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YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
 
 ALBERT S. COOK, Editor 
 
 LXII 
 
 ANN RADCLIFFE 
 
 IN 
 
 RELATION TO HER TIME 
 
 CLARA FRANCES McINTYRE 
 
 Associate 'Professor in the University of W)'oming 
 
 NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXX 
 
YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
 
 ALBERT S. COOK. Editor 
 
 LXII 
 
 ANN RADCLIFFE 
 
 IN 
 
 RELATION TO HER TIME 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARA FRANCES McINTYRE 
 
 Associate Professor in the University of Wyoming 
 
 A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 
 
 of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXX 
 

 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Ann Radcliffe is among the authors who are spoken of 
 with a certain degree of famiHarity, but of whom Httle is 
 really known. When her name is mentioned, people say, 
 glibly, 'Ann Radcliffe? Oh, yes. The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho!' But when questioned further, many of them are 
 obliged to admit that even of her most famous books they 
 know only a few pages quoted by other writers. Her 
 importance as a literary influence we find accepted without 
 dispute in most discussions of eighteenth- and nineteenth- 
 century literature, especially those which have to do with the 
 novel. But Ann Radcliffe in herself, as a literary figure of 
 real significance and power, has received scant justice. 
 There has been little attempt to establish definitely her place 
 among her contemporaries; there has hardly been a 
 thorough and consistent working-out of her influence upon 
 later writers, although in that direction more has been done. 
 
 The one full and carefully critical treatment of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe is still to be found in Sir Waher Scott's essay, 
 which first appeared shortly after her death, as one of the 
 prefaces in Ballantyne's Novelists' Library, and was after- 
 ward published in the collection called Lives of the Novelists. 
 Among more modern works which give some considerable 
 attention to Mrs. Radcliffe may be mentioned Professor 
 Beers' English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century; a 
 doctoral thesis entitled The Gothic Romance: its Origin 
 and Development, by Elizabeth Church, written at Radcliffe 
 College in 1913, and as yet unpublished; a thesis by Joseph 
 Brey, Die Natitrschilderungen in den Romanen und Ge- 
 dichten der Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, ncbst einem Rikkhlick 
 aiif die Entwickelung der Naturs child erung im Englischen 
 
4 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Romane des i8. Jahrhundertsp- The Gothic Romance, by- 
 Hans Mobius f and a study of Englische Romankunst, by 
 Wilhelm Dibelius.^ 
 
 Most of these works consider mainly Mrs. Radclifife's 
 influence upon others. It has seemed that there was perhaps 
 room for a more thorough investigation than has hitherto 
 been made of her actual place among her contemporaries ; 
 that it might be worth while to see what her readers and 
 fellow-writers thought about her, and to decide, as far as 
 possible, what part of her work was original, and what was 
 derived from others. 
 
 The present study has several definite aims. In the first 
 place, it attempts to put into clear and accessible form what 
 can be discovered concerning Mrs. Radcliffe's life. It takes 
 up her work from several points of view, considering the 
 sources from which she drew material ; the popularity of 
 her books, as shown by contemporary estimates, especially 
 in leading magazines of her day, and by the numerous 
 translations and dramatizations which were made ; and a 
 somewhat neglected aspect of her contribution to the novel — 
 her modification of its structure. 
 
 The most interesting thing about the study has been its 
 revelation of the really important place which this almost 
 forgotten author held in the literary judgment of her gen- 
 eration. She was praised not only by the general crowd 
 of fiction-readers, but by men who made a profession of 
 criticizing literature, and who had a sense of literary values. 
 An examination of the magazines of the iate eighteenth 
 century shows us that in her own day she occupied con- 
 stantly and triumphantly the chief place in public favor. 
 She was referred to as the Great Enchantress, and it was 
 perhaps because Scott was recognized as in a sense her 
 
 ' Munich, 1908. 
 ^ Leipzig, 1902. 
 ^ Palastra, Vol. 92, Berlin, 1910. 
 
Introductory 5 
 
 successor that his more powerful spells won for him the 
 title of the Wizard of the North. Even he did not at once 
 take precedence of Mrs. Radcliffe, and, great though the 
 interest was which he aroused, it does not seem to have 
 been universally recognized that a distinctly superior power 
 had appeared. Henry Crabb Robinson, writing of Wav- 
 erley in 1815,^ balances the merits of the two writers as if 
 he accepted them as equals : 
 
 The author's sense of the romantic and picturesque is not so 
 delicate, or his execution so powerful, as Mrs. Radcliffe's, but 
 his paintings of men and manners are more valuable. The inci- 
 dents are not so dexterously contrived, and the author has not 
 produced a very interesting personage in his hero, Waverley, 
 who, as his name was probably intended to indicate, is ever 
 hesitating between two kings and two mistresses. 
 
 Scott, in his own judgment of Mrs. Radcliffe, is both 
 generous and discriminating: 
 
 It may be true, that Mrs. Radcliflfe rather walks in fairy-land 
 than in the region of realities, and that she has neither displayed 
 the command of the human passions, nor the insight into the 
 human heart, nor the observation of life and manners, which 
 recommend other authors in the same line. But she has taken 
 the lead in a line of composition, appealing to those powerful 
 and general sources of interest, a latent sense of supernatural 
 awe, and curiosity concerning whatever is hidden and mysteri- 
 ous '; and if she has been ever nearly approached in this walk, 
 which we should hesitate to affirm, it is at least certain that 
 she has never been excelled or even equalled.^ 
 
 One of whom Scott could speak in such terms, one who 
 was largely responsible for a literary type which has not 
 entirely ceased its influence even down to our own time, 
 certainly has some claim to consideration. We have hardly 
 the right to dismiss her with a patronizing smile, and a 
 joking reference to subterranean passages, long-suffering 
 maidens, vanishing lights, and creaking doors. 
 
 ^ Diary i. 304. 
 
 ' Lives of the Novelists, p. 244. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 FACTS OF MRS. RADCLIFFE's LIFE 
 
 The title of this chapter is chosen advisedly. We know 
 a few plain, bald facts about Ann RadcliflFe's experience in 
 the world, and that is all we know. The whole range of her 
 personality and relationships we can get only by inference 
 or imagination. She did not, as some authors have done, 
 leave letters and diaries which reveal her friendships, her 
 tastes, and her ideals. The journals which she did keep 
 record her impressions of external things, rather than her 
 inner life. 
 
 It is extraordinary that any one who occupied so con- 
 spicuous a place in the literary world could have kept her 
 personal affairs so completely away from public observation, 
 A writer in the Edinburgh Review (38. 360, note) for May, 
 1823, makes the following comment on Mrs. Radcliffe : 
 
 The fair authoress kept herself almost as much incognito [sic] 
 as the Author of Waverley; nothing was known of her but her 
 name on the title page. She never appeared in public, nor 
 mingled in private society, but kept herself apart, like the sweet 
 bird that sings its solitary notes, shrowded and unseen. 
 
 In truth, her anonymity, though in one sense less com- 
 plete than Scott's, was more persistent. Her name, indeed, 
 appeared upon the title-page, but to most of her readers 
 the name revealed ;nothing. Her private ^ife and her 
 authorship were to her, evidently, two entirely separate 
 things, and in those days there were no interviewers suffi- 
 ciently daring to make the one an excuse for intruding upon 
 the other. 
 
