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before his
+death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw
+a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If
+we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the
+survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold
+his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.
+On this foundation Polidori constructed _The Vampyre_. The story
+opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose
+appearance and character excite great interest in London society.
+His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "dead,
+grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to
+penetrate and at one glance to pierce through to the inward
+workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray
+that laid (_sic_) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man
+named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes
+deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he
+joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes
+a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table;
+and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides
+to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds
+in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.
+Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with
+Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes
+to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an
+excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the
+terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting
+to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of
+superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light
+dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become
+the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a
+blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his
+discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.
+While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the
+shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a
+solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he
+knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made
+to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to
+the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's
+possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has
+found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he
+learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.
+When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the
+figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first
+seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost
+demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him
+momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven
+is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His
+warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey
+relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven,
+but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted
+the thirst of a vampyre."
+
+Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of
+fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and
+leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been
+handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and
+would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori
+wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect
+on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the
+verge of the unspeakable.
+
+Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as
+characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A
+writer in the _Dublin University Magazine_ tells of a vampire who
+plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire
+in one of George Macdonald's stories, _Adela Cathcart_. The
+prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, round
+whom centres a story of absorbing interest.
+
+De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many
+admirable illustrations for his essay on _Murder, Considered as
+one of the Fine Arts_, and who seems to have been attracted by
+the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in
+sensational fiction. In _Klosterheim_, a one-volumed novel
+published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of
+an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none
+other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man
+before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a
+usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down
+subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of
+Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the
+exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are
+not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a
+likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's
+story is very different. The adventures of the Masque and of the
+Lady Pauline are cast in Germany amid the confusion of the Thirty
+Years' War. In _The Household Wreck_, published in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, January 1838, De Quincey shows his power of conveying
+a sense of foreboding, that anticipation of horror which is often
+more harrowing than the reality. Another tale of terror, _The
+Avenger_, published in the same year, describes a series of
+bloodcurdling murders which baffle the skill of the police, but
+which eventually prove to have been committed by a son to avenge
+dishonour done to his Jewish mother. For a collection of _Popular
+Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, published in 1823,
+De Quincey translated _Der Freischütz_ from the German of J.A.
+Apel, under the title of _The Fatal Marksman_. By means of
+ill-gotten magic bullets the marksman wins his bride, but by one
+of those little ironies in which the devil delights to indulge,
+she is slain on the wedding-day by a bullet, which is aimed
+straight, but goes askew. In _The Dice_, another short story from
+the German, De Quincey once again exploits the old theme of a
+bargain with the devil.
+
+De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror shrink into
+unimportance beside the rest of his work, and are not in
+themselves remarkable. They are of interest as showing the
+widespread and long-enduring vogue of the species. It is
+noteworthy how many writers, whose main business lay elsewhere,
+have found time to make erratic excursions into the realms of the
+supernatural.
+
+So late as 1834--more than a decade after the appearance of
+_Melmoth_--Harrison Ainsworth, whose imagination was steeped in
+terror, sought once more to revive the "feeble and fluttering
+pulses of old Romance." Among his earliest experiments were tales
+obviously fashioned in the Gothic manner. His Imperishable One,
+the hero of a tale first published in the _European Magazine_ for
+1822, bemoans the burden of immortality in the listless tones of
+Godwin's St. Leon, and is tempted by the fallen angel in the
+self-same guise in which he appeared to Lewis's notorious monk.
+In _The Test of Affection_ (_European Magazine_, 1822) a wealthy
+man avails himself of Mrs. Radcliffe's supernatural trickery to
+test the loyalty of his friends, whom he succeeds in alarming by
+noises and a skeleton apparition. In _Arliss's Pocket Magazine_
+(1822) there appeared _The Spectre Bride_; and in the _European
+Magazine_ (1823) Ainsworth attempted a theme that would have
+attracted Poe in _The Half Hangit_. _The Boeotian_ for 1824
+contained _A Tale of Mystery_, and the _Literary Souvenir_ for
+1825 _The Fortress of Saguntum_, a story in the style of Lewis.
+Ainsworth's first novel, _Rookwood_ (1834), was inspired by a
+visit to Cuckfield Place, an old manor house which had reminded
+Shelley of "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe":
+
+     "Wishing to describe somewhat minutely the trim
+     gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted
+     groves, the gloomy chambers and gloomier galleries of
+     an ancient hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved
+     to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs.
+     Radcliffe, substituting an old English squire, an old
+     manorial residence and an old English highwayman for
+     the Italian marchise, the castle and the brigand of
+     that great mistress of romance... The attempt has
+     succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectation. Romance,
+     if I am not mistaken, is destined shortly to undergo an
+     important change. Modified by the German and French
+     writers--Hoffmann, Tieck, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas,
+     Balzac and Paul Lacroix--the structure commenced in our
+     land by Horace Walpole, 'Monk' Lewis, Mrs. Radcliffe
+     and Maturin, but, left imperfect and inharmonious,
+     requires, now that the rubbish which choked up its
+     approach is removed, only the hand of the skilful
+     architect to its entire renovation and perfection."
+
+In _Rookwood_, Ainsworth disdains Mrs. Radcliffe's reasonable
+elucidations of the supernatural, and introduces spectres whose
+existence it would be impossible to deny. Once, however, a
+supposed ghost becomes substantial, and proves to be none other
+than a human being called Jack Palmer. The sexton, Luke Bradley,
+_alias_ Alan Rookwood, has inherited two of the Wanderer's
+traits--the fear-impelling eyes of intolerable lustre, and the
+habit of indulging in wild, screaming laughter on the most
+inauspicious occasions.
+
+Gothic properties are scattered with indiscriminate
+extravagance--skeleton hands, suddenly extinguished candles,
+sliding panels, sepulchral vaults. The plot of _Rookwood_ is too
+complicated and too overcrowded with incident to keep our
+attention. The terrors are so unremitting that they fail to
+strike home. The only part of the book which holds us enthralled
+is the famous description of Dick Turpin's ride to York. Here we
+forget Ainsworth's slip-shod style in the excitement of the
+chase. In his later novels Ainsworth abandoned the manner of Mrs.
+Radcliffe, but did not fail to make use of the motive of terror
+and mystery. The scenes of horror which he strove to convey in
+words were often more admirably depicted in the illustrations of
+Cruikshank. The sorcerer's sabbath in _Crichton_, the historical
+scenes of horror in _The Tower of London_, the masque of the
+Dance of Death in _Old St. Paul's_, the appearance of Herne the
+Hunter, heralded by phosphoric lights, in _Windsor Castle_, the
+terrible orgies of _The Lancashire Witches_, are described with
+more striking effect because of Ainsworth's early reading in the
+school of terror. In _Auriol_, which was first published in
+_Ainsworth's Magazine_ (1844-5) under the title _Revelations of
+London_, was issued in 1845 as a gratuitous supplement to the
+_New Monthly_, and greeted with derision,[125] Ainsworth handled
+once again the theme that fascinated Lytton. The Prologue (1599)
+describes the death of Dr. Lamb, whose elixir is seized by his
+great-grandson. In 1830 London is haunted by a stranger, who
+involves Auriol in wildly fantastic and frightful adventures. The
+book closes in Dr. Lamb's laboratory; the intervening scenes are
+but dream imagery. Phiz's sketch of the Ruined House is the most
+lasting memory left by the book.
+
+Captain Marryat, whose mind was well stored with sailors' yarns,
+retells in _The Phantom Ship_ (1839) the old legend of the Flying
+Dutchman. At one time the doomed vessel is an unsubstantial
+vision, which can pass clean through the Utrecht; at another she
+is a real craft, whose deck can be boarded by mortal men. The
+one-eyed pilot, Schriften, with his malignant hatred of the hero,
+Philip, is a terrifying figure. The story is embroidered by the
+invention of a wife of Arab extraction, who is constantly
+attempting to recall the half-forgotten magical arts which her
+mother had practised. Marryat makes an opportunity in the history
+of Krantz, the second mate of the _Vrou Katerina_, to introduce
+the Scandinavian legend of the werewolf, which is related with
+grisly detail.
+
+The novel of terror, with all its faults, had seldom been guilty
+of demanding intellectual strain or of overburdening itself with
+erudition. It was the dignified task of Lord Lytton to
+rationalise and elevate the novel of terror, to evolve the "man
+of reason" from the "child of nature." Although time has
+tarnished the brilliance of his reputation, George Edward Bulwer
+was an imposing figure in the history of nineteenth century
+fiction. Throughout his life, in spite of political and social
+distractions and of matrimonial disaster, he continued to engage
+with unwearying industry in literary work. He was not a man of
+genius in whom the creative impulse found its own expression, but
+a versatile and accomplished gentleman who could direct his
+talents into any channel he pleased. Essays, translations,
+verses, plays, novels flowed from his pen in rapid succession,
+and he won his meed of applause and fame, as well as his share of
+execration and derision, in his own lifetime. Quick to discern
+the popular taste of the hour, and eager to gratify it, Lytton,
+with the resourceful agility of a lightning impersonator, turns
+in his novels from Wertherism to dandyism, from criminal
+psychology to fairy folk-lore, from historical romance to
+domestic romance, from pseudo-philosophic occultism to
+pseudo-scientific fantasy. He ranges at will in the past, the
+present or the future, consorting indifferently with impalpable
+wraiths, Vrilya or mysterious Sages. It is to his credit that
+this unusual gift of adaptability does not result in
+incompetency. Though he attempts a variety of manners, it must in
+justice be acknowledged that he does most of them well. He
+constructs his plots with laborious art, and pays a deliberate,
+if sometimes misguided, attention to style. When he fails, it is
+less from lack of effort than from over-elaboration and excess of
+zeal.
+
+Bulwer Lytton's predilection for the supernatural was neither a
+theatrical pose nor a passing folly excited by the fashionable
+craze for psychical research, but a genuine and enduring
+interest, inherited, it may be, from his ancestor, the learned,
+eccentric savant, Dr. Bulwer, who studied the Black Art and
+dabbled in astrology and palmistry. He was a member of the
+society of Rosicrucians, and, to quote the words of his grandson,
+"he certainly did not study magic for the sake of writing about
+it, still less did he write about it, without having studied it,
+merely for the sake of making his readers' flesh creep." From his
+early years Lytton seems to have been keenly interested in
+supernatural manifestations. He was inspired by the deserted
+rooms at the end of a long gallery in Knebworth House to set down
+the story of the ghost, Jenny Spinner, who was said to haunt
+them; and the concealed chamber in _The Haunted and the Haunters_
+may have been a revived memory of the trap-door down which Lytton
+as a boy had "peeped with bristling hair into the shadowy abysses
+of hellhole." In _Glenallan_,[126] an early fragment, we find
+promising material for a tale of mystery--a villain with a
+"strange and sinister expression," a boy who, like the youthful
+Shelley, steals forth by night to graveyards, hoping to attain to
+fearful secrets, and an aged servant, a living chronicle of
+horrors, who relates the doings of an Irish wizard, Morshed
+Tyrone, of such awful power that the spirits of the earth, air
+and ocean ministered to him. In _Godolphin_ (1833) there is an
+astrologer with the furrowed brow and awful eye, so common among
+the people of terror, and a strangely gifted girl, Lucilla, who
+turns soothsayer. But when Bulwer Lytton attempts a supernatural
+romance he leaves far behind him the sphere of Gothic terrors and
+soars into rarefied, exalted regions that inspire awe rather than
+horror. The Dweller of the Threshold in _Zanoni_ is no
+red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a
+deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over
+the crater of Vesuvius.
+
+The romance, _Zanoni_ (1842), which Lytton considered the
+greatest of his works and which Carlyle praised with what now
+seems extravagant fervour, was based on an earlier sketch,
+_Zicci_ (1838), and embodies a complicated theory which he had
+conceived several years earlier after reading some mediaeval
+treatises on astrology and the occult sciences. While his mind
+was occupied with these studies, the character of Mejnour and the
+main outlines of the story were inspired by a dream, which he
+related to his son. According to Lytton's theory, the air is
+peopled with Intelligences, of whom some are favourable, others
+hostile to man. The earth contains certain plants, which, rightly
+used, have power to arrest the decay of the human body, and to
+enable man, by quickening his physical senses and mental gifts,
+to perceive the aerial beings and to discover the secrets of
+nature. This supernatural knowledge is in possession of a
+brotherhood of whom two only, Mejnour and his pupil Zanoni, are
+in existence. The initiation involves the surrender of all
+violent passions and emotions, and the neophyte must be brought
+into contact with the powerful and malignant being called the
+Dweller of the Threshold:
+
+  "Whose form of giant mould
+  No mortal eye can fixed behold,"
+
+Mejnour and Zanoni are supposed to have been initiated--the
+former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
+years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a
+vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual
+youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in
+contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and
+friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences,
+feels sympathy with human beings.
+
+Zanoni, who spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure, after
+fifty centuries at last falls in love with Viola, an Italian
+opera-singer. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, Zanoni is reluctant to
+bind the woman he loves to his own fate. He tries to renounce
+Viola to an Englishman, Glyndon, who eventually chooses to
+relinquish love for the sake of achieving the unearthly knowledge
+of Mejnour. Glyndon, however, fails in the trial, and is
+consequently haunted by the horror of the Dweller of the
+Threshold. Meanwhile Zanoni is united to Viola; and because he
+has succumbed to the force of love, his peculiar powers begin to
+fail. He can no longer see the beautiful, aerial intelligence,
+Adon-Ai. To save from death Viola and the child who is born to
+them, Zanoni ere long yields to the Dweller of the Threshold his
+gift of communion with the inhabitants of heaven. Later Viola,
+who incidentally typifies Superstition deserting Faith, leaves
+Zanoni at the call of Glyndon, and in Paris, during the Reign of
+Terror, is doomed to die. Zanoni invokes the aid of the
+mysterious Intelligences, and his courage at length brings
+Adon-Ai again to his side. He wins a day's reprieve for Viola,
+and is executed in her stead. The death of Robespierre releases
+the prisoners, but Viola dies the next day.
+
+The compact between Zanoni and the Dweller of the Threshold is a
+renovation of the time-worn legend of the bargain with an evil
+spirit, but Lytton transforms it almost beyond recognition.
+Zanoni is no criminal. He has attained his secrets through
+will-power, self-conquest, and the subordination of the flesh to
+the spirit, and he surrenders his gifts willingly for the sake of
+another. Both Mejnour and Zanoni disclaim miraculous powers, yet
+Zanoni is ready to stake his mistress on a cast of the dice, and
+can cause the death of three sanguinary marauders without
+stirring from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursues his
+chemical studies. From such incidents as these it would seem as
+if Lytton, for the actual craftsmanship of _Zanoni_, may have
+gleaned stray hints from the novel of terror; but the spirit and
+intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton
+expressly declares that his _Zanoni_ is not an allegory, he
+confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to
+assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse
+subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice
+that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that
+Lytton first conceived his theories and then created personages
+to illustrate them. His characters have no power to act of their
+own volition or to do unexpected things, but must move along the
+lines laid down for them.
+
+In _The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain_,
+which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1859, Bulwer Lytton
+lays aside the sin of over-elaboration and ornamentation that so
+easily besets him, and relies for his effect on the impalpable
+horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the
+accurate description of the position of the house in a street off
+the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the
+matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage
+of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony,
+all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie
+child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands,
+the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly
+outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb with
+ruffles, lace, and buckles, the hideous phantom of the drowned
+man, the dark figure with malignant serpent eyes, shadow forth
+the story hinted at in the letters found in an old drawer.
+Haunted by loathly presences, the watcher experiences a sensation
+of almost intolerable horror, but saves himself at the worst by
+opposing his will to that of the haunters. He rightly surmises
+that the evil influences, which seem in some way to emanate from
+a small empty room, really proceed from a living being. His
+interpretation is skilful and subtle enough not to detract from
+the simple horror of the tale. A miniature, certain volatile
+essences, a compass, a lodestone and other properties are found
+in a room below that which appeared to be the source of the
+horrors. It proves that the man, whose face is portrayed on the
+miniature has been able through the exertion of will-power to
+prolong his life for two centuries, and to preserve a curse in a
+magical vessel. He is actually interviewed by the watcher, to
+whom he unfolds his remarkable history, and whom he mesmerises
+into silence on the subject of his experiences in the haunted
+house for a space of three months.
+
+Lytton realises that it is not only what is told but what is left
+unsaid that requires consideration in a ghost story. His
+reticence and the entire absence of any note of mockery or doubt
+secure the "willing suspension of disbelief" necessary to the
+appreciation of the apparently supernatural.
+
+In _A Strange Story_, which, at Dickens's invitation, appeared in
+_All the Year Round_ (1861-2), Bulwer Lytton further elaborates
+his theories of mesmerism and willpower. He explains his purpose
+in the Preface:
+
+     "When the reader lays down this strange story, perhaps
+     he will detect, through all the haze of Romance, the
+     outlines of these images suggested to his reason:
+     Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such
+     as the Materialist had conceived it. Secondly, the
+     image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its
+     inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence and
+     destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplexity
+     and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation
+     before it settles at last into the simple faith which
+     unites the philosopher and the infant. And thirdly, the
+     image of the erring but pure-thoughted Visionary,
+     seeking overmuch on this earth to separate soul from
+     mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom
+     and reason is lost in the space between earth and the
+     stars."
+
+These three conceptions are embodied in Margrave, who has renewed
+his life far beyond the limits allotted to man; a young doctor,
+Fenwick, who represents the intellectual divorced from the
+spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies
+the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the
+story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to
+wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately
+tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the
+wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose,
+there is a fascination about the book which compels us to go
+forward.
+
+In Lytton's hands the barbarity of the novel of terror has been
+gracefully smoothed away. It has, indeed, become almost
+unrecognisably refined and elevated, and something of its native
+vigour is lost in the process. Amid all the amenities of Vrilya
+and Intelligences, we miss the vulgar blatancy of an honest,
+old-fashioned spectre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+For the readers of their own day the Gothic romances of Walpole,
+Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe possessed the charm of novelty.
+Before the close of the century we may trace, in the
+conversations of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in
+_Northanger Abbey_, symptoms of a longing for more poignant
+excitement. It was at this time that Mrs. Radcliffe, after the
+publication of _The Italian_ in 1797, retired quietly from the
+field. From her obscurity she viewed no doubt with some disdain
+the vulgar achievements of "Monk" Lewis and a tribe of imitators,
+who compounded a farrago of horrors as thick and slab as the
+contents of a witch's cauldron. Until the appearance in 1820 of
+Maturin's _Melmoth_, which was redeemed by its psychological
+insight and its vigorous style, the Gothic romance maintained a
+disreputable existence in the hands of those who looked upon
+fiction as a lucrative trade, not as an art. In the meantime,
+however, an easy device had been discovered for pandering to the
+popular craving for excitement. Ingenious authors realised that
+it was possible to compress into the five pages of a short story
+as much sensation as was contained in the five volumes of a
+Gothic romance. For the brevity of the tales, which were issued
+in chapbooks, readers were compensated by gaudily coloured
+illustrations and by double-barrelled titles. An anthology called
+"Wild Roses" (published by Anne Lemoine, Coleman Street, n.d.)
+included: _Twelve O'Clock or the Three Robbers, The Monks of
+Cluny, or Castle Acre Monastery, The Tomb of Aurora, or The
+Mysterious Summons, The Mysterious Spaniard, or The Ruins of St.
+Luke's Abbey_, and lastly, as a _bonne bouche_, _Barbastal, or
+The Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_.[127] There are
+many collections of this kind, some of them dating back to 1806,
+among the chapbooks in the British Museum. It is in these brief,
+blood-curdling romances that we may find the origin of the short
+tale of terror, which became so popular a form of literature in
+the nineteenth century. The taste for these delicious morsels has
+lingered long. Dante Gabriel Rossetti delighted in _Brigand
+Tales, Tales of Chivalry, Tales of Wonder, Legends of Terror_;
+and it was in search of such booty, "a penny plain and twopence
+coloured" that, more than fifty years later, Robert Louis
+Stevenson and his companions ransacked the stores of a certain
+secluded stationer's shop in Edinburgh.
+
+It was probably the success of the chapbook that encouraged the
+editors of periodicals early in the nineteenth century to enliven
+their pages with sensational fiction. The literary hack, who, if
+he had lived a century earlier, would have been glad to turn a
+Turkish tale for half-a-crown, now cheerfully furnished a
+"fireside horror" for the Christmas number. In his search after
+novelty he was often driven to wild and desperate expedients.
+Leigh Hunt, who showed scant sympathy with Lewis's bleeding nun
+and scoffed mercilessly at his "little grey men who sit munching
+hearts," was bound to admit: "A man who does not contribute his
+quota of grim story, now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of the
+republic of letters." Accordingly, so that he too might wear a
+death's head as part of his _insignia_, he included in _The
+Indicator_ (1819-21) a supernatural story, entitled _A Tale for a
+Chimney Corner_. Scorning to "measure talents with a leg of veal
+or a German sausage," he unfortunately dismissed from his
+imagination the nightmarish hordes of
+
+     "Haunting Old Women and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary
+     Lean Hands, and Empusas on one leg, and Ladies growing
+     Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through
+     Keyholes; and Plaintive Heads and Shrieking Statues and
+     Shocking Anomalies of Shape and Things, which, when
+     seen, drove people mad,"
+
+and in their place he conjured up a placid, ladylike ghost from a
+legend quoted in Sandys' commentary on Ovid. Leigh Hunt's story
+has the air of having been written by one who cared for none of
+these things; but there were others who wrote with more gusto.
+
+Many of the tales in such collections as _The Story-Teller_
+(1833) or _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ (1839-42) show
+the persistence of Gothic story. In these periodicals the grave
+and the gay are intermingled, and when we are weary of dark
+intrigues and impenetrable secrets we may turn to lighter
+reading. Yet it is significant of the taste of our ancestors that
+we cannot venture far without encountering a spectre of some
+sort, or a villain with the baleful eye, disguised, it may be, as
+a Spanish gipsy, a German necromancer or a Russian count. Many of
+the stories are Gothic novels, reduced in size, but with room for
+all the old machinery:
+
+  "A novel now is nothing more
+  Than an old castle, and a creaking door,
+    A distant hovel,
+  Clanking of chains--a galley--a light--
+  Old armour, and a phantom all in white,
+    And there's a novel."
+
+In _The Story-Teller_, a magazine which reprinted many popular
+tales, we find German legends like _The Three Students of
+Göttingen_, a "True Story Very Strange and Very Pitiful"; _The
+Wood Demon; The Wehr-Wolf; The Sexton of Cologne, or Lucifer_, a
+striking story of an Italian artist who was haunted by a terrible
+figure he had painted in the church at Arezzo. Yet the first tale
+in the collection, _The Story-Haunted_, which describes the sad
+fate of a youth brought up in a solitary library reading romances
+to his mother, was intended, like _The Spectre-Smitten_, in
+_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_,[128] as a solemn
+warning against over-indulgence in fictitious terrors. The mother
+dies in an agony of horror, as her son reads aloud the account of
+the Gentleman of Florence, who was pursued by a spectre of
+himself, which vanished with him finally into the earth, as the
+priest endeavoured to bless him. The son, left alone, enters the
+world, and judges the people around him by the standard of books.
+The story-haunted youth falls in love with the phantom of his own
+imagination, whom he endows with all the graces of the heroines
+of romance. He finds her embodied at last, but she dies before
+they are united. _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_, in ten
+volumes, contains a comprehensive selection of tales of terror by
+the "best authors." Walpole, Miss Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk"
+Lewis, Maturin, Mrs. Shelley, and Charles Brockden Brown are all
+represented; and there are many translations of tales by French
+and German authors. We may take our choice of _The Spectre
+Barber_ or _The Spectre Bride_, or, if we are inclined to
+incredulity, see _The Spectre Unmasked_. The entertainment
+offered is of bewildering variety. Some of the stories, such as
+D.F. Hayne's _Romance of the Castle_, seem like familiar,
+well-tried friends, and conceal no surprises for the readers of
+Gothic romance. Others, like _The Sleepless Woman_, by W. Jerdan,
+are more piquant. The hero is warned by his dying uncle to beware
+of women's bright eyes. In spite of this he marries a lady, whose
+eyes unite the qualities of the robin and the falcon. After the
+wedding he makes the awful discovery that she is of too noble a
+lineage ever to sleep. Turn where he may, her eyes are always
+upon him. At last, we find him pallid, haggard, and emaciated,
+wandering alone in an avenue of cedar trees beside a silent lake:
+
+     "At this moment a breath of wind blew a branch aside--a
+     sunbeam fell upon the baron's face; he took it for the
+     eyes of his wife. Alas! his remedy lay temptingly
+     before him, the still, the profound, the shadowy lake.
+     De Launaye took one plunge--it was into eternity."
+
+The writer foolishly ruins the effect of this climax by
+super-imposing an allegorical interpretation.
+
+Like the _Story-Teller, The Romancist and Novelist's Library_
+should be read
+
+  "At night when doors are shut,
+  And the wood-worm pricks,
+  And the death-watch ticks,
+  And the bar has a flag of smut,--
+  And the cat's in the water-butt--
+  And the socket floats and flares,
+  And the housebeams groan,
+  And a foot unknown
+  Is surmised on the garret stairs,
+  And the locks slip unawares."
+
+But "tales of terror" lose some of their power when read one
+after another; they are most effective read singly in
+periodicals. _Blackwood's Magazine_ was especially famous for its
+tales, the best of which have been collected and published
+separately. The editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_ shows
+a marked preference for tales of a supernatural or sensational
+cast. Le Fanu, who claimed that his stories, like those of Sir
+Walter Scott, belonged to the "legitimate school of English
+tragic romance," was one of the best-known contributors. _All the
+Year Round_ and _Household Words_, under the editorship of
+Dickens, often found room for the occult and the uncanny. Wilkie
+Collins' fascinating serial, _The Moonstone_, was published in
+_All the Year Round_ in 1868; _The Woman in White_ had appeared
+six years earlier in _Blackwood_. The stories included in these
+magazines are of various types. The old-fashioned spook gradually
+declines in popularity. He is ousted in a scientific age by more
+recondite forms of terror. Before 1875, with a few belated
+exceptions:
+
+  "Ghosts, wandering here and there
+  Troop home to churchyards, damned spirits all,
+  That in crossways and floods have burial,
+  Already to their wormy beds are gone."
+
+The "explained supernatural" is skilfully improved and developed.
+Le Fanu's _Green Tea_ is a story from the diary of a German
+doctor, concerning a patient who was dogged by a black monkey.
+The creature, "whose green eyes glow with an expression of
+unfathomable malignity," is medically explained to be an
+illusion; but it is so vividly presented that it fastens on our
+imagination with remarkable tenacity. Wilkie Collins' short
+story, _The Yellow Mask_, included in the series called _After
+Dark_, is another experiment in the same kind. A jealous woman
+appears among the dancers at a ball, wearing a waxen cast of the
+face of the man's dead wife. The short story, in which the author
+deliberately shakes our nerves and then soothes away our fears by
+accounting naturally for startling phenomena, is an amazingly
+popular type. It reappears continually in different guises.
+Occasionally it merges into pleasant buffoonery. _Die
+Geistertodtenglocke_, for instance, a story in the _Dublin
+University Magazine_ (1862), is a burlesque, in which the
+mysterious tolling of a bell is explained by the discovery that a
+cow strolled into the ruin to eat the hay with which the rope was
+mended. But, judiciously handled, this type of story makes a
+strong appeal to human beings who like to know how much of the
+terrible and painful they can endure, and who yet must ultimately
+be reassured.
+
+Another group of short tales of terror consists of those which
+purport to be faithful renderings of the beliefs of simple
+people. To this category belong Allan Cunningham's _Traditional
+Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_, which first
+appeared, with one exception, in the _London Magazine_ (1821-23).
+Cunningham has the tact to preserve the legends of elves,
+fairies, ghosts and bogles, as they were passed down from one
+generation to another on the lips of living beings. Later he
+attempted, in a novel, _Sir Michael Scott_ (1828), a kind of
+Gothic romance; but there is no trace in the _Traditional Tales_
+of the influence of the terrormongers with whose works he was
+familiar. Perhaps the finest story of the collection is _The
+Haunted Ships_, in which are embodied the traditions associated
+with two black and decayed hulls, half immersed in the quicksands
+of the Solway. Lewis would have dragged us on board ship, and
+would have shown us the devil in his own person. Cunningham
+wisely keeps ashore, and repeats the tales that are told
+concerning the fiendish mirth and revelry to be heard, when, at
+certain seasons of the year, they arise in their former beauty,
+with forecastle and deck, with sail and pennon and shroud. James
+Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who was a friend of Cunningham, was
+steeped in the same folk-lore. _The Mysterious Bride_, printed
+among his _Tales and Sketches_, tells of a beautiful spirit-lady,
+dressed in white and green, who appears three times on St.
+Lawrence's Eve to the Laird of Birkendelly. On the morning, after
+the night on which she had promised to wed him, he is found, a
+blackened corpse, on Birky Brow. _Mary Burnet_ is the story of a
+maiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. She
+returns to earth, like Kilmeny, and assures her parents of her
+welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts
+her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his
+legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very
+stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems
+ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most
+memorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_
+(1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with
+religious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by a
+mysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations and
+weird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seen
+at daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders,
+dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsbury
+has suggested that Lockhart probably had the principal hand in
+this story. "Christopher North" was another member of the
+_Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of the
+unearthly.
+
+The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift for
+story-telling made Dickens call her his Scheherazade, were, like
+those of Cunningham, based directly on tradition. She was always
+attracted by the subject of witchcraft; and she had collected a
+store of "creepy" legends of the kind which made the nervous
+ladies of Cranford bid their sedan-chairmen hasten rapidly down
+Darkness Lane at nights. The best of Mrs. Gaskell's short tales
+is perhaps _The Nurse's Story_, which appeared in the Christmas
+number of _Household Words_ in 1852. Mrs. Gaskell has a happy
+gift for preserving the natural aroma of a tale of bygone days.
+_The Nurse's Story_ has a hint of the old-world grace of Lamb's
+_Dream Children_. The carefully disposed tableau of ghosts--the
+unforgiving old man, and the vindictive sister, spurning the lady
+and her child from the hall--is too definite and distinct, but
+the conception of the wraith of the dead child outside the manor,
+pleading piteously to be let in, and luring away the living
+child, is delicately wrought. The tale is told in the rambling,
+circumstantial style, suitable to the fireside and the long
+leisure of a winter's evening. Dickens tells a very different
+nurse's story in one of the chapters of _An Uncommercial
+Traveller_. The tone of Mrs. Gaskell's nurse is kindly and
+protective; that of Dickens' nurse severe, admonitory and
+emphatic. She, who told the grim legend of Captain Murderer,
+meant, clearly, to scare as well as to entertain her hearer. She
+leads up to the climax of her story, the deadly revenge of the
+dark twin's poisoned pie, with admirable art. The nurse's name
+was Mercy, but, as Dickens remarks, she showed none to him.
+Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful
+stories, he himself, like the fat boy in _Pickwick_, sometimes
+"wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait
+of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety,
+and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs,
+besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us _The Monkey's
+Paw_; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, _Told in the Dark_, are
+as forcible as any of his humours to be read in the daylight.
+Dickens, in his excursions into the supernatural, does not,
+however, always cast off his mood of jocularity. His treatment of
+Marley's ghost lacks dignity and decorum. Clanking its chains in
+a remote cellar of the silent, empty house, it has the power to
+disturb us, but we lose our respect for the shade when we gaze
+upon it eye to eye. Applied to the spirit world, there is much
+truth in the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. The
+account of the thirteenth juryman, in _Dr. Marigold's
+Prescriptions_, is much more alarming. The story of the
+signalman, No. 1 Branch line, in _Mugby Junction_, is indefinably
+horrible. The signalman's anguish of mind, his exact description
+of the Appearance, his sense of overhanging calamity, are all
+strangely disquieting. The coincidence of the manner of his
+death, with which the story closes, is wisely left to make its
+own inevitable impression.
+
+Some of the stories in _Blackwood_ are the more striking because
+they depend for their effect on natural, not supernatural,
+horror. We may feel we are immune from the visits of ghosts, but
+the accident in _The Man in the Bell_ (1821) is one which might
+happen to anyone. The maddening clangour of sound, the frightful
+images that crowd into the reeling brain of the man suspended in
+the belfry, are described with an unflinching realism that
+reminds us of _The Pit and the Pendulum_. To the same class
+belongs the skilfully constructed _Iron Shroud_ (1830), by
+William Mudford, an author who, as Scott remarks in his journal,
+"loves to play at cherry-pit with Satan." The suspense is
+ingeniously maintained as, one by one, the windows of the iron
+dungeon disappear, until, at last, the massive walls and
+ponderous roof contract into the victim's iron shroud. Wilkie
+Collins' story, _A Terribly Strange Bed_, which describes the
+stratagem of a gang of cardsharpers for getting rid of those who
+happen to win money from them, is in the same vein. The canopy
+slowly descends during the night, and smothers its victim. A
+similar motive is used, with immeasurably finer effect, by Joseph
+Conrad in his story of the disappearance of the sailor at the
+lonely inn in the mountains of Spain. The experience of Byrne in
+_The Inn of the Two Witches_[129] is a masterpiece in the
+psychology of terror. The dense darkness, in which the young
+naval officer "steers his course only by the feel of the wind,"
+the scene when the door of the inn bursts open and reveals in the
+candlelight the savage beauty of the gipsy girl with evil,
+slanting eyes, and the inhuman ugliness of the old hags, are a
+fitting prelude to the horrors of the chamber, where the corpse
+of the missing sailor is found in the wardrobe. We pass with
+Byrne through the different stages of suspicion and dread until,
+completely baffled in his attempt to account for the manner in
+which Tom Corbin was done to death, we feel "the hot terror that
+plays upon the heart like a tongue of flame that touches and
+withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes."
+
+In the short stories of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century, it is hard to escape from the terrible. We light upon it
+suddenly, here, there and everywhere. We find it in Stevenson's
+_New Arabian Nights_, in his _Merry Men_, and his stories of the
+South Seas, as indeed we should expect, when we recall the
+tapping of the blind man's stick in _Treasure Island_, the scene
+with the candles in the snow after the duel between the two
+brothers in _The Master of Ballantrae_, or David Balfour's
+perilous adventure on the broken staircase in _Kidnapped_.
+Kipling is another expert in the art of eeriness, and has a wide
+range. His Indian backgrounds are peculiarly adapted for tales of
+terror. The loathsome horror of _The Mark of the Beast_, with its
+intangible suggestion of mystery, the quiet restraint of _The
+Return of Imray_, in which so much is left unsaid, are two
+admirable illustrations of his gift.
+
+The tale of terror wins its effect by ever-varying means.
+Scientific discoveries open up new vistas, and the twentieth
+century will evolve many fresh devices for torturing the nerves.
+The telephone set ringing by a ghostly hand, the aeroplane with a
+phantom pilot, will replace the Gothic machinery of ruined abbeys
+and wandering lights. The possibilities of terror are manifold,
+and it is impracticable here to do more than pick up a few
+threads in the tangled skein. Terror becomes inextricably
+interwoven with other motives according to the bent of the
+author. It is allied with psychology in James' sinister _Turn of
+the Screw_, with scientific phantasy in Wells' _Invisible Man_.
+It may enhance the excitement of a spy story, add zest to the
+study of crime, or act as a foil to a romantic love interest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+In 1797 we are told that in America "the dairymaid and hired man
+no longer weep over the ballad of the cruel stepmother, but amuse
+themselves into an agreeable terror with the haunted houses and
+hobgoblins of Mrs. Radcliffe."[130] In _The Asylum, or Alonzo and
+Melissa_, published in Ploughkeepsie in 1811, the Gothic castle,
+with its full equipment of "explained ghosts," has been safely
+conveyed across the Atlantic and set up in South Carolina; and
+_The Sicilian Pirate or the Pillar of Mystery: a Terrific
+Romance_, is, if we may trust its title, a hair-raising story, in
+the style of "Monk" Lewis. Charles Brockden Brown, one of the
+earliest American novelists, prides himself on "calling forth the
+passions and engaging the sympathy of the reader by means not
+hitherto employed by preceding authors," and speaks slightingly
+of "puerile superstitions and exploded manners, Gothic castles
+and chimeras."[131] Brown, who, like Shelley, was an enthusiastic
+admirer of Godwin, sought to embody the theories of _Political
+Justice_ in romances describing American life. The works, which
+are said by Peacock to have taken deepest root in Shelley's mind
+and to have had the strongest influence in the formation of his
+character, are Schiller's _Robbers_, Goethe's _Faust_, and four
+novels--_Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly_, and _Mervyn_--by C.B.
+Brown.[132]
+
+Notwithstanding his lofty scorn for "Gothic castles and
+chimeras," even Brown himself condescended to take over from the
+despised Mrs. Radcliffe the device of introducing apparently
+supernatural occurrences which are ultimately traced to natural
+causes. Like Mrs. Radcliffe he is at the mercy of a conscience
+which forbids him to thrust upon his readers spectres in which he
+himself does not believe. He lacks Lewis's reckless mendacity. In
+_Wieland_ mysterious voices are heard at intervals by various
+members of the family. To the hero, who has inherited a tendency
+to religious fanaticism, they seem to be of divine origin, and
+when a voice bids him sacrifice those who are dearest to him, he
+obeys implicitly. He slays his wife and children, and his sister
+only escapes death by accident. After this catastrophe it proves
+that the voices are produced by a skilled ventriloquist, Carwin,
+who has been admitted as an intimate friend of the family.
+Realising that this explanation may seem somewhat incredible,
+Brown seeks to make it appear more plausible by dwelling on
+Wieland's abnormal state of mind, which would render him
+peculiarly open to suggestion. Carwin's motive for thus
+persecuting the Wieland family with his accursed gift is never
+satisfactorily explained. His attitude is apparently that of an
+obtuse psychologist, who does not realise how serious the
+consequence of his experiments may be.
+
+In _Ormond_ and _Arthur Mervyn_, Brown describes the ravages of
+the yellow fever, of which he had personal experience in New York
+and Philadelphia. The hero of _Ormond_ is a member of a society
+similar to that of the Illuminati, whose ceremonies and beliefs
+are set forth in _Horrid Mysteries_ (1796). The heroine,
+Constantia Dudley, who was Shelley's ideal feminine character, is
+the embodiment of a theory, not a human being. She "walks always
+in the light of reason," and decides that "to marry in extreme
+youth would be a proof of pernicious and opprobrious temerity."
+The most memorable of Brown's novels is _Edgar Huntly_, which
+bears an obvious resemblance to _Caleb Williams_. Like Godwin,
+Brown is deeply interested in morbid psychology. He finds
+pleasure in tracing the workings of the brain in times of
+emotional stress. The description of a sleepwalker digging a
+grave--a picture which captivated Shelley's imagination--is the
+starting-point of the book. Edgar Huntly is impelled by curiosity
+to track him down. The somnambulist, Clithero, has, in
+self-defence, killed the twin-brother of his patron, Mrs,
+Lorimer, to whom he is deeply attached. Obsessed by the idea of
+the misery his deed will arouse in her mind, he attempts, in a
+moment of frenzy, to slay her. Believing that Mrs. Lorimer has
+died after hearing of the murder, Clithero flees to America. When
+he disappears from his home, Huntly resolves to follow him, and
+in his search loses himself amid wild and desolate country. He is
+attacked by Indians, and after frightful adventures at length
+reaches his home. Clithero, whom he believed dead, has been
+rescued. Mrs. Lorimer is still alive, and is married to a former
+lover. This news, however, fails to restore Clithero, who, in a
+fit of insanity, flings himself overboard when he is in a ship in
+charge of Huntly.
+
+Brown's plots, which often open well, are spoilt by hasty,
+careless conclusions. It was his habit to write two or three
+novels simultaneously. He was beset by the problem that exercised
+even Scott's brain: "The devil of a difficulty is that one
+puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot
+disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have
+raised."
+
+Brown takes very little trouble over his dénouements, but his
+characters leave so faint an impression on our minds that we are
+not deeply concerned in their fates. He is interested rather in
+conveying states of mind than in portraying character. We search
+the windings of Clithero's tormented conscience without realising
+him as an individual. The background of rugged scenery, though it
+is described in vague, turgid language, is more definite and
+distinct than the human figures. We feel that Brown is struggling
+through the obscurity of his Latinised diction to depict
+something he has actually seen. An air of dreadful solemnity
+hangs heavily over each story. Every being is in deadly earnest.
+Brown has Godwin's power of hypnotising us by his serious
+persistence, and of reducing us to a mood of awestruck gravity by
+the sonority of his pompous periods.
+
+From the oppressive gloom of Brown's "novels with a purpose," it
+is a relief to turn to the irresponsible gaiety of "Geoffrey
+Crayon," whose tales of terror, published some twenty years
+later, are usually fashioned in a jovial spirit, only faintly
+tinged with awe and dread. In _The Spectre Bridegroom_, included
+in _The Sketch Book_ (1820), the ghostly rider of Bürger's
+far-famed ballad is set amid new surroundings and pleasantly
+turned to ridicule. The "supernatural" wooer, who now and again
+arouses a genuine thrill of fear, is merely playing a practical
+joke on the princess by impersonating the dead bridegroom, and
+all ends happily. The story of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy
+Hollow is set against so picturesque a background that we are
+almost inclined to quarrel with those who laughed and said that
+Ichabod Crane was still alive, and that Bram Jones, the lovely
+Katrina's bridegroom, knew more of the spectre than he chose to
+tell. The drowsy atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow makes us see visions
+and dream dreams. The group of "Strange Stories by a Nervous
+Gentleman" in _Tales of a Traveller_ (1824) prove that Washington
+Irving was well versed in ghostly lore. He, as well as any, can
+call spirits from the vasty deep, but, when they appear in answer
+to his summons, he can seldom refrain from receiving them in a
+jocose, irreverent mood, ill befitting the solemn, dignified
+spectre of a German legend. Even the highly qualified,
+irrepressibly loquacious ghost of Lewis Carroll's
+_Phantasmagoria_ would have resented his genial familiarity. The
+strange stories are told at a hunting-party in a country-house, a
+cheerful, comfortable background for ghost stories. A hoary,
+one-eyed gentleman, "the whole side of whose head was dilapidated
+and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted," sets
+the ball rolling with the old story of a spectre who glides into
+the room, wringing her hands, and is later identified, like
+Scott's Lady in the Sacque, by her resemblance to an ancestral
+portrait in the gallery. The "knowing" gentleman tells of a
+picture that winked in a startling and alarming fashion, and
+immediately explains away this phenomenon by the presence of a
+thief who has cut a spy-hole in the canvas. _The Bold Dragoon_ is
+a spirited, riotous nightmare in which the furniture dances to
+the music of the bellows played by an uncanny musician in a long
+flannel gown and a nightcap. The _Story of the German Student_ is
+in a different key. Here Irving strikes a note of real horror.
+The student falls in love with an imaginary lady, woven out of
+his dreams. He finds her in distress one night in the streets of
+Paris, takes her home, only to find her a corpse in the morning.
+A police-officer informs him that the lady was guillotined the
+day before, and the student discovers the truth of this statement
+when he unrolls a bandage and her head falls to the floor. The
+young man loses his reason, and is tormented by the belief that
+an evil spirit has reanimated a dead body to ensnare him. The
+morning after the recital of this gruesome story, the host reads
+aloud to his guests a manuscript entrusted to him, together with
+a portrait, by a young Italian. This youth, it chances, learnt
+painting with a monk, who, as a penance, drew pictures, or
+modelled waxen images, representing death and corruption, a
+detail which reminds us of what was concealed by the Black Veil
+in _Udolpho_. He later falls in love with his model, Bianca, who,
+during his absence abroad, marries his friend Filippo. In a
+jealous rage the young Italian slays his rival, and is
+unceasingly haunted by his phantom. Washington Irving has no
+desire to endure for long the atmosphere of mystery and horror
+his story has created, and quickly relieves the tension by a
+return to ordinary life. The host promises to show the picture,
+which is said to affect all beholders in an extraordinary
+fashion, to each of his guests in turn. They all profess
+themselves remarkably affected by it, until the host confesses
+that he has too sincere a regard for the feelings of the young
+Italian to reveal the actual picture to any of them; With this
+moment of disillusionment the strange stories come to an end. The
+title, _Tales of a Traveller_, under which Irving placed his
+tales of terror, indicates the mood in which he fashioned them.
+He regarded them much as he would regard the wonderful adventures
+of Baron Munchausen. They were to be taken, like one of Dr.
+Marigold's prescriptions, with a grain of salt. The idea of
+blending levity with horror, suggested perhaps by German
+influence, was very popular in England and France at this period.
+Balzac's _L'Auberge Rouge_ and _L'Elixir de la Longue Vie_ are
+written in a similar mood.
+
+It is not always the boldest and most adventurous beings who
+elect to dwell amid "calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire."
+The "virtuous mind," whom supernatural horrors may "startle well
+but not astound," sometimes finds a melancholy pleasure in
+beguiling weaker mortals into haunted ruins to watch their firm
+nerves tremble. Sometimes too, though a man be wholly innocent of
+the desire to alarm, he is led astray, whether he will or not,
+among the terrors of the invisible world. Grey ghosts steal into
+his imagination unawares. It was so that they came to Nathaniel
+Hawthorne, who speaks sorrowfully of "gaily dressed fantasies
+turning to ghostly and black-clad images of themselves." He would
+gladly have written a "sunshiny" book, but was capriciously fated
+to live ever in the twilight, haunted by spectres and by "dark
+ideas." He fashions his tales of terror delicately and
+reluctantly, not riotously and shamelessly like Lewis and
+Maturin.
+
+An innate reticence and shyness of temper held Hawthorne, as if
+by a spell, somewhat aloof from life, and no one realised more
+clearly than he the limitations that his detachment from humanity
+imposed upon his art.
+
+Of _Twice-Told Tales_ he writes regretfully:
+
+     "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in
+     too retired a shade... Instead of passion there is
+     sentiment and even in what purport to be pictures of
+     actual life we have allegory, not always so warmly
+     dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be
+     taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether
+     from lack of power or an inconquerable reserve, the
+     author's touches have often an effect of tameness. The
+     book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be
+     read in the clear, brown twilight atmosphere in which
+     it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to
+     look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages";
+
+and in his _Notebook_ (1840) he confesses:
+
+     "I used to think I could imagine all the passions, all
+     feelings and states of the heart and mind, but how
+     little did I know! Indeed we are but shadows, we are
+     not endowed with real life, and all that seems most
+     real about us is but the thinnest shadow of a
+     dream--till the heart be touched."
+
+Whether he is threading the labyrinths of his imagination or
+watching the human shadows come and go, Hawthorne lingers longer
+in the shadow than in the sunshine. He was not a man of morose
+and gloomy temper, disenchanted with life and driven by distress
+or thwarted passion to brood in solitude. An irresistible,
+inexplicable impulse drives him towards the sombre and the
+gloomy. The delicacy and wistful charm of the words in which
+Hawthorne criticises his own work and character reveal how
+impossible it would have been for him to force his wayward
+genius. His imagination hovers with curious persistence round
+eerie, fantastic themes:
+
+"An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making
+all the images reflected in it pass again across its surface"--a
+hint skilfully introduced into the history of old Esther Dudley
+in _The Legends of the Province House_, or:
+
+     "A dreadful secret to be communicated to several
+     persons of various character--grave or gay--and they
+     all to become insane, according to their characters, by
+     the influence of the secret"
+
+--an idea modified and adapted in _The Marble Faun_. "An ice-cold
+hand--which people ever afterwards remember when once they have
+grasped it"--is bestowed on the Wandering Jew, the owner of the
+marvellous _Virtuoso's Collection_, whose treasures include the
+blood-encrusted pen with which Dr. Faustus signed away his
+salvation, Peter Schlemihl's shadow, the elixir of life, and the
+philosopher's stone. The form of a vampire, who apparently never
+took shape on paper, flitted through the twilight of Hawthorne's
+imagination:
+
+     "Stories to be told of a certain person's appearance in
+     public, of his having been seen in various situations,
+     and his making visits in private circles; but finally
+     on looking for this person, to come upon his old grave
+     and mossy tombstone."
+
+With so many alluring suggestions floating shadowwise across his
+mind, it is not wonderful that Hawthorne should have been
+fascinated by the dream of a human life prolonged far beyond the
+usual span--a dream, which, if realised, would have enabled him
+to capture in words more of those "shapes that haunt thought's
+wildernesses."
+
+Although among the sketches collected in _Twice-Told Tales_ (vol.
+i. 1837, vol. ii. 1842) some are painted in gay and lively hues,
+the prevailing tone of the book is sad and mournful. The
+light-hearted philosophy of the wanderers in _The Seven
+Vagabonds_, the pretty, brightly coloured vignettes in _Little
+Annie's Rambles_, the quiet cheerfulness of _Sunday at Home_ or
+_The Rill from the Town Pump_, only serve to throw into darker
+relief gloomy legends like that of _Ethan Brand_, the man who
+went in search of the Unpardonable Sin, or dreary stories like
+that of _Edward Fane's Rosebud_, or the ghostly _White Old Maid_.
+One of the most carefully wrought sketches in _Twice-Told Tales_
+is the weird story of _The Hollow of the Three Hills_. By means
+of a witch's spell, a lady hears the far-away voices of her aged
+parents--her mother querulous and tearful, her father calmly
+despondent--and amid the fearful mirth of a madhouse
+distinguishes the accents and footstep of the husband she has
+wronged. At last she listens to the death-knell tolled for the
+child she has left to die. The solemn rhythm of Hawthorne's
+skilfully ordered sentences is singularly haunting and
+impressive:
+
+     "The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the
+     hills, but deep shades obscured the hollow and the
+     pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to
+     overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
+     weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till
+     the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals of
+     her words, like a clang that had travelled far over
+     valley and rising ground and was just ready to die in
+     the air... Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened
+     into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from
+     some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of
+     mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to
+     the solitary wayfarer that all might weep for the doom
+     appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread,
+     passing slowly, slowly on as of mourners with a coffin,
+     their garments trailing the ground so that the ear
+     could measure the length of their melancholy array.
+     Before them went the priest reading the burial-service,
+     while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
+     breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak
+     aloud, still here were revilings and anathemas
+     whispered, but distinct, from women and from men... The
+     sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a
+     thin vapour and the wind that just before had seemed to
+     shake the coffin-pall moaned sadly round the verge of
+     the hollow between three hills."
+
+In a later collection of Hawthorne's short stories, _Mosses from
+an Old Manse_, the grave and the gay, the terrific and the
+sportive, are once more intermingled. Side by side with a forlorn
+attempt at humorous allegory, Mrs. _Bullfrog_, we find the
+serious moral allegories of _The Birthmark_ and _The
+Bosom-Serpent_, the wild, mysterious forest-revels in _Goodman
+Brown_, and the evil, sinister beauty of _Dr. Rappacini's
+Daughter_, a modern rehandling of the ancient legend of the
+poison-maiden, who was perhaps the prototype of Oliver Wendell
+Holmes' heroine in _Elsie Venner_ (1861). The quiet grace and
+natural ease of Hawthorne's style lend even to his least
+ambitious tales a distinctive charm. If he chooses a slight and
+simple theme, his touch is deft and sure. _Dr. Heidegger's
+Experiment_, in which Hawthorne's delicate, whimsical fancy plays
+round the idea of the elixir of life, is almost like a series of
+miniature pictures, distinct and lifelike in form and colour,
+seen through the medium of an old-fashioned magic-lantern. Yet
+even in this fantastic trifle we can discern the feeling for
+words and the sense of proportion that characterise Hawthorne's
+longer works.
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_ (1850) was originally intended to be one of
+several short stories, but Hawthorne was persuaded to expand it
+into a novel. He felt some misgivings as to the success of the
+work:
+
+  "Keeping so close to the point as the tale does, and
+  diversified in no otherwise than by turning different
+  sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it will
+  weary very many people and disgust some."
+
+The plot bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Lockhart's
+striking novel, _Adam Blair_. The "dark idea" that fascinates
+Hawthorne is the psychological state of Hester Prynne and her
+lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, in the long years that follow their
+lawless passion. Their love story hardly concerns him at all. The
+interest of the novel does not depend on the development of the
+plot. No attempt is made to complicate the story by concealing
+the identity of Hester's lover or of her husband. The action
+takes place within the souls and minds of the characters, not in
+their outward circumstances. The central chapter of the book is
+named significantly: "The Interior of a Heart." The moral
+situation described in _The Scarlet Letter_ did not present
+itself to Hawthorne abstractly, but as a series of pictures. He
+habitually thought in images, and he brooded so long over his
+conceptions that his descriptions are almost as definite in
+outline and as vivid in colour as things actually seen. His
+pictures do not waver or fade elusively as the mind seeks to
+realise them. The prison door, studded with pikes, before which
+Hester Prynne first stands with the letter on her breast, the
+pillory where Dimmesdale keeps vigil at midnight, the
+forest-trees with pale, fitful gleams of sunshine glinting
+through their leaves, are so distinct that we almost put out our
+hands to touch them. Hawthorne's dream-imagery has the same
+convincing reality. The phantasmagoric visions which float
+through Hester's consciousness--the mirrored reflection of her
+own face in girlhood, her husband's thin, scholar-like visage,
+the grey houses of the cathedral city where she had spent her
+early years--are more real to her and to us than the blurred
+faces of the Puritans who throng the marketplace to gaze on her
+ignominy. Although the moral tone of the book is one of almost
+unrelieved gloom, the actual scenes are full of colour and light.
+Pearl's scarlet frock with its fantastic embroideries, the
+magnificent velvet gown and white ruff of the old dame who rides
+off by night to the witch-revels in the forest, the group of Red
+Indians in their deer-skin robes and wampum belts of red and
+yellow ochre, the bronzed faces and gaudy attire of the Spanish
+pirates, all stand out in bold relief among the sober greys and
+browns of the Puritans. The tense, emotional atmosphere is
+heightened by the festive brightness of the outer world.
+
+The light of Hawthorne's imagination is directed mainly on three
+characters--Hester, Arthur, and the elf-like child Pearl, the
+living symbol of their union. Further in the background lurks the
+malignant figure of Roger Chillingworth, contriving his fiendish
+scheme of vengeance, "violating in cold blood the sanctity of a
+human heart." The blaze of the Scarlet Letter compels us by a
+strange magnetic power to follow Hester Prynne wherever she goes,
+but her suffering is less acute and her character less intricate
+than her lover's. She bears the outward badge of shame, but after
+"wandering without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind," wins a
+dull respite from anguish as she glides "like a grey and sober
+shadow" over the threshold of those who are visited by sorrow. At
+the last, when Dimmesdale's spirit is "so shattered and subdued
+that it could hardly hold itself erect," Hester has still energy
+to plan and to act. His character is more twisted and tortuous
+than hers, and to understand him we must visit him apart. The
+sensitive nature that can endure physical pain but shrinks
+piteously from moral torture, the capacity for deep and
+passionate feeling, the strange blending of pride and abject
+self-loathing, of cowardice and resolve, are portrayed with
+extraordinary skill. The different strands of his character are
+"intertwined in an inextricable knot." His is a living soul,
+complicated and varying in its moods, but ever pursued by a sense
+of sin. By one of Hawthorne's swift, uncanny flashes of insight,
+as Dimmesdale goes home after the forest-meeting, we hear nothing
+of the wild beatings of hope and dreary revulsions to despair,
+but only of foul, grotesque temptations that assail him, just as
+earlier--on the pillory--it is the grim humour and not the
+frightful shame of the situation that strikes him, when by an odd
+trick of his imagination he suddenly pictures a "whole tribe of
+decorous personages starting into view with the disorder of a
+nightmare in their aspects," to look upon their minister.
+
+Hawthorne's delineation of character and motive is as
+scrupulously accurate and scientific as Godwin's, but there is
+none of Godwin's inhumanity in his attitude. His complete
+understanding of human weakness makes pity superfluous and
+undignified. He pronounces no judgment and offers no plea for
+mercy. His instinct is to present the story as it appeared
+through the eyes of those who enacted the drama or who witnessed
+it. Stern and inexorable as one of his own witch-judging
+ancestors, Hawthorne foils the lovers' plan of escape across the
+sea, lets the minister die as soon as he has made the revelation
+that gives him his one moment of victory, and in the conclusion
+brings Hester back to take up her long-forsaken symbol of shame.
+Pearl alone Hawthorne sets free, the spell which bound her human
+sympathies broken by the kiss she bestows on her guilty father.
+There are few passionate outbursts of feeling, save when Hester
+momentarily unlocks her heart in the forest--and even here
+Hawthorne's language is extraordinarily restrained:
+
+     "'What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it
+     so! We said so to each other. Hast thou forgotten it?'
+     'Hush, Hester!' said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the
+     ground. 'No; I have not forgotten.'"
+
+Or again, after Dimmesdale has confessed that he has neither
+strength nor courage left him to venture into the world: "'Thou
+shalt not go alone!' answered she, in a deep whisper. Then all
+was spoken."
+
+In _The House of the Seven Gables_ (1851), as in _The Scarlet
+Letter_, Hawthorne again presents his scenes in the light of a
+single, pervading idea, this time an ancestral curse, symbolised
+by the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, who condemned an innocent
+man for witchcraft.
+
+     "To the thoughtful man there will be no tinge of
+     superstition in what we figuratively express, by
+     affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps
+     as a portion of his own punishment--is often doomed to
+     become the Evil Genius of his family."
+
+Hawthorne wins his effect by presenting the idea to our minds
+from different points of view, until we are obsessed by the curse
+that broods heavily over the old house. Even the aristocratic
+breed of fowls, of "queer, rusty, withered aspect," are an emblem
+of the decay of the Pyncheon family. The people are apt to be
+merged into the dense shadows that lurk in the gloomy passages,
+but when the sun shines on them they stand out with arresting
+distinctness. The heroic figure of Hepzibah Pyncheon, a little
+ridiculous and a little forbidding of aspect, but cherishing
+through weary years a passionate devotion to her brother, is
+described with a gentle blending of humour and pathos. Clifford
+Pyncheon--the sybarite made for happiness and hideously cheated
+of his destiny--is delineated with curious insight and sympathy.
+It is Judge Jaffery Pyncheon, with his "sultry" smile of
+"elaborate benevolence"--unrelenting and crafty as his infamous
+ancestor--who lends to _The House of Seven Gables_ the element of
+terror. Hour after hour, Hawthorne, with grim and bitter irony,
+mocks and taunts the dead body of the hypocritical judge until
+the ghostly pageantry of dead Pyncheons--including at last Judge
+Jaffery himself with the fatal crimson stain on his
+neckcloth--fades away with the oncoming of daylight.
+
+Hawthorne's mind was richly stored with "wild chimney-corner
+legends," many of them no doubt gleaned from an old woman
+mentioned in one of his _Tales and Sketches_. He takes over the
+fantastic superstitions in which his ancestors had believed, and
+uses them as the playthings of his fancy, picturing with
+malicious mirth the grey shadows of his stern, dark-browed
+forefathers sadly lamenting his lapse from grace and saying one
+to the other:
+
+     "A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in
+     life, what manner of glorifying God, or being
+     serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may
+     that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have
+     been a fiddler."
+
+The story of Alice Pyncheon, the maiden under the dreadful power
+of a wizard, who, to wreak his revenge, compelled her to
+surrender her will to his and to do whatsoever he list, the
+legends of ghosts and spectres in the _Twice-Told Tales_, the
+allusions to the elixir of life in his _Notebooks_, the
+introduction of witches into _The Scarlet Letter_, of mesmerism
+into _The Blithedale Romance_, show how often Hawthorne was
+pre-occupied with the terrors of magic and of the invisible
+world. He handles the supernatural in a half-credulous,
+half-sportive spirit, neither affirming nor denying his belief.
+One of his artful devices is wilfully to cast doubt upon his
+fancies, and so to pique us into the desire to be momentarily at
+least one of the foolish and imaginative.
+
+After writing _The Blithedale Romance_, in which he embodied his
+experiences at Brook Farm, and his Italian romance,
+_Transformation, or The Marble Faun_, Hawthorne, when his health
+was failing, strove to find expression for the theme of
+immortality, which had always exercised a strange fascination
+upon him. In August, 1855, during his consulate in Liverpool, he
+visited Smithell's Hall, near Bolton, and heard the legend of the
+Bloody Footstep. He thought of uniting this story with that of
+the elixir of life, but ultimately decided to treat the story of
+the footstep in _Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, of which only a
+fragment was written, and to embody the elixir idea in a separate
+work, _Septimius Felton_, of which two unfinished versions exist.
+Septimius Felton, a young man living in Concord at the time of
+the war of the Revolution, tries to brew the potion of eternity
+by adding to a recipe, which his aunt has derived from the
+Indians, the flowers which spring from the grave of a man whom he
+has slain. In _Dr. Dolliver's Romance_, Hawthorne, so far as we
+may judge from the fragment which remains, seems to be working
+out an idea jotted down in his notebook several years earlier:
+
+     "A man arriving at the extreme point of old age grows
+     young again at the same pace at which he had grown old,
+     returning upon his path throughout the whole of life,
+     and thus taking the reverse view of matters. Methinks
+     it would give rise to some odd concatenations."
+
+The story, which opens with a charming description of Dr.
+Dolliver and his great-grandchild, Pansie, breaks off so abruptly
+that it is impossible to forecast the "odd concatenations" that
+had flashed through Hawthorne's mind.
+
+Although Hawthorne is preoccupied continually with the thought of
+death, his outlook is melancholy, not morbid. He recoils
+fastidiously from the fleshly and loses himself in the spiritual.
+He is concerned with mournful reflections, not frightful events.
+It is the mystery of death, not its terror, that fascinates him.
+Sensitive and susceptible himself, he never startles us with
+physical horrors. He does not search with curious ingenuity for
+recondite terrors. He was compelled as if by some wizard's
+strange power, to linger in earth's shadowed places; but the
+scenes that throng his memory are reflected in quiet, subdued
+tones. His pictures are never marred by harsh lines or crude
+colours.
+
+While Hawthorne in his _Twice-Told Tales_ was toying pensively
+with spectral forms and "dark ideas," Edgar Allan Poe was
+penetrating intrepidly into trackless regions of terror. Where
+Hawthorne would have shrunk back, repelled and disgusted, Poe,
+wildly exhilarated by the anticipation of a new and excruciating
+thrill, forced his way onwards. He sought untiringly for unusual
+situations, inordinately gloomy or terrible, and made them the
+starting point for excursions into abnormal psychology. Just as
+Hawthorne harps with plaintive insistence on the word "sombre,"
+Poe again and again uses the epithet "novel." His tales are
+never, as Hawthorne's often are, pathetic. His instinct is always
+towards the dramatic. Sometimes he rises to tragic heights,
+sometimes he is merely melodramatic. He rejoices in theatrical
+effects, like the death-throes of William Wilson, the return of
+the lady Ligeia, or the entry, awaited with torturing suspense,
+of the "lofty" and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of
+Usher. Like Hawthorne, Poe was fascinated by the thought of
+death, "the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed him night and
+day," but he describes death accompanied by its direst physical
+and mental agonies. Hawthorne broods over the idea of sin, but
+Poe probes curiously into the psychology of crime. The one is
+detached and remote, the other inhuman and passionless. The
+contrast in style between Hawthorne and Poe reflects clearly
+their difference in temper. Hawthorne writes always with easy,
+finished perfection, choosing the right word unerringly, Poe
+experiments with language, painfully acquiring a conscious,
+studied form of expression which is often remarkably effective,
+but which almost invariably suggests a sense of artifice. In
+reading _The Scarlet Letter_ we do not think of the style; in
+reading _The Masque of the Red Death_ we are forcibly impressed
+by the skilful arrangement of words, the alternation of long and
+short sentences, the device of repetition and the deliberate
+choice of epithets. Hawthorne uses his own natural form of
+expression. Poe, with laborious art, fashions an instrument
+admirably adapted to his purposes.
+
+Poe's earliest published story, _A Manuscript Found in a
+Bottle_--the prize tale for the _Baltimore Saturday Visitor_,
+1833--proves that he soon recognised his peculiar vein of talent.
+He straightway takes the tale of terror for his own. The
+experiences of a sailor, shipwrecked in the Simoom and hurled on
+the crest of a towering billow into a gigantic ship manned by a
+hoary crew who glide uneasily to and fro "like the ghosts of
+buried centuries," forecast the more frightful horrors of _A
+Descent into the Maelstrom_ (1841). Poe's method in both stories
+is to induce belief by beginning with a circumstantial narrative
+of every-day events, and by proceeding to relate the most
+startling phenomena in the same calm, matter-of-fact manner. The
+whirling abyss of the Maelstrom in which the tiny boat is
+engulfed, and the sensations of the fishermen--awe, wonder,
+horror, curiosity, hope, alternating or intermingled--are
+described with the same quiet precision as the trivial
+preliminary adventures. The man's dreary expectation of
+incredulity seals our conviction of the truth of his story. In
+_The Manuscript Found in a Bottle_, too, we may trace the first
+suggestion of that idea which finds its most complete and
+memorable expression in _Ligeia_ (1837). The antique ship, with
+its preternaturally aged crew "doomed to hover continually upon
+the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the
+abyss," is an early foreshadowing of the fulfilment of Joseph
+Glanvill's declaration so strikingly illustrated in the return of
+Ligeia: "Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death
+utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." In
+_Ligeia_, Poe concentrates on this idea with singleness of
+purpose. He had striven to embody it in his earlier sketches, in
+_Morella_, where the beloved is reincarnated in the form of her
+own child, in the musical, artificial _Eleonora_ and in the
+gruesome _Berenice_. In _Ligeia_, at last, it finds its
+appropriate setting in the ebony bridal-chamber, hung with gold
+tapestries grotesquely embroidered with fearful shapes and
+constantly wafted to and fro, like those in one of the _Episodes
+of Vathek_. In _The Fall of the House of Usher_ he adapts the
+theme which he had approached in the sketch entitled _Premature
+Burial_, and unites with it a subtler conception, the sentience
+of the vegetable world. Like the guest of Roderick Usher, as we
+enter the house we fall immediately beneath the overmastering
+sway of its irredeemable, insufferable gloom. The melancholy
+building, Usher's wild musical improvisations, his vague but
+awful paintings, his mystical reading and his eerie verses with
+the last haunting stanza:
+
+  "And travellers now within that valley
+  Through the red-litten windows, see
+  Vast forms that move fantastically
+  To a discordant melody;
+  While, like a rapid, ghastly river,
+  Through the pale door,
+  A hideous throng rush out forever
+  And laugh--but smile no more,"
+
+are all in harmony with the fate that broods over the family of
+Usher. Poe's gift for avoiding all impressions alien to his
+effect lends to his tales extraordinary unity of tone and colour.
+He leads up to his crisis with a gradual crescendo of emotion.
+The climax, hideous and terrifying, relieves the intensity of our
+feelings, and once it is past Poe rapidly hastens to the only
+possible conclusion. The dreary house with its vacant, eye-like
+windows reflected at the outset in the dark, unruffled tarn,
+disappears for ever beneath its surface.
+
+In _The Masque of the Red Death_ the imagery changes from moment
+to moment, each scene standing out clear in colour and sharp in
+outline; but from first to last the perspective of the whole is
+kept steadily in view. No part is disproportionate or
+inappropriate. The arresting overture describing the swift and
+sudden approach of the Red Death, the gay, thoughtless security
+of Prince Prospero and his guests within the barricaded abbey,
+the voluptuous masquerade held in a suite of seven rooms of seven
+hues, the disconcerting chime of the ebony clock that momentarily
+stills the grotesque figures of the dancers, prepare us for the
+dramatic climax, the entry of the audacious guest, the Red Death,
+and his struggle with Prince Prospero. The story closes as it
+began with the triumph of the Red Death. Poe achieves his
+powerful effect with rigid economy of effort. He does not add an
+unnecessary touch.
+
+In _The Cask of Amontillado_--perhaps the most terrible and the
+most perfectly executed of all Poe's tales--the note of grim
+irony is sustained throughout. The jingling of the bells and the
+devilish profanity of the last three words--_Requiescat in
+pace_--add a final touch of horror to a revenge, devised and
+carried out with consummate artistry.
+
+Poe, like Hawthorne, loved to peer curiously into the dim
+recesses of conscience. Hawthorne was concerned with the effect
+of remorse on character. Poe often exhibits a conscience
+possessed by the imp of the perverse, and displays no interest in
+the character of his victim. He chooses no ordinary crimes. He
+considers, without De Quincey's humour, murder as a fine art. In
+_The Black Cat_ the terrors are calculated with cold-blooded
+nicety. Every device is used to deepen the impression and to
+intensify the agony. In _The Tell-Tale Heart_, so unremitting is
+the suspense, as the murderer slowly inch by inch projects his
+head round the door in the darkness, that it is well-nigh
+intolerable. The close of the story, which errs on the side of
+the melodramatic, is less cunningly contrived than Poe's endings
+usually are. In _William Wilson_, Poe handles the subject of
+conscience in an allegorical form, a theme essayed by Bulwer
+Lytton in one of his sketches in _The Student, Monos and
+Daimonos_. He probably influenced Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde_.
