self for the reception of poetry or to induce its flow. His poem is only a lightning-rod to attract a fluid over which he has no control before it comes to him. There may be a poetic art, such as verse-making, but to talk about the art of poetry is to talk nonsense. It is men of genteel intellects who speak of the art of poetry. The man who wrote the Art of Poetry knew better than to credit the possible existence of any such art. He himself says

the poet is born, not made.

I am very bad at dates, but I think Le Fanu wrote Green Tea before a whole community of Canadian nuns were thrown into the most horrible state of nervous misery by excessive indulgence in that drug. Of all the horrible tales that are not revolting, Green Tea is I think the most horrible. The bare statement that an estimable and pious man is haunted by the ghost of a monkey is at the first blush funny. But if you have not read the story read it, and see how little of fun is in it. The horror of the tale lies in the fact that this apparition of a monkey is the only probable

ghost in fiction. I have not the book by me as I write, and I cannot recall the victim's name, but he is a clergyman, and, as far as we know to the contrary, a saint. There is no reason on earth why he should be pursued by this malignant spectre. He has committed no crime, no sin even. He labours with all the sincerity of a holy man to regain his health and exorcise his foe. He is as crimeless as you or I and infinitely more faultless. He has not deserved his fate, yet he is driven in the end to cut his throat, and you excuse that crime by saying he is mad.

I do not think any additional force is gained in the course of this unique story by the importation of malignant irreverence to Christianity in the latter manifestations of the ape. I think the apparition is at its best and most terrible when it is simply an indifferent pagan, before it assumes the role of antichrist. ape is at his best as a mind-destroyer when the clergyman, going down the avenue in the twilight, raised his eyes and finds the awful presence preceding him along the top of the

This

wall. There the clergyman reaches the acme of piteous, unsupportable horror. In the pulpit with the brute, the priest is fighting against the devil. In the avenue he has not the strengthening or consoling reflection that he is defending a cause, struggling against hell. The instant motive enters into the story the situation ceases to be dramatic and becomes merely theatrical. Every "converted" tinker will tell you stirring stories of his wrestling with Satan, forgetting that it takes two to fight, and what a loathsome creature he himself is. But the conflict between a good man and the unnecessary apparition of this ape is pathetic, horribly pathetic, and full of the dramatic despair of the finest tragedy.

It is desirable at this point to focus some scattered words that have been set down above. The reason this apparition of the ape appears probable is because it is unnecessary. Any one can understand why Macbeth should see that awful vision at the banquet. The apparition of the murdered dead is little more than was to be expected, and can be explained

in an easy fashion. You or I never committed murder, therefore we are not liable to be troubled by the ghost of Banquo. In your life or mine Nemesis is not likely to take heroic dimensions. The spectres of books, as a rule, only excite our imaginative fears, not our personal terrors. The spectres of books have and can have nothing to do with us any more than the sufferings of the Israelites in the desert. When a person of our acquaintance dies, we inquire the particulars of his disease, and then discover the predisposing causes, so that we may prove to ourselves we are not in the same category with him. We do not deny our liability to contract the disease, we deny our likelihood to supply the predisposing causes. He died of aneurism of the aorta: Ah, we say, induced by the violent exercise he took-we never take violent exercise. If not of aneurism of the aorta, but fatty degeneration of the heart: Ab, induced by the sedentary habits of his latter years—we take care to secure plenty of exercise. If a man has been careful of his health and dies, we allege that he took all the robustness out of

his constitution by over-heedfulness; if he has been careless, we say he took no precautions at all; and from either of these extremes we are exempt, and therefore we shall live for ever.

Now here in this story of Green Tea is a ghost which is possible, probable, almost familiar. It is a ghost without genesis or justification. The gods have nothing to do with it. Something, an accident due partly to excessive tea-drinking, has happened to the clergyman's nerves, and the ghost of this ape glides into his life and sits down and abides with him. There is no reason why the ghost should be an ape. When the victim sees the apparition first he does not know it to be an ape. He is coming home in an omnibus one night and descries two gleaming spots of fire in the dark, and from that moment the life of the poor gentleman becomes a ruin. It is a thing that may happen to you or me any day, any hour. That is why Le Fanu's ghost is so horrible. You and I might drink green tea to the end of our days and suffer from nothing more than ordinary impaired digestion. But you or I may get a fall, or a sunstroke, and ever afterwards