 The few facts which give us our only definite hold on 
 Ann Radcliffe as a person are found in the Annual Biog- 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 7 
 
 raphy and Obituary for 1824.^ It is this account which is 
 made use of by Scott in the Lives of the Novelists, by Mrs. 
 Kavanagh in the English Women of Letters, and by Tal- 
 fourd in the memoir prefixed to Gaston de Blondcville. 
 Part of the information furnished here, it seems Hkely, is 
 quoted directly from Mr. Radcliflfe himself, for the author 
 of the memoir says he went to the person best qualified to 
 speak of Mrs. Radcliffe, and that would naturally have been 
 her husband. Although this biographical sketch has been 
 used by the writers just mentioned, a portion of it may be 
 repeated here, as it is the most authoritative statement that 
 we have of Ann Radcliffe's ancestry : 
 
 She was born in London, in the year 1764; the daughter of 
 William and Ann Ward, who, though in trade, were nearly the 
 only persons of their two families not living in handsome, or at 
 least easy independence. Her paternal grandmother was a 
 Cheselden, the sister of the celebrated surgeon of whose kind 
 regard her father had a grateful recollection, and some of 
 whose presents, in books, I have seen. The late Lieutenant 
 Colonel Cheselden, of Somerby in Leicestershire, was, I think, 
 another nephew of the surgeon. Her father's aunt, the late 
 Mrs. Barwell, first of Leicester, and then of Duffield in Derby- 
 shire, was one of the sponsors at her baptism. Her maternal 
 grandmother was Ann Gates, the sister of Dr. Samuel Jebb of 
 Stratford, who was father of Sir Richard : on that side she 
 was also related to Dr. Halifax, Bishop of Gloucester, and to 
 Dr. Halifax, Physician to the King. Perhaps it may gratify 
 curiosity to state further, that she was descended from a near 
 relative of the DeWitts of Holland. In some family papers 
 which I have seen, it is stated that a DeWitt, of the family of 
 John and Cornelius, came to England, under the patronage of 
 government, upon some design of draining the fens in Lin- 
 colnshire, bringing with him a daughter, Amelia, then an infant. 
 The prosecution of the plan is supposed to have been interrupted 
 by the rebellion, in the time of Charles the First; but DeWitt 
 appears to have passed the remainder of his life in a mansion 
 near Hull, and to have left many children, of whom Amelia was 
 the mother of one of Mrs. Radclifife's ancestors.^ 
 
 '8. 89. 
 
 ^Annual Biography and Obituary 8. 98. 
 
8 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 This passage perhaps shows an innocent desire on Mr. 
 RadcHffe's part to emphasize the importance of his wife's 
 family, but it does certainly tell us that she came of honor- 
 able stock. A little further on, we have the account of 
 some of the advantages which she enjoyed in her childhood. 
 
 Besides that a great part of her youth had been passed in 
 the residences of her superior relatives, she had the advantage 
 of being much loved, when a child, by the late Mr. Bentley; 
 to whom, on the establishment of the fabric known by the name 
 of Wedgwood and Bentley's, was appropriated the superinten- 
 dence of all that related to form and design. Mr. Wedgwood 
 was the intelligent man of commerce, and the able chemist ; 
 Mr. Bentley the man of more general literature, and of taste 
 in the arts. One of her mother's sisters was married to Mr. 
 Bentley; and, during the life of her aunt, who was accom- 
 plished 'according to the moderation' — may I say, the mlse 
 moderation? — of that day, the little niece was a favorite guest 
 at Chelsea, and afterwards at Turnham Green, where Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bentley resided. At their house she saw several persons 
 of distinction for literature; and others who, without having 
 been so distinguished, were beneficial objects of attention for 
 their minds and their manners. Of the former class the late 
 Mrs. Montague, and once, I think, Mrs. Piozzi ; of the latter, 
 Mrs. Ord. The gentleman called Athenian Stuart was also a 
 visitor there. 
 
 This passage would seem to involve us in a slight dif- 
 ficulty. Thomas Bentley married in 1754 Miss Hannah 
 Oates, of Sheffield.^ She died two years after this mar- 
 riage, and he afterward married Mary Stamford, of Derby. 
 It would have been impossible for Ann Ward to make visits 
 'during the life of her aunt,' as the latter died eight years 
 before Ann was born. According to Eliza Meteyard, how- 
 ever, an elder sister of Hannah Oates kept house for her 
 brother-in-law from the death of his first wife to his second 
 marriage in 1772, and apparently, even after the second 
 marriage, spent considerable time in his household. Miss 
 
 ^Meteyard, Life of Joseph Wedgwood i. 305; 2. 258. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 9 
 
 Meteyard adds, 'A niece seems also to have occasionally 
 resided with them,'^ and again she remarks, 'Nor was child- 
 hood absent from that pleasant home, with its fine gardens, 
 its environing fields, and the 'great silent highway' flowing 
 near. A little niece of either Miss Oates or Mr. Bentley 
 passed much of her time at Chelsea.'^ 
 
 I have called attention to this rather small point because, 
 if Ann Ward was the 'little niece' mentioned here, the fact 
 gives valuable testimony as to her early opportunities. 
 Mr. Bentley was, from all accounts, not only a man of busi- 
 ness, but possessed of wide culture. Miss Meteyard speaks 
 of his popularity and his courtliness of manner, and men- 
 tions many people of prominence in literary and scientific 
 work whom he counted among his friends. He himself 
 contributed articles to the Gentleman's Magazine and the 
 Monthly Review, and Wedgwood, in one of his letters, re- 
 proaches him for not publishing a manuscript on female 
 education.^ He was evidently able to introduce his niece 
 to a circle interested in literature and art, a society which 
 must have been most stimulating to a young girl of quick 
 intelligence ; and he probably took an active interest in her 
 development. Her biographer is certainly right in calling 
 her intimacy with the Bentley family an advantage. 
 
 Mr. Bentley died in 1780, when Ann was sixteen. For 
 the last three years of his life, his residence was at Turnham 
 Green. It was in 1774 that he left his Chelsea home; if 
 his niece visited him there, it must have been when she was 
 only a child. 
 
 So far as her formal education is concerned, we are able 
 to learn little. The general impression given by her biog- 
 raphers is that it was the ordinary education of the young 
 girl of that day, and that, according to modern ideas, it 
 
 ^ Ibid. I. 305. 
 ^ Ibid. 2. 172. 
 'Julia Wedgwood, Personal Life of losiali Wedgwood, p. 48. 
 
lo Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 would seem, if not superficial, decidedly incomplete. Mrs. 
 
 Kavanagh speaks of her education as 'plain,' and adds^ : 
 
 Had Ann Radcliflfe been John Radcliffe, and received the 
 vigorous and polished education which marks the man and the 
 gentleman, we might have a few novels less, but we would 
 assuredly have some fine pages more in that language where, 
 spite their merit, her works will leave no individual trace. 
 
 From Mrs. Radcliffe's own work we might, perhaps, be 
 inclined to give her credit for rather more knowledge than 
 this comment implies. Her references to authors, both in 
 her journals and in her novels, show not only thorough 
 familiarity but genuine appreciation, and the quotations 
 which she uses as headings to her chapters suggest a con- 
 siderable range of reading. Mrs. Elwood, in her Memoirs 
 of Literary Ladies, gives, on the authority of an unnamed 
 contemporary who spent an evening with Mrs. Radcliffe, 
 the statement that she was a great admirer of Schiller's 
 Robbers, and that her favorite tragedy was Macbeth. Her 
 favorite painters were Salvator, Claude, and Caspar Pous- 
 sin. Her favorite poets after Shakespeare were Tasso, 
 Milton, and Spenser. Whether she had a knowledge of any 
 language other than her own seems uncertain. The writer 
 of the sketch in the Annual Biography and Obituary, before 
 quoted, speaks of her 'gratification in listening to any good 
 verbal sounds' ; and says that she 'would desire to hear 
 passages repeated from the Latin and Creek classics ; re- 
 quiring, at intervals, the most literal translations that could 
 be given, with all that was possible of their idiom, how much 
 soever the version might be embarrassed by that aim at 
 exactness.' This would make it appear that she had no 
 understanding of the originals. In her Journey Through 
 Holland, however, she twice makes use of a Latin quotation, 
 with considerable aptness, and, moreover, in an incidental 
 way which makes it seem probable that the words were 
 familiar to her. In one case^ the reference is to Lucretius : 
 
 ^ English Women of Letters, p. 255. 
 ^ Journey 2. 272. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life n 
 
 We returned to our low-roofed habitation, where, as the wind 
 swept in hollow gusts along the mountains and strove against 
 our casements, the crackling blaze of a wood fire lighted up the 
 cheerfulness, which, so long since as Juvenal's [sic] time, has 
 been allowed to arise from the contrast of ease against difficulty. 
 Suave mari magna, turbantibus aequora ventis} 
 
 In the other passage she refers to Tacitus,^ mentioning 
 'the fine speech, beginning, Nunquam apud vos verba feci, 
 aut pro vohis solicitior, aut pro me seciirior; a passage so 
 near to the cimctisque timentem, securumque sui, by which 
 Lucan describes Cato, that it must be supposed to have been 
 inspired by it.'^ 
 
 Of course it is quite possible that these writings were 
 known to Mrs. RadcHffe only in translation, and that she 
 had her husband's aid in finding the originals, but in that 
 case it seems almost strange that she did not make her 
 acknowledgment of his assistance more general, since she 
 scrupulously makes mention of the fact that he is responsible 
 for the political observations in the book. 
 
