Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all
Commingled, making up a canopy
Of shapes, and forms, and tendencies to shape,
That shift and vanish, change and interchange …
Strange congregation! yet not slow to meet
Eyes that perceive through minds that can inspire.[1]
Even if we hold that she makes too much of her materials, and that, like Racine's Hebrew queen,
D'un vain songe peut-être elle fait trop de compte,
there is yet no gainsaying the vraisemblance of her narrative art, or the contagious influence which it engenders, She almost compels you to feel, if not own, the strange awe of
spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.[2]
She has been said to be enamoured of her revenants and restants, because they convey to her soul the dear assurance of a world to come—the purpose of this book being the conveyance of that grand conviction to other minds: she is eager for the investigation of any new facts, in how questionable a guise soever they may come, which may, perhaps, let in some more light upon the darkness which encompasses the mystery of life. Famous company would she have been for John Leyden, who, when he got upon this topic, used to rivet the attention of Scott and other beaux esprits, by "maintaining powerfully," and "with great learning," the effete traditions of ghost-seeing, and the "exploded doctrines of demonology," and sometimes "affect to confirm the strange tales with which his memory abounded, by reference to the ghostly experiences of his childhood." In him she would have hailed an M.D. who, in spite of his diploma, would claim exemption from the stern strictures she passes on scientific "critics and collegos" en masse, as systematically and most ignorantly "putting down" every new discovery—mesmerism and clairvoyance, for instance—which opposes the textus receptus of their inspired rule of faith, or which "promises to be troublesome from requiring new thought to render it intelligible." Against these doctors throughout all the world Mrs. Crowe uplifts a ringing, protestant cry, as stiff-necked and dull-pated partisans, who, having declared against any new theory or discovery in the outset, find it "important to their petty interests that the thing shall not be true; and they determine that it shall not if they can help it." Her principle is—as expounded in another of her works—that on subjects connected with the invisible world, all à priori reasoning is perfectly worthless; the possibility of the reappearance of the dead, for instance—that is, of their rendering their presence sensible to us, who are yet in the flesh, and whose gross organs are only calculated and designed to take cognisance of material objects—is a question that can be argued, only by experience; while this very experience, in all ages and countries, is, she contends, in favour of the fact; and although allowing herself ignorant of the peculiar conditions under which "preternatural" recognitions take place, whether depending on the state of the seer or the seen, or the mutual rapport of both, she states her perfect satisfaction that such
