The Great God Pan and the Three Impostors

Arthur Machen was always in perpetual wrath about Non-Conformists; the sight of a Wesleyan or Presbyterian chapel moves him to fury. He viewed hecatombs to Zeus with sympathy, or even human sacrifices to any pagan deity; but never the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting! He possessed a beautiful prose style, and, so far as can be seen, was the master of all writers in English of the supernatural tale. M. R. James was supreme in the old-fashioned ghost-story; and Algernon...
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Arthur Machen was always in perpetual wrath about Non-Conformists; the sight of a Wesleyan or Presbyterian chapel moves him to fury. He viewed hecatombs to Zeus with sympathy, or even human sacrifices to any pagan deity; but never the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting! He possessed a beautiful prose style, and, so far as can be seen, was the master of all writers in English of the supernatural tale.

M. R. James was supreme in the old-fashioned ghost-story; and Algernon Blackwood's essays in superstition have explored every known and unknown corner. Blackwood, however, fires ten duds for every shell which explodes; he can build up a towering edifice of horror only to have its top-story crumble; he often spreads a small amount of ghostliness over so large a surface that its effect is hardly sufficient to make you shiver. But Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan," and certainly of the stories in "The Three Imposters," seems to to be unsurpassed, even by Poe, for horror, and suggestion of diabolism.