 It must be admitted that the whole question of Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's early education remains largely a matter of con- 
 jecture. One of her French biographers* remarks, 'Elle 
 re(^ut une education distinguee,' but he gives no details in 
 support of his statement. The fact that in 1781 the Misses 
 Sophia and Harriet Lee opened their school for young ladies 
 at Bath suggests a reasonable source for her early training, 
 and that she may have been a pupil in the school seems pos- 
 sible from a comment in the obituary notice of Sophia Lee 
 in the Annual Register for 1824.^ No records of this school 
 are extant, however; so it is impossible to know whether 
 
 ^ Lucretius 2. i. 
 ' Hist. 4. 58. 
 
 * Journey i. 124. 
 
 * Arnault, Biographic Nouvelle des Contemporains, Vol. 17. 
 
 '66. 217: 'It is to be remarked that Mrs. Radcliffe (then Miss 
 Ward), resident at Bath, and acquainted in Miss Lee's family, 
 though too young to have appeared herself as a writer, was among 
 the warmest admirers of "The Recess." ' 
 
12 Ann Radcliffc in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Miss Ward's name appeared upon the roll of pupils. About 
 all the conclusions we are justified in drawing are these: 
 that she had read rather widely, both in older and in more 
 modern authors ; that she knew something of art and music ; 
 and that, among her own relatives and connections, she had 
 the advantage of intelligent and refined society. 
 
 In 1787, at the age of twenty-three, Ann Ward married 
 William Radclifife, a graduate of Oxford, and a student of 
 law.^ Mr. Radclifife did not, however, complete his legal 
 studies ; he turned, instead, to journalism, and became the 
 proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle. He seems, 
 also, to have had general literary interests, apart from his 
 editorial duties. In the Monthly Review for June, 1790, 
 appears a review of 'A Journey through Sweden. Written 
 in French by a Dutch Ofificer and translated into English by 
 William Radclifife, A.B. of Oriel College, Oxford;' and in 
 the same magazine for September, 1790, is a review of The 
 Natural History of East Tartary, translated by the same 
 author. There is no further description, to show whether 
 this is the William Radclifife who married Ann Ward, but 
 the exact correspondence of the name and title with those 
 given in the marriage-notice makes it seem probable. 
 
 Marriage, with Ann Ward, seems to have meant not the 
 ending, but the beginning, of a career. In the scanty bio- 
 graphical treatments of Mrs. Radclifife which we possess, 
 
 ^ Mr. R. W. M. Wright, sub-librarian of the Victoria Art Gallery 
 and Reference Library, Bath, furnished me with the following 
 notices : 
 
 Entry in Parish Register of St. Michaels Church, 
 Bath. 
 
 Jan. 15" 1787. WilHam RadcHffe Bachelor ^^. William Ward 
 
 Anne Ward Spinster ^'^"^^s Rose Forbes 
 
 Bath Chronicle, Thurs., Jany 18, 1787. 
 Monday, was married at St. Michaels Church the Rev William 
 RadcHffe A. B. of Oriel College, Oxford, to Miss Ward, daughter 
 of Mr. Ward, of Milsom Street. 
 
Facts of Mrs. RadcUffe's Life 13 
 
 one statement is made emphatic, that sh^ was enc6uraged to 
 her writing — urged to it, in fact — by her husband. We 
 are even told that on their journeys she was always equipped 
 with a number of notebooks in which she wrote her impres- 
 sions of the scenery, and that Mr. Radcliffe amused himself 
 by reading what she had written. To enjoy reading about 
 scenery, when in the presence of the scenery itself, certainly 
 implies either devotion on the part of the reader, or charm 
 on the part of the writer. In this case both probably existed 
 to a considerable degree. 
 
 Mrs. Radclifife's first book, The Castles of Athlin and 
 Dunhayne, was published two years after her marriage, a 
 short review of it appearing in the Critical Reviezv for 
 September, 1789.^ It was published anonymously, as were 
 the first editions of A Sicilian Romance, in 1791, and The 
 Romance of the Forest, in 1792. It was not until the second 
 edition of the latter book that the author's name appeared 
 on the title-page. The Romance of the Forest completely 
 established the reputation of the author, whose second book 
 had attracted much more favorable comment than the first. 
 The Mysteries of Udolpho, in 1794, made her the most 
 popular writer of the day. This was followed, in 1795, by 
 A Journey Made m the Summer of 1794, through Holland 
 and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return doivn 
 the Rhine: to ivhich are added Observations durifig a Tour 
 to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland and Ctimberland. 
 The Italian, in 1796, completes the list of works published 
 during Mrs. Radcliffe's lifetime. 
 
 Further discussion of her work and its reception will be 
 given later. Here it will suffice to say that at the time 
 The Italian appeared, probably no author was so generally 
 admired and so eagerly read as this young woman, who had 
 begun writing, we are told, to pass away the winter evenings 
 when her husband was /away at his work, and who, at first, 
 any way, took her productions much less seriously than he. 
 
 '68.251. 
 
14 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 With this we come to the end of Mrs. Radcliffe's pro- 
 ductive period, and to the consideration of a puzzHng 
 question. Why, at the early age of thirty-two, at the 
 height of her fame, did she suddenly lay down her pen, and, 
 except for some poems, and an experiment in historical 
 romance which she apparently had no intention of publish- 
 ing, never take it up again? 
 
 No one of the answers that have been offered is wholly 
 satisfying. Perhaps a combination of all the answers might 
 yield greater satisfaction. One suggestion is that she was 
 grieved over unfavorable comments on The Italian. It is 
 true that some reviewers spoke of the book as falling short 
 of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and even The Romance of the 
 Forest; but others praised it as surpassing the earlier works, 
 and none of the reviews was sufficiently scathing to dis- 
 courage even a highly sensitive author. Another theory is 
 that she was disgusted by the many absurd productions 
 which tried to win popularity by imitation of her. There 
 seems to be rather more plausibility in this. A lady of any 
 literary conscience might well have a sense of guilt at being 
 responsible for such a following. It may even be that, hav- 
 ing seen the reductio ad ahsurdum of her method, she came 
 to distrust the method itself, and lost the inclination to carry 
 it further. A more personal reason for her cessation of 
 activity is furnished by her biographers in the fact that she 
 received a legacy which made her pecuniarily independent, 
 and therefore removed any temptation to write for gain. 
 In connection with the pecuniary side of Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 writing, a passage in the Annual Biography and Obituary is 
 interesting : 
 
 Some exaggeration has taken place with respect to the pecu- 
 niary advantages which Mrs. Radcliffe derived from her talents. 
 For instance, it has been said, that she received iooo£ from the 
 Messrs. Robinsons, for the copy-right of 'The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho.' The real amount was 5ooi ; at that time so unusually 
 large a sum for a work of imagination, that old Mr. Cadell, 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 15 
 
 than whom no man was more experienced in such matters, when 
 he was told that 50oi had been given, offered a wager of io£ 
 that it was not the fact. It has also been said, that Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe received isooi for the copyright of 'The Italians.' [sic] 
 The real amount did not exceed 8oo£. 
 
