“Seize on him, furies! take him to your torments!—
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environ’d me, and howled in mine ears"
Such hideous cries! that with the very noise I made, I prevented poor Mr. Montenero from hearing the answer to some historic question he was asking. Berenice’s eye warned me to lower my voice, and I believe I should have been quiet, but that unluckily, Mowbray set me off in another direction, by reminding me of the tapestry-chamber and Sir Josseline. I remember covering my face with both my hands, and shuddering with horror.
Mr. Montenero asked, “What of the tapestry-chamber?”
And immediately recollecting that I should not, to him, and before his daughter, describe the Jew, who had committed a deed without a name, I with much embarrassment said, that “it was nothing of any consequence—it was something I could not explain.”
I left it to Mowbray’s superior presence of mind, and better address, to account for it, and I went on with Berenice. Whenever my imagination was warmed, verses poured in upon my memory, and often without much apparent connexion with what went before. I recollected at this moment the passage in Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination” describing the early delight the imagination takes in horrors:—the children closing round the village matron, who suspends the infant audience with her tales breathing astonishment; and I recited all I recollected of
“Evil spirits! of the deathbed call
Of him who robb’d the widow, and devour’d
The orphan’s portion—of unquiet souls
Ris’n from the grave, to ease the heavy guilt
Of deeds in life conceal’d—of shapes that walk
At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave
The torch of Hell around the murderer’s bed!”
Mowbray and Mr. Montenero, who had stayed behind us a few minutes, came up just as I was, with much emphasis and gesticulation,
“Waving the torch of Hell."
I am sure I must have been a most ridiculous figure. I saw Mowbray on the brink of laughter; but Mr. Montenero looked so grave, that he fixed all my attention. I suddenly stopped.
“We were talking of ‘The Pleasures of Imagination,’” said Berenice to her father. “Mr. Harrington is a great admirer of Akenside.”