rp-strings of the soul, may make an
extraordinary music. But the sounds produced depend not upon the impulse
conveyed to the instrument, but on the quality and condition of the
instrument itself. Without the impulse a large and various mind may lie
quiescent. With the impulse a small and disordered spirit may make
a very considerable sound. In the very loftiest flights of genius we
discern a sort of glorious dementia. All readers have found it in the
last splendid verse of 'Adonais.' It proclaims itself in Keats in the
wild _naivete_ of the inquiry, 'Muse of my native land, am I inspired?'
The faculty of the very greatest among the great lies in the existence
of this inrush of emotion, in strict subordination to the intellectual
powers. To be without it precludes greatness; to be wholly subject to
its influence is to be insane. Miss Corelli experiences the inrush
of emotion in great force, but, unfortunately for her work, and for
herself, the sense of power which it inspires is not co-ordinate with
the strength of intellect which is essential to its control.

Miss Corelli has ventured freely into the domain of spiritual things,
and has dealt, with more daring than knowledge, with esoteric mysteries.
The great reading public knows little of these matters, because, as a
rule, they have been expressed by writers whose works are too abstruse
to catch the popular ear. It is only when they are handled by writers
of imaginative fiction that they become popularly known at all. In 'The
Sorrows of Satan' Miss Corelli has earned a reputation for originality
by advancing a theory which is older than many of the hills. It has been
for ages a rooted religious belief, but it is wholly in conflict with
the theological ideas which are taught in our churches and chapels, and
has, therefore, a startling air of strangeness to the average church and
chapel-goer.

The theory is thus expressed in Mr. C. G. Harrison's lectures on 'The
Transcendental Universe': 'It is generally supposed that Satan is the
enemy of spirituality in man; that he delights in his degradation, and
views with diabolical satisfaction the development of his lower
nature and all its evil consequences. The wide, and almost universal,
prevalence of this mediaeval superstition only makes it all the more
necessary to protest against it as a grotesque error.... It would
probably be much nearer the truth to say that the degradation and
suffering of mankind, for which the adver