recesses of so many Gothic abbeys is but another manifestation of
the Fate-Moon, which shines, foreboding death, after Thorgunna's
funeral, in the Icelandic saga. The witchcraft and demonology
that attracted Scott and "Monk" Lewis, may be traced far beyond
Sinclair's _Satan's Invisible World Discovered_ (1685), Bovet's
_Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_ (1683), or Reginald
Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584) to Ulysses' invocation of
the spirits of the dead,[13] to the idylls of Theocritus and to
the Hebrew narrative of Saul's visit to the Cave of Endor. There
are incidents in _The Golden Ass_ as "horrid" as any of those
devised by the writers of Gothic romance. It would, indeed, be no
easy task to fashion scenes more terrifying than the mutilation
of Socrates in _The Golden Ass_, by the witch, who tears out his
heart and stops the wound with a sponge which falls out when he
stoops to drink at a river, or than the strange apparition of a
ragged, old woman who vanishes after leading the way to the room,
where the baker's corpse hangs behind the door. Though the title
assumes a special literary significance at the close of the
eighteenth century, the tale of terror appeals to deeply rooted
instincts, and belongs, therefore, to every age and clime.




CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF GOTHIC ROMANCE.


To Horace Walpole, whose _Castle of Otranto_ was published on
Christmas Eve, 1764, must be assigned the honour of having
introduced the Gothic romance and of having made it fashionable.