which, at the time when these fantasies were indited, were regarded as fables and dreams, but which have since (in their phenomenal aspect simply) been recognised as matters of popular experience and scientific research.
In “Ligeia,” the sad and stately symmetry of the sentences, their rhythmical cadence, the Moresque sumptuousness of imagery with which the story is invested, and the wierd metempsychosis which it records, produce an effect on the reader altogether peculiar in character and, as we think, quite inexplicable without a reference to the supernatural inspiration which seems to pervade them. In the moods of mind and phases of passion which this story represents we have no laboured artistic effects; we look into the haunted chambers of the poet’s own mind and see, as through a veil, the strange experiences of his inner life; while, in the dusk magnificence of its imagery, we have the true heraldic blazonry of an imagination royally dowered and descended. In this, as in all that class of stories we have named, the
