The Argosy — page 61: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Thee ay. Past “ Sensationalists.” SI “ Castle Spectre,” “ One o’Clock ; or, The Knight and the Wood-demon,” and ‘ Rugantio,” helped to degrade the drama, to a condition compared to which we, who profess to deplore its present decline, are comparatively classic and lofty. In a philosophic sense it is curious, and in an artistic sense highly satisfactory, to remark how completely the literature of the present day / has eliminated from itself the melodramatic element which Lewis imported from the Germans, and which served to render him not only one of the most successful, but one of the most admired of the authors of his time. “The Monk,” of all his compositions, is the only one remembered, and even this singular book bids fair to be forgotten as soon as the generation whose youth it amused has departed. ‘This story was written abroad, and when published in England met witha success that few works since that time have experienced. Its super- natural, libidinous, and impious components, were of a nature so revolting that the author was menaced with a prosecution; to avert which, he recalled the issued copies, and in a second edition declared he had recast the work. It was not, however, difficult to perceive that it would have been impossible to purge the book of its offensive ele- ments, without utterly destroying the entire conception of the story. This Lewis did not choose to do; the book was restored to the public with emendations of so trifling a character as to render, if possible, its design more prurient. Unless we except Mrs. Radcliffe, it would be hard to name any author who was more artistic in his treatment of the blue-lighted side of the supernatural than Lewis. His efforts after effect were of the most arduous nature; but strained as they were by him, he succeeded in carrying them into a region into which neither the ludicrous, nor the pathetic, nor the humorous, entered; which repelled most of the emotions which it is the business of all other art to provoke : a region in which the maniac might have seen his finest frenzies realized ; a region which yet wants a name, and which can only be called ‘“ Monk Lewis’s Own.” In a postscript to his melodrama of the ‘‘ Castle Spectre,” he declares that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his action, yet the anachronism was purposely made in order to set off the scene; and could he have produced a greater effect by making his heroine blue, d/ye he would have made her / Though one of the most unblushiny~® i:agiansts of his day, considerable merit must be allowed to Lewis for the art with which he contrived his effects by the incorporation of his own eccentric fancies with the eccentric fancies of others. The story of “ The Monk” displays an adoption of the super- natural machinery, which most of the others of the same school only assumed in semblance. Mrs. Radcliffe, for instance, employs, to attain her effects, certain apparent supernatural agencies, which she subse- quently falsifies. Lewis imagined that his readers were not to be put off with such lame and impotent conclusions. If he introduced the devil, ECOMiIcoOolxs.cO©