 Although we have no suggestion that, in her early mar- 
 ried life, Mrs. Radcliffe was in particular need of money, it 
 is probable that these extra sirnis were welcome. Later on, 
 when private resources made possible more indulgences in 
 the way of entertainment and travel, and when, perhaps, 
 her husband had more time to enjoy these things with her, 
 there was less temptation to put her fancies into salable 
 form. 
 
 Aside from the list of her publications, we find the chief 
 record of Mrs. Radcliffe's life in the journeys that she made. 
 Even without this record, we could almost infer her love of 
 traveling from her books. Mrs. Kavanagh remarks that 
 her heroes and heroines are always going on journeys. In 
 this, it is true, she was following to some extent the tradition 
 of the novel. But in the older novels the chief aim of the 
 hero's travels was to expose him continually to new adven- 
 tures. With Mrs. Radcliffe there is a second aim — ^to 
 describe the changing scenery, and to show its effect upon 
 the traveler. 
 
 In spite of her love of travel, Mrs. Radcliffe was not, on 
 the whole, a journeyer in far places. Her one experience 
 of the Continent was the trip through Holland and western 
 Germany, mentioned before. The intention of the travelers 
 to go on into Switzerland was frustrated by a disobliging 
 official, who refused to believe that they were English, and 
 would not honor their passports. 
 
 How little was accurately known of Mrs. Radcliffe, even 
 in her own time, is shown by the following statement in the 
 Edinburgh Reviciv for May, 1823^: 
 
 ^ 38. 360, note. 
 2 
 
i6 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 The Editor of the Englishman for many years was a Mr. 
 Radclifife. He had been formerly attached to some of our 
 embassies into Italy, where his lady accompanied him ; and here 
 she imbibed that taste for picturesque scenery, and the obscure 
 and wild superstitions of mouldering castles, of which she has 
 made so beautiful a use in her Romances. 
 
 Scott corrects this statement, but draws an inference of 
 his own which seems hardly less mistaken : 
 
 In 1793, Mrs. Radclifife had the advantage of visiting the 
 scenery of the Rhine, and, although we are not positive of the 
 fact, we are strongly inclined to suppose that The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho were written, or at least corrected, after the date of 
 this journey; for the mouldering castles of the robber-chivalry 
 of Germany, situated on the wild and romantic banks of that 
 celebrated stream, seem to have given a bolder flight to her 
 imagination, and a more glowing character to her colouring, 
 than are exhibited in The Romance of the Forest. . . . Her 
 remarks upon these countries were given to the public in 1794, 
 in a very well-written work, entitled A Journey through Hol- 
 land, etc' 
 
 Unfortunately for Scott's theory, the very title of the 
 book to which he refers contradicts it. It is A Journey 
 Made in the Summer of 17Q4, and the first announcement 
 of its publication is found in the London Chronicle for 
 May I, 1795. The first notice of The Mysteries of Udolpho 
 appeared on May 10, 1794. It seems impossible, therefore, 
 that the castles of the Rhine could have had anything to 
 do with Mrs. Radcliflfe's famous description of the Castle 
 of Udolpho. It must remain a product of her imagination, 
 assisted by her reading. 
 
 After this one longer expedition, Mrs. Radcliffe's travels 
 were confined to her own country. We have mention of a 
 tour round the coast of Kent in 1797. In 1798 she visited 
 Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight; in 1800, the coast of 
 Sussex; in 1801, the New Forest and the Isle of Wight. 
 The journey in 1802 is of especial interest. In that year 
 
 ' Lives of the Novelists, p. 215. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 17 
 
 she visited Leicester and Warwick, Kenilworth, Oxford, 
 and Woodstock ; and the trip to Kenilworth was the evident 
 inspiration of Gaston de BlondeviUe, which was written 
 shortly after, but was not published until after her death. 
 The latest journey of any length which we find recorded was 
 one to Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, in the autumn of 
 181 1. In her later years, she and her husband gave up the 
 more distant excursions, and hired a carriage for the sum- 
 mer months, so that they might make trips to attractive 
 places near London. 
 
 The seclusion of Mrs. Radclifife's life led, naturally, to 
 many misunderstandings and false reports. One source of 
 confusion was that during her lifetime several books ap- 
 peared under names very similar to hers. The British 
 Museum Catalogue has Mary Ann Radcliffe of Kennington 
 Cross, author of The Memoirs of Mrs. M. A. Radcliffe in 
 familiar letters to her female friend, and The Female Advo- 
 cate, or an attempt to recover the rights of zvomen from^ male 
 usurpation; Mary Anne Radcliflfe, author of Manfrone; or 
 the One-handed Monk; and Ann Sophia Radcliffe, author 
 of The Ladies Elegant Jester; or, Fun for the Female Sex. 
 
 The first of these books probably helped to strengthen the 
 belief in Mrs. Radcliffe's death which her long silence 
 seemed to support. Mention of the book appears in the 
 Monthly List of Publications of the British Critic for Feb- 
 ruary, 1811.^ The Critic for August, 1812, has the follow- 
 ing comment on it^ : 
 
 We at first sight promised ourselves and our readers also, 
 much satisfaction from presenting Memoirs of the very ingen- 
 ious and much lamented Mrs. Radcliflfe, compiled by herself, 
 but it seems that the lady here commemorated is, or rather was, 
 a very dififerent personage. Whether the Tale is real or ficti- 
 tious is not declared, but the reader vi'xW find a narrative by no 
 means ill written, of an unfortunate individual, whose life 
 
 ' 37- 205. 
 '40. 189. 
 
1 8 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 exhibits a useful moral, and lessons of important caution to 
 the thoughtless of her own sex. Some agreeable specimens of 
 poetry are interspersed, and the volume is introduced by a very 
 highly respectable list of subscribers. 
 
 It is sometimes inferred that the writers of these books 
 were masquerading under names assumed with the dehb- 
 erate intention of profiting by an estabHshed reputation. 
 This would hardly seem to be true in the case of The Female 
 Advocate; for the author, in the introduction, apologizing 
 for her daring in undertaking such a performance, says, 
 'a first attempt, surrounded by all the disadvantages peculiar 
 to the sex, seems to her, to require no small share of courage, 
 and which, indeed, nothing but the importance of the subject 
 should have induced her to encounter.' If she had been 
 posing as the Ann Radcliffe of the novels, she would hardly, 
 writing in 1799, have spoken of her effort as *a first attempt.' 
 
 Manfronc ; or the One-handed Monk is an undeniable 
 imitation of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. The opening is a hash 
 of Radcliffian details : we have a large, dark apartment with 
 flickering light, a girl who has been perusing a gloomy tale, 
 and, feeling a presentiment of evil, is about to summon her 
 maid to spend the night with her, when she is interrupted 
 by a startling adventure, in the midst of which, quite in the 
 fashion of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines, '.she faints away. 
 There are many other resemblances throughout the book. 
 But the feeble descriptions of nature could hardly be mis- 
 taken for Mrs. Radcliffe's, and there are slips in grammar 
 of which she would not be guilty. We find the book at- 
 tributed to her, however, in some of the discussions of her 
 work, and this mistake was undoubtedly far from helpful 
 to her reputation. In one of the accounts of her which 
 appeared after her death^ we are told that 'the imitations of 
 her style and manner by various literary adventurers, the 
 publication of some other novels under a name slightly 
 
 ^Portfolio 16. 137. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life ' 19 
 
 varied for the purpose of imposing on the public, and the 
 flippant use of the term "Radchffe school," by scribblers 
 of all classes, tended altogether to disgust her with the 
 world, and create a depression of spirits, which led for many 
 years, in a considerable degree to seclude her from society.' 
 When Manfronc appeared, however, in 1809, it was already 
 more than ten years since Mrs. RadclifiFe had written any- 
 thing for publication ; so that it cannot bear much of the 
 responsibility for her seclusion. 
 
