73/) 
 
THE TALES OF TERROR 
 
 BY 
 
 CHRISTABEL FORSYTHE FISKE, Ph.B. 
 
 (CORNELL) 
 
 ISOoSl 
 
 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY IN 
 
 PART SATISFACTION OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
 THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS, t899 
 
 Reprinted from The Conservative Review of March, igoo 
 
 THE NEALE COMPANY 
 
 431 Eleventh Street, N. W. 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
THE TALES OF TERROR 
 
 BY 
 
 CHRISTABEL FORSYTHE FISKE, Ph.B. 
 (CORNELL) 
 
 A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY IN 
 
 PART SATISFACTION OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
 THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS, 1899 
 
 Reprinted from The Conservative Revieiv of March, 1900 
 
 THE NEALE COMPANY 
 
 431 Eleventh Street, N. W. 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
^^' 
 
 ^ 
 
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 A- 
 
THE TALES OF TERROR 
 
 By Christabel Forsythe Fiske, M.A. 
 
 AWAY back in the days when Poetry had dropped her wings 
 and was walking with orderly tread, when Pope and 
 his successors were peopling Windsor Forest with classical 
 gods and fauna, two men fell a-dreaming, a vagary not often 
 indulged in during that unshaded glare of Augustan day- 
 light. And the thrush in Thompson's heart sent so sweet a 
 song thrilling out through that weary, conventional old 
 world that other birds stirred in their nests and joined the 
 strain, while Walpole's Will-o'-the-wisp vision likewise led 
 him out from the trim garden-plots of the Classicists into a 
 wild forest where he and his followers beat out a little tangled 
 by-path forgotten now for many a day, but worthy of kinder 
 treatment, if only for the splashes of sunshine which 
 surprise us here and there, and for the fact that, far on in 
 its windings, two fair spirits step out from its mazes into the 
 golden highway over which the Great march on into immor- 
 tality. It is down this old, neglected wood-path that we 
 will wander for a while. 
 
 Heine speaks somewhere of "that inexplicable mysteri- 
 ous shudder which seizes one in reading these apparently 
 harmless tales." He questions, "whence does it arise if not 
 from some half-unconscious undercurrent of our being, to 
 which indefinite element the author has appealed?" Dunlop 
 speaks more explicitly. He says, "There exists in every 
 heart at all susceptible to the influence of the imagination, a 
 certain superstitious dread of the world unknown which 
 easily suggests the ideas of commerce with that world." 
 Now we all know how the Classicists had laughed to scorn 
 any tendency toward fanciful superstition. They viewed 
 things in clear daylight. An ingrained tendency of the 
 human soul cannot, however, be eternally snubbed; and in 
 the general emancipation from the iron rule of the Classicists 
 
4 The Tales of Terror 
 
 the superstitious soul-fibre, which the most prosaic of us at 
 times recognize, claimed its right to stretch itself after its 
 long repression. But how could a ghost trail its robe 
 through the plain, matter-of-fact world of Augustan sun- 
 shine? Instinctively the mind flew back to the dear old days 
 of mediaeval darkness when churchyards yawned unchal- 
 lenged, and an inheritance of phantoms was the proud pos- 
 session of any family worth knowing. And thus it was that 
 the spirit of feudal days laid hold of Horace Walpole, and 
 found expression in his Castles both of Strawberry Hill and 
 of Otranto. 
 
 One point should be specially borne in mind, the neglect 
 of which has led to much false criticism. The distinct 
 appeal to the superstitious element in our souls, this 
 power to arouse in us that "inexplicable mysterious shud- 
 der" of which Heine speaks, is the test by which we 
 must judge these books. Do they, as a whole (those of 
 the representative writers, I mean, not the ridiculous host of 
 imitators who turned the whole school into a laughing 
 stock), do they succeed in stimulating us to a mental state 
 of fearsome delight? This is the only fair standard by which 
 to judge this department of literature. What does it matter 
 that the heroes are sticks and the heroines dolls? It was not 
 to create character that Mrs. RadclilTe wrote. What differ- 
 ence if we are accompanied through desolate castles and 
 vaults by weeping Emilys and fainting Amelias? They 
 are the merest fringe of the story — the pivots on which 
 it turns. The real heroine is you yourself, — the life and 
 heart of the story is the thrill of your own sensation as you 
 shiver at the storm which moans at the window and rustles 
 the loose tapestry. 
 
 Another fact must be duly considered. Our point of 
 view must be correct if we expect to enjoy the terror of these 
 novels. Any one who looks forward to the palpable excite- 
 ment of lying awake all night shivering at the horror por- 
 trayed will be disappointed. More often than not we shall 
 see no ghost at all, and we should realize this fact before we 
 begin. We should approach these terror-tales in precisely 
 the same mood in which parties of gay young people plan 
 invasions of "haunted houses." Such a party of girls started 
 
The Tales of Terror 5 
 
 one night through the old Tayloe mansion down on Nine- 
 teenth Street near the river. Of course we knew beforehand 
 that it was empty of all but ourselves; and yet — the mystery 
 of it as we stole along with lighted tapers and hushed voices ! 
 What was that rustle just behind us? And that shadow 
 over there in the far corner of the desolate old banqueting 
 hall, where years and years ago a guest once murdered his 
 host as they sat at wine? And that curious tap-tap-tap which 
 followed our hushed steps steadily down the spiral staircase! 
 Compared to this subtle tingling of nerve and brain the 
 intrusion of a real ghost would have seemed vulgarly pal- 
 pable. Had we seen a sheeted figure actually stalking through 
 the hall, we should at once have suspected a mischievous 
 brother or two. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the fear attendant 
 upon supernatural occurrences is the only sort which our 
 writers succeed in arousing. It is astonishing through what 
 a range they play upon the soul's susceptibility to terror. 
 The emotions to which our spirits are subject during a perusal 
 of these books vary from the mere thrill of weird pleasure 
 inspired by "Monk" Lewis's Spirit of the Frozen Ocean, to the 
 horror of physical repulsion occasioned by the brute violence 
 of Maturin's mob scene. The Inquisition, convent horrors, 
 the foulness of prison and hospital, the ravages of tempest 
 and violent men, alike stir our susceptibilities of fear and 
 pity. These material terrors, however, are commonly sub- 
 sidiary to the main purpose. They are intended to subdue 
 the soul of hero and reader alike into tremulous readiness for 
 the ghostly experiences. We shall see later how this artistic 
 subservience is sometimes violated by the brutality of Lewis 
 and the morbidness of Maturin. Likewise we shall see how 
 the terror is furnished largely by the dangers and horrors of 
 adventure and physical phenomena to the almost total 
 exclusion of the supernatural. The omission of this seem- 
 ingly essential ingredient, however, does not at all exclude 
 these novels from the Terror Class, since it is evidently 
 omitted with the greatest regret by the writers, who, fully in 
 sympathy with the spirit of the other terrorists, are mani- 
 festly pining for a ghost or two. The supernatural is 
 omitted only in obedience to a stern exigency of the occa- 
 
6 The Tales of Terror 
 
 sion — which exigency will be later discussed in its connec- 
 tion. 
 
 The novels of the Terror School will divide themselves, 
 for our purpose, into three classes : First, the so-called Con- 
 ventional novels beginning with Walpole and culminating in 
 Mrs. Radcliffc. Second, the Reactionary novels, such as 
 Beckford's Vathck and Brown's Wieland. Third, the germ 
 of the Historical novel, such as Leland's Longszvord and Lee's 
 Recess. 
 
 It is well, at this point, to emphasize the fact that we 
 have, in this paper, limited ourselves either to the few great 
 novelists of this school, or to those representative members 
 of it who show some distinct tendency conducive to its gen- 
 eral evolution. With imitators, even so successful a one as 
 Roche, we are compelled through lack of space to have 
 nothing to do. We must even omit with regret from the 
 second section so brilliant a success as Mrs. Shelley's Frank- 
 enstein, since its distinctly reactionary tone had been antici- 
 pated by writers necessarily discussed. 
 
 I. THE CONVENTIONAL NOVELS 
 
 We will first deal with the Conventional Novels. It is 
 interesting to note that Horace Walpole's reaction of feeling 
 toward things mediaeval was as timorously manifested in lit- 
 erary form as were all other tendencies toward emancipation 
 from classical fetters. He did, indeed, make one bold break 
 in the architectural line by the building of his Gothic castle 
 at Strawberry Hill. The summer whim of a man like Wal- 
 pole, however, could not challenge severe criticism. It was 
 quite another matter to join himself formally with the bud- 
 ding literary sect of Romanticists. It was years, therefore, 
 before he ventured to dream his castle of Strawberry Hill 
 into Otranto, and even then he published it as a manuscript 
 he had found by chance, and, until its success was assured, 
 refused to acknowledge his paternity to this wild-brain child. 
 The enthusiastic reception of this absurd book shows more 
 effectively than any other symptom the growing eagerness of 
 the people for escape from the matter-of-fact and common- 
 place; while the delight with which even Gray welcomed its 
 
The Tales of Terror 7 
 
 very clumsy ghost, demonstrates conclusively the more sig- 
 nificant fact that Literature itself was weary of the cold day- 
 light so long reflected on its pages. 
 
 The preface to this pioneer novel of Walpole's contains, 
 among other interesting things, a statement of the author's 
 intention to produce a work which will unite features of 
 the mediceval Romances of Chivalry with those of mod- 
 ern novels. In this ambitious endeavor Walpole and his 
 followers failed most signally. The adventures of the 
 unfortunate Matilda in Ofranto certainly do not smack of 
 modern life; while a glance into Hiion of Burgundy, for 
 instance, makes it impossible for us to regard Walpole's 
 resolution seriously. A ponderous magic helmet dashed 
 down at inconvenient moments is a poor substitute for the 
 enchantment, airy as thistle-down, which floats through 
 mediaeval lore. In the one, Oberon's fairies dance through 
 elf-charmed woods. In the other, sheeted ghosts stalk 
 through vaulted dungeons. The Romances are bewitched; 
 the Tales are haunted. 
 
 Again, the moral tone is different. In the Romances the 
 hero indulges in the most shocking intrigues, generally with 
 the wife of his friend or relative. The maiden woos the 
 favored knight with the utmost candor, even arranging little 
 social games of chess for the most scandalizing stakes. At 
 all these somewhat appalling love episodes the author and 
 all concerned look on apparently with the most placid 
 approval. In the Tales, on the other hand, we shall see that 
 the moral tone is on the whole high. 
 
