gratitude; pressed large gifts on Haroun, and seemed pained when they were
refused. This time Haroun conversed freely, drawing forth Grayle's own
irregular, perverted, stormy, but powerful intellect.

I can best convey the general nature of Grayle's share in the dialogue
between himself, Haroun, and Derval--recorded in the narrative in words
which I cannot trust my memory to repeat in detail--by stating the effect
it produced on my own mind. It seemed, while I read, as if there passed
before me some convulsion of Nature,--a storm, an earthquake,--outcries
of rage, of scorn, of despair, a despot's vehemence of will, a rebel's
scoff at authority; yet, ever and anon, some swell of lofty thought, some
burst of passionate genius,--abrupt variations from the vaunt of superb
defiance to the wail of intense remorse.

The whole had in it, I know not what of uncouth but colossal,--like the
chant, in the old lyrical tragedy, of one of those mythical giants, who,
proud of descent from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements,
while still crude and conflicting, to be crushed under the rocks, upheaved
in their struggle, as Order and Harmony subjected a brightening Creation
to the milder influences throned in Olympus. But it was not till the
later passages of the dialogue in which my interest was now absorbed, that
the language ascribed to this sinister personage lost a gloomy pathos not
the less impressive for the awe with which it was mingled. For, till
then, it seemed to me as if in that tempestuous nature there were still
broken glimpses of starry light; that a character originally lofty, if
irregular and fierce, had been embittered by early and continuous war with
the social world, and had, in that war, become maimed and distorted; that,
under happier circumstances, its fiery strength might have been
disciplined to good; that even now, where remorse was so evidently
poignant, evil could not be irredeemably confirmed.