y island,
and brings unspeakable terror in his trail. Sometimes terror is
used nowadays, as Bulwer Lytton used it, to serve a moral
purpose. Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ is intended to
show that sin must ultimately affect the soul; and the Sorrows of
Satan, in Miss Corelli's novel, are caused by the wickedness of
the world. But apart from any ulterior motive there is still a
desire for the unusual, there is still pleasure to be found in a
thrill, and so long as this human instinct endures devices will
be found for satisfying it. Of the making of tales of terror
there is no end; and almost every novelist of note has, at one
time or another, tried his hand at the art. Early in his career
Arnold Bennett fashioned a novelette, _Hugo_, which may be read
as a modernised version of the Gothic romance. Instead of
subterranean vaults in a deserted abbey, we have the strong rooms
of an enterprising Sloane Street emporium. The coffin, containing
an image of the heroine, is buried not in a mouldering chapel,
but in a suburban cemetery. The lovely but harassed heroine has
fallen, indeed, from her high estate, for Camilla earns her
living as a milliner. There are, it is true, no sonnets and no
sunsets, but the excitement of the plot, which is partially
unfolded by means of a phonographic record, renders them
superfluous. H.G. Wells makes excursions into quasi-scientific,
fantastic realms of grotesque horror in his _First Men in the
Moon_, and in some of his sketches and short stories. Joseph
Conrad has the power of fear ever at the command of his romantic
imagination. In _The Nigger of the Narcissus_, in _Typhoon_, and,
above all, in _The Shadow-Line_, he shows his supreme mastery
over inexpressible mystery and nameless terror. The voyage of the
schooner, doomed by the evil influence of her dead captain, is
comparable only in awe and horror to that of _The Ancient
Mariner_. Conrad touches unfathomable depths of human feelings,
and in his hands the tale of terror becomes a finished work of
art.
The future of the tale of terror it is impossible to predict;
but the experiments of living authors, who continually find new
outlets with the advance of science and of psychological enquiry,
suffice to prove that its powers are not yet exhausted. Those who
make the 'moving accident' their trade will no doubt continue to
assail us with the shock of startling and sensational events.
Others with more insidious art, will set themselv