to his end in showing him all the want that he
has of a succor more exalted.” (3)
In the passages thus quoted, I imply one of the objects for which this tale has been written; and I cite them, with a wish to acknowledge one of those priceless obligations which writings the lightest and most fantastic often incur to reasoners the most serious and profound.
But I here construct a romance which should have, as a romance, some interest for the general reader. I do not elaborate a treatise submitted to the logic of sages. And it is only when “in fairy fiction drest” that Romance gives admission to “truths severe.”
I venture to assume that none will question my privilege to avail myself of the marvellous agencies which have ever been at the legitimate command of the fabulist.
To the highest form of romantic narrative, the Epic, critics, indeed, have declared that a supernatural machinery is indispensable. That the Drama has availed itself of the same license as the Epic, it would be unnecessary to say to the countrymen of Shakspeare, or to the generation that is yet studying the enigmas of Goethe’s “Faust.” Prose Romance has immemorially asserted, no less than the Epic or the Drama, its heritage in the Realm of the Marvellous. The interest which attaches to the supernatural is sought in the earliest Prose Romance which modern times take from the ancient, and which, perhaps, had its origin in the lost Novels of Miletus; (4) and the right to invoke such interest has, ever since, been maintained by Romance through all varieties of form and fancy—from the majestic epopee of “Telemaque” to the graceful fantasies of “Undine,” or the mighty mockeries of “Gulliver’s Travels” down to such comparatively commonplace elements of wonder as yet preserve from oblivion “The Castle of Otranto” and “The Old English Baron.”
Now, to my mind, the true reason why a supernatural agency is indispensable to the conception of the Epic, is that the Epic is the highest and the completest form in which Art can express either Man or Nature, and that without some gleams of the supernatural, Man is not man nor Nature, nature.
It is said, by a writer to whom an eminent philosophical critic justly applies the epithets of “pious and profound:” (5)
“Is it unreasonable to confess that we believe in God, not by reason
of the Nature which conceals Him, but by reason of the Supernatural
in Man which alone reveals and proves Him to exist? … Man reveals
God: for Man, by his intelligence, rises above Nature; and in virtue
of this intelligence is conscious of himself as a power not only
independent of, but opposed to, Nature, and capable of resisting,
conquering, and controlling her.” (6)
If the meaning involved in the argument, of which I have here made but scanty extracts, be carefully studied, I think that we shall find deeper reasons than the critics who dictated canons of taste to the last century discovered—why the supernatural is indispensable to the Epic, and why it is allowable to all works of imagination, in which Art looks on Nature with Man’s inner sense of a something beyond and above her.
But the Writer who, whether in verse or prose, would avail himself of such sources of pity or terror as flow from the Marvellous, can only attain his object in proportion as the wonders he narrates are of a kind to excite the curiosity of the age he addresses.
In the brains of our time, the faculty of Causation is very markedly developed. People nowadays do not delight in the Marvellous according to the old childlike spirit. They say in one breath, “Very extraordinary!” and in the next breath ask, “How do you account for it?” If the Author of this work has presumed to borrow from science some elements of interest for Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful reader—and certainly no true son of science—will be disposed to reproach him. In fact, such illustrations from the masters of Thought were essential to the completion of the purpose which pervades the work.
That purpose, I trust, will develop itself in proportion as the story approaches the close; and whatever may appear violent or melodramatic in the catastrophe, will, perhaps, be found, by a reader capable of perceiving the various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story, essential to the end in which those meanings converge, and towards which the incidents that give them the character and interest of of fiction, have been planned and directed from the commencement.
Of course, according to the most obvious principles of art, the narrator of a fiction must be as thoroughly in earnest as if he were the narrator of facts. One could not tell the most extravagant fairy-tale so as to rouse and sustain the attention of the most infantine listener, if the tale were told as if the taleteller did not believe in it. But when the reader lays down this “Strange Story,” perhaps he will detect, through all the haze of romance, the outlines of these images suggested to his reason: Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such as the Materialist had conceived it; secondly, the image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its inquiries from the belief in the spiritual essence and destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplexity and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation before it settles at last into the simple faith which unites the philosopher and the infant; and thirdly, the image of the erring but pure-thoughted visionary, seeking over-much on this earth to separate soul from mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom, and reason is lost in the space between earth and the stars. Whether in these pictures there be any truth worth the implying, every reader must judge for himself; and if he doubt or deny that there be any such truth, still, in the process of thought which the doubt or denial enforces, he may chance on a truth which it pleases himself to discover.
“Most of the Fables of AEsop,”—thus says Montaigne in his
charming essay “Of Books” (7)—“have several senses and meanings, of
which the Mythologists choose some one that tallies with the fable.
But for the most part ‘t is only what presents itself at the first
view, and is superficial; there being others more lively, essential,
and internal, into which they had not been able to penetrate;
and”—adds Montaigne—“the case is the very same with me.”
(1) OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. i. See introduction.
(2) OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii. p. 546 (Anthropologie).
(3) OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii. p. 524.
(4) “The Golden Ass” of Apuleius.
(5) Sir William Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 40.
(6) Jacobi: Von der Gottlichen Dingen; Werke, p. 424–426.
(7) Translation, 1776, Yol. ii. p. 103.
CHAPTER I.
In the year 18—I settled as a physician at one of the wealthiest of our great English towns, which I will designate by the initial L——. I was yet young, but I had acquired some reputation by a professional work, which is, I believe, still amongst the received authorities on the subject of which it treats. I had studied at Edinburgh and at Paris, and had borne away from both those illustrious schools of medicine whatever guarantees for future distinction the praise of professors may concede to the ambition of students. On becoming a member of the College of Physicians, I made a tour of the principal cities of Europe, taking letters of introduction to eminent medical men, and gathering from many theories and modes of treatment hints to enlarge the foundations of unprejudiced and comprehensive practice. I had resolved to fix my ultimate residence in London. But before this preparatory tour was completed, my resolve was changed by one of those unexpected events which determine the fate man in vain would work out for himself. In passing through the Tyro, on my way into the north of