the haunted castle

Front matter

Ny

AIAN x

SANA

I

. The Haunted Castle as described

. Continuance of the picture of the Haunted Castle in later literature iit

LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE PICTURE OF THE HAUNTED CASTLE

Refinement of Walpole’s style—Lewis’s horror-romantic_realism— Disintegration of the Walpole-Radcliffe stage setting and the ensuing greater liberty—Development of the Haunted Castle along new paths 5 ; - ; ; - ; <

by Lewis—Above-ground part of

the monastery at Madrid—Lindenberg Castle—Stage setting for

The Castle Spectve—The Haunted Castle in the plays and ballads

of Lewis—Subterranean portion of the Madrid monastery—The

German Burgverliess—Atmosphere of dungeon and graveyards—

Nature-setting in Lewis’s work—tThe bell . . 2 -

. Walter Scott and the Haunted Castle—Lay of the Last Minstvel—

Marmion—W oodstock—Ivanhoe—Part played by the Haunted Castle inthe historical novel . é : 2 Z - :

The Haunted Castle in the works of S. T. Coleridge—Christabel, Remorse and Zapolja—Relation of Byron to the horror-romanticist stage— Hours of Idleness, Lava, The Prisoner of Chillon and Mazeppa— His Oriental romanticism and sense of Nature ATE a é

The Haunted Castle in the early works of Shelley—Poems— Zastyvozzi and St. Ivvyne, and the influence of Lewis and Radcliffe in these—Shelley’s sense of Nature . ; 5

. C. R. Maturin’s stage of horrors—The Fatal Revenge—The Milesian

Chief— Bertvram—M anuel— Fredolfo—Melmoth the Wanderer— William Godwin’s Caleb Williams and Leon—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . 5

Idyllic landscape attached to the Haunted Castle—Robert Southey— Joan of Avc—Thalaba the Destvoyer—Madoc—The Curse of Kehama— Rodevick—Southey and the Haunted Castle—The epilogue to Joan of Avc—Odes and Ballads—Thalaba and Madoc —Southey’s Orientalism, a Gothic trait—The bell—Southey’s roots in horror-romanticism—Coleridge’s sense of Nature and his idyllic landscapes—Horror-romanticism in the early work of Wordsworth—His sense of Nature and progress to real Nature— Traits from the sphere of horror-romanticism in Thomas Moore— Ballads and Lalla Rookh 4 : : Nets

Lytton’s Zanoni and Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun—Poe’s William Wilson, Ligeia, The Assignation, The Oval Portrait, The Masque of Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher

. Significance of the Haunted Castle for later literature—The historical novel—Scenes of terror in mneo-romantic literature—New machinery for its transformation—-The chief themes proceeding from its circle . 5 .

IV THE CRIMINAL MONK

Ambrosio derived from France—The monks of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe—Merits of Lewis in making known the type of criminal monk—Monks in German romantic literature—Ambrosio a conglomerate of Laurent in Les Victimes Cloityées and Montoni in Udolpho—Belongs outwardly to the line of Manfred—His station in life and fall, and the effect on the reader of his fate—Fault in the method of temptation .. - i 5 R : : .

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157 167

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SECT. PAGE

2. Attitude of the reader towards The Monk—Later figures who spring up around Ambrosio—Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Italian (Schedoni) . 176

3. Other descendants—Maturin’s The Fatal Revenge ‘(Schemoli) — Morosini in The Milesian Chief—Scott’s Ivanhoe (Brian de Bois- Guilbert)—Landor’s trilogy Andvea of Hungary (Fra Rupert) . 180

4. Double life led by Ambrosio and the followers attracted by it— E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Eli xiv of the Devil (Medardus)—Victor Hugo’s Notve Dame de Payis (Claude Frollo)—E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Fréulein von Scudery (the goldsmith Cardillac)—R. L. Stevenson’s Stvange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. a ea Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray c 183

5. Direct descendants of Ambrosio— Double personality — Poe’s Wiliam Wilson and the Man of the Crowd—Double gee and the theory of heredity—-Tannhauser and Medardus . 188