+
+In _The Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe seems to start from the very
+border-line of the most hideous nightmare that the human mind can
+conceive, yet there is nothing hazy or indefinite in his analysis
+of the feelings of his victim. He speaks as one who has
+experienced the sensations himself, not as one who is making a
+wild surmise. To read is, indeed, to endure in some measure the
+torture of the prisoner; but our pain is alleviated not only by
+the realisation that we at least may win respite when we will,
+but by our appreciation of Poe's subtle technique. He notices the
+readiness of the mind, when racked unendurably, to concentrate on
+frivolous trifles--the exact shape and size of the dungeon; or
+the sound of the scythe cutting through cloth. Mental and
+physical agonies are interchanged with careful art.
+
+Poe's constructive power fitted him admirably to write the
+detective story. In _The Mystery of M. Roget_ he adopts a dull
+plot without sufficient vigour and originality to rivet our
+attention, but _The Murders of the Rue Morgue_ secures our
+interest from beginning to end. As in the case of Godwin's _Caleb
+Williams_, the end was conceived first and the plot was carefully
+woven backwards. No single thread is left loose. Dupin's methods
+of ratiocination are similar to those of Conan Doyle's Sherlock
+Holmes. Poe never shirks a gory detail, but the train of
+reasoning not the imagery absorbs us in his detective stories. In
+his treasure story--_The Gold Bug_, which may have suggested
+Stevenson's _Treasure Island_--he compels our interest by the
+intricacy and elaboration of his problem.
+
+The works of Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin were not unknown
+to Poe, and he refers more than once to the halls of Vathek. From
+Gothic romance he may perhaps vivid that they make the senses
+ache. Like Maturin, he even resorts to italics to enforce his
+effect. He crashes down heavily on a chord which would resound at
+a touch. He is liable too to descend into vulgarity in his choice
+of phrases. His tales consequently gain in style in the
+translations of Baudelaire. But these aberrations occur mainly in
+his inferior work. In his most highly wrought stories, such as
+_Amontillado_, _The House of Usher_, or _The Masque of the Red
+Death_, the execution is flawless. In these, Poe never lost sight
+of the ideal, which, in his admirable review of Hawthorne's
+_Twice-Told Tales_ and _Mosses from an Old Manse_, he set before
+the writer of short stories:
+
+     "A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale ...
+     having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain
+     unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then
+     invents such incidents--he then combines such
+     events--as may best aid him in establishing this
+     preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend
+     not to the outbringing of this effect, he has failed in
+     the first step. In the whole composition there should
+     be no word written of which the tendency direct or
+     indirect is not to the one pre-established design."
+
+While he was writing, Poe did not for a moment let his
+imagination run riot. The outline of the story was so distinctly
+conceived, its atmosphere so familiar to him, that he had leisure
+to choose his words accurately, and to dispose his sentences
+harmoniously, with the final effect ever steadily in view. The
+impression that he swiftly flashes across our minds is deep and
+enduring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
+
+
+This book is an attempt to trace in outline the origin and
+development of the Gothic romance and the tale of terror. Such a
+survey is necessarily incomplete. For more than fifty years after
+the publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ the Gothic Romance
+remained a definitely recognised kind of fiction; but, as the
+scope of the novel gradually came to include the whole range of
+human expression, it lost its individuality, and was merged into
+other forms. To follow every trail of its influence would lead us
+far afield. The Tale of Terror, if we use the term in its wider
+sense, may be said to include the magnificent story of the
+Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar's Feast, the Book of Job, the
+legends of the Deluge and of the Tower of Babel, and Saul's Visit
+to the Witch of Endor, which Byron regarded as the best ghost
+story in the world. In the Hebrew writings fear is used to endow
+a hero with superhuman powers or to instil a moral truth. The sun
+stands still in the heavens that Joshua may prevail over his
+enemies. In modern days the tale of terror is told for its own
+sake. It has become an end in itself, and is probably appreciated
+most fully by those who are secure from peril. It satisfies the
+human desire to experience new emotions and sensations, without
+actual danger.
+
+There is little doubt that the Gothic Romance primarily made its
+appeal to women readers, though we know that Mrs. Radcliffe had
+many men among her admirers, and that Cherubina of _The Heroine_
+had a companion in folly, The Story-Haunted Youth. It is remotely
+allied, as its name implies, to the mediaeval romances, at which
+Cervantes tilts in _Don Quixote_. It was more closely akin,
+however, to the heroic romances satirised in Mrs. Charlotte
+Lennox's _Female Quixote_ (1752). When the voluminous works of Le
+Calprenède and of Mademoiselle de Scudéry were translated into
+English, they found many imitators and admirers, and their vogue
+outlasted the seventeenth century. _Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus_,
+out of which Mrs. Pepys told her husband long stories, "though
+nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner," is to be found,
+with a pin stuck through one of the middle leaves, in the lady's
+library described by Addison in the _Spectator_, Mrs. Aphra Behn,
+in _Oroonoko_ and _The Fair Jilt_, had made some attempt to bring
+romance nearer to real life; but it was not until the middle of
+the eighteenth century, when the novel, with the rise of
+Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, took firm root on
+English soil, that the popularity of Cassandra, Parthenissa and
+Aretina was superseded. Then, if we may trust the evidence of
+Colman's farce, _Polly Honeycombe_, first acted in 1760, Pamela,
+Clarissa Harlowe and Sophia Western reigned in their stead. For
+the reader who had patiently followed the eddying, circling
+course of the heroic romance, with its high-flown language and
+marvellous adventures, Richardson's novel of sentiment probably
+held more attraction than Fielding's novel of manners. Fielding,
+on his broad canvas, paints the life of his day on the highway,
+in coaches, taverns, sponging-houses or at Vauxhall masquerades.
+Every class of society is represented, from the vagabond to the
+noble lord. Richardson, in describing the shifts and subterfuges
+of Mr. B--and the elaborate intrigue of Lovelace, moves within a
+narrow circle, devoting himself, not to the portrayal of
+character, but to the minute analysis of a woman's heart. The
+sentiment of Richardson descends to Mrs. Radcliffe. Her heroines
+are fashioned in the likeness of Clarissa Harlowe; her heroes
+inherit many of the traits of the immaculate Grandison. She adds
+zest to her plots by wafting her heroines to distant climes and
+bygone centuries, and by playing on their nerves with
+superstitious fears. Since human nature often looks to fiction
+for a refuge from the world, there is always room for the
+illusion of romance side by side with the picture of actual life.
+Fanny Burney's spirited record of Evelina's visit to her vulgar,
+but human, relatives, the Branghtons, in London, is not enough.
+We need too the sojourn of Emily, with her thick-coming fancies,
+in the castle of Udolpho.
+
+The Gothic Romance did not reflect real life, or reveal
+character, or display humour. Its aim was different. It was full
+of sentimentality, and it stirred the emotions of pity and fear.
+The ethereal, sensitive heroine, suffering through no fault of
+her own, could not fail to win sympathy. The hero was pale,
+melancholy, and unfortunate enough to be attractive. The villain,
+bold and desperate in his crimes, was secretly admired as well as
+feared. Hairbreadth escapes and wicked intrigues in castles built
+over beetling precipices were sufficiently outside the reader's
+own experience to produce a thrill. Ghosts, and rumours of
+ghosts, touched nearly the eighteenth century reader, who had
+often listened, with bated breath, to winter's tales of spirits
+seen on Halloween in the churchyard, or white-robed spectres
+encountered in dark lanes and lonely ruins. In country houses
+like those described in Miss Austen's novels, where life was
+diversified only by paying calls, dining out, taking gentle
+exercise or playing round games like "commerce" or "word-making
+and work-taking," the Gothic Romances must have proved a welcome
+source of pleasurable excitement. Mr. Woodhouse, with his
+melancholy views on the effects of wedding cake and muffin, would
+have condemned them, no doubt, as unwholesome; Lady Catherine de
+Bourgh would have been too impatient to read them; but Lydia
+Bennet, Elinor Dashwood and Isabella Thorpe must have found in
+them an inestimable solace. Their fame was soon overshadowed by
+that of the Waverley Novels, but they had served their turn in
+providing an entertaining interlude before the arrival of Sir
+Walter Scott. Even at the very height of his vogue, they probably
+enjoyed a surreptitious popularity, not merely in the servants'
+hall, but in the drawing room. Nineteenth century literature
+abounds in references to the vogue of this school of fiction.
+There were spasmodic attempts at a revival in an anonymous work
+called _Forman_ (1819), dedicated to Scott, and in Ainsworth's
+_Rookwood_ (1834); and terror has never ceased to be used as a
+motive in fiction.
+
+In _Villette_, Lucy Snowe, whose nerves Ginevra describes as
+"real iron and bend leather," gazes steadily for the space of
+five minutes at the spectral "nun." This episode indicates a
+change of fashion; for the lady of Gothic romance could not have
+submitted to the ordeal for five seconds without fainting. A more
+robust heroine, who thinks clearly and yet feels strongly, has
+come into her own. In _Jane Eyre_ many of the situations are
+fraught with terror, but it is the power of human passion,
+transcending the hideous scenes, that grips our imagination.
+Terror is used as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. In
+_Wuthering Heights_ the windswept Yorkshire moors are the
+background for elemental feelings. We no longer "tremble with
+delicious dread" or "snatch a fearful joy." The gloom never
+lightens. We live ourselves beneath the shadow of Heathcliff's
+awe-inspiring personality, and there is no escape from a terror,
+which passes almost beyond the bounds of speech. The Brontës do
+not trifle with emotion or use supernatural elements to increase
+the tension. Theirs are the terrors of actual life.
+
+Other novelists, contemporary with the Brontës, revel in terror
+for its own sake. Wilkie Collins weaves elaborate plots of
+hair-raising events. The charm of _The Moonstone_ and the _Woman
+in White_ is independent of character or literary finish. It
+consists in the unravelling of a skilfully woven fabric. Le Fanu,
+who resented the term "sensational" which was justly applied to
+his works, plays pitilessly on our nerves with both real and
+fictitious horrors. He, like Wilkie Collins, made a cult of
+terror. Their literary descendants may perhaps be found in such
+authors as Richard Marsh or Bram Stoker, or Sax Rohmer. In Bram
+Stoker's _Dracula_ the old vampire legend is brought up to date,
+and we are held from beginning to end in a state of frightful
+suspense. No one who has read the book will fail to remember the
+picture of Dracula climbing up the front of the castle in
+Transylvania, or the scene in the tomb when a stake is driven
+through the heart of the vampire who has taken possession of
+Lucy's form. The ineffable horror of the "Un-Dead" would repel us
+by its painfulness, if it were not made endurable by the love,
+hope and faith of the living characters, particularly of the old
+Dutch doctor, Van Helsing. The matter-of-fact style of the
+narrative, which is compiled of letters, diaries and journals,
+and the mention of such familiar places as Whitby and Hampstead,
+help to enhance the illusion.
+
+The motive of terror has often been mingled with other motives in
+the novel as well as in the short tale. In unwinding the
+complicated thread of the modern detective story, which follows
+the design originated by Godwin and perfected by Poe, we are
+frequently kept to our task by the force of terror as well as of
+curiosity. In _The Sign of Four_ and in _The Hound of the
+Baskervilles_, to choose two entirely different stories, Conan
+Doyle realises that darkness and loneliness place us at the mercy
+of terror, and he works artfully on our fears of the unknown.
+Phillips Oppenheim and William Le Queux, in romances which have
+sometimes a background of international politics, maintain our
+interest by means of mystifications, which screw up our
+imagination to the utmost pitch, and then let us down gently with
+a natural but not too obvious explanation. A certain amount of
+terror is almost essential to heighten the interest of a novel of
+costume and adventure, like _The Prisoner of Zenda_ or _Rupert of
+Hentzau_, or of the fantastic, exciting romances of Jules Verne.
+Rider Haggard's African romances, _She_ and _King Solomon's
+Mines_, belong to a large group of supernatural tales with a
+foreign setting. They combine strangeness, wonder, mystery and
+horror. The ancient theme of bartering souls is given a new twist
+in Robert Hichens' novel, _The Flames_. E.F. Benson, in _The
+Image in the Sand_, experiments with Oriental magic. The
+investigations of the Society for Psychical Research gave a new
+impulse to stories of the occult and the uncanny. Algernon
+Blackwood is one of the most ingenious exponents of this type of
+story. By means of psychical explanations, he succeeds in
+revivifying many ancient superstitions. In _Dr. John Silence_,
+even the werewolf, whom we believed extinct, manifests himself in
+modern days among a party of cheerful campers on a lonely island,
+and brings unspeakable terror in his trail. Sometimes terror is
+used nowadays, as Bulwer Lytton used it, to serve a moral
+purpose. Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ is intended to
+show that sin must ultimately affect the soul; and the Sorrows of
+Satan, in Miss Corelli's novel, are caused by the wickedness of
+the world. But apart from any ulterior motive there is still a
+desire for the unusual, there is still pleasure to be found in a
+thrill, and so long as this human instinct endures devices will
+be found for satisfying it. Of the making of tales of terror
+there is no end; and almost every novelist of note has, at one
+time or another, tried his hand at the art. Early in his career
+Arnold Bennett fashioned a novelette, _Hugo_, which may be read
+as a modernised version of the Gothic romance. Instead of
+subterranean vaults in a deserted abbey, we have the strong rooms
+of an enterprising Sloane Street emporium. The coffin, containing
+an image of the heroine, is buried not in a mouldering chapel,
+but in a suburban cemetery. The lovely but harassed heroine has
+fallen, indeed, from her high estate, for Camilla earns her
+living as a milliner. There are, it is true, no sonnets and no
+sunsets, but the excitement of the plot, which is partially
+unfolded by means of a phonographic record, renders them
+superfluous. H.G. Wells makes excursions into quasi-scientific,
+fantastic realms of grotesque horror in his _First Men in the
+Moon_, and in some of his sketches and short stories. Joseph
+Conrad has the power of fear ever at the command of his romantic
+imagination. In _The Nigger of the Narcissus_, in _Typhoon_, and,
+above all, in _The Shadow-Line_, he shows his supreme mastery
+over inexpressible mystery and nameless terror. The voyage of the
+schooner, doomed by the evil influence of her dead captain, is
+comparable only in awe and horror to that of _The Ancient
+Mariner_. Conrad touches unfathomable depths of human feelings,
+and in his hands the tale of terror becomes a finished work of
+art.
+ The future of the tale of terror it is impossible to predict;
+but the experiments of living authors, who continually find new
+outlets with the advance of science and of psychological enquiry,
+suffice to prove that its powers are not yet exhausted. Those who
+make the 'moving accident' their trade will no doubt continue to
+assail us with the shock of startling and sensational events.
+Others with more insidious art, will set themselves to devise
+stories which evoke subtler refinements of fear. The interest has
+already been transferred from 'bogle-wark' to the effect of the
+inexplicable, the mysterious and the uncanny on human thought and
+emotion. It may well be that this track will lead us into
+unexplored labyrinths of terror.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES:
+
+
+[1: Frazer, _Folklore of the Old Testament_, I. iv. § 2.]
+
+[2: _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, 1894.]
+
+[3: _Spectator_, No. 12.]
+
+[4: _Spectator_, No. 110.]
+
+[5: Boswell, _Life of Johnson_, June 12th, 1784.]
+
+[6: _Tom Jones_, Bk. xvi. ch. v.]
+
+[7: Letter to Dr. Moore, Aug. 2, 1787.]
+
+[8: Ashton, _Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century_, 1882.]
+
+[9: Advertisement to _Cloudesley_, 1830.]
+
+[10: Preface to _Mandeville_, Oct. 25, 1817.]
+
+[11: Letters, vii. 27.]
+
+[12: _The Uncommercial Traveller_.]
+
+[13: _Odyssey_, xi.]
+
+[14: April 17, 1765.]
+
+[15: Nov. 13, 1784.]
+
+[16: June 12, 1753.]
+
+[17: _Remarks on Italy_.]
+
+[18: Aug. 4, 1753.]
+
+[19: _Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay_, vol. ii. Appendix
+ii.: _A
+     Visit to Strawberry Hill in 1786_.]
+
+[20: Jan. 5, 1766.]
+
+[21: July 15, 1783.]
+
+[22: March 26, 1765.]
+
+[23: Nov. 5, 1782.]
+
+[24: It has been pointed out (Scott, _Lives of the Novelists_,
+note)
+     that in Lope de Vega's _Jerusalem_ the picture of Noradine
+stalks
+     from its panel and addresses Saladine.]
+
+[25: Cf. Wallace, _Blind Harry_.]
+
+[26: _Preface_, 1764.]
+
+[27: Ch. XX.]
+
+[28: Ch. XXXIV.]
+
+[29: Ch. lxii.]
+
+[30: Jan. 27, 1780.]
+
+[31: _Letters_, April 8, 1778, and Jan. 27, 1780.]
+
+[32: _Poetical Works_, ed. Sampson, p. 8.]
+
+[33: Translated _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1820 (Nov.). Cf. Scott,
+     _Bridal of Triermain_.]
+
+[34: _E.g. Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay_, June 18, 1795;
+     Mathias, _Pursuits of Literature_, 14th ed. 1808, p. 56;
+Scott,
+     _Lives of the Novelists_; Extracts from the _Diary of a
+Lover of
+     Literature_ (1810); Byron, _Childe Harold_, iv. xviii.;
+     Thackeray, _Newcomes_, chs. xi., xxviii.; Brontë, _Shirley_,
+ch.
+     xxvii; Trollope, _Barchester Towers_, ch. xv., etc.]
+
+[35: Family Letters, 1908.]
+
+[36: Reprinted, Romancist and Novelist's Library.]
+
+[37: _Journeys of Mrs. Radcliffe_, 2nd ed., 1795, vol. ii. p.
+171.]
+
+[38: _Noctes Ambrosianae_, ed. 1855, vol. i. p. 201.]
+
+[39: Lecture on _The English Novelists_.]
+
+[40: _Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis_, 1839, i. 122.]
+
+[41: _Life and Correspondence_, July 22nd, 1794.]
+
+[42: Essay on _The State of German Literature_.]
+
+[43: Southey, Preface to _Madoc_.]
+
+[44: _Life and Correspondence_, Feb. 23, 1798.]
+
+[45: Letter to John Murray, Aug. 23rd, 1814.]
+
+[46: _Monthly Review_, June, 1797.]
+
+[47: No. 148.]
+
+[48: Cf. Musaeus: _Die Entführung_.]
+
+[49: _Marmion_, Canto ii. Intro.]
+
+[50: Reprinted, Romancist and Novelist's Library, vol. i. 1839.]
+
+[51: _Essay on German Playwrights_.]
+
+[52: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (1809).]
+
+[53: Many of these were issued by B. Crosby, Stationers' Court.]
+
+[54: _Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers_, 1856, p.
+     138.]
+
+[55: Trans. from the German of Christian August Vulpius.]
+
+[56: Cf. Thackeray, "Tunbridge Toys" (Roundabout Papers).]
+
+[57: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_.]
+
+[58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1825; and memoir prefixed to the
+edition
+     of _Melmoth the Wanderer_, published in 1892.]
+
+[59: Prose Works, 1851, vol. xviii.]
+
+[60: _Letters and Memoir_, 1895, vol. i. p. 101.]
+
+[61: _Life_ (Melville), 1909, vol. i. p. 79.]
+
+[62: _Letters_, 2nd Series, 1872, vol. i. p. 101.]
+
+[63: Gustave Planche, _Portraits Littéraires_.]
+
+[64: Cf. Stevenson's _Bottle-Imp._]
+
+[65: _Edinburgh Review_, July 1821.]
+
+[66: Conant, _The Oriental Tale in England_, pp. 36-38.]
+
+[67: Conant, _The Oriental Tale in England_, pp. 36-38.]
+
+[68: Letter to Henley, Jan. 29, 1782.]
+
+[69: _Life and Letters_, Melville, 1910, p. 20.]
+
+[70: _Life and Letters_, 1910, p. 20.]
+
+[71: _Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore_, 1853,
+     vol. ii. p. 197.]
+
+[72: Nov. 24, 1777, _Life and Letters_, p. 40.]
+
+[73: Austen Leigh, _Memoir of Jane Austen_.]
+
+[74: Letter to William Godwin, Dec. 7, 1817.]
+
+[75: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_. Kegan
+Paul,
+     1876, vol. i. p. 78.]
+
+[76: Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832.]
+
+[77:  Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832.]
+
+[78:  Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832, p. xi: "I read over a little
+old
+      book entitled _The Adventures of Mme. De St. Phale_, I
+turned
+      over the pages of a tremendous compilation entitled _God's
+      Revenge against Murder_, where the beam of the eye of
+      omniscience was represented as perpetually pursuing the
+      guilty... I was extremely conversant with _The Newgate
+      Calendar_ and _The Lives of the Pirates_. I rather amused
+myself
+      with tracing a certain similitude between the story of
+_Caleb
+      Williams_ and the tale of _Bluebeard_;" and Preface to
+      _Cloudesley_: "The present publication may in the same
+sense be
+      denominated a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Children
+in
+      the Wood."]
+
+[79: Scott, Introduction to _The Abbot_, 1831.]
+
+[80: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, 1876, vol.
+ii.
+     p. 304.]
+
+[81: _Caleb Williams_, ch. x.]
+
+[82: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, vol. i.
+pp.
+     330-1.]
+
+[83: _Political Justice_, bk. ii, ch. ii.]
+
+
+[84: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, vol. i.
+pp.
+     330-1; Preface to 1st edition, 1799.]
+
+[85: _Hermippus Redivivus_; or _The Sage's Triumph over Old Age
+and
+     the Grave_ (translated from the Latin of Cohausen, with
+     annotations), 1743. Dr. Johnson pronounced the volume "very
+     entertaining as an account of the hermetic philosophy and as
+     furnishing a curious history of the extravagancies of the
+human
+     mind," adding "if it were merely imaginary it would be
+nothing at
+     all."]
+
+[86: _St. Leon_, vol. iv. ch, xiii.]
+
+[87: _St. Leon_, Bk. iv, ch. v.]
+
+[88: _Lives of the Necromancers_, 1834, Preface. "The main purpose
+of
+     this book is to exhibit a fair delineation of the credulity
+of
+     the human mind. Such an exhibition cannot fail to be
+productive
+     of the most salutary lessons."]
+
+[89: _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_, by
+Count
+     Reginald de St. Leon, 1800, p. 234.]
+
+[90: Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 10.]
+
+[91: Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 44.]
+
+[92: Hogg, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 15.]
+
+[93: Cf. Castle of Lindenberg story in _The Monk_, and ballad of
+Alonzo the Brave.]
+
+[94: A versification of the story of the Wandering Jew, Bleeding
+Nun
+     and Don Raymond in _The Monk_.]
+
+[95: This poem was borrowed from Lewis's _Tales of Terror_
+(without
+     Shelley's knowledge), where it is entitled _The Black Canon
+of
+     Elmham, or St. Edmond's Eve_.]
+
+[96: Letter to Edward Fergus Graham, Ap. 23, 1810 (_Letters_, ed.
+     Ingpen, 1909, vol. i, pp. 4-6).]
+
+[97: Letter to John Joseph Stockdale, Nov. 14, 1810.]
+
+[98: Mme. de Montolieu, _Caroline de Lichfield_, translated by
+Thos.
+     Holcroft, 1786.]
+
+[99: Mme. de Genlis, translated by Rev. Beresford, 1796.]
+
+[100: Peter Middleton Darling, _Romance of the Highlands_, 1810.]
+
+[101: Regina Maria Roche, _The Discarded Son, or The Haunt of the
+      Banditti_, 1806.]
+
+[102: Agnes Musgrave, _Cicely, or The Rose of Raby_.]
+
+[103: Aphra Behn, _The Nun_.]
+
+[104: Charlotte Smith, _Ethelinde, or The Recluse of the Lake_,
+1790.]
+
+[105: _The Relapse: a novel_, 1780.]
+
+[106: _Tales of the Hall_.]
+
+[107: Crébillon, _Les Égarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_.]
+
+[108: _The Borough_, Ellen Orford, Letter xx.]
+
+[109: _The Borough_, xx, ll. 56 _seqq._]
+
+[110: _Parish Register_.]
+
+[111: _William and Helen_, 1796.]
+
+[112: _House of Aspen_, 1799 (Keepsake, 1830). _Doom of
+Devorgoil_,
+      1817 (Keepsake, 1830).]
+
+[113: Scott, _Lives of the Novelists_ (on Clara Reeve and Mrs.
+      Radcliffe and Maturin).]
+
+[114: Keepsake, 1828.]
+
+[115: Keepsake, 1828.]
+
+[116: _Journal_, Feb. 23, 1826.]
+
+[117: List of books read 1814-1816.]
+
+[118: _Fantasmagoriana: ou Recueil d'Histoires d'Apparitions, de
+      Spectres, de Revenans, trad. d'Allemand par un Amateur_.
+Paris,
+      1812.]
+
+[119: _Diary of John William Polidori_, June 17, 1816.]
+
+[120: Byron, _Letters and Journals_, 1899, iii. 446. Mary
+Shelley,
+      _Life and Letters_, 1889, i. 586. Extract from Mary
+Shelley's
+      _Diary_, Aug. 14, 1816.]
+
+[121: Nov. 15, 1823, _Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
+Shelley_
+      (Marshall), ii. 52.]
+
+[122: _Life and Letters_, ii. 88. ]
+
+[123: _Romancist and Novelist's Library_.]
+
+[124: Reprinted in _Treasure House of Tales by Great Authors_,
+ed.
+      Garnett, 1891.]
+
+[125: _Punch_, vol. x. p. 31:
+
+        "Says Ainsworth to Colburn
+        A plan in my pate is
+        To give my romance, as
+        A supplement gratis.
+        Says Colburn to Ainsworth
+        'Twill do very nicely,
+        For that will be charging
+        Its value precisely."]
+
+[126: _Life, Letters and Literary Remains_, 1883, vol. ii. pp. 70
+      _seqq_.]
+
+[127: _Dublin University Magazine_, 1862. "Forgotten Novels."]
+
+[128: _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1830-1837.]
+
+[129: _Within the Tides_, 1915.]
+
+[130: Preface to _The Algerine Captive_ (Walpole, Vermont, 1797)
+      quoted Loshe, _Early American Novel_, N.Y. 1907.]
+
+[131: Preface to _Edgar Huntly_.]
+
+[132: Peacock, _Memoirs of Shelley_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Abbey of Clunedale_, Drake's, 35.
+
+_Abbot_, Scott's, 109 note, 153.
+
+_Abdallah_, Tieck's, 65.
+
+_Abellino_, Zschokke's, 70.
+
+_Adam Blair_, Lockhart's, 207.
+
+Addison, Joseph, 5, 17, 69, 95, 222.
+
+_Adela Cathcart_, Macdonald's, 173.
+
+_Adventures of Abdallah_, Bignon's, 94, 96.
+
+_Adventures of Mme. de St. Phale_, 109 note.
+
+_After Dark_, Wilkie Collins', 190.
+
+Aikin, A.L. (see Barbauld, Mrs. A.L.).
+
+Aikin, Dr. J., 28.
+
+Aikin, Lucy, 28.
+
+Ainsworth, Harrison, 149, 174-177.
+
+_Alastor_, Shelley's, 127, 163.
+
+_Albigenses_, Maturin's, 82.
+
+_Alciphron_, Moore's, 117.
+
+_Algerine Captive_, 197 note.
+
+_Alice in Wonderland_, Lewis Carroll's, 116.
+
+_All the Year Round_, 183, 190.
+
+_Almoran and Hamet_, Hawkesworth's, 95.
+
+_Alonzo and Melissa_, 197.
+
+_Alonzo the Brave_, Lewis's, n, 120 note.
+
+_Amadas, Sir_, 4.
+
+_Amelia_, Fielding's, 134, 135.
+
+_Ancient Mariner_, Coleridge's, 9, 227.
+
+_Angelina_, Maria Edgeworth's, 133.
+
+_Annual Review_, 73.
+
+_Antiquary_, Scott's, 154.
+
+Apel, J.A., 174.
+
+_Apostate Nun_ (see _Convent of Grey Penitents)_.
+
+
+_Apparitions, History and Reality of_, Defoe's, 5, 139.
+
+_Apparitions, History of_, Taylor's, 149.
+
+Apuleius, 13.
+
+_Arabian Nights_, 12, 94.
+
+_Ardinghello_, Heinse's, 65.
+
+_Arliss's Pocket Magazine_, 175.
+
+_Arlamène ou le Grand Cyrus_, Mme. de Scudéry's, 222.
+
+_Arthur Mervyn_, C.B. Brown's, 198.
+
+_Asylum or Alonzo and Melissa_, 197.
+
+_Auberge Rouge_, Balzac's, 203.
+
+_Auriol_, Ainsworth's, 176-177.
+
+Austen, Jane, 100, 125-133, 138, 140, 223.
+
+_Avenger_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_Avenging Demon_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Azemia_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+Babel, Tower of, 221.
+
+_Babes in the Wood_, 13, 109 note.
+
+_Babylonica_, Iamblichus', 12.
+
+Ballad collections, 9.
+
+_Baltimore Saturday Visitor_, 214.
+
+Balzac, Honoré de, 86, 203.
+
+_Bandit of Florence_, 76.
+
+_Banditti of the Forest_, 76.
+
+_Barbastal, or the Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_,
+186.
+
+Barbauld, Mrs. A.L., 28-31, 32, 33, 147.
+
+_Barchester Towers_, Trollope's, 38 note.
+
+_Bard_, Gray's, 7.
+
+Barrett, E.S., 22, 79, 133-137, 138.
+
+Baudelaire, Charles, 86, 220.
+
+Beckford, William, 94-99, 118.
+
+Beggar Girl and her Benefactors, Mrs. Bennett's, 74, 134.
+
+Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 141 note, 222.
+
+_Benevolent Monk_, Melville's, 75.
+
+Bennett, Mrs. A.M., 74.
+
+Bennett, Arnold, 227.
+
+Benson, E.F., 226.
+
+_Beowulf_, 2.
+
+_Berenice_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Bertram_, Maturin's, 81, 149.
+
+_Betrothed_, Scott's, 153.
+
+_Bibliotheca Britannica_, Watt's, 75, 129.
+
+Bignon, Jean-Paul, 94.
+
+_Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+_Black Canon of Elmham (Tales of Terror_), 120 note.
+
+_Black Cat_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Black Forest_, 76.
+
+Blackwood, Algernon, 226.
+
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, 34 note, 174, 182, 189, 190, 194.
+
+Blake, William, 31-32.
+
+_Blanche and Osbright_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+"Blind Harry," 21 note.
+
+_Blithedale Romance_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, Horsley Curteis', 75.
+
+_Bluebeard_, 3, 13, 109 note.
+
+_Boeotian_, 175.
+
+_Bold Dragoon_, Irving's, 201.
+
+Boleyn, Anne, 31.
+
+_Book for a Corner_, Leigh Hunt's, 28.
+
+_Borough_, Crabbe's, 142, 143.
+
+_Bosom-Serpent_, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Bottle-Imp_, Stevenson's, 87 note.
+
+Bovet, 14, 149.
+
+_Bravo of Bohemia_ or _Black Forest_, 76.
+
+_Bravo of Venice_, Lewis's, 70, 71, 125.
+
+_Bridal of Triermain_, Scott's, 34 note.
+
+_Bride of Lammermoor_, Scott's, 81, 153.
+
+_Brigand Tales_, 186.
+
+Brontë, Charlotte, 38 note, 51, 224.
+
+Bronté, Emily, 224-225.
+
+Brown, Charles Brockden, 140, 188, 197-200.
+
+Browne, Sir Thomas, 5.
+
+Bulke, Sir George, 57.
+
+_Bullfrog, Mrs_., Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+Bunyan, John, 5.
+
+Bürger, Gottfried, II, 148, 200.
+
+Burney, Dr. Charles, 17.
+
+Burney, Fanny, 38 note, 135, 223.
+
+Burns, Robert, 8, 9.
+
+Burton, Robert, 5.
+
+Byron, Lord, 38 note, 55, 59, 72, 79, 81, 135, 158, 160, 167,
+169,
+  171, 221.
+
+_Caleb Williams_, Godwin's, 13, 102-111, 168, 199, 218.
+
+_Caledonian Banditti_, 76.
+
+_Camilla_, Fanny Burney's, 134.
+
+Campbell, Dr. John, 112.
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, 65, 72.
+
+_Caroline of Lichfield_, Mme. de Montolieu's, 134.
+
+Carroll, Lewis, 201.
+
+_Cask of Amontillado_, Poe's, 217, 220.
+
+_Castle Connor_, Clara Reeve's, 28.
+
+_Castle of Otranto_, Walpole's, 12, 16-23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30,
+31, 39,
+  40, 58, 77, 146, 221.
+
+_Castle of Wolfenbach_, Mrs. Parson's, 129.
+
+_Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 39-41, 45.
+
+_Castle Spectre_, Lewis's, 66, 149.
+
+_Castle without a Spectre_, Mrs. Hunter's, 76.
+
+Cazotte, Jacques, 68.
+
+_Cecilia_, Fanny Burney's, 134, 135.
+
+_Cenci_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+Cervantes, 222.
+
+_Chateau de Montville_, Sarah Wilkinson's, 77.
+
+_Cherubina, Adventures of_ (see _Heroine_).
+
+_Childe Harold_, Byron's, 38 note.
+
+_Children of the Abbey_, Mrs. Roche's, 22, 59, 129, 130, 134.
+
+_Chinese Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+_Christabel_, Coleridge's, 9, 10.
+
+"Christopher North" (Wilson, John), 192.
+
+_Cicely or The Rose of Raby_, Miss Agnes Musgrave's, 141 note.
+
+_Clarissa Harlowe_, Richardson's, 46, 134, 140.
+
+_Clerk Saunders_, 3.
+
+_Clermont_, Mrs. Roche's, 129.
+
+_Cock Lane and Commonsense_, Andrew Lang's, 2 note.
+
+"Cock Lane Ghost," 6.
+
+Coleridge, S.T., 9, 10, 66, 81.
+
+_Collectanea_, Leland's, 57.
+
+Collins, Wilkie, 190, 194, 225.
+
+Collins, William, 7, 8, 12, 35, 58.
+
+Colman, George, the younger, 109.
+
+Colman, George, the elder, 129, 222.
+
+Conant, Martha, 95 note.
+
+_Confessions of a Fanatic_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+Conrad, Joseph, 194, 195, 227.
+
+_Contes de ma Mère Oie_, Perrault's, 12.
+
+_Convent of St. Ursula_, Miss Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+_Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 76, 77-78.
+
+Corelli, Marie, 226.
+
+_Corsair_, Byron's, 56.
+
+_Count of Narbonne_, Jephson's, 19.
+
+"Count Reginald de St. Leon," 116.
+
+Coverley, Sir Roger de, 5.
+
+Crabbe, George, 76, 140-144.
+
+Crébillon, C.P.J., 141 note.
+
+_Crichton_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+Croly, George, 118.
+
+Cruikshank, 176.
+
+Cunningham, Allan, 191-192.
+
+Curteis, T.J. Horsley, 75.
+
+Dacre, Charlotte ("Rosa Matilda"), 75, 122.
+
+D'Arblay, Mme. (see Burney, Fanny).
+
+Darwin, Erasmus, 160.
+
+D'Aulnoy, Countess, 12.
+
+David, 2.
+
+_Death of Despina_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 5, 6, 139.
+
+_Delicate Distress_, 134.
+
+"Demon Frigate," 12.
+
+"Demon Lover," 2, 14.
+
+_Demonology and Witchcraft, Letters on_, Scott's, 149.
+
+_Demonology, Treatise on_, James I.'s, 4.
+
+De Quincey, 173-174.
+
+De Scudéry, Mme., 222.
+
+_Descent into the Maelstrom_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Devil in Love_, Cazotte's, 68.
+
+_Diary of a Lover of Literature_, Green's, 38 note.
+
+_Dice_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+Dickens, Charles, 14, 59, 81, 190, 192, 193.
+
+_Discarded Son_, Mrs. Roche's, 140 note.
+
+_Discovery of Witchcraft_, Scot's, 14, 147.
+
+Disraeli, Benjamin, 99.
+
+_Distress, Kinds of, which Excite Agreeable Sensations_,
+Barbauld's, 29.
+
+_Dr. Dolliver's Romance_, Hawthorne's, 212-213.
+
+_Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Hawthorne's, 207.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, Stevenson's, 218.
+
+_Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions_, Dickens', 194.
+
+_Don Quixote_, Cervantes', 222.
+
+_Doom of Devorgoil_, Scott's, 149 note.
+
+_Douglas_, Home's, 8.
+
+Doyle, Sir A. Conan, 103, 218, 226.
+
+_Dracula_, Bram Stoker's, 2, 173, 225.
+
+Drake, Dr. Nathan, 32-37, 147.
+
+_Dream Children_, Lamb's, 193.
+
+_Dublin University Magazine_, 173, 186 note, 190, 191.
+
+Dumas, Alexandre, 175.
+
+_Edgar Huntly_, C.B. Brown's, 197, 198, 199-200.
+
+Edgeworth, Maria, 133.
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 87 note.
+
+_Edmond, Orphan of the Castle_, 28.
+
+_Edward_, 34.
+
+_Edward Fane's Rosebud_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_, Crébillon's, 141 note.
+
+_Elegant Enthusiast_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+_Eleanora_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Elixir de la Longue Vie_, Balzac's, 203.
+
+_Elixir des Teufels_, Hoffmann's, 70.
+
+_Elsie Venner_, Holmes', 207.
+
+Endor, Witch of, 2, 221.
+
+_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, Byron's, 72 note, 79.
+
+_English Chronicle_, 39.
+
+_English Novelists, Lectures on_, Hazlitt's, 62.
+
+_Entführung_, Musaeus', 68 note.
+
+_Epicurean_, Moore's, 117, 118.
+
+_Ernestus Berchtold_, Polidori's, 160, 170-171.
+
+_Ethan Brand_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Ethelinde_, Charlotte Smith's, 141.
+
+"Ettrick Shepherd" (see Hogg, James).
+
+_European Magazine_, 175.
+
+_Evelina_, Fanny Burney's, 134.
+
+_Eve of St. Agnes_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Ewige Jude_, Schubart's, 120.
+
+_Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Faerie Queene_, Spenser's, 17.
+
+_Fair Elenor_, Blake's, 31-32.
+
+_Fair Jilt_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 222.
+
+_Falkner_, Godwin's, 168.
+
+_Fall of the House of Usher_, Poe's, 216, 220.
+
+_Family of Montorio_, 72, 74, 80, 81, 82-86, 88, 91, 93, 158.
+
+_Fantasmagoriana_, 160 note.
+
+_Farina_, Meredith's, 70.
+
+_Fatal Marksman_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_Fatal Revenge_ (see _Family of Montorio_).
+
+_Faust_, Goethe's, 92, 198.
+
+_Faustus, Dr._, Marlowe's, 4, 12, 91, 92.
+
+_Fear, Ode to_, Collins', 35.
+
+"Felix Phantom," 77.
+
+_Female Quixote_, Mrs. Lennox's, 222.
+
+_Ferdinand, Count Fathom, Adventures of_, Smollett's, 12, 23-25,
+29,
+  35, 68.
+
+_Feudal Tyrants_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+Fielding, Henry, 222.
+
+_Field of Terror_, De La Motte Fouqué's, 34.
+
+_First Men in the Moon_, Wells', 227.
+
+_Flames_, Hichens', 226.
+
+_Fleetwood_, Godwin's, 102 note, 104 note, 109 note.
+
+Flood, Story of, 1, 221.
+
+Ford, John, 127.
+
+_Forman_, 224.
+
+_Fortress of Saguntum_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+_Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott's, 153.
+
+Fouqué, De la Motte, 34, 153.
+
+Francis, Sophia, 76.
+
+_Frankenstein_, Mrs. Shelley's, 158-165, 169.
+
+Frazer, 2 note.
+
+_Fredolfo_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Freischütz_, Apel's, 174.
+
+_Fugitive Countess_, Miss Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+Galland, Antoine, 12, 94.
+
+Gaskell, Mrs., 192-193.
+
+_Gaston de Blondeville_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 39, 40, 56-58, 60.
+
+_Geisterseher_, Schiller's, 51.
+
+_Geistertodtenglocke_, 191.
+
+"Geoffrey Crayon" (see Irving, Washington).
+
+_German Literature, Essay on_, Carlyle's, 65.
+
+_German Playwrights, Essay on_, Carlyle's, 72 note.
+
+_German Student, Story of a_, 201.
+
+_Ghasta_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Ghost_, "Felix Phantom's," 77.
+
+_Giaour_, Byron's, 55.
+
+Gilgamesh epic, 1-2.
+
+_Ginevra_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+Glanvill, Joseph, 6, 215.
+
+_Glenallan_, Lytton's, 179.
+
+_Glenfinlas_, Scott's, 11.
+
+_Godolphin_, Lytton's, 179.
+
+_God's Revenge Against Murder_, 109 note.
+
+Godwin, William, 13, 92, 100-117, 124, 158, 166, 175, 197, 199,
+200, 209, 218, 226.
+
+Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 65, 92, 148, 198.
+
+_Golden Ass_, Apuleius', 13, 14, 15.
+
+_Goodman Brown_, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Götz van Berlichingen_, Goethe's, 148.
+
+_Grand Cyrus_, Mme. de Scudéry's, 222.
+
+_Grandison, Sir Charles_, Richardson's, 134.
+
+Green, Sarah, 133.
+
+_Green Tea_, Le Fanu's, 190.
+
+Gray, Thomas, 7, 12, 20, 40, 58, 75.
+
+Grillparzer, Franz, 72.
+
+Grosse, Marquis von, 76, 129.
+
+_Guardian_, 68.
+
+Gueulette, 94.
+
+Haggard, Rider, 226.
+
+_Half Hangit_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+_Halloween_, Burns', 8.
+
+Hamilton, Count Antony, 95.
+
+_Hamlet_, Shakespeare's, 86.
+
+_Hardyknute_, 35.
+
+_Haunted and the Haunters_, Lytton's, 179, 182-183.
+
+_Haunted Ships_, Cunningham's, 191.
+
+Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 95.
+
+Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 203-213, 214, 217, 220.
+
+Hayne, D.F., 188.
+
+Hazlitt, William, 62.
+
+Heinse, Wilhelm, 65.
+
+_Hellas_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+Henley, Rev. S., 94.
+
+_Henry Fitzowen_, Drake's, 33.
+
+_Hermippus Redivivus_, Campbell's, 112.
+
+_Heroine_, Barrett's, 79, 133-137.
+
+Heywood, Thomas, 149.
+
+_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Heywood's, 149.
+
+_History of Nourjahad_, Mrs. Sheridan's, 95.
+
+_History of the Exchequer_, Mador's, 57.
+
+Hobson, Elizabeth, 6.
+
+Hoffmann, E.T.A., 70, 175.
+
+Hogg, James, 11, 58, 61, 191, 192.
+
+_Hollow of the Three Hills_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 207,
+
+Home, John, 8.
+
+_Horrid Mysteries_, Marquis von Grosse's, 76, 126, 129, 199.
+
+_Hound of the Baskervilles_, 226.
+
+_Hours of Idleness_, Byron's, 72.
+
+_Household Words_, 190, 193.
+
+_Household Wreck_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_House of Aspen_, Scott, 149 note.
+
+_House of the Seven Gables_, Hawthorne's, 210-211.
+
+Hughes, A.M.D., 122.
+
+_Hugo_, Bennett's, 227.
+
+Hugo, Victor, 175.
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 28, 186.
+
+Hunter, Mrs. Rachel, 76.
+
+Hurd, Bishop, 17, 20.
+
+Iamblichus, 12.
+
+Icelandic saga, 2, 14.
+
+_Iliad_, 14.
+
+_Image in the Sand_, Benson's, 226.
+
+_Indicator_, Leigh Hunt's, 187.
+
+_Inn of the Two Witches_, Conrad's, 195.
+
+_Invisible Man_, Wells', 196.
+
+_Iron Shroud_, Mudford's, 194.
+
+Irving, Washington, 200-203.
+
+_Isabella_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Italian_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 34, 45, 47, 52-56, 58, 60, 69, 70,
+114, 124, 125, 128, 137, 168, 185.
+
+_Ivanhoe_, Scott's, 18.
+
+_Jack the Giant-Killer_, 19.
+
+Jacobs, W.W., 193.
+
+James I., 4.
+
+James, Henry, 196.
+
+_Jane Eyre_, Charlotte Brontë's, 224.
+
+_Jekyll and Hyde_, Stevenson's, 218.
+
+"Jenny Spinner," 179.
+
+Jephson, Robert, 19.
+
+Jerdan, W., 189.
+
+_Jerusalem_, Lope de Vega's, 21 note.
+
+_Job, Book of_, 221.
+
+_John Silence_, Blackwood's, 226.
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 6, 7, 95.
+
+Johnson, T.B., 140.
+
+Jonson, Ben, 4.
+
+_Journal_, Moore's, 97.
+
+_Journeys of Mrs. Radcliffe_, 60-61.
+
+_Juif Errant_, Sue's, 118.
+
+Keats, John, 10.
+
+_Keepsake_, 149 note, 150 note, 151 note.
+
+Kemble, John, 19.
+
+_Kidnapped_, Stevenson, 41, 195.
+
+_Kilmeny_, Hogg's, 11.
+
+_King John_, Shakespeare's, 55.
+
+_King Lear_, Shakespeare's, 3, 110.
+
+_King Solomon's Mines_, Haggard's, 226.
+
+Kipling, Rudyard, 195.
+
+Klingemann, 72.
+
+_Klosterheim_, De Quincey's, 173.
+
+_Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Beaumont and Fletcher's, 7.
+
+_Knights of the Swan_, Mme. de Genlis', 134.
+
+_Königsmark the Robber_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+Kotzebue, August von, 65, 72.
+
+_Kubla Khan_, 10.
+
+_La Belle Dame sans Merci_, Keats', 11.
+
+Lacroix, Paul, 175.
+
+_Lady in the Sacque_, Scott's, 150, 201.
+
+_Lady of the Lake_, Scott's, 152.
+
+Lamb, Charles, 193.
+
+_Lamia_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Lancashire Witches_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+Lang, Andrew, 2.
+
+Langhorne, John, 95.
+
+_Lara_, Byron's, 56.
+
+_Last Man_, Mrs. Shelley's, 166-168.
+
+Lathom, Francis, 76.
+
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Scott's, 79, 152.
+
+Le Calprenède, 222.
+
+Lee, Sophia, 39, 57.
+
+Le Fanu, Sheridan, 190, 225.
+
+_Legend of Montrose_, Scott's, 153.
+
+_Legends of a Nunnery_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+_Legends of Terror_, 186.
+
+_Legends of the Province House_, Hawthorne's, 204.
+
+Leland, John, 57.
+
+Lemoine, Anne, 186.
+
+Lennox, Mrs. Charlotte, 222.
+
+_Lenore_, Bürger's, 11, 148.
+
+Le Queux, William, 226.
+
+_Letitia_, Mrs. Rachel Hunter's, 76.
+
+_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_, Hurd's, 17, 20.
+
+Lewis, M.G. ("Monk"), 11, 14, 32, 55, 56, 61, 63-72, 76, 77, 85,
+91,
+  114, 120, 122, 123, 125, 136, 148, 157, 158, 174, 175, 185,
+186,
+  188, 197, 203, 218.
+
+_Ligeia_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Literary Hours_, Drake's, 32.
+
+_Literary Souvenir_, 175.
+
+_Little Annie's Rambles_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Lives of the Necromancers_, Godwin's, 115, 117.
+
+_Lives of the Novelists_, Scott's, 21 note, 38 note, 150 note,
+153.
+
+_Lives of the Pirates_, 109 note.
+
+_Lives_, Plutarch's, 162.
+
+Lockhart, John, 192, 207.
+
+_Lodore_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+_London Magazine_, 191.
+
+_Longsword_, Leland's, 57.
+
+Lope de Vega, 21 note.
+
+_Lopez and Aranthe_, Miss Sarah Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+_Lord of Ennerdale_, Scott's, 148.
+
+Loshe, 197.
+
+_Lucifer_, 188.
+
+Lyttleton, Lord, 6.
+
+Lytton, Bulwer, 109, 116, 178-184, 226.
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 77.
+
+_Macbeth_, Shakespeare's, 4, 85.
+
+Macpherson, James, 12, 20.
+
+_Madoc_, Southey's, 65 note.
+
+Mador, 57.
+
+_Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_, 186.
+
+_Malfi, Duchess of_, Webster's, 4.
+
+Mallet, David, 7.
+
+Malone, Edmund, 19.
+
+Malory, Sir Thomas, 4.
+
+_Manuscript Found in a Bottle_, Poe's, 214, 215.
+
+_Mandeville_, Godwin's, 101.
+
+_Manfroni_, 75.
+
+_Manuel_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Man in the Bell_, 194.
+
+_Marble Faun_, Hawthorne's, 204, 212.
+
+_Margaret Nicholson, Posthumous Poems of_, 120.
+
+_Mark of the Beast_, Kipling's, 195.
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 4, 92.
+
+_Marmion_, Scott's, 69 note.
+
+Marryat, Captain, 2, 177.
+
+Marsh, Richard, 225.
+
+_Mary Burnet_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+Mason, 16, 20, 58.
+
+_Masque of Queens_, Ben Jonson's, 4.
+
+_Masque of the Red Death_, Poe's, 214, 216, 217, 220.
+
+_Master of Ballantrae_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+Mathias, T.J., 38 note.
+
+Maturin, C.R., 55, 61, 72, 80-93, 150 note, 157, 158, 175, 185,
+188, 203, 218, 220.
+
+Medwin, Thomas, 74, 120.
+
+Meeke, Mrs., 77.
+
+_Melancholy, Ode on_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Melmoth Reconcilié à l'Église_, Balzac's, 86.
+
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's, 14, 80 note, 82, 86-93, 158,
+174, 185.
+
+Melville, Theodore, 75.
+
+Meredith, George, 70, 99.
+
+_Merry Men_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+Mickle, William Julius, 69.
+
+_Midnight Bell_, George Walker's, 77, 129.
+
+_Midnight Groan_, 120.
+
+_Midnight Horrors_, 75.
+
+_Midnight Weddings_, Mrs. Meeke's, 77.
+
+_Milesian Chief_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+Milton, John, 54, 58.
+
+Minerva Press, 74.
+
+_Misanthropic Parent_, Miss Smith's, 135.
+
+Mitford, Miss Mary Russell, 58, 86.
+
+_Modern Language Review_, 122.
+
+_Modern Oedipus_, Polidori's, 160, 170-171.
+
+_Mogul Tales_, Gueulette's, 94, 95.
+
+_Monastery_, Scott's, 109, 152.
+
+_Monk_, Lewis's, 64, 65, 66-70, 91, 114, 120 note, 123, 129, 136,
+148, 152.
+
+_Monk of Madrid_, George Moore's, 75.
+
+_Monkey's Paw_, Jacobs', 193.
+
+_Monks of Cluny or Castle Acre Monastery_, 186.
+
+_Monos and Daimonos_, Lytton's, 217.
+
+Montagu, George, 18.
+
+_Monthly Review_, 68 note.
+
+_Montmorenci_, Drake's, 34, 35.
+
+_Moonstone_, Wilkie Collins', 190, 225.
+
+Moore, George, 75.
+
+Moore, Dr. John, 53.
+
+Moore, Thomas, 97, 117, 118.
+
+_Moral Tales_, Maria Edgeworth's, 133.
+
+_More Ghosts_, "Felix Phantom's," 77.
+
+More, Hannah, 16.
+
+_Morella_, Poe's, 215.
+
+Morgan, Lady, 81.
+
+_Mortal Immortal_, Mrs. Shelley's, 169.
+
+_Morte D'Arthur_, Malory's, 4.
+
+_Mosses from an old Manse_, Hawthorne's, 206, 220.
+
+Mudford, William, 194.
+
+_Mugby Junction_, Dickens', 194.
+
+_Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts_, De Quincey's, 173.
+
+_Murders of the Rue Morgue_, Poe's, 218.
+
+Musaeus, Johann, 68 note.
+
+Musgrave, Agnes, 141 note.
+
+_My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, Scott's, 150.
+
+_Mysteries of the Forest_, Miss Eleanor Sleath's, 76.
+
+_Mysteries of Udolpho_ (see _Udolpho, Mysteries of_).
+
+_Mysterious Bravo_, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Bride_, James Hogg's, 191.
+
+_Mysterious Freebooter_, Lathom's, 76, 120.
+
+_Mysterious Hand_, Randolph's, 76, 120.
+
+_Mysterious Mother_, Walpole's, 34, 58.
+
+_Mysterious Spaniard_, 186.
+
+_Mysterious Summons_, 186.
+
+_Mysterious Visits_, Mrs. Parson's, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Wanderer_, Miss Sophia Reeve's, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Warnings_, Mrs. Parson's, 76, 129.
+
+_Mystery of M. Roget_, Poe's, 218.
+
+_Mystery of the Abbey_, T.B. Johnson's, 140.
+
+_Mystery of the Black Tower_, Palmer's, 76.
+
+_Mystic Sepulchre_, Palmer's, 76.
+
+_My Uncle's Garret Window_, Lewis's, 65.
+
+_Necromancer of the Black Forest_, 129.
+
+_New Arabian Nights_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+_Newcomes_, Thackeray's, 38 note.
+
+_Newgate Calendar_, 109 note.
+
+_New Monk_, "R.S.'s" 75.
+
+_New Monthly_, 177.
+
+_Nigger of the Narcissus_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+_Nightmare_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Nightmare Abbey_, Peacock's, 47, 126, 138, 140.
+
+_Noctes Ambrosianae_, 58, 62 note, 192.
+
+_Nocturnal Minstrel_, Miss Sleath's, 77.
+
+_Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen's, 44, 128, 129-133, 185.
+
+_Notebooks_, Hawthorne's, 204, 212, 213.
+
+_Nouvelle Heloïse_, Rousseau's, 134.
+
+_Nun_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 141.
+
+_Nun of Misericordia_, Miss Sophia Francis's, 76.
+
+_Nun of St. Omer's_, "Rosa Matilda's," 75.
+
+_Nurse's Story_, Mrs. Gaskell's, 192, 193.
+
+_Objects of Terror_, Drake's essay on, 34.
+
+_Oblong Box_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Old Bachelor_, Crabbe's, 142.
+
+_Old English Baron_, Clara Reeve's, 22, 25-28, 57.
+
+"Old Jeffrey," 6.
+
+_Old Manor House_, Charlotte Smith's, 77.
+
+_Old Mortality_, Scott's, 22, 154.
+
+_Old St. Paul's_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Old Woman of Berkeley_, Southey's, 11.
+
+Oppenheim, Phillips, 226.
+
+_Oriental Tale in England_, Conant's, 95 note, 96 note.
+
+_Ormond_, T.B. Brown's, 198.
+
+_Oroonoko_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 222.
+
+_Orphan of the Rhine_, Miss Sleath's, 129.
+
+_Oscar and Alva_, Byron's, 72.
+
+_Osorio_, Coleridge's, 81.
+
+_Ossian_, Macpherson's, 12, 20, 58.
+
+_Oval Portrait_, Poe's, 219.
+
+Pain, Barry, 193.
+
+Palmer, John, 76.
+
+_Pamela_, Richardson's, 134.
+
+_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Bovet's, 14, 149.
+
+_Paradise Lost_, Milton's, 162.
+
+_Parish Register_, Crabbe's, 144 note.
+
+Parsons, Mrs. Eliza, 73, 74, 76, 129.
+
+_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_, Warren's, 188.
+
+_Paul Clifford_, Lytton's, 109.
+
+Peacock, T.L., 72, 126, 138-140, 197.
+
+_Peep at our Ancestors_, Mrs. Rouvière's, 74, 75.
+
+Pegge, Samuel, 57.
+
+Pepys, Mrs., 222.
+
+Percy, Bishop, 9, 20.
+
+_Perkin Warbeck_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+Perrault, Charles, 12.
+
+_Persian Tales_, Galland's, 94.
+
+_Peruvian Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+Petronius, 2.
+
+_Peveril of the Peak_, Scott's, 154.
+
+_Phantasmagoria_, Lewis Carroll's, 201.
+
+_Phantom Ship_, Marryat's, 2, 177.
+
+_Pickwick_, Dickens', 193.
+
+_Picture of Dorian Gray_, Oscar Wilde's, 226.
+
+_Pilgrim's Progress_, Bunyan's, 5.
+
+_Pillar of Mystery_, 197.
+
+_Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe's, 194, 218.
+
+Planche, Gustave, 86 note.
+
+Plato, 101.
+
+_Pleasure derived from Objects of Terror_, Mrs. Barbauld's essay
+on, 28.
+
+Pliny, 14.
+
+Plutarch, 162.
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, 149, 175, 213-220, 226.
+
+_Poetical Sketches_, Blake's, 31.
+
+Polidori, Dr., 158, 160, 169-173.
+
+_Political Justice_, Godwin's, 100, 101, 102, 111, 197.
+
+_Polly Honeycombe_, Colman's, 222.
+
+Polyphemus, 2.
+
+Pope, Alexander, 17.
+
+_Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, 174.
+
+_Portraits Littèraires_, Planche's, 86 note.
+
+_Pour et Contre_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Preceptor Husband_, Crabbe's, 141.
+
+_Preface to Shakespeare_, Pope's, 17.
+
+_Premature Burial_, Poe's, 216.
+
+_Priory of St. Clair_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 78.
+
+_Prisoner of Zenda_, Hope's, 226.
+
+_Prometheus Unbound_, Shelley's, 101, 120, 127.
+
+_Pursuits of Literature_, Mathias', 38 note.
+
+_Quarterly Review_, 72.
+
+_Queenhoo Hall_, Strutt's, 57.
+
+_Queen Mab_, 101, 120.
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 12, 13, 14, 20, 22, 24, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35,
+  38-62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 76, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85, 91, 101,
+104,
+  105, 109, 114, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 136,
+137,
+  148, 150 note, 154, 155, 157, 158, 167, 168, 173, 175, 176,
+185,
+  188, 197, 198, 218, 219, 222, 223.
+
+_Rambler_, Johnson's, 94.
+
+Randolph, A.J., 76.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter, Dr._, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Rasselas_, Johnson's, 94, 134.
+
+_Räuber_, Schiller's, 55, 65, 148, 198.
+
+_Raven_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Recess_, Sophia Lee's, 39, 57.
+
+Reeve, Clara, 13, 21, 25-28, 33, 38, 57, 150 note.
+
+Reeve, Sophia, 76.
+
+_Relapse_, 141.
+
+_Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, Percy's, 9, 20.
+
+_Return of Imray_, Kipling's, 195.
+
+_Revelations of London_ (see _Auriol_).
+
+_Revenge_ (Poems of Victor and Cazire), 120.
+
+_Revolt of Islam_, Shelley's, 101, 127.
+
+_Richard III._, Shakespeare's, 55.
+
+Richardson, Samuel, 46, 222, 223.
+
+Ridley, James, 95.
+
+_Rill from the Town Pump_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Robber Bridegroom_, 3.
+
+_Robbers_ (see _Räuber_).
+
+Robinson, Crabb, 59.
+
+_Rob Roy_, Scott's, 154.
+
+Roche, Mrs. Regina Maria, 22, 59, 129, 134, 140 note.
+
+Rogers, Samuel, 74.
+
+Rohmer, Sax, 225.
+
+_Rokeby_, Scott's, 152, 154.
+
+_Romance of the Castle_, D.F. Hayne's, 188.
+
+_Romance of the Cavern_, George Walker's, 76.
+
+_Romance of the Forest_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 26, 42-46, 52, 53, 56,
+69, 76, 109, 131, 132, 134.
+
+_Romance of the Highlands_, Peter Darling's, 134.
+
+_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_, Sarah Green's, 133.
+
+_Romances_, an Imitation, 29.
+
+_Romancist and Novelist's Library_, 39 note, 122, 129, 168 note,
+187, 188, 189.
+
+_Rookwood_, Ainsworth's, 175-176, 224.
+
+"Rosa Matilda" (see Dacre).
+
+_Rose of Raby_, Miss Agnes Musgrave's, 141.
+
+Rossetti, Christina, 39.
+
+Rossetti, D.G., 86, 186.
+
+Rossetti, W.M., 169.
+
+_Roundabout Papers_, Thackeray's, 75 note.
+
+Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 89, 115, 137.
+
+Rouvière, Mrs. Henrietta, 74, 75.
+
+_Ruins of Empire_, Volney's, 162.
+
+_Ruins of St. Luke's Abbey_, 186.
+
+_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Glanvill's, 6.
+
+_St. Edmond's Eve_ (Tales of Terror), 120 note.
+
+_St. Edmund's Eve_ (Poems by Victor and Cazire), 120.
+
+_St. Godwin_, 116.
+
+_St. Irvyne_, Shelley's, 13, 66, 120, 121, 122, 123-126.
+
+_St. Leon_, Godwin's, 91, 102, 111-116, 117, 124, 166, 169.
+
+Saintsbury, George, 192.
+
+_Salathiel_, Croly's, 118.
+
+_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, Sinclair's, 14, 149.
+
+_Scarlet Letter_, Hawthorne's, 207-210, 212.
+
+Schiller, Friedrich, 51, 65.
+
+Schubart, 120.
+
+Scot, Reginald, 14, 147.
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 14, 20, 21 note, 22, 38 note, 55, 57, 69,
+72,
+  73, 74, 75, 77, 80, 81, 82, 86, 109, 135, 145-156, 190, 194,
+200,
+  201, 224.
+
+_Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_, 154.
+
+_Sensitive Plant_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+_Septimius Felton_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Seven Vagabonds_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+Seward, Anna, 150.
+
+_Sexton of Cologne_, 188.
+
+_Shadow Line_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+Shakespeare, 54, 55, 58, 85, 89, 127.
+
+_Shaving of Shagpat_, Meredith's, 99.
+
+_She_, Rider Haggard's, 226.
+
+Shelley, Mary, 158-169, 188.
+
+Shelley, P.B., 13, 66, 74, 101, 118-127, 160, 167, 168, 175, 197,
+198, 199.
+
+Sheridan, Mrs. Frances, 95.
+
+Sheridan, R.B., 129.
+
+_Shirley_, Charlotte Brontë's, 38 note.
+
+_Shrine of St. Alstice_, 76.
+
+_Sicilian Pirate_, 197.
+
+_Sicilian Romance_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 13, 22, 41-42, 45, 53, 123,
+132,
+  137.
+
+_Sign of Four_, Conan Doyle's, 226.
+
+Sinclair, George, 14, 149.
+
+_Sir Bertrand_, Mrs. Barbauld's, 28-31.
+
+_Sir Egbert_, Drake's, 35.
+
+_Sir Eustace Grey_, Crabbe's, 144.
+
+_Sir Michael Scott_, Cunningham's, 191.
+
+_Sketch Book_, Irving's, 200.
+
+Sleath, Eleanor, 76, 77, 129.
+
+_Sleepless Woman_, Jerdan's, 189.
+
+Smith, Mrs. Charlotte, 77, 141 note.
+
+Smollett, Tobias, 12, 23-25, 29, 31, 68, 222.
+
+_Solyman and Almena_, Langhorne's, 95.
+
+_Sorcerer_, Mickle's, 68, 69.
+
+Southey, Robert, 11, 65.
+
+_Spectator_, 5, 222.
+
+_Spectral Horseman_, 120.
+
+_Spectre Barber_, 188.
+
+_Spectre Bride_, 175, 188.
+
+_Spectre Bridegroom_, 200.
+
+_Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_, Miss Wilkinson's, 79.
+
+_Spectre of the Murdered Nun_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 78.
+
+_Spectre-Smitten_, 188.
+
+_Spectre Unmasked_, 188.
+
+Spenser, Edmund, 4, 17, 32, 33, 36, 37, 102.
+
+Steele, Richard, 129.
+
+Sterne, Laurence, 222.
+
+Stevenson, R.L., 87 note, 147, 186, 195, 218.
+
+Stoker, Bram, 2, 225.
+
+_Story-Haunted_, 188, 222.
+
+_Story Teller_, 187, 188, 189.
+
+_Strange Story_, Lytton's, 116, 183-184.
+
+Strutt, Joseph, 57.
+
+_Student_, 217.
+
+_Subterranean Horrors_, Randolph's, 76, 120.
+
+Sue, Eugène, 118.
+
+_Sunday at Home_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, Ode on the_, Collins',
+8.
+
+_Sweet William's Ghost_, 3.
+
+_Symposium_, Plato's, 101.
+
+_Tales for a Chimney Corner_, Leigh Hunt's, 187.
+
+_Tale of Mystery_, 175.
+
+_Tale of the Passions_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+_Tales and Sketches_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+_Tales and Sketches_, Hawthorne's, 211.
+
+_Tales of a Traveller_, Irving's, 201-202.
+
+_Tales of Chivalry_, 186.
+
+_Tales of Superstition and Chivalry_, 73.
+
+_Tales of Terror_, Lewis's, 32, 70, 120.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, Ridley's, 95.
+
+_Tales of the Hall_, Crabbe's, 141.
+
+_Tales of Wonder_, Lewis's, 69, 70, 120, 148, 186.
+
+_Tam Lin_, 3.
+
+_Tam o' Shanter_, Burns', 8.
+
+_Tapestried Chamber_, Scott's, 150, 201.
+
+_Tartarian Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+Taylor, Joseph, 149.
+
+Taylor, William (of Norwich), 148.
+
+Tedworth, Drummer of, 6, 153.
+
+_Tell-Tale Heart_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Tender Husband_, Steele's, 129.
+
+_Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins', 194.
+
+_Test of Affection_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+Thackeray, W.M., 38 note, 39, 75 note, 78, 86.
+
+Theocritus, 14.
+
+_Thomas the Rhymer_, 147.
+
+Thorgunna, 14.
+
+_Thrawn Janet_, Stevenson's, 147.
+
+_Three Students of Göttingen_, 188.
+
+Tieck, Ludwig, 65, 175.
+
+_Told in the Dark_, Barry Pain's, 193.
+
+_Tomb of Aurora_, 186.
+
+_Tom Jones_, Fielding's, 7 note, 126 note.
+
+Tourneur, Cyril, 127.
+
+_Tower of London_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_,
+Cunningham's, 191.
+
+_Transformation_, Hawthorne's (see _Marble Faun_).
+
+_Transformation_, Mrs. Shelley's, 169.
+
+_Treasure House of Tales by Great Authors_, Garnett's, 169 note.
+
+_Treasure Island_, Stevenson's, 195, 218.
+
+_Trimalchio, Supper of_, Petronius', 2.
+
+_Tristram Shandy_, Sterne's, 134.
+
+_Triumph of Conscience_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+Trollope, Anthony, 38 note.
+
+_True Thomas_, 3.
+
+_Tunbridge Toys_, Thackeray's, 75 note.
+
+_Turkish Tales_, Galland's, 94.
+
+_Turn of the Screw_, James', 196.
+
+_Twelve o'clock, or The Three Robbers_, 186.
+
+_Twice-Told Tales_, Hawthorne's, 203, 205-206, 212, 213, 220.
+
+_Typhoon_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+_Udolpho, Mysteries of_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 13, 14, 25, 45, 47-51,
+52,
+  53. 59, 61, 64, 75, 76, 123, 125, 128, 129, 131, 134, 137, 145,
+202.
+
+Ulysses, 2, 14.
+
+_Uncommercial Traveller_, Dickens', 193.
+
+_Usher's Well, Wife of_, 3.
+
+_Valperga_, Mrs. Shelley's, 165-166.
+
+_Vampyre_, Polidori's, 169, 171-173.
+
+_Vathek, Episodes of_, Beckford's, 96, 216.
+
+_Vathek, History of the Caliph_, Beckford's, 94-99, 118.
+
+_Veal, Mrs._, Defoe's, 6.
+
+Verne, Jules, 226.
+
+_Victor and Cazire, Poems by_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Villette_, Charlotte Brontë's, 51, 224.
+
+_Virtuoso's Collection_, Hawthorne's, 204.
+
+_Vision of Mirza_, Addison's, 94.
+
+Volney, Count de, 162.
+
+Voltaire, 95.
+
+Walker, George, 76, 77, 129.
+
+Wallace, Sir William, 13, 21 note.
+
+Walpole, Horace, 12, 13, 16-23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37,
+39, 175, 185, 188.
+
+Wandering Jew, 12, 14, 68, 92, 118, 120, 158.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Scott's, 147, 148, 149, 151-152.
+
+Watt, Robert, 75, 129.
+
+_Waverley_, Scott's, 59, 145, 146, 153, 166.