 The styles of these two departments of literature are 
 strikingly alike. The Romance runs along like a child's fairy 
 tale with an epic simplicity. The knight starts out any morn- 
 ing knowing that he may be turned into a dwarf or a dragon 
 or a dozen different things before night. He takes it as a mat- 
 ter of course. So does his chronicler. Neither of them troubles 
 himself in the very least as to whether the victim deserves 
 such a fate. There is too much marvel still ahead for much 
 reflection. The style of the Tales, on the other hand, is 
 labored and self-conscious. Through all the cavalier's 
 adventures the shadow of his creator stalks beside him. The 
 mental attitude of the early chronicler imparts a charm to 
 
i 
 
 8 The Tales of Terror 
 
 his work which his imitator completely lacks. He does not 
 care at all how his hero appears. Neither does his hero. 
 This lack of self-consciousness imparts to him the grace of a 
 rollicking child; and we are equally pleased at the vocif- 
 erous abandon with which the redoubtable Huon, caught in 
 the enchanted forest, sobs out his fear of the elf Oberon, and 
 with the delightful pluck with which he afterwards accosts 
 that fairy. The heroes of Walpole and Radcliffe would have 
 scorned any such exhibition of weakness. At the approach 
 of danger they strike an attitude, call on God and their lady, 
 and plunge into it, looking around immediately for approval. 
 Personally, we prefer Huon's panic to Vivaldi's posing. But 
 one must read for himself the old Romancers to perceive 
 how entirely Walpole and his followers failed in this portion 
 of their task. Their work no more resembles their model 
 than blood-stained armor resembles airy gauze — or restless 
 ghosts, dancing fairies, — or dungeon horrors, moonlit witch- 
 ery. 
 
 Before tracing through these Conventional Terror Tales 
 their all-important element, — that of the supernatural, — and 
 pointing out certain individual peculiarities of each repre- 
 sentative novelist, we will touch a moment upon two charac- 
 teristics of the whole class. First, the stilted moral tone; 
 second, the stock characters. Concerning the first point, 
 we will not pause over the fact that virtue is painted very 
 white indeed and vice very black. The persecuted maiden 
 and the heavy villain are familiar to all readers. We would 
 rather call attention to the manner in which our authors 
 strive to triple-guard our morality by saving even our 
 notions of conventional propriety from the slightest shock. 
 They chaperone us and their characters with the utmost 
 strictness. Mrs. Radcliffe is a very Dame Grundy in this 
 respect. She, like Walpole and like her predecessors, is con- 
 stantly haunted by fear of unseemly situations. One ludi- 
 crous incident will illustrate many. In Udolpho, in the mid- 
 night gloom, Emily's persecutor crept up to her turret cham- 
 ber on ill designs intent. The situation is cleverly worked 
 up. A tremor of terror is on us, as the villain steals softly 
 up through vaulted corridor and spiral staircase. As we 
 think of the maiden lying white-robed and unconscious in 
 
The Tales of Terror g 
 
 the canopied bed, we long madly for some miraculous ap- 
 pearance of the faithful Valancourt. Slowly the recreant 
 knight steals up through the last spiral staircase to the 
 maiden's door. He tries the latch ! It yields ! Good 
 heavens! Will Valancourt get there in time? The villain 
 creeps along through the dim apartment, his distorted 
 shadow crouching behind him. He has reached the bed, he 
 has pushed aside the curtains. Ye gods ! What happens now? 
 Does Emily, awaking, spring to her feet and stand before 
 him like a strong white angel, causing him to crouch and 
 quiver before the august glory of her womanhood? Not at 
 all. At this overwhelming moment Mrs. Radclifife steps 
 forward and gravely announces, "Fortunately Emily had not 
 undressed before retiring for the night." Heaven be praised ! 
 To be sure there is no earthly reason, apparently, why Emily 
 should not, on this particular occasion, have made her usual 
 preparations for bed. But that is not the point. The situa- 
 tion is saved. The ensuing scene proceeds as decorously as 
 an afternoon tea. Wandering through these pages we watch 
 many a sweetheart borne by gallant cavalier from the midst 
 of flaming, falling rafters; but never does the author fail 
 to take time to assure us, as in Deloraine, of the scrupulous 
 care with which she has managed to complete her toilet. 
 Not always in her right mind, she is invariably clothed. 
 
 Not content, however, with allowing these models of pro- 
 priety to impress their own lesson, the author is constantly 
 on hand with precept upon precept. There is one place in 
 Deloraine, where Godwin actually leaves a girl whirling over 
 the edge of a precipice, presumably to describe circles in 
 midair, while he dilates for several pages on the advantage of 
 self-control under such circumstances. 
 
 ♦ In turning to our second point, that of the stock charac- 
 ters with their inevitable result of wire-pulled plot, we are 
 reminded of Pope's recipe for an epic poem, — ''Take a 
 storm, a dream, six battles, three sacrifices, funeral games, 
 a dozen gods in two divisions, shake together until there 
 arises the froth of a lofty style.". We might follow his 
 method and give a formula for the production of a Con- 
 ventional Terror Tale, — a storm, a ghost, a maiden, a cas- 
 tle. In other words, there are certain elements which must 
 
lo The Tales of Terror 
 
 enter into a story of this kind. They are as necessary as 
 lettuce, vinegar, oil, and pepper to salad. There may or 
 may not be chicken or shrimps, but the foundation remains 
 the same. 
 
 These ingredients, however, are mixed in various propor- 
 tions and forms. Sometimes they are poured in en masse, 
 sometimes the merest flavor is perceptible. Take the mar- 
 plotting parent for instance. He is not always the maiden's 
 father saying, "Girl, behold your future lord," and pointing 
 to some despicable specimen of humanity. Sometimes, as 
 inThe Albigenses, this inconvenient relative has been deceased 
 for many years, but has compHcated things for the young 
 couple by imposing on his infant son the amiable vow of 
 exterminating root and branch the family of his hereditary 
 enemy. This is eminently embarrassing for Paladour, who 
 discovers on his wedding-night that his beautiful bride is 
 the sole survivor of his father's foe. He avoids his little task 
 by plunging the dagger into his own heart in the presence 
 of his beloved, who at once follows his example by stabbing 
 herself. They are found bathed in gore, and dreadful con- 
 fusion ensues. Both survive, however, but the vow still 
 holds Paladour, whose wife, whom he thinks dead, follows 
 him to camp in the disguise of a page. And what would 
 have happened, when she disclosed herself to him, heaven 
 knows, except that Count Raymond, Paladour's father, who 
 was not dead at all, rushed in at an opportune moment and 
 absolved him from his vow ! 
 
 Another important stock character in these novels is the 
 servants. Most of these servants, with their exasperating 
 talkativeness, are mere feeble echoes of Shakespeare's 
 "Nurse," and dreadful bores, always excepting Pietro in The 
 Italian. He is delicious from beginning to end! Any one 
 wanting a glimpse of the vein of catchy cleverness too often 
 smothered in Mrs. Radclifife by her pompous machinery, has 
 only to seize on this book and become acquainted with 
 Pietro. 
 
 As for the heroine, poor girl, she has been so mercilessly 
 made fun of from Mr. George Meredith down, that we will, 
 for the most part, pass her over, except to say that possibly 
 these milk-and-water girls are to be preferred to the hectic 
 
The Tales of Terror ii 
 
 heroine of modern sensationalism. Tlie insipid peach is, 
 after all, better and sweeter than the one at whose heart a 
 worm is gnawing, however dazzlingly the phosphorescent 
 radiance of decay may spread itself over the surface. But 
 this is far from the point. The supernal goodness of our 
 Matildas interest us little. Some exhibition of that other 
 quality, supposed in some flippant minds to accompany 
 supernal goodness, namely, hopeless stupidity, seems to 
 deserve attention. These girls seem utterly lacking in com- 
 mon sense. For one thing, they inherit from Mrs. Radcliffe 
 and her School an incredible reverence for the conventions. 
 There is Julia, for instance, in The Sicilian Romance. Her 
 lover had discovered her fleeing from the power of an 
 enraged and all-powerful nobleman. As the sun rises on 
 them he pleads marriage in a neighboring monastery, as a 
 means of checkmating the nobleman and ensuring their hap- 
 piness. Delay means eternal separation, for the Count is 
 close behind them. Considering the fact that she has been 
 wandering around the woods all night with this young man, 
 one would conclude that Julia's pink-and-white propriety 
 would lead her to consider this the only respectable thing to 
 do. But no ! Her brother has recently been killed by ban- 
 dits, and Julia insists, before she will consent to think of 
 marriage, on observing the conventional period of mourning 
 at a spot, by the way, within perfectly easy reach of the indig- 
 nant and all-powerful nobleman ! 
 
 If our heroine's scruples are exasperating to an honorable 
 lover, her utter lack of tact in dealing with her various 
 assortment of brutal captors is perfectly maddening. In The 
 Albigenses Isabella of Courtenaye is carried off by an outlaw. 
 Now this outlaw wants to marry her, and is inclined to treat 
 her with the utmost gentleness, hoping that time and reflec- 
 ton will bend her to his purpose. Considering the fact that 
 Isabella knows that her lover is, at that moment, in the castle 
 plotting her escape, it is obviously her policy to temporize 
 and conciliate. Is that her course? Not at all. We must 
 blame, yet we cannot but admire, the reckless hauteur with 
 which the highborn maiden repels the advances of the name- 
 less adventurer. But when it comes to calling him the scum 
 of the earth, and treating him generally with a scornful con- 
 
12 The Tales of Terror 
 
 tempt which would make a worm turn, we feel that any self- 
 respecting robber must have felt impelled to violent meas- 
 ures. And when she actually disclosed the fact that his other 
 captive is her lover, we lose all patience and willingly con- 
 sign them both to the tomb. Instead, they escape down a 
 rope ladder which conveniently hooks itself to the window 
 by some means or other. 
 
