groans of
melancholy spectres, and where the pale moon ever gleams on dark
and dreadful deeds. He had reached that stage of human
development when fairies, elves, witches and dragons begin to
lose their charm, when the gentle quiver of fear excited by an
ogre, who is inevitably doomed to be slain at the last, no longer
suffices. At the approach of adolescence with its surging
emotions and quickening intellectual life, there awakens a demand
for more thrilling incidents, for wilder passions and more
desperate crimes, and it is at this period that the "novel of
terror" is likely to make its strongest appeal. Youth, with its
inexperience, is seldom tempted to bring fiction to the test of
reality, or to scorn it on the ground of its improbability, and
we may be sure that Shelley and his cousin, Medwin, as they hung
spellbound over such treasures as _The Midnight Groan, The
Mysterious Freebooter_, or _Subterranean Horrors_ did not pause
to consider whether the characters and adventures were true to
life. They desired, indeed, not to criticise but to create, and
in the winter of 1809-1810 united to produce a terrific romance,
with the title _Nightmare_, in which a gigantic and hideous witch
played a prominent part. After reading Schubert's _Der Ewige
Jude_, they began a narrative poem dealing with the legend of the
Wandering Jew,[91] who lingered in Shelley's imagination in after
years, and whom he introduced into _Queen Mab, Prometheus
Unbound_, and _Hellas_. The grim and ghastly legends included in
"Monk" Lewis's _Tales of Terror_ (1799) and _Tales of Wonder_
(1801) fascinated Shelley;[92] and the suggestive titles
_Revenge_;[93] _Ghasta, or the Avenging Demon_;[94] _St. Edmund's
Eve_;[95] _The Triumph of Conscience_ from the _Poems by Victor
and Cazire_ (1810), and _The Spectral Horseman_ from _The
Posthumous Poems of Margaret Nicholson_ (1810), all prove his
preoccupation with the supernatural. That Shelley's enthusiasm
for the gruesome and uncanny was not merely morbid and
hysterical, the mad, schoolboyish letter, written while he was in
the throes of composing _St. Irvyne_, is sufficient indication.
In a mood of grotesque fantasy and wild exhilaration, Shelley
invites his friend Graham to Field Place. The postscript is in
his handwriting, but is signed by his sister Elizabeth:

"The avenue is composed of vegetable substances moulded
in the form of trees called by the multitude Elm trees.
Stalk along t