+
+Webster, John, 4, 127.
+
+_Wehr-Wolf_, 188.
+
+Weit Weber, 65.
+
+Wells, H.G., 196, 227.
+
+_Werther, Sorrows of_, Goethe's, 65, 162.
+
+Wesley, John, 6.
+
+_West Wind, Ode to the_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+_White Old Maid_, Hawthorne's,
+
+_Wieland_, C.B. Brown's, 140, 198.
+
+Wilde, Oscar, 226.
+
+_Wild Irish Boy_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Wild Irish Girl_, Lady Morgan's, 81.
+
+"Wild Roses," 186.
+
+Wilkinson, Miss Sarah, 66, 73, 74, 76, 77-80.
+
+Will, R., 76, 129.
+
+_William and Margaret_, Mallet's, 7.
+
+_William Lovell_, Tieck's, 65.
+
+_William Wilson_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Windsor Castle_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Witch of Fife_, Hogg's, 11.
+
+_Woman in White_, Wilkie Collins', 190, 225.
+
+_Women_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Wood-Demon_, 188.
+
+_Woodstock_, Scott's, 149, 153, 154.
+
+"Writing on the Wall," 221.
+
+_Wuthering Heights_, Emily Brontë's, 224.
+
+_Yellow Mask_, Wilkie Collins', 190.
+
+_Zanoni_, Lytton's, 116, 179, 180-182.
+
+_Zastrozzi_, Shelley's, 13, 66, 121, 122-123.
+
+_Zeluco_, Dr. John Moore's, 53.
+
+_Zicci_, Lytton's, 116, 180.
+
+_Zofloya_, Miss Charlotte Dacre's, 122-123, 124.
+
+Zschokke, Heinrich, 70.
+
+
+
+
+Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose and
+Co. Ltd.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TERROR***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Tale of Terror, by Edith Birkhead
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Tale of Terror
+
+Author: Edith Birkhead
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2004  [eBook #14154]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TERROR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE TALE OF TERROR
+
+A Study of the Gothic Romance
+
+by
+
+EDITH BIRKHEAD M.A.
+
+Assistant Lecturer in English Literature in the University of Bristol
+Formerly Noble Fellow in the University of Liverpool
+
+London
+Constable & Company Ltd.
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The aim of this book is to give some account of the growth of
+supernatural fiction in English literature, beginning with the
+vogue of the Gothic Romance and Tale of Terror towards the close
+of the eighteenth century. The origin and development of the
+Gothic Romance are set forth in detail from the appearance of
+Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 to the publication of
+Maturin's _Melmoth the Wanderer_ in 1820; and the survey of this
+phase of the novel is continued, in the later chapters, to modern
+times. One of these is devoted to the Tale of Terror in America,
+where in the hands of Hawthorne and Poe its treatment became a
+fine art. In the chapters dealing with the more recent forms of
+the tale of terror and wonder, the scope of the subject becomes
+so wide that it is impossible to attempt an exhaustive survey.
+
+The present work is the outcome of studies begun during my tenure
+of the William Noble Fellowship in the University of Liverpool,
+1916-18. It is a pleasure to express here my thanks to Professor
+R.H. Case and to Dr. John Sampson for valuable help and criticism
+at various stages of the work. Parts of the MS. have also been
+read by Professor C.H. Herford of the University of Manchester
+and by Professor Oliver Elton of the University of Liverpool. To
+Messrs. Constable's reader I am also indebted for several helpful
+suggestions.--E.B.
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL,
+
+December, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+
+The antiquity of the tale of terror; the element of fear in
+myths, heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the
+romances of the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the
+seventeenth century; the credulity of the age of reason; the
+renascence of terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend
+the marvellous of old story with the natural of modern novels."
+Pp. 1-15.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.
+
+
+Walpole's admiration for Gothic art and his interest in the
+middle ages; the mediaeval revival at the close of the eighteenth
+century; _The Castle of Otranto_; Walpole's bequest to later
+romance-writers; Smollett's incidental anticipation of the
+methods of Gothic Romance; Clara Reeve's _Old English Baron_ and
+her effort to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
+probability"; Mrs. Barbauld's Gothic fragment; Blake's _Fair
+Elenor_; the critical theories and Gothic experiments of Dr.
+Nathan Drake. Pp. 16-37.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE NOVEL OF SUSPENSE." MRS. RADCLIFFE.
+
+
+The vogue of Mrs. Radcliffe; her tentative beginning in _The
+Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, and her gradual advance in skill
+and power; _The Sicilian Romance_ and her early experiments in
+the "explained" supernatural; _The Romance of the Forest_, and
+her use of suspense; heroines: _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
+illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; _The Italian_;
+villains; her historical accuracy and "unexplained" spectre in
+_Gaston de Blondeville_; her reading; style; descriptions of
+scenery; position in the history of the novel.
+Pp. 38-62.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
+
+
+Lewis's methods contrasted with those of Mrs. Radcliffe; his debt
+to German terror-mongers; _The Monk_; ballads; _The Bravo of
+Venice_; minor works and translations; Scott's review of
+Maturin's _Montorio_; the vogue of the tale of terror between
+Lewis and Maturin; Miss Sarah Wilkinson; the personality of
+Charles Robert Maturin; his literary career; the complicated plot
+of _The Family of Montorio_; Maturin's debt to others; his
+distinguishing gifts revealed in _Montorio_; the influence of
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_ on French literature; a survey of
+_Melmoth_; Maturin's achievement as a novelist. Pp. 63-93.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
+
+
+The Oriental story in France and England in the eighteenth
+century; Beckford's _Vathek_; Beckford's life and character; his
+literary gifts; later Oriental tales. Pp. 94-99.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
+
+Godwin's mind and temper; the plan of _Caleb Williams_ as
+described by Godwin; his methods; the plot of _Caleb Williams_;
+its interest as a story; Godwin's limitations as a novelist; _St.
+Lean_; its origin and purpose; outline of the story; the
+character of Bethlem Gabor; Godwin's treatment of the Rosicrucian
+legend; a parody of _St. Lean_; the supernatural in _Cloudesley_
+and in _Lives of the Necromancers_; Moore's _Epicurean_; Croly's
+_Salathiel_; Shelley's youthful enthusiasm for the tale of
+terror; _Zastrozzi_; its lack of originality; _St. Irvyne_;
+traces of Shelley's early reading in his poems. Pp. 100-127.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+Jane Austen's raillery in _Northanger Abbey_; Barrett's mockery
+in _The Heroine_; Peacock's _Nightmare Abbey_; his praise of C.B.
+Brown in _Gryll Grange_; _The Mystery of the Abbey_, and its
+misleading title; Crabbe's satire in _Belinda Waters_ and _The
+Preceptor Husband_; his ironical attack on the sentimental
+heroine in _The Borough_; his appreciation of folktales; _Sir
+Eustace Grey_. Pp.
+128-144.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+Scott's review of fashionable fiction in the Preface to
+_Waverley_; his early attempts at Gothic story in _Thomas the
+Rhymer_ and _The Lord of Ennerdale_; his enthusiasm for Buerger's
+_Lenore_ and for Lewis's ballads; his interest in demonology and
+witchcraft; his attitude to the supernatural; his hints to the
+writers of ghost-stories; his own experiments; Wandering Willie's
+Tale, a masterpiece of supernatural horror; the use of the
+supernatural in the Waverley Novels; Scott, the supplanter of the
+novel of terror. Pp.
+145-156.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.
+
+
+The exaggeration of the later terror-mongers; innovations; the
+stories of Mary Shelley, Byron and Polidori; _Frankenstein_; its
+purpose; critical estimate; _Valperga_; _The Last Man_; Mrs.
+Shelley's short tales; Polidori's _Ernestus Berchtold_, a
+domestic story with supernatural agency; _The_ FACES _Vampyre_;
+later vampires; De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror;
+Harrison Ainsworth's attempt to revive romance; his early Gothic
+stories; _Rookwood_, an attempt to bring the Radcliffe romance up
+to date; terror in Ainsworth's other novels; Marryat's _Phantom
+Ship_; Bulwer Lytton's interest in the occult; _Zanoni_, and
+Lytton's theory of the Intelligences; _The Haunted and the
+Haunters_; _A Strange Story_ and Lytton's preoccupation with
+mesmerism. Pp. 157-184.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+The chapbook versions of the Gothic romance; the popularity of
+sensational story illustrated in Leigh Hunt's _Indicator_;
+collections of short stories; various types of short story in
+periodicals; stories based on oral tradition; the humourist's
+turn for the terrible; natural terror in tales from _Blackwood_
+and in Conrad; use of terror in Stevenson and Kipling; future
+possibilities of fear as a motive in short stories. Pp. 185-196.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+The vogue of Gothic story in America; the novels of Charles
+Brockden Brown; his use of the "explained" supernatural; his
+Godwinian theory; his construction and style; Washington Irving's
+genial tales of terror; Hawthorne's reticence and melancholy;
+suggestions for eery stories in his notebooks; _Twice-Told
+Tales_; _Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter_;
+Hawthorne's sympathetic insight into character; _The House of the
+Seven Gables_, and the ancestral curse; his half-credulous
+treatment of the supernatural; unfinished stories; a contrast of
+Hawthorne's methods with those of Edgar Allan Poe; _A Manuscript
+found in a Bottle_, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill
+of Poe illustrated in _Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher,
+The Masque of the Red Death_, and _The Cash of Amontillado_;
+Poe's psychology; his technique in _The Pit and the Pendulum_ and
+in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his
+ideal in writing a short story. Pp. 197-220.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
+
+
+The persistence of the tale of terror; the position of the Gothic
+romance in the history of fiction; the terrors of actual life in
+the Bronte's novels; sensational stories of Wilkie Collins, Le
+Fanu and later authors; the element of terror in various types of
+romance; experiments of living authors; the future of the tale of
+terror. Pp
+221-228.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.  Pp. 229-241
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+The history of the tale of terror is as old as the history of
+man. Myths were created in the early days of the race to account
+for sunrise and sunset, storm-winds and thunder, the origin of
+the earth and of mankind. The tales men told in the face of these
+mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. The universal
+myth of a great flood is perhaps the earliest tale of terror.
+During the excavation of Nineveh in 1872, a Babylonian version of
+the story, which forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, was discovered
+in the library of King Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.); and there are
+records of a much earlier version, belonging to the year 1966
+B.C. The story of the Flood, as related on the eleventh tablet of
+the Gilgamesh epic, abounds in supernatural terror. To seek the
+gift of immortality from his ancestor, Ut-napishtim, the hero
+undertakes a weary and perilous journey. He passes the mountain
+guarded by a scorpion man and woman, where the sun goes down; he
+traverses a dark and dreadful road, where never man trod, and at
+last crosses the waters of death. During the deluge, which is
+predicted by his ancestor, the gods themselves are stricken with
+fear:
+
+     "No man beheld his fellow, no more could men know each
+     other. In heaven the gods were afraid ... They drew
+     back, they climbed up into the heaven of Anu. The gods
+     crouched like dogs, they cowered by the walls."[1]
+
+Another episode in the same epic, when Nergal, the god of the
+dead, brings before Gilgamesh an apparition of his friend,
+Eabani, recalls the impressive scene, when the witch of Endor
+summons the spirit of Samuel before Saul.
+
+When legends began to grow up round the names of traditional
+heroes, fierce encounters with giants and monsters were invented
+to glorify their strength and prowess. David, with a stone from
+his sling, slew Goliath. The crafty Ulysses put out the eye of
+Polyphemus. Grettir, according to the Icelandic saga, overcame
+Glam, the malevolent, death-dealing vampire who "went riding the
+roofs." Beowulf fearlessly descended into the turbid mere to
+grapple with Grendel's mother. Folktales and ballads, in which
+incidents similar to those in myths and heroic legends occur, are
+often overshadowed by terror. Figures like the Demon Lover, who
+bears off his mistress in the fatal craft and sinks her in the
+sea, and the cannibal bridegroom, outwitted at last by the
+artfulness of one of his brides, appear in the folk-lore of many
+lands. Through every century there glide uneasy spirits, groaning
+for vengeance. Andrew Lang[2] mentions the existence of a papyrus
+fragment, found attached to a wooden statuette, in which an
+ancient Egyptian scribe addresses a letter to the Khou, or
+spirit, of his dead wife, beseeching her not to haunt him. One of
+the ancestors of the savage were-wolf, who figures in Marryat's
+_Phantom Ship_, may perhaps be discovered in Petronius' _Supper
+of Trimalchio_. The descent of Bram Stoker's infamous vampire
+Dracula may be traced back through centuries of legend.
+Hobgoblins, demons, and witches mingle grotesquely with the
+throng of beautiful princesses, queens in glittering raiment,
+fairies and elves. Without these ugly figures, folk-tales would
+soon lose their power to charm. All tale tellers know that fear
+is a potent spell. The curiosity which drove Bluebeard's wife to
+explore the hidden chamber lures us on to know the worst, and as
+we listen to horrid stories, we snatch a fearful joy. Human
+nature desires not only to be amused and entertained, but moved
+to pity and fear. All can sympathise with the youth, who could
+not shudder and who would fain acquire the gift.
+
+From English literature we gain no more than brief, tantalising
+glimpses of the vast treasury of folk-tales and ballads that
+existed before literature became an art and that lived on side by
+side with it, vitalising and enriching it continually. Yet here
+and there we catch sudden gleams like the fragment in _King
+Lear_:
+
+  "Childe Roland to the dark tower came.
+  His word was still Fie, Foh and Fum,
+  I smell the blood of a British man."
+
+or Benedick's quotation from the _Robber Bridegroom_:
+
+  "It is not so, it was not so, but, indeed, God forbid that
+  it should be so."
+
+which hint at the existence of a hoard as precious and
+inexhaustible as that of the Nibelungs. The chord of terror is
+touched in the eerie visit of the three dead sailor sons "in
+earthly flesh and blood" to the wife of Usher's well, Sweet
+William's Ghost, the rescue of Tarn Lin on Halloween, when
+Fairyland pays a tiend to Hell, the return of clerk Saunders to
+his mistress, True Thomas's ride to Fairyland, when:
+
+  "For forty days and forty nights,
+  He wade through red blood to the knee,
+  And he saw neither sun nor moon,
+  But heard the roaring of the sea."
+
+The mediaeval romances of chivalry, which embody stories handed
+down by oral tradition, are set in an atmosphere of supernatural
+wonder and enchantment. In Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Sir
+Lancelot goes by night into the Chapel Perilous, wherein there is
+only a dim light burning, and steals from the corpse a sword and
+a piece of silk to heal the wounds of a dying knight. Sir Galahad
+sees a fiend leap out of a tomb amid a cloud of smoke; Gawaine's
+ghost, with those of the knights and ladies for whom he has done
+battle in life, appears to warn the king not to begin the fight
+against Modred on a certain day. In the romance of _Sir Amadas_,
+the ghost of a merchant, whose corpse the knight had duteously
+redeemed from the hands of creditors, succours him at need. The
+shadow of terror lurks even amid the beauty of Spenser's
+fairyland. In the windings of its forests we come upon dark
+caves, mysterious castles and huts, from which there start
+fearsome creatures like Despair or the giant Orgoglio, hideous
+hags like Occasion, wicked witches and enchanters or frightful
+beings like the ghostly Maleger, who wore as his helmet a dead
+man's skull and rode upon a tiger swift as the wind. The
+Elizabethan dramatists were fascinated by the terrors of the
+invisible world. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, round whose name are
+clustered legends centuries old concerning bargains between man
+and the devil, the apparitions and witches in _Macbeth_, the dead
+hand, the corpse-like images, the masque of madmen, the tombmaker
+and the passing-bell in Webster's sombre tragedy, _The Duchess of
+Malfi_, prove triumphantly the dramatic possibilities of terror.
+As a foil to his _Masque of Queens_ (1609) Ben Jonson introduced
+twelve loathly witches with Ate as their leader, and embellished
+his description of their profane rites, with details culled from
+James I.'s treatise on Demonology and from learned ancient
+authorities.
+
+In _The Pilgrim's Progress_, Despair, who "had as many lives as a
+cat," his wife Diffidence at Doubting Castle, and Maul and
+Slaygood are the ogres of popular story, whose acquaintance
+Bunyan had made in chapbooks during his ungodly youth.
+Hobgoblins, devils and fiends, "sturdy rogues" like the three
+brothers Faintheart, Mistrust and Guilt, who set upon Littlefaith
+in Dead Man's Lane, lend the excitement of terror to Christian's
+journey to the Celestial City. The widespread belief in witches
+and spirits to which Browne and Burton and many others bear
+witness in the seventeenth century, lived on in the eighteenth
+century, although the attitude of the "polite" in the age of
+reason was ostensibly incredulous and superior. A scene in one of
+the _Spectator_ essays illustrates pleasantly the state of
+popular opinion. Addison, lodging with a good-natured widow in
+London, returns home one day to find a group of girls sitting by
+candlelight, telling one another ghost-stories. At his entry they
+are abashed, but, on the widow's assuring them that it is only
+the "gentleman," they resume, while Addison, pretending to be
+absorbed in his book at the far end of the table, covertly
+listens to their tales of
+
+     "ghosts that, pale as ashes, had stood at the feet of
+     the bed or walked over a churchyard by moonlight; and
+     others, who had been conjured into the Red Sea for
+     disturbing people's rest."[3]
+
+In another essay Addison shows that he is strongly inclined to
+believe in the existence of spirits, though he repudiates the
+ridiculous superstitions which prevailed in his day;[4] and Sir
+Roger de Coverley frankly confesses his belief in witches. Defoe,
+in the preface to his _Essay on the History and Reality of
+Apparitions_ (1727) states uncompromisingly:
+
+     "I must tell you, good people, he that is not able to
+     see the devil, in whatever shape he is pleased to
+     appear in, he is not really qualified to live in this
+     world, no, not in the quality of a common inhabitant."
+
+Epworth Rectory, the home of John Wesley's father, was haunted in
+1716-17 by a persevering ghost called Old Jeffrey, whose exploits
+are recorded with a gravity and circumstantial exactitude that
+remind us of Defoe's narrative concerning the ghostly Mrs. Veal
+in her "scoured" silk. John Wesley declares stoutly that he is
+convinced of the literal truth of the story of one Elizabeth
+Hobson, who professed to have been visited on several occasions
+by supernatural beings. He upholds too the authenticity of the
+notorious Drummer of Tedworth, whose escapades are described in
+chapbooks and in Glanvill's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_ (1666), a
+book in which he was keenly interested. In his journal (May 25th,
+1768) he remarks:
+
+     "It is true that the English in general, and indeed
+     most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up
+     all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere old
+     wives' fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take
+     this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against
+     this violent compliment which so many that believe the
+     Bible pay to those who do not believe it."
+
+The Cock Lane ghost gained very general credit, and was
+considered by Mrs. Nickleby a personage of some importance, when
+she boasted to Miss La Creevy that her great-grandfather went to
+school with him--or her grandmother with the Thirsty Woman of
+Tutbury. The appearance of Lord Lyttleton's ghost in 1779 was
+described by Dr. Johnson, who was also disposed to believe in the
+Cock Lane ghost, as the most extraordinary thing that had
+happened in his day.[5] There is abundant evidence that the
+people of the eighteenth century were extremely credulous, yet,
+in literature, there is a tendency to look askance at the
+supernatural as at something wild and barbaric. Such ghosts as
+presume to steal into poetry are amazingly tame, and even
+elegant, in their speech and deportment. In Mallet's _William and
+Margaret_ (1759). which was founded on a scrap of an old ballad
+out of _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Margaret's wraith
+rebukes her false lover in a long and dignified oration. But
+spirits were shy of appearing in an age when they were more
+likely to be received with banter than with dread. Dr. Johnson
+expresses the attitude of his age when, in referring to Gray's
+poem, _The Bard_, he remarks:
+
+     "To select a singular event and swell it to a giant's
+     bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions
+     has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the
+     probable may always find the marvellous. And it has
+     little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are
+     improved only as we find something to be imitated or
+     declined." (1780.)
+
+The dictum that we are affected only as we believe is open to
+grave doubt. We are often thrown into a state of trepidation
+simply through the power of the imagination. We are wise after
+the event, like Partridge at the play:
+
+     "No, no, sir; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as
+     that neither... And if it was really a ghost, it could
+     do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much
+     company; and yet, if I was frightened, I am not the
+     only person."[6]
+
+The supernatural which persisted always in legends handed down
+from one generation to another on the lips of living people, had
+not lost its power to thrill and alarm, and gradually worked its
+way back into literature. Although Gray and Collins do not
+venture far beyond the bounds of the natural, they were in
+sympathy with the popular feelings of superstitious terror, and
+realised how effective they would be in poetry.
+
+Collins, in his _Ode on the Superstitions of the Scottish
+Highlands_, adjures Home, the author of _Douglas_, to sing:
+
+            "how, framing hideous spells,
+  In Sky's lone isle, the gifted wizard-seer
+  Lodged in the wintry cave with Fate's fell spear
+  Or in the depths of Uist's dark forests dwells,
+  How they whose sight such dreary dreams engross
+  With their own vision oft astonished droop
+  When o'er the wintry strath or quaggy moss
+  They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop."
+
+Burns, in the foreword to _Halloween_ (1785), writes in the
+"enlightened" spirit of the eighteenth century, but in the poem
+itself throws himself whole-heartedly into the hopes and fears
+that agitate the lovers. He owed much to an old woman who lived
+in his home in infancy:
+
+  "She had ... the largest collection in the country
+  of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies,
+  brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles,
+  dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted
+  towers, dragons and other trumpery. This
+  cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong
+  an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my
+  nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in
+  suspicious places; it often takes an effort of philosophy
+  to shake off these idle terrors."[7]
+
+_Tam o' Shanter_, written for Captain Grose, was perhaps based on
+a Scottish legend, learnt at the inglenook in childhood, from
+this old wife, or perhaps
+
+  "By some auld houlet-haunted biggin
+  Or kirk deserted by its riggin,"
+
+from Captain Grose himself, who made to quake:
+
+  "Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha' or chamer,
+  Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor,
+  And you, deep-read in hell's black grammar,
+         Warlocks and witches."
+
+In it Burns reveals with lively reality the terrors that assail
+the reveller on his homeward way through the storm:
+
+  "Past the birks and meikle stane
+  Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
+  And through the whins, and by the cairn
+  Where hunters fand the murdered bairn
+  And near the thorn, aboon the well
+  Where Mungo's mither hanged hersell."
+
+For sheer terror the wild, fantastic witch-dance, seen through a
+Gothic window in the ruins of Kirk-Alloway, with the light of
+humour strangely glinting through, has hardly been surpassed. The
+Ballad-collections, beginning with Percy's _Reliques of Ancient
+English Poetry_ (1705), brought poets back to the original
+sources of terror in popular tradition, and helped to revive the
+latent feelings of awe, wonder and fear. In Coleridge's _Ancient
+Manner_ the skeleton-ship with its ghastly crew--the
+spectre-woman and her deathmate--the sensations of the mariner,
+alone on a wide, wide sea, seize on our imagination with
+irresistible power. The very substance of the poem is woven of
+the supernatural. The dream imagery is thrown into relief by
+occasional touches of reality--the lighthouse, the church on the
+cliff, the glimpses of the wedding, the quiet song of the hidden
+brook in the leafy month of June. We, like the mariner, after
+loneliness so awful that
+
+        "God himself
+  Scarce seemed there to be,"
+
+welcome the firm earth beneath our feet, and the homely sound of
+the vesper bell. In _Christabel_ we float dreamily through scenes
+as unearthly and ephemeral as the misty moonlight, and the words
+in which Coleridge conjures up his vision fall into music of
+magic beauty. The opening of the poem creates a sense of
+foreboding, and the horror of the serpent-maiden is subtly
+suggested through her effect on Christabel. Coleridge hints at
+the terrible with artistic reticence. In _Kubla Khan_ the chasm
+is:
+
+  "A savage place! as holy and enchanted
+  As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
+  By woman wailing for her demon-lover."
+
+The poetry of Keats is often mysterious and suggestive of terror.
+The description of the Gothic hall in _The Eve of St. Agnes_:
+
+  "In all the house was heard no human sound;
+  A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;
+  The arras, rich with horseman, hawk and hound,
+  Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar;
+  And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor;"
+
+the serpent-maiden, Lamia, who
+
+  "Seemed at once some penanced lady elf,
+  Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self;"
+
+the grim story in _Isabella_ of Lorenzo's ghost, who
+
+  "Moaned a ghostly undersong
+  Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briers along."
+
+all lead us over the borderland. In a rejected stanza of the _Ode
+on Melancholy_, he abandons the horrible:
+
+  "Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones
+  And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast,
+  Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans
+  To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast;
+  Although your rudder be a dragon's tail
+  Long severed, yet still hard with agony,
+  Your cordage, large uprootings from the skull
+  Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail
+  To find the Melancholy--"
+
+Keats's melancholy is not to be found amid images
+of horror:
+
+  "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die,
+  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
+  Bidding adieu."
+
+In _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ he conveys with delicate touch the
+memory of the vision which haunts the knight, alone and palely
+loitering. We see it through his eyes:
+
+  "I saw pale kings and princes too,
+  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
+  They cried--'La Belle Dame sans Merci
+  Hath thee in thrall!'
+
+  "I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
+  With horrid warning gaped wide,
+  And I awoke and found me here,
+  On the cold hill's side."
+
+From effects so exquisitely wrought as these it seems almost
+profane to turn to the crude attempts of such poets as "Monk"
+Lewis or Southey to sound the note of terror. Yet they too, in
+their fashion, played a part in the "Renascence of Wonder."
+Coleridge, fascinated by the spirit of "gramarye" in Buerger's
+_Lenore_, etherealised and refined it. Scott and Lewis gloried in
+the gruesome details and spirited rhythm of the ballad, and in
+their supernatural poems wish to startle and terrify, not to awe,
+their readers. Those who revel in phosphorescent lights and in
+the rattle of the skeleton are apt to o'erleap themselves; and
+Scott's _Glenfinlas_, Lewis's _Alonzo the Brave and the Fair
+Imogene_ and Southey's _Old Woman of Berkeley_ fall into the
+category of the grotesque. Hogg intentionally mingles the comic
+and the terrible in his poem, _The Witch of Fife_, but his
+prose-stories reveal his power of creating an atmosphere of
+_diablerie_, undisturbed by intrusive mockery. In the poem
+_Kilmeny_, he handles an uncanny theme with dreamy beauty.
+
+From the earliest times to the present day, writers of fiction
+have realised the force of supernatural terror. In the
+_Babylonica_ of Iamblichus, the lovers evade their pursuers by
+passing as spectres; the scene of the romance is laid in tombs,
+caverns, and robbers' dens, a setting remarkably like that of
+Gothic story. Into the English novel of the first half of the
+eighteenth century, however, the ghost dares not venture. The
+innate desire for the marvellous was met at this period not by
+the novel, but by oral tradition and by such works as Galland's
+translation of _The Arabian Nights_, the Countess D'Aulnoy's
+collection of fairy tales, Perrault's _Contes de ma Mere Oie_.
+Chapbooks setting forth mediaeval legends of "The Wandering Jew,"
+the "Demon Frigate," or "Dr. Faustus," and interspersed with
+anecdotes of freaks, monsters and murderers, satisfied the
+craving for excitement among humbler readers.[8] Smollett, who,
+in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom_ (1753), seems to
+have been experimenting with new devices for keeping alive the
+interest of a _picaresque_ novel, anticipates the methods of Mrs.
+Radcliffe. Although he sedulously avoids introducing the
+supernatural, he hovers perilously on the threshold. The
+publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 was not so wild an
+adventure as Walpole would have his readers believe. The age was
+ripe for the reception of the marvellous.
+
+The supernatural had, as we have seen, begun to find its way back
+into poetry, in the work of Gray and Collins. In Macpherson's
+_Ossian_, which was received with acclamation in 1760-3, the
+mountains, heaths and lakes are haunted by shadowy, superstitious
+fears. Dim-seen ghosts wail over the wastes. There is abundant
+evidence that "authentic" stories of ghostly appearances were
+heard with respect. Those who eagerly explored Walpole's Gothic
+castle and who took pleasure in Miss Reeve's well-trained ghost,
+had previously enjoyed the thrill of chimney corner legends. The
+idea of the gigantic apparition was derived, no doubt, from the
+old legend of the figure seen by Wallace on the field of battle.
+The limbs, strewn carelessly about the staircase and the gallery
+of the castle, belong to a giant, very like those who are worsted
+by the heroes of popular story. Godwin, in an unusual flight of
+fancy, amused himself by tracing a certain similitude between
+_Caleb Williams_ and _Bluebeard_, between _Cloudesley_ and _The
+Babes in the Wood_,[9] and planned a story, on the analogy of the
+Sleeping Beauty, in which the hero was to have the faculty of
+unexpectedly falling asleep for twenty, thirty, or a hundred
+years.[10]
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe, who, so far as we may judge, did not draw her
+characters from the creatures of flesh and blood around her,
+seems to have adopted some of the familiar figures of old story.
+Emily's guardian, Montoni, in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, like
+the unscrupulous uncle in Godwin's _Cloudesley_, may well have
+been descended from the wicked uncle of the folk tale. The cruel
+stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in
+_The Sicilian Romance_. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer
+of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method
+of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and
+robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic fiction are time
+honoured figures. Travellers in Thessaly in Apuleius' _Golden
+Ass_, like the fugitives in Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St.
+Irvyne_, find themselves in robbers' caves. The Gothic castle,
+suddenly encountered in a dark forest, is boldly transported from
+fairyland and set down in Italy, Sicily or Spain. The chamber of
+horrors, with its alarming array of scalps or skeletons, is
+civilised beyond recognition and becomes the deserted wing of an
+abbey, concealing nothing worse than one discarded wife,
+emaciated and dispirited, but still alive. The ghost-story, which
+Ludovico reads in the haunted chamber of Udolpho, is described by
+Mrs. Radcliffe as a Provencal tale, but is in reality common to
+the folklore of all countries. The restless ghost, who yearns for
+the burial of his corpse, is as ubiquitous as the Wandering Jew.
+In the _Iliad_ he appears as the shade of Patroclus, pleading
+with Achilles for his funeral rites. According to a letter of the
+younger Pliny,[11] he haunts a house in Athens, clanking his
+chains. He is found in every land, in every age. His feminine
+counterpart presented herself to Dickens' nurse requiring her
+bones, which were under a glass-case, to be "interred with every
+undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound ten, in another
+particular place."[12] Melmoth the Wanderer, when he becomes the
+wooer of Immalee, seems almost like a reincarnation of the Demon
+Lover. The wandering ball of fire that illuminates the dusky
+recesses of so many Gothic abbeys is but another manifestation of
+the Fate-Moon, which shines, foreboding death, after Thorgunna's
+funeral, in the Icelandic saga. The witchcraft and demonology
+that attracted Scott and "Monk" Lewis, may be traced far beyond
+Sinclair's _Satan's Invisible World Discovered_ (1685), Bovet's
+_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_ (1683), or Reginald
+Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584) to Ulysses' invocation of
+the spirits of the dead,[13] to the idylls of Theocritus and to
+the Hebrew narrative of Saul's visit to the Cave of Endor. There
+are incidents in _The Golden Ass_ as "horrid" as any of those
+devised by the writers of Gothic romance. It would, indeed, be no
+easy task to fashion scenes more terrifying than the mutilation
+of Socrates in _The Golden Ass_, by the witch, who tears out his
+heart and stops the wound with a sponge which falls out when he
+stoops to drink at a river, or than the strange apparition of a
+ragged, old woman who vanishes after leading the way to the room,
+where the baker's corpse hangs behind the door. Though the title
+assumes a special literary significance at the close of the
+eighteenth century, the tale of terror appeals to deeply rooted
+instincts, and belongs, therefore, to every age and clime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.
+
+
+To Horace Walpole, whose _Castle of Otranto_ was published on
+Christmas Eve, 1764, must be assigned the honour of having
+introduced the Gothic romance and of having made it fashionable.
+Diffident as to the success of so "wild" a story in an age
+devoted to good sense and reason, he sent forth his mediaeval
+tale disguised as a translation from the Italian of "Onuphrio
+Muralto," by William Marshall. It was only after it had been
+received with enthusiasm that he confessed the authorship. As he
+explained frankly in a letter to his friend Mason: "It is not
+everybody that may in this country play the fool with
+impunity."[14] That Walpole regarded his story merely as a
+fanciful, amusing trifle is clear from the letter he wrote to
+Miss Hannah More reproving her for putting so frantic a thing
+into the hands of a Bristol milkwoman who wrote poetry in her
+leisure hours.[15] _The Castle of Otranto_ was but another
+manifestation of that admiration for the Gothic which had found
+expression fourteen years earlier in his miniature castle at
+Strawberry Hill, with its old armour and "lean windows fattened
+with rich saints."[16] The word "Gothic" in the early eighteenth
+century was used as a term of reproach. To Addison, Siena
+Cathedral was but a "barbarous" building, which might have been a
+miracle of architecture, had our forefathers "only been
+instructed in the right way."[17] Pope in his _Preface to
+Shakespeare_ admits the strength and majesty of the Gothic, but
+deplores its irregularity. In _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_,
+published two years before _The Castle of Otranto_, Hurd pleads
+that Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ should be read and criticised as a
+Gothic, not a classical, poem. He clearly recognises the right of
+the Gothic to be judged by laws of its own. When the nineteenth
+century is reached the epithet has lost all tinge of blame, and
+has become entirely one of praise. From the time when he began to
+build his castle, in 1750, Walpole's letters abound in references
+to the Gothic, and he confesses once: "In the heretical corner of
+my heart I adore the Gothic building."[18] At Strawberry Hill the
+hall and staircase were his special delight and they probably
+formed the background of that dream in which he saw a gigantic
+hand in armour on the staircase of an ancient castle. When Dr.
+Burney visited Walpole's home in 1786 he remarked on the striking
+recollections of _The Castle of Otranto_, brought to mind by "the
+deep shade in which some of his antique portraits were placed and
+the lone sort of look of the unusually shaped apartments in which
+they were hung."[19] We know how in idle moments Walpole loved to
+brood on the picturesque past, and we can imagine his falling
+asleep, after the arrival of a piece of armour for his
+collection, with his head full of plans for the adornment of his
+cherished castle. His story is but an expansion of this
+dilettante's nightmare. His interest in things mediaeval was not
+that of an antiquary, but rather that of an artist who loves
+things old because of their age and beauty. In a delightfully gay
+letter to his friend, George Montagu, referring flippantly to his
+appointment as Deputy Ranger of Rockingham Forest, he writes,
+after drawing a vivid picture of a "Robin Hood reforme":
+
+     "Visions, you know, have always been my pasture; and so
+     far from growing old enough to quarrel with their
+     emptiness, I almost think there is no wisdom comparable
+     to that of exchanging what is called the realities of
+     life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old
+     histories and the babble of old people make one live
+     back into centuries that cannot disappoint one. One
+     holds fast and surely what is past. The dead have
+     exhausted their power of deceiving--one can trust
+     Catherine of Medicis now. In short, you have opened a
+     new landscape to my fancy; and my lady Beaulieu will
+     oblige me as much as you, if she puts the long bow into
+     your hands. I don't know, but the idea may produce some
+     other _Castle of Otranto_."[20]
+
+So Walpole came near to anticipating the greenwood scenes of
+_Ivanhoe_. The decking and trappings of chivalry filled him with
+boyish delight, and he found in the glitter and colour of the
+middle ages a refuge from the prosaic dullness of the eighteenth
+century. A visit from "a Luxembourg, a Lusignan and a Montfort"
+awoke in his whimsical fancy a mental image of himself in the
+guise of a mediaeval baron: "I never felt myself so much in _The
+Castle of Otranto_. It sounded as if a company of noble crusaders
+were come to sojourn with me before they embarked for the Holy
+Land";[21] and when he heard of the marvellous adventures of a
+large wolf who had caused a panic in Lower Languedoc, he was
+reminded of the enchanted monster of old romance and declared
+that, had he known of the creature earlier, it should have
+appeared in _The Castle of Otranto_.[22] "I have taken to
+astronomy," he declares on another occasion,
+
+     "now that the scale is enlarged enough to satisfy my
+     taste, who love gigantic ideas--do not be afraid; I am
+     not going to write a second part to _The Castle of
+     Otranto_, nor another account of the Patagonians who
+     inhabit the new Brobdingnag planet."[23]
+
+These unstudied utterances reveal, perhaps more clearly than
+Walpole's deliberate confessions about his book, the mood of
+irresponsible, light-hearted gaiety in which he started on his
+enterprise. If we may rely on Walpole's account of its
+composition, _The Castle of Otranto_ was fashioned rapidly in a
+white heat of excitement, but the creation of the story probably
+cost him more effort than he would have us believe. The result,
+at least, lacks spontaneity. We never feel for a moment that we
+are living invisible amidst the characters, but we sit aloof like
+Puck, thinking: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" His
+supernatural machinery is as undignified as the pantomime
+properties of Jack the Giant-killer. The huge body scattered
+piecemeal about the castle, the unwieldy sabre borne by a hundred
+men, the helmet "tempestuously agitated," and even the "skeleton
+in a hermit's cowl" are not only unalarming but mildly
+ridiculous. Yet to the readers of his day the story was
+captivating and entrancing. It satisfied a real craving for the
+romantic and marvellous. The first edition of five hundred copies
+was sold out in two months, and others followed rapidly. The
+story was dramatised by Robert Jephson and produced at Covent
+Garden Theatre under the title of _The Count of Narbonne_, with
+an epilogue by Malone. It was staged again later in Dublin,
+Kemble playing the title role. It was translated into French,
+German and Italian. In England its success was immediate, though
+several years elapsed before it was imitated. Gray, to whom the
+story was first attributed, wrote of it in March, 1765: "It
+engages our attention here (at Cambridge), makes some of us cry a
+little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights." Mason
+praised it, and Walpole's letters refer repeatedly to the vogue
+it enjoyed. This widespread popularity is an indication of the
+eagerness with which readers of 1765 desired to escape from the
+present and to revel for a time in strange, bygone centuries.
+Although Walpole regarded the composition of his Gothic story as
+a whim, his love of the past was shared by others of his
+generation. Of this Macpherson's _Ossian_ (1760-3), Kurd's
+_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (1762), and Percy's _Reliques_
+(1765), are, each in its fashion, a sufficient proof. The
+half-century from 1760 to 1810 showed remarkably definite signs
+of a renewed interest in things written between 1100 and 1650,
+which had been neglected for a century or more. _The Castle of
+Otranto_, which was "an attempt to blend the marvellous of old
+story with the natural of modern novels" is an early symptom of
+this revulsion to the past; and it exercised a charm on Scott as
+well as on Mrs. Radcliffe and her school. _The Castle of Otranto_
+is significant, not because of its intrinsic merit, but because
+of its power in shaping the destiny of the novel.
+
+The outline of the plot is worth recording for the sake of
+tracing ancestral likenesses when we reach the later romances.
+The only son of Manfred--the villain of the piece--is discovered
+on his wedding morning dashed to pieces beneath an enormous
+helmet. Determined that his line shall not become extinct,
+Manfred decides to divorce Hippolyta and marry Isabella, his
+son's bride. To escape from her pursuer, Isabella takes flight
+down a "subterraneous passage," where she is succoured by a
+"peasant" Theodore, who bears a curious resemblance to a portrait
+of the "good Alfonso" in the gallery of the castle. The servants
+of the castle are alarmed at intervals by the sudden appearance
+of massive pieces of armour in different parts of the building. A
+clap of thunder, which shakes the castle to its foundations,
+heralds the culmination of the story. A hundred men bear in a
+huge sabre; and an apparition of the illustrious Alfonso--whose
+portrait in the gallery once walks straight out of its
+frame[24]--appears, "dilated to an immense magnitude,"[25] and
+demands that Manfred shall surrender Otranto to the rightful
+heir, Theodore, who has been duly identified by the mark of a
+"bloody arrow." Alfonso, thus pacified, ascends into heaven,
+where he is received into glory by St. Nicholas. As Matilda, who
+was beloved of Theodore, has incidentally been slain by her
+father, Theodore consoles himself with Isabella. Manfred and his
+wife meekly retire to neighbouring convents. With this
+anti-climax the story closes. To present the "dry bones" of a
+romantic story is often misleading, but the method is perhaps
+justifiable in the case of _The Castle of Otranto_, because
+Walpole himself scorned embellishments and declared in his
+grandiloquent fashion:
+
+     "If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader
+     will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. There
+     is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions or
+     unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to
+     the catastrophe."[26]
+
+But with all its faults _The Castle of Otranto_ did not fall
+fruitless on the earth. The characters are mere puppets, yet we
+meet the same types again and again in later Gothic romances.
+Though Clara Reeve renounced such "obvious improbabilities" as a
+ghost in a hermit's cowl and a walking picture, she was an
+acknowledged disciple of Walpole, and, like him, made an
+"interesting peasant" the hero of her story, _The Old English
+Baron_. Jerome is the prototype of many a count disguised as
+father confessor, Bianca the pattern of many a chattering
+servant. The imprisoned wife reappears in countless romances,
+including Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), and Mrs.
+Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798). The tyrannical father--no
+new creation, however--became so inevitable a figure in fiction
+that Jane Austen had to assure her readers that Mr. Morland "was
+not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters," and Miss
+Martha Buskbody, the mantua-maker of Gandercleugh, whom Jedediah
+Cleishbotham ingeniously called to his aid in writing the
+conclusion of _Old Mortality_, assured him, as the fruit of her
+experience in reading through the stock of three circulating
+libraries that, in a novel, young people may fall in love without
+the countenance of their parents, "because it is essential to the
+necessary intricacy of the story." But apart from his characters,
+who are so colourless that they hardly hold our attention,
+Walpole bequeathed to his successors a remarkable collection of
+useful "properties." The background of his story is a Gothic
+castle, singularly unenchanted it is true, but capable of being
+invested by Mrs. Radcliffe with mysterious grandeur. Otranto
+contains underground vaults, ill-fitting doors with rusty hinges,
+easily extinguished lamps and a trap-door--objects trivial and
+insignificant in Walpole's hands, but fraught with terrible
+possibilities. Otranto would have fulfilled admirably the
+requirements of Barrett's Cherubina, who, when looking for
+lodgings demanded--to the indignation of a maidservant, who came
+to the door--old pictures, tapestry, a spectre and creaking
+hinges. Scott, writing in 1821, remarks:
+
+     "The apparition of the skeleton-hermit to the prince of
+     Vicenza was long accounted a masterpiece of the
+     horrible; but of late the valley of Jehosaphat could
+     hardly supply the dry bones necessary for the
+     exhibition of similar spectres."
+
+But Cherubina, whose palate was jaded by a surfeit of the pungent
+horrors of Walpole's successors, would probably have found _The
+Castle of Otranto_ an insipid romance and would have lamented
+that he did not make more effective use of his supernatural
+machinery. His story offered hints and suggestions to those whose
+greater gifts turned the materials he had marshalled to better
+account, and he is to be honoured rather for what he instigated
+others to perform than for what he actually accomplished himself.
+_The Castle of Otranto_ was not intended as a serious
+contribution to literature, but will always survive in literary
+history as the ancestor of a thriving race of romances.
+
+More than ten years before the publication of _The Castle of
+Otranto_, Smollett, in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count
+Fathom_, had chanced upon the devices employed later in the tale
+of terror. The tremors of fear to which his rascally hero is
+subjected lend the spice of alarm to what might have been but a
+monotonous record of villainy. Smollett depicts skilfully the
+imaginary terrors created by darkness and solitude. As the Count
+travels through the forest:
+
+     "The darkness of the night, the silence and solitude of
+     the place, the indistinct images of the trees that
+     appeared on every side, stretching their extravagant
+     arms athwart the gloom, conspired, with the dejection
+     of spirits occasioned by his loss, to disturb his fancy
+     and raise strange phantoms in his imagination. Although
+     he was not naturally superstitious, his mind began to
+     be invaded with an awful horror that gradually
+     prevailed over all the consolations of reason and
+     philosophy; nor was his heart free from the terrors of
+     assassination. In order to dissipate these agreeable
+     reveries, he had recourse to the conversation of his
+     guide, by whom he was entertained with the history of
+     divers travellers who had been robbed and murdered by
+     ruffians, whose retreat was in the recesses of that
+     very wood."[27]
+
+The sighing of the trees, thunder and sudden flashes of lightning
+add to the horror of a journey, which resembles Mrs. Radcliffe's
+description of Emily's approach to Udolpho. When Count Fathom
+takes refuge in a robber's hut, he discovers in his room, which
+has no bolt on the inside of the door, the body of a recently
+murdered man, concealed beneath some bundles of straw. Effecting
+his escape by placing the corpse in his own bed to deceive the
+robbers, the count is mistaken for a phantom by the old woman who
+waits upon him. In carrying out his designs upon Celinda, the
+count aggravates her natural timidity by relating dismal stories
+of omens and apparitions, and then groans piteously outside her
+door and causes the mysterious music of an AEolian harp to sound
+upon the midnight air. Celinda sleeps, too, like the ill-starred
+heroine of the novel of terror, "at the end of a long gallery,
+scarce within hearing of any other inhabited part of the
+house."[28] The scene in _Count Fathom_, in which Renaldo, at
+midnight, visits, as he thinks, the tomb of Monimia, is
+surrounded with circumstances of gloom and mystery:
+
+     "The uncommon darkness of the night, the solemn silence
+     and lonely situation of the place, conspired with the
+     occasion of his coming and the dismal images of his
+     fancy, to produce a real rapture of gloomy
+     expectation... The clock struck twelve, the owl
+     screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was
+     opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering
+     taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary
+     aisle."
+
+As he watches again on a second night:
+
+     "His ear was suddenly invaded with the sound of some
+     few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed
+     to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason
+     shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which
+     represented this music as the prelude to something
+     strange and supernatural."[29]
+
+The figure of a woman, arrayed in a flowing robe and veil,
+approaches--and proves to be Monimia in the flesh. Although
+Smollett precedes Walpole, in point of time, he is, in these
+scenes, nearer in spirit to Udolpho than Otranto. His use of
+terror, however, is merely incidental; he strays inadvertently
+into the history of Gothic romance. The suspicions and
+forebodings, with which Smollett plays occasionally upon the
+nerves of his readers, become part of the ordinary routine in the
+tale of terror.
+
+Clara Reeve's Gothic story, first issued under the title of _The
+Champion of Virtue_, but later as _The Old English Baron_, was
+published in 1777--twelve years after Walpole's _Castle of
+Otranto_, of which, as she herself asserted, it was the "literary
+offspring." By eliminating all supernatural incidents save one
+ghost, she sought to bring her story "within the utmost verge of
+probability." Walpole, perhaps displeased by the slighting
+references in the preface to some of the more extraordinary
+incidents in his novel, received _The Old English Baron_ with
+disdain, describing it as "totally void of imagination and
+interest."[30] His strictures are unjust. There are certainly no
+wild flights of fancy in Clara Reeve's story, but an even level
+of interest is maintained throughout. Her style is simple and
+refreshingly free from affectation. The plot is neither rapid nor
+exhilarating, but it never actually stagnates. Like Walpole's
+Gothic story, _The Old English Baron_ is supposed to be a
+transcript from an ancient manuscript. The period, we are
+assured, is that of the minority of Henry VI., but despite an
+elaborately described tournament, we never really leave
+eighteenth century England. Edmund Twyford, the reputed son of a
+cottager, is befriended by a benevolent baron Fitzowen, but,
+through his good fortune and estimable qualities, excites the
+envy of Fitzowen's nephews and his eldest son. To prove the
+courage of Edmund, who has been basely slandered by his enemies,
+the baron asks him to spend three nights in the haunted apartment
+of the castle. Up to this point, there has been nothing to
+differentiate the story from an uneventful domestic novel. The
+ghost is of the mechanical variety and does not inspire awe when
+he actually appears, but Miss Reeve tries to prepare our minds
+for the shock, before she introduces him. The rusty locks and the
+sudden extinction of the lamp are a heritage from Walpole, but
+the "hollow, rustling noise" and the glimmering light, naturally
+explained later by the approach of a servant with a faggot,
+anticipate Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Adeline later, in _The Romance of
+the Forest_, Edmund is haunted by prophetic dreams. The second
+night the ghost violently clashes his armour, but still remains
+concealed. The third night dismal groans are heard. The ghost
+does not deign to appear in person until the baron's nephews
+watch, and then:
+
+     "All the doors flew open, a pale glimmering light
+     appeared at the door from the staircase, and a man in
+     complete armour entered the room: he stood with one
+     hand extended pointing to the outward door."
+
+It is to vindicate the rights of this departed spirit that Sir
+Ralph Harclay challenges Sir Walter Lovel to a "mediaeval"
+tournament. Before the story closes, Edmund is identified as the
+owner of Castle Lovel, and is married to Lady Emma, Fitzowen's
+daughter. The narration of the unusual circumstances connected
+with his birth takes some time, as the foster parents suffer from
+what is described by writers on psychology as "total recall," and
+are unable to select the salient details. The characters are
+rather dim and indistinct, the shadowiest of all being Emma, who
+has no personality at all, and is a mere complement to the
+immaculate Edmund's happiness. The good and bad are sharply
+distinguished. There are no "doubtful cases," and consequently
+there is no difficulty in distributing appropriate rewards and
+punishments at the close of the story--the whole "furnishing a
+striking lesson to posterity of the overruling hand of providence
+and the certainty of retribution." Clara Reeve was fifty-two
+years of age when she published her Gothic story, and she writes
+in the spirit of a maiden aunt striving to edify as well as to
+entertain the younger generation. When Edmund takes Fitzowen to
+view the fatal closet and the bones of his murdered father, he
+considers the scene "too solemn for a lady to be present at"; and
+his love-making is as frigid as the supernatural scenes. The hero
+is young in years, but has no youthful ardour. The very ghost is
+manipulated in a half-hearted fashion and fails to produce the
+slightest thrill. The natural inclination of the authoress was
+probably towards domestic fiction with a didactic intention, and
+she attempted a "mediaeval" setting as a _tour de force_, in
+emulation of Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_. The hero, whose birth
+is enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the
+vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic
+spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards
+the romantic. _The Old English Baron_ is an unambitious work, but
+it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity
+of style. It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild
+degree of interest simply as a story, while _The Castle of
+Otranto_ is only tolerable as a literary curiosity. A tragedy,
+_Edmond_, _Orphan of the Castle_ (1799), was founded upon the
+story, which was translated into French in 1800. Miss Reeve
+informs the public in a preface to a late edition of _The Old
+English Baron_ that, in compliance with the suggestion of a
+friend, she had composed _Castle Connor, an Irish Story_, in
+which apparitions were introduced. The manuscript of this tale
+was unfortunately lost. Not even a mouldering fragment has been
+rescued from an ebony cabinet in the deserted chamber of an
+ancient abbey, and we are left wondering whether the ghosts spoke
+with a brogue.
+
+When Walpole wrote disparagingly of Clara Reeve's imitation of
+his Gothic story, he singled out for praise a fragment which he
+attributes to Mrs. Barbauld. The story to which he alludes is
+evidently the unfinished _Sir Bertrand_, which is contained in
+one of the volumes entitled _Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose_,
+published jointly by J. and A.L. Aikin in 1773, and preceded by
+an essay _On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror_. Leigh
+Hunt, who reprinted _Sir Bertrand_, which had impressed him very
+strongly in his boyhood, in his _Book for a Corner_ (1849)
+ascribes the authorship of the tale to Dr. Aikin, commenting on
+the fact that he was "a writer from whom this effusion was hardly
+to have been looked for." It is probably safe to assume that
+Walpole, who was a contemporary of the Aikins and who took a
+lively interest in the literary gossip of the day, was right in
+assigning _Sir Bertrand_ to Miss Aikin,[31] afterwards Mrs.
+Barbauld, though the story is not included in _The Works of Anne
+Letitia Barbauld_, edited by Miss Lucy Aikin in 1825. That the
+minds of the Aikins were exercised about the sources of pleasure
+in romance, especially when connected with horror and distress,
+is clear not only from this essay and the illustrative fragment
+but also from other essays and stories in the same
+collection--_On Romances, an Imitation_, and _An Enquiry into
+those Kinds of Distress which Excite Agreeable Sensations_. In
+the preliminary essay to _Sir Bertrand_ an attempt is made to
+explain why terrible scenes excite pleasurable emotions and to
+distinguish between two different types of horror, as illustrated
+by _The Castle of Otranto_, which unites the marvellous and the
+terrible, and by a scene of mere natural horror in Smollett's
+_Count Fathom_. The story _Sir Bertrand_ is an attempt to combine
+the two kinds of horror in one composition. A knight, wandering
+in darkness on a desolate and dreary moor, hears the tolling of a
+bell, and, guided by a glimmering light, finds "an antique
+mansion" with turrets at the corners. As he approaches the porch,
+the light glides away. All is dark and still. The light reappears
+and the bell tolls. As Sir Bertrand enters the castle, the door
+closes behind him. A bluish flame leads him up a staircase till
+he comes to a wide gallery and a second staircase, where the
+light vanishes. He grasps a dead-cold hand which he severs from
+the wrist with his sword. The blue flame now leads him to a
+vault, where he sees the owner of the hand "completely armed,
+thrusting forwards the bloody stump of an arm, with a terrible
+frown and menacing gesture and brandishing a sword in the
+remaining hand." When attacked, the figure vanishes, leaving
+behind a massive, iron key which unlocks a door leading to an
+apartment containing a coffin, and statues of black marble,
+attired in Moorish costume, holding enormous sabres in their
+right hands. As the knight enters, each of them rears an arm and
+advances a leg and at the same moment the lid of the coffin opens
+and the bell tolls. Sir Bertrand, guided by the flames,
+approaches the coffin from which a lady in a shroud and a black
+veil arises. When he kisses her, the whole building falls asunder
+with a crash. Sir Bertrand is thrown into a trance and awakes in
+a gorgeous room, where he sees a beautiful lady who thanks him as
+her deliverer. At a banquet, nymphs place a laurel wreath on his
+head, but as the lady is about to address him the fragment breaks
+off.
+
+The architecture of the castle, with its gallery, staircase and
+subterranean vaults, closely resembles that of Walpole's Gothic
+structure. The "enormous sabres" too are familiar to readers of
+_The Castle of Otranto_. The gliding light, disquieting at the
+outset of the story but before the close familiar grown, is
+doomed to be the guide of many a distressed wanderer through the
+Gothic labyrinths of later romances. Mrs. Barbauld chose her
+properties with admirable discretion, but lacked the art to use
+them cunningly. A tolling bell, heard in the silence and darkness
+of a lonely moor, will quicken the beatings of the heart, but
+employed as a prompter's signal to herald the advance of a group
+of black statues is only absurd. After the grimly suggestive
+opening, the story gradually loses in power as it proceeds and
+the happy ending, which wings our thoughts back to the Sleeping
+Beauty of childhood, is wholly incongruous. If the fragment had
+ended abruptly at the moment when the lady arises in her shroud
+from the coffin, _Sir Bertrand_ would have been a more effective
+tale of terror. From the historical point of view Mrs. Barbauld's
+curious patchwork is full of interest. She seems to be reaching
+out wistfully towards the mysterious and the unknown. Genuinely
+anxious to awaken a thrill of excitement in the breast of her
+reader, she is hesitating and uncertain as to the best way of
+winning her effect. She is but a pioneer in the art of freezing
+the blood and it were idle to expect that she should rush boldly
+into a forest of horrors. Naturally she prefers to follow the
+tracks trodden by Walpole and Smollett; but with intuitive
+foresight she seems to have realised the limitations of Walpole's
+marvellous machinery, and to have attempted to explore the
+regions of the fearful unknown. Her opening scene works on that
+instinctive terror of the dark and the unseen, upon which Mrs.
+Radcliffe bases many of her most moving incidents.
+
+Among the _Poetical Sketches_ of Blake, written between 1768 and
+1777, and published in 1783, there appears an extraordinary poem
+written in blank verse, but divided into quatrains, and entitled
+_Fair Elenor_. This juvenile production seems to indicate that
+Blake was familiar with Walpole's Gothic story.[32] The heroine,
+wandering disconsolately by night in the castle vaults--a place
+of refuge first rendered fashionable by Isabella in _The Castle
+of Otranto_--faints with horror, thinking that she beholds her
+husband's ghost, but soon:
+
+  "Fancy returns, and now she thinks of bones
+  And grinning skulls and corruptible death
+  Wrapped in his shroud; and now fancies she hears
+  Deep sighs and sees pale, sickly ghosts gliding."
+
+A reality more horrible than her imaginings awaits her. A
+bleeding head is abruptly thrust into her arms by an assassin in
+the employ of a villainous and anonymous "duke." Fair Elenor
+retires to her bed and gives utterance to an outburst of similes
+in praise of her dead lord. Thus encouraged, the bloody head of
+her murdered husband describes its lurid past, and warns Elenor
+to beware of the duke's dark designs. Elenor wisely avoids the
+machinations of the villain, and brings an end to the poem, by
+breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the
+popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her
+lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a
+year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants,
+all headless out of respect to their mistress.
+
+Blake's youthful excursion into the murky gloom of Gothic vaults
+resulted in a poem so crude that even "Monk" Lewis, who was no
+connoisseur, would have declined it regretfully as a contribution
+to his _Tales of Terror_, but _Fair Elenor_ is worthy of
+remembrance as an early indication of Walpole's influence, which
+was to become so potent on the history of Gothic romance.
+
+The Gothic experiments of Dr. Nathan Drake, published in his
+_Literary Hours_ (1798), are extremely instructive as indicating
+the critical standpoint of the time. Drake, like Mrs. Barbauld
+and her brother, was deeply interested in the sources of the
+pleasure derived from tales of terror, and wrote his Gothic
+stories to confirm and illustrate the theories propounded in his
+essays. He discusses gravely and learnedly the kinds of
+fictitious horror that excite agreeable sensations, and then
+proceeds to arrange carefully calculated effects, designed to
+alarm his readers, but not to outrage their sense of decorum. He
+has none of the reckless daring of "Monk" Lewis, who flung
+restraint to the winds and raced in mad career through an orgy of
+horrors. In his enchanted castles we are disturbed by an uneasy
+suspicion that the inhabitants are merely allegorical characters,
+and that the spectre of a moral lurks in some dim recess ready to
+spring out upon us suddenly. Dr. Drake's mind was as a house
+divided against itself: he was a moralist, emulating the "sage
+and serious Spenser" in his desire to exalt virtue and abase
+vice, he was a critic working out, with calm detachment,
+practical illustrations of the theories he had formulated, and he
+was a romantic enthusiast, imbued with a vague but genuine
+admiration for the wild superstitions of a bygone age. His
+stories exhibit painful evidence of the conflict which waged
+between the three sides of his nature. In the essay prefixed to
+_Henry Fitzowen, a Gothic Tale_, he distinguishes between the two
+species of Gothic superstition, the gloomy and the sportive, and
+addresses an ode to the two goddesses of Superstition--one the
+offspring of Fear and Midnight, the other of Hesper and the Moon.
+In his story the spectres of darkness are put to flight by a
+troop of aerial spirits. Dr. Drake knew the Gothic stories of
+Walpole, Mrs. Barbauld, Clara Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe; and
+traces of the influence of each may be found in his work. Henry
+Fitzowen loves Adeline de Montfort, but has a powerful and
+diabolical rival--Walleran--whose character combines the most
+dangerous qualities of Mrs. Radcliffe's villains with the magical
+gifts of a wizard. Fitzowen, not long before the day fixed for
+his wedding, is led astray, while hunting, by an elusive stag, a
+spectral monk and a "wandering fire," and arrives home in a
+thunderstorm to find his castle enveloped in total darkness and
+two of his servants stretched dead at his feet. He learns from
+his mother and sister, who are shut in a distant room, that
+Adeline has been carried off by armed ruffians. Believing
+Walleran to be responsible for this outrage, Fitzowen sets out
+the next day in search of him. After weary wanderings he is
+beguiled into a Gothic castle by a foul witch, who resembles one
+of Spenser's loathly hags, and on his entrance hears peals of
+diabolical laughter. He sees spectres, blue lights, and the
+corpse of Horror herself. When he slays Walleran the enchantments
+disappear. At the end of a winding passage he finds a cavern
+illuminated by a globe of light, and discovers Adeline asleep on
+a couch. He awakes her with a kiss. Thunder shakes the earth, a
+raging whirlwind tears the castle from its foundations, and the
+lovers awake from their trance in a beautiful, moonlit vale where
+they hear enchanting music and see knights, nymphs and spirits. A
+beauteous queen tells them that the spirits of the blest have
+freed them from Horror's dread agents. The music dies away, the
+spirits flee and the lovers find themselves in a country road. A
+story of the same type is told by De La Motte Fouque in _The
+Field of Terror_.[33] Before the steadfast courage of the
+labourer who strives to till the field, diabolical enchantments
+disappear. It is an ancient legend turned into moral allegory.
+
+In the essay on _Objects of Terror_, which precedes _Montmorenci,
+a Fragment_, Drake discusses that type of terror, which is
+"excited by the interference of a simple, material causation,"
+and which "requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to
+prevent its operating more pain than pleasure." He condemns
+Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ on the ground that the catastrophe
+is only productive of horror and aversion, and regards the old
+ballad, _Edward_, as intolerable to any person of sensibility,
+but praises Dante and Shakespeare for keeping within the "bounds
+of salutary and grateful pleasure." The scene in _The Italian_,
+where Schedoni, about to plunge a dagger into Ellena's bosom,
+recoils, in the belief that he has discovered her to be his own
+daughter, is commended as "appalling yet delighting the reader."
+In the productions of Mrs. Radcliffe, "the Shakespeare of Romance
+Writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the
+softer graces of a Claude," he declares,
+
+     "may be found many scenes truly terrific in their
+     conception, yet so softened down, and the mind so much
+     relieved, by the intermixture of beautiful description,
+     or pathetic incident, that the impression of the whole
+     never becomes too strong, never degenerates into
+     horror, but pleasurable emotion is ever the
+     predominating result."
+
+The famous scene in _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, the description of
+Danger in Collins' _Ode to Fear_, the Scottish ballad of
+_Hardyknute_ are mentioned as admirable examples of the fear
+excited by natural causes. In the fragment called _Montmorenci_,
+Drake aims at combining "picturesque description with some of
+those objects of terror which are independent of supernatural
+agency." As the curfew tolls sullenly, Henry de Montmorenci and
+his two attendants rush from a castle into the darkness of a
+stormy night. They hurry through a savage glen, in which a
+swollen torrent falls over a precipice. After hearing the crash
+of falling armour, they suddenly come upon a dying knight on
+whose pale features every mark of horror is depicted. Led by
+frightful screams of distress, Montmorenci and his men find a
+maiden, who has been captured by banditti. Montmorenci slays the
+leader, but is seized by the rest of the banditti and bound to a
+tree overlooking a stupendous chasm into which he is to be
+hurled. By almost superhuman struggles he effects his escape,
+when suddenly--there at this terror-fraught moment, the fragment
+wisely ends.
+
+In _The Abbey of Clunedale_ Drake experiments feebly and
+ineffectively with the "explained supernatural" in which Mrs.
+Radcliffe was an adept. The ruined abbey, deemed to be haunted,
+is visited at night as an act of penance by a man named Clifford
+who, in a fit of unfounded jealousy, has slain his wife's
+brother. Clifford, accompanied by his sister, and bearing a
+light, kneels at his wife's tomb, and is mistaken for a spectral
+being.
+
+The Gothic tale entitled _Sir Egbert_ is based on an ancient
+legend associated with one of the turrets of Rochester Castle.
+Sir Egbert, searching for his friend, Conrad, who had disappeared
+in suspicious circumstances, hears from the Knights Templars,
+that the wicked Constable is believed to hold two lovers in a
+profound and deathlike sleep. He resolves to make an attempt to
+draw from its sheath the sword which separates them and so
+restore them to life and liberty. Undismayed by the fate of those
+who have fallen in the quest, Sir Egbert enters the castle, where
+he is entertained at a gorgeous feast. When the festivities are
+at their height, and Sir Egbert has momentarily forgotten his
+enterprise, a terrible shriek is heard. The revellers vanish, and
+Sir Egbert is left alone to face a spectral corpse, which beckons
+him onward to a vault, where in flaming characters are inscribed
+the words: "Death to him who violates the mysteries of Gundulph's
+Tower." Nothing daunted, Sir Egbert amid execrations of fiends,
+encounters delusive horrors and at last unsheathes the sword. The
+lovers awake, and the whole apparatus of enchantment vanishes.
+Conrad tells how he and Bertha, six years before, had been lured
+by a wandering fire to a luxurious cavern, where they drank a
+magic potion. The story closes with the marriage of Conrad and
+Bertha, and of Egbert and Matilda, a sister of one of the other
+victims of the same enchanter.
+
+In Dr. Drake's stories are patiently collected all the heirlooms
+necessary for the full equipment of a Gothic castle. Massive
+doors, which sway ponderously on their hinges or are forcibly
+burst open and which invariably close with a resounding crash,
+dark, eerie galleries, broken staircases, decayed apartments,
+mouldering floors, tolling bells, skeletons, corpses, howling
+spectres--all are there; but the possessor, overwhelmed by the
+very profusion which surrounds him, is at a loss how to make use
+of them. He does not realise the true significance of a
+half-stifled groan or an unearthly yell heard in the darkness.
+Each new horror indeed seems but to put new life into the heart
+of the redoubtable Sir Egbert, who, like Spenser's gallant
+knights, advances from triumph to triumph vanquishing evil at
+every step. It is impossible to become absorbed in his
+personages, who have less body than his spectres, and whose
+adventures take the form of a walk through an exhibition of
+horrors, mechanically set in motion to prove their prowess. Dr.
+Drake seems happier when the hideous beings are put to rout, and
+the transformation-scene, which places fairyland before us,
+suddenly descends on the stage. Yet the bungling attempts of Dr.
+Drake are interesting as showing that grave and critical minds
+were prepared to consider the tale of terror as a legitimate form
+of literature, obeying certain definite rules of its own and
+aiming at the excitement of a pleasurable fear. The seed of
+Gothic story, sown at random by Horace Walpole, had by 1798 taken
+firm root in the soil. Drake's enthusiasm for Gothic story was
+associated with his love for older English poetry and with his
+interest in Scandinavian mythology. He was a genuine admirer of
+Spenser and attempted imitations, in modern diction, of old
+ballads. It is for his bent towards the romantic, rather than for
+his actual accomplishments, that Drake is worthy of remembrance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - "THE NOVEL OF SUSPENSE." MRS. RADCLIFFE.
+
+
+The enthusiasm which greeted Walpole's enchanted castle and Miss
+Reeve's carefully manipulated ghost, indicated an eager desire
+for a new type of fiction in which the known and familiar were
+superseded by the strange and supernatural. To meet this end Mrs.
+Radcliffe suddenly came forward with her attractive store of
+mysteries, and it was probably her timely appearance that saved
+the Gothic tale from an early death. The vogue of the novel of
+terror, though undoubtedly stimulated by German influence, was
+mainly due to her popularity and success. The writers of the
+first half of the nineteenth century abound in references to her
+works,[34] and she thus still enjoys a shadowy, ghost-like
+celebrity. Many who have never had the curiosity to explore the
+labyrinths of the underground passages, with which her castles
+are invariably honeycombed, or who have never shuddered with
+apprehension before the "black veil," know of their existence
+through _Northanger Abbey_, and have probably also read how
+Thackeray at school amused himself and his friends by drawing
+illustrations of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.
+
+Of Mrs. Radcliffe's life few facts are known, and Christina
+Rossetti, one of her many admirers, was obliged, in 1883, to
+relinquish the plan of writing her biography, because the
+materials were so scanty.[35] From the memoir prefixed to the
+posthumous volumes, published in 1826, containing _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, and various poems, we learn that she was born in
+1764, the very year in which Walpole issued _The Castle of
+Otranto_, and that her maiden name was Ann Ward. In 1787 she
+married William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of
+law, who became editor of a weekly newspaper, _The English
+Chronicle_. Her life was so secluded that biographers did not
+hesitate to invent what they could not discover. The legend that
+she was driven frantic by the horrors that she had conjured up
+was refuted after her death.
+
+It may have been the publication of _The Recess_ by Sophia Lee in
+1785 that inspired Mrs. Radcliffe to try her fortune with a
+historical novel. _The Recess_ is a story of languid interest,
+circling round the adventures of the twin daughters of Mary Queen
+of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk. Yet as we meander gently
+through its mazes we come across an abbey "of Gothic elegance and
+magnificence," a swooning heroine who plays the lute,
+thunderstorms, banditti and even an escape in a coffin--items
+which may well have attracted the notice of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose
+first novel, _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_,[36] appeared
+in 1789. Considered historically, this immature work is full of
+interest, for, with the notable exception of the supernatural, it
+contains in embryo nearly all the elements of Mrs. Radcliffe's
+future novels.