 It is, however, in their relations to each other that 
 heroine and hero shine out in their full lustre. We have 
 spoken, in another place, of the contrast between these 
 stories and the old Romances of Chivalry. In these latter, 
 there is a simple expression of this elemental passion which, 
 though it may at times repel our finer senses, is yet natural 
 and inevitable. Rymenhild and Horn, Esclaramonda and 
 Huon, may at times be somewhat indecent; but they are at 
 least impulsive, simple, and straightforward. And when, for 
 some reason, the chronicler has chosen to curb his looseness 
 of expression, the scenes are really lovely. That for instance 
 between Arthur and Guenever in the Romance of Merlin. 
 Compare with it the meeting between Isabella and Sir Pala- 
 dour in The Albigenses. The two scenes are alike in setting, 
 each taking place in a banquet hall of the old feudal castle. 
 The gorgeous Lady of Courtenaye, on her chair of state, 
 surrounded by all the pomp of feudal magnificence, forms a 
 heartless contrast to Guenever as she stands in simple garb 
 and attitude ofifering the wine-cUp to her father's deliverer; 
 while Paladour's high-flown language is absurd compared 
 to the hot words bursting from Arthur's heart. 
 
 It will be seen from the above statements that a profound 
 knowledge of human nature is not characteristic of the 
 novels we are studying. It is pre-eminently a work of plot 
 and machinery. The characters are little wooden men and 
 women such as we used to play with in our Noah's arks, and 
 expose at pleasure to the ferocity of the tigers or bears or 
 any other of Noah's proteges. We used to wonder that 
 they remained just as yellow and hard and smiling as ever in 
 face of such horrid perils ! And thus it is with the characters 
 moving through these pages. They are the mere sport of 
 circumstances. The author throws them into dungeons, 
 tortures, and manifold dangers. They weep or smile as he 
 
The Tales of Terror 13 
 
 pulls the string. The story does not take its trend because 
 the heroine, forsooth, insists upon acting out the faith that 
 is in her in spite of fate. She fits herself to fate like jelly to 
 a mold. Such pliancy was necessary to this form of fiction. 
 Once put into it a busthng, everyday girl like Austen's Eliza- 
 beth Bennett, and the mold would have broken into a thou- 
 sand pieces. 
 
 These characteristics, then, — an unsuccessful attempt at 
 mediaeval local coloring, a stilted moral tone, and the inevi- 
 table combination of stock characters and wire-pulled plot, — 
 we take to be three main characteristics of the Conventional 
 class of Terror Tales. In their consideration we have left 
 out, for the moment, the predominating element of the 
 supernatural. We will now glance into the separate novels. 
 
 The Castle of Otranto is interesting not from any merit of 
 its own, but from its position as first in the field. Consider- 
 ing it as pioneer, its comprehensiveness of scope is remark- 
 able. In the preface it explicitly strikes the keynote of the 
 School. "Terror," we are told, "is the author's principal 
 Engine." All the ingredients of which we have already 
 spoken find their place in this concoction, though so badly 
 mixed and tempered as to render it arid and insipid. The 
 Gothic castle, with its necessary equipment of trap doors, 
 secret passages, haunted chambers, looms up as a model for 
 all ensuing architecture. Storms come when called. The 
 ghost makes his portentious debut — a genuine ghost, no 
 sheet and pillow-case affair. Helmet and statue shiver at 
 the touch of magic, and pictures walk around. 
 
 The supernatural element in this book is so clumsily pal- 
 pable that Clara Reeve, who, in 1777, published her English 
 Baron, while announcing her book as the offspring of 
 Otranto, condemned Walpole's extravagance and declared 
 her intention of keeping this ghostly element within reason- 
 able bounds. Such moderation hints vaguely at Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe and becomes Reeve's chief merit. In this she shows 
 advance on Walpole. He strives to excite our fear by bona 
 fide ghosts and magical machinery. Where Reeve follows 
 his lead she is not, perhaps, so extravagantly absurd, but she 
 is at least stupid and powerless. 
 
14 The Tales of Terror 
 
 But on occasion she has soared above him to a point he 
 never dreamed of. She touches deftly, at least once, on the 
 human soul quivering beneath the impulse of vague, appre- 
 hensive, fear. Walpole's sluggish heroes needed a real bogy 
 to stir their nerves. The picture Reeve draws of Edmund 
 wandering at midnight through the apartments of the Old 
 East Wing, through the rafters of which the rain forced its 
 way, and along the passages of which the wind moaned and 
 sighed, reached a high degree of artistic excellence. Com- 
 pared to it, the ready-made ghosts Walpole sets up seem vul- 
 gar and absurd. At this moment, at least. Reeve has touched 
 with successful finger the vast field of Subjective Terror in 
 which Radcliffe was to achieve her fame. It is provoking 
 that this admirable little scene serves merely as prelude to an 
 absurd visitation, in which Edmund's deceased mother 
 administers to him and to the reader several pages of stupid 
 advice. 
 
 Both Reeve and Walpole were enthusiastically received 
 by the public and boasted numerous disciples, whom, for 
 lack of time or merit, we shall pass over. We turn at once 
 to Mrs. Radcliffe, who published her first novel in 1791, and 
 in whom the so-called Conventional type of Terror Tale cul- 
 minated. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's work is marked by a change in the treat- 
 ment of the supernatural. Her predecessors. Reeve and 
 Walpole, marshalled an imposing line of phantoms upon 
 which to hang the terror of their tales. Mrs. Radcliffe, on 
 the other hand, traces to natural phenomena most of her 
 supernatural appearances. This has been by some consid- 
 ered a blemish. She has been accused of shams and decep- 
 tion.) It is hard to understand this objection. The strange 
 ice-cold Hand that seized my mother's in the dark hall was 
 no less thrilling to the little group to whom I was telling the 
 story, because they knew beforehand I was telling the truth. 
 The words, "Asleep ! Asleep ! Asleep !" low, mysterious, and 
 awful, which floated to me down the staircase of a house 
 recently made desolate by death, curdled my blood none the 
 less because my common sense assured my affrighted nerves 
 that the phenomenon must be explained. 
 
The Tales of Terror 1 5 
 
 This, then, seems to me Mrs. Raddiffe's signal merit. 
 She marched ahead boldly and took possession of the field 
 barely hinted at by Clara Reeve. Human life as it surges 
 and hums in the active world, she does not know. The pas- 
 sions of Love, of Hate, of Pride, of Avarice, she handles 
 clumsily. But the passion of Fear she does know, and that 
 so thoroughly that she scorns any extensive use of terrors 
 to which only children are really subject, and chooses those 
 which may justifiably shake the strongest nerves. A man 
 wandering through convent-vaults at midnight may well 
 start at the low groan behind him, even though it be but the 
 stifled cry of a tortured prisoner; and a girl sitting alone at 
 stormy twilight in a wind-swept turret, poring over weird 
 pages of moth-eaten manuscript, would be stolid indeed if 
 she did not impute some sinister meaning to the creeping 
 rustle of the tapestry at her shoulder. 
 
 Thus to the Gateway of the varied Realm of Subjective 
 Fear do we see Mrs. Radcliffe conducting the erratic Genius 
 of our novels, and it was perhaps an inevitable result of her 
 determination to avoid sheet and pillow-case frauds, that we 
 should find emphasized in her books the element of material 
 or physical terror. So long as ghosts walked at pleasure, 
 they were naturally supposed to be capable of supplying the 
 necessary quota of thrills. It was a different matter when it 
 came to dealing, for the most part, with the prepossessions 
 of a soul. The writer must look around for all possible 
 means of subduing it to the proper key of tremulous expec- 
 tation. And what more conducive to such a result than the 
 varied aspects of physical suffering touching the spirit 
 through a series of quivering nerves? 
 
 Considering the time in which these stories were laid, very 
 obviously the tyrannous power of church and prelate lay 
 easily in the path of the writer who was seeking for scenes 
 of physical oppression. Mrs. Radcliffe seized eagerly on 
 these elements; and thus it was that the convent powers 
 rose imposingly into view, and that the dread halls of the 
 Inquisition swung back their heavy doors to the airy touch 
 of imagination. And if ever a suit of libel is justifiable, 
 surely the venerable Mother Church would have right to 
 bring one against our author and her successors. The mon- 
 
i6 The Tales of Terror 
 
 asteries are almost uniformly represented as the abodes of 
 depravity, and we give our heroine up for lost whenever she 
 comes in sight of one. But however much or however little 
 foundation there may be for these representations they are 
 certainly used to great effect. Around these convent walls 
 hangs a veil of mystery and dread. We tremble in the 
 wind-swept turret with Ellena as she sits alone in the twilight 
 meditating on the pit yawning at her feet by the machina- 
 tions of the treacherous abbess. We shiver in the midnight 
 dusk of the vast, desolate church as we watch the penitent 
 monk prostrate at his devotions. We enter shudderingly the 
 dungeon where the recreant nun, her dead baby at her 
 breast, lies languishing, shut in from light and air. In all 
 these convent-glimpses, Mrs. Radcliffe is admirable. But 
 she is not so successful in her dealing with the Inquisition. 
 It may be said, however, that, on the whole, she succeeds 
 finely in her use of this element of physical terror which 
 she has brought from comparative insignificance into strik- 
 ing prominence. And to her great credit it must be noted 
 that she never violates its artistic subservience to the super- 
 natural element. Later writers, we shall see, revelled in 
 morbid physical horror for its own sake. Of this outrage 
 Mrs. Radcliffe is never guilty. 
 
 Little need be said of the well-recognized descriptive 
 power of Mrs. Radcliffe. All know how her books abound 
 in exquisite landscapes, notably at sunset. Her purples and 
 golds and blues are lovely, and tiresomely familiar. One 
 phase, or rather tendency, of this descriptive power, how- 
 ever, does not seem to have been sufftciently, if at all, recog- 
 nized. It is a tendency which dignifies it as expression does 
 a lovely face. 
 
 To appreciate fully this tendency we must note one curi- 
 ous fact, namely, that our old poets and writers as a rule 
 shrank from the more savage aspects of nature, dweUing 
 almost uniformly on its gentler summer side. Shakespeare, 
 to be sure, heightened the horror of Lear's madness by a 
 tempest; and through all ages writers, including our Terror- 
 ists, have turned to good account in terrific situations the 
 power of the stormy elements. But these were not regarded 
 as in themselves capable of affording a high degree of 
 
The Tales of Terror 17 
 
 aesthetic pleasure. It remained for Shelley and his age to 
 say, "I love winds and waves and storms." 
 
