Identifier: booksbookmen00lang (find matches)
Title: Books and bookmen ..
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912
Subjects: Bibliomania Literary forgeries and mystifications
Publisher: London, Longmans, Green
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
at which we shouldrepine. The Japanese artist expresses his own senseof the casual and fluctuating nature of ghosts bydrawing his spectre in shaky lines, as if themodel had given the artist the horrors. Thissiimdacrum rises out of the earth like an exha-lation, and groups itself into shape above thespade with which all that is corporeal of its lateowner has been interred. Please remark theuncomforted and dismal expression of the sijnu-lacnim. We must remember that the ghostor Ka is not the soul, which has otherdestinies in the future world, good or evil, butis only a shadowy resemblance, condemned,as in the Egyptian creed, to dwell in thetomb and hover near it. The Chinese andJapanese have their own definite theory ofthe next world, and we must by no meansconfuse the eternal fortunes of the permanent,conscious, and responsible self, already inhabit-ing other worlds than ours, with the eccentricvagaries of the semi-material tomb-hauntinglarva, which so often develops a noisy and bear-
Text Appearing After Image:
A WELL AND WATER BOGIE. 64 BOOKS AND BOOKMEN. fighting disposition quite unlike the character ofits proprietor in life. The next bogie, so limp and washed-out ashe seems, with his white, drooping dripping armsand hands, reminds us of that horrid Frenchspecies of apparition, la lavandiere de la nuit,who washes dead mens linen in the moonlitpools and rivers. Whether this simulacnini bemeant for the spirit of the well (for everythinghas its spirit in Japan), or whether it be theghost of some mortal drowned in the well, Icannot say with absolute certainty ; but theopinion of the learned tends to the former con-clusion. Naturally a Japanese child, when sentin the dusk to draw water, will do so with fearand trembling, for this limp, floppy apparitionmight scare the boldest. Another bogie, aterrible creation of fancy, I take to be a vampire,about which the curious can read in DomCalmet, who will tell them how whole villagesin Hungary have been depopulated by vam-pires ; or he may study in Fa

Note About Images