V

THE WANDERING JEW AND THE PROBLEM OF NEVER-ENDING LIFE

1. Chronicles of Roger of; Wendover and Matthew of Paris—Biblical foundation of the legend—Connection with Buddha—Connection of the legend of Malkus with that of St. John—Influence of the story of Cain—The names Cartaphilus and Johannes Buttadeus— Book on Ahasuerus from the year 1602—The name Ahasuerus— French variants of the work . : : 5 3 . LOE

2. Ahasuerus in seventeenth and eighteenth century literature—Goethe and the Ahasuerus legend—Chr. D. Fr. Schubart’s poem The Wandering Jew—Schiller’s Geistevsehey—Percy’s ballad. . 194

3. Ahasuerus in The Monk—Agreement with Schubart’s conception—His melancholy and outward appearance which links him to the line of Manfred—His glance—Development of the romantic glance . 197

4. The story of Faust and Ambrosio’s bargain for his soul—The story of Theophilus—The story of St. Barsisa—Augustin Calmet’s work— Michel Lovis and Urban Grandier’s bargain for their souls—

The Wandering Jew and the tale of Faust—The sp nvosop net Ss Stone and the Elixir of Life—Eternal youth and health 6 199

5. Godwin’s St. Leon—Hermippus Redivivus—Skill of St. Leon at alchemy. Shelley and the Ahasuerus motive—Queen Mab—The ballads and fragments of a poem on the te mea le Irvyne and Ginotti—Hellas_. : ee? OL

6. Southey’s Curse of Kehama—Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer . rn 207

7. Lytton’s Zanoni—The Rosicrucian Brotherhood—Contents of Zanoni—The Rosicrucians Zanoni and Mejnour—Zanoni’s glance—Mejnour’s laboratory—Lytton’s tale, The Haunted House—Rider Haggard—Pierre Benoit . : : - > e209

8. The various groups of themes in literature derived from the story of Ahasuerus—Its adaptability to many purposes . 4 : i SH DES:

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VI = THE BYRONIC HERO

SECT.

1. The line of Manfred—Hamlet, Eblis, Satan—Lovelace and Zeluco, etc.—Oswald in Wordsworth’s play The Borderers — Coleridge’s Ordonio (in the play Remorse)—Schiller’s Karl Moor—Godwin’s Bethlem Gabor—The French ova of Wialsel Rereae ERG origin of the Byronic hero

2. Part of Walter Scott in the creation of tue Byconie era Bde of the Last Minstvel—Marmion—Lady of the Deh DE rise of the Isles— Harold the Dauntless . ;

3. The part of Byron— The Giaour—The Bride of Wise ice The Casi Lava— The Siege of Covinth— Parisina— The Prisoner of Chillon—M azeppa—The Island ae 4. Poems of Byron’s youth—Childe Harold—Don Juan —Byvon e aadehes the dark hero with a definite form and character

Vil GHOSTS AND DEMONIAC BEINGS

1. Use of ghosts an old-established practice in literature—Belief in ghosts one of the commonest traits in folk-lore—First stage of their use— Moral reason for their introduction—The ghost a deus ex machina —Appearance of the ghost as an important factor in romantic circumstances—A new chapter in the history of ghosts—The ghosts of Margaret and Sweet William—Significance of Percy’s ghost-ballads—Birger’s Lenore—Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogene

2. Sources of the ballad of Alonzo — Percy’s Margaret and William — Biirger’s Lenardo und Blandine and Lenore — Schiller’s Geistersehey—The highest point of terror in Alonzo—The tale of the Bleeding Nun in The Monk—Its fundamental motive and highest achievement of terror—Ghost of Antonia’s mother—Condition of effectivity in use of se ee rar by Lewis in spook-romanticism . 3

3. Traces of Lewis’s Siese eae Ss M aymion, ha of the Last M: oe. Bride of Lammermoor, The Tapestried Chamber, The Betrothed,

Byron’s Oscar of Alva and Lara—Shelley's ballads—Ghasta, A Ballad and The Spectral Horseman

_--4. Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner—kinship with host scene Eien at the height of a festival—Relation of mae ai to ee romanticism .