+
+The scene is laid in Scotland, and the period, we are assured, is
+that of the "dark ages"; but almost at the outset we are startled
+rudely from our dreams of the mediaeval by the statement that
+
+     "the wrongfully imprisoned earl, when the sweet
+     tranquillity of evening threw an air of tender
+     melancholy over his mind ... composed the following
+     sonnet, which, having committed it to paper, he, the
+     next evening dropped upon the terrace."
+
+The sonnet consists of four heroic quatrains somewhat curiously
+resembling the manner of Gray. From this episode it may be
+gathered that Mrs. Radcliffe did not aim at, or certainly did not
+achieve, historical accuracy, but evolved most of her
+descriptions, not from original sources in ancient documents, but
+from her own inner consciousness. It was only in her last
+novel--_Gaston de Blondeville_--that she made use of old
+chronicles. Within the Scottish castle we meet a heroine with an
+"expression of pensive melancholy" and a "smile softly clouded
+with sorrow," a noble lord deprived of his rights by a villain
+"whose life is marked with vice and whose death with the
+bitterness of remorse." But these grey and ghostly shadows, who
+flit faintly through our imagination, are less prophetic of
+coming events than the properties with which the castle is
+endowed, a secret but accidently discovered panel, a trap-door,
+subterranean vaults, an unburied corpse, a suddenly extinguished
+lamp and a soft-toned lute--a goodly heritage from _The Castle of
+Otranto_. The situations which a villain of Baron Malcolm's type
+will inevitably create are dimly shadowed forth and involve, ere
+the close, the hairbreadth rescue of a distressed maiden, the
+reinstatement of the lord in his rights, and the identification
+of the long-lost heir by the convenient and time-honoured
+"strawberry mark." These promising materials are handled in a
+childish fashion. The faintly pencilled outlines, the
+characterless figures, the nerveless structure, give little
+presage of the boldly effective scenery, the strong delineations
+and the dexterously managed plots of the later novels. The
+gradual, steady advance in skill and power is one of the most
+interesting features of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. Few could have
+guessed from the slight sketch of Baron Malcolm, a merely slavish
+copy of the traditional villain, that he was to be the ancestor
+of such picturesque and romantic creatures as Montoni and
+Schedoni.
+
+This tentative beginning was quickly followed by the more
+ambitious _Sicilian Romance_ (1790), in which we are transported
+to the palace of Ferdinand, fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the
+north coast of Sicily. This time the date is fixed officially at
+1580. The Marquis has one son and two daughters, the children of
+his first wife, who has been supplanted by a beautiful but
+unscrupulous successor. The first wife is reputed dead, but is,
+in reality, artfully and maliciously concealed in an uninhabited
+wing of the abbey. It is her presence which leads to disquieting
+rumours of the supernatural. Ferdinand, the son, vainly tries to
+solve the enigma of certain lights, which wander elusively about
+the deserted wing, and finds himself perilously suspended, like
+David Balfour in _Kidnapped_, on a decayed staircase, of which
+the lower half has broken away. In this hazardous situation,
+Ferdinand accidentally drops his lamp and is left in total
+darkness. An hour later he is rescued by the ladies of the
+castle, who, alarmed by his long absence, boldly come in search
+of him with a light. During another tour of exploration he hears
+a hollow groan, which, he is told, proceeds from a murdered
+spirit underground, but which is eventually traced to the unhappy
+marchioness. These two incidents plainly reveal that Mrs.
+Radcliffe has now discovered the peculiar vein of mystery towards
+which she was groping in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_.
+From the very first she explained away her marvels by natural
+means. If we scan her romances with a coldly critical eye--an
+almost criminal proceeding--obvious improbabilities start into
+view. For instance, the oppressed marchioness, who has not seen
+her daughter Julia since the age of two, recognises her without a
+moment's hesitation at the age of seventeen, and faints in a
+transport of joy. It is no small tribute to Mrs. Radcliffe's
+gifts that we often accept such incidents as these without demur.
+So unnerved are we by the lurking shadows, the flickering lights,
+the fluttering tapestry and the unaccountable groans with which
+she lowers our vitality, that we tremble and start at the wagging
+of a straw, and have not the spirit, once we are absorbed into
+the atmosphere of her romance, to dispute anything she would have
+us believe. The interest of the _Sicilian Romance_, which is far
+greater than that of her first novel, arises entirely out of the
+situations. There is no gradual unfolding of character and
+motive. The high-handed marquis, the jealous marchioness, the
+imprisoned wife, the vapid hero, the two virtuous sisters, the
+leader of the banditti, the respectable, prosy governess, are a
+set of dolls fitted ingeniously into the framework of the plot.
+They have more substance than the tenuous shadows that glide
+through the pages of Mrs. Radcliffe's first story, but they move
+only as she deftly pulls the strings that set them in motion.
+
+In her third novel, _The Romance of the Forest_, published in
+1792, Mrs. Radcliffe makes more attempt to discuss motive and to
+trace the effect of circumstances on temperament. The opening
+chapter is so alluring that callous indeed would be the reader
+who felt no yearning to pluck out the heart of the mystery. La
+Motte, a needy adventurer fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a
+stormy night in a lonely, sinister-looking house. With startling
+suddenness, a door bursts open, and a ruffian, putting a pistol
+to La Motte's breast with one hand, and, with the other, dragging
+along a beautiful girl, exclaims ferociously,
+
+     "You are wholly in our power, no assistance can reach
+     you; if you wish to save your life, swear that you will
+     convey this girl where I may never see her more... If
+     you return within an hour you will die."
+
+The elucidation of this remarkable occurrence is long deferred,
+for Mrs. Radcliffe appreciates fully the value of suspense in
+luring on her readers, but our attention is distracted in the
+meantime by a series of new events. Treasuring the unfinished
+adventure in the recesses of our memory, we follow the course of
+the story. When La Motte decides impulsively to reside in a
+deserted abbey, "not," as he once remarks, "in all respects
+strictly Gothic," but containing a trap-door and a human skeleton
+in a chest, we willingly take up our abode there and wait
+patiently to see what will happen. Our interest is inclined to
+flag when life at the abbey seems uneventful, but we are ere long
+rewarded by a visit from a stranger, whose approach flings La
+Motte into so violent a state of alarm that he vanishes with
+remarkable abruptness beneath a trapdoor. It proves, however,
+that the intruder is merely La Motte's son, and the timid marquis
+is able to emerge. Meanwhile, La Motte's wife, suspicious of her
+husband's morose habits and his secret visits to a Gothic
+sepulchre, becomes jealous of Adeline, the girl they have
+befriended. It later transpires that La Motte has turned
+highwayman and stores his booty in this secluded spot. The visits
+are so closely shrouded in obscurity, and we have so exhausted
+our imagination in picturing dark possibilities, that the simple
+solution falls disappointingly short of our expectations. The
+next thrill is produced by the arrival of two strangers, the
+wicked marquis and the noble hero, without whom the tale of
+characters in a novel of terror would scarcely be complete. The
+emotion La Motte betrays at the sight of the marquis is due, we
+are told eventually, to the fact that Montalt was the victim of
+his first robbery. Adeline, meanwhile, in a dream sees a
+beckoning figure in a dark cloak, a dying man imprisoned in a
+darkened chamber, a coffin and a bleeding corpse, and hears a
+voice from the coffin. The disjointed episodes and bewildering
+incoherence of a nightmare are suggested with admirable skill,
+and effectually prepare our minds for Adeline's discoveries a few
+nights later. Passing through a door, concealed by the arras of
+her bedroom, into a chamber like that she had seen in her sleep,
+she stumbles over a rusty dagger and finds a roll of mouldering
+manuscripts. This incident is robbed of its effect for readers of
+_Northanger Abbey_ by insistent reminiscences of Catherine
+Morland's discovery of the washing bills. But Adeline, by the
+uncertain light of a candle, reads, with the utmost horror and
+consternation, the harrowing life-story of her father, who has
+been foully done to death by his brother, already known to us as
+the unprincipled Marquis Montalt. La Motte weakly aids and abets
+Montalt's designs against Adeline, and she is soon compelled to
+take refuge in flight. She is captured and borne away to an
+elegant villa, whence she escapes, only to be overtaken again.
+Finally, Theodore arrives, as heroes will, in the nick of time,
+and wounds his rival. Adeline finds a peaceful home in the
+chateau of M. La Luc, who proves to be Theodore's father. Here
+the reader awaits impatiently the final solution of the plot.
+Once we have been inmates of a Gothic abbey, life in a Swiss
+chateau, however idyllic, is apt to seem monotonous. In time Mrs.
+Radcliffe administers justice. The marquis takes poison; La Motte
+is banished but reforms; and Adeline, after dutifully burying her
+father's skeleton in the family vault, becomes mistress of the
+abbey, but prefers to reside in a _chalet_ on the banks of Lake
+Geneva.
+
+Although the _Romance of the Forest_ is considerably shorter than
+the later novels, the plot, which is full of ingenious
+complications, is unfolded in the most leisurely fashion. Mrs.
+Radcliffe's tantalising delays quicken our curiosity as
+effectively as the deliberate calm of a _raconteur_, who, with a
+view to heightening his artistic effect, pauses to light a pipe
+at the very climax of his story. Suspense is the key-note of the
+romance. The characters are still subordinate to incident, but La
+Motte and his wife claim our interest because they are exhibited
+in varying moods. La Motte has his struggles and, like Macbeth,
+is haunted by compunctious visitings of nature. Unlike the
+thorough-paced villain, who glories in his misdeeds, he is
+worried and harassed, and takes no pleasure in his crimes. Madame
+La Motte is not a jealous woman from beginning to end like the
+marchioness in the _Sicilian Romance_. Her character is moulded
+to some extent by environment. She changes distinctly in her
+attitude to Adeline after she has reason to suspect her husband.
+Mrs. Radcliffe's psychology is neither subtle nor profound, but
+the fact that psychology is there in the most rudimentary form is
+a sign of her progress in the art of fiction. Theodore is as
+insipid as the rest of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, who are
+distinguishable from one another only by their names, and Adeline
+is perhaps a shade more emotional and passionless than Emily and
+Ellena in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ and _The Italian_. The
+lachrymose maiden in _The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, who
+can assume at need "an air of offended dignity," is a preliminary
+sketch of Julia, Emily and Ellena in the later novels. Mrs.
+Radcliffe's heroines resemble nothing more than a composite
+photograph in which all distinctive traits are merged into an
+expressionless "type." They owe something no doubt to
+Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_, but their feelings are not so
+minutely analysed. Their lady-like accomplishments vary slightly.
+In reflective mood one may lightly throw off a sonnet to the
+sunset or to the nocturnal gale, while another may seek refuge in
+her water-colours or her lute. They are all dignified and
+resolute in the most distressing situations, yet they weep and
+faint with wearisome frequency. Their health and spirits are as
+precarious as their easily extinguished candles. Yet these
+exquisitely sensitive, well-bred heroines alienate our sympathy
+by their impregnable self-esteem, a disconcerting trait which
+would certainly have exasperated heroes less perfect and more
+human than Mrs. Radcliffe's Theodores and Valancourts. Their
+sorrows never rise to tragic heights, because they are only
+passive sufferers, and the sympathy they would win as pathetic
+figures is obliterated by their unfailing consciousness of their
+own rectitude. In describing Adeline, Mrs. Radcliffe attempts an
+unusually acute analysis:
+
+     "For many hours she busied herself upon a piece of work
+     which she had undertaken for Madame La Motte, but this
+     she did without the least intention of conciliating her
+     favour, but because she felt there was something in
+     thus repaying unkindness, which was suited to her own
+     temper, her sentiments and her pride. Self-love may be
+     the centre around which human affections move, for
+     whatever motive conduces to self-gratification may be
+     resolved into self-love, yet, some of these affections
+     are in their nature so refined that, though we cannot
+     deny their origin, they almost deserve the name of
+     virtue: of this species was that of Adeline."
+
+It is characteristic of Mrs. Radcliffe's tendency to overlook the
+obvious in searching for the subtle, that the girl who feels
+these recondite emotions expresses slight embarrassment when
+unceremoniously flung on the protection of strangers. Emily, in
+_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, possesses the same protective armour
+as Adeline. When she is abused by Montoni, "Her heart swelled
+with the consciousness of having deserved praise instead of
+censure, and was proudly silent"; or again, in _The Italian_,
+
+     "Ellena was the more satisfied with herself because she
+     had never for an instant forgotten her dignity so far
+     as to degenerate into the vehemence of passion or to
+     falter with the weakness of fear."
+
+Her father, M. St. Aubert, on his deathbed, bids Emily beware of
+"priding herself on the gracefulness of sensibility."
+
+Fortunately the heroine is merely a figurehead in _The Mysteries
+of Udolpho_ (1794). The change of title is significant. The two
+previous works have been romances, but it is now Mrs. Radcliffe's
+intention to let herself go further in the direction of wonder
+and suspense than she had hitherto ventured. She is like Scythrop
+in _Nightmare Abbey_, of whom it was said:
+
+     "He had a strong tendency to love of mystery for its
+     own sake; that is to say, he would employ mystery to
+     serve a purpose, but would first choose his purpose by
+     its capability of mystery."
+
+Yet Mrs. Radcliffe, at the opening of her story, is sparing in
+her use of supernatural elements. We live by faith, and are drawn
+forward by the hope of future mystifications. In the first volume
+we saunter through idyllic scenes of domestic happiness in the
+Chateau le Vert and wander with Emily and her dying father
+through the Apennines, with only faint suggestions of excitement
+to come. The second volume plunges us _in medias res_. The aunt,
+to whose care Emily is entrusted, has imprudently married a
+tempestuous tyrant, Montoni, who, to further his own ends,
+hurries his wife and niece from the gaiety of Venice to the gloom
+of Udolpho. After a journey fraught with terror, amid rugged,
+lowering mountains and through dusky woods, we reach the castle
+of Udolpho at nightfall. The sombre exterior and the shadow
+haunted hall are so ominous that we are prepared for the worst
+when we enter its portals. The anticipation is half pleasurable,
+half fearful, as we shudder at the thought of what may befall us
+within its walls. At every turn something uncanny shakes our
+overwrought nerves; the sighing of the wind, the echo of distant
+footsteps, lurking shadows, gliding forms, inexplicable groans,
+mysterious music torture the sensitive imagination of Emily, who
+is mercilessly doomed to sleep in a deserted apartment with a
+door, which, as so often in the novel of terror, bolts only on
+the outside. More nerve wracking than the unburied corpse or even
+than the ineffable horror concealed behind the black veil are the
+imaginary, impalpable terrors that seize on Emily's tender fancy
+as she crosses the hall on her way to solve the riddle of her
+aunt's disappearance:
+
+     "Emily, deceived by the long shadows of the pillars and
+     by the catching lights between, often stopped,
+     imagining that she saw some person moving in the
+     distant obscurity...and as she passed these pillars she
+     feared to turn her eyes towards them, almost expecting
+     to see a figure start from behind their broad shaft."
+
+Torn from the context, this passage no longer congeals us with
+terror, but in its setting it conveys in a wonderfully vivid
+manner the tricks of a feverish imagination. So exhaustive--and
+exhausting--are the mysteries of Udolpho that it was a mistake to
+introduce another haunted castle, le Blanc, as an appendix.
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe's long deferred explanations of what is apparently
+supernatural have often been adversely criticised. Her method
+varies considerably. Sometimes we are enlightened almost
+immediately. When the garrulous servant, Annette, is relating to
+Emily what she knows of the story of Laurentina, who had once
+lived in the castle, both mistress and servant are wrought up to
+a state of nervous tension:
+
+     "Emily, whom now Annette had infected with her own
+     terrors, listened attentively, but everything was
+     still, and Annette proceeded... 'There again,' cried
+     Annette, suddenly, 'I heard it again.' 'Hush!' said
+     Emily, trembling. They listened and continued to sit
+     quite still. Emily heard a slow knocking against the
+     wall. It came repeatedly. Annette then screamed loudly,
+     and the chamber door slowly opened--It was Caterina,
+     come to tell Annette that her lady wanted her."
+
+It is seldom that the rude awakening comes thus swiftly. More
+often we are left wondering uneasily and fearfully for a
+prolonged stretch of time. The extreme limit of human endurance
+is reached in the episode of the Black Veil. Early in the second
+volume, Emily, for whom the concealed picture had a fatal
+fascination, determined to gaze upon it.
+
+     "Emily passed on with faltering steps and, having
+     paused a moment at the door before she attempted to
+     open it, she then hastily entered the chamber and went
+     towards the picture, which appeared to be enclosed in a
+     frame of uncommon size, that hung in a dark part of the
+     room. She paused again and then, with a timid hand,
+     lifted the veil, but instantly let it fall--perceiving
+     that, what it had concealed was no picture and, before
+     she could leave the chamber, she dropped senseless on
+     the floor."
+
+In time Emily recovers, but the horror of the Black Veil preys on
+her mind until, near the close of the third volume, Mrs.
+Radcliffe mercifully consents to tell us not only what Emily
+thought that she beheld, but what was actually there.
+
+     "There appeared, instead of the picture she had
+     expected, within the recess of the wall, a human figure
+     of ghastly paleness, stretched at its length, and
+     dressed in the habiliments of the grave. What added to
+     the horror of the spectacle was that the face appeared
+     partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were
+     visible on the features and hands... Had she dared to
+     look again, her delusion and her fears would have
+     vanished together, and she would have perceived that
+     the figure before her was not human, but formed of
+     wax... A member of the house of Udolpho, having
+     committed some offence against the prerogative of the
+     church, had been condemned to the penance of
+     contemplating, during certain hours of the day, a waxen
+     image made to resemble a human body in the state to
+     which it is reduced after death ... he had made it a
+     condition in his will that his descendants should
+     preserve the image."
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe, realising that the secret she had so jealously
+guarded is of rather an amazing character, asserts that it is
+"not without example in the records of the fierce severity which
+monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind." But the
+explanation falls so ludicrously short of our expectations and is
+so improbable a possibility, that Mrs. Radcliffe would have been
+wise not to defraud Catherine Morland and other readers of the
+pleasure of guessing aright. Few enjoy being baffled and thwarted
+in so unexpected a fashion. The skeleton of Signora Laurentina
+was the least that could be expected as a reward for suspense so
+patiently endured. But long ere this disclosure, we have learnt
+by bitter experience to distrust Mrs. Radcliffe's secrets and to
+look for ultimate disillusionment. The uncanny voice that
+ominously echoes Montoni's words is not the cry of a bodiless
+visitant striving to awaken "that blushing, shamefaced spirit
+that mutinies in a man's bosom," but belongs to an ordinary human
+being, the prisoner Du Pont, who has discovered one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's innumerable concealed passages. The bed with the
+black velvet pall in the haunted chamber contains, not the
+frightful apparition that flashed upon the inward eye of Emily
+and of Annette, but a stalwart pirate who shrinks from discovery.
+The gliding forms which steal furtively along the ramparts and
+disappear at the end of dark passages become eventually, like the
+nun in Charlotte Bronte's _Villette_, sensible to feeling as to
+sight. The unearthly music which is heard in the woods at
+midnight proceeds, not from the inhabitants of another sphere,
+but from a conscience stricken nun with a lurid past. The corpse,
+which Emily believed to be that of her aunt, foully done to death
+by a pitiless husband, is the body of a man killed in a bandit's
+affray. Here Mrs. Radcliffe seems eager to show that she was not
+afraid of a corpse, but is careful that it shall not be the
+corpse which the reader anticipates. She deliberately excites
+trembling apprehensions in order that she may show how absurd
+they are. We are befooled that she may enjoy a quietly malicious
+triumph. The result is that we become wary and cautious. The
+genuine ghost story, read by Ludovico to revive his fainting
+spirits when he is keeping vigil in the "haunted" chamber, is
+robbed of its effect because we half expect to be disillusioned
+ere the close. It is far more impressive if read as a separate
+story apart from its setting. The idea of explaining away what is
+apparently supernatural may have occurred to Mrs. Radcliffe after
+reading Schiller's popular romance, _Der Geisterseher_ (1789), in
+which the elaborately contrived marvels of the Armenian, who was
+modelled on Cagliostro, are but the feats of a juggler and have a
+physical cause. But more probably Mrs. Radcliffe's imagination
+was held in check by a sensitive conscience, which would not
+allow her to trade on the credulity of simple-minded readers.
+
+It is noteworthy that Mrs. Radcliffe's last work--_The Italian_,
+published in 1797--is more skilfully constructed, and possesses
+far greater unity and concentration than _The Mysteries of
+Udolpho_. The Inquisition scenes towards the end of the book are
+unduly prolonged, but the story is coherent and free from
+digressions. The theme is less fanciful and far fetched than
+those of _The Romance of the Forest_ and _Udolpho_. It seldom
+strays far beyond the bounds of the probable, nor overstrains our
+capacity for belief. The motive of the story is the Marchesa di
+Vivaldi's opposition to her son's marriage on account of Ellena's
+obscure birth. The Marchesa's far reaching designs are forwarded
+by the ambitious monk, Schedoni, who, for his own ends,
+undertakes to murder Ellena. _The Italian_ abounds in dramatic,
+haunting scenes. The strangely effective overture, which
+describes the Confessional of the Black Penitents, the midnight
+watch of Vivaldi and his lively, impulsive servant, Paulo, amid
+the ruins of Paluzzi, the melodramatic interruption of the
+wedding ceremony, the meeting of Ellena and Schedoni on the
+lonely shore, the trial in the halls of the Inquisition, are all
+remarkably vivid. The climax of the story when Schedoni, about to
+slay Ellena, is arrested in the very act by her beauty and
+innocence, and then by the glimpse of the portrait which leads
+him to believe she is his daughter, is finely conceived and
+finely executed. Afterwards, Ellena proves only to be his niece,
+but we have had our thrill and nothing can rob us of it. _The
+Italian_ depends for its effect on natural terror, rather than on
+supernatural suggestions. The monk, who haunts the ruins of
+Paluzzi, and who reappears in the prison of the Inquisition,
+speaks and acts like a being from the world of spectres, but in
+the fulness of time Mrs. Radcliffe ruthlessly exposes his methods
+and kills him by slow poison. She never completely explains his
+behaviour in the halls of the Inquisition nor accounts
+satisfactorily for the ferocity of his hatred of Schedoni. We are
+unintentionally led on false trails.
+
+The character of Schedoni is undeniably Mrs. Radcliffe's
+masterpiece. No one would claim that his character is subtle
+study, but in his interviews with the Marchesa, Mrs. Radcliffe
+reveals unexpected gifts tor probing into human motives. He is an
+imposing figure, theatrical sometimes, but wrought of flesh and
+blood. In fiction, as in life, the villain has always existed,
+but it was Mrs. Radcliffe who first created the romantic villain,
+stained with the darkest crimes, yet dignified and impressive
+withal. Zeluco in Dr. John Moore's novel of that name (1789) is a
+powerful conception, but he has no redeeming features to temper
+our repulsion with pity. The sinister figures of Mrs. Radcliffe,
+with passion-lined faces and gleaming eyes, stalk--or, if
+occasion demand it, glide--through all her romances, and as she
+grows more familiar with the type, her delineations show
+increased power and vigour. When the villain enters, or shortly
+afterwards, a descriptive catalogue is displayed, setting forth,
+in a manner not unlike that of the popular _feuilleton_ of
+to-day, the qualities to be expected, and with this he is let
+loose into the story to play his part and act up to his
+reputation. In the _Sicilian Romance_ there is the tyrannical
+marquis who would force an unwelcome marriage on his daughter and
+who immures his wife in a remote corner of the castle, visiting
+her once a week with a scanty pittance of coarse food. In _The
+Romance of the Forest_ we find a conventional but thorough
+villain in Montalt and a half-hearted, poor-spirited villain in
+La Motte, whose "virtue was such that it could not stand the
+pressure of occasion." Montoni, the desperate leader of the
+condottieri in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, is endued with so
+vigorous a vitality that we always rejoice inwardly at his return
+to the forefront of the story. His abundant energy is refreshing
+after a long sojourn with his garrulous wife and tearful niece.
+
+     "He delighted in the energies of the passions, the
+     difficulties and tempests of life which wreck the
+     happiness of others roused and strengthened all the
+     powers of his mind, and afforded him the highest
+     enjoyment... The fire and keenness of his eye, its
+     proud exaltation, its bold fierceness, its sudden
+     watchfulness as occasion and even slight occasion had
+     called forth the latent soul, she had often observed
+     with emotion, while from the usual expression of his
+     countenance she had always shrunk."
+
+Schedoni is undoubtedly allied to this desperado, but his methods
+are quieter and more subtle:
+
+     "There was something terrible in his air, something
+     almost superhuman. The cowl, too, as it threw a shade
+     over the livid paleness of his face increased its
+     severe character and gave an effect to his large,
+     melancholy eye which approached to horror ... his
+     physiognomy ... bore the traces of many passions which
+     seemed to have fixed the features they no longer
+     animated. An habitual gloom and severity prevailed over
+     the deep lines of his countenance, and his eyes were so
+     piercing that they seemed to penetrate at a single
+     glance into the hearts of men, and to read their most
+     secret thoughts--few persons could endure their
+     scrutiny or even endure to meet them twice ... he could
+     adapt himself to the tempers and passions of persons,
+     whom he wished to conciliate, with astonishing
+     facility."
+
+The type undoubtedly owes something to Milton's Satan. Like
+Lucifer, he is proud and ambitious, and like him he retains
+traces of his original grandeur. Hints from Shakespeare helped to
+fashion him. Like Cassius, seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a
+sort
+
+  "As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
+  That could be moved to smile at anything."
+
+Like King John,
+
+  "The image of a wicked heinous fault
+  Lives in his eye: that close aspect of his
+  Does show the mood of a much-troubled breast."
+
+By the enormity of his crimes he inspires horror and repulsion,
+but by his loneliness he appeals, for a moment, like the
+consummate villain Richard III., to our pity:
+
+  "There is no creature loves me
+  And if I die, no soul will pity me.
+  Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
+  Find in myself no pity to myself?"
+
+Karl von Moor, the famous hero of Schiller's _Die Raeuber_ (1781),
+is allied to this desperado. He is thus described in the
+advertisement of the 1795 edition:
+
+     "The picture of a great, misguided soul, endowed with
+     every gift of excellence, yet lost in spite of all its
+     gifts. Unbridled passions and bad companionship corrupt
+     his heart, urge him on from crime to crime, until at
+     last he stands at the head of a band of murderers,
+     heaps horror upon horror, and plunges from precipice to
+     precipice in the lowest depths of despair. Great and
+     majestic in misfortune, by misfortune reclaimed and led
+     back to the paths of virtue. Such a man shall you pity
+     and hate, abhor yet love in the robber Moor."
+
+Among the direct progeny of these grandiose villains are to be
+included those of Lewis and Maturin, and the heroes of Scott and
+Byron. We know them by their world-weariness, as well as by their
+piercing eyes and passion-marked faces, their "verra wrinkles
+Gothic." In _The Giaour_ we are told:
+
+  "Dark and unearthly is the scowl
+  That glares beneath his dusky cowl:
+
+  "The flash of that dilating eye
+  Reveals too much of times gone by.
+  Though varying, indistinct its hue
+  Oft will his glance the gazer rue."
+
+Of the Corsair, it is said:
+
+  "There breathe but few whose aspect might defy
+  The full encounter of his searching eye."
+
+Lara is drawn from the same model:
+
+  "That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last
+  And spoke of passions, but of passions past;
+  The pride but not the fire of early days,
+  Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
+  A high demeanour and a glance that took
+  Their thoughts from others by a single look."
+
+The feminine counterpart of these bold impersonations of evil is
+the tyrannical abbess who plays a part in _The Romance of the
+Forest_ and in _The Italian_, and who was adopted and exaggerated
+by Lewis, but her crimes are petty and malicious, not daring and
+ambitious, like the schemes of Montoni and Schedoni.
+
+One of Mrs. Radcliffe's contemporaries is said to have suggested
+that if she wished to transcend the horror of the Inquisition
+scenes in _The Italian_ she would have to visit hell itself. Like
+her own heroines, Mrs. Radcliffe had too elegant and refined an
+imagination and too fearful a heart to undertake so desperate a
+journey. She would have recoiled with horror from the impious
+suggestion. In _Gaston de Blondeville_, written in 1802, but
+published posthumously with a memoir by Noon Talfourd, she
+ventures to make one or two startling innovations. Her hero is no
+longer a pale, romantic young man of gentle birth, but a stolid,
+worthy merchant. Here, at last, she indulges in a substantial
+spectre, who cannot be explained away as the figment of a
+disordered imagination, since he seriously alarms, not a solitary
+heroine or a scared lady's-maid, but Henry III. himself and his
+assembled barons. Yet apart from this daring escapade, it is
+timidity rather than the spirit of valorous enterprise that is
+urging Mrs. Radcliffe into new and untried paths. Her happy,
+courageous disregard for historical accuracy in describing
+far-off scenes and bygone ages has deserted her. She searches
+painfully in ancient records, instead of in her imagination, for
+mediaeval atmosphere. Her story is grievously overburdened with
+elaborate descriptions of customs and ceremonies, and she adds
+laborious notes, citing passages from learned authorities, such
+as Leland's _Collectanea_, Pegge's dissertation on the obsolete
+office of Esquire of the King's Body, Sir George Bulke's account
+of the coronation of Richard III., Mador's _History of the
+Exchequer_, etc. We are transported from the eighteenth century,
+not actually to mediaeval England, but to a carefully arranged
+pageant displaying mediaeval costumes, tournaments and banquets.
+The actors speak in antique language to accord with the
+picturesque background against which they stand. _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, which is noteworthy as an early attempt to shadow
+forth the days of chivalry, has far more colour than Leland's
+_Longsword_ (1752), Miss Reeve's _Old English Baron_ (1777), or
+Miss Sophia Lee's _Recess_ (1785), from which rather than from
+Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier romances its descent may be traced. The
+attempt to avoid glaring anachronisms and to reproduce an
+accurate picture of a former age points forward to Scott.
+Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_, which Scott completed, was a revolt
+against the unscrupulous inventions of romance-writers, and was
+crammed full of archaeological lore. The story of _Gaston de
+Blondeville_ is tedious, the characters are shadowy and unreal,
+and we become, as the Ettric Shepherd remarked, in _Noctes
+Ambrosianae_, "somewhat too hand and glove with his ghostship";
+yet, regarded simply as a spectacular effect, it is not without
+indications of skill and power. Miss Mitford based a drama on it,
+but it never attained the popularity of Mrs. Radcliffe's other
+novels. It was published when her reputation was on the wane.
+
+Of the materials on which Mrs. Radcliffe drew in fashioning her
+romances it is impossible to speak with any certainty. Doubtless
+she had studied certain old chronicles, and she was deeply read
+in Shakespeare, especially in the tragedies. Much of her leisure,
+we are told, was spent in reading the literary productions of the
+day, especially poetry and novels. At the head of her chapters
+she often quotes Milton as well as the poets of her own
+century--Mason, Gray, Collins, and once "Ossian"--choosing almost
+inevitably passages which deal with the terrible or the ghostly.
+She must have known _The Castle of Otranto_, and in _The Italian_
+she quotes several passages from Walpole's melodrama _The
+Mysterious Mother_. But often she may have been dependent on the
+oral legends clustering round ancient abbeys for the background
+of her stories. Ghostly legends would always appeal to her, and
+she probably amassed a hoard of traditions when she visited
+English castles during her tours with her husband. The background
+of _Gaston de Blondeville_ is Kenilworth Castle. That ancient
+ruins stirred her imagination profoundly is clear from passages
+in her notes on the journeys. In Furness Abbey she sees in her
+mind's eye "a midnight procession of monks," and at Brougham
+Castle:
+
+     "One almost saw the surly keeper descending through
+     this door-case and heard him rattle the keys of the
+     chamber above, listening with indifference to the clank
+     of chains and to the echo of that groan below which
+     seemed to rend the heart it burst from,"
+
+or again:
+
+     "Slender saplings of ash waved over the deserted door
+     cases, where at the transforming hour of twilight, the
+     superstitious eye might mistake them for spectres of
+     some early possessor of the castle, restless from
+     guilt, or of some sufferer persevering for vengeance."
+
+Mrs. Radcliffe's style compares favourably with that of many of
+her contemporaries, with that of Mrs. Roche, for instance, who
+wrote _The Children of the Abbey_ and an array of other forgotten
+romances, but she is too fond of long, imperfectly balanced
+sentences, with as many awkward twists and turns as the winding
+stairways of her ancient turrets. Nobody in the novels, except
+the talkative, comic servant, who is meant to be vulgar and
+ridiculous, ever condescends to use colloquial speech. Even in
+moments of extreme peril the heroines are very choice in their
+diction. Dialogue in Mrs. Radcliffe's world is as stilted and
+unnatural as that of prim, old-fashioned school books. In her
+earliest novel she uses very little conversation, clearly finding
+the indirect form of narrative easier. Sometimes, in the more
+highly wrought passages of description, she slips unawares into a
+more daring phrase, _e.g._ in _Udolpho_, the track of blood
+"glared" upon the stairs, where the word suggests not the actual
+appearance of the bloodstain, but rather its effect on Emily's
+inflamed and disordered imagination. Dickens might have chosen
+the word deliberately in this connection, but he would have used
+it, not once, but several times to ensure his result and to
+emphasise the impression. This is not Mrs. Radcliffe's way. Her
+attention to style is mainly subconscious, her chief interest
+being in situation. Her descriptions of scenery have often been
+praised. Crabb Robinson declared in his diary that he preferred
+them to those of _Waverley_. When Byron visited Venice he found
+no better words to describe its beauty than those of Mrs.
+Radcliffe, who had never seen it:
+
+  "I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+  As from the stroke of an enchanted wand."
+
+In 1794 Mrs. Radcliffe and her husband made a journey through
+Holland and West Germany, of which she wrote an account,
+including with it observations made during a tour of the English
+Lakes. All her novels, except _The Italian_ and _Gaston de
+Blondeville_, had been written before she went abroad, and in
+describing foreign scenery she relied on her imagination, aided
+perhaps by pictures and descriptions as well as by her
+recollections of English mountains and lakes. The attempt to
+blend into a single picture a landscape actually seen and a
+landscape only known at second-hand may perhaps account for the
+lack of distinctness in her pictures. Her descriptions of scenery
+are elaborate, and often prolix, but it is often difficult to
+form a clear image of the scene. In her novels she cares for
+landscape only as an effective background, and paints with the
+broad, careless sweep of the theatrical scene-painter. In the
+_Journeys_, where she depicts scenery for its own sake, her
+delineation is more definite and distinct. She reveals an unusual
+feeling for colour and for the lights and tones of a changing sea
+or sky:
+
+     "It is most interesting to watch the progress of
+     evening and its effect on the waters; streaks of light
+     scattered among the dark, western clouds after the sun
+     had set, and gleaming in long reflection on the sea,
+     while a grey obscurity was drawing over the east, as
+     the vapours rose gradually from the ocean. The air was
+     breathless, the tall sails of the vessel were without
+     motion, and her course upon the deep scarcely
+     perceptible; while above the planet burned with steady
+     dignity and threw a tremulous line of light upon the
+     sea, whose surface flowed in smooth, waveless expanse.
+     Then other planets appeared and countless stars
+     spangled the dark waters. Twilight now pervaded air and
+     ocean, but the west was still luminous where one solemn
+     gleam of dusky red edged the horizon from under heavy
+     vapours."[37]
+
+Sometimes her scenes are disappointingly vague. She describes
+Ingleborough as "rising from elegantly swelling ground," and
+attempts to convey a stretch of country by enumerating a list of
+its features in generalised terms:
+
+     "Gentle swelling slopes, rich in verdure, thick
+     enclosures, woods, bowery hop-grounds, sheltered
+     mansions announcing the wealth, and substantial farms
+     with neat villages, the comfort of the country."
+
+Yet she notices tiny mosses whose hues were "pea green and
+primrose," and sometimes reveals flashes of imaginative insight
+into natural beauty like "the dark sides of mountains marked only
+by the blue smoke of weeds driven in circles near the ground."
+These personal, intimate touches of detail are very different
+from the highly coloured sunrises and sunsets that awaken the
+raptures of her heroines.
+
+With all her limitations, Mrs. Radcliffe is a figure whom it is
+impossible to ignore in the history of the novel. Her influence
+was potent on Lewis and on Maturin as well as on a host of
+forgotten writers. Scott admired her works and probably owed
+something in his craftsmanship to his early study of them. She
+appeals most strongly in youth. The Ettrick Shepherd, who was by
+nature and education "just excessive superstitious," declares:
+
+     "Had I read _Udolpho_ and her other romances in my
+     boyish days my hair would have stood on end like that
+     o' other folk ... but afore her volumes fell into my
+     hauns, my soul had been frichtened by a' kinds of
+     traditionary terrors, and many hunder times hae I maist
+     swarfed wi' fear in lonesome spots in muir and woods at
+     midnight when no a leevin thing was movin but mysel'
+     and the great moon."[38]
+
+There are dull stretches in all her works, but, as Hazlitt justly
+claims, "in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and
+making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and
+fears, she is unrivalled among her countrymen."[39]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
+
+
+To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew
+Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which depends
+for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity, for
+"the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even
+stronger and more primitive instinct of fear. Those who find Mrs.
+Radcliffe's unruffled pace leisurely beyond endurance, or who
+dislike her coldly reasonable methods of accounting for what is
+only apparently supernatural, or who sometimes feel stifled by
+the oppressive air of gentility that broods over her romantic
+world, will find ample reparation in the melodramatic pages of
+"Monk" Lewis. Here, indeed, may those who will and dare sup full
+with horrors. Lewis, in reckless abandonment, throws to the winds
+all restraint, both moral and artistic, that had bound his
+predecessor. The incidents, which follow one another in
+kaleidoscopic variety, are like the disjointed phases of a
+delirium or nightmare, from which there is no escape. We are
+conscious that his story is unreal or even ludicrous, yet Lewis
+has a certain dogged power of driving us unrelentingly through
+it, regardless of our own will. Literary historians have tended
+to over-emphasise the connection between Mrs. Radcliffe and
+Lewis. Their purposes and achievement are so different that it is
+hardly accurate to speak of them as belonging to the same school.
+It is true that in one of his letters Lewis asserts that he was
+induced to go on with his romance, _The Monk_, by reading _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_, "one of the most interesting books that
+has (sic) ever been written," and that he was struck by the
+resemblance of his own character to that of Montoni;[40] but his
+literary debt to Mrs. Radcliffe is comparatively insignificant.
+His depredations on German literature are much more serious and
+extensive. Lewis, indeed, is one of the Dick Turpins of fiction
+and seizes his booty where he will in a high-handed and somewhat
+unscrupulous fashion, but for many of Mrs. Radcliffe's treasures
+he could find no use. Her picturesque backgrounds, her ingenious
+explanations of the uncanny, her uneventful interludes and long
+deferred but happy endings were outside his province. The moments
+in her novels which Lewis admired and strove to emulate were
+those during which the reader with quickened pulse breathlessly
+awaits some startling development. Of these moments, there are,
+it must be frankly owned, few in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Lewis's
+mistake lay in trying to induce a more rapid palpitation, and to
+prolong it almost uninterruptedly throughout his novel. By
+attempting a physical and mental impossibility he courts
+disaster. Mrs. Radcliffe's skeletons are decently concealed in
+the family cupboard, Lewis's stalk abroad in shameless publicity.
+In Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, the shadow fades and disappears just
+when we think we are close upon the substance; for, after we have
+long been groping in the twilight of fearful imaginings, she
+suddenly jerks back the shutter to admit the clear light of
+reason. In Lewis's wonder-world there are no elusive shadows; he
+hurls us without preparation or initiation into a daylight orgy
+of horrors.
+
+Lewis was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, but a year
+spent in Weimar (1792-3), where he zealously studied German, and
+incidentally, met Goethe, seems to have left more obvious marks
+on his literary career. To Lewis, Goethe is pre-eminently the
+author of _The Sorrows of Werther_; and Schiller, he remarks
+casually, "has, written several other plays besides _The
+Robbers."_[41] He probably read Heinse's _Ardinghello_(1787),
+Tieck's _Abdallah_ (1792-3), and _William Lovell_ (1794-6), many
+of the innumerable dramas of Kotzebue, the romances of Weit
+Weber, and other specimens of what Carlyle describes as "the bowl
+and dagger department," where
+
+     "Black Forests and Lubberland, sensuality and horror,
+     the spectre nun and the charmed moonshine, shall not be
+     wanting. Boisterous outlaws also, with huge whiskers,
+     and the most cat o' mountain aspect; tear-stained
+     sentimentalists, the grimmest man-eaters, ghosts and
+     the like suspicious characters will be found in
+     abundance."[42]
+
+Throughout his life he seems to have made a hobby of the
+literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or
+lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and
+the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of
+his _Romantic Tales_(1808), such as _My Uncle's Garret Window_,
+are uncommonly tame. Like the painter of a hoarding who must at
+all costs arrest attention, he magnifies, exaggerates and
+distorts. Once when rebuked for introducing black guards into a
+country where they did not exist, he is said to have declared
+that he would have made them sky-blue if he thought they would
+produce any more effect.[43] Referring to _The Monk_, he
+confesses: "Unluckily, in working it up, I thought that the
+stronger my colours, the more effect would my picture
+produce."[44]
+
+One of his early attempts at fiction was a romance which he later
+converted into his popular drama, _The Castle Spectre_. This play
+was staged in 1798, and was reconverted by Miss Sarah Wilkinson
+in 1820 into a romance. Lewis spreads his banquet with a lavish
+hand, and crudities and absurdities abound, but he has a knack of
+choosing situations well adapted for stage effect. The play,
+aptly described by Coleridge as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth
+and Impermanence,"[45] would offer a happy hunting ground to
+those who delight in the pursuit of "parallel passages." At the
+age of twenty, during his residence at the Hague as _attache_ to
+the British embassy, in the summer of 1794, he composed in ten
+weeks, his notorious romance, _The Monk_. On its publication in
+1795 it was attacked on the grounds of profanity and indecency.
+
+_The Monk_, despite its cleverness, is essentially immature, yet
+it is not a childish work. It is much less youthful, for
+instance, than Shelley's _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. The
+inflamed imagination, the violent exaggeration of emotion and of
+character, the jeering cynicism and lack of tolerance, the
+incoherent formlessness, are all indications of adolescence. In
+_The Monk_ there are two distinct stories, loosely related. The
+story of Raymond and Agnes, into which the legends of the
+bleeding nun and Wandering Jew are woven with considerable skill,
+was published more than once as a detached and separate work. It
+is concerned with the fate of two unhappy lovers, who are parted
+by the tyranny of their parents and of the church, and who endure
+manifold agonies. The physical torture of Agnes is described in
+revolting detail, for Lewis has no scruple in carrying the ugly
+far beyond the limits within which it is artistic. The happy
+ending of their harrowing story is incredible. By making
+Ambrosio, on the verge of his hideous crimes, harshly condemn
+Agnes for a sin of the same nature as that which he is about to
+commit, Lewis forges a link between the two stories. But the
+connection is superficial, and the novel suffers through the
+distraction of our interest. In the story of Ambrosio, Antonia
+plays no part in her own downfall. She is as helpless as a
+plaster statue demolished by an earthquake. The figure of Matilda
+has more vitality, though Lewis changes his mind about her
+character during the course of the book, and fails to make her
+early history consistent with the ending of his story. She is
+certainly not in league with the devil, when, in a passionate
+soliloquy, she cries to Ambrosio, whom she believes to be asleep:
+"The time will come when you will be convinced that my passion is
+pure and disinterested. Then you will pity me and feel the whole
+weight of my sorrows." But when the devil appears, he declares to
+Ambrosio:
+
+     "I saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not
+     principle, and I seized the fit moment for your
+     seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the
+     Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty
+     spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded
+     to the blandishments of Matilda."
+
+The discrepancy is obvious, but this blemish is immaterial, for
+the whole story is unnatural. The deterioration in Ambrosio's
+character--though Lewis uses all his energy in striving to make
+it appear probable by discussing the effect of environment--is
+too swift.
+
+Lewis is at his best when he lets his youthful, high spirits have
+full play. His boyish exaggeration makes Leonella, Antonia's
+aunt, seem like a pantomime character, who has inadvertently
+stepped into a melodrama, but the caricature is amusing by its
+very crudity. She writes in red ink to express "the blushes of
+her cheek," when she sends a message of encouragement to the
+Conde d'Ossori. This and other puerile jests are more tolerable
+than Lewis's attempts to depict passion or describe character.
+Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, passionate
+faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style
+is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short,
+staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are
+engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the
+declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak
+as if they were behind the footlights, shouting to the gallery.
+
+A cold-blooded reviewer, in whom the detective instinct was
+strong, indicated the sources of _The Monk_ so mercilessly, that
+Lewis appears in his critique[46] rather as the perpetrator of a
+series of ingenious thefts than as the creator of a novel:
+
+     "The outline of the Monk Ambrosio's story was suggested
+     by that of the Santon Barissa [Barsisa] in the
+     _Guardian_:[47] the form of temptation is borrowed from
+     _The Devil in Love_ of Canzotte [Cazotte], and the
+     catastrophe is taken from _The Sorcerer_. The
+     adventures of Raymond and Agnes are less obviously
+     imitations, yet the forest scene near Strasburg brings
+     to mind an incident in Smollett's _Count Fathom_; the
+     bleeding nun is described by the author as a popular
+     tale of the Germans,[48] and the convent prison
+     resembles the inflictions of Mrs. Radcliffe."
+
+The industrious reviewer overlooks the legend of the Wandering
+Jew, which might have been added to the list of Lewis's
+"borrowings." It must be admitted that Lewis transforms, or at
+least remodels, what he borrows. Addison's story relates how a
+sage of reputed sanctity seduces and slays a maiden brought to
+him for cure, and later sells his soul. Lewis abandons the
+Oriental setting, converts the santon into a monk and embroiders
+the story according to his fancy. Scott alludes to a Scottish
+version of what is evidently a widespread legend.[49] The
+resemblance of the catastrophe--presumably the appearance of
+Satan in the form of Lucifer--to the scene in Mickle's
+_Sorcerer_, which was published among Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_
+(1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames
+and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two
+scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage
+from _The Romance of the Forest_, but, if so she is exaggerated
+almost beyond recognition.
+
+In fashioning as the villain of her latest novel, _The Italian_,
+a monk, whose birth is wrapt in obscurity, Mrs. Radcliffe may
+have been influenced by Lewis's _Monk_ which had appeared two
+years before. Both Schedoni and Ambrosio are reputed saints, both
+are plunged into the blackest guilt, and both are victims of the
+Inquisition. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is true, recoils from introducing
+the enemy of mankind, but, before the secrets are finally
+revealed, we almost suspect Schedoni of having dabbled in the
+Black Arts, and his actual crime falls short of our expectations.
+The "explained supernatural" plays a less prominent part in _The
+Italian_ than in the previous novels, and Mrs. Radcliffe relies
+for her effect rather on sheer terror. The dramatic scene where
+Schedoni stealthily approaches the sleeping Ellena at midnight
+recalls the more highly coloured, but less impressive scene in
+Antonia's bedchamber. The fate of Bianchi, Ellena's aunt, is
+strangely reminiscent of that of Elvira, Antonia's mother. The
+convent scenes and the overbearing abbess had been introduced
+into Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier novels; but in _The Italian_, the
+anti-Roman feeling is more strongly emphasised than usual. This
+may or may not have been due to the influence of Lewis. There is
+no direct evidence that Mrs. Radcliffe had read _The Monk_, but
+the book was so notorious that a fellow novelist would be almost
+certain to explore its pages. Hoffmann's romance, _Elixir des
+Teufels_ (1816), is manifestly written under its inspiration.
+Coincidence could not account for the remarkable resemblances to
+incidents in the story of Ambrosio.
+
+The far-famed collection of _Tales of Terror_ appeared in 1799,
+_The Tales of Wonder_ in 1801. The rest of Lewis's work consists
+mainly of translations and adaptations from the German. He
+revelled in the horrific school of melodrama. He delighted in the
+kind of German romance parodied by Meredith in _Farina_, where
+Aunt Lisbeth tells Margarita of spectres, smelling of murder and
+the charnel-breath of midnight, who "uttered noises that wintered
+the blood and revealed sights that stiffened hair three feet
+long; ay, and kept it stiff." _The Bravo of Venice_ (1805) is a
+translation of Zschokke's _Abellino, der Grosse Bandit_, but
+Lewis invented a superfluous character, Monaldeschi, Rosabella's
+destined bridegroom, apparently with the object that Abellino
+might slay him early in the story--and added a concluding
+chapter. At the outset of the story, Rosalvo, a man after Lewis's
+own heart, declares:
+
+"To astonish is my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can
+never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by
+his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a
+double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and
+by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise
+of a noble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter,
+Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached when Flodoardo,
+under oath to deliver up the bandit Abellino, appears before the
+Doge at the appointed hour and reveals his double identity. He is
+hailed as the saviour of Hungary, and wins Rosabella as his
+bride. In the second edition of _The Bravo of Venice_, a romance
+in four volumes by M. G. Lewis, _Legends of the Nunnery_, is
+announced as in the press. There seems to be no record of it
+elsewhere. _Feudal Tyrants_ (1806), a long romance from the
+German, connected with the story of William Tell, consists of a
+series of memoirs loosely strung together, in which the most
+alarming episode is the apparition of the pale spectre of an aged
+monk. In _Blanche and Osbright, or Mistrust_ (1808),[50] which is
+not avowedly a translation, Lewis depicts an even more revolting
+portrait than that of Abellino in his bravo's disguise. He adds
+detail after detail without considering the final effect on the
+eye:
+
+     "Every muscle in his gigantic form seemed convulsed by
+     some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened
+     every feature; the wind from the unclosed window
+     agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to
+     writhe itself. His eyeballs glared, his teeth
+     chattered, his lips trembled; and yet a smile of
+     satisfied vengeance played horribly around them. His
+     complexion seemed suddenly to be changed to the dark
+     tincture of an African; the expression of his
+     countenance was dreadful, was diabolical. Magdalena, as
+     she gazed upon his face, thought that she gazed upon a
+     demon."
+
+Here, to quote the Lady Hysterica Belamour, we have surely the
+"horrid, horrible, horridest horror." But in _Koenigsmark the
+Robber, or The Terror of Bohemia_ (1818), Lewis's caste includes
+an enormous yellow-eyed spider, a wolf who changes into a peasant
+and disappears amid a cloud of sulphur, and a ghost who sheds
+three ominous drops of boiling blood. It was probably such
+stories as this that Peacock had in mind when he declared,
+through Mr. Flosky, that the devil had become "too base and
+popular" for the surfeited appetite of readers of fiction. Yet,
+as Carlyle once exclaimed of the German terror-drama, as
+exemplified in Kotzebue, Grillparzer and Klingemann, whose
+stock-in-trade is similar to that of Lewis: "If any man wish to
+amuse himself irrationally, here is the ware for his money."[51]
+Byron, who had himself attempted in _Oscar and Alva_ (_Hours of
+Idleness_, 1807) a ballad in the manner of Lewis, describes with
+irony the triumphs of terror:
+
+  "Oh! wonderworking Lewis! Monk or Bard,
+  Who fain would make Parnassus a churchyard!
+  Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
+  Thy muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou;
+  Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand,
+  By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band;
+  Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page
+  To please the females of our modest age;
+  All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain
+  Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
+  At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds
+  And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds
+  With small grey men--wild yagers and what not,
+  To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;
+  Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
+  St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease.
+  Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell,
+  And in thy skull discern a deeper hell!"[52]
+
+Scott's delightfully discursive review of _The Fatal Revenge or
+The Family of Montorio_ (1810), not only forms a fitting
+introduction to the romances of Maturin, but presents a lively
+sketch of the fashionable reading of the day. It has been
+insinuated that the _Quarterly Review_ was too heavy and serious,
+that it contained, to quote Scott's own words, "none of those
+light and airy articles which a young lady might read while her
+hair was papering." To redeem the reputation of the journal,
+Scott gallantly undertook to review some of the "flitting and
+evanescent productions of the times." After a laborious
+inspection of the contents of a hamper full of novels, he arrived
+at the painful conclusion that "spirits and patience may be as
+completely exhausted in perusing trifles as in following
+algebraical calculations." He condemns the authors of the Gothic
+romance, not for their extravagance, a venial offence, but for
+their monotony, a deadly sin.
+
+     "We strolled through a variety of castles, each of
+     which was regularly called Il Castello; met with as
+     many captains of condottieri, heard various
+     ejaculations of Santa Maria and Diabolo; read by a
+     decaying lamp and in a tapestried chamber dozens of
+     legends as stupid as the main history; examined such
+     suites of deserted apartments as might set up a
+     reasonable barrack, and saw as many glimmering lights
+     as would make a respectable illumination." It was no
+     easy task to bore Sir Walter Scott, and an excursion
+     into the byeways of early nineteenth century fiction
+     proves abundantly the justice of his satire. Such
+     novelists as Miss Sarah Wilkinson or Mrs. Eliza
+     Parsons, whose works were greedily devoured by
+     circulating library readers a hundred years ago,
+     deliberately concocted an unappetising gallimaufry of
+     earlier stories and practised the harmless deception of
+     serving their insipid dishes under new and imposing
+     names. A writer in the _Annual Review_, so early as
+     1802, complains in criticising _Tales of Superstition
+     and Chivalry_:
+
+     "It is not one of the least objections against these
+     fashionable fictions that the imagery of them is
+     essentially monstrous. Hollow winds, clay-cold hands,
+     clanking chains and clicking clocks, with a few similar
+     etcetera are continually tormenting us."
+
+Tales of terror were often issued in the form of sixpenny
+chapbooks, enlivened by woodcuts daubed in yellow, blue, red and
+green. Embellished with these aids to the imagination, they were
+sold in thousands. To the readers of a century ago, a "blue book"
+meant, as Medwin explains in his life of Shelley, not a pamphlet
+filled with statistics, but "a sixpenny shocker."[53] The
+notorious Minerva Press catered for wealthier patrons, and, it is
+said, sold two thousand copies of Mrs. Bennett's _Beggar Girl and
+her Benefactors_ on the day of publication, at thirty-six
+shillings for the seven volumes. Samuel Rogers recalled Lane, the
+head of the firm, riding in a carriage and pair with two footmen,
+wearing gold cockades.[54] Scott was careful not to disclose the
+names of the novelists he derided, but his hamper probably
+contained a selection of Mrs. Parsons' sixty works, and perhaps
+two of Miss Wilkinson's, with their alluring titles, _The Priory
+of St. Clair, or The Spectre of the Murdered Nun_; _The Convent
+of the Grey Penitents, or The Apostate Nun_. Perchance, he found
+there Mrs. Henrietta Rouviere's romance, (published in the same
+year as _Montorio_,) _A Peep at our Ancestors_ (1807), describing
+the reign of King Stephen. Mrs. Rouviere, in her preface,
+
+     "flatters herself that, aided by records and documents,
+     she may have succeeded in a correct though faint sketch
+     of the times she treats, and in affording, if through a
+     dim yet not distorted nor discoloured glass, A Peep at
+     our Ancestors";
+
+but her story is entirely devoid of the colour with which Mrs.
+Radcliffe, her model, contrived to decorate the past. It is,
+moreover, written in a style so opaque that it obscures her
+images from view as effectually as a piece of ground glass. To
+describe the approach of twilight--an hour beloved by writers of
+romance--she attempts a turgid paraphrase of Gray's Elegy:
+
+     "The grey shades of an autumnal evening gradually stole
+     over the horizon, progressively throwing a duskier hue
+     on the surrounding objects till glimmering confusion
+     encompassing the earth shut from the accustomed eye the
+     well-known view, leaving conjecture to mark its
+     boundaries."
+
+The adventures of Adelaide and her lover, Walter of Gloucester,
+are so insufferably tedious that Scott doubtless decided to
+"leave to conjecture" their interminable vicissitudes. The names
+of other novels, whose pages he may impatiently have scanned, may
+be garnered by those who will, from such works as _Living
+Authors_ (1817), or from the four volumes of Watts' elaborate
+compilation, the _Bibliotheca Britannica_ (1824). The titles are,
+indeed, lighter and more entertaining reading than the books
+themselves. Anyone might reasonably expect to read _Midnight
+Horrors, or The Bandit's Daughter_, as Henry Tilney vows he read
+_The Mysteries of Udolpho_, with "hair on end all the time"; but
+the actual story, notwithstanding a wandering ball of fire, that
+acts as guide through the labyrinths of a Gothic castle, is
+conducive of sleep rather than shudders. The notoriety of Lewis's
+monk may be estimated by the procession of monks who followed in
+his train. There were, to select a few names at random, _The New
+Monk_, by one R.S., Esq.; _The Monk of Madrid_, by George Moore
+(1802); _The Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, by T.J. Horsley Curties;
+_Manfroni, the One-handed Monk_, whose history was borrowed,
+together with those of Abellino, the terrific bravo, and Rinaldo
+Rinaldini,[55] by "J.J." from Miss Flinders' library;[56] and
+lastly, as a counter-picture, a monk without a scowl, _The
+Benevolent Monk_, by Theodore Melville (1807). The nuns,
+including "Rosa Matilda's" _Nun of St. Omer's_, Miss Sophia
+Francis's _Nun of Misericordia_ (1807) and Miss Wilkinson's
+_Apostate Nun_, would have sufficed to people a convent. Perhaps
+_The Convent of the Grey Penitents_ would have been a suitable
+abode for them; but most of them were, to quote Crabbe, "girls no
+nunnery can tame." Lewis's Venetian bravo was boldly transported
+to other climes. We find him in Scotland in _The Mysterious
+Bravo_, or _The Shrine of St. Alstice, A Caledonian Legend_, and
+in Austria in _The Bravo of Bohemia or The Black Forest_. No
+country is safe from the raids of banditti. _The Caledonian
+Banditti_ or _The Banditti of the Forest_, or _The Bandit of
+Florence_--all very much alike in their manners and morals--make
+the heroine's journey a perilous enterprise. The romances of Mrs.
+Radcliffe were rifled unscrupulously by the snappers-up of
+unconsidered trifles, and many of the titles are variations on
+hers. In emulation of _The Romance of the Forest_ we find George
+Walker's _Romance of the Cavern_ (1792) and Miss Eleanor Sleath's
+_Mysteries of the Forest_. Novelists appreciated the magnetic
+charm of the word "mystery" on a title-page, and after _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_ we find such seductive names as _Mysterious
+Warnings_ and _Mysterious Visits_, by Mrs. Parsons; _Horrid
+Mysteries_, translated from the German of the Marquis von Grosse,
+by R. Will (1796); _The Mystery of the Black Tower_ and _The
+Mystic Sepulchre_, by John Palmer, a schoolmaster of Bath; _The
+Mysterious Wanderer_ (1807), by Miss Sophia Reeve; _The
+Mysterious Hand or Subterranean Horrors_ (1811), by A.J.
+Randolph; and _The Mysterious Freebooter_ (1805), by Francis
+Lathom. Castles and abbeys were so persistently haunted that Mrs.
+Rachel Hunter, a severely moral writer, advertises one of her
+stories as _Letitia: A Castle Without a Spectre_. Mystery slips,
+almost unawares, into the domestic story. There are, for
+instance, vague hints of it in Charlotte Smith's _Old Manor
+House_ (1793). The author of _The Ghost_ and of _More Ghosts_
+adopts the pleasing pseudonym of Felix Phantom. The gloom of
+night broods over many of the stories, for we know:
+
+      "affairs that walk,
+  As they say spirits do, at midnight, have
+  In them a wilder nature than the business
+  That seeks despatch by day,"
+
+and we are confronted with titles like _Midnight Weddings_, by
+Mrs. Meeke, one of Macaulay's favourite "bad-novel writers," _The
+Midnight Bell_, awakening memories of Duncan's murder, by George
+Walker, or _The Nocturnal Minstrel_ (1809), by Miss Sleath. These
+"dismal treatises" abound in reminiscences of Mrs. Radcliffe and
+of "Monk" Lewis, and many of them hark back as far as _The Castle
+of Otranto_ for some of their situations. The novels of Miss
+Wilkinson may perhaps serve as well as those of any of her
+contemporaries to show that Scott was not unduly harsh in his
+condemnation of the romances fashionable in the first decade of
+the nineteenth century, when "tales of terror jostle on the
+road."[57] The sleeping potion, a boon to those who weave the
+intricate pattern of a Gothic romance, is one of Miss Wilkinson's
+favourite devices, and is employed in at least three of her
+stories. In _The Chateau de Montville_ (1803) it is administered
+to the amiable Louisa to aid Augustine in his sinister designs,
+but she ultimately escapes, and is wedded by Octavius, who has
+previously been borne off by a party of pirates. He "finds the
+past unfortunate vicissitudes of his life amply recompensed by
+her love." In _The Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Rosalthe
+happily avoids the opiate, as she overhears the plans of her
+unscrupulous husband, who, it seems, has "an unquenchable thirst
+of avarice," and desires to win a wealthier bride. She flees to a
+"cottage ornee" on Finchley Common, the home, it may be
+remembered, of Thackeray's Washerwoman; and the thrills we expect
+from a novel of terror are reserved for the second volume, and
+arise out of the adventures of the next generation. After
+Rosalthe's death, spectres, blue flames, corpses, thunderstorms
+and hairbreadth escapes are set forth in generous profusion.
+
+In _The Priory of St. Clair_ (1811), Julietta, who has been
+forced into a convent against her will, like so many other
+heroines, is drugged and conveyed as a corpse to the Count de
+Valve's Gothic castle. She comes to life only to be slain before
+the high altar, and revenges herself after death by haunting the
+count regularly every night. _The Fugitive Countess or Convent of
+St. Ursula_ (1807) contains three spicy ingredients--a mock
+burial, a concealed wife and a mouldering manuscript. The social
+status of Miss Wilkinson's characters is invariably lofty, for no
+self-respecting ghost ever troubles the middle classes; and her
+manner is as ambitious as her matter. Her personages, in _Lopez
+and Aranthe_, behave and talk thus:
+
+"Heavenly powers!" exclaimed Aranthe, "it is Dorimont, or else my
+eyes deceive me!" Overpowered with surprise and almost
+breathless, she sunk on the carpet. Lopez stood aghast, his
+countenance was of a deadly pale, a glass of wine he had in his
+hand he let fall to the floor, while he articulated: "What an
+alteration in that once beauteous countenance!"
+
+Miss Wilkinson's sentences stagger and lurch uncertainly, but she
+delights in similes and other ornaments of style:
+
+     "Adeline Barnett was fair as a lily, tall as the pine,
+     her fine dark eyes sparkling as diamonds, and she moved
+     with the majestic air of a goddess, but pride and
+     ambition appeared on the brow of this famed maiden, and
+     destroying the effect of her charms."
+
+She is, in fact, more addicted to "gramarye" than to
+"grammar"--the fault with which Byron, in a note to _English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, charged the hero and heroine of
+Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Her heroes do not merely
+love, they are "enamoured to a romantic degree." Her arbours are
+"composed of jasmine, white rose, and other odoriferous sweets of
+Flora." She sprinkles French phrases with an airy nonchalance
+worthy of the Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs are included
+in Barrett's _Heroine_. Her duchesses "figure away with
+_eclat_"--"a party _quarrie_ assemble at their _dejeune_." It is
+noteworthy that by 1820 even Miss Wilkinson had learnt to despise
+the spectres in whom she had gloried during her amazing career.
+In _The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_ (1820) the ghost is
+ignominiously exposed, and proved to be "a tall figure dressed in
+white, and a long, transparent veil flowing over her whole
+figure," while the heroine Amelia speaks almost in the accents of
+Catherine Morland:
+
+     "My governess has been affirming that there are Gothic
+     buildings without spectres or legends of a ghostly
+     nature attached to them; now, what is a castle or abbey
+     worth without such appendage?; do tell me candidly, are
+     none of the turrets of your old family mansion in
+     Monmouth rendered thus terrific by some unquiet,
+     wandering spirit?, dare the peasantry pass it after
+     twilight, or if they are forced into that temerity, do
+     not their teeth chatter, their hair stand erect and
+     their poor knees knock together?"
+
+That Miss Wilkinson, who, for twenty years, had conscientiously
+striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last
+to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a
+piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the
+enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely
+have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more to
+raise their diminished heads.
+
+From a medley of novels, similar to those of Miss Wilkinson,
+Scott singled out for commendation _The Fatal Revenge or The
+Family of Montorio_, by "Jasper Denis Murphy," or the Rev.
+Charles Robert Maturin. Amid the chaos of horror into which
+Maturin hurls his readers, Scott shrewdly discerned the spirit
+and animation which, though often misdirected, pervade his whole
+work. The story is but a grotesque distortion of life, yet Scott
+found himself "insensibly involved in the perusal and at times
+impressed with no common degree of respect for the powers of the
+author." His generous estimate of Maturin's gifts and his
+prediction of future success is the more impressive, because _The
+Fatal Revenge_ undeniably belongs to the very class of novels he
+was ridiculing.
+
+Maturin was an eccentric Irish clergyman, who diverted himself by
+weaving romances and constructing tragedies. He loved to mingle
+with the gay and frivolous; he affected foppish attire, and
+prided himself on his exceptional skill in dancing. His
+indulgence in literary work was probably but another expression
+of his longing to escape from the strait and narrow way
+prescribed for a Protestant clergyman. Wild anecdotes are told of
+his idiosyncrasies.[58] He preferred to compose his stories in a
+room full of people, and he found a noisy argument especially
+invigorating. To prevent himself from taking part in the
+conversation, he used to cover his mouth with paste composed of
+flour and water. Sometimes, we are told, he would wear a red
+wafer upon his brow, as a signal that he was enduring the throes
+of literary composition and expected forbearance and
+consideration. It is said that he once missed preferment in the
+church because he absentmindedly interviewed his prospective
+vicar with his head bristling with quills like a porcupine. He is
+said to have insisted on his wife's using rouge though she had
+naturally a high colour, and to have gone fishing in a
+resplendent blue coat and silk stockings. Such was the flamboyant
+personality of the man whose first novel attracted the kindly
+attention of Scott. His oddities, which would have rejoiced the
+heart of Dickens, are not without significance in a study of his
+literary work, for his love of emphasis and exaggeration are
+reflected in both the substance and style of his novels.
+
+Maturin's writings fall into three periods. Of his three early
+novels, _The Fatal Revenge or The Family of Montorio_ (1807),
+_The Wild Irish Boy_ (1808) and _The Milesian Chief_ (1812), the
+first only is a tale of horror. _The Wild Irish Boy_ is a
+domestic story, and forms a suitable companion for Lady Morgan's
+_Wild Irish Girl_. _The Milesian Chief_ is a historical novel,
+and is now chiefly remembered on account of the likeness of the
+opening chapters to Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ (1819). After
+the publication of these novels, Maturin turned his attention to
+the stage. His first tragedy, _Bertram_ (1816), received the
+encouragement of Scott and Byron. The character of Bertram is
+modelled on that of Schiller's robber-chief, Karl von Moor, who
+captivated the imagination of Coleridge himself, and who is
+reflected in _Osorio_ and perhaps in Mrs. Radcliffe's villains.
+The action of the melodrama moves swiftly, and abounds in the
+"moving situations" Maturin loved to handle. _Bertram_ was
+succeeded in 1817 by _Manuel_, and in 1819 by _Fredolfo_.
+Meanwhile Maturin had returned to novel-writing. _Women, or Pour
+et Contre_, with its lifelike sketches of Puritanical society and
+clever characterisation, appeared in 1818, and was favourably
+reviewed by Scott.[59] _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's
+masterpiece, was published in 1820, and was succeeded in 1824 by
+his last work, _The Albigenses_, a historical romance, following
+Scott's design rather than that of Mrs. Radcliffe.