 Now Radcliffe, however antiquated in other respects, 
 was in this point quite up to date. She might almost be 
 called Wordsworthian. Her characters, however wooden, are 
 yet possessed of ''that pervading love of nature" by which 
 the Lake Poet meant spiritual sympathy with nature. They 
 are filled with that "extrinsic" passion for nature which is, 
 being interpreted, that love for natural phenomena which is 
 not limited to smooth landscapes and sunny aspects. Emily 
 in Udolpho and Ellena in The Italian, when carried off by 
 enemies, the one to the castle, the other to the convent, 
 passed through scenery stupendous and awful with roaring 
 torrent and beetling crag. One would suppose that these 
 unhappy girls, forced towards unknown horrors, would be 
 depressed by the gloomy majesty of the surrounding land- 
 scape. Not at all. They forget their troubles as they gaze 
 into the dizzy ravines and up to the towering precipices, — 
 scenery such as older writers and tourists had spoken of 
 with half impatient horror, and about which Gray had 
 scarcely dared to rave for fear of being called romantic, a 
 fear which is, in itself, a tribute to these writers as evi- 
 dencing a tendency in them toward the large universal love 
 of nature to ring out later from Wordsworth's muse. More 
 than this, our Ellena and Emily gained calmness and strength 
 for future struggle from the awful majesty of mountains. 
 We can imagine the austere Lake Poet, shaking his head 
 with disgust over these wild novels, surprised into an approv- 
 ing nod at lighting, in these scenes, on so signal an illustra- 
 tion of his own theory of a spiritual connection between the 
 soul of man and of nature. 
 
 We have said that in Radclif¥e the Conventional Terror 
 novels culminated. The unprecedented popularity of her 
 books led to a deluge of imitations which went far towards 
 discountenancing the whole School. From her time on, 
 symptoms of reaction begin to appear. In 1797 Jane 
 Austen wrote her delicious burlesque on the Udolpho novels, 
 Northanger Abbey. The fact that she could not, during her 
 lifetime, find a publisher for this book shows that, as an 
 expression of public opinion, it was premature. While Rad- 
 
1 8 The Tales of Terror 
 
 cliffe lived and wrote, the reaction was slow and unobtrusive, 
 making itself felt rather by the appearance of new tendencies 
 in the novels of the School than in open expressions of dis- 
 approval. To the consideration of these tendencies we now 
 turn our attention. 
 
 II. THE REACTIONARY NOVELS 
 
 This class of novels may be called Reactionary, because 
 it is marked by more or less revolt against the Walpole-Rad- 
 clifife machinery. The first example of this Reactionary class 
 appeared while the old Conventional Novels were in the full 
 blast of their popularity — away back in 1777. Beckford's 
 Vathek, in its bold originality and distinctness from the fash- 
 ionable type, was a child born before its time; and in it 
 appears all the brilliant quality which occasionally accom- 
 panies such premature birth. Vathek is in a sense the master- 
 piece of the whole school. 
 
 There are in it three marked points of departure from the 
 old type : first, an entire dropping of Gothic mediaeval color- 
 ing; second, the introduction of genuine humor; third, a 
 glimpse now and then of something resembling lifelike- 
 ness of character. Concerning the first point, it need 
 only be said that the author discards entirely Gothic castles 
 and knights and the rest of the old machinery, and sets us 
 down in the midst of dazzling Oriental scenes. His success 
 in this line is evidenced by Byron's dictum that, as an East- 
 ern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it. As for the vein 
 of humor hitherto absent from the Terror Tales, it is so 
 subtile and delicious that any quotation is impossible. 
 Indeed, so delicate is this humor, that we question how large 
 a percentage of readers would be much affected by it. But 
 to a mind susceptible to its influence, this little book is a 
 spring of delight. The half page describing the encounter 
 between Carathis and Evlis, and the scrap concerning one of 
 the Genii who played the flute, are good tests by which to 
 discover the presence or absence of this susceptibility. 
 
 The successful bits of character-gHmpses deserve especial 
 notice. It must not be for a moment supposed that in this 
 fantastic little book there is anything like a successful full- 
 
The Tales of Terror ig 
 
 length portrait. But there is here and there an approach to 
 reality, which is more than can be said for previous writers. 
 Carathis, for instance, is more than impossibly wicked. But 
 there is a distinct smack of life in the nonchalant manner in 
 which she carries off her evil deeds and spurs on her vacil- 
 lating kinsman. Her acts are incredibly atrocious, but she 
 goes about them in precisely the debonair self-possessed 
 spirit of an unscrupulous woman of the world, who encoun- 
 ters failure cooly enough, confident of bringing it in the end 
 to success. In fact, the very Genii in their brisk attendance 
 on their special charges, and their helpful little ways of rais- 
 ing castles in a night, are far more characteristic individuals 
 than any who have hitherto appeared in the pages of the 
 Terror School. 
 
 One minor innovation of Beckford's was the introduction 
 of the devil. Hitherto it was only the spirits of just men 
 made perfect who interfered in mundane affairs. We shall 
 see how popular his Satanic Majesty became in following 
 novels. 
 
 We have said that Vathek was an instance of merely indi- 
 vidual revolt from the Radcliffe School. The man who first 
 gave expression to the premonitory symptoms of general 
 uneasiness appeared some seventeen years later. It was the 
 high-pressure moral tone of the old novels that was too much 
 for Lewis. He flew straight to the other extreme, and, 
 still holding to the old machinery of ghosts and Gothic cas- 
 tles, published what has been justly called one of the worst 
 books in the English language. I think I am not wrong in 
 saying that there is one scene in The Monk which must cast 
 a deep shadow on any pure spirit who has once gazed upon 
 it. 
 
 Another point worthy of noticing in Lewis is the undue 
 emphasis given to the element of physical terror. We have 
 seen how in Mrs. Radcliffe's hands this element was always 
 kept in artistic subservience. Lewis is the first who handles 
 material horror for mere love of it. Indeed we may say that 
 the immorality of his book consists in the brutal frankness 
 with which he details physical outrages worse than death. 
 He thus strikes a new key for following writers. Not that 
 any other of them, so far as I know, actually allows this ten- 
 
20 The Tales of Terror 
 
 dency to sully the moral purity of his pages. But hencefor- 
 ward we shall perceive a distinct interest in personal horror 
 per se till, in Maturin, it reaches a point well-nigh intolerable. 
 
 Lewis likewise emphasizes the more sprightly tone of 
 Vathek. The story moves at a more rapid pace than in Rad- 
 cliffe's pages. The language of Lorenzo and Raymond 
 sounds at times almost like modern club slang, while in one 
 scene Agnes chatters like an up-to-date society girl. Of 
 course such a modern air cannot from an artistic point of 
 view be justified in a novel laid in the Middle Ages. Scott's 
 magical manner of imparting vitality to figures who speak 
 and act in a manner entirely in keeping with the age in which 
 they live, is far better. But Lewis cannot be blamed for not 
 being Scott; and he at least deserves credit for having, in 
 any manner, imparted vivacity to the ponderous movement 
 of these stories. 
 
 Lewis follows Beckford in his interest in the Infernal 
 Powers. He seizes on the old legend of a being who has 
 sold his soul to the devil, and works it with considerable 
 ingenuity, though not with the wonderful success with which 
 Maturin, years later, followed him along the same line. 
 
 In the same year with The Monk appeared a book which, 
 though it cannot be properly included in the school we are 
 studying, yet contained many elements in common with it; 
 it must be mentioned in this connection because of its effect 
 upon an able writer who carried the influence of the English 
 Terror Tales into American literature — a writer who was in 
 a sense the precursor of Hawthorne. This book is Caleb 
 Williams, and to Caleb Williams surely belongs the literary 
 paternity of Edgar Huntly, Arthur Mervyn, and most of 
 Charles Brockden Brown's heroes. 
 
 Never was the influence of one man upon another more 
 strongly defined than in the case before us. In Edgar Huntly 
 the hero is precisely the same morbid, super-sensitive soul 
 as in Caleb Williams and Deloraine. In the opening chapter, 
 he, like Caleb and Deloraine, utters the most extravagant 
 self-denunciation. Nothing can equal his abject remorse. We 
 are horrified ! This man must at the very least have slaugh- 
 tered his entire family in their beds ! We discover at last 
 that he has merely killed his enemy in the very clearest case 
 
The Tales of Terror 21 
 
 of self-defence. All the principal characters in Brown's 
 novels, Arthur Mervj^n conspicuously, are possessed of the 
 same insatiable curiosity that plunged Caleb into his scrapes; 
 they pry into people's boxes with the same unscrupulous- 
 ness, and tell of it with the same naivete. 
 
 The most noticeable point in Brown is the manner in 
 which, at one explicit stroke of the pen, he abolishes much of 
 the old machinery to which even "Monk" Lewis had clung. 
 In his preface to Himtly he says, "One merit at least the writer 
 may claim, that of calHng up the passions and engaging the 
 sympathy of the reader by means hitherto unemployed. 
 Puerile superstitions and exploded manners, Gothic castles 
 and chimeras, are the materials usually employed for such 
 ends. The incidents of Indian hostility and the perils of the 
 western wilderness are far more suitable for a native of 
 America. These, therefore, are in part the ingredients of 
 this tale, and these he has been ambitious to detail in vivid 
 and faithful colors." In other words, Charles Brockden 
 Brown has removed his scenes and characters from old 
 feudal days and scenes, and planted them squarely down in 
 the America of his own generation. His heroes are no 
 longer mediaeval knights, but modern Americans. What a 
 change ! From what resources has he excluded the Engine 
 of Terror! Ghosts and superstitions may, presumably, 
 dwell in the hoary castles of Chivalry. But modern scepti- 
 cism has refused them entrance to the mansions and huts of 
 the American colonists. What, then, shall take their place? 
 Brown glances back at the subjective tendency that marked 
 Mrs. RadcHffe's work. He will develop it to perfection. 
 His field shall be the realm of the psychical. Psychical phe- 
 nomena shall be his Terror-engine. 
 