5. Traces of the ghost-scene in Poe’ s sarees ATaende = Red Death and the Shadow—Emily Bronté’s Wuthering Heights .

6. Lucifer in Lewis’s novel—Lucifer’s outward appearance at the encounter with Antonia—His beauty—His melancholy—Interest of the Romanticists in the Devil—Materialistic igi oe es ra SS 9 —Examples of use of the Devil

7. The assistant of Lucifer, Matilda—Cazotte’s Le Diable ene Carathis in Vathek—-Ambrosio’s temptation by a picture—The picture in Schiller’s Gezsterseher—Other demons and = in Lewis’s works

___8. Coleridge’s Gevaldine—The “Dweller <A the Threshold” in lveteor s Zanont and The Haunted and the Haunters — eee of the eyes as a source of terror g. Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstvel—Southey’s ht in denne: mien women—Poe’s Ligeia and Morella—vVilliers de L’Isle-Adam— Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun : :

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PAGE

VIII INCEST AND ROMANTIC EROTICISM.

SECT. PAGE 1. Antiquity of the incest-motive and examples—The Old Testament and the Mosaic Law—Prevalence of incest in folk-poesy—The

Kullervo group of runes . 267 2. Incest in Shakespeare—Hamlet and the psycho-analytical method—

Elizabethan dramatists—Walpole’s Mysterious Mother and

psycho-analysis—Incest a typical romantic theme—Walpole’s

part in its appeararice in his-own.romantic circle 3 2 “19 2 209

3. Mrs. Radcliffe and the incest-motive—Share of Lewis therein—Incest-motive as a touchstone of the author’s character—Scott, Southey and Wordsworth—Walpole, Coleridge, Lewis, Byron and Shelley— Astarie or the question of Byron and Mrs. Leigh—Byron’s defiant character and love of mystery—The Bride of Abydos—Cain— Manfred : zZ 3 : : : 2 Z 5 Re:

_— 4. Relation of Shelley to the incest-motive—His parallel loves—Vision of Alastor—Epipsychidion—Rosalind and Helen—Revolt of Islam—The Cenc . : : : 5 : - : 5 a eae,

5. The important part played by the incest-motive in English romanticism —Various phases of romantic love—Persecution of young women an erotic trait—Scenes of eroticism and horror painted in solitude psychical symptoms of neurasthenia—Fundamental unhealthiness of romantic eroticism c 5 . 2 “ A és e279 IX THE YOUNG HERO AND HEROINE AND OTHER CHARACTERS 1. The tyrant the chief héro of romanticism—Importance notwithstanding of the young hero and heroine. : 4 : eos

\» 2. Young heroes of Walpole, Reeve and Radcliffe—Weakness of Lewis’s

young heroes—Landor’s Gebiy and its high idealism—Southey’s young heroes as the representatives of a bright heroic ideal— Southey’s character and his view of life—His battle on behalf of his ideal of the young hero— Vision of Judgment of Southey and

3. Walter Scott’s young heroes—Dark and blond type and examples . 280

4. Byron’s young hero melts into the Byronic hero—Shelley as the poet

a of the blond idealistic hero—Outward appearance of his hero—

Idealistic, positive and optimistic principles—Spirit of battle—

Freedom from self-imposed sense of guilt—Symbolic of a philosophy

dreaming of happiness for mankind—Place among Landor’s and Southey’s young heroes . : é : : : : 288

5. The young heroine of. Walpole, Reeve and Radcliffe—Radcliffe’s dark and blonde type—Lewis’s Antonia and Virginia—After Lewis the young heroine becomes a parallel type to the young hero—Landor, Southey and Shelley—Rossetti’s Blessed Damozel. 290

6. Walter Scott’s young heroines—Division into Radcliffe’s two types and examples—The real young heroine of Scott—Jeanie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian—Development of the young heroine through Scott to a character of actual life . : : : Re 292

. Byron’s young heroines—Love their only idealism—Their poetically described exterior—Romantic sorrow part of their fate—The young heroine an essential factor in Byron’s poetry - ‘ oe FETS

XV

SECT. PAGE 8. Great significance of the young hero and heroine—The old butler and example of the type—The talkative chambermaid an effective foil to the high-flying heroine—Note on the significance of the central themes of horror-romanticism for later romanticism = 1296 x OTHER THEMES