+
+In reviewing _The Family of Montorio_, Scott prudently attempted
+only a brief survey of the plot, and forsook Maturin's sequence
+of events. In his sketch the outline of the story is
+comparatively clear. In the novel itself we wander, bewildered,
+baffled and distracted through labyrinthine mazes. No Ariadne
+awaits on the threshold with the magic ball of twine to guide us
+through the complicated windings. We stumble along blind alleys
+desperately retracing our weary steps, and, after stumbling alone
+and unaided to the very end, reach the darkly concealed clue when
+it has ceased to be either of use or of interest to us. Many an
+adventurer must have lain down, dispirited and exhausted, without
+ever reaching his distant and elusive goal. Disentangled and
+simplified almost beyond recognition, the story runs thus: In
+1670, Count Orazio and his younger brother are the sole
+representatives of the family of Montorio. Orazio has married
+Erminia di Vivaldi, whom he loves devotedly. She does not return
+his love. The younger brother determines to take advantage of
+this circumstance to gain the title and estates for himself, and
+succeeds in arousing Orazio's jealousy against a young officer,
+Verdoni, to whom Erminia had formerly been deeply attached. In a
+violent passion Orazio slays Verdoni before the eyes of Erminia,
+who falls dead at his feet. This part of his design accomplished,
+the younger brother plots to murder Orazio himself, who, however,
+discovers the innocence of his wife and the hideous perfidy of
+his brother. Temporarily bereft of reason, Orazio sojourns alone
+on a desert island. When his senses are restored, he resolves to
+devote the rest of his life to vengeance. For fifteen years he
+buries himself in occult studies, and when his diabolical schemes
+have matured, returns, disguised as the monk Schemoli, to the
+scene of the murder. He becomes confessor to his brother, who has
+assumed the title and estates. It is his intention to compel the
+Count's sons, Annibal and Ippolito, to murder their father. Death
+at the hands of parricides seems to him the only appropriate
+catastrophe for the Count's career of infamy. To reconcile the
+two victims--Annibal and Ippolito--to their task, he "relies
+mainly on the doctrine of fatalism." The most complex and
+ingenious "machinery" is used to work upon their superstitious
+feelings. No device is too tortuous if it aid his purpose. Even
+the pressure of the Inquisition is brought to bear on one of the
+brothers. Each, after protracted agony, submits to his destiny,
+and the swords of the two brothers meet in the Count's body. When
+the murder is safely accomplished, it is proved that Annibal and
+Ippolito are the sons, not of the Count, but of Schemoli and
+Erminia. By the irony of fate the knowledge comes too late for
+Schemoli to save his children from the crime. At the close of a
+lengthy trial the two brothers are released, but deprived of
+their lands. Ultimately they die fighting in the siege of
+Barcelona. Schemoli perishes, in the approved Gothic manner, by
+self-administered poison. Intertwined with the main theme of
+Schemoli's fatal revenge are the love-stories of the two
+brothers. Rosolia, a nun, who seems to have been acquainted with
+Shakespeare's comedies, disguises herself as a page, and devotes
+her life to the service of Ippolito and to the composition of
+sentimental verses. She only reveals her sex just before her
+death, though we have guessed it from her first appearance.
+Ildefonsa, who is beloved of Annibal, has been forced into a
+convent against her will--a fate almost inevitable in the realm
+of Gothic romance. When letters are received authorising her
+release from the vows, a pitiless mother-superior reports that
+she is dead. She is immured, but an earthquake sets her free, for
+Maturin will move heaven and earth to effect his purposes. The
+ill-fated maiden dies shortly afterwards. Ere the close it proves
+that Ildefonsa was the daughter of Erminia, who had been secretly
+married to Verdoni before her union with Orazio. Such is the
+skeleton of Maturin's story, when its scattered members have been
+patiently collected and fitted together. The impressive figure of
+Schemoli, with his unholy power of fascinating his reluctant
+accomplices, lends to the book the only sort of unity it
+possesses. But even he fails to arouse a sense of fear strong
+enough to fix our attention to so wandering a story. Like the
+doomed brothers, we drift dejectedly through inexplicable
+terrors, and we re-echo with fervour Annibal's dolorous cry:
+
+     "Why should I be shut up in this house of horrors to
+     deal with spirits and damned things and the secrets of
+     the infernal world while there are so many paths open
+     to pleasure, the varieties of human intercourse and the
+     enjoyment of life?"
+
+Maturin, a disciple of Mrs. Radcliffe, feels it his duty to
+explain away the apparently miraculous incidents in his story,
+but he lacks the persevering ingenuity that partly compensates
+for her frauds. On a single page he calmly discloses secrets
+which have harassed us for four volumes, and his long-deferred
+explanations are paltry and incredible. The bleeding figures that
+wrought so painfully on the sensitive nerves of Ippolito are
+merely waxen images that spout blood automatically.
+Disappearances and reappearances, which seemed supernatural, are
+simply effected by private exits and entrances. Other startling
+phenomena are accounted for in the same trivial fashion.
+
+Maturin seems to have crowded into his story nearly every
+character and incident that had been employed in earlier Gothic
+romances. Schemoli is a remarkably faithful portrait of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's Schedoni. From beneath his cowl flash the piercing
+eyes, whose very glance will daunt the bravest heart; his sallow
+visage is furrowed with the traces of bygone passions; he shuns
+society, and is dreaded by his associates. The oppressed maiden,
+driven into a nunnery, drugged and immured, the ambitious
+countess, the devoted, loquacious servant, the inhuman
+abbess--all play their accustomed parts. The background shifts
+from the robber's den to the ruined chapel, from the castle vault
+to the dungeon of the Inquisition, each scene being admirably
+suited to the situation contrived, or the emotion displayed.
+Maturin had accurately inspected the passages and trap-doors of
+Otranto. No item, not a rusty lock, not a creaking hinge, had
+escaped his vigilant eye. He knew intimately every nook and
+cranny of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. He had viewed with
+trepidation their blood-stained floors, their skeletons and
+corpses, and had carefully calculated the psychological effect of
+these properties. He had gazed with starting eye on the lurid
+horrors of "Monk" Lewis, and had carried away impressions so
+distinct that he, perhaps unwittingly, transferred them to the
+pages of his own story. But Maturin's reading was not strictly
+confined to the school of terror. He had studied Shakespeare's
+tragedies, and these may have suggested to him the idea of
+enhancing the interest of his story by dissecting human motive
+and describing passionate feeling. In depicting the remorse of
+the count and his wife Zenobia, who had committed a murder to
+gratify their ambition, and who are tormented by ugly dreams,
+Maturin inevitably draws from _Macbeth_. Zenobia, the stronger
+character, reviles her husband for indulging in sickly fancies
+and strives to embolden him:
+
+  "Like a child you run from a mask you have yourself painted."
+
+He replies in a free paraphrase of _Hamlet_:
+
+  "It is this cursed domestic sensibility of guilt that makes
+cowards
+  of us all."
+
+Maturin is distinguished from the incompetent horde of
+romance-writers, whom Scott condemned, by the powerful eloquence
+of his style and by his ability to analyse emotion, to write as
+if he himself were swayed by the feeling he describes. His insane
+extravagances have at least the virtue that they come flaming hot
+from an excited imagination. The passage quoted by
+Scott--Orazio's attempt to depict his state of mind after he had
+heard of his brother's perfidy--may serve to illustrate the force
+and vigour of his language:
+
+     "Oh! that midnight darkness of the soul in which it
+     seeks for something whose loss has carried away every
+     sense but one of utter and desolate deprivation; in
+     which it traverses leagues in motion and worlds in
+     thought without consciousness of relief, yet with a
+     dread of pausing. I had nothing to seek, nothing to
+     recover; the whole world could not restore me an atom,
+     could not show me again a glimpse of what I had been or
+     lost, yet I rushed on as if the next step would reach
+     shelter and peace."
+
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_ has found many admirers. It fascinated
+Rossetti,[60] Thackeray[61] and Miss Mitford.[62] It was praised
+by Balzac, who wrote a satirical sequel--_Melmoth Reconcilie a
+L'Eglise_ (1835), and by Baudelaire, and exercised a considerable
+influence on French literature.[63] It consists of a series of
+tales, strung together in a complicated fashion. In each tale the
+Wanderer, who has bartered his soul in return for prolonged life,
+may, if he can, persuade someone to take the bargain off his
+hands.[64] He visits those who are plunged in despair. His
+approach is heralded by strange music, and his eyes have a
+preternatural lustre that terrifies his victims. No one will
+agree to his "incommunicable condition."
+
+The bird's-eye view of an Edinburgh Reviewer who described
+_Melmoth_ as "the sacrifice of Genius in the Temple of False
+Taste," will give some idea of the bewildering variety of its
+contents:
+
+     "His hero is a modern Faustus, who has bartered his
+     soul with the powers of darkness for protracted life
+     and unlimited worldly enjoyment; his heroine, a species
+     of insular goddess, a virgin Calypso of the Indian
+     Ocean, who, amid flowers and foliage, lives upon figs
+     and tamarinds, associates with peacocks and monkeys, is
+     worshipped by the occasional visitants of her island,
+     finds her way into Spain where she is married to the
+     aforesaid hero by the hand of a dead hermit, the ghost
+     of a murdered domestic being the witness of her
+     nuptials; and finally dies in a dungeon of the
+     Inquisition at Madrid. To complete this phantasmagoric
+     exhibition, we are presented with sybils and misers,
+     parricides, maniacs in abundance, monks with scourges
+     pursuing a naked youth streaming with blood;
+     subterranean Jews surrounded by the skeletons of their
+     wives and children; lovers blasted by lightning, Irish
+     hags, Spanish grandees, shipwrecks, caverns, Donna
+     Claras and Donna Isidoras--all exposed to each other in
+     violent and glaring contrast and all their adventures
+     narrated with the same undeviating display of turgid,
+     vehement, and painfully elaborated language."[65]
+
+This breathless sentence gives some conception of the delirious
+imagery of Maturin's romance, but the book is worthy of a more
+respectful, unhurried survey. _Melmoth_ shows a distinct advance
+on _Montorio_ in constructive power. Each separate story is
+perfectly clear and easy to follow, in spite of the elaborate
+interlacing. The romance opens with the death of a miser in a
+desolate Irish farmstead, with harpies clustering at his bedside.
+His nephew and heir, John Melmoth, is adjured to destroy a
+certain manuscript and a portrait of an ancestor with eyes "such
+as one feels they wish they had never seen and feels they can
+never forget." Alone at midnight, John Melmoth reads the
+manuscript, which is reputed to have been written by Stanton, an
+English traveller in Spain, about 1676. The document relates a
+startling story of a mysterious Englishman who appears at a
+Spanish wedding with disastrous consequences, and reappears
+before Stanton in a madhouse offering release on dreadful
+conditions. After reading it, John Melmoth decides to burn the
+family portrait. He is visited by a sinister form, who proves
+that he is no figment of the imagination by leaving black and
+blue marks on his relative's wrist. The next night a ship is
+wrecked in a storm. The Wanderer appears, and mocks the victims
+with fiendish mirth. The sole survivor, Don Alonzo Moncada,
+unfolds his story to John Melmoth. The son of a great duke, he
+has been forced to become a monk to save his mother's honour. He
+dwells with the excruciating detail in which Maturin is inclined
+to revel, on the horrors of Spanish monasteries. Escaping through
+a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who
+incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers.
+His plan of flight is foiled, and he is borne off to the dungeons
+of the Inquisition. Here the Wanderer, who has a miraculous power
+to enter where he will, offers, on the ineffable condition, to
+procure his freedom. Moncada repudiates the temptation, effects
+his own escape during a great fire, and catches sight of the
+stranger on the summit of a burning building. He takes refuge
+with a Jew, but, to evade the vigilance of the Inquisitors,
+disappears suddenly down an underground passage, where he finds
+Adonijah, another Jew, who obligingly employs him as an
+amanuensis, and sets him to copy a manuscript. This gives Maturin
+the opportunity, for which he has been waiting, to introduce his
+"Tale of the Indian." The story of Immalee, who is visited on her
+desert island by the Wanderer in the guise of a lover as well as
+a tempter, forms the most memorable part of _Melmoth_. In the
+other stories the stranger has been a taciturn creature, relying
+on the lustre of his eyes rather than on his powers of eloquence
+to win over his victims. To Immalee he pours forth floods of
+rhetoric on the sins and follies of mankind. Had she not been one
+of Rousseau's children of nature, and so innocent alike of a
+knowledge of Shakespeare and of the fault of impatience, she
+would surely have exclaimed: "If thou hast news, I prithee
+deliver them like a man of this world." When Immalee is
+transported to Spain and reassumes her baptismal name of Isidora,
+Melmoth follows her and their conversations are continued at dead
+of night through the lattice. Here they discourse on the real
+nature of love. At length the gloomy lover persuades Isidora to
+marry him. Their midnight nuptials take place against a weird
+background. By a narrow, precipitous path they approach the
+ruined chapel, and are united by a hand "as cold as that of
+death." Meanwhile, Don Francisco, Isidora's father, on his way
+home, spends the night at an inn, where a stranger insists on
+telling him "The Tale of Guzman." In this tale the tempter visits
+a father whose family is starving, but who resists the lure of
+wealth. Maturin portrays with extraordinary power the
+deterioration in the character of an old man Walberg, through the
+effects of poverty. At the close of the narration Don Francisco
+falls into a deep slumber, but is sternly awakened by a stranger
+with an awful eye, who insists on becoming his fellow traveller,
+and on telling, in defiance of protests, yet another story. The
+prologue to the Lover's Tale is almost Chaucerian in its humour:
+
+     "It was with the utmost effort of his mixed politeness
+     and fear that he prepared himself to listen to the
+     tale, which the stranger had frequently amid their
+     miscellaneous conversation, alluded to, and showed an
+     evident anxiety to relate. These allusions were
+     attended with unpleasant reminiscences to the
+     hearer--but he saw that it was to be, and armed himself
+     as best he might with courage to hear. 'I would not
+     intrude on you, Senhor,' says the stranger, 'with a
+     narrative in which you can feel but little interest,
+     were I not conscious that its narration may operate as
+     a warning, the most awful, salutary and efficacious to
+     yourself.'"
+
+At this veiled hint Don Francisco discharges a volley of oaths,
+but he is silenced completely by the smile of the stranger--"that
+spoke bitterer and darker things than the fiercest frown that
+ever wrinkled the features of man." After this he cannot choose
+but hear, and the stranger seizes his opportunity to begin an
+uncommonly dull story, connected with a Shropshire family and
+intermingled with historical events. In this tale the Wanderer
+appears to a girl whose lover has lost his reason, and offers to
+restore him if she will accept his conditions. Once more the
+tempter is foiled. The story meanders so sluggishly that our
+sympathies are with Don Francisco, and we cannot help wishing
+that he had adopted more drastic measures to quieten the
+insistent stranger. At the conclusion Francisco mutters
+indignantly:
+
+     "It is inconceivable to me how this person forces
+     himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have
+     no more application to me than the legend of the Cid,
+     and may be as apocryphal as the ballad of
+     Roncesvalles--"
+
+but yet the stranger has not finished. He proceeds to tell him a
+tale in which he will feel a peculiar interest, that of Isidora,
+his own daughter, and finally urges him to hasten to her rescue.
+Don Francisco wanders by easy stages to Madrid, and, on his
+arrival, marries Isidora against her will to Montilla. Melmoth,
+according to promise, appears at the wedding. The bridegroom is
+slain. Isidora, with Melmoth's child, ends her days in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition, murmuring: "Paradise! will he be
+there?" So far as one may judge from the close of the story, it
+seems not.
+
+Moncada and John Melmoth, whom we left, at the beginning of the
+romance, in Ireland, are revisited by the Wanderer, whose time on
+earth has at last run out. He confesses his failure: "I have
+traversed the world in the search, and no one to gain that world,
+would lose his own soul." His words remind us of the text of the
+sermon which suggested to Maturin the idea of the romance. Like
+the companions of Dr. Faustus, Melmoth and Moncada hear terrible
+sounds from the room of the Wanderer in the last throes of agony.
+The next morning the room is empty; but, following a track to the
+sea-cliffs, they see, on a crag beneath, the kerchief the
+Wanderer had worn about his neck. "Melmoth and Moncada exchanged
+looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly
+home."
+
+This extraordinary romance, like _Montorio_, clearly owes much to
+the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and "Monk" Lewis. Immalee, as her
+name implies, is but a glorified Emily with a loxia on her
+shoulder instead of a lute in her hand. The monastic horrors are
+obviously a heritage from _The Monk_. The Rosicrucian legend, as
+handled in _St. Leon_, may have offered hints to Maturin, whose
+treatment is, however, far more imaginative and impressive than
+that of Godwin. The resemblance to the legend of the Wandering
+Jew need not be laboured. Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_ and the first
+part of Goethe's _Faust_ left their impression on the story. The
+closing scenes inevitably remind us of the last act of Marlowe's
+tragedy. But, when all these debts are acknowledged they do but
+serve to enhance the success of Maturin, who out of these varied
+strands could weave so original a romance. _Melmoth_ is not an
+ingenious patchwork of previous stories. It is the outpouring of
+a morbid imagination that has long brooded on the fearful and the
+terrific. Imbued with the grandeur and solemnity of his theme,
+Maturin endeavours to write in dignified, stately language. There
+are frequent lapses into bombast, but occasionally his rhetoric
+is splendidly effective:
+
+     "It was now the latter end of autumn; heavy clouds had
+     all day been passing laggingly and gloomily along the
+     atmosphere, as the hours pass over the human mind and
+     life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
+     portentously off, like ships of war reconnoitring a
+     strong fort, to return with added strength and fury."
+
+He takes pleasure in coining unusual, striking phrases, such as:
+"All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,"
+or "Minutes are hours in the _noctuary_ of terror," or "The
+secret of silence is the only secret. Words are a blasphemy
+against that taciturn and invisible God whose presence enshrouds
+us in our last extremity."
+
+Maturin chooses his similes with discrimination, to heighten the
+effect he aims at producing:
+
+"The locks were so bad and the keys so rusty that it was like the
+cry of the dead in the house when the keys were turned," or:
+
+     "With all my care, however, the lamp declined,
+     quivered, flashed a pale light, like the smile of
+     despair, on me, and was extinguished ... I had watched
+     it like the last beatings of an expiring heart, like
+     the shiverings of a spirit about to depart for
+     eternity."
+
+There are no quiet scenes or motionless figures in _Melmoth_.
+Everything is intensified, exaggerated, distorted. The very
+clouds fly rapidly across the sky, and the moon bursts forth with
+the "sudden and appalling effulgence of lightning." A shower of
+rain is perhaps "the most violent that was ever precipitated on
+the earth." When Melmoth stamps his foot "the reverberation of
+his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with
+the thunder." Maturin's use of words like "callosity,"
+"induration," "defecated," "evanition," and his fondness for
+italics are other indications of his desire to force an
+impression by fair means or foul.
+
+The gift of psychological insight that distinguishes _Montorio_
+reappears in a more highly developed form in _Melmoth the
+Wanderer_. "Emotions," Maturin declares, "are my events," and he
+excels in depicting mental as well as physical torture. The
+monotony of a "timeless day" is suggested with dreary reality in
+the scene where Moncada and his guide await the approach of night
+to effect their escape from the monastery. The gradual surrender
+of resolution before slight, reiterated assaults is cunningly
+described in the analysis of Isidora's state of mind, when a
+hateful marriage is forced upon her. Occasionally Maturin
+astonishes us by the subtlety of his thought:
+
+"While people think it worth while to torment us we are never
+without some dignity, though painful and imaginary."
+
+It is his faculty for describing intense, passionate feeling, his
+power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for
+conveying his thoughts in rolling, rhythmical periods of
+eloquence, that make _Melmoth_ a memory-haunting book. With all
+his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last of the
+Goths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - THE ORIENTAL TALE OF TERROR. BECKFORD.
+
+
+Beckford's _History of the Caliph Vathek_, which was written in
+French, was translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, who had the
+temerity to publish the English version--described as a
+translation from the Arabic--in 1786, before the original had
+appeared. The French version was published in Lausanne and in
+Paris in 1787. An interest in Oriental literature had been
+awakened early in the eighteenth century by Galland's
+epoch-making versions of _The Arabian Nights_ (1704-1717), _The
+Turkish Tales_ (1708) and _The Persian Tales_ (1714), which were
+all translated into English during the reign of Queen Anne. Many
+of the pseudo-translations of French authors, such as Gueulette,
+who compiled _The Chinese Tales_, _Mogul Tales_, _Tartarian
+Tales_, and _Peruvian Tales_, and Jean-Paul Bignon, who presented
+_The Adventures of Abdallah_, were quickly turned into English;
+and the Oriental story became so fashionable a form that didactic
+writers eagerly seized upon it as a disguise for moral or
+philosophical reflection. The Eastern background soon lost its
+glittering splendour and colour, and became a faded, tarnished
+tapestry, across which shadowy figures with outlandish names and
+English manners and morals flit to and fro. Addison's _Vision of
+Mirza_ (1711), Johnson's _Rasselas_ (1759), and various essays in
+_The Rambler_, Dr. Hawkesworth's _Almoran and Hamet_ (1761),
+Langhorne's _Solyman and Almena_ (1762), Ridley's _Tales of the
+Genii_ (1764), and Mrs. Sheridan's _History of Nourjahad_ (1767)
+were among the best and most popular of the Anglo-Oriental
+stories that strove to inculcate moral truths. In their
+oppressive air of gravity, Beckford, with his implacable hatred
+of bores, could hardly have breathed. One of the most amazing
+facts about his wild fantasy is that it was the creation of an
+English brain. The idea of _Vathek_ was probably suggested to
+Beckford by the witty Oriental tales of Count Antony Hamilton and
+of Voltaire. The character of the caliph, who desired to know
+everything, even the sciences which did not exist, is sketched in
+the spirit of the French satirists, who turned Oriental
+extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the
+close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls
+of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set
+out and rose to an exalted solemnity.
+
+Beckford's mind was so richly stored with the jewels of Eastern
+legend that it was inevitable he should shower from his treasury
+things new and old, but everything which passes through the
+alembic of his imagination is transmuted almost beyond
+recognition. The episode of the sinners with the flaming hearts
+has been traced[66] to a scene in the _Mogul Tales_, where Aboul
+Assam saw three men standing mute in postures of sorrow before a
+book on which were inscribed the words: "Let no man touch this
+divine treatise who is not perfectly pure." When Aboul Assam
+enquired of their fate they unbuttoned their waistcoats, and
+through their skin, which appeared like crystal, he saw their
+hearts encompassed with fire. In Beckford's story this grotesque
+scene assumes an awful and moving dignity. From _The Adventure of
+Abdallah, Son of Hanif_, Beckford derived the conception of a
+visit to the regions of Eblis, whom, however, by a wave of his
+wand, he transforms from a revolting ogre to a stately
+prince.[67]
+
+To read _Vathek_ is like falling asleep in a huge Oriental palace
+after wandering alone through great, echoing halls resplendent
+with a gorgeous arras, on which are displayed the adventures of
+the caliph who built the palaces of the five senses. In our dream
+the caliph and his courtiers come to life, and we awake dazzled
+with the memory of a myriad wonders. There throng into our mind a
+crowd of unearthly forms--aged astrologers, hideous Giaours,
+gibbering negresses, graceful boys and maidens, restless, pacing
+figures with their hands on their hearts, and a formidable
+prince--whose adventures are woven into a fantastic but distinct
+and definite pattern around the three central personages, the
+caliph Vathek, his exquisitely wicked mother Carathis, and the
+bewitching Nouronihar. The fatal palace of Eblis, with its lofty
+columns and gloomy towers of an architecture unknown in the
+annals of the earth, looms darkly in our imagination. Beckford
+alludes, with satisfaction, to _Vathek_ as a "story so horrid
+that I tremble while relating it, and have not a nerve in my
+frame but vibrates like an aspen,"[68] and in the _Episodes_
+leads us with an unhallowed pleasure into other abodes of
+horror--a temple adorned with pyramids of skulls festooned with
+human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with human faces, and an
+apartment whose walls were hung with carpets of a thousand kinds
+and a thousand hues, which moved slowly to and fro as if stirred
+by human creatures stifling beneath their weight. But Beckford
+passes swiftly from one mood to another, and was only momentarily
+fascinated by terror. So infinite is the variety of _Vathek_ in
+scenery and in temper that it seems like its wealthy, eccentric,
+author secluded in Fonthill Abbey, to dwell apart in defiant,
+splendid isolation.
+
+It is impossible to understand or appreciate _Vathek_ apart from
+Beckford's life and character, which contain elements almost as
+grotesque and fantastic as those of his romance. He was no
+visionary dreamer, content to build his pleasure-domes in air. He
+revelled in the golden glories of good Haroun-Alraschid,[69] but
+he craved too for solid treasures he could touch and handle, for
+precious jewels, for rare, beautiful volumes, for curious, costly
+furniture. The scenes of splendour portrayed in _Vathek_ were
+based on tangible reality.[70] Beckford's schemes in later
+life--his purchase of Gibbon's entire library, his twice-built
+tower on Lansdown Hill, were as grandiose and ambitious as those
+of an Eastern caliph. The whimsical, Puckish humour, which helped
+to counteract the strain of gloomy bitterness in his nature, was
+early revealed in his _Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary
+Painters_ and in his burlesques of the sentimental novels of the
+day, which were accepted by the compiler of _Living Authors_
+(1817) as a serious contribution to fiction by one Miss Jacquetta
+Agneta Mariana Jenks. Moore,[71] in his _Journal_, October 1818,
+remarks:
+
+     "The two mock novels, _Azemia_ and _The Elegant
+     Enthusiast_, were written to ridicule the novels
+     written by his sister, Mrs. Harvey (I think), who read
+     these parodies on herself quite innocently."
+
+Even in the gloomy regions of Eblis, Beckford will not wholly
+repress his sense of the ridiculous. Carathis, unawed by the
+effulgence of his infernal majesty, behaves like a buffoon,
+shouting at the Dives and actually attempting to thrust a Soliman
+from his throne, before she is finally whirled away with her
+heart aflame. The calm politeness with which the dastardly
+Barkiaroukh consents to a blood-curdling murder, the sardonic
+dialogue between Vathek on the edge of the precipice and the
+Giaour concealed in the abyss, the buoyantly high-spirited
+description of the plump Indian kicked and pursued like "an
+invulnerable football," the oppressive horror of the subterranean
+recesses, the mischievous pleasantry of the Gulchenrouz idyll
+reveal different facets of Beckford's ever-varying temper. In
+_Vathek_, Beckford found expression not only for his devotion to
+the Eastern outlook on life, but also for his own strangely
+coloured, vehement personality. The interpreter walks ever at our
+elbow whispering into our ear his human commentary on Vathek's
+astounding adventures.
+
+Beckford's pictures are remarkable for definite precision of
+outline. There are no vague hints and suggestions, no lurking
+shadows concealing untold horrors. The quaint dwarfs perched on
+Vathek's shoulders, the children chasing blue butterflies,
+Nouronihar and her maidens on tiptoe, with their hair floating in
+the breeze, stand out in clear relief, as if painted on a fresco.
+The imagery is so lucid that we are able to follow with
+effortless pleasure the intricate windings of a plot which at
+Beckford's whim twists and turns through scenes of wonderful
+variety. Amid his wild, erratic excursions he never loses sight
+of the end in view; the story, with all its vagaries, is
+perfectly coherent. This we should expect from one who "loved to
+bark a tough understanding."[72] It is the intellectual strength
+and exuberant vitality behind Beckford's Oriental scenes that
+lend them distinction and power.
+
+_The History of the Caliph Vathek_ did not set a fashion. It is
+true that the Orient sometimes formed the setting of nineteenth
+century novels, as in Disraeli's _Alvoy_ (1833), where for a
+brief moment, when the hero's torch is extinguished by bats on
+his entry into subterranean portals, we find ourselves in the
+abode of wonder and terror; but not till Meredith's _Shaving of
+Shagpal_ (1856) do we meet again Beckford's kinship with the
+East, and his gift for fantastic burlesque.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - GODWIN AND THE ROSICRUCIAN NOVEL.
+
+
+When Miss Austen was asked to write a historical romance
+"illustrative of the house of Coburg," she airily dismissed the
+suggestion, pleading mirthfully:
+
+     "I could not sit down seriously to write a serious
+     romance under any other motive than to save my life,
+     and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and
+     never relax into laughing at myself or at other people
+     I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the
+     first chapter."[73]
+
+If Godwin had been confronted with the same offer, he would have
+settled himself promptly to plot out a scheme, and within a few
+months a historical romance on the house of Coburg, accompanied
+perchance by a preface setting forth the evils of monarchy, would
+have been in the hands of the publisher. Unlike Miss Austen,
+Godwin had neither a sense of humour nor a fastidious artistic
+conscience to save him from undertaking incongruous tasks. He
+seems never even to have suspected the humour of life, and would
+have perceived nothing ludicrous in the spectacle of the author
+of _Political Justice_ embarking on such a piece of work. Those
+disquieting flashes of self-revelation that more imaginative men
+catch in the mirror of their own minds and that awaken sometimes
+laughter and sometimes tears, never disturbed Godwin's serenity.
+He brooded earnestly over his speculations, quietly ignoring
+inconvenient facts and never shrinking from absurd conclusions.
+In theory he aimed at disorganising the whole of human society,
+yet in actual life he was content to live unobtrusively,
+publishing harmless books for children; and though he abhorred
+the principle of aristocracy, he did not scruple to accept a
+sinecure from government through Lord Grey. Notwithstanding his
+stolid inconsistency and his deficiency in humour, Godwin is a
+figure whom it is impossible to ignore or to despise. He was not
+a frothy orator who made his appeal to the masses, but the leader
+of the trained thinkers of the revolutionary party, a political
+rebel who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the
+manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable
+and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the
+futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the
+aridity of his style. His _Political Justice_ remains,
+nevertheless, a lucidly written, well-ordered piece of
+intellectual reasoning. Shelley spoke of Godwin's _Mandeville_ in
+the same breath with Plato's _Symposium_[74] and the ideas
+expressed in _Political Justice_ inspired him to write not merely
+_Queen Mab_ but the _Revolt of Islam_ and _Prometheus Unbound_.
+Godwin's plea for the freedom of the individual and his belief in
+the perfectibility of man through reason had a far-reaching
+effect that cannot be readily estimated, but, as his theories
+only concern us here in so far as they affect two of his novels,
+it is unnecessary to pursue the trail of his influence further.
+
+That the readers of fiction in the last decade of the eighteenth
+century eagerly desired the mysterious and the terrible, Mrs.
+Radcliffe's widespread popularity proved unmistakably. To satisfy
+this craving, Godwin, who was ever on the alert to discover a
+subject which promised swift and adequate financial return,
+turned to novel-writing, and supplied a tale of mystery, _The
+Adventures of Caleb Williams_ (1794), and a supernatural,
+historical romance, _St. Leon_ (1799). As he was a political
+philosopher by nature and a novelist only by profession, he
+artfully inveigled into his romances the theories he wished to
+promote. The second title of _Caleb Williams_ is significant.
+_Things As They Are_ to Godwin's mind was synonymous with "things
+as they ought not to be." He frankly asserts: "_Caleb Williams_
+was the offspring of that temper of mind in which the composition
+of my _Political Justice_ left me"[75]--a guileless confession
+that may well have deterred many readers who recoil shuddering
+from political treatises decked out in the guise of fiction. But
+alarm is needless; for, although _Caleb Williams_ attempts to
+reveal the oppressions that a poor man may endure under existing
+conditions, and the perversion of the character of an aristocrat
+through the "poison of chivalry," the story may be enjoyed for
+its own sake. We can read it, if we so desire, purely for the
+excitement of the plot, and quietly ignore the underlying
+theories, just as it is possible to enjoy Spenser's sensuous
+imagery without troubling about his allegorical meaning. The
+secret of Godwin's power seems to be that he himself was so
+completely fascinated by the intricate structure of his story
+that he succeeds in absorbing the attention of his readers. He
+bestowed infinite pains on the composition of _Caleb Williams_,
+and conceived the lofty hope that it "would constitute an epoch
+in the mind of every reader."[76] A friend to whom he submitted
+two-thirds of his manuscript advised him to throw it into the
+fire and so safeguard his reputation. The result of this
+criticism on a character less determined or less phlegmatic than
+Godwin's would have been a violent reaction from hope to despair.
+But Godwin, who seems to have been independent of external
+stimulus, was not easily startled from his projects, and plodded
+steadily forward until his story was complete. He would have
+scorned not to execute what his mind had conceived. Godwin's
+businesslike method of planning the story backwards has been
+adopted by Conan Doyle and other writers of the detective story.
+The deliberate, careful analysis of his mode of procedure, so
+characteristic of his mind and temper, is full of interest:
+
+     "I bent myself to the conception of a series of
+     adventures of flight and pursuit: the fugitive in
+     perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the
+     worst calamities and the pursuer by his ingenuity and
+     resources keeping the victim in a state of the most
+     fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume.
+     I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and
+     impressive situation adequate to account for the
+     impulse that the pursuer should feel incessantly to
+     alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable
+     resolution never to allow him the least interval of
+     peace and security. This I apprehended could best be
+     effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of
+     which the innocent victim should be impelled by an
+     unconquerable spirit of curiosity. The murderer would
+     thus have a sufficient motive to persecute the unhappy
+     discoverer that he might deprive him of peace,
+     character and credit, and have him for ever in his
+     power. This constituted the outline of my second
+     volume... To account for the fearful events of the
+     third it was necessary that the pursuer should be
+     invested with every advantage of fortune, with a
+     resolution that nothing could defeat or baffle and with
+     extraordinary resources of intellect. Nor could my
+     purpose of giving an overpowering interest to my tale
+     be answered without his appearing to have been
+     originally endowed with a mighty store of amiable
+     dispositions and virtues, so that his being driven to
+     the first act of murder should be judged worthy of the
+     deepest regret, and should be seen in some measure to
+     have arisen out of his virtues themselves. It was
+     necessary to make him ... the tenant of an atmosphere
+     of romance, so that every reader should feel prompted
+     almost to worship him for his high qualities. Here were
+     ample materials for a first volume."[77]
+
+Godwin hoped that an "entire unity of plot" would be the
+infallible result of this ingenious method of constructing his
+story, and only wrote in a high state of excitement when the
+"afflatus" was upon him. So far as we may judge from his
+description, he seems to have realised his story first as a
+complex psychological situation, not as a series of disconnected
+pictures. He thought in abstractions not in visual images, and he
+had next to make his abstractions concrete by inventing figures
+whose actions should be the result of the mental and moral
+conflict he had conceived. Godwin's attitude to his art forms a
+striking contrast to that of Mrs. Radcliffe. She has her set of
+marionettes, appropriately adorned, ready to move hither and
+thither across her picturesque background as soon as she has
+deftly manipulated the machinery which is to set them in motion.
+Godwin, on the other hand, first constructs his machinery, and
+afterwards, with laborious effort, carves the figures who are to
+be attached to the wires. He cares little for costume or setting,
+but much for the complicated mechanism that controls the destiny
+of his characters. The effect of this difference in method is
+that we soon forget the details of Mrs. Radcliffe's plots, but
+remember isolated pictures. After reading _Caleb Williams_ we
+recollect the outline of the story in so far as it relates to the
+psychology of Falkland and his secretary; but of the actual
+scenes and people only vague images drift through our memory.
+Godwin's point of view was not that of an artist but of a
+scientist, who, after patiently investigating and analysing
+mental and emotional phenomena, chose to embody his results in
+the form of a novel. He spared no pains to make his narrative
+arresting and convincing. The story is told by Caleb Williams
+himself, who, in describing his adventures, revives the passions
+and emotions that had stirred him in the past. By this device
+Godwin trusted to lend energy and vitality to his story.
+
+Caleb Williams, a raw country youth, becomes secretary to
+Falkland, a benevolent country gentleman, who has come to settle
+in England after spending some years in Italy. Collins, the
+steward, tells Williams his patron's history. Falkland has always
+been renowned for the nobility of his character. In Italy, where
+he inspired the love and devotion of an Italian lady, he avoided,
+by "magnanimity," a duel with her lover. On Falkland's return to
+England, Tyrrel, a brutal squire who was jealous of his
+popularity, conceived a violent hatred against him. When Miss
+Melville, Tyrrel's ill-used ward, fell in love with Falkland, who
+had rescued her from a fire, her guardian sought to marry her to
+a boorish, brutal farm-labourer. Though Falkland's timely
+intervention saved her in this crisis, the girl eventually died
+as the result of Tyrrel's cruelty. As she was the victim of
+tyranny, Falkland felt it his duty at a public assembly to
+denounce Tyrrel as her murderer. The squire retaliated by making
+a personal assault on his antagonist. As Falkland "had perceived
+the nullity of all expostulation with Mr. Tyrrel," and as
+duelling according to the Godwinian principles was "the vilest of
+all egotism," he was deprived of the natural satisfaction of
+meeting his assailant in physical or even mental combat. Yet "he
+was too deeply pervaded with the idle and groundless romances of
+chivalry ever to forget the situation"--as Godwin seems to think
+a "man of reason" might have done in these circumstances. Tyrrel
+was stabbed in the dark, and Falkland, on whom suspicion
+naturally fell, was tried, but eventually acquitted without a
+stain on his character. Two men--a father and son called
+Hawkins--whom Falkland had befriended against the overbearing
+Tyrrel, were condemned and executed for the crime. This is the
+state of affairs when Caleb Williams enters Falkland's service
+and takes up the thread of the narrative. On hearing the story of
+the murder, Williams, who has been perplexed by the gloomy moods
+of his master, allows his suspicions to rest on Falkland, and to
+gratify his overmastering passion of curiosity determines to spy
+incessantly until he has solved the problem. One day, after
+having heard a groan of anguish, Williams peers through the
+half-open door of a closet, and catches sight of Falkland in the
+act of opening the lid of a chest. This incident fans his
+smouldering curiosity into flame, and he is soon after detected
+by his master in an attempt to break open the chest in the
+"Bluebeard's chamber." Not without cause, Falkland is furiously
+angry, but for some inexplicable reason confesses to the murder,
+at the same time expressing his passionate determination at all
+costs to preserve his reputation. He is tortured, not by remorse
+for his crime, but by the fear of being found out, and seeks to
+terrorise Williams into silence by declaring:
+
+     "To gratify a foolishly inquisitive humour you have
+     sold yourself. You shall continue in my service, but
+     can never share my affection. If ever an unguarded word
+     escape from your lips, if ever you excite my jealousy
+     or suspicion, expect to pay for it by your death or
+     worse."
+
+From this moment Williams is helpless. Turn where he will, the
+toils of Falkland encompass him. Forester, Falkland's
+half-brother, tries to persuade Williams to enter his service.
+Williams endeavours to flee from his master, who prevents his
+escape by accusing him, in the presence of Forester, of stealing
+some jewellery and bank-notes which have disappeared in the
+confusion arising from an alarm of fire. The plunder has been
+placed in Williams' boxes, and the evidence against him is
+overwhelming. He is imprisoned, and the sordid horror of his life
+in the cells gives Godwin an opportunity of showing "how man
+becomes the destroyer of man." He escapes, and is sheltered by a
+gang of thieves, whose leader, Raymond, a Godwinian theorist,
+listens with eager sympathy to his tale, which he regards as
+"only one fresh instance of the tyranny and perfidiousness
+exercised by the powerful members of the community against those
+who are less privileged than themselves." When a reward is
+offered for the capture of Williams, the thieves are persuaded
+that they must not deliver the lamb to the wolf. After an old
+hag, whose animosity he has aroused, has made a bloodthirsty
+attack on him with a hatchet, Williams feels obliged to leave
+their habitation "abruptly without leave-taking." He then assumes
+beggar's attire and an Irish brogue, but is soon compelled to
+seek a fresh disguise. In Wales as in London, he comes across
+someone who has known Falkland, and is reviled for his treachery
+to so noble a master, and cast forth with ignominy. He discovers
+that Falkland has hired an unscrupulous villain, Gines, to follow
+him from place to place, blackening his reputation. Finally
+desperation drives him to accuse Falkland openly, though, after
+doing so, he praises the murderer, and loathes himself for his
+betrayal:
+
+"Mr. Falkland is of a noble nature ... a man worthy of affection
+and kindness ... I am myself the basest and most odious of
+mankind."
+
+The inexorable persecutor in return cries at last:
+
+     "Williams, you have conquered! I see too late the
+     greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it
+     is to my fault and not yours that I owe my ruin ... I
+     am the most execrable of all villains... As reputation
+     was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that
+     death and infamy must seize me together."
+
+Three days later Falkland dies, but instead of experiencing
+relief at the death of his persecutor, Williams becomes the
+victim of remorse, regarding himself as the murderer of a noble
+spirit, who had been inevitably ruined by the corruption of human
+society:
+
+"Thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth,
+and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to
+thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
+madness."
+
+At the conclusion of the story, Godwin has not succeeded in
+making his moral very clear. The "wicked aristocrat" who figures
+in the preface as "carrying into private life the execrable
+principles of kings and ministers" emerges at last almost as a
+saintly figure, who through a false notion of honour has
+unfortunately become the victim of a brutal squire. But, if the
+story does not "rouse men to a sense of the evils of slavery," or
+"constitute an epoch in the mind of every reader," it has
+compensating merits and may be read with unfailing interest
+either as a study of morbid psychology or as a spirited detective
+story. Godwin's originality in his dissection of human motive has
+hardly yet been sufficiently emphasised, perhaps because he is so
+scrupulous in acknowledging literary debts.[78] From Mrs.
+Radcliffe, whose _Romance of the Forest_ was published the year
+before _Caleb Williams_, he borrowed the mysterious chest, the
+nature of whose contents is hinted at but never actually
+disclosed; but Godwin was no wizard, and had neither the gift nor
+the inclination to conjure with Gothic properties. In leaving
+imperfectly explained the incident of the discovery of the heart
+in _The Monastery_, Scott shielded himself behind Godwin's Iron
+Chest, which gave its name to Colman's drama.[79] Godwin's
+peculiar interest was in criminal psychology, and he concentrates
+on the dramatic conflict between the murderer and the detective.
+An unusual turn is given to the story by the fact that the
+criminal is the pursuer instead of the pursued. Godwin intended
+later in life to write a romance based on the story of Eugene
+Aram, the philosophical murderer; and his careful notes on the
+scheme are said to have been utilised by his friend, Bulwer
+Lytton, in his novel of that name.[80] _Caleb Williams_ helped to
+popularise the criminal in fiction, and _Paul Clifford_, the
+story of the chivalrous highwayman, is one of its literary
+descendants.
+
+Godwin was a pioneer breaking new ground in fiction; and, as he
+was a man of talent rather than of genius, it is idle to expect
+perfection of workmanship. The story is full of improbabilities,
+but they are described in so matter-of-fact a style that we
+"soberly acquiesce." After an hour of Godwin's grave society an
+effervescent sense of humour subsides. A mind open to suggestion
+is soon infected by his imperturbable seriousness, which
+effectually stills "obstinate questionings." Even the brigands
+who live with their philanthropic leader are accepted without
+demur. After all, Raymond is only Robin Hood turned political
+philosopher. The ingenious resources of _Caleb Williams_ when he
+strives to elude his pursuer are part of the legitimate
+stock-in-trade of the hero of a novel of adventure. He is not as
+other men are, and comes through perilous escapades with
+miraculous success. It is at first difficult to see why Falkland
+does not realise that his plan of ceaselessly harassing his
+victim is likely to force Williams to accuse him publicly, but
+gradually we begin to regard his mental obliquity as one of the
+decrees of fate. Falkland's obtuseness is of the same nature as
+that of the sleeper who undertakes a voyage to Australia to
+deliver a letter which anywhere but in a dream would have been
+dropped in the nearest pillar-box. The obvious solution that
+would occur to a waking mind is persistently evasive. The plot of
+_Caleb Williams_ hinges on an improbability, but so does that of
+_King Lear_; and if it had not been for Falkland's stupidity, the
+story would have ended with the first volume. Godwin excels in
+the analysis of mental conditions, but fails when he attempts to
+transmute passionate feeling into words. We are conscious that he
+is a cold-blooded spectator _ab extra_ striving to describe what
+he has never felt for himself. It is not even "emotion
+recollected in tranquillity." Men of this world, who are carried
+away by scorn and anger, utter their feelings simply and
+directly. Godwin's characters pause to cull their words from
+dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that
+Williams has basely robbed his master is astonishingly elegant:
+"Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the
+opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed
+from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81]
+The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which
+was meant almost to annihilate Caleb Williams, lies effectually
+concealed behind a blinding veil of rhetoric. When he has leisure
+to adorn, he translates the simplest, most obvious reflections
+into the "jargon" of political philosophy, but, driven
+impetuously forward by the excitement of his theme, he throws off
+jerky, spasmodic sentences containing but a single clause. His
+style is a curious mixture of these two manners.
+
+The aim of _St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century_, is to
+show that "boundless wealth, freedom from disease, weakness and
+death are as nothing in the scale against domestic affection and
+the charities of private life."[82] For four years Godwin had
+desired to modify what he had said on the subject of private
+affections in _Political Justice_, while he asserted his
+conviction of the general truth of his system. Godwin had argued
+that private affections resulted in partiality, and therefore
+injustice.[83] If a house were on fire, reason would urge a man
+to save Fenelon in preference to his valet; but if the rescuer
+chanced to be the brother or father of the valet, private feeling
+would intervene, unreasonably urging him to save his relative and
+abandon Fenelon. Lest he should be regarded as a wrecker of
+homes, Godwin wished to show that domestic happiness should not
+be despised by the man of reason. Instead of expressing his views
+on this subject in a succinct pamphlet, Godwin, elated by the
+success of _Caleb Williams_, decided to embody them in the form
+of a novel. He at first despaired of finding a theme so rich in
+interest as that of his first novel, but ultimately decided that
+"by mixing human feelings and passions with incredible situations
+he might conciliate the patience even of the severest
+judges."[84] The phrase, "mixing human feelings," betrays in a
+flash Godwin's mechanical method of constructing a story. He
+makes no pretence that _St. Leon_ grew naturally as a work of
+art. He imposed upon himself an unsuitable task, and, though he
+doggedly accomplished it, the result is dull and laboured.
+
+The plot of _St. Leon_ was suggested by Dr. John Campbell's
+_Hermippus Redivivus_,[85] and centres round the theories of the
+Rosicrucians. The first volume describes the early life of the
+knight St. Leon, his soldiering, his dissipations, and his happy
+marriage to Marguerite, whose character is said to have been
+modelled on that of Mary Wollstonecraft. In Paris he is tempted
+into extravagance and into playing for high stakes, with the
+result that he retires to Switzerland the "prey of poverty and
+remorse." Misfortunes pursue him for some time, but he at last
+enjoys six peaceful years, at the end of which he is visited by a
+mysterious old man, whom he conceals in a summer-house, and whom
+he refuses to betray to the Inquisitors in search of him. In
+return the old man reveals to him the secret of the elixir vitae,
+and of the philosopher's stone. Marguerite becomes suspicious of
+the source of her husband's wealth: "For a soldier you present me
+with a projector and a chemist, a cold-blooded mortal raking in
+the ashes of a crucible for a selfish and solitary advantage."
+His son, Charles, unable to endure the aspersions cast upon his
+father's honour during their travels together in Germany, deserts
+him. St. Leon is imprisoned because he cannot account for the
+death of the stranger and for his own sudden acquisition of
+wealth, but contrives his escape by bribing the jailor. He
+travels to Italy, but is unable to escape from misfortune.
+Suspected of black magic, he becomes an object of hatred to the
+inhabitants of the town where he lives. His house is burnt down,
+his servant and his favourite dog are killed, and he soon hears
+of the death of his unhappy wife. He is imprisoned in the
+dungeons of the Inquisition, but escapes, and takes refuge with a
+Jew, whom he compels to shelter him, until another dose of the
+elixir restores his youthful appearance, and he sets forth again,
+this time disguised as a wealthy Spanish cavalier. He visits his
+own daughters, representing himself as the executor under their
+father's will. He decides to devote himself to the service of
+others, and is revered as the saviour of Hungary, until
+disaffection, caused by a shortage of food, renders him
+unpopular. He makes a friend of Bethlem Gabor, whose wife and
+children have been savagely murdered by a band of marauders. St.
+Leon, we are told, "found an inexhaustible and indescribable
+pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul."
+But Gabor soon conceives a bitter hatred against him, and entraps
+him in a subterranean vault, where he languishes for many months,
+refusing to yield up his secret. At length the castle is
+besieged, and Gabor before his death gives St. Leon his liberty.
+The leader of the expedition proves to be St. Leon's long-lost
+son, Charles, who has assumed the name of De Damville. St. Leon,
+without at first revealing his identity, cultivates the
+friendship of his son, but Charles, on learning of his dealings
+with the supernatural, repudiates his father. Finally the
+marriage of his son to Pandora proves to St. Leon that despite
+his misfortunes "there is something in this world worth living
+for."
+
+The Inquisition scenes of _St. Leon_ were undoubtedly coloured
+faintly by those of Lewis's _Monk_ (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's
+_Italian_ (1798); but it is characteristic of Godwin that instead
+of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses
+rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the
+Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the
+philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye
+so familiar to readers of the novel of terror: "You wished to
+escape from its penetrating power, but you had not the strength
+to move. I began to feel as if it were some mysterious and
+superior being in human form;"[86] but apart from this trait he
+is not an impressive figure. The only character who would have
+felt perfectly at home in the realm of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk"
+Lewis is Bethlem Gabor, who appears for the first time in the
+fourth volume of _St. Leon_. He is akin to Schedoni and his
+compeers in his love of solitude, his independence of
+companionship, and his superhuman aspect, but he is a figure who
+inspires awe and pity as well as terror. Beside this personage
+the other characters pale into insignificance:
+
+     "He was more than six feet in stature ... and he was
+     built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain
+     the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like
+     thunder ... his head and chin were clothed with a thick
+     and shaggy hair, in colour a dead-black. He had
+     suffered considerable mutilation in the services
+     through which he had passed ... Bethlem Gabor, though
+     universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of
+     a soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of
+     reserve and taciturnity... Seldom did he allow himself
+     to open his thoughts but when he did, Great God! what
+     supernatural eloquence seemed to inspire and enshroud
+     him... Bethlem Gabor's was a soul that soared to a
+     sightless distance above the sphere of pity."[87]
+
+The superstitions of bygone ages, which had fired the imagination
+of so many writers of romance, left Godwin cold. He was mildly
+interested in the supernatural as affording insight into the
+"credulity of the human mind," and even compiled a treatise on
+_The Lives of the Necromancers_ (1834).[88] But the hints and
+suggestions, the gloom, the weird lights and shades which help to
+create that romantic atmosphere amid which the alchemist's dream
+seems possible of realisation are entirely lacking in Godwin's
+story. He displays everything in a high light. The transference
+of the gifts takes place not in the darkness of a subterranean
+vault, but in the calm light of a summer evening. No unearthly
+groans, no phosphorescent lights enhance the horror and mystery
+of the scene. Godwin is coolly indifferent to historical
+accuracy, and fails to transport us back far beyond the end of
+the eighteenth century. Rousseau's theories were apparently
+disseminated widely in 1525. _St. Leon_ is remembered now rather
+for its position in the history of the novel than for any
+intrinsic charm. Godwin was the first to embody in a romance the
+ideas of the Rosicrucians which inspired Bulwer Lytton's _Zicci_,
+_Zanoni_ and _A Strange Story_.
+
+_St. Leon_ was travestied, the year after it appeared, in a work
+called _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_,
+by "Count Reginald de St. Leon," which gives a scathing survey of
+the plot, with all its improbabilities exposed. The bombastic
+style of _St. Leon_ is imitated and only slightly exaggerated,
+and the author finally satirises Godwin bitterly:
+
+     "Thinking from my political writings that I was a good
+     hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing.
+     These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I
+     had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine
+     high-sounding periods would assist to make the
+     unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious
+     reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I could invent."[89]
+
+The parodist takes Godwin almost as seriously as he took himself,
+and his attack is needlessly savage. Godwin's political opinions
+may account for the brutality of his assailant who doubtless
+belonged to the other camp. When Godwin attempts the supernatural
+in his other novels, he always fails to create an atmosphere of
+mystery. The apparition in _Cloudesley_ appears, fades, and
+reappears in a manner so undignified as to remind us of the
+Cheshire Cat in _Alice in Wonderland_:
+
+     "I suddenly saw my brother's face looking out from
+     among the trees as I passed. I saw the features as
+     distinctly as if the meridian sun had beamed upon
+     them... It was by degrees that the features showed
+     themselves thus out of what had been a formless shadow.
+     I gazed upon it intently. Presently it faded away by as
+     insensible degrees as those by which it had become
+     agonisingly clear. After a short time it returned."
+
+Godwin describes a ghost as deliberately and exactly as he would
+describe a house, and his delineation causes not the faintest
+tremor. Having little imagination himself, he leaves nothing to
+the imagination of the reader. In his _Lives of the
+Necromancers_, he shows that he is interested in discovering the
+origin of a belief in natural magic; but the life stories of the
+magicians suggest no romantic pictures to his imagination. In
+dealing with the mysterious and the uncanny, Godwin was
+attempting something alien to his mind and temper.
+
+In Godwin's _St. Leon_ the elixir of life is quietly bestowed on
+the hero in a summer-house in his own garden. The poet, Thomas
+Moore, in his romance, _The Epicurean_ (1827), sends forth a
+Greek adventurer to seek it in the secret depths of the catacombs
+beneath the pyramids of Egypt. He originally intended to tell his
+story in verse, but after writing a fragment, _Alciphron_,
+abandoned this design and decided to begin again in prose. His
+story purports to be a translation of a recently discovered
+manuscript buried in the time of Diocletian. Inspired by a dream,
+in which an ancient and venerable man bids him seek the Nile if
+he wishes to discover the secret of eternal life, Alciphron, a
+young Epicurean philosopher of the second century, journeys to
+Egypt. At Memphis he falls in love with a beautiful priestess,
+Alethe, whom he follows into the catacombs. Bearing a glimmering
+lamp, he passes through a gallery, where the eyes of a row of
+corpses, buried upright, glare upon him, into a chasm peopled by
+pale, phantom-like forms. He braves the terrors of a blazing
+grove and of a dark stream haunted by shrieking spectres, and
+finds himself whirled round in chaos like a stone shot in a
+sling. Having at length passed safely through the initiation of
+Fire, Water and Air, he is welcomed into a valley of "unearthly
+sadness," with a bleak, dreary lake lit by a "ghostly glimmer of
+sunshine." He gazes with awe on the image of the god Osiris, who
+presides over the silent kingdom of the dead. Watching within the
+temple of Isis, he suddenly sees before him the priestess,
+Alethe, who guides him back to the realms of day. At the close of
+the story, after Alethe has been martyred for the Christian
+faith, Alciphron himself becomes a Christian.
+
+In _The Epicurean_, Moore shows a remarkable power of describing
+scenes of gloomy terror, which he throws into relief by
+occasional
+glimpses of light and splendour. The journey of Alciphron
+inevitably challenges comparison with that of _Vathek_, but the
+spirit of mockery that animates Beckford's story is wholly
+absent. Moore paints a theatrical panorama of effective scenes,
+but his figures are mere shadows.
+
+The miseries of an existence, prolonged far beyond the allotted
+span, are depicted not only in stories of the elixir of life, but
+in the legends centring round the Wandering Jew. Croly's
+_Salathiel_ (1829), like Eugene Sue's lengthy romance, _Le Juif
+Errant_, won fame in its own day, but is now forgotten. Some of
+Croly's descriptions, such as that of the burning trireme, have a
+certain dazzling magnificence, but the colouring is often crude
+and startling. The figure of the deathless Jew is apt to be lost
+amid the mazes of the author's rhetoric. The conception of a man
+doomed to wander eternally in expiation of a curse is in itself
+an arresting theme likely to attract a romantic writer, but the
+record of his adventures may easily become monotonous.
+
+The "novel of terror" has found few more ardent admirers than the
+youthful Shelley, who saw in it a way of escape from the harsh
+realities and dull routine of ordinary existence. From his
+childhood the world of ideas seems to have been at least as real
+and familiar to him as the material world. The fabulous beings of
+whom he talked to his young sisters--the Great Tortoise in
+Warnham Pond, the snake three hundred years old in the garden at
+Field Place, the grey-bearded alchemist in his garret[90]--had
+probably for him as much meaning and interest as the living
+people around him. Urged by a restless desire to evade the
+natural and encounter the supernatural, he wandered by night
+under the "perilous moonshine," haunted graveyards in the hope of
+"high talk with the departed dead," dabbled in chemical
+experiments and pored over ancient books of magic. It was to be
+expected that an imagination reaching out so eagerly towards the
+unknown should find refuge from the uncongenial life of Sion
+House School in the soul-stirring region of romance. Transported
+by sixpenny "blue books" and the many volumed novels in the
+Brentford circulating library, Shelley's imagination fled
+joyously to that land of unlikelihood, where the earth yawns with
+bandits' caverns inhabited by desperadoes with bloody daggers,
+where the air continually resounds with the shrieks and groans of
+melancholy spectres, and where the pale moon ever gleams on dark
+and dreadful deeds. He had reached that stage of human
+development when fairies, elves, witches and dragons begin to
+lose their charm, when the gentle quiver of fear excited by an
+ogre, who is inevitably doomed to be slain at the last, no longer
+suffices. At the approach of adolescence with its surging
+emotions and quickening intellectual life, there awakens a demand
+for more thrilling incidents, for wilder passions and more
+desperate crimes, and it is at this period that the "novel of
+terror" is likely to make its strongest appeal. Youth, with its
+inexperience, is seldom tempted to bring fiction to the test of
+reality, or to scorn it on the ground of its improbability, and
+we may be sure that Shelley and his cousin, Medwin, as they hung
+spellbound over such treasures as _The Midnight Groan, The
+Mysterious Freebooter_, or _Subterranean Horrors_ did not pause
+to consider whether the characters and adventures were true to
+life. They desired, indeed, not to criticise but to create, and
+in the winter of 1809-1810 united to produce a terrific romance,
+with the title _Nightmare_, in which a gigantic and hideous witch
+played a prominent part. After reading Schubert's _Der Ewige
+Jude_, they began a narrative poem dealing with the legend of the
+Wandering Jew,[91] who lingered in Shelley's imagination in after
+years, and whom he introduced into _Queen Mab, Prometheus
+Unbound_, and _Hellas_. The grim and ghastly legends included in
+"Monk" Lewis's _Tales of Terror_ (1799) and _Tales of Wonder_
+(1801) fascinated Shelley;[92] and the suggestive titles
+_Revenge_;[93] _Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon_;[94] _St. Edmund's
+Eve_;[95] _The Triumph of Conscience_ from the _Poems by Victor
+and Cazire_ (1810), and _The Spectral Horseman_ from _The
+Posthumous Poems of Margaret Nicholson_ (1810), all prove his
+preoccupation with the supernatural. That Shelley's enthusiasm
+for the gruesome and uncanny was not merely morbid and
+hysterical, the mad, schoolboyish letter, written while he was in
+the throes of composing _St. Irvyne_, is sufficient indication.
+In a mood of grotesque fantasy and wild exhilaration, Shelley
+invites his friend Graham to Field Place. The postscript is in
+his handwriting, but is signed by his sister Elizabeth:
+
+     "The avenue is composed of vegetable substances moulded
+     in the form of trees called by the multitude Elm trees.
+     Stalk along the road towards them and mind and keep
+     yourself concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained
+     stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the
+     lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons
+     and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the
+     grave, that occasionally may blast your straining
+     eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction
+     should yawn beneath your feet.
+
+     "Think of all this at the frightful hour of midnight,
+     when the Hell-demon leans over your sleeping form, and
+     inspires those thoughts which eventually will lead you
+     to the gates of destruction... The fiend of the Sussex
+     solitudes shrieked in the wilderness at midnight--he
+     thirsts for thy detestable gore, impious Fergus. But
+     the day of retribution will arrive. H + D=Hell
+     Devil."[96]
+
+That Shelley could jest thus lightly in the mock-terrific vein
+shows that his mind was fundamentally sane and well-balanced, and
+that he only regarded "fiendmongering" as a pleasantly thrilling
+diversion. His _Zastrozzi_ (1810) and _St. Irvyne_ (1811) were
+probably written with the same zest and spirit as his harrowing
+letter to "impious Fergus." They are the outcome of a boyish
+ambition to practise the art of freezing the blood, and their
+composition was a source of pride and delight to their author. A
+letter to Peacock (Nov. 9, 1818) from Italy re-echoes the note of
+child-like enjoyment in weaving romances:
+
+"We went to see heaven knows how many more palaces--Ranuzzi,
+Marriscalchi, Aldobrandi. If you want Italian names for any
+purpose, here they are; I should be glad of them if I was writing
+a novel."
+
+_Zastrozzi_ was published in April, 1810, while Shelley was still
+at Eton, and with the L40 paid for the romance, he is said to
+have given a banquet to eight of his friends. Though the story is
+little more than a _rechauffe_ of previous tales of terror, it
+evidently attained some measure of popularity. It was reprinted
+in _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ in 1839. Like Godwin,
+Shelley contrived to smuggle a little contraband theory into his
+novels, but his stock-in-trade is mainly that of the
+terrormongers. The book to which Shelley was chiefly indebted was
+_Zofloya or the Moor_ (1806), by the notorious Charlotte Dacre or
+"Rosa Matilda," but there are many reminiscences of Mrs.
+Radcliffe and of "Monk" Lewis. The sources of _Zastrozzi_ and
+_St. Irvyne_ have been investigated in the _Modern Language
+Review_ (Jan. 1912), by Mr. A. M. D. Hughes, who gives a complete
+analysis of the plot of _Zofloya_, and indicates many parallels
+with Shelley's novels. The heroine of _Zofloya_ is clearly a
+lineal descendant of Lewis's Matilda, though Victoria di
+Loredani, with all her vices, never actually degenerates into a
+fiend. Victoria, it need hardly be stated, is nobly born, but she
+has been brought up amid frivolous society by a worthless mother,
+and: "The wildest passions predominated in her bosom; to gratify
+them she possessed an unshrinking, relentless soul that would not
+startle at the darkest crime."
+
+Zofloya, who spurs her on, is the Devil himself. The plot is
+highly melodramatic, and contains a headlong flight, an
+earthquake and several violent deaths. In _Zastrozzi_, Shelley
+draws upon the characters and incidents of this story very
+freely. His lack of originality is so obvious as to need no
+comment. The very names he chooses are borrowed. Julia is the
+name of the pensive heroine in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Sicilian
+Romance_. Matilda carries with it ugly memories of the lady in
+Lewis's _Monk_; Verezzi occurs in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_;
+Zastrozzi is formed by prefixing an extra syllable to the name
+Strozzi from _Zofloya_. The incidents are those which happen
+every day in the realm of terror. The villain, the hero, the
+melancholy heroine, and her artful rival, develop no new traits,
+but act strictly in accordance with tradition. They never
+infringe the rigid code of manners and morals laid down for them
+by previous generations. The scenery is invariably appropriate as
+a setting to the incidents, and even the weather may be relied on
+to act in a thoroughly conventional manner. The characters are
+remarkable for their violent emotions and their marvellously
+expressive eyes. When Verezzi's senses are "chilled with the
+frigorific torpidity of despair," his eyes "roll horribly in
+their sockets." When "direst revenge swallows up every other
+feeling" in the soul of Matilda, her eyes "scintillate with a
+fiend-like expression." Incidents follow one another with a wild
+and stupefying rapidity. Every moment is a crisis. The style is
+startlingly abrupt, and the short, disconnected paragraphs are
+fired off like so many pistol shots. The sequence of events is
+mystifying--Zastrozzi's motive for persecuting Verezzi is darkly
+concealed until the end of the story, for reasons known only to
+writers of the novel of terror. Shelley's romance, in short, is
+no better and perhaps even worse than that of the other disciples
+of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis.
+
+_St. Irvyne: or the Rosicrucian_ (1811), though it was written by
+a "Gentleman of the University of Oxford" and not by a schoolboy,
+shows slight advance on _Zastrozzi_ either in matter or manner.
+The plot indeed is more bewildering and baffling than that of
+_Zastrozzi_. The action of the story is double and alternate, the
+scene shifts from place to place, and the characters appear and
+disappear in an unaccountable and disconcerting fashion. This
+time Godwin's _St. Leon_ has to be added to the list of Shelley's
+sources. Ginotti, whose name is stolen from a brigand in
+_Zofloya_, is not the devil but one of his sworn henchmen, who
+has discovered and tasted the elixir vitae. Like Zofloya, he is
+surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery. So that he may himself
+die, Ginotti, like the old stranger in _St. Leon_, is anxious to
+impart his secret to another. He chooses as his victim,
+Wolfstein, a young noble who, like Leonardo in _Zofloya_, has
+allied himself with a band of brigands. The bandit, Ginotti, aids
+Wolfstein to escape with a beautiful captive maiden, for whom
+Shelley adopts the name Megalena from _Zofloya_. While the lovers
+are in Genoa, Megalena, discovering Wolfstein with a lady named
+Olympia, whose "character has been ruined by a false system of
+education," makes him promise to murder her rival. In Olympia's
+bedchamber Wolfstein's hand is stayed for a moment by the sight
+of her beauty--a picture which recalls the powerful scene in Mrs.
+Radcliffe's _Italian_, when Schedoni bends over the sleeping
+Ellena. After Olympia's suicide, Megalena and Wolfstein flee
+together from Genoa. In the tale of terror, as in the modern
+film-play, a flight of some kind is almost indispensable.
+Ginotti, whose habit of disappearing and reappearing reminds us
+of the ghostly monk in the ruins of Paluzzi, tells his history to
+Wolfstein, and, at the destined hour, bestows the prescription
+for the elixir, and appoints a meeting in St. Irvyne's abbey,
+where Wolfstein stumbles over the corpse of Megalena. Wolfstein
+refuses to deny God. Both Ginotti and his victim are blasted by
+lightning, amid which the "frightful prince of terror, borne on
+the pinions of hell's sulphurous whirlwind," stands before them.
+
+     "On a sudden Ginotti's frame, mouldered to a gigantic
+     skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glared in his
+     eyeless sockets. Blackened in terrible convulsions,
+     Wolfstein expired; over him had the power of hell no
+     influence. Yes, endless existence is thine, Ginotti--a
+     dateless and hopeless eternity of horror."
+
+Interspersed with this somewhat inconsequent story are the
+adventures of Eloise, who is first introduced on her return home,
+disconsolate, to a ruined abbey. We are given to understand that
+the story is to unfold the misfortunes which have led to her
+downfall, but she is happily married ere the close. She
+accompanies her dying mother on a journey, as Emily in _The
+Mysteries of Udolpho_ accompanied her father, and meets a
+mysterious stranger, Nempere, at a lonely house, where they take
+refuge. Nempere proves to be a less estimable character than
+Valancourt, who fell to Emily's lot in similar circumstances. He
+sells her to an English noble, Mountfort, at whose house she
+meets Fitzeustace, who, like Vivaldi in _The Italian_, overhears
+her confession of love for himself. Nempere is killed in a duel
+by Mountfort. At the close, Shelley states abruptly that Nempere
+is Ginotti, and Eloise is Wolfstein's sister. In springing a
+secret upon us suddenly on the last page, Shelley was probably
+emulating Lewis's _Bravo of Venice_; but the conclusion, which is
+intended to forge a connecting link between the tales, is
+unsatisfying. It is not surprising that the publisher, Stockdale,
+demanded some further elucidation of the mystery. Ginotti,
+apparently, dies twice, and Shelley's letters fail to solve the
+problem. He wrote to Stockdale: "Ginotti, as you will see, did
+_not_ die by Wolfstein's hand, but by the influence of that
+natural magic, which, when the secret was imparted to the latter,
+destroyed him."[97] A few days later he wrote again, evidently in
+reply to further questions: "On a re-examination you will
+perceive that Mountfort physically did kill Ginotti, which must
+appear from the latter's paleness." The truth seems to be that
+Shelley was weary of his puppets, and had no desire to extricate
+them from the tangle in which they were involved, though he was
+impatient to see _St. Irvyne_ in print, and spoke hopefully of
+its "selling mechanically to the circulating libraries."
+
+Shelley took advantage of the privilege of writers of romance to
+palm off on the public some of his earliest efforts at
+versification. These poems, distributed impartially among the
+various characters, are introduced with the same laborious
+artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though
+suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to
+scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed
+be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to
+night or to the moon, however profound her woes. Superhuman
+strength and courage is an endowment necessary to all who would
+dwell in the realms of terror and survive the fierce struggle for
+existence. Peacock, in _Nightmare Abbey_, paints the Shelley of
+1812 in Scythrop, who devours tragedies and German romances, and
+is troubled with a "passion for reforming the world." "He slept
+with _Horrid Mysteries_ under his pillow, and dreamed of
+venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight
+conventions in subterranean caves... He had a certain portion of
+mechanical genius which his romantic projects tended to develop.
+He constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and
+secret passages, that would have baffled the skill of the
+Parisian police." His bearing was that of a romantic villain: "He
+stalked about like the grand Inquisitor, and the servants flitted
+past him like familiars."
+
+Although Shelley outgrew his youthful taste for horrors, his
+early reading left traces on the imagery and diction of his
+poetry. There is an unusual profusion in his vocabulary of such
+words as ghosts, shades, charnel, tomb, torture, agony, etc., and
+supernatural similes occur readily to his mind. In _Alastor_ he
+compares himself to
+
+  "an inspired and desperate alchymist
+  Staking his very life on some dark hope,"
+
+and cries:
+
+  "O that the dream
+  Of dark magician in his visioned cave
+  Raking the cinders of a crucible
+  For life and power, even when his feeble hand
+  Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
+  Of this so lonely world."
