These poems, distributed impartially among the
various characters, are introduced with the same laborious
artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though
suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to
scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed
be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to
night or to the moon, however profound her woes. Superhuman
strength and courage is an endowment necessary to all who would
dwell in the realms of terror and survive the fierce struggle for
existence. Peacock, in _Nightmare Abbey_, paints the Shelley of
1812 in Scythrop, who devours tragedies and German romances, and
is troubled with a "passion for reforming the world." "He slept
with _Horrid Mysteries_ under his pillow, and dreamed of
venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight
conventions in subterranean caves... He had a certain portion of
mechanical genius which his romantic projects tended to develop.
He constructed models of cells and recesses, sliding panels and
secret passages, that would have baffled the skill of the
Parisian police." His bearing was that of a romantic villain: "He
stalked about like the grand Inquisitor, and the servants flitted
past him like familiars.
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