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[a] It may not be unacceptable to our readers, to quote, in this place,
a stanza, from an Ode to Horror in the Student, ii. 313. It alludes
to the story of a French gentleman, who, going into the catacombs,
not far from Cairo, with some Arab guides, was there robbed by them,
and left; a huge stone being placed over the entrance.
What felt the Gallic, traveller,
When far in Arab desert, drear,
He found within the catacomb,
Alive, the terrors of a tomb?
While many a mummy, through the shade,
In hieroglyphic stole arrayed,
Seem'd to uprear the mystic head,
And trace the gloom with ghostly tread;
Thou heard'st him pour the stifled groan,
Horror! his soul was all thy own! ED.
[b] See Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions. It is to be regretted, that
Coleridge has never yet gratified the wish he professed to feel, in
the first volume of his Friend, p. 246, to devote an entire work to
the subject of dreams, visions, ghosts, witchcraft, &c; in it we
should have had the satisfaction of tracing the workings of a most
vivid imagination, analyzed by the most discriminating judgment. See
Barrow's sermon on the being of God, proved from supernatural
effects. We need scarcely request the reader to bear in mind, that
Barrow was a mathematician, and one of the most severe of
reasoners.
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