+
+In the _Ode to the West Wind_ his memories of an older and finer
+kind of romance suggested the fantastic comparison of the dead
+leaves to
+
+  "ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,"
+
+and in _Prometheus Unbound_ Panthea sees
+
+  "unimaginable shapes
+  Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deeps."
+
+The poem _Ginevra_, which describes an enforced wedding and the
+death of the bride at the sight of her real lover, may well have
+been inspired by reading the romances of terror, where such
+events are an everyday occurrence. The gruesome descriptions in
+_The Revolt of Islam_, the decay of the garden in _The Sensitive
+Plant_, the tortures of Prometheus, all show how Shelley strove
+to work on the instinctive emotion of fear. In _The Cenci_ he
+touches the profoundest depths of human passion, and shows his
+power of finding words, terrible in their simple grandeur, for a
+soul in agony. In the tragedies of Shakespeare and of his
+followers--Ford, Webster and Tourneur--Shelley had heard the true
+language of anguish and despair. The futile, frenzied shrieking
+of Matilda and her kind is forgotten in the passionate nobility
+or fearful calm of the speeches of Beatrice Cenci.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to be
+expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published _The
+Italian_, Jane Austen had completed her _Northanger Abbey_,
+ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that
+for the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Mrs. Radcliffe received L500, and
+for _The Italian_ L800; while for the manuscript of _Northanger
+Abbey_, the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of
+L10, selling it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.
+The contrast in market value is significant. The publisher, who,
+it may be added, was not necessarily a literary critic, probably
+realised that if the mock romance were successful, its tendency
+would be to endanger the popularity of the prevailing mode in
+fiction. Hence for many years it was concealed as effectively as
+if it had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. Among Jane Austen's early unpublished
+writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and
+exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly
+romances"; but her spirited defence of the novelist's art in
+_Northanger Abbey_ is clear evidence that her raillery is
+directed not against fiction in general, but rather against such
+"horrid" stories as those included in the list supplied to
+Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the sweetest creatures
+in the world."
+
+It has sometimes been supposed that the more fantastic titles in
+this catalogue were figments of Jane Austen's imagination, but
+the identity of each of the seven stories may be established
+beyond question. Two of the stories--_The Necromancer of the
+Black Forest_, a translation from the German, and _The Castle of
+Wolfenbach_, by Mrs. Eliza Parsons (who was also responsible for
+_Mysterious Warnings_)--may still be read in _The Romancist and
+Novelist's Library_ (1839-1841), a treasure-hoard of forgotten
+fiction. _Clermont_ (1798) was published by Mrs. Regina Maria
+Roche, the authoress of _The Children of the Abbey_ (1798), a
+story almost as famous in its day as _Udolpho_. The author of
+_The Midnight Bell_ was one George Walker of Bath, whose record,
+like that of Miss Eleanor Sleath, who wrote the moving history of
+_The Orphan of the Rhine_ (1798) in four volumes, may be found in
+Watts' _Bibliotheca Britannica_. _Horrid Mysteries_, perhaps the
+least credible of the titles, was a translation from the German
+of the Marquis von Grosse by R. Will. Jane Austen's attack has no
+tinge of bitterness or malice. John Thorpe, who declared all
+novels, except _Tom Jones_ and _The Monk_, "the stupidest things
+in creation," admitted, when pressed by Catherine, that Mrs.
+Radcliffe's were "amusing enough" and "had some fun and nature in
+them"; and Henry Tilney, a better judge, owned frankly that he
+had "read all her works, and most of them with great pleasure."
+From this we may assume that Miss Austen herself was perhaps
+conscious of their charm as well as their absurdity.
+
+Sheridan's Lydia Languish (1775) and Colman's Polly Honeycombe
+(1777) were both demoralised by the follies of sentimental
+fiction, as Biddy Tipkin, in Steele's _Tender Husband_ (1705),
+had been by romances. It was Miss Austen's purpose in creating
+Catherine Morland to present a maiden bemused by Gothic romance:
+
+"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would
+have supposed her born to be a heroine." In almost every detail
+she is a refreshing contrast to the traditional type. Two
+long-lived conventions--the fragile mother, who dies at the
+heroine's birth, and the tyrannical father--are repudiated at the
+very outset; and Catherine is one of a family of seven. We cannot
+conceive that Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines even at the age of ten
+would "love nothing so well in the world as rolling down the
+green slope at the back of the house." Her accomplishments lack
+the brilliance and distinction of those of Adela and Julia, but,
+
+     "Though she could not write sonnets she brought herself
+     to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her
+     throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on
+     the pianoforte, she could listen to other people's
+     performances with very little fatigue. Her greatest
+     deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of
+     drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her
+     lover's profile, that she might be detected in the
+     design. There she fell miserably short of the true
+     heroic height...Not one started with rapturous wonder
+     on beholding her...nor was she once called a divinity
+     by anybody."
+
+She had no lover at the age of seventeen,
+
+     "because there was not a lord in the neighbourhood--not
+     even a baronet. There was not one family among their
+     acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy
+     accidentally found at their door--not one whose origin
+     was unknown."
+
+Nor is Catherine aided in her career by those "improbable
+events," so dear to romance, that serve to introduce a hero--a
+robber's attack, a tempest, or a carriage accident. With a sly
+glance at such dangerous characters as Lady Greystock in _The
+Children of the Abbey_ (1798), Miss Austen creates the inert, but
+good-natured Mrs. Alien as Catherine's chaperone in Bath:
+
+     "It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs.
+     Alien that the reader may be able to judge in what
+     manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the
+     general distress of the work and how she will probably
+     contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the
+     desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is
+     capable, whether by her imprudence, vulgarity or
+     jealousy--whether by intercepting her letters, ruining
+     her character or turning her out of doors."
+
+Amid all the diversions of the gay and beautiful city of Bath,
+Miss Austen does not lose sight entirely of her satirical aim,
+though she turns aside for a time. Catherine's confusion of mind
+is suggested with exquisite art in a single sentence. As she
+drives with John Thorpe she "meditates by turns on broken
+promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys
+and trapdoors." This prepares us for the delightful scene in
+which Tilney, on the way to the abbey, foretells what Catherine
+may expect on her arrival. The hall dimly lighted by the expiring
+embers of a wood fire, the deserted bedchamber "never used since
+some cousin or kin had died in it about twenty years before," the
+single lamp, the tapestry, the funereal bed, the broken lute, the
+ponderous chest, the secret door, the vaulted room, the rusty
+dagger, the cabinet of ebony and gold with its roll of
+manuscripts, prove his intimacy with _The Romance of the Forest_,
+as well as with _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. The black chest and
+the cabinet are there in startling fulfilment of his prophecies,
+and when, just as with beating heart Catherine is about to
+decipher the roll of paper she has discovered in the cabinet
+drawer, she accidentally extinguishes her candle:
+
+     "A lamp could not have expired with more awful
+     effect... Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled
+     the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden
+     fury, added fresh horror to the moment... Human nature
+     could support no more ... groping her way to the bed
+     she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
+     agony by creeping far beneath the clothes... The storm
+     still raged... Hour after hour passed away, and the
+     wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the
+     clocks in the house before the tempest subsided, and
+     she, unknowingly, fell fast asleep. She was awakened
+     the next morning at eight o'clock by the housemaid's
+     opening her window-shutter. She flew to the mysterious
+     manuscript, If the evidence of sight might be trusted
+     she held a washing bill in her hands ... she felt
+     humbled to the dust."
+
+Even this bitter humiliation does not sweep away the cobwebs of
+romance from Catherine's imaginative mind, but the dark
+suspicions she harbours about General Tilney are not altogether
+inexplicable. He is so much less natural and so much more stagey
+than the other characters that he might reasonably be expected to
+dabble in the sinister. This time Catherine is misled by memories
+of the _Sicilian Romance_ into weaving a mystery around the fate
+of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her
+husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for
+"glimmering lights," like those in the palace of Mazzini, and
+determines to search for "a fragmented journal continued to the
+last gasp," like that of Adeline's father in _The Romance of the
+Forest_. In this search she encounters Tilney, who has returned
+unexpectedly from Woodston. He dissipates once and for all her
+nervous fancies, and Catherine decides: "Among the Alps and
+Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as
+were not spotless as an angel, might have the dispositions of a
+fiend. But in England it was not so."
+
+Miss Austen's novel is something more than a mock-romance, and
+Catherine is not a mere negative of the traditional heroine, but
+a human and attractive girl, whose fortunes we follow with the
+deepest interest. At the close, after Catherine's ignominious
+journey home, we are back again in the cool world of reality. The
+abbey is abandoned, after it has served its purpose in
+disciplining the heroine, in favour of the unromantic country
+parsonage.
+
+In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen had deftly turned the novels
+of Mrs. Radcliffe to comedy; but, even if her parody had been
+published in 1798, when we are assured that it was completed, her
+satirical treatment was too quiet and subtle, too delicately
+mischievous, to have disturbed seriously the popularity of the
+novel of terror. We can imagine the Isabella Thorpes and Lydia
+Bennets of the day dismissing _Northanger Abbey_ with a yawn as
+"an amazing dull book," and returning with renewed zest to more
+stimulating and "horrid" stories. Maria Edgeworth too had aimed
+her shaft at the sentimental heroine in one of her _Moral
+Tales--Angelina or L'Amie Inconnue_ (1801). Miss Sarah Green, in
+_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_ (1810) had displayed the
+extravagant folly of a clergyman's daughter whose head was turned
+by romances. Ridicule of a more blatant and boisterous kind was
+needed, and this was supplied by Eaton Stannard Barrett, who, in
+1813--five years before _Northanger Abbey_ appeared--published
+_The Heroine or The Adventures of Cherubina_. In this farcical
+romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an
+onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and
+blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like
+Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his
+farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it
+was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a
+madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring
+note in a rollicking high-spirited farce. The plights into which
+Cherubina is plunged are so needlessly cruel, that, while only
+intending to make her ridiculous, Barrett succeeds rather in
+making her pitiable. But many of her adventures are only a shade
+more absurd than those in the romances at which he tilts. Regina
+Maria Roche's _Children of the Abbey_ (1798) would take the wind
+from the sails of any parodist. In protracting _The Heroine_
+almost to wearisome length, Barrett probably acted deliberately
+in mimicry of this and a horde of other tedious romances.
+Certainly the unfortunate Stuart waits no longer for the
+fulfilment of his hopes than Lord Mortimer, the long-suffering
+hero of _The Children of the Abbey_, who early in the first
+volume demands of Amanda Fitzalan, what he calls an
+"eclaircissement," but does not win it until the close of the
+fourth. Barrett does not scruple to mention the titles of the
+books he derides. The following catalogue will show how widely he
+casts his net: _Mysteries of Udolpho, Romance of the Forest,
+Children of the Abbey, Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, Clarissa
+Harlowe, Evelina, Camilla, Cecilia, La Nouvelle Heloise,
+Rasselas, The Delicate Distress, Caroline of Lichfield_,[98] _The
+Knights of the Swan_,[99] _The Beggar Girl, The Romance of the
+Highlands_.[100] Besides these novels, which he actually names,
+Barrett alludes indirectly to several others, among them
+_Tristram Shandy_ and _Amelia_. From this enumeration it is
+evident that Barrett was satirising the heroine, not merely of
+the "novel of terror," but of the "sentimental novel" from which
+she traced her descent. He organises a masquerade, mindful that
+it is always the scene of the heroine's "best adventure," with
+Fielding's _Amelia_ and Miss Burney's _Cecilia_ and probably
+other novels in view. The precipitate flight of Cherubina,
+"dressed in a long-skirted red coat stiff with tarnished lace, a
+satin petticoat, satin shoes and no stockings," and with hair
+streaming like a meteor, described in Letter XX, is clearly a
+cruel mockery of Cecilia's distressful plight in Miss Burney's
+novel. Even Scott is not immune from Barrett's barbed arrows, and
+Byron is glanced at in the bogus antique language of "Eftsoones."
+Barrett, indeed, jeers at the mediaeval revival in its various
+manifestations and even at "Romanticism" generally, not merely at
+the new school of fiction represented by Mrs. Radcliffe, her
+followers and rivals. Not content with reaching his aim, as he
+does again and again in _The Heroine_, Barrett, like many another
+parodist, sometimes over-reaches it, and sneers at what is not in
+itself ridiculous.
+
+Nominally Cherubina is the butt of Barrett's satire, but the
+permanent interest of the book lies in the skilful stage-managing
+of her lively adventures. There is hardly an attempt at
+characterisation. The people are mere masqueraders, who amuse us
+by their costume and mannerisms, but reveal no individuality. The
+plot is a wild extravaganza, crammed with high-flown,
+mock-romantic episodes. Cherry Wilkinson, as the result of a
+surfeit of romances, perhaps including _The Misanthropic Parent
+or The Guarded Secret_ (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real
+father--a worthy farmer--to look for more aristocratic parents.
+As he is not picturesque enough for a villain, she repudiates him
+with scorn: "Have you the gaunt ferocity of famine in your
+countenance? Can you darken the midnight with a scowl? Have you
+the quivering lip and the Schedoniac contour? In a word, are you
+a picturesque villain full of plot and horror and magnificent
+wickedness? Ah! no, sir, you are only a sleek, good-humoured,
+chuckle-headed, old gentleman." In the course of her search she
+meets with amazing adventures, which she describes in a series of
+letters to her governess. She changes her name to Cherubina de
+Willoughby, and journeys to London, where, mistaking Covent
+Garden Theatre for an ancient castle, she throws herself on the
+protection of a third-rate actor, Grundy. He readily falls in
+with her humour, assuming the name of Montmorenci, and a suit of
+tin armour and a plumed helmet for her delight. Later, Cherubina
+is entertained by Lady Gwyn, who, for the amusement of her
+guests, heartlessly indulges her propensity for the romantic, and
+poses as her aunt. She is introduced in a gruesome scene, which
+recalls the fate of Agnes in Lewis's _Monk_, to her supposed
+mother, Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs, under the title
+_Il Castello di Grimgothico_, are inserted, after the manner of
+Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis, who love an inset tale, into the
+midst of the heroine's adventures. Cherubina determines to live
+in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These
+include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of
+comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and
+Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of
+minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the
+time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking."
+The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where
+she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The
+incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are
+foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend
+them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic
+castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering
+manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed
+barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina,
+for each item in this curious medley revives moving associations
+in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school. When Cherubina
+visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our
+thoughts to _The Sicilian Romance_. In Westminster Abbey she is
+disappointed to find "no cowled monks with scapulars"--a phrase
+which flashes across our memory the sinister figure of Schedoni
+in _The Italian_. At the masquerade she plans to wear a Tuscan
+dress from _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, and, when furnishing
+Monkton Castle she bids Jerry, the Irish comic servant, bring
+"flags stained with the best old blood--feudal, if possible, an
+old lute, lyre or harp, black hangings, curtains, and a velvet
+pall." Even the banditti and condottieri, who enliven so many
+novels of terror, cannot be ignored, and are represented by a
+troop of Irish ruffians. Barrett lets nothing escape him.
+Rousseau's theories are irreverently travestied. The thunder
+rolls "in an awful and Ossianly manner"; the sun, "that
+well-known gilder of eastern turrets," rises in empurpled
+splendour; the hero utters tremendous imprecations, ejaculates
+superlatives or frames elaborately poised, Johnsonian periods;
+the heroine excels in cheap but glittering repartee, wears
+"spangled muslin," and has "practised tripping, gliding,
+flitting, and tottering, with great success." Shreds and patches
+torn with a ruthless, masculine hand from the flimsy tapestry of
+romance, fitted together in a new and amusing pattern, are
+exhibited for our derision. The caricature is entertaining in
+itself, and would probably be enjoyed by those who are unfamiliar
+with the romances ridiculed; but the interest of identifying the
+booty, which Barrett rifles unceremoniously from his victims, is
+a fascinating pastime.
+
+Miss Austen, with her swift stiletto, and Barrett, with his
+brutal bludgeon--to use a metaphor of "terror"--had each
+delivered an attack; and in 1818, if we may judge by Peacock's
+_Nightmare Abbey_, there is a change of fashion in fiction. How
+far this change is due to the satirists it is impossible to
+determine. Mr. Flosky, "who has seen too many ghosts himself to
+believe in their external appearance," through whose lips Peacock
+reviles "that part of the reading public which shuns the solid
+food of reason," probably gives the true cause for the waning
+popularity of the novel of terror:
+
+     "It lived upon ghosts, goblins and skeletons till even
+     the devil himself ... became too base, common and
+     popular for its surfeited appetite. The ghosts have
+     therefore been laid, and the devil has been cast into
+     outer darkness."
+
+The novel of terror has been destroyed not by its enemies but by
+its too ardent devotees. The horrid banquet, devoured with
+avidity for so many years, has become so highly seasoned that the
+jaded palate at last cries out for something different, and,
+according to Peacock, finds what it desires in "the vices and
+blackest passions of our nature tricked out in a masquerade dress
+of heroism and disappointed benevolence"--an uncomplimentary
+description of the Byronic hero. Yet sensational fiction has
+lingered on side by side with other forms of fiction all through
+the nineteenth century, because it supplies a human and natural
+craving for excitement. It may not be the dominant type, but it
+will always exist, and will produce its thrill by ever-varying
+devices. Those who scoff may be taken unawares, like the company
+in _Nightmare Abbey_. The conversation turned on the subject of
+ghosts, and Mr. Larynx related his delightfully compact ghost
+story:
+
+     "I once saw a ghost myself in my study, which is the
+     last place any one but a ghost would look for me. I had
+     not been in it for three months and was going to
+     consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a
+     venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in
+     my armchair, reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a
+     moment, and so did I, and what it was and what it
+     wanted, I have never been able to ascertain"
+
+--a quieter, more inoffensive ghost than that described by Defoe
+in his _Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions_: "A
+grave, ancient man, with a full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded
+gown, who changed into the most horrible monster that ever was
+seen, with eyes like two fiery daggers red-hot." Mr. Flosky and
+Mr. Hilary have hardly declared their disbelief in ghosts when:
+
+     "The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure,
+     shrouded in white drapery with the semblance of a
+     bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly
+     up the apartment. Mr. Flosky was not prepared for this
+     apparition, and made the best of his way out at the
+     opposite door. Mr. Hilary and Marionetta followed
+     screaming. The honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of
+     his body, first rolled off the sofa and then under it.
+     Rev. Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much
+     precipitation that he overturned the table on the foot
+     of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears
+     of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his
+     senses that missing the door he threw up one of the
+     windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head
+     and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who
+     were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by
+     the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to
+     land."
+
+In Melincourt Castle a very spacious wing was left free to the
+settlement of a colony of ghosts, and the Rev. Mr. Portpipe often
+passed the night in one of the dreaded apartments over a blazing
+fire, with the same invariable exorcising apparatus of a large
+venison pasty, a little prayer-book, and three bottles of
+Madeira. Yet despite this excellent mockery, Peacock in _Gryll
+Grange_ devotes a chapter to tales of terror and wonder, singling
+out the works of Charles Brockden Brown for praise, especially
+his _Wieland_, "one of the few tales in which the final
+explanation of the apparently supernatural does not destroy or
+diminish the original effect."
+
+The title _Nightmare Abbey_ in a catalogue would undoubtedly have
+caught the eye of Isabella Thorp or her friend Miss Andrews,
+searching eagerly for "horrid mysteries," but they would perhaps
+have detected the note of mockery in the name. They would,
+however, have been completely deceived by the title, _The Mystery
+of the Abbey_, published in Liverpool in 1819 by T.B. Johnson,
+and we can imagine their consternation and disgust on the arrival
+of the book from the circulating library. The abbey is "haunted"
+by the proprietors of a distillery; and the spectre, described in
+horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red
+handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not
+a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a
+_picaresque_ novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a
+hoax.
+
+Belinda Waters, the heroine of one of Crabbe's tales, who was "by
+nature negatively good," is a portrait after Miss Austen's own
+heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of
+circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda tosses
+wearily aside a half-read volume of _Clarissa_, commended by her
+maid, "who had _Clarissa_ for her heart's dear friend."
+
+  "Give me," she said, "for I would laugh or cry,
+  'Scenes from the Life,' and 'Sensibility,'
+  'Winters at Bath': I would that I had one!
+  'The Constant Lover,' 'The Discarded Son,'[101]
+
+  "'The Rose of Raby,'[102] 'Delmore,' or 'The Nun'[103]--
+  These promise something, and may please, perhaps,
+  Like 'Ethelinda'[104] and the dear 'Relapse.'[105]
+  To these her heart the gentle maid resigned
+  And such the food that fed the gentle mind."
+
+But even the "delicate distress" of heroines, like Niobe, all
+tears, palls at last, and Belinda, having wept her fill, craves
+now for "sterner stuff."
+
+  "Yet tales of terror are her dear delight,
+  All in the wintry storm to read at night."
+
+In _The Preceptor Husband_,[106] the pretty wife, whose notions
+of botany are delightfully vague, and who, in English history,
+light-heartedly confuses the Reformation and the Revolution, has
+tastes similar to those of Belinda. Pursued by an instructive
+husband, she turns at bay, and tells her priggish preceptor what
+kind of books she really enjoys:
+
+  "Well, if I must, I will my studies name,
+  Blame if you please--I know you love to blame--
+  When all our childish books were set apart,
+  The first I read was 'Wanderings of the Heart.'[107]
+  It was a story where was done a deed
+  So dreadful that alone I feared to read.
+  The next was 'The Confessions of a Nun'--
+  'Twas quite a shame such evils should be done.
+  Nun of--no matter for the creature's name,
+  For there are girls no nunnery can tame.
+  Then was the story of the Haunted Hall,
+  When the huge picture nodded from the wall,
+
+  "When the old lord looked up with trembling dread,
+  And I grew pale and shuddered as I read.
+  Then came the tales of Winters, Summers, Springs
+  At Bath and Brighton--they were pretty things!
+  No ghosts or spectres there were heard or seen,
+  But all was love and flight to Gretna-green.
+  Perhaps your greater learning may despise
+  What others like--and there your wisdom lies."
+
+To this attractive catalogue the preceptor husband, no doubt,
+listened with the expression of Crabbe's _Old Bachelor_:
+
+  "that kind of cool, contemptuous smile
+  Of witty persons overcharged with bile,"
+
+but she at least succeeds in interrupting his flow of information
+for the time being. He retires routed. Crabbe's close
+acquaintance with "the flowery pages of sublime distress," with
+"vengeful monks who play unpriestly tricks," with banditti
+
+        "who, in forest wide
+  Or cavern vast, indignant virgins hide,"
+
+was, as he confesses, a relic of those unregenerate days, when
+
+  "To the heroine's soul-distracting fears
+  I early gave my sixpences and tears."[108]
+
+He could have groped his way through a Gothic castle without the
+aid of a talkative housekeeper:
+
+  "I've watched a wintry night on castle-walls,
+  I've stalked by moonlight through deserted halls,
+  And when the weary world was sunk to rest
+  I've had such sights--as may not be expressed.
+  Lo! that chateau, the western tower decayed,
+  The peasants shun it--they are all afraid;
+  For there was done a deed--could walls reveal
+  Or timbers tell it, how the heart would feel!
+
+  "Most horrid was it--for, behold, the floor
+  Has stain of blood--and will be clean no more.
+  Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
+  And the long passage send a dismal tune,
+  Music that ghosts delight in--and now heed
+  Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed.
+  See! with majestic sweep she swims alone
+  Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan,
+  Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake
+  And the feet falter every step they take.
+  Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes
+  To find a something which will soon expose
+  The villainies and wiles of her determined foes,
+  And having thus adventured, thus endured,
+  Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured."[109]
+
+Crabbe's Ellen Orford in _The Borough_ (1810) is drawn from life,
+and in grim and bitter irony is intended as a contrast to these
+timorous and triumphant creatures
+
+          "borrowed and again conveyed,
+  From book to book, the shadows of a shade."
+
+Ellen's adventures are sordid and gloomy, without a hint of the
+picturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the
+"air-drawn" fancies that torture the sensitive Angelinas of
+Gothic fiction:
+
+  "But not like them has she been laid
+  In ruined castle sore dismayed,
+  Where naughty man and ghostly sprite
+  Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
+  Stalked round the room, put out the light
+  And shook the curtains round the bed.
+  No cruel uncle kept her land,
+  No tyrant father forced her hand;
+  She had no vixen virgin aunt
+  Without whose aid she could not eat
+  And yet who poisoned all her meat
+  With gibe and sneer and taunt."
+
+Though Crabbe showed scant sympathy with the delicate
+sensibilities of girls who hung enraptured over the high-pitched
+heroics and miraculous escapes of Clementina and her kindred, he
+found pleasure in a robuster school of romance--the adventures of
+mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, and Robin Hood, as set
+forth and embellished in the chapbooks which cottagers treasured
+"on the deal shelf beside the cuckoo-clock."[110] And in his
+poem, _Sir Eustace Grey_, he presents with subtle art a mind
+tormented by terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.
+
+
+In 1775 we find Miss Lydia Languish's maid ransacking the
+circulating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloak
+novels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twenty
+years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost
+from all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of
+_Udolpho_," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in her pocket-book
+the "horrid" titles of romances from the German. In 1814,
+apparently, the vogue of the sentimental, the scandalous, the
+mysterious, and the horrid still persisted. Scott, in the
+introductory chapter to _Waverley_, disrespectfully passes in
+review the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed to be
+supplanted by the series of romances he was then beginning:
+
+     "Had I announced in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, A Tale
+     of Other Days,' must not every novel reader have
+     anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
+     of which the eastern wing has been long uninhabited,
+     and the keys either lost or consigned to the care of
+     some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps
+     about the middle of the second volume were doomed to
+     guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts?
+     Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried
+     in my very title page? and could it have been possible
+     to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce
+     any scene more lively than might be produced by the
+     jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the
+     garrulous narrative of the heroine's
+     _fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of
+     blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's
+     hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance
+     from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image
+     forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
+     and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and
+     Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls,
+     caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and
+     dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my
+     work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
+     sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of
+     auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her
+     solitary hours, which she fortunately always finds
+     means of transporting from castle to cottage, though
+     she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a
+     two-pair-of-stairs window and is more than once
+     bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without
+     any guide but a blowsy peasant girl, whose jargon she
+     can scarcely understand? Or again, if my _Waverley_ had
+     been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst thou not,
+     gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch
+     of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private
+     scandal ... a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero
+     from the Barouche Club or the Four in Hand, with a set
+     of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen
+     Anne Street, East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow
+     Street Office?"
+
+Yet Scott himself had once trodden in these well-worn paths of
+romance. In the general preface to the collected edition of 1829,
+wherein he seeks to "ravel out his weaved-up follies," he refers
+to "a tale of chivalry planned thirty years earlier in the style
+of _The Castle of Otranto_, with plenty of Border characters and
+supernatural incident." His outline of the plot and a fragment of
+the story, which was to be entitled _Thomas the Rhymer_, are
+printed as an appendix to the preface. Scott intended to base his
+story on an ancient legend, found in Reginald Scot's _Discovery
+of Witchcraft_, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas of
+Hercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by a
+mysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a long
+range of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and by
+every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword
+in his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out of
+marble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like the
+halls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancient
+table, a horn and a sword. A voice bade Dick try his courage,
+warning him that much depended upon his first choosing either the
+horn or the sword. Dick, whose stout heart quailed before the
+supernatural terrors of the hall, attempted to blow the horn
+before unsheathing the sword. At the first feeble blast the
+warriors and their steeds started to life, the knights fiercely
+brandishing their weapons and clashing their armour. Dick made a
+fruitless attempt to snatch the sword. After a mysterious voice
+had pronounced his doom he was hurled out of the hall by a
+whirlwind of irresistible fury. He told his story to the
+shepherds, who found him dying on the cold hill side.
+
+Regarding this legend as "an unhappy foundation for a prose
+story," Scott did not complete his fragment, which in style and
+treatment is not unlike the Gothic experiments of Mrs. Barbauld
+and Dr. Nathan Drake. Such a story as that of the magic horn and
+sword might have been told in the simple words that occur
+naturally to a shepherd, "warmed to courage over his third
+tumbler," like the old peasant to whom Stevenson entrusts the
+terrible tale of _Thrawn Janet_, or to Wandering Willie, who
+declared:
+
+     "I whiles mak a tale serve the turn among the country
+     bodies, and I have some fearsome anes, that mak the
+     auld carlines shake on the settle, and bits o' bairns
+     skirl on their minnies out frae their beds."
+
+The personality of the narrator, swayed by the terror of his
+tale, would have cast the spell that Scott's carefully framed
+sentences fail to create. Another of Scott's _disjecta membra_,
+composed at the end of the eighteenth century, is the opening of
+a story called _The Lord of Ennerdale_, in which the family of
+Ratcliffe settle down before the fire to listen to a story
+"savouring not a little of the marvellous." As Lady Ratcliffe and
+her daughters
+
+     "had heard every groan and lifted every trapdoor in
+     company with the noted heroine of Udolpho, had
+     valorously mounted _en croupe_ behind the horseman of
+     Prague through all his seven translators, had followed
+     the footsteps of Moor through the forests of Bohemia,"
+
+and were even suspected of an acquaintance with Lewis's _Monk_,
+Scott was setting himself no easy task when he undertook to
+thrill these seasoned adventurers. After this prologue, which
+leads one to expect a banquet of horrors, only a very brief
+fragment of the story is forthcoming. Though he gently derides
+Lady Ratcliffe's literary tastes, Scott, too, was an admirer of
+Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, and had been so entranced by Burger's
+_Lenore_ that he attempted an English version.[111] It was after
+hearing Taylor's translation of this ballad read aloud that he
+uttered his dismal ejaculation: "I wish to heaven I could get a
+skull and two crossbones"--a whim that was speedily gratified.
+He, too, like Lady Ratcliffe, had read _Die Raeuber_; and he
+translated Goethe's _Getz von Berlichingen_. He delighted in
+Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) where the verse gallops through
+horrors so fearful that the "lights in the chamber burn blue,"
+and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblin
+dramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, as
+Lewis's _Castle Spectre_ and Maturin's _Bertram_. His Latin
+call-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis or
+Harrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen--the disposal of the
+dead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually added
+to his store of quaint and grisly learning both from popular
+tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's
+_Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Sinclair's
+_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, whence he borrowed the name
+of the jackanapes in _Wandering Willie's Tale_, and the
+horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's
+_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Joseph Taylor's _History of
+Apparitions_, from which he quotes in _Woodstock_. He was
+familiar with all the niceties of ghostly etiquette; he could
+distinguish at a glance the various ranks and orders of demons
+and spirits; he was versed in charms and spells; he knew exactly
+how a wizard ought to be dressed. This lore not only stood him in
+good stead when he compiled his _Letters on Demonology and
+Witchcraft_ (1830), but served to adorn his poems and novels.
+There was nothing unhealthy in his attitude towards the spectral
+world. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double room,
+while a dead man occupied the other. Twice in his life he
+confessed to having felt "eerie"--once at Glamis Castle, which
+was said to be haunted by a Presence in a Secret Chamber, and
+once when he believed that he saw an apparition on his way home
+in the twilight; but he usually jests cheerfully when he speaks
+of the supernatural. He was interested in tracing the sources of
+terror and in studying the mechanism of ghost stories.
+
+The axioms which he lays down are sound and suggestive:
+
+     "Ghosts should not appear too often or become too
+     chatty. The magician shall evoke no spirits, whom he is
+     not capable of endowing with manners and language
+     corresponding to their supernatural character. Perhaps,
+     to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and
+     in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret
+     mode of securing a certain necessary degree of
+     credulity from the hearers of a ghost story... The
+     chord which vibrates and sounds at a touch remains in
+     silent tension under continued pressure."[113]
+
+Scott's ghost story, _The Tapestried Chamber, or the Lady in the
+Sacque_[114] which he heard from Miss Anna Seward, who had an
+unexpected gift for recounting such things at country house
+parties, gives the impression of being carefully planned
+according to rule. As a human being the Lady in the Sacque had a
+black record, but, considered dispassionately as a ghost, her
+manners and deportment are irreproachable. The ghost-seer's
+independence of character are so firmly insisted upon that it
+seems impertinent to doubt the veracity of his story. _My Aunt
+Margaret's Mirror_ was told to Scott in childhood by an ancient
+spinster, whose pleasing fancy it was to read alone in her
+chamber by the light of a taper fixed in a candlestick which she
+had formed out of a human skull, and who was learned in
+superstitious lore. She describes accurately the mood, when "the
+female imagination is in due temperature to enjoy a ghost story":
+
+     "All that is indispensable for the enjoyment of the
+     milder feeling of supernatural awe is that you should
+     be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps
+     over you when you hear a tale of terror--that
+     well-vouched tale which the narrator, having first
+     expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary
+     lore, selects and produces, as having something in it
+     which he has been always obliged to give up as
+     inexplicable. Another symptom is a momentary hesitation
+     to look round you, when the interest of the narrative
+     is at the highest; and the third, a desire to avoid
+     looking into a mirror, when you are alone, in your
+     chamber, for the evening."[115]
+
+In her story "Aunt Margaret" describes how, in a magic mirror
+belonging to Dr. Baptista Damiotti, Lady Bothwell and her sister
+Lady Forester see the wedding ceremony of Sir Philip Forester and
+a young girl in a foreign city interrupted by Lady Forester's
+brother, who is slain in the duel that ensues. Scott regarded
+these two stories as trifles designed to while away a leisure
+hour. On _Wandering Willie's Tale_--a masterpiece of supernatural
+terror--he bestowed unusual care. The ill fa'urd, fearsome
+couple--Sir Robert with his face "gash and ghastly as Satan's,"
+and "Major Weir," the jackanape, in his red-laced coat and
+wig--Steenie's eerie encounter with the "stranger" on horseback,
+the ribald crew of feasters in the hall are described so
+faithfully and in such vivid phrases that it is no wonder Willie
+should remark at one point of the story: "I almost think I was
+there mysell, though I couldna be born at the same time." The
+power of the tale, which fascinates us from beginning to end and
+which can be read again and again with renewed pleasure, depends
+partly on Wandering Willie's gifts as a narrator, partly on the
+emotions that stir him as he talks. With unconscious art, he
+always uses the right word in his descriptions, and chooses those
+details that help us to fix the rapidly changing imagery of his
+scenes; and he reproduces exactly the natural dialogue of the
+speakers. He begins in a tone of calm, unhurried narration, with
+only a hint of fear in his voice, but, at the death of Sir
+Robert, grows breathless with horror and excitement. The uncanny
+incident of the silver whistle that sounds from the dead man's
+chamber is skilfully followed by a matter-of-fact account of
+Steenie's dealings with the new laird. The emotion culminates in
+the terror of the hall of ghastly revellers, whose wild shrieks
+"made Willie's gudesire's very nails grow blue and chilled the
+marrow in his banes." So lifelike is the scene, so full of colour
+and movement, that Steenie's descendants might well believe that
+their gudesire, like Dante, had seen Hell.
+
+The notes, introductions and appendices to Scott's works are
+stored with material for novels of terror. The notes to
+_Marmion_, for instance, contain references to a necromantic
+priest whose story "much resembles that of Ambrosio in the
+_Monk_," to an "Elfin" warrior and to a chest of treasure
+jealously guarded for a century by the Devil in the likeness of a
+huntsman. In _The Lady of the Lake_ there is a note on the
+ancient legend of the Phantom Sire, in _Rokeby_ there is an
+allusion to the Demon Frigate wandering under a curse from
+harbour to harbour. To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion.
+He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poems
+or his romances. In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ he had,
+indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a leading part, but
+the imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the natural
+baseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs into
+the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in _The
+Monastery_ (1830)--a boisterous creature who rides on horseback,
+splashes through streams and digs a grave--was wisely withdrawn
+in the sequel, _The Abbot_. In the Introduction Scott states:
+
+     "The White Lady is scarcely supposed to have possessed
+     either the power or the inclination to do more than
+     inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is always
+     subjected by those mortals who ... could assert
+     superiority over her."
+
+The only apology Scott could offer to the critics who derided his
+wraith was that the readers "ought to allow for the capriccios of
+what is after all but a better sort of goblin." She was suggested
+by the Undine of De La Motte Fouque. In his next novel, _The
+Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the
+magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch--not one bounce on the drum of
+Tedworth--not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch
+in the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightly
+from his imagination. Apparitions--such as the Bodach Glas who
+warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in _Waverley_, or
+the wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on the
+battlefield in _The Legend of Montrose_--had appeared in his
+earlier novels, and others appear again and again later. In _The
+Bride of Lammermoor_--the only one of Scott's novels which might
+fitly be called a "tale of terror"--the atmosphere of horror and
+the sense of overhanging calamity effectually prepare our minds
+for the supernatural, and the wraith of old Alice who appears to
+the master of Ravenswood is strangely solemn and impressive. But
+even more terrible is the description of the three hags laying
+out her corpse. The appearance of Vanda with the Bloody Finger in
+the haunted chamber of the Saxon manor in _The Betrothed_ is
+skilfully arranged, and Eveline's terror is described with
+convincing reality. In _Woodstock_, Scott adopted the method of
+explaining away the apparently supernatural, although in his
+_Lives of the Novelists_ he expressly disapproves of what he
+calls the "precaution of Snug the joiner." Charged by Ballantyne
+with imitating Mrs. Radcliffe, Scott defended himself by
+asserting:
+
+     "My object is not to excite fear of supernatural things
+     in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon
+     the agents of the story--one a man in sense and
+     firmness, one a man unhinged by remorse, one a stupid,
+     unenquiring clown, one a learned and worthy but
+     superstitious divine."[116]
+
+As Scott in his introduction quotes the passage from a treatise
+entitled _The Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_,
+which reveals that the mysteries were performed by one Joseph
+Collins with the aid of two friends, a concealed trap-door and a
+pound of gunpowder, he cannot justly be accused of deceiving his
+readers. There are suggestions of Mrs. Radcliffe's method in
+others of his novels. In _The Antiquary_, before Lovel retires to
+the Green Room at Monkbar, he is warned by Miss Griselda Oldbuck
+of a "well-fa'urd auld gentleman in a queer old-fashioned dress
+with whiskers turned upward on his upper lip as long as
+baudrons," who is wont to appear at one's bedside. He falls into
+an uneasy slumber, and in the middle of the night is startled to
+see a green huntsman leave the tapestry and turn into the
+"well-fa'urd auld gentleman" before his very eyes. In _Old
+Mortality_, Edith Bellenden mistakes her lover for his
+apparition, just as one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines might have
+done. In _Peveril of the Peak_, Fenella's communications with the
+hero in his prison, when he mistakes her voice for that of a
+spirit, have an air of Gothic mystery. The awe-inspiring villain,
+who appears in _Marmion_ and _Rokeby_, may be distinguished by
+his scowl, his passion-lined face and gleaming eye. Rashleigh, in
+_Rob Roy_, who, understanding Greek, Latin and Hebrew, "need not
+care for ghaist or barghaist, devil or dobbie," and whose
+sequestered apartment the servants durst not approach at
+nightfall for "fear of bogles and brownies and lang-nebbit things
+frae the neist world," is of the same lineage. Sir Robert
+Redgauntlet, too, might have stepped out of one of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's romances. His niece is not unlike one of her
+heroines. She speaks in the very accents of Emily when she says:
+
+     "Now I have still so much of our family spirit as
+     enables me to be as composed in danger as most of my
+     sex, and upon two occasions in the course of our
+     journey--a threatened attack by banditti, and the
+     overturn of our carriage--I had the fortune so to
+     conduct myself as to convey to my uncle a very
+     favourable idea of my intrepidity."
+
+Jeanie Deans, the most admirable and the most skilfully drawn of
+Scott's women, is a daring contrast to the traditional heroine of
+romance. The "delicate distresses" of persecuted Emilies shrink
+into insignificance amid the tragedy and comedy of actual life
+portrayed in The Waverley Novels. The tyrannical marquises,
+vindictive stepmothers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks,
+chattering domestics and fierce banditti are thrust aside by a
+motley crowd of living beings--soldiers, lawyers, smugglers,
+gypsies, shepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures,
+guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow with
+sensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folk
+like "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty and
+Peter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our own
+world. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs.
+Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting and
+substantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs.
+Radcliffe's characters habitually discourse descends to some of
+Scott's personages, but is often exchanged for the natural idiom
+of simple people. The Gothic abbey, dropped down in an uncertain,
+haphazard fashion, in some foreign land, is deserted for huts,
+barns inns, cottages and castles, solidly built on Scottish soil.
+We leave the mouldy air of the subterranean vault for the keen
+winds of the moorland. The terrors of the invisible world only
+fill the stray corners of his huge scene. He creates romance out
+of the stuff of real life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TALE OF TERROR.
+
+
+As the novel of terror passes from the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe to
+those of "Monk" Lewis, Maturin and their imitators, there is a
+crashing crescendo of emotion. The villain's sardonic smile is
+replaced by wild outbursts of diabolical laughter, his scowl
+grows darker and darker, and as his designs become more bloody
+and more dangerous, his victims no longer sigh plaintively, but
+give utterance to piercing shrieks and despairing yells; tearful
+Amandas are unceremoniously thrust into the background by
+vindictive Matildas, whose passions rage in all their primitive
+savagery; the fearful ghost "fresh courage takes," and stands
+forth audaciously in the light of day; the very devil stalks
+shamelessly abroad in manifold disguises. We are caught up from
+first to last in the very tempest, torrent and whirlwind of
+passion. When the novel of terror thus throws restraint to the
+winds, outrageously o'ersteps the modesty of nature and indulges
+in a farrago of frightfulness, it begins to defeat its own
+purposes and to fail in its object of freezing the blood. The
+limit of human endurance has been reached--and passed. Emphasis
+and exaggeration have done their worst. Battle, murder, and
+sudden death--even spectres and fiends--can appal no more. If the
+old thrill is to be evoked again, the application of more
+ingenious methods is needed.
+
+Such novels as Maturin's _Family of Montorio_, though "full of
+sound and fury," fail piteously to vibrate the chords of terror,
+which had trembled beneath Mrs. Radcliffe's gentle fingers. The
+instrument, smitten forcibly, repeatedly, desperately, resounds
+not with the answering note expected, but with an ugly, metallic
+jangle. _Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's extraordinary
+masterpiece, was to prove--as late as 1820--that there were
+chords in the orchestra of horror as yet unsounded; but in 1816,
+when Mary Shelley and her companions set themselves to compose
+supernatural stories, it was wise to dispense with the shrieking
+chorus of malevolent abbesses, diabolical monks, intriguing
+marquises, Wandering Jews or bleeding spectres, who had been so
+grievously overworked in previous performances. Dr. Polidori's
+skull-headed lady, Byron's vampire-gentleman, Mrs. Shelley's
+man-created monster--a grotesque and gruesome trio--had at least
+the attraction of novelty. It is indeed remarkable that so young
+and inexperienced a writer as Mary Shelley, who was only nineteen
+when she wrote _Frankenstein_, should betray so slight a
+dependence on her predecessors. It is evident from the records of
+her reading that the novel of terror in all its guises was
+familiar to her. She had beheld the majestic horror of the halls
+of Eblis; she had threaded her way through Mrs. Radcliffe's
+artfully constructed Gothic castles; she had braved the terrors
+of the German Ritter-, Raeuber- und Schauer-Romane; she had
+assisted, fearful, at Lewis's midnight diablerie; she had
+patiently unravelled the "mystery" novels of Godwin and of
+Charles Brockden Brown.[117] Yet, despite this intimate knowledge
+of the terrible and supernatural in fiction, Mrs. Shelley's theme
+and her way of handling it are completely her own. In an "acute
+mental vision," as real as the visions of Blake and of Shelley,
+she beheld her monster and the "pale student of unhallowed arts"
+who had created him, and then set herself to reproduce the thrill
+of horror inspired by her waking dream. _Frankenstein_ has,
+indeed, been compared to Godwin's _St. Leon_, but the resemblance
+is so vague and superficial, and _Frankenstein_ so immeasurably
+superior, that Mrs. Shelley's debt to her father is negligible.
+St. Leon accepts the gift of immortality, Frankenstein creates a
+new life, and in both novels the main interest lies in tracing
+the effect of the experiment on the soul of the man, who has
+pursued scientific inquiry beyond legitimate limits. But apart
+from this, there is little resemblance. Godwin chose the
+supernatural, because it chanced to be popular, and laboriously
+built up a cumbrous edifice, completing it by a sheer effort of
+will-power. His daughter, with an imagination naturally more
+attuned to the gruesome and fantastic, writes, when once she has
+wound her way into the heart of the story, in a mood of
+breathless excitement that drives the reader forward with
+feverish apprehension.
+
+The name of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ is far-famed; but the
+book itself, overshadowed perhaps by its literary associations,
+seems to have withdrawn into the vast library of famous works
+that are more often mentioned than read. The very fact that the
+name is often bestowed on the monster instead of his creator
+seems to suggest that many are content to accept Mrs. Shelley's
+"hideous phantom" on hearsay evidence rather than encounter for
+themselves the terrors of his presence. The story deserves a
+happier fate, for, if it be read in the spirit of willing
+surrender that a theme so impossible demands, it has still power
+momentarily "to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle
+the blood and to quicken the beatings of the heart." The record
+of the composition of _Frankenstein_ has been so often reiterated
+that it is probably better known than the tale itself. In the
+summer of 1816--when the Shelleys were the neighbours of Byron
+near Lake Geneva--Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori,
+after reading some volumes of ghost stories[118] and discussing
+the supernatural and its manifestations, each agreed to write a
+ghost story. It has been asserted that an interest in spectres
+was stimulated by a visit from "Monk" Lewis, but we have evidence
+that Mrs. Shelley was already writing her story in June,[119] and
+that Lewis did not arrive at the Villa Diodati till August
+14th.[120] The conversation with him about ghosts took place four
+days later. Shelley's story, based on the experiences of his
+early youth, was never completed. Byron's fragment formed the
+basis of Dr. Polidori's _Vampyre_. Dr. Polidori states that his
+supernatural novel, _Ernestus Berchtold_, was begun at this time;
+but the skull-headed lady, alluded to by Mary Shelley as figuring
+in Polidori's story, is disappointingly absent. It was an
+argument between Byron and Shelley about Erasmus Darwin's
+theories that brought before Mary Shelley's sleepless eyes the
+vision of the monster miraculously infused by its creator with
+the spark of life. _Frankenstein_ was begun immediately,
+completed in May, 1817, and published in 1818.
+
+Mrs. Shelley has been censured for setting her tale in a clumsy
+framework, but she tells us in her preface that she began with
+the words: "It was on a dreary night of November." This sentence
+now stands at the opening of Chapter IV., where the plot begins
+to grip our imagination; and it seems not unfair to assume that
+the introductory letters and the first four chapters, which
+contain a tedious and largely unnecessary account of
+Frankenstein's early life, were written in deference to Shelley's
+plea that the idea should be developed at greater length, and did
+not form part of her original plan. The uninteresting student,
+Robert Walton, to whom Frankenstein, discovered dying among
+icebergs, tells his story, is obviously an afterthought. If Mrs.
+Shelley had abandoned the awkward contrivance of putting the
+narrative into the form of a dying man's confession, reported
+verbatim in a series of letters, and had opened her story, as she
+apparently intended, at the point where Frankenstein, after weary
+years of research, succeeds in creating a living being, her novel
+would have gained in force and intensity. From that moment it
+holds us fascinated. It is true that the tension relaxes from
+time to time, that the monster's strange education and the
+Godwinian precepts that fall so incongruously from his lips tend
+to excite our mirth, but, though we are mildly amused, we are no
+longer merely bored. Even the protracted descriptions of domestic
+life assume a new and deeper meaning, for the shadow of the
+monster broods over them. One by one those whom Frankenstein
+loves fall victims to the malice of the being he has endowed with
+life. Unceasingly and unrelentingly the loathsome creature dogs
+our imagination, more awful when he lurks unseen than when he
+stands actually before us. With hideous malignity he slays
+Frankenstein's young brother, and by a fiendish device causes
+Justine, an innocent girl, to be executed for the crime. Yet ere
+long our sympathy, which has hitherto been entirely with
+Frankenstein, is unexpectedly diverted to the monster who, it
+would seem, is wicked only because he is eternally divorced from
+human society. Amid the magnificent scenery of the Valley of
+Chamounix he appears before his creator, and tells the story of
+his wretched life, pleading: "Everywhere I see bliss from which I
+alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery
+made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."
+
+He describes how his physical ugliness repels human beings, who
+fail to realise his benevolent intentions. A father snatches from
+his arms the child he has rescued from death; the virtuous
+family, whom he admires and would fain serve, flee affrighted
+from his presence. To educate the monster, so that his thoughts
+and emotions may become articulate, and, incidentally, to
+accentuate his isolation from society, Mrs. Shelley inserts a
+complicated story about an Arabian girl, Sofie, whose lover
+teaches her to read from Plutarch's _Lives_, Volney's _Ruins of
+Empire, The Sorrows of Werther_, and _Paradise Lost_. The monster
+overhears the lessons, and ponders on this unique library, but,
+as he pleads his own cause the more eloquently because he knows
+Satan's passionate outbursts of defiance and self-pity, who would
+cavil at the method by which he is made to acquire his knowledge?
+"The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their
+branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst
+forth amidst the universal stillness. All save I were at rest or
+in enjoyment. I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me." And
+later, near the close of the book: "The fallen angel becomes a
+malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends
+and associates in his desolation; I am alone," His fate reminds
+us of that of _Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude_, who:
+
+  "Over the world wanders for ever
+  Lone as incarnate death."
+
+After the long and moving recital of his woes, even the obdurate
+Frankenstein cannot resist the justice of his demand for a
+partner like himself. Yet when the student recoils with horror
+from his half-accomplished task and sees the creature maliciously
+peering through the window, our hatred leaps to life once more
+and burns fiercely as the monster adds to his crimes the murder
+of Clerval, Frankenstein's dearest friend, and of Elizabeth on
+her wedding night. We follow with shuddering anticipation the
+long pursuit of the monster, expectant of a last, fearful
+encounter which shall decide the fate of the demon and his maker.
+Amid the region of eternal ice, Frankenstein catches sight of
+him; but fails to reach him. At last, beside the body of his last
+victim--Frankenstein himself--the creature is filled with remorse
+at the "frightful catalogue" of his sins, and makes a final bid
+for our sympathy in the farewell speech to Walton, before
+climbing on an ice-raft to be "borne away by the waves and lost
+in darkness and distance."
+
+Like _Alastor_, _Frankenstein_ was a plea for human sympathy, and
+was, according to Shelley's preface, intended "to exhibit the
+amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence of universal
+virtue." The monster has the perception and desire of goodness,
+but, by the circumstances of his abnormal existence, is delivered
+over to evil. It is this dual nature that prevents him from being
+a mere automaton. The monster indeed is far more real than the
+shadowy beings whom he pursues. Frankenstein is less an
+individual than a type, and only interests us through the
+emotions which his conflict with the monster arouses. Clerval,
+Elizabeth and Frankenstein's relatives are passive sufferers
+whose psychology does not concern us. Mrs. Shelley rightly
+lavishes her skill on the central figure of the book, and
+succeeds, as effectually as Frankenstein himself, in infusing
+into him the spark of life. Mrs. Shelley's aim is to "awaken
+thrilling horror," and, incidentally, to "exhibit the excellence
+of domestic virtue," and for her purpose the demon is of
+paramount importance. The involved, complex plot of a novel
+seemed to pass beyond Mrs. Shelley's control. A short tale she
+could handle successfully, and Shelley was unwise in inciting her
+to expand _Frankenstein_ into a long narrative. So long as she is
+completely carried away by her subject Mrs. Shelley writes
+clearly, but when she pauses to regard the progress of her story
+dispassionately, she seems to be overwhelmed by the wealth of her
+resources and to have no power of selecting the relevant details.
+The laborious introductory letters, the meticulous record of
+Frankenstein's education, the story of Felix and Sofie, the
+description of the tour through England before the creation of
+the second monster is attempted, are all connected with the main
+theme by very frail links and serve to distract our attention in
+an irritating fashion from what really interests us. In the novel
+of mystery a tantalising delay may be singularly effective. In a
+novel which depends chiefly for its effect on sheer horror,
+delays are merely dangerous. By resting her terrors on a
+pseudo-scientific basis and by placing her story in a definite
+locality, Mrs. Shelley waives her right to an entire suspension
+of disbelief. If it be reduced to its lowest terms, the plot of
+Frankenstein, with its bewildering confusion of the prosaic and
+the fantastic, sounds as crude, disjointed and inconsequent as
+that of a nightmare. Mrs. Shelley's timid hesitation between
+imagination and reality, her attempt to reconcile incompatible
+things and to place a creature who belongs to no earthly land in
+familiar surroundings, prevents _Frankenstein_ from being a
+wholly satisfactory and alarming novel of terror. She loves the
+fantastic, but she also fears it. She is weighted down by
+commonsense, and so flutters instead of soaring, unwilling to
+trust herself far from the material world. But the fact that she
+was able to vivify her grotesque skeleton of a plot with some
+degree of success is no mean tribute to her gifts. The energy and
+vigour of her style, her complete and serious absorption in her
+subject, carry us safely over many an absurdity. It is only in
+the duller stretches of the narrative, when her heart is not in
+her work, that her language becomes vague, indeterminate and
+blurred, and that she muffles her thoughts in words like
+"ascertain," "commencement," "peruse," "diffuse," instead of
+using their simpler Saxon equivalents. Stirred by the excitement
+of the events she describes, she can write forcibly in simple,
+direct language. She often frames short, hurried sentences such
+as a man would naturally utter when breathless with terror or
+with recollections of terror. The final impression that
+_Frankenstein_ leaves with us is not easy to define, because the
+book is so uneven in quality. It is obviously the shapeless work
+of an immature writer who has had no experience in evolving a
+plot. Sometimes it is genuinely moving and impressive, but it
+continually falls abruptly and ludicrously short of its aim. Yet
+when all its faults have been laid bare, the fact remains that
+few readers would abandon the story half-way through. Mrs.
+Shelley is so thoroughly engrossed in her theme that she impels
+her readers onward, even though they may think but meanly of her
+story as a work of art.
+
+Mrs. Shelley's second novel, _Valperga, or the Life and
+Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca_, published in 1823,
+was a work on which she bestowed much care and labour, but the
+result proves that she writes best when the urgency of her
+imagination leaves her no leisure either to display her learning
+or adorn her style. She herself calls _Valperga_ a "child of
+mighty slow growth," and Shelley adds that it was "raked out of
+fifty old books." Mrs. Shelley, always an industrious student,
+made a conscientious survey of original sources before fashioning
+her story of mediaeval Italy, and she is hampered by the
+exuberance of her knowledge. The novel is not a romance of
+terror; but Castruccio, though his character is sketched from
+authentic documents, seems towards the end of the story to
+resemble the picturesque villain who numbered among his ancestry
+Milton's Satan. He has "a majestic figure and a countenance
+beautiful but sad, and tarnished by the expression of pride that
+animated it." Beatrice, the gifted prophetess who falls deep in
+love with Castruccio, ends her days in the dungeons of the
+Inquisition. Mrs. Shelley's aim, however, is not to arouse fear,
+but to trace the gradual deterioration of Castruccio's character
+from an open-hearted youth to a crafty tyrant. The blunt remarks
+of Godwin, who revised the manuscript, are not unjust, but fall
+with an ill grace from the pen of the author of _St. Leon_: "It
+appears in reading, that the first rule you prescribed was: 'I
+will let it be long.' It contains the quantity of four volumes of
+_Waverley_. No hard blow was ever hit with a woodsaw."[121]
+
+In _The Last Man_, which appeared in 1825, Mrs. Shelley attempted
+a stupendous theme, no less then a picture of the devastation of
+the human race by plague and pestilence. She casts her
+imagination forward into the twenty-first century, when the last
+king of England has abdicated the throne and a republic is
+established. Very wisely, she narrows the interest by
+concentrating on the pathetic fate of a group of friends who are
+among the last survivors, and the story becomes an idealised
+record of her own sufferings. The description of the loneliness
+of the bereft has a personal note, and reminds us of her journal,
+where she expresses the sorrow of being herself the last
+survivor, and of feeling like a "cloud from which the light of
+sunset has passed."[122] Raymond, who dies in an attempt to place
+the standard of Greece in Stamboul, is a portrait of Byron; and
+Adrian, the late king's son, who finally becomes Protector, is
+clearly modelled on Shelley. Yet in spite of these personal
+reminiscences, their characters lack distinctness. Idris, Clara
+and Perdita are faintly etched, but Evadne, the Greek artist, who
+cherishes a passion for Raymond, and dies fighting against the
+Turks, has more colour and body than the other women, though she
+is somewhat theatrical. Mrs. Shelley conveys emotion more
+faithfully than character, and the overwrought sensibilities and
+dark forebodings of the diminished party of survivors who leave
+England to distract their minds by foreign travel are artfully
+suggested. The leaping, gesticulating figure, whom their jaded
+nerves and morbid fancy transform into a phantom, is a delirious
+ballet-dancer; and the Black Spectre, mistaken for Death
+Incarnate, proves only to be a plague-stricken noble, who lurks
+near the party for the sake of human society. These "reasonable"
+solutions of the apparently supernatural remind us of Mrs.
+Radcliffe's method, and Mrs. Shelley shows keen psychological
+insight in her delineation of the state of mind which readily
+conjures up imaginary terrors. When Lionel Verney is left alone
+in the universe, her power seems to flag, and instead of the
+final crescendo of horror, which we expect at the end of the
+book, we are left with an ineffective picture of the last man in
+Rome in 2005 deciding to explore the countries he has not yet
+viewed. As he wanders amid the ruins he recalls not only "the
+buried Caesars," but also the monk in _The Italian_, of whom he
+had read in childhood--a striking proof of Mrs. Shelley's faith
+in the permanence of Mrs. Radcliffe's fame.
+
+Though the style of _The Last Man_ is often tediously prolix and
+is disfigured by patches of florid rhetoric and by inappropriate
+similes scattered broadcast, occasional passages of wonderful
+beauty recall Shelley's imagery; and, in conveying the pathos of
+loneliness, personal feeling lends nobility and eloquence to her
+style. With so ambitious a subject, it was natural that she
+should only partially succeed in carrying her readers with her.
+Though there are oases, the story is a somewhat tedious and
+dreary stretch of narrative that can only be traversed with
+considerable effort.
+
+Mrs. Shelley's later works--_Perkin Warbeck_ (1830), a historical
+novel; _Lodore_ (1835), which describes the early life of Shelley
+and Harriet; _Falkner_ (1837), which was influenced by _Caleb
+Williams_--do not belong to the history of the novel of terror;
+but some of her short tales, contributed to periodicals and
+collected in 1891, have gruesome and supernatural themes. _A Tale
+of the Passions, or the Death of Despina_[123] a story based on
+the struggles of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, contains a
+perfect specimen of the traditional villain of the novel of
+terror:
+
+     "Every feature of his countenance spoke of the struggle
+     of passions and the terrible egotism of one who would
+     sacrifice himself to the establishment of his will: his
+     black eyebrows were scattered, his grey eyes deep-set
+     and scowling, his look at once stern and haggard. A
+     smile seemed never to have disturbed the settled scorn
+     which his lips expressed; his high forehead was marked
+     by a thousand contradictory lines."
+
+This terrific personage spends the last years of his life in
+orthodox fashion as an austere saint in a monastery.
+
+_The Mortal Immortal_, a variation on the theme of _St. Leon_, is
+the record of a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, who drank half of the
+elixir his master had compounded in the belief that it was a
+potion to destroy love. It is written on his three hundred and
+twenty-third birthday. _Transformation_, like _Frankenstein_,
+dwells on the pathos of ugliness and deformity, but the subject
+is treated rather in the spirit of an eastern fairy tale than in
+that of a novel of terror. The dwarf, in return for a chest of
+treasure, borrows a beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the
+love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short
+stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her
+novels, and are written in a more graceful, fluent style than the
+books on which she expended great labour.
+
+The literary history of Byron's fragmentary novel and of
+Polidori's short story, _The Vampyre_, is somewhat tangled, but
+the solution is to be found in the diary of Dr. John William
+Polidori, edited and elucidated by William Michael Rossetti. The
+day after that on which Polidori states that all the competitors,
+except himself, had begun their stories, he records the simple
+fact: "Began my ghost-story after tea." He gives no hint as to
+the subject of his tale, but Mrs. Shelley tells us that Polidori
+had some idea of a "skull-headed lady, who was so punished for
+looking through a key-hole, and who was finally buried in the
+tomb of the Capulets." In the introduction to _Ernestus
+Berchtold, or the Modern OEdipus_, he states definitely:
+
+     "The tale here presented to the public is one I began
+     at Coligny, when _Frankenstein_ was planned, and when a
+     noble author, having determined to descend from his
+     lofty range, gave up a few hours to a tale of terror,
+     and wrote the fragment published at the end of
+     Mazeppa."
+
+As no skull-headed lady appears in _Ernestus Berchtold_, it is
+probable that her career was only suggested to the rest of the
+party as an entrancing possibility, and never actually took
+shape. This theme would certainly have proved more frightful and
+possibly more interesting than the one which Polidori eventually
+adopted in _Ernestus Berchtold_, a rambling, leisurely account of
+the adventures of a Swiss soldier, whose wife afterwards proves
+to be his own sister. Their father has accepted from a malignant
+spirit the gift of wealth, but each time that the gift is
+bestowed some great affliction follows. This secret is not
+divulged until we are quite near the close of the story, and have
+waited so long that our interest has begun to wane. _Ernestus
+Berchtold_ is, as a matter of fact, not a novel of terror at all.
+The supernatural agency, which should have been interlaced with
+the domestic story from beginning to end, is only dragged in
+because it was one of the conditions of the competition, as
+indeed Polidori frankly confesses in his introduction:
+
+     "Many readers will think that the same moral and the
+     same colouring might have been given to characters
+     acting under the ordinary agencies of life. I believe
+     it, but I agreed to write a supernatural tale, and that
+     does not allow of a completely everyday narrative."
+
+The candour of this admission forestalls criticism. Strangely
+enough, Polidori adds that he has thrown the "superior agency"
+into the background, because "a tale that rests upon
+improbabilities must generally disgust a rational mind." With so
+decided a preference for the reasonable and probable, it is
+remarkable that Polidori should treat the vampire legend
+successfully. It has frequently been stated that Byron's story
+was completed by Polidori; but this assertion is not precisely
+accurate. Polidori made no use of the actual fragment, but based
+his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have
+been continued. Byron's story describes the arrival of two
+friends amid the ruins of Ephesus. One of them, Darvell, who,
+like most of Byron's heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a
+prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies. Before his
+death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw
+a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis. If
+we may trust Polidori's account, Byron intended that the
+survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold
+his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.
+On this foundation Polidori constructed _The Vampyre_. The story
+opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose
+appearance and character excite great interest in London society.
+His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a "dead,
+grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to
+penetrate and at one glance to pierce through to the inward
+workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray
+that laid (_sic_) upon the skin it could not pass." A young man
+named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes
+deeply interested in the study of Ruthven's character. When he
+joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes
+a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table;
+and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven's reputation, decides
+to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely. He succeeds
+in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.
+Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with
+Ianthe. One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes
+to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an
+excursion. Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the
+terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting
+to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of
+superhuman strength, who cries: "Again baffled!" When light
+dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become
+the prey of a vampire. He carries away from the spot a
+blood-stained dagger. In the delirious fever, which ensues on his
+discovery of Ianthe's fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.
+While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the
+shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a
+solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he
+knows of his crimes or death. In accordance with a promise made
+to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to
+the rays of the moon. The corpse disappears. Among Ruthven's
+possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has
+found in the hovel fits exactly. On passing through Rome he
+learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.
+When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the
+figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first
+seen him. He dare not break his oath, and soon becomes almost
+demented. The news of his sister's marriage seems to rouse him
+momentarily from his lethargy, and when he discovers that Ruthven
+is to be the bridegroom he urges her to delay the marriage. His
+warnings are disregarded, and the ceremony takes place. Aubrey
+relates to his sister's guardians all that he knows of Ruthven,
+but it is too late. Ruthven has disappeared, and she has "glutted
+the thirst of a vampyre."
+
+Polidori's manner of telling the story is curiously matter of
+fact and restrained. He relates the incidents as they occur, and
+leaves the reader to form his own conclusions. If Lewis had been
+handling the theme he would have wallowed in gory details, and
+would have expatiated on the agonies of his victims. Polidori
+wisely keeps his story in a quiet key, depending for his effect
+on the terror of the bare facts. He realises that he is on the
+verge of the unspeakable.
+
+Polidori's story set a fashion in vampires, who appear as
+characters in fiction all through the nineteenth century. A
+writer in the _Dublin University Magazine_ tells of a vampire who
+plays an admirable game of whist! There is an "explained" vampire
+in one of George Macdonald's stories, _Adela Cathcart_. The
+prince of vampires is, however, Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, round
+whom centres a story of absorbing interest.
+
+De Quincey, who might have selected from the novel of terror many
+admirable illustrations for his essay on _Murder, Considered as
+one of the Fine Arts_, and who seems to have been attracted by
+the German type of horrific story, shows some facility in
+sensational fiction. In _Klosterheim_, a one-volumed novel
+published in 1832, the interest circles round the machinations of
+an elusive, ubiquitous "Masque," eventually revealed to be none
+other than the son of the late Landgrave, who, like many a man
+before him in the tale of terror, has been done to death by a
+usurper. Disappearances through trap-doors, and escapes down
+subterranean passages are effected with a dexterity suggestive of
+Mrs. Radcliffe's methods; and the inexplicable murders, with the
+exception of that of an aged seneschal accidentally betrayed, are
+not real. In certain of his moods and habits, the Masque bears a
+likeness to Lewis's "Bravo," but the setting of De Quincey's
+story is very different. The adventures of the Masque and of the
+Lady Pauline are cast in Germany amid the confusion of the Thirty
+Years' War. In _The Household Wreck_, published in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, January 1838, De Quincey shows his power of conveying
+a sense of foreboding, that anticipation of horror which is often
+more harrowing than the reality. Another tale of terror, _The
+Avenger_, published in the same year, describes a series of
+bloodcurdling murders which baffle the skill of the police, but
+which eventually prove to have been committed by a son to avenge
+dishonour done to his Jewish mother. For a collection of _Popular
+Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, published in 1823,
+De Quincey translated _Der Freischuetz_ from the German of J.A.
+Apel, under the title of _The Fatal Marksman_. By means of
+ill-gotten magic bullets the marksman wins his bride, but by one
+of those little ironies in which the devil delights to indulge,
+she is slain on the wedding-day by a bullet, which is aimed
+straight, but goes askew. In _The Dice_, another short story from
+the German, De Quincey once again exploits the old theme of a
+bargain with the devil.
+
+De Quincey's contributions to the tale of terror shrink into
+unimportance beside the rest of his work, and are not in
+themselves remarkable. They are of interest as showing the
+widespread and long-enduring vogue of the species. It is
+noteworthy how many writers, whose main business lay elsewhere,
+have found time to make erratic excursions into the realms of the
+supernatural.
+
+So late as 1834--more than a decade after the appearance of
+_Melmoth_--Harrison Ainsworth, whose imagination was steeped in
+terror, sought once more to revive the "feeble and fluttering
+pulses of old Romance." Among his earliest experiments were tales
+obviously fashioned in the Gothic manner. His Imperishable One,
+the hero of a tale first published in the _European Magazine_ for
+1822, bemoans the burden of immortality in the listless tones of
+Godwin's St. Leon, and is tempted by the fallen angel in the
+self-same guise in which he appeared to Lewis's notorious monk.
+In _The Test of Affection_ (_European Magazine_, 1822) a wealthy
+man avails himself of Mrs. Radcliffe's supernatural trickery to
+test the loyalty of his friends, whom he succeeds in alarming by
+noises and a skeleton apparition. In _Arliss's Pocket Magazine_
+(1822) there appeared _The Spectre Bride_; and in the _European
+Magazine_ (1823) Ainsworth attempted a theme that would have
+attracted Poe in _The Half Hangit_. _The Boeotian_ for 1824
+contained _A Tale of Mystery_, and the _Literary Souvenir_ for
+1825 _The Fortress of Saguntum_, a story in the style of Lewis.
+Ainsworth's first novel, _Rookwood_ (1834), was inspired by a
+visit to Cuckfield Place, an old manor house which had reminded
+Shelley of "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe":
+
+     "Wishing to describe somewhat minutely the trim
+     gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted
+     groves, the gloomy chambers and gloomier galleries of
+     an ancient hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved
+     to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs.
