The Watcher, and other Weird Tales. By J. Sheridan Le
Fanu. (Downey and Co.)—The power possessed by the late Mr. Sheridan
Le Fenn of summoning the eerie and terrible from the vasty deep of his own imagination was very genuine—quite as genuine as that of Edgar Allan Poe—and it was manifested in his unequal
and not always satisfactory novels. It was, however, a power of the kind which is exhibited to greater advantage in a short than in a long story, and it is a consciousness of this, no doubt, which has induced his son, Mr. Brinsley Sheridan Le Faun, to reprint several "weird stories" which, with the exception of the first, "The Watcher," are taken from the "Purcell Papers," that have already been published under the editorship of Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves. If ever man had the Shakesperian power of "moving a horror quickly," it was Le Fenn, and it may be doubted if even he has shown it to better purpose than in "The Watcher," to which the place of honour is given in this volume, and which shows how a man is pursued and crashed by the memory—in a ghostly form—of his own evil deeds. Not less notable are "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess," and "A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family." In the one a murder, in the other a suicide through insanity produced by crime, are seen coming on by the reader, who yet feels quite helpless to prevent either. But there is not a weak tale—there is not a weak line—in the whole collec- tion. These stories were indeed eminently worth reprinting, if only to prove to present-day dealers in the horrible that they have still in a deceased writer a most formidable rival. The illustra- tions deserve a word of commendation; their ghostliness is quite as remarkable as that of the letterpress.
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