Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

"Like the dry corpse which stood upright." – See the Second Book of Kings, chap. xiii. v. 20 and 21. Thirty years ago this impressive incident was made the subject of a large altar-piece by Mr Alston, an interesting American artist, then resident in London.

13

"African Obeah." – Thirty-years ago it would not have been necessary to say one word of the Obi or Obeah magic; because at that time several distinguished writers (Miss Edgeworth, for instance, in her Belinda) had made use of this superstition in fictions, and because the remarkable history of Three-finger'd Jack, a story brought upon the stage, had made the superstition notorious as a fact. Now, however, so long after the case has probably passed out of the public mind, it may be proper to mention – that when an Obeah man, i. e., a professor of this dark collusion with human fears and human credulity, had once woven his dreadful net of ghostly terrors, and had thrown it over his selected victim, vainly did that victim flutter, struggle, languish in the meshes; unless the spells were reversed, he generally perished; and without a wound except from his own too domineering fancy.

14

What follows, I think, (for book I have none of any kind where this paper is proceeding,) viz. et serâ sub nocte rudentum, is probably a mistake of Virgil's; the lions did not roar because night was approaching, but because night brought with it their principal meal, and consequently the impatience of hunger.

15

"Kilcrops." – See, amongst Southey's early poems, one upon this superstition. Southey argues contra; but for my part, I should have been more disposed to hold a brief on the other side.

16

In this place I derive my feeling partly from a lovely sketch of the appearance, in verse, by Mr Wordsworth; partly from my own experience of the case; and, not having the poems here, I know not how to proportion my acknowledgments.

17

"And so, then," the Cynic objects, "you rank your own mind (and you tell us so frankly) amongst the primary formations?" As I love to annoy him, it would give me pleasure to reply – "Perhaps I do." But as I never answer more questions than are necessary, I confine myself to saying, that this is not a necessary construction of the words. Some minds stand nearer to the type of the original nature in man, are truer than others to the great magnet in our dark planet. Minds that are impassioned on a more colossal scale than ordinary, deeper in their vibrations, and more extensive in the scale of their vibrations – whether, in other parts of their intellectual system, they had or had not a corresponding compass – will tremble to greater depths from a fearful convulsion, and will come round by a longer curve of undulations.

18

i. e. (As on account of English readers is added,) the recognition of his true identity, which in one moment, and by a horrid flash of revelation, connects him with acts incestuous, murderous, parricidal, in the past, and with a mysterious fatality of woe lurking in the future.

19

Euripides.