1. Sense of oppression and of innocence in danger—Perpetual flight— _. The creation of an atmosphere of excitement a special aim of - the horror-romanticists—Crime, and criminals as persecutors o innocence—With a redistribution of parts the chief factors ready for detective and criminological fiction—Godwin’s Caleb Williams and its significance in the development of the detective story— Charles Brockden Brown and his production—Poe’s share in the detective story—The Gold Bug and The Murders in the Rue Morgue—Conan Doyle an imitator of Poe . E 5 «2 299

_-2. Typical themes for a seafaring nation—Defoe and Swift and their nauticalromanticism—Smollett as a depicter of sea-life—Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner the-key_to exotic tales of sufferings at sea— Wordsworth, Scott and Byron as depicters of adventures at sea— Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pymand The Gold Bug—Stevenson’s Tveasure Island—Lasting favour accorded to nautical romanticism . : : : : i : 3 5 1 B05

3. The romantic portrait in Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis—Portrait of Melmoth—Poe’s Oval Portvait—Rossetti’s Hand and Soul, Saint Agnes of Intercession and The Portrait—Lytton’s miniature invested with evil powers—Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray. 304

NG 4. The young hero’s love of solitude—Melancholy, longing for love and \f emotional affinity with nature—Loneliness of the Byronic hero a te matter of morals, of withdrawal beyond good and evil—Madness as a theme of the romantics—Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis— Maturin’s Melmoth—Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo—Scott’s gently insane characters . : : : : : : : e807) 5. The Black Art in horror-romanticism—lIts significance in the creation of mystery—Manfred and Frankenstein. The Jung-Stilling theory of the three components of the human being—Poe’s Mesmeric Revelation and The Case of Mr. Waldemar—The vampire-motive— Byron—Somnambulism—Hypnotism and the transmigration of souls as literary themes—Poe’s Tale of the Ragged Mountains . 309

6. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and its political contents—Godwin’s Enquiry conceyning Political Justice—Poverty of principles in romanticism before the French Revolution—Effect of revolutionary ideals on the mutual groupings of English Romanticists and relation of these groups to each other—Short character-sketches of the chief authors of English romanticism . : : : 5 eee

V7. Exoticism—Predilection for the Middle Ages—Distance, a condition of romance—The Roman Catholic Faith and the Inquisition— Byron’s Orientalism—Hellenism of Landor and Shelley — Exoticism denotes in general liberation from the boundaries set by familiar surroundings 314 8. Style of The Castle of Otvanto—Narrative form used by Reeve and Radcliffe—Modernity of Lewis’s method—Godwin and Maturin as narrators and depicters—Gebiy and the revival of the fantastic epos—The romantic drama and melodrama—The ballad and its significance as a means of spreading the romantic movement— Significance of romanticism as a stage of transit into the new century . ; ; : - : S : 316

XV1 am

CONTENTS ~-

XI SUSPENSE AND TERROR

SECT. PAGE

Ses The romanticism of tersar,” a name-justified by the facts—Its aim —Terror awakening beauty—Preliminary stage of terror—Nature of the state of terror—The creation of suspense a method to achieve terror 5 ‘ ‘ i 5 < ; % 5 319

. Suspense in various works of the school and its various natures— Outward excitement and that created by Sas eI latter a condition forthe achievement of terror . 319

. Suggestion an essential factor in the creation of an cencebhers of terror—Different horror-romanticist works from the standpoint of suggestion—Suggestive realistic treatment of horrors by Lewis— Other examples—Dim consciousness of the Brat value of su Becstien in earlier work of the same class A 321

4. The submersion in an atmosphere of horrors of a nil tS up by suggestion, effected with the aid of the supernatural and unnatural—Different methods of the horror-romanticists in aiming at an atmosphere of horrors—Later horror-romanticists . . ns 25

. Difference between literary horrors and those of the arena—Primary and secondary colours in literary horrors—Romantic atmosphere, \y longing, nocturnal Nature inclining the mind to sensitiveness— Harmony of daytime Nature and the idyllic—Stormy night scenes, sublime mountainous landscape and. solitude—Suffering . and criminality—Tragedy—Terror-awakening beauty : e325 w