+     Radcliffe, substituting an old English squire, an old
+     manorial residence and an old English highwayman for
+     the Italian marchise, the castle and the brigand of
+     that great mistress of romance... The attempt has
+     succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectation. Romance,
+     if I am not mistaken, is destined shortly to undergo an
+     important change. Modified by the German and French
+     writers--Hoffmann, Tieck, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas,
+     Balzac and Paul Lacroix--the structure commenced in our
+     land by Horace Walpole, 'Monk' Lewis, Mrs. Radcliffe
+     and Maturin, but, left imperfect and inharmonious,
+     requires, now that the rubbish which choked up its
+     approach is removed, only the hand of the skilful
+     architect to its entire renovation and perfection."
+
+In _Rookwood_, Ainsworth disdains Mrs. Radcliffe's reasonable
+elucidations of the supernatural, and introduces spectres whose
+existence it would be impossible to deny. Once, however, a
+supposed ghost becomes substantial, and proves to be none other
+than a human being called Jack Palmer. The sexton, Luke Bradley,
+_alias_ Alan Rookwood, has inherited two of the Wanderer's
+traits--the fear-impelling eyes of intolerable lustre, and the
+habit of indulging in wild, screaming laughter on the most
+inauspicious occasions.
+
+Gothic properties are scattered with indiscriminate
+extravagance--skeleton hands, suddenly extinguished candles,
+sliding panels, sepulchral vaults. The plot of _Rookwood_ is too
+complicated and too overcrowded with incident to keep our
+attention. The terrors are so unremitting that they fail to
+strike home. The only part of the book which holds us enthralled
+is the famous description of Dick Turpin's ride to York. Here we
+forget Ainsworth's slip-shod style in the excitement of the
+chase. In his later novels Ainsworth abandoned the manner of Mrs.
+Radcliffe, but did not fail to make use of the motive of terror
+and mystery. The scenes of horror which he strove to convey in
+words were often more admirably depicted in the illustrations of
+Cruikshank. The sorcerer's sabbath in _Crichton_, the historical
+scenes of horror in _The Tower of London_, the masque of the
+Dance of Death in _Old St. Paul's_, the appearance of Herne the
+Hunter, heralded by phosphoric lights, in _Windsor Castle_, the
+terrible orgies of _The Lancashire Witches_, are described with
+more striking effect because of Ainsworth's early reading in the
+school of terror. In _Auriol_, which was first published in
+_Ainsworth's Magazine_ (1844-5) under the title _Revelations of
+London_, was issued in 1845 as a gratuitous supplement to the
+_New Monthly_, and greeted with derision,[125] Ainsworth handled
+once again the theme that fascinated Lytton. The Prologue (1599)
+describes the death of Dr. Lamb, whose elixir is seized by his
+great-grandson. In 1830 London is haunted by a stranger, who
+involves Auriol in wildly fantastic and frightful adventures. The
+book closes in Dr. Lamb's laboratory; the intervening scenes are
+but dream imagery. Phiz's sketch of the Ruined House is the most
+lasting memory left by the book.
+
+Captain Marryat, whose mind was well stored with sailors' yarns,
+retells in _The Phantom Ship_ (1839) the old legend of the Flying
+Dutchman. At one time the doomed vessel is an unsubstantial
+vision, which can pass clean through the Utrecht; at another she
+is a real craft, whose deck can be boarded by mortal men. The
+one-eyed pilot, Schriften, with his malignant hatred of the hero,
+Philip, is a terrifying figure. The story is embroidered by the
+invention of a wife of Arab extraction, who is constantly
+attempting to recall the half-forgotten magical arts which her
+mother had practised. Marryat makes an opportunity in the history
+of Krantz, the second mate of the _Vrou Katerina_, to introduce
+the Scandinavian legend of the werewolf, which is related with
+grisly detail.
+
+The novel of terror, with all its faults, had seldom been guilty
+of demanding intellectual strain or of overburdening itself with
+erudition. It was the dignified task of Lord Lytton to
+rationalise and elevate the novel of terror, to evolve the "man
+of reason" from the "child of nature." Although time has
+tarnished the brilliance of his reputation, George Edward Bulwer
+was an imposing figure in the history of nineteenth century
+fiction. Throughout his life, in spite of political and social
+distractions and of matrimonial disaster, he continued to engage
+with unwearying industry in literary work. He was not a man of
+genius in whom the creative impulse found its own expression, but
+a versatile and accomplished gentleman who could direct his
+talents into any channel he pleased. Essays, translations,
+verses, plays, novels flowed from his pen in rapid succession,
+and he won his meed of applause and fame, as well as his share of
+execration and derision, in his own lifetime. Quick to discern
+the popular taste of the hour, and eager to gratify it, Lytton,
+with the resourceful agility of a lightning impersonator, turns
+in his novels from Wertherism to dandyism, from criminal
+psychology to fairy folk-lore, from historical romance to
+domestic romance, from pseudo-philosophic occultism to
+pseudo-scientific fantasy. He ranges at will in the past, the
+present or the future, consorting indifferently with impalpable
+wraiths, Vrilya or mysterious Sages. It is to his credit that
+this unusual gift of adaptability does not result in
+incompetency. Though he attempts a variety of manners, it must in
+justice be acknowledged that he does most of them well. He
+constructs his plots with laborious art, and pays a deliberate,
+if sometimes misguided, attention to style. When he fails, it is
+less from lack of effort than from over-elaboration and excess of
+zeal.
+
+Bulwer Lytton's predilection for the supernatural was neither a
+theatrical pose nor a passing folly excited by the fashionable
+craze for psychical research, but a genuine and enduring
+interest, inherited, it may be, from his ancestor, the learned,
+eccentric savant, Dr. Bulwer, who studied the Black Art and
+dabbled in astrology and palmistry. He was a member of the
+society of Rosicrucians, and, to quote the words of his grandson,
+"he certainly did not study magic for the sake of writing about
+it, still less did he write about it, without having studied it,
+merely for the sake of making his readers' flesh creep." From his
+early years Lytton seems to have been keenly interested in
+supernatural manifestations. He was inspired by the deserted
+rooms at the end of a long gallery in Knebworth House to set down
+the story of the ghost, Jenny Spinner, who was said to haunt
+them; and the concealed chamber in _The Haunted and the Haunters_
+may have been a revived memory of the trap-door down which Lytton
+as a boy had "peeped with bristling hair into the shadowy abysses
+of hellhole." In _Glenallan_,[126] an early fragment, we find
+promising material for a tale of mystery--a villain with a
+"strange and sinister expression," a boy who, like the youthful
+Shelley, steals forth by night to graveyards, hoping to attain to
+fearful secrets, and an aged servant, a living chronicle of
+horrors, who relates the doings of an Irish wizard, Morshed
+Tyrone, of such awful power that the spirits of the earth, air
+and ocean ministered to him. In _Godolphin_ (1833) there is an
+astrologer with the furrowed brow and awful eye, so common among
+the people of terror, and a strangely gifted girl, Lucilla, who
+turns soothsayer. But when Bulwer Lytton attempts a supernatural
+romance he leaves far behind him the sphere of Gothic terrors and
+soars into rarefied, exalted regions that inspire awe rather than
+horror. The Dweller of the Threshold in _Zanoni_ is no
+red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a
+deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over
+the crater of Vesuvius.
+
+The romance, _Zanoni_ (1842), which Lytton considered the
+greatest of his works and which Carlyle praised with what now
+seems extravagant fervour, was based on an earlier sketch,
+_Zicci_ (1838), and embodies a complicated theory which he had
+conceived several years earlier after reading some mediaeval
+treatises on astrology and the occult sciences. While his mind
+was occupied with these studies, the character of Mejnour and the
+main outlines of the story were inspired by a dream, which he
+related to his son. According to Lytton's theory, the air is
+peopled with Intelligences, of whom some are favourable, others
+hostile to man. The earth contains certain plants, which, rightly
+used, have power to arrest the decay of the human body, and to
+enable man, by quickening his physical senses and mental gifts,
+to perceive the aerial beings and to discover the secrets of
+nature. This supernatural knowledge is in possession of a
+brotherhood of whom two only, Mejnour and his pupil Zanoni, are
+in existence. The initiation involves the surrender of all
+violent passions and emotions, and the neophyte must be brought
+into contact with the powerful and malignant being called the
+Dweller of the Threshold:
+
+  "Whose form of giant mould
+  No mortal eye can fixed behold,"
+
+Mejnour and Zanoni are supposed to have been initiated--the
+former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
+years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a
+vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual
+youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in
+contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and
+friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences,
+feels sympathy with human beings.
+
+Zanoni, who spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure, after
+fifty centuries at last falls in love with Viola, an Italian
+opera-singer. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, Zanoni is reluctant to
+bind the woman he loves to his own fate. He tries to renounce
+Viola to an Englishman, Glyndon, who eventually chooses to
+relinquish love for the sake of achieving the unearthly knowledge
+of Mejnour. Glyndon, however, fails in the trial, and is
+consequently haunted by the horror of the Dweller of the
+Threshold. Meanwhile Zanoni is united to Viola; and because he
+has succumbed to the force of love, his peculiar powers begin to
+fail. He can no longer see the beautiful, aerial intelligence,
+Adon-Ai. To save from death Viola and the child who is born to
+them, Zanoni ere long yields to the Dweller of the Threshold his
+gift of communion with the inhabitants of heaven. Later Viola,
+who incidentally typifies Superstition deserting Faith, leaves
+Zanoni at the call of Glyndon, and in Paris, during the Reign of
+Terror, is doomed to die. Zanoni invokes the aid of the
+mysterious Intelligences, and his courage at length brings
+Adon-Ai again to his side. He wins a day's reprieve for Viola,
+and is executed in her stead. The death of Robespierre releases
+the prisoners, but Viola dies the next day.
+
+The compact between Zanoni and the Dweller of the Threshold is a
+renovation of the time-worn legend of the bargain with an evil
+spirit, but Lytton transforms it almost beyond recognition.
+Zanoni is no criminal. He has attained his secrets through
+will-power, self-conquest, and the subordination of the flesh to
+the spirit, and he surrenders his gifts willingly for the sake of
+another. Both Mejnour and Zanoni disclaim miraculous powers, yet
+Zanoni is ready to stake his mistress on a cast of the dice, and
+can cause the death of three sanguinary marauders without
+stirring from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursues his
+chemical studies. From such incidents as these it would seem as
+if Lytton, for the actual craftsmanship of _Zanoni_, may have
+gleaned stray hints from the novel of terror; but the spirit and
+intention of the book are entirely different. Though Lytton
+expressly declares that his _Zanoni_ is not an allegory, he
+confesses that it has symbolical meanings. Zanoni is apt to
+assume the superior pose of a lecturer elucidating an abstruse
+subject to an unenlightened audience. The impression of artifice
+that the book makes upon us is probably due to the fact that
+Lytton first conceived his theories and then created personages
+to illustrate them. His characters have no power to act of their
+own volition or to do unexpected things, but must move along the
+lines laid down for them.
+
+In _The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain_,
+which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1859, Bulwer Lytton
+lays aside the sin of over-elaboration and ornamentation that so
+easily besets him, and relies for his effect on the impalpable
+horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the
+accurate description of the position of the house in a street off
+the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the
+matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage
+of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony,
+all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie
+child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands,
+the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly
+outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb with
+ruffles, lace, and buckles, the hideous phantom of the drowned
+man, the dark figure with malignant serpent eyes, shadow forth
+the story hinted at in the letters found in an old drawer.
+Haunted by loathly presences, the watcher experiences a sensation
+of almost intolerable horror, but saves himself at the worst by
+opposing his will to that of the haunters. He rightly surmises
+that the evil influences, which seem in some way to emanate from
+a small empty room, really proceed from a living being. His
+interpretation is skilful and subtle enough not to detract from
+the simple horror of the tale. A miniature, certain volatile
+essences, a compass, a lodestone and other properties are found
+in a room below that which appeared to be the source of the
+horrors. It proves that the man, whose face is portrayed on the
+miniature has been able through the exertion of will-power to
+prolong his life for two centuries, and to preserve a curse in a
+magical vessel. He is actually interviewed by the watcher, to
+whom he unfolds his remarkable history, and whom he mesmerises
+into silence on the subject of his experiences in the haunted
+house for a space of three months.
+
+Lytton realises that it is not only what is told but what is left
+unsaid that requires consideration in a ghost story. His
+reticence and the entire absence of any note of mockery or doubt
+secure the "willing suspension of disbelief" necessary to the
+appreciation of the apparently supernatural.
+
+In _A Strange Story_, which, at Dickens's invitation, appeared in
+_All the Year Round_ (1861-2), Bulwer Lytton further elaborates
+his theories of mesmerism and willpower. He explains his purpose
+in the Preface:
+
+     "When the reader lays down this strange story, perhaps
+     he will detect, through all the haze of Romance, the
+     outlines of these images suggested to his reason:
+     Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such
+     as the Materialist had conceived it. Secondly, the
+     image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its
+     inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence and
+     destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplexity
+     and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation
+     before it settles at last into the simple faith which
+     unites the philosopher and the infant. And thirdly, the
+     image of the erring but pure-thoughted Visionary,
+     seeking overmuch on this earth to separate soul from
+     mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom
+     and reason is lost in the space between earth and the
+     stars."
+
+These three conceptions are embodied in Margrave, who has renewed
+his life far beyond the limits allotted to man; a young doctor,
+Fenwick, who represents the intellectual divorced from the
+spiritual; and Lilian Ashleigh, a clairvoyante girl, who typifies
+the spiritual divorced from the intellectual. The interest of the
+story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to
+wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately
+tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the
+wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose,
+there is a fascination about the book which compels us to go
+forward.
+
+In Lytton's hands the barbarity of the novel of terror has been
+gracefully smoothed away. It has, indeed, become almost
+unrecognisably refined and elevated, and something of its native
+vigour is lost in the process. Amid all the amenities of Vrilya
+and Intelligences, we miss the vulgar blatancy of an honest,
+old-fashioned spectre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+For the readers of their own day the Gothic romances of Walpole,
+Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe possessed the charm of novelty.
+Before the close of the century we may trace, in the
+conversations of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in
+_Northanger Abbey_, symptoms of a longing for more poignant
+excitement. It was at this time that Mrs. Radcliffe, after the
+publication of _The Italian_ in 1797, retired quietly from the
+field. From her obscurity she viewed no doubt with some disdain
+the vulgar achievements of "Monk" Lewis and a tribe of imitators,
+who compounded a farrago of horrors as thick and slab as the
+contents of a witch's cauldron. Until the appearance in 1820 of
+Maturin's _Melmoth_, which was redeemed by its psychological
+insight and its vigorous style, the Gothic romance maintained a
+disreputable existence in the hands of those who looked upon
+fiction as a lucrative trade, not as an art. In the meantime,
+however, an easy device had been discovered for pandering to the
+popular craving for excitement. Ingenious authors realised that
+it was possible to compress into the five pages of a short story
+as much sensation as was contained in the five volumes of a
+Gothic romance. For the brevity of the tales, which were issued
+in chapbooks, readers were compensated by gaudily coloured
+illustrations and by double-barrelled titles. An anthology called
+"Wild Roses" (published by Anne Lemoine, Coleman Street, n.d.)
+included: _Twelve O'Clock or the Three Robbers, The Monks of
+Cluny, or Castle Acre Monastery, The Tomb of Aurora, or The
+Mysterious Summons, The Mysterious Spaniard, or The Ruins of St.
+Luke's Abbey_, and lastly, as a _bonne bouche_, _Barbastal, or
+The Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_.[127] There are
+many collections of this kind, some of them dating back to 1806,
+among the chapbooks in the British Museum. It is in these brief,
+blood-curdling romances that we may find the origin of the short
+tale of terror, which became so popular a form of literature in
+the nineteenth century. The taste for these delicious morsels has
+lingered long. Dante Gabriel Rossetti delighted in _Brigand
+Tales, Tales of Chivalry, Tales of Wonder, Legends of Terror_;
+and it was in search of such booty, "a penny plain and twopence
+coloured" that, more than fifty years later, Robert Louis
+Stevenson and his companions ransacked the stores of a certain
+secluded stationer's shop in Edinburgh.
+
+It was probably the success of the chapbook that encouraged the
+editors of periodicals early in the nineteenth century to enliven
+their pages with sensational fiction. The literary hack, who, if
+he had lived a century earlier, would have been glad to turn a
+Turkish tale for half-a-crown, now cheerfully furnished a
+"fireside horror" for the Christmas number. In his search after
+novelty he was often driven to wild and desperate expedients.
+Leigh Hunt, who showed scant sympathy with Lewis's bleeding nun
+and scoffed mercilessly at his "little grey men who sit munching
+hearts," was bound to admit: "A man who does not contribute his
+quota of grim story, now-a-days, seems hardly to be free of the
+republic of letters." Accordingly, so that he too might wear a
+death's head as part of his _insignia_, he included in _The
+Indicator_ (1819-21) a supernatural story, entitled _A Tale for a
+Chimney Corner_. Scorning to "measure talents with a leg of veal
+or a German sausage," he unfortunately dismissed from his
+imagination the nightmarish hordes of
+
+     "Haunting Old Women and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary
+     Lean Hands, and Empusas on one leg, and Ladies growing
+     Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through
+     Keyholes; and Plaintive Heads and Shrieking Statues and
+     Shocking Anomalies of Shape and Things, which, when
+     seen, drove people mad,"
+
+and in their place he conjured up a placid, ladylike ghost from a
+legend quoted in Sandys' commentary on Ovid. Leigh Hunt's story
+has the air of having been written by one who cared for none of
+these things; but there were others who wrote with more gusto.
+
+Many of the tales in such collections as _The Story-Teller_
+(1833) or _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_ (1839-42) show
+the persistence of Gothic story. In these periodicals the grave
+and the gay are intermingled, and when we are weary of dark
+intrigues and impenetrable secrets we may turn to lighter
+reading. Yet it is significant of the taste of our ancestors that
+we cannot venture far without encountering a spectre of some
+sort, or a villain with the baleful eye, disguised, it may be, as
+a Spanish gipsy, a German necromancer or a Russian count. Many of
+the stories are Gothic novels, reduced in size, but with room for
+all the old machinery:
+
+  "A novel now is nothing more
+  Than an old castle, and a creaking door,
+    A distant hovel,
+  Clanking of chains--a galley--a light--
+  Old armour, and a phantom all in white,
+    And there's a novel."
+
+In _The Story-Teller_, a magazine which reprinted many popular
+tales, we find German legends like _The Three Students of
+Goettingen_, a "True Story Very Strange and Very Pitiful"; _The
+Wood Demon; The Wehr-Wolf; The Sexton of Cologne, or Lucifer_, a
+striking story of an Italian artist who was haunted by a terrible
+figure he had painted in the church at Arezzo. Yet the first tale
+in the collection, _The Story-Haunted_, which describes the sad
+fate of a youth brought up in a solitary library reading romances
+to his mother, was intended, like _The Spectre-Smitten_, in
+_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_,[128] as a solemn
+warning against over-indulgence in fictitious terrors. The mother
+dies in an agony of horror, as her son reads aloud the account of
+the Gentleman of Florence, who was pursued by a spectre of
+himself, which vanished with him finally into the earth, as the
+priest endeavoured to bless him. The son, left alone, enters the
+world, and judges the people around him by the standard of books.
+The story-haunted youth falls in love with the phantom of his own
+imagination, whom he endows with all the graces of the heroines
+of romance. He finds her embodied at last, but she dies before
+they are united. _The Romancist and Novelist's Library_, in ten
+volumes, contains a comprehensive selection of tales of terror by
+the "best authors." Walpole, Miss Reeve, Mrs. Radcliffe, "Monk"
+Lewis, Maturin, Mrs. Shelley, and Charles Brockden Brown are all
+represented; and there are many translations of tales by French
+and German authors. We may take our choice of _The Spectre
+Barber_ or _The Spectre Bride_, or, if we are inclined to
+incredulity, see _The Spectre Unmasked_. The entertainment
+offered is of bewildering variety. Some of the stories, such as
+D.F. Hayne's _Romance of the Castle_, seem like familiar,
+well-tried friends, and conceal no surprises for the readers of
+Gothic romance. Others, like _The Sleepless Woman_, by W. Jerdan,
+are more piquant. The hero is warned by his dying uncle to beware
+of women's bright eyes. In spite of this he marries a lady, whose
+eyes unite the qualities of the robin and the falcon. After the
+wedding he makes the awful discovery that she is of too noble a
+lineage ever to sleep. Turn where he may, her eyes are always
+upon him. At last, we find him pallid, haggard, and emaciated,
+wandering alone in an avenue of cedar trees beside a silent lake:
+
+     "At this moment a breath of wind blew a branch aside--a
+     sunbeam fell upon the baron's face; he took it for the
+     eyes of his wife. Alas! his remedy lay temptingly
+     before him, the still, the profound, the shadowy lake.
+     De Launaye took one plunge--it was into eternity."
+
+The writer foolishly ruins the effect of this climax by
+super-imposing an allegorical interpretation.
+
+Like the _Story-Teller, The Romancist and Novelist's Library_
+should be read
+
+  "At night when doors are shut,
+  And the wood-worm pricks,
+  And the death-watch ticks,
+  And the bar has a flag of smut,--
+  And the cat's in the water-butt--
+  And the socket floats and flares,
+  And the housebeams groan,
+  And a foot unknown
+  Is surmised on the garret stairs,
+  And the locks slip unawares."
+
+But "tales of terror" lose some of their power when read one
+after another; they are most effective read singly in
+periodicals. _Blackwood's Magazine_ was especially famous for its
+tales, the best of which have been collected and published
+separately. The editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_ shows
+a marked preference for tales of a supernatural or sensational
+cast. Le Fanu, who claimed that his stories, like those of Sir
+Walter Scott, belonged to the "legitimate school of English
+tragic romance," was one of the best-known contributors. _All the
+Year Round_ and _Household Words_, under the editorship of
+Dickens, often found room for the occult and the uncanny. Wilkie
+Collins' fascinating serial, _The Moonstone_, was published in
+_All the Year Round_ in 1868; _The Woman in White_ had appeared
+six years earlier in _Blackwood_. The stories included in these
+magazines are of various types. The old-fashioned spook gradually
+declines in popularity. He is ousted in a scientific age by more
+recondite forms of terror. Before 1875, with a few belated
+exceptions:
+
+  "Ghosts, wandering here and there
+  Troop home to churchyards, damned spirits all,
+  That in crossways and floods have burial,
+  Already to their wormy beds are gone."
+
+The "explained supernatural" is skilfully improved and developed.
+Le Fanu's _Green Tea_ is a story from the diary of a German
+doctor, concerning a patient who was dogged by a black monkey.
+The creature, "whose green eyes glow with an expression of
+unfathomable malignity," is medically explained to be an
+illusion; but it is so vividly presented that it fastens on our
+imagination with remarkable tenacity. Wilkie Collins' short
+story, _The Yellow Mask_, included in the series called _After
+Dark_, is another experiment in the same kind. A jealous woman
+appears among the dancers at a ball, wearing a waxen cast of the
+face of the man's dead wife. The short story, in which the author
+deliberately shakes our nerves and then soothes away our fears by
+accounting naturally for startling phenomena, is an amazingly
+popular type. It reappears continually in different guises.
+Occasionally it merges into pleasant buffoonery. _Die
+Geistertodtenglocke_, for instance, a story in the _Dublin
+University Magazine_ (1862), is a burlesque, in which the
+mysterious tolling of a bell is explained by the discovery that a
+cow strolled into the ruin to eat the hay with which the rope was
+mended. But, judiciously handled, this type of story makes a
+strong appeal to human beings who like to know how much of the
+terrible and painful they can endure, and who yet must ultimately
+be reassured.
+
+Another group of short tales of terror consists of those which
+purport to be faithful renderings of the beliefs of simple
+people. To this category belong Allan Cunningham's _Traditional
+Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_, which first
+appeared, with one exception, in the _London Magazine_ (1821-23).
+Cunningham has the tact to preserve the legends of elves,
+fairies, ghosts and bogles, as they were passed down from one
+generation to another on the lips of living beings. Later he
+attempted, in a novel, _Sir Michael Scott_ (1828), a kind of
+Gothic romance; but there is no trace in the _Traditional Tales_
+of the influence of the terrormongers with whose works he was
+familiar. Perhaps the finest story of the collection is _The
+Haunted Ships_, in which are embodied the traditions associated
+with two black and decayed hulls, half immersed in the quicksands
+of the Solway. Lewis would have dragged us on board ship, and
+would have shown us the devil in his own person. Cunningham
+wisely keeps ashore, and repeats the tales that are told
+concerning the fiendish mirth and revelry to be heard, when, at
+certain seasons of the year, they arise in their former beauty,
+with forecastle and deck, with sail and pennon and shroud. James
+Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, who was a friend of Cunningham, was
+steeped in the same folk-lore. _The Mysterious Bride_, printed
+among his _Tales and Sketches_, tells of a beautiful spirit-lady,
+dressed in white and green, who appears three times on St.
+Lawrence's Eve to the Laird of Birkendelly. On the morning, after
+the night on which she had promised to wed him, he is found, a
+blackened corpse, on Birky Brow. _Mary Burnet_ is the story of a
+maiden who is drowned when keeping tryst with her lover. She
+returns to earth, like Kilmeny, and assures her parents of her
+welfare. A demon woman, whose form resembles that of Mary, haunts
+her lover, and entices him to evil. Since Hogg can give to his
+legends a "local habitation and a name," pointing to the very
+stretch of road on which the elfin lady first appeared, it seems
+ungracious to doubt his veracity. The Ettrick Shepherd's most
+memorable achievement, however, is his _Confessions of a Fanatic_
+(1824), a terribly impressive account of a man afflicted with
+religious mania, who believes himself urged into crime by a
+mysterious being. The story abounds in frightful situations and
+weird scenes, one of the most striking being the reflection, seen
+at daybreak on Arthur's Seat, of a human head and shoulders,
+dilated to twenty times its natural size. Professor Saintsbury
+has suggested that Lockhart probably had the principal hand in
+this story. "Christopher North" was another member of the
+_Noctes_ confraternity who came sometimes under the spell of the
+unearthly.
+
+The supernatural tales of Mrs. Gaskell, whose gift for
+story-telling made Dickens call her his Scheherazade, were, like
+those of Cunningham, based directly on tradition. She was always
+attracted by the subject of witchcraft; and she had collected a
+store of "creepy" legends of the kind which made the nervous
+ladies of Cranford bid their sedan-chairmen hasten rapidly down
+Darkness Lane at nights. The best of Mrs. Gaskell's short tales
+is perhaps _The Nurse's Story_, which appeared in the Christmas
+number of _Household Words_ in 1852. Mrs. Gaskell has a happy
+gift for preserving the natural aroma of a tale of bygone days.
+_The Nurse's Story_ has a hint of the old-world grace of Lamb's
+_Dream Children_. The carefully disposed tableau of ghosts--the
+unforgiving old man, and the vindictive sister, spurning the lady
+and her child from the hall--is too definite and distinct, but
+the conception of the wraith of the dead child outside the manor,
+pleading piteously to be let in, and luring away the living
+child, is delicately wrought. The tale is told in the rambling,
+circumstantial style, suitable to the fireside and the long
+leisure of a winter's evening. Dickens tells a very different
+nurse's story in one of the chapters of _An Uncommercial
+Traveller_. The tone of Mrs. Gaskell's nurse is kindly and
+protective; that of Dickens' nurse severe, admonitory and
+emphatic. She, who told the grim legend of Captain Murderer,
+meant, clearly, to scare as well as to entertain her hearer. She
+leads up to the climax of her story, the deadly revenge of the
+dark twin's poisoned pie, with admirable art. The nurse's name
+was Mercy, but, as Dickens remarks, she showed none to him.
+Though Dickens shrank timorously in childhood from her frightful
+stories, he himself, like the fat boy in _Pickwick_, sometimes
+"wants to make our flesh creep." It seems, indeed, an odd trait
+of the humorist that he can at will wholly discard his gaiety,
+and, like the Pied Piper, pipe to another measure. W.W. Jacobs,
+besides his humorous sailor yarns, has given us _The Monkey's
+Paw_; and Barry Pain's gruesome stories, _Told in the Dark_, are
+as forcible as any of his humours to be read in the daylight.
+Dickens, in his excursions into the supernatural, does not,
+however, always cast off his mood of jocularity. His treatment of
+Marley's ghost lacks dignity and decorum. Clanking its chains in
+a remote cellar of the silent, empty house, it has the power to
+disturb us, but we lose our respect for the shade when we gaze
+upon it eye to eye. Applied to the spirit world, there is much
+truth in the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. The
+account of the thirteenth juryman, in _Dr. Marigold's
+Prescriptions_, is much more alarming. The story of the
+signalman, No. 1 Branch line, in _Mugby Junction_, is indefinably
+horrible. The signalman's anguish of mind, his exact description
+of the Appearance, his sense of overhanging calamity, are all
+strangely disquieting. The coincidence of the manner of his
+death, with which the story closes, is wisely left to make its
+own inevitable impression.
+
+Some of the stories in _Blackwood_ are the more striking because
+they depend for their effect on natural, not supernatural,
+horror. We may feel we are immune from the visits of ghosts, but
+the accident in _The Man in the Bell_ (1821) is one which might
+happen to anyone. The maddening clangour of sound, the frightful
+images that crowd into the reeling brain of the man suspended in
+the belfry, are described with an unflinching realism that
+reminds us of _The Pit and the Pendulum_. To the same class
+belongs the skilfully constructed _Iron Shroud_ (1830), by
+William Mudford, an author who, as Scott remarks in his journal,
+"loves to play at cherry-pit with Satan." The suspense is
+ingeniously maintained as, one by one, the windows of the iron
+dungeon disappear, until, at last, the massive walls and
+ponderous roof contract into the victim's iron shroud. Wilkie
+Collins' story, _A Terribly Strange Bed_, which describes the
+stratagem of a gang of cardsharpers for getting rid of those who
+happen to win money from them, is in the same vein. The canopy
+slowly descends during the night, and smothers its victim. A
+similar motive is used, with immeasurably finer effect, by Joseph
+Conrad in his story of the disappearance of the sailor at the
+lonely inn in the mountains of Spain. The experience of Byrne in
+_The Inn of the Two Witches_[129] is a masterpiece in the
+psychology of terror. The dense darkness, in which the young
+naval officer "steers his course only by the feel of the wind,"
+the scene when the door of the inn bursts open and reveals in the
+candlelight the savage beauty of the gipsy girl with evil,
+slanting eyes, and the inhuman ugliness of the old hags, are a
+fitting prelude to the horrors of the chamber, where the corpse
+of the missing sailor is found in the wardrobe. We pass with
+Byrne through the different stages of suspicion and dread until,
+completely baffled in his attempt to account for the manner in
+which Tom Corbin was done to death, we feel "the hot terror that
+plays upon the heart like a tongue of flame that touches and
+withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes."
+
+In the short stories of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century, it is hard to escape from the terrible. We light upon it
+suddenly, here, there and everywhere. We find it in Stevenson's
+_New Arabian Nights_, in his _Merry Men_, and his stories of the
+South Seas, as indeed we should expect, when we recall the
+tapping of the blind man's stick in _Treasure Island_, the scene
+with the candles in the snow after the duel between the two
+brothers in _The Master of Ballantrae_, or David Balfour's
+perilous adventure on the broken staircase in _Kidnapped_.
+Kipling is another expert in the art of eeriness, and has a wide
+range. His Indian backgrounds are peculiarly adapted for tales of
+terror. The loathsome horror of _The Mark of the Beast_, with its
+intangible suggestion of mystery, the quiet restraint of _The
+Return of Imray_, in which so much is left unsaid, are two
+admirable illustrations of his gift.
+
+The tale of terror wins its effect by ever-varying means.
+Scientific discoveries open up new vistas, and the twentieth
+century will evolve many fresh devices for torturing the nerves.
+The telephone set ringing by a ghostly hand, the aeroplane with a
+phantom pilot, will replace the Gothic machinery of ruined abbeys
+and wandering lights. The possibilities of terror are manifold,
+and it is impracticable here to do more than pick up a few
+threads in the tangled skein. Terror becomes inextricably
+interwoven with other motives according to the bent of the
+author. It is allied with psychology in James' sinister _Turn of
+the Screw_, with scientific phantasy in Wells' _Invisible Man_.
+It may enhance the excitement of a spy story, add zest to the
+study of crime, or act as a foil to a romantic love interest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - AMERICAN TALES OF TERROR.
+
+
+In 1797 we are told that in America "the dairymaid and hired man
+no longer weep over the ballad of the cruel stepmother, but amuse
+themselves into an agreeable terror with the haunted houses and
+hobgoblins of Mrs. Radcliffe."[130] In _The Asylum, or Alonzo and
+Melissa_, published in Ploughkeepsie in 1811, the Gothic castle,
+with its full equipment of "explained ghosts," has been safely
+conveyed across the Atlantic and set up in South Carolina; and
+_The Sicilian Pirate or the Pillar of Mystery: a Terrific
+Romance_, is, if we may trust its title, a hair-raising story, in
+the style of "Monk" Lewis. Charles Brockden Brown, one of the
+earliest American novelists, prides himself on "calling forth the
+passions and engaging the sympathy of the reader by means not
+hitherto employed by preceding authors," and speaks slightingly
+of "puerile superstitions and exploded manners, Gothic castles
+and chimeras."[131] Brown, who, like Shelley, was an enthusiastic
+admirer of Godwin, sought to embody the theories of _Political
+Justice_ in romances describing American life. The works, which
+are said by Peacock to have taken deepest root in Shelley's mind
+and to have had the strongest influence in the formation of his
+character, are Schiller's _Robbers_, Goethe's _Faust_, and four
+novels--_Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly_, and _Mervyn_--by C.B.
+Brown.[132]
+
+Notwithstanding his lofty scorn for "Gothic castles and
+chimeras," even Brown himself condescended to take over from the
+despised Mrs. Radcliffe the device of introducing apparently
+supernatural occurrences which are ultimately traced to natural
+causes. Like Mrs. Radcliffe he is at the mercy of a conscience
+which forbids him to thrust upon his readers spectres in which he
+himself does not believe. He lacks Lewis's reckless mendacity. In
+_Wieland_ mysterious voices are heard at intervals by various
+members of the family. To the hero, who has inherited a tendency
+to religious fanaticism, they seem to be of divine origin, and
+when a voice bids him sacrifice those who are dearest to him, he
+obeys implicitly. He slays his wife and children, and his sister
+only escapes death by accident. After this catastrophe it proves
+that the voices are produced by a skilled ventriloquist, Carwin,
+who has been admitted as an intimate friend of the family.
+Realising that this explanation may seem somewhat incredible,
+Brown seeks to make it appear more plausible by dwelling on
+Wieland's abnormal state of mind, which would render him
+peculiarly open to suggestion. Carwin's motive for thus
+persecuting the Wieland family with his accursed gift is never
+satisfactorily explained. His attitude is apparently that of an
+obtuse psychologist, who does not realise how serious the
+consequence of his experiments may be.
+
+In _Ormond_ and _Arthur Mervyn_, Brown describes the ravages of
+the yellow fever, of which he had personal experience in New York
+and Philadelphia. The hero of _Ormond_ is a member of a society
+similar to that of the Illuminati, whose ceremonies and beliefs
+are set forth in _Horrid Mysteries_ (1796). The heroine,
+Constantia Dudley, who was Shelley's ideal feminine character, is
+the embodiment of a theory, not a human being. She "walks always
+in the light of reason," and decides that "to marry in extreme
+youth would be a proof of pernicious and opprobrious temerity."
+The most memorable of Brown's novels is _Edgar Huntly_, which
+bears an obvious resemblance to _Caleb Williams_. Like Godwin,
+Brown is deeply interested in morbid psychology. He finds
+pleasure in tracing the workings of the brain in times of
+emotional stress. The description of a sleepwalker digging a
+grave--a picture which captivated Shelley's imagination--is the
+starting-point of the book. Edgar Huntly is impelled by curiosity
+to track him down. The somnambulist, Clithero, has, in
+self-defence, killed the twin-brother of his patron, Mrs,
+Lorimer, to whom he is deeply attached. Obsessed by the idea of
+the misery his deed will arouse in her mind, he attempts, in a
+moment of frenzy, to slay her. Believing that Mrs. Lorimer has
+died after hearing of the murder, Clithero flees to America. When
+he disappears from his home, Huntly resolves to follow him, and
+in his search loses himself amid wild and desolate country. He is
+attacked by Indians, and after frightful adventures at length
+reaches his home. Clithero, whom he believed dead, has been
+rescued. Mrs. Lorimer is still alive, and is married to a former
+lover. This news, however, fails to restore Clithero, who, in a
+fit of insanity, flings himself overboard when he is in a ship in
+charge of Huntly.
+
+Brown's plots, which often open well, are spoilt by hasty,
+careless conclusions. It was his habit to write two or three
+novels simultaneously. He was beset by the problem that exercised
+even Scott's brain: "The devil of a difficulty is that one
+puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot
+disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have
+raised."
+
+Brown takes very little trouble over his denouements, but his
+characters leave so faint an impression on our minds that we are
+not deeply concerned in their fates. He is interested rather in
+conveying states of mind than in portraying character. We search
+the windings of Clithero's tormented conscience without realising
+him as an individual. The background of rugged scenery, though it
+is described in vague, turgid language, is more definite and
+distinct than the human figures. We feel that Brown is struggling
+through the obscurity of his Latinised diction to depict
+something he has actually seen. An air of dreadful solemnity
+hangs heavily over each story. Every being is in deadly earnest.
+Brown has Godwin's power of hypnotising us by his serious
+persistence, and of reducing us to a mood of awestruck gravity by
+the sonority of his pompous periods.
+
+From the oppressive gloom of Brown's "novels with a purpose," it
+is a relief to turn to the irresponsible gaiety of "Geoffrey
+Crayon," whose tales of terror, published some twenty years
+later, are usually fashioned in a jovial spirit, only faintly
+tinged with awe and dread. In _The Spectre Bridegroom_, included
+in _The Sketch Book_ (1820), the ghostly rider of Buerger's
+far-famed ballad is set amid new surroundings and pleasantly
+turned to ridicule. The "supernatural" wooer, who now and again
+arouses a genuine thrill of fear, is merely playing a practical
+joke on the princess by impersonating the dead bridegroom, and
+all ends happily. The story of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy
+Hollow is set against so picturesque a background that we are
+almost inclined to quarrel with those who laughed and said that
+Ichabod Crane was still alive, and that Bram Jones, the lovely
+Katrina's bridegroom, knew more of the spectre than he chose to
+tell. The drowsy atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow makes us see visions
+and dream dreams. The group of "Strange Stories by a Nervous
+Gentleman" in _Tales of a Traveller_ (1824) prove that Washington
+Irving was well versed in ghostly lore. He, as well as any, can
+call spirits from the vasty deep, but, when they appear in answer
+to his summons, he can seldom refrain from receiving them in a
+jocose, irreverent mood, ill befitting the solemn, dignified
+spectre of a German legend. Even the highly qualified,
+irrepressibly loquacious ghost of Lewis Carroll's
+_Phantasmagoria_ would have resented his genial familiarity. The
+strange stories are told at a hunting-party in a country-house, a
+cheerful, comfortable background for ghost stories. A hoary,
+one-eyed gentleman, "the whole side of whose head was dilapidated
+and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted," sets
+the ball rolling with the old story of a spectre who glides into
+the room, wringing her hands, and is later identified, like
+Scott's Lady in the Sacque, by her resemblance to an ancestral
+portrait in the gallery. The "knowing" gentleman tells of a
+picture that winked in a startling and alarming fashion, and
+immediately explains away this phenomenon by the presence of a
+thief who has cut a spy-hole in the canvas. _The Bold Dragoon_ is
+a spirited, riotous nightmare in which the furniture dances to
+the music of the bellows played by an uncanny musician in a long
+flannel gown and a nightcap. The _Story of the German Student_ is
+in a different key. Here Irving strikes a note of real horror.
+The student falls in love with an imaginary lady, woven out of
+his dreams. He finds her in distress one night in the streets of
+Paris, takes her home, only to find her a corpse in the morning.
+A police-officer informs him that the lady was guillotined the
+day before, and the student discovers the truth of this statement
+when he unrolls a bandage and her head falls to the floor. The
+young man loses his reason, and is tormented by the belief that
+an evil spirit has reanimated a dead body to ensnare him. The
+morning after the recital of this gruesome story, the host reads
+aloud to his guests a manuscript entrusted to him, together with
+a portrait, by a young Italian. This youth, it chances, learnt
+painting with a monk, who, as a penance, drew pictures, or
+modelled waxen images, representing death and corruption, a
+detail which reminds us of what was concealed by the Black Veil
+in _Udolpho_. He later falls in love with his model, Bianca, who,
+during his absence abroad, marries his friend Filippo. In a
+jealous rage the young Italian slays his rival, and is
+unceasingly haunted by his phantom. Washington Irving has no
+desire to endure for long the atmosphere of mystery and horror
+his story has created, and quickly relieves the tension by a
+return to ordinary life. The host promises to show the picture,
+which is said to affect all beholders in an extraordinary
+fashion, to each of his guests in turn. They all profess
+themselves remarkably affected by it, until the host confesses
+that he has too sincere a regard for the feelings of the young
+Italian to reveal the actual picture to any of them; With this
+moment of disillusionment the strange stories come to an end. The
+title, _Tales of a Traveller_, under which Irving placed his
+tales of terror, indicates the mood in which he fashioned them.
+He regarded them much as he would regard the wonderful adventures
+of Baron Munchausen. They were to be taken, like one of Dr.
+Marigold's prescriptions, with a grain of salt. The idea of
+blending levity with horror, suggested perhaps by German
+influence, was very popular in England and France at this period.
+Balzac's _L'Auberge Rouge_ and _L'Elixir de la Longue Vie_ are
+written in a similar mood.
+
+It is not always the boldest and most adventurous beings who
+elect to dwell amid "calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire."
+The "virtuous mind," whom supernatural horrors may "startle well
+but not astound," sometimes finds a melancholy pleasure in
+beguiling weaker mortals into haunted ruins to watch their firm
+nerves tremble. Sometimes too, though a man be wholly innocent of
+the desire to alarm, he is led astray, whether he will or not,
+among the terrors of the invisible world. Grey ghosts steal into
+his imagination unawares. It was so that they came to Nathaniel
+Hawthorne, who speaks sorrowfully of "gaily dressed fantasies
+turning to ghostly and black-clad images of themselves." He would
+gladly have written a "sunshiny" book, but was capriciously fated
+to live ever in the twilight, haunted by spectres and by "dark
+ideas." He fashions his tales of terror delicately and
+reluctantly, not riotously and shamelessly like Lewis and
+Maturin.
+
+An innate reticence and shyness of temper held Hawthorne, as if
+by a spell, somewhat aloof from life, and no one realised more
+clearly than he the limitations that his detachment from humanity
+imposed upon his art.
+
+Of _Twice-Told Tales_ he writes regretfully:
+
+     "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in
+     too retired a shade... Instead of passion there is
+     sentiment and even in what purport to be pictures of
+     actual life we have allegory, not always so warmly
+     dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be
+     taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether
+     from lack of power or an inconquerable reserve, the
+     author's touches have often an effect of tameness. The
+     book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be
+     read in the clear, brown twilight atmosphere in which
+     it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to
+     look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages";
+
+and in his _Notebook_ (1840) he confesses:
+
+     "I used to think I could imagine all the passions, all
+     feelings and states of the heart and mind, but how
+     little did I know! Indeed we are but shadows, we are
+     not endowed with real life, and all that seems most
+     real about us is but the thinnest shadow of a
+     dream--till the heart be touched."
+
+Whether he is threading the labyrinths of his imagination or
+watching the human shadows come and go, Hawthorne lingers longer
+in the shadow than in the sunshine. He was not a man of morose
+and gloomy temper, disenchanted with life and driven by distress
+or thwarted passion to brood in solitude. An irresistible,
+inexplicable impulse drives him towards the sombre and the
+gloomy. The delicacy and wistful charm of the words in which
+Hawthorne criticises his own work and character reveal how
+impossible it would have been for him to force his wayward
+genius. His imagination hovers with curious persistence round
+eerie, fantastic themes:
+
+"An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making
+all the images reflected in it pass again across its surface"--a
+hint skilfully introduced into the history of old Esther Dudley
+in _The Legends of the Province House_, or:
+
+     "A dreadful secret to be communicated to several
+     persons of various character--grave or gay--and they
+     all to become insane, according to their characters, by
+     the influence of the secret"
+
+--an idea modified and adapted in _The Marble Faun_. "An ice-cold
+hand--which people ever afterwards remember when once they have
+grasped it"--is bestowed on the Wandering Jew, the owner of the
+marvellous _Virtuoso's Collection_, whose treasures include the
+blood-encrusted pen with which Dr. Faustus signed away his
+salvation, Peter Schlemihl's shadow, the elixir of life, and the
+philosopher's stone. The form of a vampire, who apparently never
+took shape on paper, flitted through the twilight of Hawthorne's
+imagination:
+
+     "Stories to be told of a certain person's appearance in
+     public, of his having been seen in various situations,
+     and his making visits in private circles; but finally
+     on looking for this person, to come upon his old grave
+     and mossy tombstone."
+
+With so many alluring suggestions floating shadowwise across his
+mind, it is not wonderful that Hawthorne should have been
+fascinated by the dream of a human life prolonged far beyond the
+usual span--a dream, which, if realised, would have enabled him
+to capture in words more of those "shapes that haunt thought's
+wildernesses."
+
+Although among the sketches collected in _Twice-Told Tales_ (vol.
+i. 1837, vol. ii. 1842) some are painted in gay and lively hues,
+the prevailing tone of the book is sad and mournful. The
+light-hearted philosophy of the wanderers in _The Seven
+Vagabonds_, the pretty, brightly coloured vignettes in _Little
+Annie's Rambles_, the quiet cheerfulness of _Sunday at Home_ or
+_The Rill from the Town Pump_, only serve to throw into darker
+relief gloomy legends like that of _Ethan Brand_, the man who
+went in search of the Unpardonable Sin, or dreary stories like
+that of _Edward Fane's Rosebud_, or the ghostly _White Old Maid_.
+One of the most carefully wrought sketches in _Twice-Told Tales_
+is the weird story of _The Hollow of the Three Hills_. By means
+of a witch's spell, a lady hears the far-away voices of her aged
+parents--her mother querulous and tearful, her father calmly
+despondent--and amid the fearful mirth of a madhouse
+distinguishes the accents and footstep of the husband she has
+wronged. At last she listens to the death-knell tolled for the
+child she has left to die. The solemn rhythm of Hawthorne's
+skilfully ordered sentences is singularly haunting and
+impressive:
+
+     "The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the
+     hills, but deep shades obscured the hollow and the
+     pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to
+     overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
+     weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till
+     the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals of
+     her words, like a clang that had travelled far over
+     valley and rising ground and was just ready to die in
+     the air... Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened
+     into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from
+     some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of
+     mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to
+     the solitary wayfarer that all might weep for the doom
+     appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread,
+     passing slowly, slowly on as of mourners with a coffin,
+     their garments trailing the ground so that the ear
+     could measure the length of their melancholy array.
+     Before them went the priest reading the burial-service,
+     while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
+     breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak
+     aloud, still here were revilings and anathemas
+     whispered, but distinct, from women and from men... The
+     sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a
+     thin vapour and the wind that just before had seemed to
+     shake the coffin-pall moaned sadly round the verge of
+     the hollow between three hills."
+
+In a later collection of Hawthorne's short stories, _Mosses from
+an Old Manse_, the grave and the gay, the terrific and the
+sportive, are once more intermingled. Side by side with a forlorn
+attempt at humorous allegory, Mrs. _Bullfrog_, we find the
+serious moral allegories of _The Birthmark_ and _The
+Bosom-Serpent_, the wild, mysterious forest-revels in _Goodman
+Brown_, and the evil, sinister beauty of _Dr. Rappacini's
+Daughter_, a modern rehandling of the ancient legend of the
+poison-maiden, who was perhaps the prototype of Oliver Wendell
+Holmes' heroine in _Elsie Venner_ (1861). The quiet grace and
+natural ease of Hawthorne's style lend even to his least
+ambitious tales a distinctive charm. If he chooses a slight and
+simple theme, his touch is deft and sure. _Dr. Heidegger's
+Experiment_, in which Hawthorne's delicate, whimsical fancy plays
+round the idea of the elixir of life, is almost like a series of
+miniature pictures, distinct and lifelike in form and colour,
+seen through the medium of an old-fashioned magic-lantern. Yet
+even in this fantastic trifle we can discern the feeling for
+words and the sense of proportion that characterise Hawthorne's
+longer works.
+
+_The Scarlet Letter_ (1850) was originally intended to be one of
+several short stories, but Hawthorne was persuaded to expand it
+into a novel. He felt some misgivings as to the success of the
+work:
+
+  "Keeping so close to the point as the tale does, and
+  diversified in no otherwise than by turning different
+  sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it will
+  weary very many people and disgust some."
+
+The plot bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Lockhart's
+striking novel, _Adam Blair_. The "dark idea" that fascinates
+Hawthorne is the psychological state of Hester Prynne and her
+lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, in the long years that follow their
+lawless passion. Their love story hardly concerns him at all. The
+interest of the novel does not depend on the development of the
+plot. No attempt is made to complicate the story by concealing
+the identity of Hester's lover or of her husband. The action
+takes place within the souls and minds of the characters, not in
+their outward circumstances. The central chapter of the book is
+named significantly: "The Interior of a Heart." The moral
+situation described in _The Scarlet Letter_ did not present
+itself to Hawthorne abstractly, but as a series of pictures. He
+habitually thought in images, and he brooded so long over his
+conceptions that his descriptions are almost as definite in
+outline and as vivid in colour as things actually seen. His
+pictures do not waver or fade elusively as the mind seeks to
+realise them. The prison door, studded with pikes, before which
+Hester Prynne first stands with the letter on her breast, the
+pillory where Dimmesdale keeps vigil at midnight, the
+forest-trees with pale, fitful gleams of sunshine glinting
+through their leaves, are so distinct that we almost put out our
+hands to touch them. Hawthorne's dream-imagery has the same
+convincing reality. The phantasmagoric visions which float
+through Hester's consciousness--the mirrored reflection of her
+own face in girlhood, her husband's thin, scholar-like visage,
+the grey houses of the cathedral city where she had spent her
+early years--are more real to her and to us than the blurred
+faces of the Puritans who throng the marketplace to gaze on her
+ignominy. Although the moral tone of the book is one of almost
+unrelieved gloom, the actual scenes are full of colour and light.
+Pearl's scarlet frock with its fantastic embroideries, the
+magnificent velvet gown and white ruff of the old dame who rides
+off by night to the witch-revels in the forest, the group of Red
+Indians in their deer-skin robes and wampum belts of red and
+yellow ochre, the bronzed faces and gaudy attire of the Spanish
+pirates, all stand out in bold relief among the sober greys and
+browns of the Puritans. The tense, emotional atmosphere is
+heightened by the festive brightness of the outer world.
+
+The light of Hawthorne's imagination is directed mainly on three
+characters--Hester, Arthur, and the elf-like child Pearl, the
+living symbol of their union. Further in the background lurks the
+malignant figure of Roger Chillingworth, contriving his fiendish
+scheme of vengeance, "violating in cold blood the sanctity of a
+human heart." The blaze of the Scarlet Letter compels us by a
+strange magnetic power to follow Hester Prynne wherever she goes,
+but her suffering is less acute and her character less intricate
+than her lover's. She bears the outward badge of shame, but after
+"wandering without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind," wins a
+dull respite from anguish as she glides "like a grey and sober
+shadow" over the threshold of those who are visited by sorrow. At
+the last, when Dimmesdale's spirit is "so shattered and subdued
+that it could hardly hold itself erect," Hester has still energy
+to plan and to act. His character is more twisted and tortuous
+than hers, and to understand him we must visit him apart. The
+sensitive nature that can endure physical pain but shrinks
+piteously from moral torture, the capacity for deep and
+passionate feeling, the strange blending of pride and abject
+self-loathing, of cowardice and resolve, are portrayed with
+extraordinary skill. The different strands of his character are
+"intertwined in an inextricable knot." His is a living soul,
+complicated and varying in its moods, but ever pursued by a sense
+of sin. By one of Hawthorne's swift, uncanny flashes of insight,
+as Dimmesdale goes home after the forest-meeting, we hear nothing
+of the wild beatings of hope and dreary revulsions to despair,
+but only of foul, grotesque temptations that assail him, just as
+earlier--on the pillory--it is the grim humour and not the
+frightful shame of the situation that strikes him, when by an odd
+trick of his imagination he suddenly pictures a "whole tribe of
+decorous personages starting into view with the disorder of a
+nightmare in their aspects," to look upon their minister.
+
+Hawthorne's delineation of character and motive is as
+scrupulously accurate and scientific as Godwin's, but there is
+none of Godwin's inhumanity in his attitude. His complete
+understanding of human weakness makes pity superfluous and
+undignified. He pronounces no judgment and offers no plea for
+mercy. His instinct is to present the story as it appeared
+through the eyes of those who enacted the drama or who witnessed
+it. Stern and inexorable as one of his own witch-judging
+ancestors, Hawthorne foils the lovers' plan of escape across the
+sea, lets the minister die as soon as he has made the revelation
+that gives him his one moment of victory, and in the conclusion
+brings Hester back to take up her long-forsaken symbol of shame.
+Pearl alone Hawthorne sets free, the spell which bound her human
+sympathies broken by the kiss she bestows on her guilty father.
+There are few passionate outbursts of feeling, save when Hester
+momentarily unlocks her heart in the forest--and even here
+Hawthorne's language is extraordinarily restrained:
+
+     "'What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it
+     so! We said so to each other. Hast thou forgotten it?'
+     'Hush, Hester!' said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the
+     ground. 'No; I have not forgotten.'"
+
+Or again, after Dimmesdale has confessed that he has neither
+strength nor courage left him to venture into the world: "'Thou
+shalt not go alone!' answered she, in a deep whisper. Then all
+was spoken."
+
+In _The House of the Seven Gables_ (1851), as in _The Scarlet
+Letter_, Hawthorne again presents his scenes in the light of a
+single, pervading idea, this time an ancestral curse, symbolised
+by the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, who condemned an innocent
+man for witchcraft.
+
+     "To the thoughtful man there will be no tinge of
+     superstition in what we figuratively express, by
+     affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps
+     as a portion of his own punishment--is often doomed to
+     become the Evil Genius of his family."
+
+Hawthorne wins his effect by presenting the idea to our minds
+from different points of view, until we are obsessed by the curse
+that broods heavily over the old house. Even the aristocratic
+breed of fowls, of "queer, rusty, withered aspect," are an emblem
+of the decay of the Pyncheon family. The people are apt to be
+merged into the dense shadows that lurk in the gloomy passages,
+but when the sun shines on them they stand out with arresting
+distinctness. The heroic figure of Hepzibah Pyncheon, a little
+ridiculous and a little forbidding of aspect, but cherishing
+through weary years a passionate devotion to her brother, is
+described with a gentle blending of humour and pathos. Clifford
+Pyncheon--the sybarite made for happiness and hideously cheated
+of his destiny--is delineated with curious insight and sympathy.
+It is Judge Jaffery Pyncheon, with his "sultry" smile of
+"elaborate benevolence"--unrelenting and crafty as his infamous
+ancestor--who lends to _The House of Seven Gables_ the element of
+terror. Hour after hour, Hawthorne, with grim and bitter irony,
+mocks and taunts the dead body of the hypocritical judge until
+the ghostly pageantry of dead Pyncheons--including at last Judge
+Jaffery himself with the fatal crimson stain on his
+neckcloth--fades away with the oncoming of daylight.
+
+Hawthorne's mind was richly stored with "wild chimney-corner
+legends," many of them no doubt gleaned from an old woman
+mentioned in one of his _Tales and Sketches_. He takes over the
+fantastic superstitions in which his ancestors had believed, and
+uses them as the playthings of his fancy, picturing with
+malicious mirth the grey shadows of his stern, dark-browed
+forefathers sadly lamenting his lapse from grace and saying one
+to the other:
+
+     "A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in
+     life, what manner of glorifying God, or being
+     serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may
+     that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have
+     been a fiddler."
+
+The story of Alice Pyncheon, the maiden under the dreadful power
+of a wizard, who, to wreak his revenge, compelled her to
+surrender her will to his and to do whatsoever he list, the
+legends of ghosts and spectres in the _Twice-Told Tales_, the
+allusions to the elixir of life in his _Notebooks_, the
+introduction of witches into _The Scarlet Letter_, of mesmerism
+into _The Blithedale Romance_, show how often Hawthorne was
+pre-occupied with the terrors of magic and of the invisible
+world. He handles the supernatural in a half-credulous,
+half-sportive spirit, neither affirming nor denying his belief.
+One of his artful devices is wilfully to cast doubt upon his
+fancies, and so to pique us into the desire to be momentarily at
+least one of the foolish and imaginative.
+
+After writing _The Blithedale Romance_, in which he embodied his
+experiences at Brook Farm, and his Italian romance,
+_Transformation, or The Marble Faun_, Hawthorne, when his health
+was failing, strove to find expression for the theme of
+immortality, which had always exercised a strange fascination
+upon him. In August, 1855, during his consulate in Liverpool, he
+visited Smithell's Hall, near Bolton, and heard the legend of the
+Bloody Footstep. He thought of uniting this story with that of
+the elixir of life, but ultimately decided to treat the story of
+the footstep in _Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, of which only a
+fragment was written, and to embody the elixir idea in a separate
+work, _Septimius Felton_, of which two unfinished versions exist.
+Septimius Felton, a young man living in Concord at the time of
+the war of the Revolution, tries to brew the potion of eternity
+by adding to a recipe, which his aunt has derived from the
+Indians, the flowers which spring from the grave of a man whom he
+has slain. In _Dr. Dolliver's Romance_, Hawthorne, so far as we
+may judge from the fragment which remains, seems to be working
+out an idea jotted down in his notebook several years earlier:
+
+     "A man arriving at the extreme point of old age grows
+     young again at the same pace at which he had grown old,
+     returning upon his path throughout the whole of life,
+     and thus taking the reverse view of matters. Methinks
+     it would give rise to some odd concatenations."
+
+The story, which opens with a charming description of Dr.
+Dolliver and his great-grandchild, Pansie, breaks off so abruptly
+that it is impossible to forecast the "odd concatenations" that
+had flashed through Hawthorne's mind.
+
+Although Hawthorne is preoccupied continually with the thought of
+death, his outlook is melancholy, not morbid. He recoils
+fastidiously from the fleshly and loses himself in the spiritual.
+He is concerned with mournful reflections, not frightful events.
+It is the mystery of death, not its terror, that fascinates him.
+Sensitive and susceptible himself, he never startles us with
+physical horrors. He does not search with curious ingenuity for
+recondite terrors. He was compelled as if by some wizard's
+strange power, to linger in earth's shadowed places; but the
+scenes that throng his memory are reflected in quiet, subdued
+tones. His pictures are never marred by harsh lines or crude
+colours.
+
+While Hawthorne in his _Twice-Told Tales_ was toying pensively
+with spectral forms and "dark ideas," Edgar Allan Poe was
+penetrating intrepidly into trackless regions of terror. Where
+Hawthorne would have shrunk back, repelled and disgusted, Poe,
+wildly exhilarated by the anticipation of a new and excruciating
+thrill, forced his way onwards. He sought untiringly for unusual
+situations, inordinately gloomy or terrible, and made them the
+starting point for excursions into abnormal psychology. Just as
+Hawthorne harps with plaintive insistence on the word "sombre,"
+Poe again and again uses the epithet "novel." His tales are
+never, as Hawthorne's often are, pathetic. His instinct is always
+towards the dramatic. Sometimes he rises to tragic heights,
+sometimes he is merely melodramatic. He rejoices in theatrical
+effects, like the death-throes of William Wilson, the return of
+the lady Ligeia, or the entry, awaited with torturing suspense,
+of the "lofty" and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of
+Usher. Like Hawthorne, Poe was fascinated by the thought of
+death, "the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed him night and
+day," but he describes death accompanied by its direst physical
+and mental agonies. Hawthorne broods over the idea of sin, but
+Poe probes curiously into the psychology of crime. The one is
+detached and remote, the other inhuman and passionless. The
+contrast in style between Hawthorne and Poe reflects clearly
+their difference in temper. Hawthorne writes always with easy,
+finished perfection, choosing the right word unerringly, Poe
+experiments with language, painfully acquiring a conscious,
+studied form of expression which is often remarkably effective,
+but which almost invariably suggests a sense of artifice. In
+reading _The Scarlet Letter_ we do not think of the style; in
+reading _The Masque of the Red Death_ we are forcibly impressed
+by the skilful arrangement of words, the alternation of long and
+short sentences, the device of repetition and the deliberate
+choice of epithets. Hawthorne uses his own natural form of
+expression. Poe, with laborious art, fashions an instrument
+admirably adapted to his purposes.
+
+Poe's earliest published story, _A Manuscript Found in a
+Bottle_--the prize tale for the _Baltimore Saturday Visitor_,
+1833--proves that he soon recognised his peculiar vein of talent.
+He straightway takes the tale of terror for his own. The
+experiences of a sailor, shipwrecked in the Simoom and hurled on
+the crest of a towering billow into a gigantic ship manned by a
+hoary crew who glide uneasily to and fro "like the ghosts of
+buried centuries," forecast the more frightful horrors of _A
+Descent into the Maelstrom_ (1841). Poe's method in both stories
+is to induce belief by beginning with a circumstantial narrative
+of every-day events, and by proceeding to relate the most
+startling phenomena in the same calm, matter-of-fact manner. The
+whirling abyss of the Maelstrom in which the tiny boat is
+engulfed, and the sensations of the fishermen--awe, wonder,
+horror, curiosity, hope, alternating or intermingled--are
+described with the same quiet precision as the trivial
+preliminary adventures. The man's dreary expectation of
+incredulity seals our conviction of the truth of his story. In
+_The Manuscript Found in a Bottle_, too, we may trace the first
+suggestion of that idea which finds its most complete and
+memorable expression in _Ligeia_ (1837). The antique ship, with
+its preternaturally aged crew "doomed to hover continually upon
+the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the
+abyss," is an early foreshadowing of the fulfilment of Joseph
+Glanvill's declaration so strikingly illustrated in the return of
+Ligeia: "Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death
+utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." In
+_Ligeia_, Poe concentrates on this idea with singleness of
+purpose. He had striven to embody it in his earlier sketches, in
+_Morella_, where the beloved is reincarnated in the form of her
+own child, in the musical, artificial _Eleonora_ and in the
+gruesome _Berenice_. In _Ligeia_, at last, it finds its
+appropriate setting in the ebony bridal-chamber, hung with gold
+tapestries grotesquely embroidered with fearful shapes and
+constantly wafted to and fro, like those in one of the _Episodes
+of Vathek_. In _The Fall of the House of Usher_ he adapts the
+theme which he had approached in the sketch entitled _Premature
+Burial_, and unites with it a subtler conception, the sentience
+of the vegetable world. Like the guest of Roderick Usher, as we
+enter the house we fall immediately beneath the overmastering
+sway of its irredeemable, insufferable gloom. The melancholy
+building, Usher's wild musical improvisations, his vague but
+awful paintings, his mystical reading and his eerie verses with
+the last haunting stanza:
+
+  "And travellers now within that valley
+  Through the red-litten windows, see
+  Vast forms that move fantastically
+  To a discordant melody;
+  While, like a rapid, ghastly river,
+  Through the pale door,
+  A hideous throng rush out forever
+  And laugh--but smile no more,"
+
+are all in harmony with the fate that broods over the family of
+Usher. Poe's gift for avoiding all impressions alien to his
+effect lends to his tales extraordinary unity of tone and colour.
+He leads up to his crisis with a gradual crescendo of emotion.
+The climax, hideous and terrifying, relieves the intensity of our
+feelings, and once it is past Poe rapidly hastens to the only
+possible conclusion. The dreary house with its vacant, eye-like
+windows reflected at the outset in the dark, unruffled tarn,
+disappears for ever beneath its surface.
+
+In _The Masque of the Red Death_ the imagery changes from moment
+to moment, each scene standing out clear in colour and sharp in
+outline; but from first to last the perspective of the whole is
+kept steadily in view. No part is disproportionate or
+inappropriate. The arresting overture describing the swift and
+sudden approach of the Red Death, the gay, thoughtless security
+of Prince Prospero and his guests within the barricaded abbey,
+the voluptuous masquerade held in a suite of seven rooms of seven
+hues, the disconcerting chime of the ebony clock that momentarily
+stills the grotesque figures of the dancers, prepare us for the
+dramatic climax, the entry of the audacious guest, the Red Death,
+and his struggle with Prince Prospero. The story closes as it
+began with the triumph of the Red Death. Poe achieves his
+powerful effect with rigid economy of effort. He does not add an
+unnecessary touch.
+
+In _The Cask of Amontillado_--perhaps the most terrible and the
+most perfectly executed of all Poe's tales--the note of grim
+irony is sustained throughout. The jingling of the bells and the
+devilish profanity of the last three words--_Requiescat in
+pace_--add a final touch of horror to a revenge, devised and
+carried out with consummate artistry.
+
+Poe, like Hawthorne, loved to peer curiously into the dim
+recesses of conscience. Hawthorne was concerned with the effect
+of remorse on character. Poe often exhibits a conscience
+possessed by the imp of the perverse, and displays no interest in
+the character of his victim. He chooses no ordinary crimes. He
+considers, without De Quincey's humour, murder as a fine art. In
+_The Black Cat_ the terrors are calculated with cold-blooded
+nicety. Every device is used to deepen the impression and to
+intensify the agony. In _The Tell-Tale Heart_, so unremitting is
+the suspense, as the murderer slowly inch by inch projects his
+head round the door in the darkness, that it is well-nigh
+intolerable. The close of the story, which errs on the side of
+the melodramatic, is less cunningly contrived than Poe's endings
+usually are. In _William Wilson_, Poe handles the subject of
+conscience in an allegorical form, a theme essayed by Bulwer
+Lytton in one of his sketches in _The Student, Monos and
+Daimonos_. He probably influenced Stevenson's _Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde_.
+
+In _The Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe seems to start from the very
+border-line of the most hideous nightmare that the human mind can
+conceive, yet there is nothing hazy or indefinite in his analysis
+of the feelings of his victim. He speaks as one who has
+experienced the sensations himself, not as one who is making a
+wild surmise. To read is, indeed, to endure in some measure the
+torture of the prisoner; but our pain is alleviated not only by
+the realisation that we at least may win respite when we will,
+but by our appreciation of Poe's subtle technique. He notices the
+readiness of the mind, when racked unendurably, to concentrate on
+frivolous trifles--the exact shape and size of the dungeon; or
+the sound of the scythe cutting through cloth. Mental and
+physical agonies are interchanged with careful art.
+
+Poe's constructive power fitted him admirably to write the
+detective story. In _The Mystery of M. Roget_ he adopts a dull
+plot without sufficient vigour and originality to rivet our
+attention, but _The Murders of the Rue Morgue_ secures our
+interest from beginning to end. As in the case of Godwin's _Caleb
+Williams_, the end was conceived first and the plot was carefully
+woven backwards. No single thread is left loose. Dupin's methods
+of ratiocination are similar to those of Conan Doyle's Sherlock
+Holmes. Poe never shirks a gory detail, but the train of
+reasoning not the imagery absorbs us in his detective stories. In
+his treasure story--_The Gold Bug_, which may have suggested
+Stevenson's _Treasure Island_--he compels our interest by the
+intricacy and elaboration of his problem.
+
+The works of Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin were not unknown
+to Poe, and he refers more than once to the halls of Vathek. From
+Gothic romance he may perhaps vivid that they make the senses
+ache. Like Maturin, he even resorts to italics to enforce his
+effect. He crashes down heavily on a chord which would resound at
+a touch. He is liable too to descend into vulgarity in his choice
+of phrases. His tales consequently gain in style in the
+translations of Baudelaire. But these aberrations occur mainly in
+his inferior work. In his most highly wrought stories, such as
+_Amontillado_, _The House of Usher_, or _The Masque of the Red
+Death_, the execution is flawless. In these, Poe never lost sight
+of the ideal, which, in his admirable review of Hawthorne's
+_Twice-Told Tales_ and _Mosses from an Old Manse_, he set before
+the writer of short stories:
+
+     "A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale ...
+     having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain
+     unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then
+     invents such incidents--he then combines such
+     events--as may best aid him in establishing this
+     preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend
+     not to the outbringing of this effect, he has failed in
+     the first step. In the whole composition there should
+     be no word written of which the tendency direct or
+     indirect is not to the one pre-established design."
+
+While he was writing, Poe did not for a moment let his
+imagination run riot. The outline of the story was so distinctly
+conceived, its atmosphere so familiar to him, that he had leisure
+to choose his words accurately, and to dispose his sentences
+harmoniously, with the final effect ever steadily in view. The
+impression that he swiftly flashes across our minds is deep and
+enduring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - CONCLUSION.