 Thus it is that we find no ghosts in Brown's books — not 
 one so much as dares to show his head. But our nerves are 
 not calmed by this circumstance. We would rather any 
 day — or night — encounter a good old-fashioned apparition 
 than one of his sleep-walkers or ventriloquists. It is in spe- 
 cifically psychological problems, then, that Brown is chiefly 
 interested. Wieland is full of ventriloquism, Hiintly of som- 
 nambulism. The former is by far the more powerful. The 
 fascination of the story lies in the thrilling effect with which 
 
22 The Tales of Terror 
 
 the author has used the uncanny power which forms its 
 motive. From the moment when, on the stormy night, the 
 tones of the wife, whom he knows to be far distant, float 
 weirdly to Wieland up the wooded slope, our attention is 
 held and bewildered. The soft voice which thrills in on 
 Clara through the thunderous twilight, — which breathed at 
 her pillow at midnight, — which shrieked at her very ear as 
 she was making her way up the dark staircase, touches us 
 with the same horror that enveloped the haunted girl. The 
 face revealed to her in the flash of the lamp as she turns 
 wildly, "every muscle tense, forehead and brow drawn into 
 vehement expression, lips stretched as in the act of shriek- 
 ing, eyes emitting sparks," out-terrorizes a whole phalanx 
 of ghosts. An indescribably weird effect is imparted to the 
 scene by the words, "The sound and the vision were present 
 and departed at the same instant, but the cry was blown into 
 my very ears while the face was many paces distant !" Edgar 
 Huntly, with its somnambulism, is not equally successful. 
 The first appearance of the sleep-walker is somewhat im- 
 pressive. But this auspicious opening is a promise unful- 
 filled. Clithero's history and remorse are too absurd, and 
 after that the whole book resolves itself into a tale of Indian 
 adventure, which, indeed, in its prophecy of Cooper, is the 
 most interesting part of the story. 
 
 Arthur Mervyn, a story of the Yellow Fever Plague of 
 1798 in New York, gives ample scope for the growing inter- 
 est in physical horrors which, as we have seen, is a character- 
 istic of the School of Terror. Though Brown certainly 
 dwells far too much on this physical horror for its own sake, 
 he is yet eminently skilful, also, in using it justifiably for the 
 artistic enhancement of higher sensations. One striking 
 instance of his power in such combination is that in which 
 the apparition appears to Arthur as he stands alone in the 
 desolate chambers of a fever-smitten house from which all 
 the inhabitants have been removed for burial. "The door 
 opened," it reads, "and a figure ghded in. The portmanteau 
 dropped from my hands, and my heart's blood was chilled. 
 If an apparition of the dead were possible, and that possibility 
 I could not deny, this was such an apparition. A hue yel- 
 lowish and livid, bones uncovered by flesh, eyes ghastly, hoi- 
 
The Tales of Terror 23 
 
 low, and woe-begone and fixed in an agony of wonder on 
 me, locks matted and negligent, constituted the vision I now 
 beheld. My belief in somewhat preternatural in this appear- 
 ance was confirmed by recollection of resemblances between 
 these features and those of one that was dead." Bear in 
 mind that we have been prepared for this appearance by fol- 
 lowing Arthur for hours through the streets of the death- 
 stricken city, that the damps of infection and disease are 
 rotting the very walls of the house in which he stands, and 
 the reader may perhaps gain some idea of the shock of this 
 sudden appearance. No ghost that I can think of was ever 
 more efifective than the ghastly figure of this plague-stricken 
 man. 
 
 Brown served as a channel through which the spirit of 
 the Terror School flowed into American literature. His red 
 Indian is only another shape of the wandering terrors, in the 
 form of bandits and outlaws, who pursue adventurous 
 knights and distressed damsels through the pages of the older 
 novels; and this wild man of the woods Brown intro- 
 duced into literature and handed down to Cooper. The 
 Coras and Alices and Heywoods of the latter novelist, pur- 
 sued through forests and caves by the savage Hurons with 
 their war paint and tomahawks, inspire us with the same 
 sort of sympathy with which we accompanied RadclifTe's 
 Emilys and JuHas over mountains inhabited by bandits. To 
 be sure, the wind that blows through Cooper's forest is fresh 
 and exhilarating and very different from the artificial atmos- 
 phere of Mrs. RadcHfTe's. But the same appeal to our emo- 
 tions of fear and sympathy is evident. As for Brown's 
 Indian, he is a mere lay figure compared with the subtle form 
 gliding through Cooper's pages. But the panther scene in 
 Huntly is worthy of anything Cooper, or anybody else, ever 
 wrote in the wild beast line. 
 
 In Cooper, then, through Brown, we see culminating the 
 element of wild outdoor adventure which holds a not incon- 
 siderable place in the novels we have been studying. 
 Another writer of far greater genius followed Brown along 
 another line. Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables is, 
 from a psychological view, the descendant of Brown's novels. 
 
 We have seen how Brown turned away from the palpable 
 
24 The Tales of Terror 
 
 absurdities of the old school to the eerie mysteries of mental 
 phenomena. Hawthorne followed his lead. The problem 
 of mesmerism is airily touched in the novel to which we have 
 referred. 
 
 The point which especially strikes us in Hawthorne's 
 romance is that this problem does not, after Brown's style, 
 form the hinge of the story. It is used here, rather, as an 
 airy accompaniment, a strain of weird music breaking now 
 and then upon our ears like the uncanny melody that floated 
 through the gloomy gables from the long-untouched keys 
 of the old harpsichord; or, better, the whole story of the 
 Judge and Clifford and Hepzibah is only a parable whose 
 meaning lies in the essence of that mysterious power which, 
 years and years before, threw a curse upon their line. The 
 persecution of Clifford by the Judge, — his dreary imprison- 
 ment on a false accusation in which consisted the Judge's 
 hold upon him, — his quivering dread when at last, for a 
 moment, his tyrant lifts his heavy hand and lets the victim 
 breathe a moment in free sunshine, — his wild cry at the 
 Judge's approach, "Hepzibah ! Hepzibah ! go down on your 
 knees to him, kiss his feet, entreat him not to come in ! Oh 
 let him have mercy on me — mercy — mercy !" — his mad exul- 
 tation at the Judge's ghastly death, "As for us, Hepzibah, 
 we can dance now, sing, laugh, play, do what we will ! The 
 weight is gone, Hepzibah, gone off this weary world, and we 
 may be as light hearted as little Phoebe herself!" — all this 
 story of a life's bondage to another's will is a more striking 
 type of the spiritual fetters, which, by a mysterious occult 
 power, one soul can throw over another. 
 
 It is in this handling of the marvelous as an accompani- 
 ment to the story rather than as its heart, that Hawthorne 
 has shown his peculiar insight. Hitherto all the stories along 
 this line have been self-conscious and labored. A series of 
 sensations is expected at the beginning by both reader 
 and writer, and these sensations form the very essence 
 of the tale. For the purpose of arousing bewilder- 
 ment and awe, the authors, as a rule, throw their char- 
 acters into the most strained and unnatural situations. 
 Girls are sent flying around through woods and over 
 mountains in search of adventures, and even Brown 
 
The Tales of Terror 25 
 
 feels obliged to call in the Yellow Fever Plague. Hawthorne 
 saw deeper. He understood that there is no need of uncom- 
 mon situations, — that through even the simplest of human 
 lives there runs a strain of mystery. Prosaic little Phoebe, 
 working in the garden among common-place flowers and 
 vegetables, is conscious of strange terror as the Family Curse 
 threatens her for a moment from the eyes of the young 
 artist. Poor old Hepzibah goes about her round of daily 
 drudgery as nurse and shopwoman; but over her from the 
 gables of the old New England house fall shadows and whis- 
 pers from the past. In short, Hawthorne's alchemy has 
 transmuted the palpable terrors of former writers into that 
 subtle general atmosphere of mystery and awe which, to the 
 thoughtful mind, pervades all human life. Into such actual 
 relation to life itself has Hawthorne succeeded in raising the 
 eerie element of Psychological terror which seemed, in other 
 hands, destined only for a tool of literary sensation. In him 
 culminated this element of Psychological terror, as distin- 
 guished from the ready-made ghosts of Reeve and Walpole. 
 
 III. THE NOVELS CONTAINING THE GERM OF HISTORICAL 
 
 FICTION 
 
 An interesting article by Mr. Saintsbury in Macmillan's 
 Magazine, August, 1894, demonstrates the fact that the birth 
 of the Historical Novel proper is directly due to two tenden- 
 cies of the latter part of the eighteenth century: first, that 
 which labored for a wider, more accurate knowledge of his- 
 torical facts, under the inspiration of Hume, Gibbon, and 
 Robertson ; and second, that which sought to revive romantic 
 interest in the customs and life of former ages. Saintsbury 
 goes so far as to say, "When in very different ways Walpole, 
 Percy, and Gray with many others, excited curiosity about 
 the incidents, manners, and literature of former times, they 
 made the Historical Novel inevitable." 
 
 From this point of view it must at once be seen that the 
 works embodying an element essential to so important a 
 development of Prose Literature contains for the student an 
 interest disproportionate to its intrinsic value. Authentic 
 historical facts could be drawn from the ^reat trio of histo- 
 
26 The Tales of Terror 
 
 rians. But the attempt to vivify the past, to make us breathe 
 its airs, to realize its sensations, all this was first clumsily- 
 attempted in the work before us. 
 
 From this point of view, then, all these Romantic Terror 
 Tales may be said to contain seed of the Historical Novel. 
 In one group of them, however, the groping effort towards 
 Scott is so much more labored and self conscious, that it 
 seems, of itself, to divide them from the rest into a distinct 
 germinal class. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that the first effort along this Hne 
 occurred two years before The Castle of Otranto. But for 
 one important omission, this little book, Longsword, might 
 seem justly to claim Otranto's pioneer position. So impor- 
 tant is this omission, however, that it leaves Walpole's pres- 
 tige unchallenged. Though he writes in the very spirit of 
 the Terrorists, it is evident that Leland felt himself under 
 restraint. Having chosen really historical personages for 
 his subjects he evidently made them the victims of super- 
 natural experiences for fear of discrediting the whole story. 
 It is apparent in more than one place how the author chafed 
 under this restriction. A ghost now! How well it would 
 have suited that dismal dungeon scene, and how effectively 
 it would have glided along that dim corridor before Regin- 
 ald's guilty eyes! Indeed so entirely is the book in the 
 spirit of our School, so evidently does the author regret his 
 enforced limitation, and so completely do all other essential 
 ingredients make their appearance, that it would be absurd 
 to deny its claim to membership in the Terror School on the 
 ground of the omission of the supernatural, just as it would 
 be absurd to allow it in spite of this omission, to usurp Wal- 
 pole's novel as pioneer. Here the Romance heroine makes 
 her first appearance, of course in tears. Her gallant cavaHer 
 stalks over land and sea, performing all manner of feats. 
 The young woman, fallen into the clutches of villainy, bullies' 
 her keeper until we feel almost sorry for him, and though for 
 a time vice triumphs over virtue to an alarming extent, in 
 the end we are soothed and delighted by seeing the two 
 villains strung up on the same tree with a rapidity well cal- 
 culated to take away one's breath. 
 