Xvil

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE PAGE I. Tue Castte oF OrrANTO 3 : : Frontispiece II. Tue Lone Entuustast ‘ ‘ ‘ : : ook

III. A Typicat Romantic Lanpscapr By Satvator Rosa . 26

IV. THropore anp IsaBELLA IN THE SUBTERRANEAN VAULTS . 40 V. Marruew Grecory Lewis . : ; : : 34390

VI. Tue Temptation or AmMBRosiIO . -. ; : aE ZO

VII. Tue Wanperinc Jew . : : ; ; : =) 104

VIII. Tue Spectre OF THE Susie z E A s P 2 244

I THE HAUNTED CASTLE

I

HE student of English literature is fairly certain at

one time or another, as he arrives at the dawning

romanticism of the latter half of the eighteenth

century, to come across a small and unassuming booklet entitled The Castle of Otranto, with the subtitle A Gothic Story. ‘The book consists of some hundred and fifty pages and has as frontispiece a fine steel engraving of an elderly man with a wide-awake expression dressed in eighteenth-century costume; underneath is the magnificent name: Horace Watpote, Eart or Orrorp. Acquaintance with the book in question, which appeared in 1764, is apt to awaken a varied series of visions of romantic authors and of the materials and history of romanticism, for scarcely a handbook of English literature exists in which some kind of mention is not made of it and of its noble author.

Horace Walpole, born in 1717, was the third son of Robert Walpole, the all-powerful minister of George II. After the usual education at Eton and Cambridge, he was despatched on the Grand Tour to France and Italy, in the company of an Eton schoolmate of like age, the poet Thomas Gray. Their travels lasted two years, after which the friends fell out ? and returned to England. Walpole was now entrusted with certain lucrative posts and for twenty-six years continued a Member of Parliament. At no time had he any particular reputation in political circles, and when his father’s career closed in 1742, his private interests began gradually to gain the upper hand. In 1747 he purchased the property called Strawberry Hill, on the Thames, near Windsor, and there he spent the remainder of his life, wholly absorbed in antiquarian, artistic and literary interests. He inherited the title of Earl of Orford in 1791 and in 1797 he died.

I A

THE HAUNTED CAS 1 Ee

We may regard Walpole as a typical upper-class dilettante who, living in comfortable circumstances and lacking a definite aim in life, is tempted to devote his time to congenial minor occupations. Feeling himself attracted by the past, by the “ Gothic Era,” * he commenced to study the period with all the spasmodic enthusiasm of the amateur. The antiquarian spirit has ever been strong in England, and in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the bonds of classicism were beginning to break and attention was concentrating upon those things which seemed to bear the ennobling and inspiring marks of time, it broke out in a laborious studying, describing and collecting of old coins, buildings and ruins, ancient poetry, etc. While better-equipped men were patiently creating a scientific basis for such study, devoted and enthusiastic laymen of the type of Walpole appeared; men of a class whose ludicrous side has been perpetuated by Scott in the person of Mr. Oldbuck, who provided the model for Dickens’ immortal chairman of the Pickwick Club. To be sure, the satire hardly applies to Walpole, who was in his way a learned man, and whose keen intelligence and refined, even if sometimes mistaken, feeling for art awaken respect; nevertheless, the “ Gothic” rubbish collected at his country-house recalls irresistibly certain of the best and most stupendous finds of Messrs. Oldbuck and Pickwick.!

The memory of Walpole as a collector of antiquities has been preserved chiefly through his whim of transforming Strawberry Hill into a kind of Gothic castle. ‘The elements and basic outlines of Gothic architecture had not at that time been fully investigated, and the necessity for a thorough reconstruction on the basis of style remaining unperceived, the methods adopted were simple enough. In the measure permitted by the previous structure of Strawberry Hill and the disposition of its rooms, a round tower was added here, a chapel thrown out there, stained glass placed in the windows, old armour and weapons distributed in suitable spots, a mantelpiece made out of an altar, and so on, the result being fondly imagined to constitute a Gothic castle. Thus twenty years were occupied in these.reconstructions and the collection of material, during which time Strawberry Hill acquired fame and became a resort for hosts of the curious. The proprietor and creator of the establishment was apparently well satisfied es the result, for he published an illustrated account of the

