the ancestors of the savage were-wolf, who figures in Marryat's
_Phantom Ship_, may perhaps be discovered in Petronius' _Supper
of Trimalchio_. The descent of Bram Stoker's infamous vampire
Dracula may be traced back through centuries of legend.
Hobgoblins, demons, and witches mingle grotesquely with the
throng of beautiful princesses, queens in glittering raiment,
fairies and elves. Without these ugly figures, folk-tales would
soon lose their power to charm. All tale tellers know that fear
is a potent spell. The curiosity which drove Bluebeard's wife to
explore the hidden chamber lures us on to know the worst, and as
we listen to horrid stories, we snatch a fearful joy. Human
nature desires not only to be amused and entertained, but moved
to pity and fear. All can sympathise with the youth, who could
not shudder and who would fain acquire the gift.

From English literature we gain no more than brief, tantalising
glimpses of the vast treasury of folk-tales and ballads that
existed before literature became an art and that lived on side by
side with it, vitalising and enriching it continually. Yet here
and there we catch sudden gleams like the fragment in _King
Lear_:

"Childe Roland to the dark tower came.
His word was still Fie, Foh and Fum,
I smell the blood of a British man."

or Benedick's quotation from the _Robber Bridegroom_:

"It is not so, it was not so, but, indeed, God forbid that
it should be so."