 The report of Mrs. Radcliffe's death was not the only 
 one which gained public credence ; there was also a story 
 that excessive use of her imagination in representing ex- 
 travagant and violent scenes had driven her insane, and 
 that she was ending her days in an asylum. This rumor 
 was so persistent that in the memoir prefixed to Gaston de 
 Blondeville was included a statement from her physician in 
 regard to her mental condition during the last part of her 
 life. That this statement was the outcome of some bitter- 
 ness of feeling appears from a passage in the review of her 
 posthumous works in the Monthly Reviezv for July, 1826^ : 
 
 There is one part of Mrs. Radcliffe's life upon which we 
 should have abstained from offering a single remark, if a passage 
 in the memoir had not made it incumbent on us to say a word 
 or two in our own vindication. In a former number of this 
 journal after pointing out an error as to a date in Sir Walter 
 Scott's memoir of that lady, we stated, from authority upon 
 which we had every reason to rely, that 'she died in a state of 
 mental desolation not to be described.' It was no part of our 
 object to wound the feelings of any of her surviving friends, 
 particularly not of Mr. Radcliffe, for whom we entertain great 
 respect. But the fact formed a part of the literary history of 
 the country, and, if our information were correct, we saw no 
 reason why it should be suppressed. Not content, however, with 
 denying its truth, Mr. Radcliffe, or some person by his authority, 
 charged us, in the public prints, with impropriety in making such 
 
 ' N. S. 2. 280. 
 
 ^ Former Series 108. 269. 
 
Ann Radclijfe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 a statement, and that charge is repeated in a document drawn up 
 and signed by Dr. Scudamore, and inserted in the memoir now 
 before us. That we may not be accused of garbling it we shall 
 here present the whole of that document to the reader. 
 
 'Mrs. Radcliffe had been for several years subject to severe 
 catarrhal coughs, and also was occasionally afflicted with asthma. 
 
 'In March, 1822, she was ill with inflammation of the lungs, and 
 for a considerable time remained much indisposed. With the 
 summer season and change of air, she regained a tolerable 
 state of health. 
 
 'In the early part of January, 1823, in consequence of exposure 
 to cold, she was again attacked with inflammation of the lungs, 
 and much more severely than before. Active treatment was 
 immediately adopted, but without the desired relief ; and the 
 symptoms soon assumed a most dangerous character. At the 
 end of three weeks, however, and contrary to all expectations, 
 the inflammation of the lungs was overcome ; and the amend- 
 ment was so decided, as to present a slight prospect of recovery. 
 
 'Alas ! our hopes were soon disappointed. Suddenly, in the 
 very moment of seeming calm from the previous violence of 
 disease, a new inflammation seized the membranes of the brain. 
 The enfeebled frame could not resist this fresh assault: so 
 rapid in their course were the violent symptoms, that medical 
 treatment proved wholly unavailing. 
 
 'In the space of three days death closed the melancholy scene. 
 
 'In this manner, at the age of fifty-nine, society was deprived 
 of a most amiable and valuable member, and literature one of 
 its brightest ornaments. 
 
 'The foregoing statement will, I hope, afford all the explana- 
 tion, which can be required, of the nature of Mrs. Radclifife's 
 illness. During the whole continuance of the inflammation of 
 the lungs, the mind was perfect in its reasoning powers, and 
 became disturbed only on the last two or three days, as a natural 
 consequence of the inflammation affecting the membranes of the 
 brain. 
 
 'Previously to the last illness, and at all times, Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe enjoyed a remarkably cheerful state of mind; and no one 
 was farther removed from "mental desolation," as has been 
 so improperly described of the latter part of her life. 
 
 'She possessed a quick sensibility, as the necessary ally of her 
 fine genius ; but this quality would serve to increase the warmth 
 of the social feelings, and effectually prevent the insulation of 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 21 
 
 the mind, either as regards the temper or the understanding.' — 
 Memoir, pp. 103-105. 
 
 It will be seen that this document, instead of contradicting 
 our statement, confirms it in the most pointed manner. We did 
 not speak generally of the latter part of Mrs. Radcliffe's life as 
 clouded by 'mental desolation,' as Dr. Scudamore has been taught 
 to suppose; we distinctly said that she died in that unhappy 
 state, and for this fact we need no further evidence than his 
 own description of the melancholy close of her existence. We 
 have been reluctantly drawn into this explanation, and we now 
 quit the subject. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe died on February 7, 1823. Her obituary- 
 notices all agree in praise of her work, and in very meagre 
 information about her life. The publication of her posthu- 
 mous works, in 1826, seemed to cause a considerable revival 
 of interest in her, and some of the best criticisms of her 
 work are found in reviews of these volumes. She was 
 buried in the cemetery belonging to St. George's, Hanover 
 Square. This burial-ground, on the Bayswater Road, near 
 Hyde Park, is the one which contains the grave of Lawrence 
 Sterne.^ 
 
 A life-history which consists of only bare facts is an in- 
 complete and unsatisfactory thing. Although, as has been 
 said, we find little recorded of Mrs. Radcliffe except facts, 
 and very few of those, there are suggestions here and there 
 which may help us to construct a personality. 
 
 For her personal appearance we have to rely upon the 
 writer of the sketch in the Annual Biography and Obituary: 
 
 This admirable writer, whom I remember from about the 
 time of her twentieth year, was, in her youth, of a figure ex- 
 quisitely proportioned ; while she resembled her father, and his 
 brother and sister, in being low of stature. Her complexion was 
 beautiful, as was her whole countenance, especially her eyes, 
 eyebrov/s, and mouth. 
 
 ^ For information in regard to this I am indebted to Professor 
 Wilbur L. Cross, of Yale University, who remembers seeing a stone 
 to Mrs. Radcliffe near the grave of Sterne. 
 
2 2 Ann Radcliffc in Relation to Her Time 
 
 If it be true that Mr. Radcliffe was the author of the 
 sketch, we should perhaps make some allowance for senti- 
 ment in this description. But he at least does not try to 
 show her as endowed with all the graces, for he says she was 
 rather shy in company : 'She had not the confidence and 
 presence of mind without which, a person conscious of being 
 observed, can scarcely be at ease, except in long-tried so- 
 ciety.' Her fondness for music we could have inferred 
 from her books, if he had not told us of it. Music plays a 
 prominent part in all the novels, and her heroines, through 
 whatever vicissitudes they may pass, always cling to their 
 musical instruments. 
 
 Two incidents which he relates seem to show an extreme 
 sensitiveness in Mrs. Radcliffe — indeed, one might say, 
 supersensitiveness. 
 
 Miss Anna Seward, in a letter written May 21, 1799,^ 
 discussing The Plays on the Passions, made this remark: 
 'Before their author was known, I observed so much of the 
 power and defects of Mrs. Radcliffe's compositions in these 
 dramas, as to believe them hers ; and I hear she owns them.' 
 In two or three subsequent letters, Miss Seward went on to 
 discuss the plays, still attributing them to Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 It was not until October 7 that she owned herself mistaken. 
 'My literary friends now assert that they are not Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's.'^ According to Mrs. Radcliffe's biographer, the 
 imputation that she could claim the credit for work which 
 did not belong to her was the cause of great grief and worry. 
 She tried to get into touch with the Mrs. Jackson whom 
 Miss Seward had quoted as having first informed her that 
 Mrs. Radcliffe owned the plays, but could find out nothing 
 concerning her. 
 