ace.*

Though Walpole had thus revealed his imperfect acquaint- — o

DHE HAUNTED, CASTLE ance with the Gothic style, Strawberry Hill helped considerably in bringing about renewed knowledge and appreciation of the period. It is permissible for us to smile at Walpole’s building, but it has its own special significance as an expression of the conception which, despite the many well-preserved real medieval relics in England, Walpole and the majority of his contemporaries had formed for themselves of that almost legendary building, “ the haunted castle,” the notion of which he attempted to delineate in his new romanticism. The knowledge that this famous stage-setting of the “ terror-romanticists” actually existed in two separate versions before its introduction into literature is not without interest.

This is not to be taken as implying that Walpole’s Gothic building activities at Strawberry Hill were the sole generators of his desire to experiment with the Gothic spirit in literature. The attention of those days was in general, and in a manner expressly calculated to inspire authors, directed towards the Gothic. Edmund Burke had, in 1756, published his study of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, thereby formulating the theory which the whole school of terror followed in

ractice. And in 1762, two years before the appearance of The Castle of Otranto, Bishop Hurd (1720-1808) had published those Letters on Chivalry and Romance, which furnished powerful support to the brothers Warton in their delight and interest in antiquities. Hurd appears as an enthusiastic advocate of the ‘“‘ Gothic Era,” propounding the question whether Gothic romance might not contain something peculiarly suited to the views of a genius and to the ends of poetry, and whether the philosophically inclined people of his own day had not gone too far in making of it a perpetual source of ridicule and contempt. He avers that if Homer had known it, he would have preferred it to the manners of his own times, as he would have found in it more “gallantry”? and “‘superior solemnity of superstitions.” The influence of such views and of Hurd’s book in drawing attention to Gothicism cannot be overestimated. Among those in whom a desire was born to attempt practical results in this field was Walpole. . His knowledge of medieval conditions was, however, fragmentary and inexact. He had his own conception of its architecture, but he knew nothing of its literature, with the exception, perhaps, of a few popular ballads. When speaking of Gothicism in the prologues and epilogues to the Castle of Otranto and to his play The Mysterious Mother, he instinctively appeals to

Shakespeare who was, as we shall see later, an important guide for the author in matters and conceptions connected with Gothicism.

Walpole was a busy letter-writer, his correspondents including the poet Gray and Madame du Deffand, whom he had met in Paris in 1765. As a composer of lively and witty letters he was among the foremost writers of his day. Of the rest of his productions I have mentioned only his play The Mysterious Mother, written in 1768, that being the only work except The Castle of Otranto, which falls within the sphere of this study.*

Zz

At this point I would like to bring in two women authors who make their appearance in the field opened up by Walpole, for in view of the material used in building up their books they are best dealt with side by side with him.

Clara Reeve (1729-1807) was the daughter of a clergyman and lived a great part of her life at Ipswich. She appears to have belonged to the type of silent literary worker whose days pass in study and the planning of works, but who are unable to discover that special field which would bring them unqualified success. She must be regarded as a learned woman, for she was capable of translating into English drgenis, the famous Latin romance of the Scotch writer John Barclay ; her translation was published (the original appeared in 1621) in 1772 as The Phemx. She had thus already reached the age of fortythree when her first work appeared. About the same time her attention was attracted by The Castle of Otranto, and in 1777 she published a book, written according to a literary programme of her own, called The Champion of Virtue: A Gothic Story. ‘The following year a new edition appeared with the title of The Old English Baron, by which name it is now generally known. Since then many further editions have appeared of this work which, among all her rich production, is the only one falling, either in respect of subject or general importance, within the limits of the present study.

