The Tale of Terror

ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that for the Mysteries of Udolpho Mrs. Radcliffe received ￡500, and for The Italian ￡800; while for the manuscript of N

t had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. Among Jane Austen's early unpublished writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly romances"; but her spirited defence of

1798) was published by Mrs. Regina Maria Roche, the authoress of The Children of the Abbey (1798), a story almost as famous in its day as Udolpho. The author of The Midnight Bell was one George Walker of Bath, whose record, like that of Miss Eleanor Sleath, who wrote the moving history of The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) in four volumes, may be found in Watts' Bibliotheca Britannica. Horrid Mysteries, perhaps the least credible of the titles, was a translation from the German of the Marquis von Grosse by R. Will.

ies of sentimental fiction, as Biddy Tipkin, in Steele's Tender Husband (1705), had been by romances. I

-the fragile mother, who dies at the heroine's birth, and the tyrannical father-are repudiated at the very outset; and Catherine is one of a family of seven. We cannot conceive that Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines e

to other people's performances with very little fatigue. Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil-she had no notion of drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile, that she

ver at the ag

re was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supporte

bber's attack, a tempest, or a carriage accident. With a sly glance at such dangerous characters as Lady Greystock in The

te the general distress of the work and how she will probably contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of which a last volu

he delightful scene in which Tilney, on the way to the abbey, foretells what Catherine may expect on her arrival. The hall dimly lighted by the expiring embers of a wood fire, the deserted bedchamber "never used since some cousin or kin had died in it about twenty years before," the single lamp, the tapestry, the funereal bed, the broken lute, the ponderous chest, the secret door, the vaulted room, the rusty d

hastily in, and sought some suspension of agony by creeping far beneath the clothes... The storm still raged... Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house before the tempest subsided, and she, unknowing

memories of the Sicilian Romance into weaving a mystery around the fate of Mrs. Tilney, whom she pictures receiving from the hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food. She watches in vain for "glimmering lights," like those in the palace of Mazzini, and determines to search for "a fragmented journal continued to the last gasp," like that of Adeline's father i

ve girl, whose fortunes we follow with the deepest interest. At the close, after Catherine's ignominious journey home, we are back again in the cool

ubina it was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring note in a rollicking high-spirited farce. The plights into which Cherubina is plunged are so needlessly cruel, that, while only intending to make her ridiculous, Barrett succeeds rather in making her pitiable. But many of her adventures are only a shade more absurd than those in the romances at which he tilts. Regina Maria Roche's Children of the Abbey (1798) would take the wind from the sails of any parodist. In protracting The Heroine almost to wearisome length, Barrett probably acted deliberately in mimicry of this and a horde of other tedious romances. Certainly the unfortunate Stuart waits no longer for the fulfilment of his hopes than Lord Mortimer, the long-suffering hero of The Children of the Abbey, who early in the first volume demands of Amanda Fitzalan, what he calls an "éclaircissement," but does not win it until the close of the fourth. Barrett does not scruple to mention the titles of the books he derides. The following catalogue will show how widely he casts his net: Mysteries of Udolpho, Romance of the Forest, Children of the Abbey, Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, Evelina, Camilla, Cecilia, La Nouvelle Helo?se, Rasselas, The Delicate Distress, Caroline of Lichfield,[98] The Knights of the

amusement of her guests, heartlessly indulges her propensity for the romantic, and poses as her aunt. She is introduced in a gruesome scene, which recalls the fate of Agnes in Lewis's Monk, to her supposed mother, Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs, under the title Il Castello di Grimgothico, are inserted, after the manner of Mrs. Radcliffe and M.G. Lewis, who love an inset tale, into the midst of the heroine's adventures. Cherubina determines to live in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking." The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, are foolish and extravagant, but the reminiscences they awaken lend them piquancy. The trappings and furniture of a dozen Gothic castles are here accumulated in generous profusion. Mouldering manuscripts, antique beds of decayed damask, a four-horsed barouche, and fluttering tapestry rejoice the heart of Cherubina, for each item in this curious medley revives moving associations in a mind nourished on the Radcliffe school. When Cherubina visits a shop she buys a diamond cross, which at once turns our thoughts to The Sic

here is a change of fashion in fiction. How far this change is due to the satirists it is impossible to determine. Mr. Flosky, "who has seen too many ghosts himself to believe in their external ap

. became too base, common and popular for its surfeited appetite. The ghost

kest passions of our nature tricked out in a masquerade dress of heroism and disappointed benevolence"-an uncomplimentary description of the Byronic hero. Yet sensational fiction has lingered on side by side with other forms of fiction all through the nineteenth century, because it supplies a human and natural cravi

s and was going to consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in my armchai

ve, ancient man, with a full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded gown, who changed into the most horrible monster that ever was s

ollowed screaming. The honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of his body, first rolled off the sofa and then under it. Rev. Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much precipitation that he overturned the table on the foot of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad

ariable exorcising apparatus of a large venison pasty, a little prayer-book, and three bottles of Madeira. Yet despite this excellent mockery, Peacock in Gryll Grange devotes a chapter to tales of terror and wonder, s

etely deceived by the title, The Mystery of the Abbey, published in Liverpool in 1819 by T.B. Johnson, and we can imagine their consternation and disgust on the arrival of the book from the circulating library. The abbey is "haunted" by the proprietors of a distillery; and

n's own heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda

said, "for I wo

he Life,' and

th': I would t

over,' 'The Dis

,'[102] 'Delmore,'

mething, and may

[104] and the de

eart the gentl

ood that fed t

Niobe, all tears, palls at last, and Belinda, hav

terror are her

try storm to r

history, light-heartedly confuses the Reformation and the Revolution, has tastes similar to those of Belinda. Pursue

ust, I will m

ease-I know you

hildish books

was 'Wanderings o

ry where was

hat alone I f

'The Confessi

hame such evils

ter for the c

girls no nun

story of the

picture nodded

rd looked up wit

le and shudde

les of Winters,

ghton-they were

ectres there we

ve and flight

greater learn

e-and there you

ptor husband, no doubt, listened with

f cool, cont

ons overcharg

eing. He retires routed. Crabbe's close acquaintance with "the flowery pages of

in for

t, indignant

, a relic of those u

ne's soul-dis

y sixpences an

ough a Gothic castle without the

wintry night o

moonlight throug

weary world w

ights-as may no

au, the wester

shun it-they

done a deed-co

it, how the he

as it-for, beh

ood-and will be

s! which through

passage send

osts delight

ymph, who must

estic sweep s

all dreary, gui

attle and though

falter every

gibing sprites

thing which wi

nd wiles of her

us adventured

lover, are for l

from life, and in grim and bitter irony is intended a

and agai

ook, the shado

icturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the "air-dra

e them has s

castle sor

y man and gh

re mind with

the room, pu

e curtains r

uncle kep

ather force

o vixen v

se aid she

poisoned a

and sneer

indred, he found pleasure in a robuster school of romance-the adventures of mighty Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, and Robin Hood, as set forth and embellished in the ch