 Thus the subject was dropped; for to Miss Baillie herself 
 Mrs. Radcliffe could address nothing but protestations, which 
 
 ^Letters 5. 226. 
 "" Ibid., p. 253. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 23 
 
 could not prove a negative, and which might be held intrusive; 
 as there was no reason to suppose that that lady had ever 
 credited the report. . . . 
 
 I have been tedious upon this subject, but it was a great one 
 with the deceased ; and if it be possible that her spirit, now, 
 as I humbly hope, beatified, can know what is passing here, 
 may this asseveration of her innocence, solemnly made on her 
 behalf, be one of its feeblest gratifications.' 
 
 The other matter which had troubled Mrs. Raddiffe was 
 a note added to one of Mrs. Carter's letters, which stated 
 that 'Mrs. Carter had no personal acquaintance with Mrs. 
 Radcliffe.' Mrs. Radcliffe's biographer remarks in regard 
 to this : 
 
 This is strictly true; but as the remark may be misunder- 
 stood to imply that Mrs. Carter had rejected, or avoided, or 
 would have rejected, or avoided, that acquaintance, it cannot 
 be improper to show that she had in some measure sought it. 
 The following short correspondence is sufficient upon the 
 subject: — 
 
 'If Mrs. Radclifife is not engaged, Mrs. Carter will have the 
 pleasure of calling upon her about twelve o'clock to-morrow 
 morning.' 
 
 'Mrs. Radcliffe is extremely sorry that an engagement to go 
 into the country to-morrow, for some time, on account of Mr. 
 R.'s state of health, which is very critical, will deprive her of 
 the honour intended her by Mrs. Carter ; for which she requests 
 Mrs. C. to believe that she has a full and proper respect.' 
 
 There is no date to either of these notes ; but that of Mrs. 
 Carter enclosed the following letter : 
 
 Bath, April 18th, 1799. 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 I venture to give you this trouble, at the request of Mrs. 
 
 Carter, whose admirable talents, and far more admirable virtues, 
 
 are too well known to need any introduction from me. She 
 
 very much wishes to have the pleasure of knowing you; and 
 
 will deliver this letter, if she has the good fortune of finding 
 
 you at home. As I am persuaded the acquaintance must afford 
 
 mutual satisfaction, I could not refuse the request with which 
 
 ^ Annual Biography and Obituary 8. 103. 
 
24 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Mrs. Carter honoured me; though it is made on the supposition 
 of my having some degree of interest with you, to which I have 
 no claim, except from the very sincere admiration I have ever 
 felt for your talents, and the regard and esteem with which 
 I am, dear Madam, 
 
 Your obliged and affectionate humble servant, 
 
 H. M. Bowdler. 
 
 P.S. If Mrs. Carter does not deliver this letter herself, she 
 will, I believe, take an early opportunity of waiting on you, 
 with a very amiable friend of mine. Miss Shipley, who has 
 promised to carry her in her carriage. 
 
 It certainly shows some excess of sensitiveness to read 
 into the statement that Mrs. Carter did not know Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe the idea that Mrs. Carter did not wish to know Mrs. 
 Radcliffe. These two instances rather incline us to believe 
 that our author possessed something of what is commonly 
 and indefinitely known as 'the artistic temperament.' They 
 also incline us to wonder whether this extreme sensitiveness 
 may not account for her withdrawal from the world. This 
 withdrawal has been differently interpreted. Jeaffreson 
 says of her^ : 
 
 Leading a life of domestic seclusion, and especially avoiding 
 those circles where rank loftily patronizes literary celebrity, and 
 mock-genius fawns slavishly on fashion, circles into which a 
 paltry vanity too often allures the best authors, Mrs. Radclifife 
 was utterly unknown to the thousands of English who, in 
 London and in the country, were burning to learn something 
 about her. 
 
 The writer of a review in the Literary Gazette^ takes a 
 less kindly view : 
 
 She was ashamed, (yes, ashamed) of her own talents ; and 
 was ready to sink in the earth at the bare suspicion of any one 
 taking her for an author ; her chief ambition being to be thought 
 a lady ! 
 
 ^ Novels and Novelists, p. 3. 
 ''June 3, 1826. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 25 
 
 It seems probable that Mrs. Radcliffe's feeling was not 
 one of silly vanity, but rather of honest pride. She was not 
 willing to climb into society by means of her literary achieve- 
 ments, if she was not considered worthy in other respects. 
 We must remember that it was not long since the days when 
 every literary man must have his noble patron, when it was 
 considered perfectly allowable for a Chesterfield to snub a 
 Johnson. Eliza Meteyard, speaking of the Wedgwoods, 
 says^ : 
 
 Mr. Josiah Wedgwood was pricked as sheriff for Dorset- 
 shire in 1803, and his year of office was a comparatively bril- 
 liant one in county annals. But, generally speaking, the family 
 led a quiet and retired life. Indeed, on the evidence of those 
 still living, it was never very cordially accepted by the proud 
 old local gentry, full of obsolete notions concerning birth and 
 pedigree. Nature's noble rank, the only rank; the possession 
 of a name which needed only time and knowledge to become 
 historic ; the possession of great wealth, and its intelligent and 
 charitable use — were nothing with a generation whose notions 
 of pedigree began with the Conquest, and thence must have 
 due record in parchment rolls and title-deeds. To be in trade, 
 or to possess wealth derived from trade, was then a sufficient 
 blot on any man's escutcheon to weigh heavily against the 
 worthiest qualities ; particularly in counties as far removed 
 from metropolitan influence as those of southern England. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe may have had experience with people of 
 this sort, who looked down upon her condescendingly be- 
 cause her relatives were 'in trade,' and made up their minds 
 to overlook this disgrace when she became a famous author. 
 If so, we can hardly wonder at her independent attitude, 
 although it seems a trifle unfortunate that she cut herself 
 off from intercourse with other people of literary interests, 
 as well as from society at large. 
 
 Perhaps we get most suggestion as to Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 personality in the selections from her journals included in 
 Talfourd's memoir. We can certainly learn something of 
 
 ^ A Group of Englishmen . p. 187. 
 
26 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 her literary tastes; we hardly need to have been told that 
 Shakespeare was her favorite author, for she is constantly 
 making references to him. For instance, in the trip to 
 Hastings, July 23, iSoo^ : 
 
 Near eleven, before we reached Hastings; no moon; star- 
 light ; milky-way very lucid ; seemed to rise out of the sea. 
 Solemn and pleasing night-scene. Glow-worms, in great num- 
 bers, shone silently and faintly on the dewy banks, like some- 
 thing supernatural. Judgment of Shakespeare in selecting this 
 image to assist the terrific impression in his ghost scene. 
 
 Again, in the account of her visit to Warwick Castle, in 
 18022 . 
 
 Near the summit an embattled overhanging gallery, where 
 formerly, no doubt, sentinels used to pace during the night, 
 looked down upon the walls of the Castle, the rivers and the 
 country far and wide, received the watch-word from the sentinel, 
 perched in the little watch-tower, higher still and seeing farther 
 in the moonlight, and repeated it to the soldiers on guard on the 
 walls and gates below. Before those great gates and under- 
 neath these towers, Shakespeare's ghost might have stalked; 
 they are in the very character and spirit of such an apparition, 
 grand and wild and strange; there should, however, have been 
 more extent. 
 
 An entry made during the trip to Portsmouth and the Isle 
 of Wight, in the autumn of 181 1, shows her feeling for 
 music, as well as her constant reference to Shakespeare.^ 
 
 How sweet is the cadence of the distant surge! It seemed, 
 as we sat in our inn, as if a faint peal of far-off bells mingled 
 with the sounds on shore, sometimes heard, sometimes lost : the 
 first note of the beginning, and last of the falling peal, seeming 
 always the most distinct. This resounding of the distant surge 
 on a rocky shore might have given Shakespeare his idea when 
 he makes Ferdinand, in the Tempest, hear, amidst the storm, 
 bells ringing his father's dirge ; a music which Ariel also com- 
 memorates, together with the sea-wave : — 
 
 ^ Memoir, p. 42. (Gaston de Blondeville, etc.. Vol. i.) 
 "^Memoir, p. 60. 
 ^ Memoir, p. 79. 
 
