ON THE SUPERNATURAL IN POETRY
BY THE LATE MRS. RADCLIFFE 1
The New Monthly Magazine and Literary
Journal, vol 16, no. 1, 1826, 145-152
One of our travellers began a
grave dissertation on the illusions of the imagination. "And not only
on frivolous occasions," said he, "but in the most important pursuits
of life, an object often flatters and charms at a distance, which
vanishes into nothing as we approach it; and 'tis well if it leave only
disappointment in our hearts. Sometimes a severer monitor is left
there."
These truisms,
delivered with an air of discovery by Mr. S––, who seldom troubled
himself to think upon any subject, except that of a good dinner, were
lost upon his companion, who, pursuing the airy conjectures which the
present scene, however humbled, had called up, was following Shakspeare
into unknown regions. "Where is now the undying spirit," said he, "that
could so exquisitely perceive and feel?–that could inspire itself with
the va,rious characters of this world, and create worlds of its own; to
which the grand and the beautiful, the gloomy and the sublime of
visible Nature, up-called not only corresponding feelings, but passions
; which seemed to perceive a soul in every thing: and thus, in the
secret workings of its own characters, and in the combinations of its
incidents, kept the elements and local scenery always in unison with
them, heightening their effect. So the conspirators at Rome pass under
the fiery showers and sheeted lightning of the thunder-storm, to meet,
at midnight, in the porch of Pompey's theatre. The streets being then
deserted by the affrighted multitude, that place, open as it was, was
convenient for their council; and, as to the storm, they felt it not;
it was not more terrible to them than their own passions, nor so
terrible to others as the dauntless spirit that makes them, almost
unconsciously, brave its fury. These appalling circumstances, with
others of supernatural import, attended the fall of the conqueror of
the world–a man, whose power Cassius represents to be dreadful as this
night, when the sheeted dead were seen in the lightning to glide along
the streets of Rome. How much does the sublimity of these attendant
circumstances heighten our idea of the power of Caesar, of the terrific
grandeur of his character, and prepare and interest us for his fate.
The whole soul is roused and fixed, in the full energy of attention,
upon the progress of the conspiracy against him; and, had not
Shakespeare wisely withdrawn him from our view, there would have been
no balance of our passions."–" Caesar was a tyrant," said Mr. S––. W––
looked at him for a moment, and smiled, and then silently resumed the
course of his own thoughts. No master ever knew how to touch the
accordant springs of sympathy by small circumstances like our own
Shakspeare. In Cymbeline, for instance, how finely such circumstances
are made use of, to awaken, at once, solemn expectation and tenderness,
and, by recalling
1 Having been permitted to
extract the above eloquent passages from the manuscripts of the author
of the "Mysteries of Udolpho," we have given this title to them, though
certainly they were not intended by the writer to be offered as a
formal or deliberate essay, under this, or any other, denomination.
They were, originally, part of an Introduction to the Romance, or
Phantasie, which is about to appear. The discussion is supposed to be
carried on by two travellers in Shakspeare's native county.
Warwickshire.
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