The Tales of Terror 27 
 
 Leland's novel, then, acquires its peculiar tone by an 
 attempt to depict not only the local coloring of an historical 
 period, but events and circumstances in the lives of actual 
 personages. Two points in its preface are worthy of notice. 
 
 One principle which he lays down separates his book 
 from any previous work along the same line. Such previous 
 work had been, in a manner, a fraud. Tales of adventure 
 had been deliberately intended to deceive the public. Sir 
 John Mandeville's Travels are full of impossible incidents 
 which he gravely attempts to foist upon the people. Robin- 
 son Crusoe is presented to the world as an authentic person- 
 age; and Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier have the same marks 
 of artifice. Leland works a new vein. He says frankly, 
 "The outlines of the following incidents and more minute 
 circumstances are to be found in the ancient English histo- 
 rians. If too great liberties have been taken in altering or 
 enlarging these incidents, the reader who looks only for 
 amusement will probably forgive it." Thus we see laid 
 down in this insignificant book a cardinal principle which 
 should govern the mental attitude of the reader and which 
 emancipates the imagination of the writer from the thraldom 
 of literal fact. His words unite in square and open union 
 the charms of History and Fiction, a union which previous 
 writers had apparently not conceived. 
 
 Another point interests us in Leland's preface as striking 
 a modern note. He says, "It is generally expected that 
 pieces of this kind should convey some useful moral" — (this 
 certainly sounds antiquated enough, but let us go on) — 
 which moral is sometimes made to float upon the surface of 
 the narrative, or is plucked up at the proper moment and 
 presented to the reader with great solemnity. The author 
 hath too high an opinion of the .judgment and penetration of 
 his reader to pursue this method. If anything lies at the 
 bottom that is worth picking up, it will be discovered with- 
 out his direction." Now this reads like an article I saw 
 yesterday in a recent number of The Atlantic Monthly \ How 
 far ahead of the sentiment of its day when moral purposes 
 rode Walpole and the rest like "Old Men of the Mountain!" 
 
 In these two points, then, the liberty of adapting histori- 
 cal fact to the exigencies of art, and the disregard of any set 
 
28 The Tales of Terror 
 
 moral purpose, — this old Dublin clergyman, fifty years 
 before Scott, laid down two cardinal principles which should 
 govern the historical novelist. But it was too much to ask 
 that his performance should be worthy of his insight. On 
 the latter point, indeed, we concede the fact that Leland has 
 lived fairly well up to his theory. Though we are somewhat 
 dismayed when, having begun the story blithe in spirit from 
 the promised exemption from long-winded homilies, we 
 stumble straight upon two pages of moral precepts given by 
 Randolph to his sons, still, on the whole, if the book does not 
 move along at an exhilarating pace, it is not on account of a 
 pointed moral. 
 
 But what can be said of the hope of artistic selection and 
 combination of which the preface gave us promise, the very 
 essence of successful work? Alas! We cannot find a 
 glimpse of such artistic handling from beginning to end! 
 In the first place the interest of the story is constantly 
 interrupted by the almost insane propensity of the char- 
 acters for telHng yarns. The meeting of two persons is 
 the signal for the relation of the adventures of the newcomer 
 from his earliest youth, followed by a courteous request for 
 an interchange of confidence — a request which is invariably 
 granted. The most insignificant character is accorded this 
 privilege, and if he declines the opportunity Leland oblig- 
 ingly takes advantage of it for him. In the beginning of the 
 book Longsword talks for one hundred and ten consecutive 
 pages about some adventures he had in France, adventures 
 in which we have no sort of interest, being anxious all the 
 time to discover the fate of his beautiful Countess during his 
 absence, a fate which we are given to understand at the 
 beginning is very tragic and interesting. The only item in 
 the Earl's experience which we care about at all is the intro- 
 duction of Jacqueline, who wears boy's clothes and tears her 
 hair on occasion, which excesses, in contrast to the staid 
 demeanor of most of the Romance heroines, are quite 
 piquant and interesting. Chauvigny, her lover, is likewise 
 exasperating when, on arriving in England, instead of rushing 
 straight to his distracted sweetheart, he sits down with the 
 Earl and talks steadily for twenty-five pages about a foolish 
 little affair with some pirates. His conduct on this occasion, 
 
The Tales of Terror 29 
 
 however, is nothing to that of the Earl himself, who, while 
 the Countess is languishing in the power of a perjured knight 
 and whom only her husband's speedy return can save from 
 dishonor, is flying around the kingdom button-holing every 
 man he meets, from the king down, for lengthy gossips 
 about his stupid scrapes. When it comes, however, to an 
 autobiography by the maid of the Countess, whose only part 
 in the story is good-natured connivance in her Lady's escape, 
 — an autobiography which includes not only her own entire 
 history, but that of her only son, her only son's sweetheart, 
 and the villain who persecuted her only son's sweetheart, and 
 ends with a dissertation on the state of the kingdom during 
 the reign of John, — we throw down the book in despair and 
 look yearningly ahead to Scott's piquant Janets, who know 
 their places well enough to keep their affairs to themselves, 
 and chatter only by indulgence. We might discuss endlessly 
 the stiltedness of the characters of this book, and the 
 pompousness of its style. A quotation or two taken from 
 what is probably the only copy in America of this rare little 
 volume, — to which through the courtesy of the Librarian of 
 Yale University the writer has had access, — will best illus- 
 trate how far was this wild little plant-slip from the chastened 
 luxuriance of its later development. These quotations are 
 taken almost at random. 
 
 Then in that dreadful moment was my heart's dear treasure, my 
 beloved Dame, present to my distracted mind. Her sorrows crowded 
 upon my busy fancy and I sunk — O my friend, how can I speak it? — 
 I sunk into a coward! Doth that tear now stealing down your furrowed 
 cheek express your pity of my weakness or a sense of my misfortune? 
 
 Yet hath thy tale renewed some doubts and suspicions, but let sus- 
 picions sleep. Then starting up he cried with a loud voice, "And who 
 of my brave followers will undertake the task of repairing instantly to 
 Cornwall and bearing to the fair Jacqueline the news of her father's 
 arrival and conveying her to my castle?" Then stood forth Fitz-alan 
 with iive more who defied toil and fatigue, and insisted that this pleas- 
 ing charge should be entrusted to them. They departed fresh and vig- 
 orous as the hind to his day's labor. 
 
 Here grief threatened to break through the fair reserve of female 
 modesty; and had already fallen in gentle drops down her glowing cheeks 
 which the Earl perceiving checked with a kindly reproving look. Then 
 cried Lesroches, "Let us unite in adoring the invisible Power that 
 directed my steps hither." And beckoning one of his followers, the 
 man retired and soon returned leading young William in his hand, who 
 flew to his father with tears of infant-joy. 
 
30 The Tales of Terror 
 
 We have little room for the crowd of successors to Long- 
 sword up to the time when Charles Robert Maturin raised 
 the class into something Hke resemblance to Scott. Possi- 
 bly, however, we can best gain an idea of the crudity of their 
 efiforts by a moment's comparison of Sophia Lee's Leicester 
 with Sir Walter Scott's. 
 
 The episode dealt with in both Lee's Recess and Scott's 
 Kenihvorth, the one published some twenty years before the 
 other, is a secret marriage of Leicester's during his time of 
 favoritism with Elizabeth. With how many suppressed wives 
 tradition has credited Leicester we have not taken the trou- 
 ble to ascertain. The heroine of Sophia's story, however, 
 is not Amy Robsart, but a preposterous young person named 
 Matilda, who, with her twin sister Elinor, are represented as 
 the children of Mary Queen of Scots by the Earl of Norfolk, 
 and born during Mary's captivity in the Tower. After this 
 astounding statement we give ourselves up for lost, and sub- 
 mit without repining to the hands of the juggler. 
 
 Now obviously our interest in these episodes lies in 
 Leicester's predicament between his royal mistress and his 
 secreted wife. All matter extraneous to this center of inter- 
 est is, in a manner, ruled out. Sophia Lee gives us a history 
 of Matilda and her sister from their earliest babyhood — Hke- 
 wise that of the estimable lady to whom Mary at their birth 
 confided them. They were most uninteresting children, who 
 at the age of seven gazed up at the pictures of Mary and 
 Norfolk exclaiming, "Ah, who can these be? Why do our 
 hearts thus throb before inanimate canvas? Surely the 
 thing that we behold is but a part of some great mystery. 
 When will the day come destined to clear it up?" How dif- 
 ferent from Scott's shifting glance over Amy Robsart's wild- 
 rose girlhood and Leicester's wooing of her! It is merely 
 glanced at in Amy's tender words, "Ah, think not that Amy 
 can love thee better in this glorious garb than she did when 
 she gave her heart to him who wore the russet-brown cloak 
 in the woods of Devon !" How in an instant rises around us 
 those forest trees beneath whose shade a girl listens spell- 
 bound to the wooing of her courtly lover. Sophia's Leicester, 
 on the other hand, plunges into the story in the most undig- 
 nified fashion, running away as fast as he can from some 
 
The Tales of Terror 31 
 
 assassins who chase him thus opportunely into the presence 
 of his beloved. They hide him in a chamber in their Recess 
 for a great many days, during which he entertains his fair 
 protectors with a tedious autobiography, scrambling away 
 into a hiding place at the daily approach of their austere 
 guardian. Finally he marries Matilda, who has been in a 
 dreadful state of nervous prostration ever since his casual 
 mention of a wife who fortunately, however, turns out to 
 have been long deceased. 
 
