ORLANDO. Mark yon grass-grown cloister, Her lone, yet fav'rite walk! here oft at noon, EDWIN. Poor Mary! fare thee well! oft shall Edwin stray From yonder neighb'ring vale, oft gently try To dissipate thy cheerless gloom, and check Thy falling tear-till then, meek nature's child! Till then, thou pilgrim mournèr! fare thee well. NUMBER XVII. Spelunca alta fuit, vastoque immanis hiatu; VIRGIL. OBJECTS of terror may with propriety be divided into those which owe their origin to the agency of superhuman beings, and form a part of every system of mythology, and into those which depend upon natural causes. and events for their production. In the essay on gothic superstition, the former species has been noticed, and a tale presented to the reader, whose chief circumstances are brought about through the influence of preternatural power; on the latter we shall now deliver a few observations, and terminate them with a fragment in which terror is attempted to be excited by the interference of simple material causation. Terror thus produced requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to prevents its operating more pain than pleasure. Unaccompanied by those mysterious incidents which indicate the ministration of beings mightier far than we, and which induce that thrilling sensation of mingled astonishment, apprehension, and delight, so irresistibly captivating to the generality of mankind, it will be apt to create rather horror and disgust than the grateful emotion intended. To obviate this result, it is necessary either to interpose picturesque description, or sublime and pathetic sentiment, or so to stimulate curiosity by the artful texture of the fable, or by the uncertain and suspended fate of an interesting personage, that the mind shall receive such a degree of artificial pleasure as may mitigate and subdue what, if naked of decoration and skilful accompaniment, would shock and appal every feeling heart. A poem, a novel, or a picture, may however, notwithstanding its accurate imitation of na ture and beauty of execution, unfold a scene so horrid, or so cruel, that the art of the painter or the poet is unable to render it communicative of the smallest pleasurable emotion. He who could fix, for instance, upon the following event as a fit subject for the canvas, was surely unacquainted with the chief purport of his art. "A robber, who had broken into a repository of the dead, in order to plunder a corse of some rich ornaments, is said to have been so affected with the hideous spectacle of mortalitywhich presented itself when he opened the coffin, that he slunk away, trembling and weeping, without being able to execute his purpose." "I have met," says Dr. Beattie, "with an excellent print upon this subject; but was never able to look at it for half a minute together."* In a collection of Scottish ballads, published by Mr. Pinkerton, there is one termed Edward, which displays a scene which no poet, however great his talents, could render tolerable to any person of sensibility. A young man, his sword still reeking with blood, rushes into the presence of his mother, at whose suggestion he had the moment Beattie on Poetry and Music, p. 115. before destroyed his father. A short dialogue ensues, which terminates by the son pouring upon this female fiend the curses of hell. The Mysterious Mother also, a tragedy by the late celebrated Lord Orford, labours under an insuperable defect of this kind. The plot turns ? upon a mother's premeditated incest with her own son, a catastrophe productive only of horror and aversion, and for which the many well-written scenes introductory to this monstrous event cannot atone. No efforts of genius, on the other hand, are so truly great as those which, approaching the brink of horror, have yet, by the art of the poet or painter, by adjunctive and picturesque embellishment, by pathetic or sublime emotion, been rendered powerful in creating the most delightful and fascinating sensations. Shakspeare, if we dismiss what is now generally allowed not to be his, the wretched play of Titus Andronicus, has seldom, if ever, exceeded the bounds of salutary and grateful terror. Many strong instances of emotion of this kind, unmingled with the wild fictions of * Select Scottish Ballads, vol. i. p. 80, |