the mind, and interest the reader independently of all peculiarity of taste. Thus the great Milton, who had a strong bias to these wildnesses of the imagination, has with striking effect made the stories 'of forests and enchantments drear,' a favourite subject with his Penseroso; and had undoubtedly their awakening images strong upon his mind when he breaks out,
Call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold; &c.4
How are we then to account for the pleasure derived from such objects? I have often been led to imagine that there is a deception in these cases; and that the avidity with which we attend is not a proof of our receiving real pleasure. The pain of suspense, and the irresistible desire of satisfying curiosity, when once raised, will account for our eagerness to go quite through an adventure, though we suffer actual pain during the whole course of it. We
1. Shakespeare's Macbeth 5.5.13. 3. Lines 44^15 in William Collins's 'Ode to Fear' 2. The mentions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Rich-(1746), slightly misquoted. The speaker of this ard III are followed by references to the doomed poem anticipates the Aikins in marveling over the
husband and wife in Thomas Otway's tragedy Ven-allure of fear and its potency as a source of art.
ice Preserv'd (1681); the royal advisor whose fall 4. Quoting lines 119 and 109-10 of Milton's
from grace centers the action of Shakespeare's poem on the delights of studious melancholy. The
Henry VIII; and Jane Shore, title character of story of Cambuscan was left half-told in Chaucer's
Nicholas Rowe's tragedy of 1714. unfinished Squire's Tale.
.
58 4 / THE GOTHIC
rather chuse to suffer the smart pang of a violent emotion than the uneasy craving of an unsatisfied desire. That this principle, in many instances, may involuntarily carry us through what we dislike, I am convinced from experience. This is the impulse which renders the poorest and most insipid narrative interesting when once we get fairly into it; and I have frequently felt it with regard to our modern novels, which, if lying on my table, and taken up in an idle hour, have led me through the most tedious and disgusting pages, while, like Pistol eating his leek, I have swallowed and execrated to the end.5 And it will not only force us through dullness, but through actual torture?through the relation of a Damien's execution, or an inquisitor's act of faith.6 When children, therefore, listen with pale and mute attention to the frightful stories of apparitions, we are not, perhaps, to imagine that they are in a state of enjoyment, any more than the poor bird which is dropping into the mouth of the rattlesnake?they are chained by the ears, and fascinated by curiosity. This solution, however, does not satisfy me with respect to the well-wrought scenes of artificial terror which are formed by a sublime and vigorous imagination. Here, though we know before-hand what to expect, we enter into them with eagerness, in quest of a pleasure already experienced. This is the pleasure constantly attached to the excitement of surprise from new and wonderful objects. A strange and unexpected event awakens the mind, and keeps it on the stretch; and where the agency of invisible beings is introduced, of 'forms unseen, and mightier far than we,' our imagination, darting forth, explores with rapture the new world which is laid open to its view, and rejoices in the expansion of its powers. Passion and fancy cooperating elevate the soul to its highest pitch; and the pain of terror is lost in amazement.
Hence the more wild, fanciful, and extraordinary are the circumstance, of a scene of horror, the more pleasure we receive from it; and where they are too near common nature, though violently borne by curiosity through the adventure, we cannot repeat it or reflect on it, without an overbalance of pain. In the Arabian Nights are many most striking examples of the terrible joined with the marvellous: the story of Aladdin, and the travels of Sinbad are particularly excellent. The Castle of Otranto is a very spirited modern attempt upon the same plan of mixed terror, adapted to the model of Gothic romance. The best conceived, and most strongly worked-up scene of mere natural horror that I recollect, is in Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom-,7 where the hero, entertained in a lone house in a forest, finds a corpse just slaughtered in the room where he is sent to sleep, and the door of which is locked upon him. It may be amusing for the reader to compare his feelings upon these, and from thence form his opinion of the justness of my theory. The following fragment, in which both these manners are attempted to be in some degree united, is offered to entertain a solitary winter's evening.
5. Alluding to a comic scene of force-feeding in auto dafe, was the form of execution that the SpanShakespeare's Henry V (5.1.36?60). ish Inquisition inflicted on heretics: the con
6. The brutality of the public torture and execu-demned were burned alive. tion in 1757 of Robert-Francois Damiens, the 7. Tobias Smollett's 1753 novel of villainy and pic
would-be assassin of Louis XV of France, was aresque adventure.
commented on across Europe. An act of faith, or
.
AIKIN AND AIKIN: OBJECTS OF TERROR / 585
Sir Bertrand, a Fragment
After this adventure, Sir Bertrand turned his steed towards the woulds,8 hoping to cross these dreary moors before the curfew. But ere he had proceeded half his journey, he was bewildered by the different tracks, and not being able, as far as the eye could reach, to espy any object but the brown heath surrounding him, he was at length quite uncertain which way he should direct his course. Night overtook him in this situation. It was one of those nights when the moon gives a faint glimmering of light through the thick black clouds of a lowering sky. Now and then she suddenly emerged in full splendor from her veil; and then instantly retired behind it, having just served to give the forlorn Sir Bertrand a wide extended prospect over the desolate waste. Hope and native courage a while urged him to push forwards, but at length the increasing darkness and fatigue of body and mind overcame him; he dreaded moving from the ground he stood on, for fear of unknown pits and bogs, and alighting from his horse in despair, he threw himself on the ground. He had not long continued in that posture when the sullen toll of a distant bell struck his ears?he started up, and turning towards the sound discerned a dim twinkling light.
Instantly he seized his horse's bridle, and with cautious steps advanced towards it. After a painful march he was stopt by a moated ditch surrounding the place from whence the light proceeded; and by a momentary glimpse of moon-light he had a full view of a large antique mansion, with turrets at the corners, and an ample porch in the centre. The injuries of time were strongly marked on every thing about it. The roof in various places was fallen in, the battlements were half demolished, and the windows broken and dismantled. A drawbridge, with a ruinous gateway at each end, led to the court before the building?He entered, and instantly the light, which proceeded from a window in one of the turrets, glided along and vanished; at the same moment the moon sunk beneath a black cloud, and the night was darker than ever. All was silent?Sir Bertrand fastened his steed under a shed, and