 No better instance can be given of the contrast between 
 Scott's charm of suggestive allusion to events not intimately 
 connected with the story, and Lee's long-winded narratives 
 of such events, than the way in which they handle the friend- 
 ship existing between Elizabeth and Leicester during the 
 captivity of her youth. Lee's Leicester gives a tedious 
 account through ten dreary pages of the manner in which it 
 sprung up and the services by which it was fostered. Turn 
 to Scott. They stand there, Elizabeth and Leicester, in the 
 midst of her splendid court, both past their bloom, both 
 bearing in their faces the marks of life and care. She ex- 
 tends her hand to him, he kneels and kisses it, not an 
 uncommon court scene, and yet note the grace of it as she 
 whispers, "No, Dudley; Elizabeth has not yet forgotten that 
 while you were a poor gentleman despoiled of your heredi- 
 tary rank, she was as poor a princess; and that in her cause 
 you then ventured all that oppression had left you, — your 
 life and your honor!" How that "light that never was on 
 sea or land," — that light which memory throws over youth- 
 ful days of doubt and struggle and aspiring obscurity glanced 
 back at from the summit of assured success, softens the faces 
 of world-worn courtier and haughty queen as their eyes meet 
 steadily for a moment! 
 
 And thus it is throughout the two stories. Amy's seclu- 
 sion is artistically thrown as foil against the brilliant scenes 
 through which her husband moves. Lee treats us to a full 
 and stupid account of Matilda's life at Leicester's castle, 
 including a very vulgar episode in which the steward makes 
 love to the twin-sister; while Leicester's visits to Cumnor 
 Place, in which Amy plays with his medals and chatters 
 delightfully, are filled by Sophia with a lot of plans in which 
 
32 The Tales of Terror 
 
 Leicester disposes of the audacious steward by shipping him 
 off to America with Sir Francis Drake. For Amy's dramatic 
 appearance before the Queen at Kenilworth, is substituted a 
 lengthy sojourn of Matilda at court, where the only event 
 to vary the monotony is a ponderous flirtation of hers with 
 Sir Philip Sidney, who, only touched on by Scott in accord- 
 ance with tradition as a graceful youth dreaming of fairies 
 and love charms, lumbers along through Lee's story talking 
 thus, ''Yet dear is the sensibility, adored Matilda ! O let the 
 tears which now enrich your cheeks be wholly Sidney's !" 
 Sidney's fate, however, in the hands of Sophia, is enviable 
 compared to that of Sir Walter Raleigh. In "Kenilworth" 
 the legends of his courtly chivalry are skilfully reflected in a 
 fascinating figure well-nigh rivalling Leicester in Elizabeth's 
 favor. Could the gallant Sir Walter have seen his name 
 attached as label to a stolid, putty-faced youth scornfully 
 discarded by a girl who, a few weeks previous, had been 
 engaged in a degrading love affair with a lackey, he would 
 have torn his knightly plume with rage. As for Elizabeth, 
 she is transformed by Lee into a vulgar old woman without 
 a single kingly attribute; while Burleigh, throughout his 
 long career, half friend, half subject to his imperious sover- 
 eign, is turned into a brutal tyrant before whom his own 
 daughter trembles. In spite of all these absurdities, how- 
 ever, the most striking contrast still remains that between the 
 two Leicesters, — Scott's gallant earl with his ready tongue 
 and magnetic grace, first in court and council, beloved alike 
 of queen and people, and the wooden figure that stalks gro- 
 tesquely through Lee's pages, the stupid dupe of a false 
 wife (not, it is needless to say, the spotless Matilda, but an 
 unpleasant predecessor), a knight whose courtly manners 
 are exhibited by banging his head violently against the 
 queen's state chair when he sees his sweetheart dancing with 
 a rival. 
 
 In 1799 Godwin's St. Leon, though condemned by Saints- 
 bury as "a gross anachronism without the remotest notion of 
 local color, antiquarian fitness, or the adjustment of atmos- 
 phere and style," yet forms a distinct stepping-stone by 
 which we may clamber up from Lee's gross absurdities to 
 the level of Maturin's really creditable work. We see, then, 
 
The Tales of Terror 33 
 
 that Godwin was link between Sophia Lee's absurdities and 
 something higher. That something higher was the work 
 of Charles Robert Maturin. We must, however, pause here 
 a moment to say a few words about Maturin in connection 
 with the Terror School in general. It is only in his last 
 novel that he passes over into specific relation to Scott. His 
 early novels actually went back to the Radclifife machinery, 
 which, by this time — 18 19 — had been laughed out of exist- 
 ence by Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. 
 
 • Maturin is, in some respects, the most powerful of the 
 School we have been studjdng. His knowledge of the 
 human soul is marvellous, and no one knows better than he 
 how to apply to it the Engine of Terror. Its manifestations 
 vary from the creep and quiver of supernatural experience to 
 the revolting physical repulsiveness of the mob scene in 
 Melmoth. This passage is almost unreadable, and forms the 
 extreme instance of that morbid revelling in material horror 
 initiated by "Monk" Lewis. Many of his scenes, however, 
 when not injured by these flaws of taste, are the finest in 
 Terror Literature. Compare his account of the Inquisition 
 with that of Mrs. Radcliffe. Hers, however lauded, seems 
 clumsy beside it. As for Maturin's, I can think of no better 
 expression of the mystic awe, with which the iron-hand of the 
 Inquisition, raised over the world, was able to inspire the true 
 children of the Church. The scene where the fire breaks 
 out in the prison and the broken-spirited captives, some con- 
 demned to death, some to torture, are led out into the great 
 court in silent, guarded bands where many for the first time 
 in years gaze on the sweep of the heavens, and where fathers 
 and children, long separated, stretch out fettered arms to 
 each other, is vital with meaning and heart-breaking awe. 
 The havoc of the Inquisition was never more vividly por- 
 trayed than in that group of pale and broken victims lit up 
 by lurid flame. 
 
 Again, his embodiment of the legend of the human 
 being who has sold himself to the devil is much sub- 
 tler and finer than "Monk" Lewis's. Lewis represents this 
 lost soul as a beautiful woman anxious to gratify her passions 
 at any price. Melmoth is dignified by his consciousness of 
 the eternal curse, and his exorbitant selfishness is at least 
 
34 The Tales of Terror 
 
 illumined by intellect and suffering. His adventures are 
 most strikingly depicted. He visits, as tempter, the sane 
 man shut into the horror of an old-time madhouse, — the 
 father who sees his wife and haggard children crying for 
 bread, — his own high-born wife, who, holding in her arms 
 the child of a marriage he will not acknowledge, is cast out 
 by family and Church to degradation and shame. None of 
 them, as he has done, will purchase exemption from present 
 suffering at the price of eternal salvation. 
 
 In this general connection we have space only to say that 
 besides its excessive, and somewhat morbid power, Maturin's 
 intellect is remarkable for its versatile influence and color. 
 It touched intellects as different as Balzac's and Scott's. The 
 former unequivocably admitted his influence, and the latter 
 frankly adored him. His "Tale of the West Indian" in 
 Melmoth breathes the very air of Tennyson's Lotos Island. 
 Here and there Poe's own peculiar horror seems to lurk, 
 notably in his dealings with the phenomena of insanity. But 
 the most striking bit of suggestiveness is that which seems 
 to foreshadow the unique, unearthly genius of Maeterlinck. 
 When I read Maeterlinck's dramas I said to myself, "Here 
 at least is something new under the sun, this man whose 
 dreams are made out of nothing more palpable than the 
 silver-rose shadows which flit through the world when light 
 from the dying sun and the rising moon meet across the 
 ocean !" And through all my reading I vainly looked for 
 something resembling him till I fell upon some scraps in 
 Maturin's old novel so alike in tone and color that I held my 
 breath. It was as if Maeterlinck's spirit floating through the 
 world before its incarnation, had struck a wild chord on 
 Maturin's heart to try "its prentice hand." Any one who 
 reads Les Aveiiglcs and then turns to the bits in Melmoth 
 about the aged father and mother of Walberg, sere and with- 
 ered as dried leaves, will understand my meaning. 
 
 We must not linger, however, over Maturin's general 
 characteristics, but must turn at once to the phase in 
 which we have chosen especially to consider him, namely, 
 his connection with the novels of our third section. In 1825 
 Maturin pubHshed a book which brought this section of our 
 Terror Literature up to a standard of excellence somewhere 
 
The Tales of Terror 35 
 
 within calling distance of Scott, who was at this time in the 
 full fiood of his popularity. We have seen how crude had 
 hitherto been the attempts along this line, how clumsily his- 
 torical personages were ushered upon the stage of fiction, 
 and how events themselves were degraded into toys for jug- 
 glers. For the first time a Terror-writer accomplished, with- 
 out palpable absurdity, the union of historical fact with 
 romantic fiction of which Leland had dreamed. He created, 
 in The Albigcnses, a work not unworthy to rank as an humble 
 companion of the works of Scott himself, not a mere formless 
 movement of an instinct which afterwards found so glorious 
 expression in that great master. 
 
 The Alhigcnscs, it must be remembered, however, is 
 nothing more than an humble companion. The Radcliffian 
 machinery is at times painfully evident. The supernatural 
 effects produced by the Ghostly Woman are not impressive, 
 and the witches are pretty poor caricatures of Shakespeare's 
 famous Three. On the whole it must be admitted that, 
 whether or not it was that Maturin, like Leland, felt himself 
 hampered by the historical thread running through his 
 works, this novel does not compare with his other books in 
 its success in deahng with the emotions of terror. 
 
 This limitation in the use of the terrific, however, if it 
 makes his book a less powerful one, serves one highly useful 
 purpose. It makes it far less morbid. It reduces Maturin's 
 strength from something like the frenzied grasp of a maniac 
 to a resemblance to healthy normal force. The wholesome 
 influence of an element of actual earthy fact introduced into 
 the wild chaos of his brain is distinctly visible. He holds 
 himself within bounds. Take, for instance, the episode of 
 Sir Paladour and the Lycanthrope or wolf-man. What a 
 temptation this must have been! What an appeal to his 
 unhealthy love for repulsive detail ! But the self-control he 
 has felt compelled to exercise in his dealings with historical 
 personages shows its salutary effect; and the result is one 
 of the finest scenes of subtle terror in fiction. It seems 
 scarcely to be questioned that had Maturin lived he would 
 have found in the field of historical fiction his true work. 
 We must remember that The Albigenses is only an experi- 
 ment, and that, as he became used to the wholesome fetters. 
 