Facts of Mrs. RadcUjfe's Life 27 
 
 'Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell, 
 Ding, dong. bell !' 
 
 In other passages she quotes from Goldsmith and from 
 ColHns. 
 
 A reference to Claude Lorraine is interesting, since her 
 gentler landscapes are often compared to his. The passage 
 is found in the account of her visit to Belvedere House, in 
 June, 1805^ : 
 
 In a shaded corner, near the chimney, a most exquisite Claude, 
 an evening view, perhaps over the Campagna of Rome. The 
 sight of this picture imparted much of the luxurious repose and 
 satisfaction, which we derive from contemplating the finest 
 scenes of Nature. Here was the poet, as well as the painter, 
 touching the imagination, and making you see more than the 
 picture contained. You saw the real light of the sun, you 
 breathed the air of the country, you felt all the circumstances 
 of a luxurious climate on the most serene and beautiful land- 
 scape ; and, the mind being thus softened, you almost fancied 
 you heard Italian music on the air — the music of Paisiello ; and 
 such, doubtless, were the scenes that inspired him. 
 
 The love of nature which her novels reveal is shown just 
 as strikingly, and even more effectively, in these informal 
 journals. We find one comment which is interesting in view 
 of some of her descriptions : 
 
 I prefer rich beauty to wild beauty, unless accompanied by 
 such shapes of grandeur as verge upon the sublime.' 
 
 In an entry written during the trip to Beachy Head, July 
 23, 1800, we have not only some remarkably vivid descrip- 
 tion, but a little more suggestion than usual of the personal 
 side of Mrs. Radcliffe^ : 
 
 Walked to the shore and along it, with a hope of having 
 some sight of the sea-front of Beachy Head from beneath it, 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 65. 
 ' Ibid., p. 54. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 40. 
 
28 Ann Radcliffc in Relation to Her Time 
 
 though four or five miles off. . . . Within half a mile of 
 the great front, unable to proceed farther ; sat down on a block, 
 wearied out, desiring William to go on; he was soon hid by a 
 turn of the cliffs. Almost frightened at the solitude and vast- 
 ness of the scene, though Chance^ was with me. Tide almost 
 out; only sea in front; white cliffs rising over me, but not 
 impending; strand all around a chaos of rocks and fallen cliffs, 
 far out into the waves; sea-fowl wheeling and screaming; all 
 disappeared behind the point, beyond which, is the great cliff; 
 but we had doubled point after point, in the hope that this 
 would be the next ; and had been much deceived in the distances 
 by these great objects; after one remote point gained, another 
 and another succeeded, and still the great cliff was unattained; 
 the white precipices beautifully varied with plants, green, blue, 
 yellow and poppy. Wheat-ears flew up often from the beach ; 
 Chance pursued them. At length William returned, having 
 been nearly, but not quite, in front of the great promontory. 
 Slowly and laboriously we made our way back along the beach, 
 greatly fatigued, the day exceedingly hot, the horizon sulphurous, 
 with lowering clouds ; thunder rolled faintly at a distance. 
 
 Perhaps the mention of the favorite dog, with the evi- 
 dently close companionship of husband and wife, recalls to 
 those who are familiar with the letters of Elizabeth Barrett 
 and Robert Browning that other 'literary marriage.' But 
 Mr. Radcliffe, although apparently well known and respected 
 in his own time, has lived in literary history only as the 
 husband of his wife. That even in his lifetime his wife's 
 fame had become the chief distinction of the family is shown 
 by the notice of his mother's death in the Genfletnan's Maga- 
 zine for February, 1809^: 
 
 At the rectory-house at Broughton, co. Lincoln, aged 71, Mrs. 
 Deborah Radcliffe, mother of the husband of the celebrated 
 Authoress of several highly-esteemed Novels and other works. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's attitude toward her literary contempo- 
 raries is mentioned both in the memoir prefixed to Gaston 
 
 ^ Her favorite dog. 
 ' 79- 188. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 29 
 
 de Blondeville, and in the article in the Annual Biography 
 and Obituary. In the former we have the statement^ : 
 
 Much of her leisure was spent in reading the Hterary pro- 
 ductions of the day, especially poetrj' and novels. Of the 
 latter works she always spoke with entire freedom from jeal- 
 ousy, and devoured the earlier Scotch novels with all the avidity 
 of youth, although she felt deeply a slighting expression in 
 'Waverley,' towards herself, which the author might have spared. 
 Sir Walter Scott has, however, made ample amends to her 
 reputation by his elaborate criticism prefixed to Ballantine's 
 edition of her romances. 
 
 The 'sHghting expression' referred to occurs in Scott's 
 humorous explanation of his title," and was probably not 
 meant to carry any real sting. 
 
 More serious criticisms by contemporary authors are sug- 
 gested by her other biographer, when he says : 
 
 Of censure she had as small a share as could be, considering 
 her distinction ; and that, too, chiefly from the writers of other 
 novels or romances, whose candour on the subject may be sus- 
 pected ; since it is certain that no writer of fictitious narrative 
 is required, otherwise than by his or her own motives, to deliver 
 an opinion upon contemporaries. She never spoke of their 
 writings, except when she could have the delight, which she 
 often had, of expressing admiration ; or when, indeed, she had 
 
 ^Memoir, p. 98. 
 
 ^Waverley, Introductory: 'Had I. for example, announced in my 
 frontispiece, "Waverley, a Tale of other Days," must not every 
 novel-reader have anticipated a castle scarce less than that of 
 Udolpho, of which the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and 
 the keys either lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler 
 or house-keeper, whose trembling steps, about the middle of the 
 second volume, were doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the 
 ruinous precincts ? Would not the owl have shrieked and the 
 cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible 
 for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any 
 scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a 
 clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the 
 heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and 
 horror which she had heard in the servants' hall?' 
 
30 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 the other entertainment, of observing that those who betrayed 
 a wish to expel her violently from the field of literature, or at 
 least to close it roughly against her as she retired, seldom 
 failed to imitate her in one part of their works, after having 
 endeavored to proscribe her by another/ 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's housev^ifely talents are mentioned with 
 considerable emphasis. We are told that she 'was minutely 
 attentive to her household affairs. . . . Although by no 
 means disposed to parsimony, she kept an exact account of 
 daily disbursements, until a very short time before her 
 death.' Probably this attention to practical details was 
 hardly expected of literary ladies. Least of all would it 
 be looked for in one whose imagination led her to the work- 
 ing out of extravagant adventures, rather than to the repro- 
 duction of everyday life. But even in her novels we find 
 scenes of domestic happiness, which, although they are de- 
 scribed in rather stilted language, have both sincerity and 
 charm. An example of this is the account of La Luc's 
 family, in The Romance of the Forest; another is the open- 
 ing of The Mysteries of Udolpho, which gives an almost idyl- 
 lic picture of Emily's early life with her father and mother. 
 Another suggestion of Mrs. Radcliffe's devotion to her home 
 may perhaps be gathered from one of her poems. These, 
 for the most part, strike one as conventional exercises in 
 verse, and rather poor ones at that ; they show very little 
 of the writer's actual feeling. But December's Eve at Home 
 seems to me to bear at least a faint stamp of autobiography. 
 It may serve to modify the traditional picture of Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe, sitting lonely on winter evenings writing her direful 
 tales, while the wind howls outside as drearily as it does 
 around her imaginary castle. Here we have her winter 
 evening with the pleasant accompaniments of light, music, 
 and friendly companionship, including the favorite dog 
 which we have met before : 
 
 ^ Annual Biog. and Obit., p. 104. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 31 
 
 Welcome December's cheerful night, 
 When the taper-lights appear ; 
 When the piled hearth blazes bright, 
 And those we love are circled there! 
 
