“I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time, solitude, and the dark were my hell.” — Charles Lamb, as quoted by John Gross.
Lamb believed that superstition might have generated the apparitions he feared. But at bottom he discounted that. “These terrors are of older standing. They are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal,” he wrote. I thought of Lamb last week when I saw this painting by Gerard Bellaart.
Click the image to enlarge, then click again for a good look.