+
+
+This book is an attempt to trace in outline the origin and
+development of the Gothic romance and the tale of terror. Such a
+survey is necessarily incomplete. For more than fifty years after
+the publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ the Gothic Romance
+remained a definitely recognised kind of fiction; but, as the
+scope of the novel gradually came to include the whole range of
+human expression, it lost its individuality, and was merged into
+other forms. To follow every trail of its influence would lead us
+far afield. The Tale of Terror, if we use the term in its wider
+sense, may be said to include the magnificent story of the
+Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar's Feast, the Book of Job, the
+legends of the Deluge and of the Tower of Babel, and Saul's Visit
+to the Witch of Endor, which Byron regarded as the best ghost
+story in the world. In the Hebrew writings fear is used to endow
+a hero with superhuman powers or to instil a moral truth. The sun
+stands still in the heavens that Joshua may prevail over his
+enemies. In modern days the tale of terror is told for its own
+sake. It has become an end in itself, and is probably appreciated
+most fully by those who are secure from peril. It satisfies the
+human desire to experience new emotions and sensations, without
+actual danger.
+
+There is little doubt that the Gothic Romance primarily made its
+appeal to women readers, though we know that Mrs. Radcliffe had
+many men among her admirers, and that Cherubina of _The Heroine_
+had a companion in folly, The Story-Haunted Youth. It is remotely
+allied, as its name implies, to the mediaeval romances, at which
+Cervantes tilts in _Don Quixote_. It was more closely akin,
+however, to the heroic romances satirised in Mrs. Charlotte
+Lennox's _Female Quixote_ (1752). When the voluminous works of Le
+Calprenede and of Mademoiselle de Scudery were translated into
+English, they found many imitators and admirers, and their vogue
+outlasted the seventeenth century. _Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus_,
+out of which Mrs. Pepys told her husband long stories, "though
+nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner," is to be found,
+with a pin stuck through one of the middle leaves, in the lady's
+library described by Addison in the _Spectator_, Mrs. Aphra Behn,
+in _Oroonoko_ and _The Fair Jilt_, had made some attempt to bring
+romance nearer to real life; but it was not until the middle of
+the eighteenth century, when the novel, with the rise of
+Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, took firm root on
+English soil, that the popularity of Cassandra, Parthenissa and
+Aretina was superseded. Then, if we may trust the evidence of
+Colman's farce, _Polly Honeycombe_, first acted in 1760, Pamela,
+Clarissa Harlowe and Sophia Western reigned in their stead. For
+the reader who had patiently followed the eddying, circling
+course of the heroic romance, with its high-flown language and
+marvellous adventures, Richardson's novel of sentiment probably
+held more attraction than Fielding's novel of manners. Fielding,
+on his broad canvas, paints the life of his day on the highway,
+in coaches, taverns, sponging-houses or at Vauxhall masquerades.
+Every class of society is represented, from the vagabond to the
+noble lord. Richardson, in describing the shifts and subterfuges
+of Mr. B--and the elaborate intrigue of Lovelace, moves within a
+narrow circle, devoting himself, not to the portrayal of
+character, but to the minute analysis of a woman's heart. The
+sentiment of Richardson descends to Mrs. Radcliffe. Her heroines
+are fashioned in the likeness of Clarissa Harlowe; her heroes
+inherit many of the traits of the immaculate Grandison. She adds
+zest to her plots by wafting her heroines to distant climes and
+bygone centuries, and by playing on their nerves with
+superstitious fears. Since human nature often looks to fiction
+for a refuge from the world, there is always room for the
+illusion of romance side by side with the picture of actual life.
+Fanny Burney's spirited record of Evelina's visit to her vulgar,
+but human, relatives, the Branghtons, in London, is not enough.
+We need too the sojourn of Emily, with her thick-coming fancies,
+in the castle of Udolpho.
+
+The Gothic Romance did not reflect real life, or reveal
+character, or display humour. Its aim was different. It was full
+of sentimentality, and it stirred the emotions of pity and fear.
+The ethereal, sensitive heroine, suffering through no fault of
+her own, could not fail to win sympathy. The hero was pale,
+melancholy, and unfortunate enough to be attractive. The villain,
+bold and desperate in his crimes, was secretly admired as well as
+feared. Hairbreadth escapes and wicked intrigues in castles built
+over beetling precipices were sufficiently outside the reader's
+own experience to produce a thrill. Ghosts, and rumours of
+ghosts, touched nearly the eighteenth century reader, who had
+often listened, with bated breath, to winter's tales of spirits
+seen on Halloween in the churchyard, or white-robed spectres
+encountered in dark lanes and lonely ruins. In country houses
+like those described in Miss Austen's novels, where life was
+diversified only by paying calls, dining out, taking gentle
+exercise or playing round games like "commerce" or "word-making
+and work-taking," the Gothic Romances must have proved a welcome
+source of pleasurable excitement. Mr. Woodhouse, with his
+melancholy views on the effects of wedding cake and muffin, would
+have condemned them, no doubt, as unwholesome; Lady Catherine de
+Bourgh would have been too impatient to read them; but Lydia
+Bennet, Elinor Dashwood and Isabella Thorpe must have found in
+them an inestimable solace. Their fame was soon overshadowed by
+that of the Waverley Novels, but they had served their turn in
+providing an entertaining interlude before the arrival of Sir
+Walter Scott. Even at the very height of his vogue, they probably
+enjoyed a surreptitious popularity, not merely in the servants'
+hall, but in the drawing room. Nineteenth century literature
+abounds in references to the vogue of this school of fiction.
+There were spasmodic attempts at a revival in an anonymous work
+called _Forman_ (1819), dedicated to Scott, and in Ainsworth's
+_Rookwood_ (1834); and terror has never ceased to be used as a
+motive in fiction.
+
+In _Villette_, Lucy Snowe, whose nerves Ginevra describes as
+"real iron and bend leather," gazes steadily for the space of
+five minutes at the spectral "nun." This episode indicates a
+change of fashion; for the lady of Gothic romance could not have
+submitted to the ordeal for five seconds without fainting. A more
+robust heroine, who thinks clearly and yet feels strongly, has
+come into her own. In _Jane Eyre_ many of the situations are
+fraught with terror, but it is the power of human passion,
+transcending the hideous scenes, that grips our imagination.
+Terror is used as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. In
+_Wuthering Heights_ the windswept Yorkshire moors are the
+background for elemental feelings. We no longer "tremble with
+delicious dread" or "snatch a fearful joy." The gloom never
+lightens. We live ourselves beneath the shadow of Heathcliff's
+awe-inspiring personality, and there is no escape from a terror,
+which passes almost beyond the bounds of speech. The Brontes do
+not trifle with emotion or use supernatural elements to increase
+the tension. Theirs are the terrors of actual life.
+
+Other novelists, contemporary with the Brontes, revel in terror
+for its own sake. Wilkie Collins weaves elaborate plots of
+hair-raising events. The charm of _The Moonstone_ and the _Woman
+in White_ is independent of character or literary finish. It
+consists in the unravelling of a skilfully woven fabric. Le Fanu,
+who resented the term "sensational" which was justly applied to
+his works, plays pitilessly on our nerves with both real and
+fictitious horrors. He, like Wilkie Collins, made a cult of
+terror. Their literary descendants may perhaps be found in such
+authors as Richard Marsh or Bram Stoker, or Sax Rohmer. In Bram
+Stoker's _Dracula_ the old vampire legend is brought up to date,
+and we are held from beginning to end in a state of frightful
+suspense. No one who has read the book will fail to remember the
+picture of Dracula climbing up the front of the castle in
+Transylvania, or the scene in the tomb when a stake is driven
+through the heart of the vampire who has taken possession of
+Lucy's form. The ineffable horror of the "Un-Dead" would repel us
+by its painfulness, if it were not made endurable by the love,
+hope and faith of the living characters, particularly of the old
+Dutch doctor, Van Helsing. The matter-of-fact style of the
+narrative, which is compiled of letters, diaries and journals,
+and the mention of such familiar places as Whitby and Hampstead,
+help to enhance the illusion.
+
+The motive of terror has often been mingled with other motives in
+the novel as well as in the short tale. In unwinding the
+complicated thread of the modern detective story, which follows
+the design originated by Godwin and perfected by Poe, we are
+frequently kept to our task by the force of terror as well as of
+curiosity. In _The Sign of Four_ and in _The Hound of the
+Baskervilles_, to choose two entirely different stories, Conan
+Doyle realises that darkness and loneliness place us at the mercy
+of terror, and he works artfully on our fears of the unknown.
+Phillips Oppenheim and William Le Queux, in romances which have
+sometimes a background of international politics, maintain our
+interest by means of mystifications, which screw up our
+imagination to the utmost pitch, and then let us down gently with
+a natural but not too obvious explanation. A certain amount of
+terror is almost essential to heighten the interest of a novel of
+costume and adventure, like _The Prisoner of Zenda_ or _Rupert of
+Hentzau_, or of the fantastic, exciting romances of Jules Verne.
+Rider Haggard's African romances, _She_ and _King Solomon's
+Mines_, belong to a large group of supernatural tales with a
+foreign setting. They combine strangeness, wonder, mystery and
+horror. The ancient theme of bartering souls is given a new twist
+in Robert Hichens' novel, _The Flames_. E.F. Benson, in _The
+Image in the Sand_, experiments with Oriental magic. The
+investigations of the Society for Psychical Research gave a new
+impulse to stories of the occult and the uncanny. Algernon
+Blackwood is one of the most ingenious exponents of this type of
+story. By means of psychical explanations, he succeeds in
+revivifying many ancient superstitions. In _Dr. John Silence_,
+even the werewolf, whom we believed extinct, manifests himself in
+modern days among a party of cheerful campers on a lonely island,
+and brings unspeakable terror in his trail. Sometimes terror is
+used nowadays, as Bulwer Lytton used it, to serve a moral
+purpose. Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ is intended to
+show that sin must ultimately affect the soul; and the Sorrows of
+Satan, in Miss Corelli's novel, are caused by the wickedness of
+the world. But apart from any ulterior motive there is still a
+desire for the unusual, there is still pleasure to be found in a
+thrill, and so long as this human instinct endures devices will
+be found for satisfying it. Of the making of tales of terror
+there is no end; and almost every novelist of note has, at one
+time or another, tried his hand at the art. Early in his career
+Arnold Bennett fashioned a novelette, _Hugo_, which may be read
+as a modernised version of the Gothic romance. Instead of
+subterranean vaults in a deserted abbey, we have the strong rooms
+of an enterprising Sloane Street emporium. The coffin, containing
+an image of the heroine, is buried not in a mouldering chapel,
+but in a suburban cemetery. The lovely but harassed heroine has
+fallen, indeed, from her high estate, for Camilla earns her
+living as a milliner. There are, it is true, no sonnets and no
+sunsets, but the excitement of the plot, which is partially
+unfolded by means of a phonographic record, renders them
+superfluous. H.G. Wells makes excursions into quasi-scientific,
+fantastic realms of grotesque horror in his _First Men in the
+Moon_, and in some of his sketches and short stories. Joseph
+Conrad has the power of fear ever at the command of his romantic
+imagination. In _The Nigger of the Narcissus_, in _Typhoon_, and,
+above all, in _The Shadow-Line_, he shows his supreme mastery
+over inexpressible mystery and nameless terror. The voyage of the
+schooner, doomed by the evil influence of her dead captain, is
+comparable only in awe and horror to that of _The Ancient
+Mariner_. Conrad touches unfathomable depths of human feelings,
+and in his hands the tale of terror becomes a finished work of
+art.
+ The future of the tale of terror it is impossible to predict;
+but the experiments of living authors, who continually find new
+outlets with the advance of science and of psychological enquiry,
+suffice to prove that its powers are not yet exhausted. Those who
+make the 'moving accident' their trade will no doubt continue to
+assail us with the shock of startling and sensational events.
+Others with more insidious art, will set themselves to devise
+stories which evoke subtler refinements of fear. The interest has
+already been transferred from 'bogle-wark' to the effect of the
+inexplicable, the mysterious and the uncanny on human thought and
+emotion. It may well be that this track will lead us into
+unexplored labyrinths of terror.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES:
+
+
+[1: Frazer, _Folklore of the Old Testament_, I. iv. sec. 2.]
+
+[2: _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, 1894.]
+
+[3: _Spectator_, No. 12.]
+
+[4: _Spectator_, No. 110.]
+
+[5: Boswell, _Life of Johnson_, June 12th, 1784.]
+
+[6: _Tom Jones_, Bk. xvi. ch. v.]
+
+[7: Letter to Dr. Moore, Aug. 2, 1787.]
+
+[8: Ashton, _Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century_, 1882.]
+
+[9: Advertisement to _Cloudesley_, 1830.]
+
+[10: Preface to _Mandeville_, Oct. 25, 1817.]
+
+[11: Letters, vii. 27.]
+
+[12: _The Uncommercial Traveller_.]
+
+[13: _Odyssey_, xi.]
+
+[14: April 17, 1765.]
+
+[15: Nov. 13, 1784.]
+
+[16: June 12, 1753.]
+
+[17: _Remarks on Italy_.]
+
+[18: Aug. 4, 1753.]
+
+[19: _Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay_, vol. ii. Appendix
+ii.: _A
+     Visit to Strawberry Hill in 1786_.]
+
+[20: Jan. 5, 1766.]
+
+[21: July 15, 1783.]
+
+[22: March 26, 1765.]
+
+[23: Nov. 5, 1782.]
+
+[24: It has been pointed out (Scott, _Lives of the Novelists_,
+note)
+     that in Lope de Vega's _Jerusalem_ the picture of Noradine
+stalks
+     from its panel and addresses Saladine.]
+
+[25: Cf. Wallace, _Blind Harry_.]
+
+[26: _Preface_, 1764.]
+
+[27: Ch. XX.]
+
+[28: Ch. XXXIV.]
+
+[29: Ch. lxii.]
+
+[30: Jan. 27, 1780.]
+
+[31: _Letters_, April 8, 1778, and Jan. 27, 1780.]
+
+[32: _Poetical Works_, ed. Sampson, p. 8.]
+
+[33: Translated _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1820 (Nov.). Cf. Scott,
+     _Bridal of Triermain_.]
+
+[34: _E.g. Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay_, June 18, 1795;
+     Mathias, _Pursuits of Literature_, 14th ed. 1808, p. 56;
+Scott,
+     _Lives of the Novelists_; Extracts from the _Diary of a
+Lover of
+     Literature_ (1810); Byron, _Childe Harold_, iv. xviii.;
+     Thackeray, _Newcomes_, chs. xi., xxviii.; Bronte, _Shirley_,
+ch.
+     xxvii; Trollope, _Barchester Towers_, ch. xv., etc.]
+
+[35: Family Letters, 1908.]
+
+[36: Reprinted, Romancist and Novelist's Library.]
+
+[37: _Journeys of Mrs. Radcliffe_, 2nd ed., 1795, vol. ii. p.
+171.]
+
+[38: _Noctes Ambrosianae_, ed. 1855, vol. i. p. 201.]
+
+[39: Lecture on _The English Novelists_.]
+
+[40: _Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis_, 1839, i. 122.]
+
+[41: _Life and Correspondence_, July 22nd, 1794.]
+
+[42: Essay on _The State of German Literature_.]
+
+[43: Southey, Preface to _Madoc_.]
+
+[44: _Life and Correspondence_, Feb. 23, 1798.]
+
+[45: Letter to John Murray, Aug. 23rd, 1814.]
+
+[46: _Monthly Review_, June, 1797.]
+
+[47: No. 148.]
+
+[48: Cf. Musaeus: _Die Entfuehrung_.]
+
+[49: _Marmion_, Canto ii. Intro.]
+
+[50: Reprinted, Romancist and Novelist's Library, vol. i. 1839.]
+
+[51: _Essay on German Playwrights_.]
+
+[52: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (1809).]
+
+[53: Many of these were issued by B. Crosby, Stationers' Court.]
+
+[54: _Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers_, 1856, p.
+     138.]
+
+[55: Trans. from the German of Christian August Vulpius.]
+
+[56: Cf. Thackeray, "Tunbridge Toys" (Roundabout Papers).]
+
+[57: _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_.]
+
+[58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1825; and memoir prefixed to the
+edition
+     of _Melmoth the Wanderer_, published in 1892.]
+
+[59: Prose Works, 1851, vol. xviii.]
+
+[60: _Letters and Memoir_, 1895, vol. i. p. 101.]
+
+[61: _Life_ (Melville), 1909, vol. i. p. 79.]
+
+[62: _Letters_, 2nd Series, 1872, vol. i. p. 101.]
+
+[63: Gustave Planche, _Portraits Litteraires_.]
+
+[64: Cf. Stevenson's _Bottle-Imp._]
+
+[65: _Edinburgh Review_, July 1821.]
+
+[66: Conant, _The Oriental Tale in England_, pp. 36-38.]
+
+[67: Conant, _The Oriental Tale in England_, pp. 36-38.]
+
+[68: Letter to Henley, Jan. 29, 1782.]
+
+[69: _Life and Letters_, Melville, 1910, p. 20.]
+
+[70: _Life and Letters_, 1910, p. 20.]
+
+[71: _Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore_, 1853,
+     vol. ii. p. 197.]
+
+[72: Nov. 24, 1777, _Life and Letters_, p. 40.]
+
+[73: Austen Leigh, _Memoir of Jane Austen_.]
+
+[74: Letter to William Godwin, Dec. 7, 1817.]
+
+[75: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_. Kegan
+Paul,
+     1876, vol. i. p. 78.]
+
+[76: Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832.]
+
+[77:  Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832.]
+
+[78:  Preface to _Fleetwood_, 1832, p. xi: "I read over a little
+old
+      book entitled _The Adventures of Mme. De St. Phale_, I
+turned
+      over the pages of a tremendous compilation entitled _God's
+      Revenge against Murder_, where the beam of the eye of
+      omniscience was represented as perpetually pursuing the
+      guilty... I was extremely conversant with _The Newgate
+      Calendar_ and _The Lives of the Pirates_. I rather amused
+myself
+      with tracing a certain similitude between the story of
+_Caleb
+      Williams_ and the tale of _Bluebeard_;" and Preface to
+      _Cloudesley_: "The present publication may in the same
+sense be
+      denominated a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Children
+in
+      the Wood."]
+
+[79: Scott, Introduction to _The Abbot_, 1831.]
+
+[80: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, 1876, vol.
+ii.
+     p. 304.]
+
+[81: _Caleb Williams_, ch. x.]
+
+[82: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, vol. i.
+pp.
+     330-1.]
+
+[83: _Political Justice_, bk. ii, ch. ii.]
+
+
+[84: _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, vol. i.
+pp.
+     330-1; Preface to 1st edition, 1799.]
+
+[85: _Hermippus Redivivus_; or _The Sage's Triumph over Old Age
+and
+     the Grave_ (translated from the Latin of Cohausen, with
+     annotations), 1743. Dr. Johnson pronounced the volume "very
+     entertaining as an account of the hermetic philosophy and as
+     furnishing a curious history of the extravagancies of the
+human
+     mind," adding "if it were merely imaginary it would be
+nothing at
+     all."]
+
+[86: _St. Leon_, vol. iv. ch, xiii.]
+
+[87: _St. Leon_, Bk. iv, ch. v.]
+
+[88: _Lives of the Necromancers_, 1834, Preface. "The main purpose
+of
+     this book is to exhibit a fair delineation of the credulity
+of
+     the human mind. Such an exhibition cannot fail to be
+productive
+     of the most salutary lessons."]
+
+[89: _St. Godwin: A Tale of the 16th, 17th and 18th Century_, by
+Count
+     Reginald de St. Leon, 1800, p. 234.]
+
+[90: Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 10.]
+
+[91: Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 44.]
+
+[92: Hogg, _Life of Shelley_, vol. i. p. 15.]
+
+[93: Cf. Castle of Lindenberg story in _The Monk_, and ballad of
+Alonzo the Brave.]
+
+[94: A versification of the story of the Wandering Jew, Bleeding
+Nun
+     and Don Raymond in _The Monk_.]
+
+[95: This poem was borrowed from Lewis's _Tales of Terror_
+(without
+     Shelley's knowledge), where it is entitled _The Black Canon
+of
+     Elmham, or St. Edmond's Eve_.]
+
+[96: Letter to Edward Fergus Graham, Ap. 23, 1810 (_Letters_, ed.
+     Ingpen, 1909, vol. i, pp. 4-6).]
+
+[97: Letter to John Joseph Stockdale, Nov. 14, 1810.]
+
+[98: Mme. de Montolieu, _Caroline de Lichfield_, translated by
+Thos.
+     Holcroft, 1786.]
+
+[99: Mme. de Genlis, translated by Rev. Beresford, 1796.]
+
+[100: Peter Middleton Darling, _Romance of the Highlands_, 1810.]
+
+[101: Regina Maria Roche, _The Discarded Son, or The Haunt of the
+      Banditti_, 1806.]
+
+[102: Agnes Musgrave, _Cicely, or The Rose of Raby_.]
+
+[103: Aphra Behn, _The Nun_.]
+
+[104: Charlotte Smith, _Ethelinde, or The Recluse of the Lake_,
+1790.]
+
+[105: _The Relapse: a novel_, 1780.]
+
+[106: _Tales of the Hall_.]
+
+[107: Crebillon, _Les Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_.]
+
+[108: _The Borough_, Ellen Orford, Letter xx.]
+
+[109: _The Borough_, xx, ll. 56 _seqq._]
+
+[110: _Parish Register_.]
+
+[111: _William and Helen_, 1796.]
+
+[112: _House of Aspen_, 1799 (Keepsake, 1830). _Doom of
+Devorgoil_,
+      1817 (Keepsake, 1830).]
+
+[113: Scott, _Lives of the Novelists_ (on Clara Reeve and Mrs.
+      Radcliffe and Maturin).]
+
+[114: Keepsake, 1828.]
+
+[115: Keepsake, 1828.]
+
+[116: _Journal_, Feb. 23, 1826.]
+
+[117: List of books read 1814-1816.]
+
+[118: _Fantasmagoriana: ou Recueil d'Histoires d'Apparitions, de
+      Spectres, de Revenans, trad. d'Allemand par un Amateur_.
+Paris,
+      1812.]
+
+[119: _Diary of John William Polidori_, June 17, 1816.]
+
+[120: Byron, _Letters and Journals_, 1899, iii. 446. Mary
+Shelley,
+      _Life and Letters_, 1889, i. 586. Extract from Mary
+Shelley's
+      _Diary_, Aug. 14, 1816.]
+
+[121: Nov. 15, 1823, _Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft
+Shelley_
+      (Marshall), ii. 52.]
+
+[122: _Life and Letters_, ii. 88. ]
+
+[123: _Romancist and Novelist's Library_.]
+
+[124: Reprinted in _Treasure House of Tales by Great Authors_,
+ed.
+      Garnett, 1891.]
+
+[125: _Punch_, vol. x. p. 31:
+
+        "Says Ainsworth to Colburn
+        A plan in my pate is
+        To give my romance, as
+        A supplement gratis.
+        Says Colburn to Ainsworth
+        'Twill do very nicely,
+        For that will be charging
+        Its value precisely."]
+
+[126: _Life, Letters and Literary Remains_, 1883, vol. ii. pp. 70
+      _seqq_.]
+
+[127: _Dublin University Magazine_, 1862. "Forgotten Novels."]
+
+[128: _Blackwood's Magazine_, 1830-1837.]
+
+[129: _Within the Tides_, 1915.]
+
+[130: Preface to _The Algerine Captive_ (Walpole, Vermont, 1797)
+      quoted Loshe, _Early American Novel_, N.Y. 1907.]
+
+[131: Preface to _Edgar Huntly_.]
+
+[132: Peacock, _Memoirs of Shelley_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Abbey of Clunedale_, Drake's, 35.
+
+_Abbot_, Scott's, 109 note, 153.
+
+_Abdallah_, Tieck's, 65.
+
+_Abellino_, Zschokke's, 70.
+
+_Adam Blair_, Lockhart's, 207.
+
+Addison, Joseph, 5, 17, 69, 95, 222.
+
+_Adela Cathcart_, Macdonald's, 173.
+
+_Adventures of Abdallah_, Bignon's, 94, 96.
+
+_Adventures of Mme. de St. Phale_, 109 note.
+
+_After Dark_, Wilkie Collins', 190.
+
+Aikin, A.L. (see Barbauld, Mrs. A.L.).
+
+Aikin, Dr. J., 28.
+
+Aikin, Lucy, 28.
+
+Ainsworth, Harrison, 149, 174-177.
+
+_Alastor_, Shelley's, 127, 163.
+
+_Albigenses_, Maturin's, 82.
+
+_Alciphron_, Moore's, 117.
+
+_Algerine Captive_, 197 note.
+
+_Alice in Wonderland_, Lewis Carroll's, 116.
+
+_All the Year Round_, 183, 190.
+
+_Almoran and Hamet_, Hawkesworth's, 95.
+
+_Alonzo and Melissa_, 197.
+
+_Alonzo the Brave_, Lewis's, n, 120 note.
+
+_Amadas, Sir_, 4.
+
+_Amelia_, Fielding's, 134, 135.
+
+_Ancient Mariner_, Coleridge's, 9, 227.
+
+_Angelina_, Maria Edgeworth's, 133.
+
+_Annual Review_, 73.
+
+_Antiquary_, Scott's, 154.
+
+Apel, J.A., 174.
+
+_Apostate Nun_ (see _Convent of Grey Penitents)_.
+
+
+_Apparitions, History and Reality of_, Defoe's, 5, 139.
+
+_Apparitions, History of_, Taylor's, 149.
+
+Apuleius, 13.
+
+_Arabian Nights_, 12, 94.
+
+_Ardinghello_, Heinse's, 65.
+
+_Arliss's Pocket Magazine_, 175.
+
+_Arlamene ou le Grand Cyrus_, Mme. de Scudery's, 222.
+
+_Arthur Mervyn_, C.B. Brown's, 198.
+
+_Asylum or Alonzo and Melissa_, 197.
+
+_Auberge Rouge_, Balzac's, 203.
+
+_Auriol_, Ainsworth's, 176-177.
+
+Austen, Jane, 100, 125-133, 138, 140, 223.
+
+_Avenger_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_Avenging Demon_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Azemia_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+Babel, Tower of, 221.
+
+_Babes in the Wood_, 13, 109 note.
+
+_Babylonica_, Iamblichus', 12.
+
+Ballad collections, 9.
+
+_Baltimore Saturday Visitor_, 214.
+
+Balzac, Honore de, 86, 203.
+
+_Bandit of Florence_, 76.
+
+_Banditti of the Forest_, 76.
+
+_Barbastal, or the Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_,
+186.
+
+Barbauld, Mrs. A.L., 28-31, 32, 33, 147.
+
+_Barchester Towers_, Trollope's, 38 note.
+
+_Bard_, Gray's, 7.
+
+Barrett, E.S., 22, 79, 133-137, 138.
+
+Baudelaire, Charles, 86, 220.
+
+Beckford, William, 94-99, 118.
+
+Beggar Girl and her Benefactors, Mrs. Bennett's, 74, 134.
+
+Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 141 note, 222.
+
+_Benevolent Monk_, Melville's, 75.
+
+Bennett, Mrs. A.M., 74.
+
+Bennett, Arnold, 227.
+
+Benson, E.F., 226.
+
+_Beowulf_, 2.
+
+_Berenice_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Bertram_, Maturin's, 81, 149.
+
+_Betrothed_, Scott's, 153.
+
+_Bibliotheca Britannica_, Watt's, 75, 129.
+
+Bignon, Jean-Paul, 94.
+
+_Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+_Black Canon of Elmham (Tales of Terror_), 120 note.
+
+_Black Cat_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Black Forest_, 76.
+
+Blackwood, Algernon, 226.
+
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, 34 note, 174, 182, 189, 190, 194.
+
+Blake, William, 31-32.
+
+_Blanche and Osbright_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+"Blind Harry," 21 note.
+
+_Blithedale Romance_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Bloody Monk of Udolpho_, Horsley Curteis', 75.
+
+_Bluebeard_, 3, 13, 109 note.
+
+_Boeotian_, 175.
+
+_Bold Dragoon_, Irving's, 201.
+
+Boleyn, Anne, 31.
+
+_Book for a Corner_, Leigh Hunt's, 28.
+
+_Borough_, Crabbe's, 142, 143.
+
+_Bosom-Serpent_, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Bottle-Imp_, Stevenson's, 87 note.
+
+Bovet, 14, 149.
+
+_Bravo of Bohemia_ or _Black Forest_, 76.
+
+_Bravo of Venice_, Lewis's, 70, 71, 125.
+
+_Bridal of Triermain_, Scott's, 34 note.
+
+_Bride of Lammermoor_, Scott's, 81, 153.
+
+_Brigand Tales_, 186.
+
+Bronte, Charlotte, 38 note, 51, 224.
+
+Bronte, Emily, 224-225.
+
+Brown, Charles Brockden, 140, 188, 197-200.
+
+Browne, Sir Thomas, 5.
+
+Bulke, Sir George, 57.
+
+_Bullfrog, Mrs_., Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+Bunyan, John, 5.
+
+Buerger, Gottfried, II, 148, 200.
+
+Burney, Dr. Charles, 17.
+
+Burney, Fanny, 38 note, 135, 223.
+
+Burns, Robert, 8, 9.
+
+Burton, Robert, 5.
+
+Byron, Lord, 38 note, 55, 59, 72, 79, 81, 135, 158, 160, 167,
+169,
+  171, 221.
+
+_Caleb Williams_, Godwin's, 13, 102-111, 168, 199, 218.
+
+_Caledonian Banditti_, 76.
+
+_Camilla_, Fanny Burney's, 134.
+
+Campbell, Dr. John, 112.
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, 65, 72.
+
+_Caroline of Lichfield_, Mme. de Montolieu's, 134.
+
+Carroll, Lewis, 201.
+
+_Cask of Amontillado_, Poe's, 217, 220.
+
+_Castle Connor_, Clara Reeve's, 28.
+
+_Castle of Otranto_, Walpole's, 12, 16-23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30,
+31, 39,
+  40, 58, 77, 146, 221.
+
+_Castle of Wolfenbach_, Mrs. Parson's, 129.
+
+_Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 39-41, 45.
+
+_Castle Spectre_, Lewis's, 66, 149.
+
+_Castle without a Spectre_, Mrs. Hunter's, 76.
+
+Cazotte, Jacques, 68.
+
+_Cecilia_, Fanny Burney's, 134, 135.
+
+_Cenci_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+Cervantes, 222.
+
+_Chateau de Montville_, Sarah Wilkinson's, 77.
+
+_Cherubina, Adventures of_ (see _Heroine_).
+
+_Childe Harold_, Byron's, 38 note.
+
+_Children of the Abbey_, Mrs. Roche's, 22, 59, 129, 130, 134.
+
+_Chinese Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+_Christabel_, Coleridge's, 9, 10.
+
+"Christopher North" (Wilson, John), 192.
+
+_Cicely or The Rose of Raby_, Miss Agnes Musgrave's, 141 note.
+
+_Clarissa Harlowe_, Richardson's, 46, 134, 140.
+
+_Clerk Saunders_, 3.
+
+_Clermont_, Mrs. Roche's, 129.
+
+_Cock Lane and Commonsense_, Andrew Lang's, 2 note.
+
+"Cock Lane Ghost," 6.
+
+Coleridge, S.T., 9, 10, 66, 81.
+
+_Collectanea_, Leland's, 57.
+
+Collins, Wilkie, 190, 194, 225.
+
+Collins, William, 7, 8, 12, 35, 58.
+
+Colman, George, the younger, 109.
+
+Colman, George, the elder, 129, 222.
+
+Conant, Martha, 95 note.
+
+_Confessions of a Fanatic_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+Conrad, Joseph, 194, 195, 227.
+
+_Contes de ma Mere Oie_, Perrault's, 12.
+
+_Convent of St. Ursula_, Miss Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+_Convent of the Grey Penitents_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 76, 77-78.
+
+Corelli, Marie, 226.
+
+_Corsair_, Byron's, 56.
+
+_Count of Narbonne_, Jephson's, 19.
+
+"Count Reginald de St. Leon," 116.
+
+Coverley, Sir Roger de, 5.
+
+Crabbe, George, 76, 140-144.
+
+Crebillon, C.P.J., 141 note.
+
+_Crichton_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+Croly, George, 118.
+
+Cruikshank, 176.
+
+Cunningham, Allan, 191-192.
+
+Curteis, T.J. Horsley, 75.
+
+Dacre, Charlotte ("Rosa Matilda"), 75, 122.
+
+D'Arblay, Mme. (see Burney, Fanny).
+
+Darwin, Erasmus, 160.
+
+D'Aulnoy, Countess, 12.
+
+David, 2.
+
+_Death of Despina_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 5, 6, 139.
+
+_Delicate Distress_, 134.
+
+"Demon Frigate," 12.
+
+"Demon Lover," 2, 14.
+
+_Demonology and Witchcraft, Letters on_, Scott's, 149.
+
+_Demonology, Treatise on_, James I.'s, 4.
+
+De Quincey, 173-174.
+
+De Scudery, Mme., 222.
+
+_Descent into the Maelstrom_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Devil in Love_, Cazotte's, 68.
+
+_Diary of a Lover of Literature_, Green's, 38 note.
+
+_Dice_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+Dickens, Charles, 14, 59, 81, 190, 192, 193.
+
+_Discarded Son_, Mrs. Roche's, 140 note.
+
+_Discovery of Witchcraft_, Scot's, 14, 147.
+
+Disraeli, Benjamin, 99.
+
+_Distress, Kinds of, which Excite Agreeable Sensations_,
+Barbauld's, 29.
+
+_Dr. Dolliver's Romance_, Hawthorne's, 212-213.
+
+_Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_, Hawthorne's, 207.
+
+_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, Stevenson's, 218.
+
+_Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions_, Dickens', 194.
+
+_Don Quixote_, Cervantes', 222.
+
+_Doom of Devorgoil_, Scott's, 149 note.
+
+_Douglas_, Home's, 8.
+
+Doyle, Sir A. Conan, 103, 218, 226.
+
+_Dracula_, Bram Stoker's, 2, 173, 225.
+
+Drake, Dr. Nathan, 32-37, 147.
+
+_Dream Children_, Lamb's, 193.
+
+_Dublin University Magazine_, 173, 186 note, 190, 191.
+
+Dumas, Alexandre, 175.
+
+_Edgar Huntly_, C.B. Brown's, 197, 198, 199-200.
+
+Edgeworth, Maria, 133.
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 87 note.
+
+_Edmond, Orphan of the Castle_, 28.
+
+_Edward_, 34.
+
+_Edward Fane's Rosebud_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit_, Crebillon's, 141 note.
+
+_Elegant Enthusiast_, Beckford's, 97.
+
+_Eleanora_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Elixir de la Longue Vie_, Balzac's, 203.
+
+_Elixir des Teufels_, Hoffmann's, 70.
+
+_Elsie Venner_, Holmes', 207.
+
+Endor, Witch of, 2, 221.
+
+_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, Byron's, 72 note, 79.
+
+_English Chronicle_, 39.
+
+_English Novelists, Lectures on_, Hazlitt's, 62.
+
+_Entfuehrung_, Musaeus', 68 note.
+
+_Epicurean_, Moore's, 117, 118.
+
+_Ernestus Berchtold_, Polidori's, 160, 170-171.
+
+_Ethan Brand_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Ethelinde_, Charlotte Smith's, 141.
+
+"Ettrick Shepherd" (see Hogg, James).
+
+_European Magazine_, 175.
+
+_Evelina_, Fanny Burney's, 134.
+
+_Eve of St. Agnes_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Ewige Jude_, Schubart's, 120.
+
+_Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Faerie Queene_, Spenser's, 17.
+
+_Fair Elenor_, Blake's, 31-32.
+
+_Fair Jilt_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 222.
+
+_Falkner_, Godwin's, 168.
+
+_Fall of the House of Usher_, Poe's, 216, 220.
+
+_Family of Montorio_, 72, 74, 80, 81, 82-86, 88, 91, 93, 158.
+
+_Fantasmagoriana_, 160 note.
+
+_Farina_, Meredith's, 70.
+
+_Fatal Marksman_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_Fatal Revenge_ (see _Family of Montorio_).
+
+_Faust_, Goethe's, 92, 198.
+
+_Faustus, Dr._, Marlowe's, 4, 12, 91, 92.
+
+_Fear, Ode to_, Collins', 35.
+
+"Felix Phantom," 77.
+
+_Female Quixote_, Mrs. Lennox's, 222.
+
+_Ferdinand, Count Fathom, Adventures of_, Smollett's, 12, 23-25,
+29,
+  35, 68.
+
+_Feudal Tyrants_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+Fielding, Henry, 222.
+
+_Field of Terror_, De La Motte Fouque's, 34.
+
+_First Men in the Moon_, Wells', 227.
+
+_Flames_, Hichens', 226.
+
+_Fleetwood_, Godwin's, 102 note, 104 note, 109 note.
+
+Flood, Story of, 1, 221.
+
+Ford, John, 127.
+
+_Forman_, 224.
+
+_Fortress of Saguntum_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+_Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott's, 153.
+
+Fouque, De la Motte, 34, 153.
+
+Francis, Sophia, 76.
+
+_Frankenstein_, Mrs. Shelley's, 158-165, 169.
+
+Frazer, 2 note.
+
+_Fredolfo_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Freischuetz_, Apel's, 174.
+
+_Fugitive Countess_, Miss Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+Galland, Antoine, 12, 94.
+
+Gaskell, Mrs., 192-193.
+
+_Gaston de Blondeville_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 39, 40, 56-58, 60.
+
+_Geisterseher_, Schiller's, 51.
+
+_Geistertodtenglocke_, 191.
+
+"Geoffrey Crayon" (see Irving, Washington).
+
+_German Literature, Essay on_, Carlyle's, 65.
+
+_German Playwrights, Essay on_, Carlyle's, 72 note.
+
+_German Student, Story of a_, 201.
+
+_Ghasta_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Ghost_, "Felix Phantom's," 77.
+
+_Giaour_, Byron's, 55.
+
+Gilgamesh epic, 1-2.
+
+_Ginevra_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+Glanvill, Joseph, 6, 215.
+
+_Glenallan_, Lytton's, 179.
+
+_Glenfinlas_, Scott's, 11.
+
+_Godolphin_, Lytton's, 179.
+
+_God's Revenge Against Murder_, 109 note.
+
+Godwin, William, 13, 92, 100-117, 124, 158, 166, 175, 197, 199,
+200, 209, 218, 226.
+
+Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 65, 92, 148, 198.
+
+_Golden Ass_, Apuleius', 13, 14, 15.
+
+_Goodman Brown_, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Goetz van Berlichingen_, Goethe's, 148.
+
+_Grand Cyrus_, Mme. de Scudery's, 222.
+
+_Grandison, Sir Charles_, Richardson's, 134.
+
+Green, Sarah, 133.
+
+_Green Tea_, Le Fanu's, 190.
+
+Gray, Thomas, 7, 12, 20, 40, 58, 75.
+
+Grillparzer, Franz, 72.
+
+Grosse, Marquis von, 76, 129.
+
+_Guardian_, 68.
+
+Gueulette, 94.
+
+Haggard, Rider, 226.
+
+_Half Hangit_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+_Halloween_, Burns', 8.
+
+Hamilton, Count Antony, 95.
+
+_Hamlet_, Shakespeare's, 86.
+
+_Hardyknute_, 35.
+
+_Haunted and the Haunters_, Lytton's, 179, 182-183.
+
+_Haunted Ships_, Cunningham's, 191.
+
+Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 95.
+
+Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 203-213, 214, 217, 220.
+
+Hayne, D.F., 188.
+
+Hazlitt, William, 62.
+
+Heinse, Wilhelm, 65.
+
+_Hellas_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+Henley, Rev. S., 94.
+
+_Henry Fitzowen_, Drake's, 33.
+
+_Hermippus Redivivus_, Campbell's, 112.
+
+_Heroine_, Barrett's, 79, 133-137.
+
+Heywood, Thomas, 149.
+
+_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Heywood's, 149.
+
+_History of Nourjahad_, Mrs. Sheridan's, 95.
+
+_History of the Exchequer_, Mador's, 57.
+
+Hobson, Elizabeth, 6.
+
+Hoffmann, E.T.A., 70, 175.
+
+Hogg, James, 11, 58, 61, 191, 192.
+
+_Hollow of the Three Hills_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 207,
+
+Home, John, 8.
+
+_Horrid Mysteries_, Marquis von Grosse's, 76, 126, 129, 199.
+
+_Hound of the Baskervilles_, 226.
+
+_Hours of Idleness_, Byron's, 72.
+
+_Household Words_, 190, 193.
+
+_Household Wreck_, De Quincey's, 174.
+
+_House of Aspen_, Scott, 149 note.
+
+_House of the Seven Gables_, Hawthorne's, 210-211.
+
+Hughes, A.M.D., 122.
+
+_Hugo_, Bennett's, 227.
+
+Hugo, Victor, 175.
+
+Hunt, Leigh, 28, 186.
+
+Hunter, Mrs. Rachel, 76.
+
+Hurd, Bishop, 17, 20.
+
+Iamblichus, 12.
+
+Icelandic saga, 2, 14.
+
+_Iliad_, 14.
+
+_Image in the Sand_, Benson's, 226.
+
+_Indicator_, Leigh Hunt's, 187.
+
+_Inn of the Two Witches_, Conrad's, 195.
+
+_Invisible Man_, Wells', 196.
+
+_Iron Shroud_, Mudford's, 194.
+
+Irving, Washington, 200-203.
+
+_Isabella_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Italian_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 34, 45, 47, 52-56, 58, 60, 69, 70,
+114, 124, 125, 128, 137, 168, 185.
+
+_Ivanhoe_, Scott's, 18.
+
+_Jack the Giant-Killer_, 19.
+
+Jacobs, W.W., 193.
+
+James I., 4.
+
+James, Henry, 196.
+
+_Jane Eyre_, Charlotte Bronte's, 224.
+
+_Jekyll and Hyde_, Stevenson's, 218.
+
+"Jenny Spinner," 179.
+
+Jephson, Robert, 19.
+
+Jerdan, W., 189.
+
+_Jerusalem_, Lope de Vega's, 21 note.
+
+_Job, Book of_, 221.
+
+_John Silence_, Blackwood's, 226.
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 6, 7, 95.
+
+Johnson, T.B., 140.
+
+Jonson, Ben, 4.
+
+_Journal_, Moore's, 97.
+
+_Journeys of Mrs. Radcliffe_, 60-61.
+
+_Juif Errant_, Sue's, 118.
+
+Keats, John, 10.
+
+_Keepsake_, 149 note, 150 note, 151 note.
+
+Kemble, John, 19.
+
+_Kidnapped_, Stevenson, 41, 195.
+
+_Kilmeny_, Hogg's, 11.
+
+_King John_, Shakespeare's, 55.
+
+_King Lear_, Shakespeare's, 3, 110.
+
+_King Solomon's Mines_, Haggard's, 226.
+
+Kipling, Rudyard, 195.
+
+Klingemann, 72.
+
+_Klosterheim_, De Quincey's, 173.
+
+_Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Beaumont and Fletcher's, 7.
+
+_Knights of the Swan_, Mme. de Genlis', 134.
+
+_Koenigsmark the Robber_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+Kotzebue, August von, 65, 72.
+
+_Kubla Khan_, 10.
+
+_La Belle Dame sans Merci_, Keats', 11.
+
+Lacroix, Paul, 175.
+
+_Lady in the Sacque_, Scott's, 150, 201.
+
+_Lady of the Lake_, Scott's, 152.
+
+Lamb, Charles, 193.
+
+_Lamia_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Lancashire Witches_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+Lang, Andrew, 2.
+
+Langhorne, John, 95.
+
+_Lara_, Byron's, 56.
+
+_Last Man_, Mrs. Shelley's, 166-168.
+
+Lathom, Francis, 76.
+
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Scott's, 79, 152.
+
+Le Calprenede, 222.
+
+Lee, Sophia, 39, 57.
+
+Le Fanu, Sheridan, 190, 225.
+
+_Legend of Montrose_, Scott's, 153.
+
+_Legends of a Nunnery_, Lewis's, 71.
+
+_Legends of Terror_, 186.
+
+_Legends of the Province House_, Hawthorne's, 204.
+
+Leland, John, 57.
+
+Lemoine, Anne, 186.
+
+Lennox, Mrs. Charlotte, 222.
+
+_Lenore_, Buerger's, 11, 148.
+
+Le Queux, William, 226.
+
+_Letitia_, Mrs. Rachel Hunter's, 76.
+
+_Letters on Chivalry and Romance_, Hurd's, 17, 20.
+
+Lewis, M.G. ("Monk"), 11, 14, 32, 55, 56, 61, 63-72, 76, 77, 85,
+91,
+  114, 120, 122, 123, 125, 136, 148, 157, 158, 174, 175, 185,
+186,
+  188, 197, 203, 218.
+
+_Ligeia_, Poe's, 215.
+
+_Literary Hours_, Drake's, 32.
+
+_Literary Souvenir_, 175.
+
+_Little Annie's Rambles_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Lives of the Necromancers_, Godwin's, 115, 117.
+
+_Lives of the Novelists_, Scott's, 21 note, 38 note, 150 note,
+153.
+
+_Lives of the Pirates_, 109 note.
+
+_Lives_, Plutarch's, 162.
+
+Lockhart, John, 192, 207.
+
+_Lodore_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+_London Magazine_, 191.
+
+_Longsword_, Leland's, 57.
+
+Lope de Vega, 21 note.
+
+_Lopez and Aranthe_, Miss Sarah Wilkinson's, 78.
+
+_Lord of Ennerdale_, Scott's, 148.
+
+Loshe, 197.
+
+_Lucifer_, 188.
+
+Lyttleton, Lord, 6.
+
+Lytton, Bulwer, 109, 116, 178-184, 226.
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 77.
+
+_Macbeth_, Shakespeare's, 4, 85.
+
+Macpherson, James, 12, 20.
+
+_Madoc_, Southey's, 65 note.
+
+Mador, 57.
+
+_Magician of the Forest of the Bloody Ash_, 186.
+
+_Malfi, Duchess of_, Webster's, 4.
+
+Mallet, David, 7.
+
+Malone, Edmund, 19.
+
+Malory, Sir Thomas, 4.
+
+_Manuscript Found in a Bottle_, Poe's, 214, 215.
+
+_Mandeville_, Godwin's, 101.
+
+_Manfroni_, 75.
+
+_Manuel_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Man in the Bell_, 194.
+
+_Marble Faun_, Hawthorne's, 204, 212.
+
+_Margaret Nicholson, Posthumous Poems of_, 120.
+
+_Mark of the Beast_, Kipling's, 195.
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 4, 92.
+
+_Marmion_, Scott's, 69 note.
+
+Marryat, Captain, 2, 177.
+
+Marsh, Richard, 225.
+
+_Mary Burnet_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+Mason, 16, 20, 58.
+
+_Masque of Queens_, Ben Jonson's, 4.
+
+_Masque of the Red Death_, Poe's, 214, 216, 217, 220.
+
+_Master of Ballantrae_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+Mathias, T.J., 38 note.
+
+Maturin, C.R., 55, 61, 72, 80-93, 150 note, 157, 158, 175, 185,
+188, 203, 218, 220.
+
+Medwin, Thomas, 74, 120.
+
+Meeke, Mrs., 77.
+
+_Melancholy, Ode on_, Keats', 10.
+
+_Melmoth Reconcilie a l'Eglise_, Balzac's, 86.
+
+_Melmoth the Wanderer_, Maturin's, 14, 80 note, 82, 86-93, 158,
+174, 185.
+
+Melville, Theodore, 75.
+
+Meredith, George, 70, 99.
+
+_Merry Men_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+Mickle, William Julius, 69.
+
+_Midnight Bell_, George Walker's, 77, 129.
+
+_Midnight Groan_, 120.
+
+_Midnight Horrors_, 75.
+
+_Midnight Weddings_, Mrs. Meeke's, 77.
+
+_Milesian Chief_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+Milton, John, 54, 58.
+
+Minerva Press, 74.
+
+_Misanthropic Parent_, Miss Smith's, 135.
+
+Mitford, Miss Mary Russell, 58, 86.
+
+_Modern Language Review_, 122.
+
+_Modern Oedipus_, Polidori's, 160, 170-171.
+
+_Mogul Tales_, Gueulette's, 94, 95.
+
+_Monastery_, Scott's, 109, 152.
+
+_Monk_, Lewis's, 64, 65, 66-70, 91, 114, 120 note, 123, 129, 136,
+148, 152.
+
+_Monk of Madrid_, George Moore's, 75.
+
+_Monkey's Paw_, Jacobs', 193.
+
+_Monks of Cluny or Castle Acre Monastery_, 186.
+
+_Monos and Daimonos_, Lytton's, 217.
+
+Montagu, George, 18.
+
+_Monthly Review_, 68 note.
+
+_Montmorenci_, Drake's, 34, 35.
+
+_Moonstone_, Wilkie Collins', 190, 225.
+
+Moore, George, 75.
+
+Moore, Dr. John, 53.
+
+Moore, Thomas, 97, 117, 118.
+
+_Moral Tales_, Maria Edgeworth's, 133.
+
+_More Ghosts_, "Felix Phantom's," 77.
+
+More, Hannah, 16.
+
+_Morella_, Poe's, 215.
+
+Morgan, Lady, 81.
+
+_Mortal Immortal_, Mrs. Shelley's, 169.
+
+_Morte D'Arthur_, Malory's, 4.
+
+_Mosses from an old Manse_, Hawthorne's, 206, 220.
+
+Mudford, William, 194.
+
+_Mugby Junction_, Dickens', 194.
+
+_Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts_, De Quincey's, 173.
+
+_Murders of the Rue Morgue_, Poe's, 218.
+
+Musaeus, Johann, 68 note.
+
+Musgrave, Agnes, 141 note.
+
+_My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_, Scott's, 150.
+
+_Mysteries of the Forest_, Miss Eleanor Sleath's, 76.
+
+_Mysteries of Udolpho_ (see _Udolpho, Mysteries of_).
+
+_Mysterious Bravo_, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Bride_, James Hogg's, 191.
+
+_Mysterious Freebooter_, Lathom's, 76, 120.
+
+_Mysterious Hand_, Randolph's, 76, 120.
+
+_Mysterious Mother_, Walpole's, 34, 58.
+
+_Mysterious Spaniard_, 186.
+
+_Mysterious Summons_, 186.
+
+_Mysterious Visits_, Mrs. Parson's, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Wanderer_, Miss Sophia Reeve's, 76.
+
+_Mysterious Warnings_, Mrs. Parson's, 76, 129.
+
+_Mystery of M. Roget_, Poe's, 218.
+
+_Mystery of the Abbey_, T.B. Johnson's, 140.
+
+_Mystery of the Black Tower_, Palmer's, 76.
+
+_Mystic Sepulchre_, Palmer's, 76.
+
+_My Uncle's Garret Window_, Lewis's, 65.
+
+_Necromancer of the Black Forest_, 129.
+
+_New Arabian Nights_, Stevenson's, 195.
+
+_Newcomes_, Thackeray's, 38 note.
+
+_Newgate Calendar_, 109 note.
+
+_New Monk_, "R.S.'s" 75.
+
+_New Monthly_, 177.
+
+_Nigger of the Narcissus_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+_Nightmare_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Nightmare Abbey_, Peacock's, 47, 126, 138, 140.
+
+_Noctes Ambrosianae_, 58, 62 note, 192.
+
+_Nocturnal Minstrel_, Miss Sleath's, 77.
+
+_Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen's, 44, 128, 129-133, 185.
+
+_Notebooks_, Hawthorne's, 204, 212, 213.
+
+_Nouvelle Heloise_, Rousseau's, 134.
+
+_Nun_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 141.
+
+_Nun of Misericordia_, Miss Sophia Francis's, 76.
+
+_Nun of St. Omer's_, "Rosa Matilda's," 75.
+
+_Nurse's Story_, Mrs. Gaskell's, 192, 193.
+
+_Objects of Terror_, Drake's essay on, 34.
+
+_Oblong Box_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Old Bachelor_, Crabbe's, 142.
+
+_Old English Baron_, Clara Reeve's, 22, 25-28, 57.
+
+"Old Jeffrey," 6.
+
+_Old Manor House_, Charlotte Smith's, 77.
+
+_Old Mortality_, Scott's, 22, 154.
+
+_Old St. Paul's_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Old Woman of Berkeley_, Southey's, 11.
+
+Oppenheim, Phillips, 226.
+
+_Oriental Tale in England_, Conant's, 95 note, 96 note.
+
+_Ormond_, T.B. Brown's, 198.
+
+_Oroonoko_, Mrs. Aphra Behn's, 222.
+
+_Orphan of the Rhine_, Miss Sleath's, 129.
+
+_Oscar and Alva_, Byron's, 72.
+
+_Osorio_, Coleridge's, 81.
+
+_Ossian_, Macpherson's, 12, 20, 58.
+
+_Oval Portrait_, Poe's, 219.
+
+Pain, Barry, 193.
+
+Palmer, John, 76.
+
+_Pamela_, Richardson's, 134.
+
+_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Bovet's, 14, 149.
+
+_Paradise Lost_, Milton's, 162.
+
+_Parish Register_, Crabbe's, 144 note.
+
+Parsons, Mrs. Eliza, 73, 74, 76, 129.
+
+_Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician_, Warren's, 188.
+
+_Paul Clifford_, Lytton's, 109.
+
+Peacock, T.L., 72, 126, 138-140, 197.
+
+_Peep at our Ancestors_, Mrs. Rouviere's, 74, 75.
+
+Pegge, Samuel, 57.
+
+Pepys, Mrs., 222.
+
+Percy, Bishop, 9, 20.
+
+_Perkin Warbeck_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+Perrault, Charles, 12.
+
+_Persian Tales_, Galland's, 94.
+
+_Peruvian Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+Petronius, 2.
+
+_Peveril of the Peak_, Scott's, 154.
+
+_Phantasmagoria_, Lewis Carroll's, 201.
+
+_Phantom Ship_, Marryat's, 2, 177.
+
+_Pickwick_, Dickens', 193.
+
+_Picture of Dorian Gray_, Oscar Wilde's, 226.
+
+_Pilgrim's Progress_, Bunyan's, 5.
+
+_Pillar of Mystery_, 197.
+
+_Pit and the Pendulum_, Poe's, 194, 218.
+
+Planche, Gustave, 86 note.
+
+Plato, 101.
+
+_Pleasure derived from Objects of Terror_, Mrs. Barbauld's essay
+on, 28.
+
+Pliny, 14.
+
+Plutarch, 162.
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, 149, 175, 213-220, 226.
+
+_Poetical Sketches_, Blake's, 31.
+
+Polidori, Dr., 158, 160, 169-173.
+
+_Political Justice_, Godwin's, 100, 101, 102, 111, 197.
+
+_Polly Honeycombe_, Colman's, 222.
+
+Polyphemus, 2.
+
+Pope, Alexander, 17.
+
+_Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations_, 174.
+
+_Portraits Litteraires_, Planche's, 86 note.
+
+_Pour et Contre_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Preceptor Husband_, Crabbe's, 141.
+
+_Preface to Shakespeare_, Pope's, 17.
+
+_Premature Burial_, Poe's, 216.
+
+_Priory of St. Clair_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 78.
+
+_Prisoner of Zenda_, Hope's, 226.
+
+_Prometheus Unbound_, Shelley's, 101, 120, 127.
+
+_Pursuits of Literature_, Mathias', 38 note.
+
+_Quarterly Review_, 72.
+
+_Queenhoo Hall_, Strutt's, 57.
+
+_Queen Mab_, 101, 120.
+
+Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 12, 13, 14, 20, 22, 24, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35,
+  38-62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 76, 77, 81, 82, 84, 85, 91, 101,
+104,
+  105, 109, 114, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 136,
+137,
+  148, 150 note, 154, 155, 157, 158, 167, 168, 173, 175, 176,
+185,
+  188, 197, 198, 218, 219, 222, 223.
+
+_Rambler_, Johnson's, 94.
+
+Randolph, A.J., 76.
+
+_Rappacini's Daughter, Dr._, Hawthorne's, 206.
+
+_Rasselas_, Johnson's, 94, 134.
+
+_Raeuber_, Schiller's, 55, 65, 148, 198.
+
+_Raven_, Poe's, 219.
+
+_Recess_, Sophia Lee's, 39, 57.
+
+Reeve, Clara, 13, 21, 25-28, 33, 38, 57, 150 note.
+
+Reeve, Sophia, 76.
+
+_Relapse_, 141.
+
+_Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, Percy's, 9, 20.
+
+_Return of Imray_, Kipling's, 195.
+
+_Revelations of London_ (see _Auriol_).
+
+_Revenge_ (Poems of Victor and Cazire), 120.
+
+_Revolt of Islam_, Shelley's, 101, 127.
+
+_Richard III._, Shakespeare's, 55.
+
+Richardson, Samuel, 46, 222, 223.
+
+Ridley, James, 95.
+
+_Rill from the Town Pump_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Robber Bridegroom_, 3.
+
+_Robbers_ (see _Raeuber_).
+
+Robinson, Crabb, 59.
+
+_Rob Roy_, Scott's, 154.
+
+Roche, Mrs. Regina Maria, 22, 59, 129, 134, 140 note.
+
+Rogers, Samuel, 74.
+
+Rohmer, Sax, 225.
+
+_Rokeby_, Scott's, 152, 154.
+
+_Romance of the Castle_, D.F. Hayne's, 188.
+
+_Romance of the Cavern_, George Walker's, 76.
+
+_Romance of the Forest_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 26, 42-46, 52, 53, 56,
+69, 76, 109, 131, 132, 134.
+
+_Romance of the Highlands_, Peter Darling's, 134.
+
+_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_, Sarah Green's, 133.
+
+_Romances_, an Imitation, 29.
+
+_Romancist and Novelist's Library_, 39 note, 122, 129, 168 note,
+187, 188, 189.
+
+_Rookwood_, Ainsworth's, 175-176, 224.
+
+"Rosa Matilda" (see Dacre).
+
+_Rose of Raby_, Miss Agnes Musgrave's, 141.
+
+Rossetti, Christina, 39.
+
+Rossetti, D.G., 86, 186.
+
+Rossetti, W.M., 169.
+
+_Roundabout Papers_, Thackeray's, 75 note.
+
+Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 89, 115, 137.
+
+Rouviere, Mrs. Henrietta, 74, 75.
+
+_Ruins of Empire_, Volney's, 162.
+
+_Ruins of St. Luke's Abbey_, 186.
+
+_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Glanvill's, 6.
+
+_St. Edmond's Eve_ (Tales of Terror), 120 note.
+
+_St. Edmund's Eve_ (Poems by Victor and Cazire), 120.
+
+_St. Godwin_, 116.
+
+_St. Irvyne_, Shelley's, 13, 66, 120, 121, 122, 123-126.
+
+_St. Leon_, Godwin's, 91, 102, 111-116, 117, 124, 166, 169.
+
+Saintsbury, George, 192.
+
+_Salathiel_, Croly's, 118.
+
+_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, Sinclair's, 14, 149.
+
+_Scarlet Letter_, Hawthorne's, 207-210, 212.
+
+Schiller, Friedrich, 51, 65.
+
+Schubart, 120.
+
+Scot, Reginald, 14, 147.
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 14, 20, 21 note, 22, 38 note, 55, 57, 69,
+72,
+  73, 74, 75, 77, 80, 81, 82, 86, 109, 135, 145-156, 190, 194,
+200,
+  201, 224.
+
+_Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_, 154.
+
+_Sensitive Plant_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+_Septimius Felton_, Hawthorne's, 212.
+
+_Seven Vagabonds_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+Seward, Anna, 150.
+
+_Sexton of Cologne_, 188.
+
+_Shadow Line_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+Shakespeare, 54, 55, 58, 85, 89, 127.
+
+_Shaving of Shagpat_, Meredith's, 99.
+
+_She_, Rider Haggard's, 226.
+
+Shelley, Mary, 158-169, 188.
+
+Shelley, P.B., 13, 66, 74, 101, 118-127, 160, 167, 168, 175, 197,
+198, 199.
+
+Sheridan, Mrs. Frances, 95.
+
+Sheridan, R.B., 129.
+
+_Shirley_, Charlotte Bronte's, 38 note.
+
+_Shrine of St. Alstice_, 76.
+
+_Sicilian Pirate_, 197.
+
+_Sicilian Romance_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 13, 22, 41-42, 45, 53, 123,
+132,
+  137.
+
+_Sign of Four_, Conan Doyle's, 226.
+
+Sinclair, George, 14, 149.
+
+_Sir Bertrand_, Mrs. Barbauld's, 28-31.
+
+_Sir Egbert_, Drake's, 35.
+
+_Sir Eustace Grey_, Crabbe's, 144.
+
+_Sir Michael Scott_, Cunningham's, 191.
+
+_Sketch Book_, Irving's, 200.
+
+Sleath, Eleanor, 76, 77, 129.
+
+_Sleepless Woman_, Jerdan's, 189.
+
+Smith, Mrs. Charlotte, 77, 141 note.
+
+Smollett, Tobias, 12, 23-25, 29, 31, 68, 222.
+
+_Solyman and Almena_, Langhorne's, 95.
+
+_Sorcerer_, Mickle's, 68, 69.
+
+Southey, Robert, 11, 65.
+
+_Spectator_, 5, 222.
+
+_Spectral Horseman_, 120.
+
+_Spectre Barber_, 188.
+
+_Spectre Bride_, 175, 188.
+
+_Spectre Bridegroom_, 200.
+
+_Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_, Miss Wilkinson's, 79.
+
+_Spectre of the Murdered Nun_, Miss Wilkinson's, 74, 78.
+
+_Spectre-Smitten_, 188.
+
+_Spectre Unmasked_, 188.
+
+Spenser, Edmund, 4, 17, 32, 33, 36, 37, 102.
+
+Steele, Richard, 129.
+
+Sterne, Laurence, 222.
+
+Stevenson, R.L., 87 note, 147, 186, 195, 218.
+
+Stoker, Bram, 2, 225.
+
+_Story-Haunted_, 188, 222.
+
+_Story Teller_, 187, 188, 189.
+
+_Strange Story_, Lytton's, 116, 183-184.
+
+Strutt, Joseph, 57.
+
+_Student_, 217.
+
+_Subterranean Horrors_, Randolph's, 76, 120.
+
+Sue, Eugene, 118.
+
+_Sunday at Home_, Hawthorne's, 205.
+
+_Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, Ode on the_, Collins',
+8.
+
+_Sweet William's Ghost_, 3.
+
+_Symposium_, Plato's, 101.
+
+_Tales for a Chimney Corner_, Leigh Hunt's, 187.
+
+_Tale of Mystery_, 175.
+
+_Tale of the Passions_, Mrs. Shelley's, 168.
+
+_Tales and Sketches_, Hogg's, 192.
+
+_Tales and Sketches_, Hawthorne's, 211.
+
+_Tales of a Traveller_, Irving's, 201-202.
+
+_Tales of Chivalry_, 186.
+
+_Tales of Superstition and Chivalry_, 73.
+
+_Tales of Terror_, Lewis's, 32, 70, 120.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, Ridley's, 95.
+
+_Tales of the Hall_, Crabbe's, 141.
+
+_Tales of Wonder_, Lewis's, 69, 70, 120, 148, 186.
+
+_Tam Lin_, 3.
+
+_Tam o' Shanter_, Burns', 8.
+
+_Tapestried Chamber_, Scott's, 150, 201.
+
+_Tartarian Tales_, Gueulette's, 94.
+
+Taylor, Joseph, 149.
+
+Taylor, William (of Norwich), 148.
+
+Tedworth, Drummer of, 6, 153.
+
+_Tell-Tale Heart_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Tender Husband_, Steele's, 129.
+
+_Terribly Strange Bed_, Wilkie Collins', 194.
+
+_Test of Affection_, Ainsworth's, 175.
+
+Thackeray, W.M., 38 note, 39, 75 note, 78, 86.
+
+Theocritus, 14.
+
+_Thomas the Rhymer_, 147.
+
+Thorgunna, 14.
+
+_Thrawn Janet_, Stevenson's, 147.
+
+_Three Students of Goettingen_, 188.
+
+Tieck, Ludwig, 65, 175.
+
+_Told in the Dark_, Barry Pain's, 193.
+
+_Tomb of Aurora_, 186.
+
+_Tom Jones_, Fielding's, 7 note, 126 note.
+
+Tourneur, Cyril, 127.
+
+_Tower of London_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_,
+Cunningham's, 191.
+
+_Transformation_, Hawthorne's (see _Marble Faun_).
+
+_Transformation_, Mrs. Shelley's, 169.
+
+_Treasure House of Tales by Great Authors_, Garnett's, 169 note.
+
+_Treasure Island_, Stevenson's, 195, 218.
+
+_Trimalchio, Supper of_, Petronius', 2.
+
+_Tristram Shandy_, Sterne's, 134.
+
+_Triumph of Conscience_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+Trollope, Anthony, 38 note.
+
+_True Thomas_, 3.
+
+_Tunbridge Toys_, Thackeray's, 75 note.
+
+_Turkish Tales_, Galland's, 94.
+
+_Turn of the Screw_, James', 196.
+
+_Twelve o'clock, or The Three Robbers_, 186.
+
+_Twice-Told Tales_, Hawthorne's, 203, 205-206, 212, 213, 220.
+
+_Typhoon_, Conrad's, 227.
+
+_Udolpho, Mysteries of_, Mrs. Radcliffe's, 13, 14, 25, 45, 47-51,
+52,
+  53. 59, 61, 64, 75, 76, 123, 125, 128, 129, 131, 134, 137, 145,
+202.
+
+Ulysses, 2, 14.
+
+_Uncommercial Traveller_, Dickens', 193.
+
+_Usher's Well, Wife of_, 3.
+
+_Valperga_, Mrs. Shelley's, 165-166.
+
+_Vampyre_, Polidori's, 169, 171-173.
+
+_Vathek, Episodes of_, Beckford's, 96, 216.
+
+_Vathek, History of the Caliph_, Beckford's, 94-99, 118.
+
+_Veal, Mrs._, Defoe's, 6.
+
+Verne, Jules, 226.
+
+_Victor and Cazire, Poems by_, Shelley's, 120.
+
+_Villette_, Charlotte Bronte's, 51, 224.
+
+_Virtuoso's Collection_, Hawthorne's, 204.
+
+_Vision of Mirza_, Addison's, 94.
+
+Volney, Count de, 162.
+
+Voltaire, 95.
+
+Walker, George, 76, 77, 129.
+
+Wallace, Sir William, 13, 21 note.
+
+Walpole, Horace, 12, 13, 16-23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37,
+39, 175, 185, 188.
+
+Wandering Jew, 12, 14, 68, 92, 118, 120, 158.
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_, Scott's, 147, 148, 149, 151-152.
+
+Watt, Robert, 75, 129.
+
+_Waverley_, Scott's, 59, 145, 146, 153, 166.
+
+Webster, John, 4, 127.
+
+_Wehr-Wolf_, 188.
+
+Weit Weber, 65.
+
+Wells, H.G., 196, 227.
+
+_Werther, Sorrows of_, Goethe's, 65, 162.
+
+Wesley, John, 6.
+
+_West Wind, Ode to the_, Shelley's, 127.
+
+_White Old Maid_, Hawthorne's,
+
+_Wieland_, C.B. Brown's, 140, 198.
+
+Wilde, Oscar, 226.
+
+_Wild Irish Boy_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Wild Irish Girl_, Lady Morgan's, 81.
+
+"Wild Roses," 186.
+
+Wilkinson, Miss Sarah, 66, 73, 74, 76, 77-80.
+
+Will, R., 76, 129.
+
+_William and Margaret_, Mallet's, 7.
+
+_William Lovell_, Tieck's, 65.
+
+_William Wilson_, Poe's, 217.
+
+_Windsor Castle_, Ainsworth's, 176.
+
+_Witch of Fife_, Hogg's, 11.
+
+_Woman in White_, Wilkie Collins', 190, 225.
+
+_Women_, Maturin's, 81.
+
+_Wood-Demon_, 188.
+
+_Woodstock_, Scott's, 149, 153, 154.
+
+"Writing on the Wall," 221.
+
+_Wuthering Heights_, Emily Bronte's, 224.
+
+_Yellow Mask_, Wilkie Collins', 190.
+
+_Zanoni_, Lytton's, 116, 179, 180-182.
+
+_Zastrozzi_, Shelley's, 13, 66, 121, 122-123.
+
+_Zeluco_, Dr. John Moore's, 53.
+
+_Zicci_, Lytton's, 116, 180.
+
+_Zofloya_, Miss Charlotte Dacre's, 122-123, 124.
+
+Zschokke, Heinrich, 70.
+
+
+
+
+Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose and
+Co. Ltd.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE OF TERROR***
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