oral. It
belongs to art because the emotion caused is due to a stimulus to our
imagination by the force of an idea and not of a thing exhibited. If an
effort were made to show us any ghastly creature knocking, the work
would be out of court.

To illustrate the line of definition already indicated, a few instances
of the horrible presented on the stage in our time may be given
usefully; it must be added that most appear to lie on the wrong side.

Shakespeare's adventures in the horrible are legitimate, with an
exception in the case of one play of doubtful authenticity, _Titus
Andronicus_. On the other hand, _Sweeney Todd; or, The Barber of Fleet
Street_, would probably find no defender; whilst a historical drama I
once saw in the South of France, where the hero was put upon the rack in
front of the footlights and squirmed and screamed, was quite
unendurable; and this is rather a pity, since there is a very powerful
dramatic scene in Balzac's _Notes sur Catherine de Medicis_, which in
consequence of this objection should not be used. There is a mitigated
form of the torture business in _La Tosca_ that caused great discussion.
Perhaps those who deem it illegitimate are somewhat supersensitive; it
would be more polite, and perhaps accurate, to call them hyper-modern.

_Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_ presented a very difficult case. I can remember
nothing so "creepy" and "shuddery" as the first appearance of Mr
Mansfield at the Lyceum in the character of the evil doctor; the house
gasped at the half-seen image of a sort of obscene beast at the
conservatory window, and there was the silence of breathless horror when
it bounded into the room and seized its victim. Until the impression
wore off the Mansfield Hyde was almost as horrible as the fantastic
things born of the cruel imagination and brilliant pencil of Mr S.H.
Sime, whose work is sometimes so richly embellished by imagination as
well as by superb technique that one cannot deny its claim to be
regarded as art.

Something of the distinction here discussed can be seen by comparing Mr
Sime's drawings with the pictures of the mad painter Wirtz, whose
abominable gallery at Brussels is a chamber of unimaginative horrors. It
may be remembered that Mr Mansfield had a competitor in Mr Bandman
Palmer, who, however, missed horror by the simple vulgarity of his
horrors, and, though he may have impressed the simple-minded, was
ludicrous to the thoughtful.

Returning for a moment to t