To divert the minds of his guests, who were considerably abashed by
this little incident, the Man of Fancy led them through several
apartments of the castle, receiving their compliments upon the taste
and varied magnificence that were displayed in each. One of these
rooms was filled with moonlight, which did not enter through the
window, but was the aggregate of all the moonshine that is scattered
around the earth on a summer night while no eyes are awake to enjoy
its beauty. Airy spirits had gathered it up, wherever they found it
gleaming on the broad bosom of a lake, or silvering the meanders of
a stream, or glimmering among the windstirred boughs of a wood, and
had garnered it in this one spacious hall. Along the walls,
illuminated by the mild intensity of the moonshine, stood a
multitude of ideal statues, the original conceptions of the great
works of ancient or modern art, which the sculptors did but
imperfectly succeed in putting into marble; for it is not to be
supposed that the pure idea of an immortal creation ceases to exist;
it is only necessary to know where they are deposited in order to
obtain possession of them.--In the alcoves of another vast apartment
was arranged a splendid library, the volumes of which were
inestimable, because they consisted, not of actual performances, but
of the works which the authors only planned, without ever finding
the happy season to achieve them. To take familiar instances, here
were the untold tales of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims; the
unwritten cantos of the Fairy Queen; the conclusion of Coleridge's
Christabel; and the whole of Dryden's projected epic on the subject
of King Arthur. The shelves were crowded; for it would not be too
much to affirm that every author has imagined and shaped out in his
thought more and far better works than those which actually
proceeded from his pen. And here, likewise, where the unrealized