Mr. Machen, a normal man of letters and grasp of an exquisitely lyrical and expressive prose type, has perhaps put more conscious effort into his picaresque Chronicles Of Clemendy, his refreshing essays, his vivid autobiographical volumes, his contemporary and spirited translations, and above all his memorable epic of the delicate æsthetic thoughts, The Hill Of Dreams, during which the youthful hero responds to the magic of that historical Welsh atmosphere which is the author’s own, and lives a dream-life in the Roman metropolis of Isca Silurum, now shrunk to the relic-strown village of Cærleon-on-Usk. Serious weird tales are either made realistically intense by shut consistency and excellent fidelity to Nature besides within the one supernatural path which the writer permits himself, or else cast altogether in the realm of phantasy, with environment cunningly tailored to the visualisation of a delicately exotic world of unreality past area and time, wherein virtually something could occur if it but happen in true accord with certain forms of imagination and illusion regular to the delicate human brain. The bizarre short story has fared properly of late, an essential contributor being the versatile E. F. Benson, whose Man Who Went Too Far breathes whisperingly of a house at the sting of a darkish wooden, and of Pan’s hoof-mark on the breast of a lifeless man.
It is vaguely like, yet infinitely unlike, Poe’s Fall Of The House of Usher. Much subtler and extra artistic, and advised with singular skill by way of the juxtaposed narratives of the a number of characters, is the latest novel Cold Harbour, by Francis Brett Young, in which an ancient home of unusual malignancy is powerfully delineated. Of the shorter tales, of which a number of volumes exist, many are unforgettable for his or her command of fear’s and sorcery’s darkest ramifications; notably Seaton’s Aunt, in which there lowers a noxious background of malignant vampirism; The Tree, which tells of a frightful vegetable development in the yard of a starving artist; Out Of The Deep, wherein we’re given depart to imagine what factor answered the summons of a dying wastrel in a dark lonely home when he pulled a protracted-feared bell-cord in the attic chamber of his dread-haunted boyhood; Mr. Kempe, which reveals us a mad clerical hermit in quest of the human soul, dwelling in a frightful sea-cliff area beside an archaic abandoned chapel; and All-Hallows, a glimpse of dæmoniac forces besieging a lonely mediæval church and miraculously restoring the rotting masonry. Its path is certainly one of infinite ramifications; but we should here confine ourselves to its appearance in a relatively unmixed state, where it determines and dominates the work of artwork containing it.
This ingredient should of necessity enter into all work both prose and verse treating broadly of life; and we are subsequently not surprised to discover a share in such writers as the poet Browning, whose Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came is instinct with hideous menace, or the novelist Joseph Conrad, who often wrote of the darkish secrets within the sea, and of the dæmoniac driving power of Fate as influencing the lives of lonely and maniacally resolute males. Deserving of distinguished notice as a forceful craftsman to whom an unseen mystic world is ever a detailed and very important actuality is the poet Walter de la Mare, whose haunting verse and exquisite prose alike bear consistent traces of a wierd vision reaching deeply into veiled spheres of beauty and horrible and forbidden dimensions of being. It may be well to comment right here that occult believers are most likely much less effective than materialists in delineating the spectral and the unbelievable, since to them the phantom world is so commonplace a actuality that they are inclined to consult with it with less awe, remoteness, and impressiveness than do those that see in it an absolute and stupendous violation of the natural order.
Occasionally he sinks to sheer whimsical phantasy of the Barrie order. A bit of boy is thrown out of his thoughts at sight of somebody or one thing he spies together with her, and a younger girl comes to a terrible end in similar style. You can not have another conviction for sexual battery, lewd or lascivious offenses involving someone underneath age 16, sexual efficiency by a toddler, computer pornography, or an analogous crime in another jurisdiction. In tropical countries, individuals with albinism who shouldn’t have entry to adequate pores and skin protection may develop life-threatening pores and skin cancers. Comparisons primarily based on appearance might also be misleading, and can’t set up a positive identification with out some chance of error. May Sinclair’s Uncanny Stories comprise extra of conventional “occultism” than of that artistic therapy of concern which marks mastery on this subject, and are inclined to lay extra stress on human emotions and psychological delving than upon the stark phenomena of a cosmos totally unreal. Of those only one, dealing with a glimpse of Pan and his aura of fright, could also be mentioned to carry the true ingredient of cosmic horror.