2,6 The Tales of Terror 
 
 which a shadow of actual fact imposes, his eccentric brain 
 would have moved within them more and more easily, with 
 the result of more and more perfectly artistic scenes. Less 
 and less often would horrors be pushed to an extreme, and 
 in their place more and more frequent would have become 
 such exquisite scenes of weird pleasurable suspense as that 
 in which the knights, gathered together in the firelight in 
 the vast dim hall of the castle around which roars a tempest 
 of rain and thunder, whisper to each other strange tales of 
 ghost and goblin, while in the lofty gallery a single minstrel 
 touched his harp. One must read this passage to realize the 
 effect of that wild voice sighing down to the knights through 
 the crash of the storm. 
 
 The lurid atmosphere of his earlier books being thus 
 somewhat cleared, it is wonderful what a stride our author 
 has taken ahead of the former would-be historical novelists. 
 In the first place, the story moves. There are very few 
 instances of autobiographical backwater, except when a 
 striking effect demands it. For example, we are as much 
 interested as Paladour in the account of Isabella's adventures 
 when she was carried away for dead ; and she does not dawdle 
 in the telling of it, while Sir Paladour listens with foot in 
 stirrup. And this episode is symbolic of the whole. The 
 story waits only on such past events as are absolutely neces- 
 sary for our comprehension. 
 
 There is likewise a dawning sense of the incidents and 
 moments in an historical episode especially adapted to 
 artistic use. For instance, one can imagine the dreary 
 monotony with which Sophia Lee, dealing with this period, 
 would have dwelt equally on every one of a long series of 
 transactions between the Albigenses and the Crusaders. 
 Maturin pounces on the one dramatic moment with unerring 
 instinct. And what a scene he produces with the brilliant 
 company of Crusaders sweeping down on horseback from a 
 verdurous hillside, and, opposite, the haggard crowd of 
 Hiiguenots toiling on foot down a slope of naked rock, into 
 the plain of conference ! We thrill at the spectacle with 
 something of the same enthusiasm which Scott himself 
 rouses in us. 
 
The Tales of Terror 37 
 
 We have noted the wooden puppetry that filled the pages 
 of the germinal Historical Novel. In Maturin's book a 
 change appears. The word of life has been spoken over the 
 dust, and it is turning to flesh before our eyes. It does not 
 breathe yet, but at least it is not wholly clay and wax. 
 Genevieve, the lovely daughter of the hunted Huguenots, 
 however much she may smack of the Radclifife heroine in her 
 impossible goodness and unparalleled adventures is, at least, 
 not a caricature of Scott's famous daughter of another perse- 
 cuted sect. In some scenes she breaks entirely through 
 Radcliffian trammels, and is very natural and lovely. Take 
 the scene on the mountain where Amirald rescues her from 
 the bandits. Her whole demeanor with its gentleness, its 
 tact, its tender dignity, is precisely what you would expect 
 of a right-hearted girl under the circumstances, while Ami- 
 raid, inspired perhaps by her simplicity, throws ofif likewise 
 all affectation and behaves like a very natural young man 
 indeed. In fact, they are throughout a very refreshing pair 
 of lovers, the most delightful, perhaps, in Terror Literature. 
 
 Maturin's plentiful introduction of humor helps to bring 
 his work nearer up to date. This element, as we have seen, 
 has been sadly lacking in the novels we have been studying, 
 especially among the historical fiction germs. All moved 
 with portentous solemnity. Longszvord has not one gleam 
 of humor from beginning to end. In The Recess the only 
 attempt at it is where EHnor banters Matilda in an elephan- 
 tine fashion on her preference for Leicester. As for Godwin, 
 the very idea of a joke in connection with him seems sacri- 
 lege. But with Maturin this all-important element makes 
 its appearance. Sir Aymer has a very nice sense of humor. 
 In fact he succeeds very well as a conventional funny man, 
 much better than the average specimen of that genus in real 
 life. The coxcomb de Semonville is at times delightful; and 
 for one instance of the brutal humor exhibited in the ugly 
 scene where the outlaws amuse themselves with the vanity 
 of Dame Marguerite, there are a dozen as delightful and 
 harmless as that in which the roistering monk of St. Ber- 
 nard's detains his superior at the door of the convent till his 
 comrades can remove the remains of their revels. In all 
 these points, — the general forward movement of the story, 
 
38 The Tales of Terror 
 
 the selection of incidents, the vividness of character-drawing, 
 and the introduction of humor, — Maturin shows a striking 
 advance over all previous workers in the Terror School, It 
 is greater honor to Maturin to have chastened his mad brain, 
 in this one last book of his life with its promise of vastly bet- 
 ter things had he lived to fulfil it, into something like resem- 
 blance to his great contemporary, than it is to have pro- 
 duced all the half insanely brilliant extravagances of his pre- 
 vious work; for this reason I have chosen to deal with his 
 genius particularly from the point of view of Historical 
 Fiction. 
 
 We have left to the end, for our culminating name, 
 the man who shares with Hawthorne the title of "the 
 Last of the old Romanticists," particularly because his spirit 
 seems an essence curiously independent of any Cult, and 
 partly because we wish to set his iridescent genius as the 
 prism which, though drawing its light from a unique source, 
 yet concentrates within itself the various colors glancing 
 across the pages of our School. The theory that Edgar 
 Allan Poe drew his inspiration from opium-dreams is long 
 exploded. From source beyond mortal ken, doubtless, was 
 his genius illuminated. But it was an angel, not a devil, 
 who whispered to him, however much the weird glow of his 
 genius may have confused the meaning of the message to 
 mortal eyes. 
 
 While unique in essence, Poe's spirit is colored far more 
 by the contemporary German Romance School than by the 
 English, At times the very tint of Tieck seems thrown 
 across his work, while his idiosyncrasy and Hoffman's seem 
 almost identical. Yet, as has been said, Poe, as universal 
 master of the terrific, brings to focus, as in a crystal, every 
 element found among our Terrorists. The ghost-ridden 
 castles of Walpole find a cleverer architect in the haunted 
 House of Usher. The Pit and the Pendulum revivifies the 
 hackneyed horrors of the Inquisition. The vast realm of 
 Subjective Fear, just entered by Mrs. Radcliffe, owns him 
 master in his Tales of Conscience. Psychological problems, 
 handled so cleverly by Brown, find subtle expression in his 
 Mesmeric Stories. The lurid magnificence of Beckford's 
 Hall of Eblis in Vathek is matched by the ominous splendor 
 
The Tales of Terror 39 
 
 of the palace in The Masque of the Red Death, The phe- 
 nomena of insanity, touched by Maturin with morbid power, 
 thrill us in his pages to ineffable horror; while the light, 
 exquisite eeriness of "Monk" Lewis's Spirit of the Frozen 
 Ocean is perceptible throughout his Celestial Tales. In short, 
 he runs the whole gamut of the soul's susceptibility of Fear. 
 It is fitting, then, that we should close our discussion of that 
 wonderful susceptibility with the mention of one who did 
 not, like others we have dealt with, manage skilfully some 
 few chords, but who struck the whole range of them with a 
 masters hand. 
 
 And so, having followed this Httle bypath in English lit- 
 erature through the wilderness to the point where its obscure 
 windings grow luminous with the glory reflected upon it from 
 Hawthorne, Poe, and Walter Scott, we step over into the 
 broad golden Highway to follow reverently these three, and 
 all the rest of the illustrious throng who, leaving these 
 humbler brethren on earth, sweep on into immortality. Pos- 
 sibly we may never again penetrate into its recesses, and yet 
 we have found many beauties there of which we had not 
 dreamed, and shall always look back lovingly to the little 
 group of men and women who tried faithfully, and not 
 always bunglingly, to bring the world back to love for the 
 glorious, long-despised lore of Mediaeval days, and who, in 
 the later development of the Tales of Terror, struck out from 
 the soul itself a harmony weird, powerful, and not unlovely. 
 Peace be to their ashes, and to their spirits refuge from 
 oblivion in the hearts of those who, looking underneath all 
 external absurdity, can discern in their work some genuine 
 throbbing of an immortal chord. 
 
 Bibliography 
 
 TALES 
 
 (In addition to what we consider the representative novels of this School we have 
 mentioned Regina INIaria Roche's works as samples of successful imitations; Leitch 
 Ritchie's, as samples of average hackwork-imitations; and Francis Lathom's, as samples of 
 the extravagant absurdities that made the School a laughing stock.) 
 
 Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto. 
 
 Anne Radcliffe A Sicilian Romance. 
 
 A Romance of the Forest. 
 
 The Mysteries of Udolpho. 
 
 The Italian. 
 
 The Castles of Athlin and Dmibayne. 
 
 Gaston dc Blondeville. 
 
40 The Tales of Terror 
 
 Clara Reeve The Old English Baron. 
 
 William Beckford Vathek. 
 
 Matthew Gregory Lewis .... The Monk. 
 
 The Bravo of Venice. 
 
 Charles Brockden Brown . . . Wieland. 
 
 Edgar Himily. 
 Arthur Mervyn. 
 Orniond. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley Frankenstein. 
 
 Charles Robert Maturin .... Melntoth. 
 
 The Fatal Revenge. 
 
 The Wild Irish Boy. 
 
 The Milesian Chief. 
 
 Women. 
 
 The Albigenses. 
 
 John Banim The Tales of the O^ Hara Family. 
 
 Thomas Leland Longsword. 
 
 Sophia Lee The Recess. 
 
 Regina Maria Roche The Children of the Abbey. 
 
 The Chapel Castle. 
 
 The Nocturnal Visit. 
 
 The Nun' s Picture. 
 
 The Maid of the Hantlet. 
 
 Clermont. 
 
 The Bridal of Dunamore. 
 
 The Vicar of La?isdowne . 
 
 The Tradition of the Castle. 
 
 The Munsfer Cottage Boy. 
 
 The Discarded Son. 
 
 Leitch Ritchie The London Nighfs Entertainment 
 
 Schinderhannes, The Robber of the Rhine. 
 The Game of Life. 
 
 Francis Lathom Mystery. 
 
 The Midnight Bell. 
 
 The Mysterious Freebooter. 
 
 The Impenetrable Secret. 
 
 The Fatal Vow, or St. Michaels Monastery. 
 
 The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery. 
 
 Very Strange but Very True. 
 
 Astonishment ! I ! ! I 
 
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