of great acquirements and splendid genius employed to furnish a mormo8 for children, a poison for youth, and a provocative for the debauchee. Tales of enchantments and witchcraft can never be useful: our author has contrived to make them -pernicious, by blending, with an irreverent negligence, all that is most awfully true in religion with all that is most ridiculously absurd in superstition. He takes frequent occasion, indeed, to manifest his sovereign contempt for the latter, both in his own person, and (most incongruously) in that of his principal characters; and that his respect for the former is not excessive, we are forced to conclude from the treatment which its inspired writings receive from him. Ambrosio discovers Antonia reading?
He examined the book which she had been reading, and had now placed upon the table. It was the Bible. 'How!' said the friar to himself, 'Antonia reads the Bible, and is still so ignorant?'
But, upon a further inspection, he found that Elvira had made exactly the same remark. That prudent mother, while she admired the beauties of the sacred writings, was convinced that, unrestricted, no reading more improper could be permitted a young woman. Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the book which young women are recommended to study, which is put into the hands of children, able to comprehend little more than those passages of which they had better remain ignorant, and which but too frequently inculcates the first rudiments of vice, and gives the first alarm to the still sleeping passions. Of this was Elvira so fully convinced, that she would have preferred putting into her daughter's hands 'Amadis de Gaul,' or 'The Valiant Champion, Tirante the White'; and woidd sooner have authorised her studying the lewd exploits of Don Galaor, or the lascivious jokes of the Damsel Plazer di mi vida. Vol.11, p. 247.
The impiety of this falsehood can be equalled only by its impudence. This is indeed as if a Corinthian harlot, clad from head to foot in the transparent thinness of the Coan vest, should affect to view with prudish horror the naked knee of a Spartan matron! If it be possible that the author of these blasphemies
8. Bogeyman, object of needless dread.
.
60 6 / THE GOTHIC
is a Christian, should he not have reflected that the only passage in the scrip- tures,9 which could give a shadow of plausibility to the weakest of these expressions, is represented as being spoken by the Almighty himself? But if he be an infidel, he has acted consistently enough with that character, in his endeavours first to influence the fleshly appetites, and then to pour contempt on the only book which would be adequate to the task of recalming them. We believe it not absolutely impossible that a mind may be so deeply depraved by the habit of reading lewd and voluptuous tales, as to use even the Bible in conjuring up the spirit of uncleanness. The most innocent expressions might become the first link in the chain of association, when a man's soul had been so poisoned; and we believe it not absolutely impossible that he might extract pollution from the word of purity, and, in a literal sense, turn the grace of God into wantonness.
We have been induced to pay particular attention to this work, from the unusual success which it has experienced. It certainly possesses much real merit, in addition to its meretricious attractions. Nor must it be forgotten that the author is a man of rank and fortune. Yes! the author of the Monk signs himself a LEGISLATOR!1 We stare and tremble.
1797
From Biographia Literaria
From Chapter 31
For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their pass-time, or rather kill-time, with the name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly daydreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is supplied ah extra2 by a sort of mental camera ohscura3 manufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore4 fixes, reflects and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should therefore transfer this species of amusement (if indeed those can be said to retire a musis,5 who were never in their company, or relaxation be attributable to those, whose bows are never bent) from the genus, reading, to that comprehensive class characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary yet co- existing propensities of human nature, namely indulgence of sloth, and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme
9. Ezekiel, chap, xxiii [Coleridge's note], has been before the reading public; the footnote 1. Lewis, a member of Parliament, signed himself (the text given here) then goes on to identify the 'M. G. Lewis, Esq., M.P.' on the title page of the sort of people who for him do not count as bona
second edition of The A'lonk. Worried that the pub-fide members of that public.
lic outcry over the episode Coleridge here lam-2. From the outside (Latin).
bastes would lead to his being charged with 3. A device (forerunner of the modern camera)
obscene libel. Lewis cut the episode from the creating a special optical effect: light passes
fourth edition. through a pinhole into a darkened room and cre
1. This paragraph makes up the first footnote to ates an inverted image of the world beyond the the third chapter of Coleridge's Biographia Liter-walls.
aria, the hybrid book in which he blended autobi-4. For the time being (Latin).
ography with philosophical speculations and 5. A pun linking 'amusement' and a musis, 'away
favorite anecdotes. In the body of his text, Cole-from the Muses.'
ridge refers to the frequency with which his name
.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON / 60 7
(by which last I mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprises as its species, gaming; swinging or swaying on a chair or gate; spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; tete-a-tete quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning word by word all the advertisements of the Daily Advertiser in a public house on a rainy day, etc. etc. etc.
