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  The
  Supernatural in Modern
  English Fiction


  By

  Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D.
  Instructor in English in Extension, Columbia University


  [Illustration: Logo]


  G. P. Putnam's Sons
  New York and London
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1917




  COPYRIGHT, 1917
  BY
  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS


  The Knickerbocker Press, New York




  To
  GEORGE AND ANNE SCARBOROUGH




PREFACE


The subject of the supernatural in modern English fiction has been
found difficult to deal with because of its wealth of material. While
there has been no previous book on the topic, and none related to it,
save Mr. C. E. Whitmore's work on _The Supernatural in Tragedy_, the
mass of fiction itself introducing ghostly or psychic motifs is simply
enormous. It is manifestly impossible to discuss, or even to mention,
all of it. Even in my bibliography which numbers over three thousand
titles, I have made no effort to list all the available examples of
the type. The bibliography, which I at first intended to publish in
connection with this volume, is far too voluminous to be included here,
so will probably be brought out later by itself.

It would have been impossible for me to prosecute the research work
or to write the book save for the assistance generously given by many
persons. I am indebted to the various officials of the libraries of
Columbia University and of New York City, particularly to Miss Isadore
Mudge, Reference Librarian of Columbia, and to the authorities of
the New York Society Library for permission to use their priceless
out-of-print novels in the Kennedy Collection. My interest in English
fiction was increased during my attendance on some courses in the
history of the English novel, given by Dr. A. J. Carlyle, in Oxford
University, England, several years ago. I have received helpful
bibliographical suggestions from Professor Blanche Colton Williams,
Dr. Dorothy Brewster, Professor Nelson Glenn McCrea, Professor John
Cunliffe, and Dean Talcott Williams, of Columbia, and Professor G. L.
Kittredge, of Harvard. Professors William P. Trent, George Philip
Krapp, and Ernest Hunter Wright very kindly read the book in manuscript
and gave valuable advice concerning it, Professor Wright going over
the material with me in detail. But my chief debt of gratitude is to
Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, Head of the Department of English and
Comparative Literature in Columbia, whose stimulating criticism and
kindly encouragement have made the book possible. To all of these--and
others--who have aided me, I am deeply grateful, and I only wish that
the published volume were more worthy of their assistance.

      D. S.

  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
    April, 1917.




CONTENTS


                                            PAGE
         INTRODUCTION                          1
  CHAPTER
     I.--THE GOTHIC ROMANCE                    6
    II.--LATER INFLUENCES                     54
   III.--MODERN GHOSTS                        81
    IV.--THE DEVIL AND HIS ALLIES            130
     V.--SUPERNATURAL LIFE                   174
    VI.--THE SUPERNATURAL IN FOLK-TALES      242
   VII.--SUPERNATURAL SCIENCE                251
  VIII.--CONCLUSION                          281




The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction




INTRODUCTION


The supernatural is an ever-present force in literature. It colors our
poetry, shapes our epics and dramas, and fashions our prose till we are
so wonted to it that we lose sense of its wonder and magic. If all the
elements of the unearthly were removed from our books, how shrunken in
value would seem the residue, how forlorn our feelings! Lafcadio Hearn
in the recently published volume, _Interpretations of Literature_, says:

  There is scarcely any great author in European literature, old
  or new, who has not distinguished himself in his treatment of
  the supernatural. In English literature I believe there is no
  exception from the time of the Anglo-Saxon poets to Shakespeare,
  and from Shakespeare to our own day. And this introduces us to the
  consideration of a general and remarkable fact, a fact that I do
  not remember to have seen in any books, but which is of very great
  philosophical importance: there is something ghostly in all great
  art, whether of literature, music, sculpture, or architecture. It
  touches something within us that relates to infinity.[1]

      [1] The word _ghostly_ is used here in its earlier sense
      signifying spiritual.

This continuing presence of the weird in literature shows the popular
demand for it and must have some basis in human psychosis. The night
side of the soul attracts us all. The spirit feeds on mystery. It
lives not by fact alone but by the unknowable, and there is no highest
mystery without the supernatural. Man loves the frozen touch of fear,
and realizes pure terror only when touched by the unmortal. The hint
of spectral sounds or presences quickens the imagination as no other
suggestion can do, and no human shapes of fear can awe the soul as
those from beyond the grave. Man's varying moods create heaven, hell,
and faery wonder-lands for him, and people them with strange beings.

Man loves the supernatural elements in literature perhaps because they
dignify him by giving his existence a feeling of infinity otherwise
denied. They grant him a sense of being the center of powers more than
earthly, of conflicts supermortal. His own material life may be however
circumscribed and trivial yet he can loose his fancy and escape the
petty tragedies of his days by flight beyond the stars. He can widen
the tents of his mortal life, create a universe for his companionship,
and marshal the forces of demons and unknown gods for his commands. To
his narrow rut he can join the unspaced firmament; to his trivial hours
add eternity; to his finite, infinity. He is so greedy of power, and
has so piteously little that he must look for his larger life in dreams
and in the literature of the supernatural.

But, whatever be the reasons, there has been a continuity of the
ghostly in literature, with certain rise and fall of interest. There is
in modern English fiction, as likewise in poetry and the drama, a great
extent of the supernatural, with wide diversity of elements. Beginning
with the Gothic romance, that curious architectural excrescence that
yet has had enormous influence on our novel, the supernatural is found
in every period and in every form