The other author in question is Ann Radcliffe, née Ward (1764-1823). She is reported to have received a good education and to have possessed opportunities of meeting many well-known people at the home of her relatives. In intellect and outward appearance, indeed, in her whole being, she was a notable and fascinating figure. At the age of twenty-three she married William Radcliffe, editor and proprietor of the a

English Chronicle. Ann Radcliffe was born in the July preceding that December which saw the appearance of The Castle of Otranto. At twenty-five she set out to continue the literary tradition inaugurated at her birth with The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, which was published in 1789. Henceforward the number of her works increases rapidly: The Sicilian Romance appeared in 1790 and The Romance of the Forest in the following year. Her most famous book, The Mysteries of Udolpho, was published in 1794. This interval of three years was no long time, remembering the unusual length of the book. The Italian, also a lengthy work, appeared | in 1797, when the authoress had reached the age of thirtythree. These novels constitute the bulk of her production and will be dealt with in these pages.

In 1795 she published an account of her travels on the Rhine and in the Lake District (4 Fourney through Holland, etc.). After the publication of The Italian she remained altogether silent, partly, no doubt, because she had exhausted her own particular field of work. After her death a romance, Gaston de Blondeville, saw the light (1826) ; her poems, many of which are contained in her romances, appeared in a separate collection in 1816.’

During his constant endeavours to provide his “‘ Gothic ” castle with relics of medieval days, the idea seems to have occurred to Walpole that it might be worth while trying to affix and to present to others, in the form of fiction, some of the Gothic fancies with which his own brain was teeming. As to the manner in which this idea was realized, he himself has left us, in a letter to a friend, the following original account : “‘ Shall I even confess to you, what was the origin of this romance ? I waked one morning in the beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled, like mine, with Gothic story) and that, on the uppermost banister of a great staircase, I saw a gigantic hand in armor. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it. Add, that I was very glad to think of anything rather than politics. In short, I was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening I wrote from the time

I had drank my tea, about six o’clock, till half an hour after one in the morning, when my hands and fingers were so weary, that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking in the middle of a paragraph.” §

We observe the author’s satisfaction with his work and that he was no longer afraid to disclose himself as its writer. In this he was affected by the reception accorded to the book, as until he was assured of its success he had attempted to hide his paternity. The first edition of The Castle of Otranto, printed at his own printing-press at Strawberry Hill, had been given out as a translation by “ W. Marshall, Gent.,” from the Italian manuscript of a certain “ Onuphrio Muralto.” To mislead the public Walpole had written in his preface: “The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of christianity ; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. ‘The style is the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been 1095, the era of the first crusade, and 1243, the | date of the last, or not long afterwards.” . . . The author had obviously been afraid that the strangeness of his book might well, at a time when his father’s enemy, Doctor Johnson, © and the school of taste represented by him still wielded an unshaken and formidable power over the reading public, expose him to ridicule, and had therefore deemed it prudent to hide for the time being behind a pseudonym and the artifice of a literary hoax. But critics and the public are not so easily misled. Was not the book printed at Strawberry Hill, whose owner’s Gothic interests were widely known? Even the name “Onuphrio Muralto” carried a faint oral suggestion of “Horace Walpole.” The preface, too, contained unmistakable hints that the author had had some actual castle in his mind, which could be none other than Strawberry Hill. Therefore, when the book was favourably received, Walpole emerged from his hiding-place, in the next edition defending his tactics by explaining that he had mistrusted his own abilities and the novelty of the attempt. He had “resigned his performance to the impartial judgment of the public, determined to let it perish in obscurity, if disapproved ; nor meaning to avow such a trifle, unless better judges should pronounce that he might own it without a blush.?”®

_ The stage-setting with which before long the student of horror-romanticism is inevitably confronted is a species of old “Gothic ” castle, the scene of innumerable horrors, capable of touching the imagination each time we see it, as when the curtain rises on ramparts and towers bathed in the spectral moonlight of Hamlet. The reader quickly observes that this “‘ haunted castle” plays an exceedingly important part in these romances ; so important, indeed, that were it eliminated the whole fabric of romance would be bereft of its foundation and would lose its predominant atmosphere. ‘The entire stock-in-trade of horror-romanticism in its oldest and purest form consists, as will be shown in the following pages, chiefly of the properties and staff of this haunted castle, and, as we proceed farther in time, of motives based in the first instance upon these, so that to my mind acquaintance with the materials of horror-romanticism is best begun with this central stage and its appurtenances. Let us start, therefore, with a visit to the ancient vaults of Otranto Castle.”