 And on the soft rug basking lies, 
 Outstretched at ease, the spotted friend. 
 With glowing coat and half-shut eyes, 
 Where watchfulness and slumber blend. 
 
 Welcome December's cheerful hour, 
 When books, with converse sweet combined. 
 And music's many-gifted power 
 Exalt, or soothe th' awakened mind. 
 
 Then, let the snow-wind shriek aloud, 
 And menace oft the guarded sash, 
 And all his diapason crowd. 
 As o'er the frame his white wings dash. 
 
 He sings of darkness and of storm. 
 
 Of icy cold and lonely ways ; 
 
 But, gay the room, the hearth more warm, 
 
 And brighter is the taper's blaze. 
 
 Then, let the merry tale go round. 
 And airy songs the hours deceive; 
 And let our heart- felt laughs resound, 
 In v/elcome to December's Eve!' 
 
 Is it fanciful to feel that from these scattered hints we 
 have constructed at least the shadow of a personality ? Cer- 
 tainly there is evidence of strength of character in a woman 
 who could keep 'her private and her public life so resolutely 
 apart, without, however, taking" refuge in anonymous publi- 
 cation, as did many women writers of her day. Even 
 though Mrs. Elwood attributes to her a mistaken idea of 
 'the incompatibility of the gentlewoman and the authoress,' 
 the fact that she gave the sanction of her name to her pro- 
 ductions seems to show that she recognized to some extent 
 the dignity of literature as a profession. One critic finds 
 Mrs. Radcliffe a pure type of femininity : 
 
 ^Posthumous Works 4. 213. 
 3 
 
32 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 There is a beauty in her mind, a gentleness, a deHcacy, a 
 retiredness in her disposition, which is wholly feminine, and 
 which every man cannot but feel, who feels as a man ought 
 towards woman.^ 
 
 It is true that the brief description of her person and man- 
 ners gives us a decidedly feminine impression. But there 
 are other critics who have called her mind 'masculine' ; and, 
 indeed, if the novels were anonymous, it might be difficult 
 to decide whether a man or a woman was responsible for 
 The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. 
 
 Perhaps, as in the case of many people, the most interest- 
 ing things we discover about her are the inconsistencies. 
 She was retiring, almost shy, in disposition ; and yet she 
 was, for many years, probably the most widely known 
 woman in England. Her physician tells us that she 'pos- 
 sessed a quick sensibility,' which 'would serve to increase the 
 warmth of the social feelings'^ ; and yet we have no record 
 of any friendships in which she played a part, no account 
 of her by any close associate. Either she succeeded in im- 
 pressing upon all her friends her desire for privacy, or her 
 companionship with her husband was so completely satisfy- 
 ing that she did not care for other intimacies. Certainly her 
 husband's note, at the end of the memoir which has been so 
 often quoted, shows his devotion, in the desire to have those 
 belated volumes in a sense a memorial to her : 
 
 The Editor of the present Publication, who is not the Writer 
 of the preceding Memoir, is aware, that it would be unbecoming 
 for him to say more of Works, written by one so dear to him, 
 than may be necessary to give the Public an early assurance of 
 their authenticity; and that fact, he apprehends, will be suffici- 
 ently proved by the distribution, which he has resolved to make, 
 of the whole purchase-money of the copyright. Every part of 
 that produce will be paid, as it shall accrue to him, to some 
 public charitable institution in England. The Lord Bishop of 
 
 ' United States Review and Literary Gazette, April, 1827. 
 ^Memoir, p. 105. 
 
Facts of Mrs. Radcliffe's Life 33 
 
 Bath and Wells, and Sir Walter Stirling, Bart, in consideration 
 of the utility of this purpose, allow him the honour of saying, 
 that they will audit his account of that distribution.^ 
 
 The very thing which we are incHned to admire in Mrs. 
 Radcliffe — her determination to keep her private Hf e entirely- 
 separate from her Hterary fame — makes her an almost 
 impossible subject for biography. Perhaps, however, we do 
 gain a sufficiently definite impression to say this — the little 
 we know of her makes us wish that we might know more. 
 
 ^ PosthiDuous Works i. 132. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WORK 
 
 Section I. Contemporary Estimates of her Work. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's first book is noticed as follows in the 
 Critical Review for September, 1789^: 
 
 The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, an Highland Story, 
 l2mo. 3s. Hookham. 
 
 There is some fancy and much romantic imagery in the con- 
 duct of this story; but our pleasure would have been more 
 unmixed had our author preserved better the manners and 
 costume of the Highlands. He seems to be unacquainted with 
 both. 
 
 The Monthly Review for December, 1789,- has a comment 
 rather longer, but even less flattering : 
 
 To those who are delighted with the marvellous, whom 
 wonders, and wonders only, can charm, the present production 
 will accord a considerable degree of amusement. This kind of 
 entertainment, however, can be little relished but by the young 
 and unformed mind. To men who have passed, or even attained, 
 the meridian of life, a series of events, which seem not to have 
 their foundation in nature, will ever be insipid, if not disgustful. 
 The author of this performance appears to have written on the 
 principle of Mr. Bayes, to elevate and surprise. By means of 
 trap-doors, false pannels, subterranean passages, etc. etc. this 
 purpose is effected : and all this, as was before intimated, will 
 possibly have its admirers. But though we are not of the number 
 of such readers, we must honestly confess, that this little work is 
 to be commended for its moral ; as also for the good senti- 
 ments and reflections which occasionally occur in it. 
 
 The Scots Magazine, in its Appendix for 1789,^ repeats 
 the last tw^o or three lines of the notice just quoted — lines 
 
 '68. 251. 
 '81.563. 
 '51-645. 
 
Work 35 
 
 which furnish a shining example of the faint praise that 
 damns. Especially does this phrase seem apt as we look 
 through the book-reviews of the time. The reviewers seem 
 to have had a bias toward morality, but they rarely mention 
 its presence except when there is a total absence of anything 
 else worthy of praise. 
 
 Mrs. RadclifTe's first attempt, then, created little excite- 
 ment in the literary world. It is rather interesting, in view 
 of Scott's later achievements, that she began with a High- 
 land story, but just why she called it a Highland story is 
 hard to understand. Probably the Highlands of Scotland 
 had for her a suggestion of romance ; but her imagination 
 had not developed to such a degree that it could, as in the 
 later books, almost take the place of knowledge. Placing 
 her castle on the 'north-east coast of Scotland, in the most 
 romantic part of the Highlands,' and bestowing Scotch 
 names on a few of her characters, were her only steps in 
 the direction of local color. 
 
 The reception of the second book, A Sicilian Romance, 
 was rather more encouraging. The Monthly Revieiv^ said 
 of it: 
 
 In this tale, we meet with something more than the alternate 
 tears and rapture of tender lovers. The writer possesses a 
 happy vein of invention, and a correctness of taste, which 
 enable her to rise above the level of mediocrity. Romantic 
 scenes, and surprizing events, are exhibited in elegant and ani- 
 mated language. 
 
 The Critical Reviezu- was somewhat less enthusiastic, but 
 took the story much more seriously than its predecessor : 
 
 This very interesting novel engages the attention, in defiance 
 of numerous improbabilities and "hair-breadth scapes' too often 
 repeated. Perhaps, on second reading, these might be still more 
 disgusting ; but it is an experiment that we can scarcely venture 
 to try but with modern novels of the first class. We found the 
 
 ^3.91, September, 1790. 
 
 ^ N. Ar. I. 35a March, 1791. 
 
36 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 tale, we have said, very entertaining, and involved with art, 
 developed with skill, and the event concealed with great dex- 
 terity. If our author again engaged in this task, we would 
 advise her not to introduce so many caverns with such peculiar 
 concealments, or so many spring-locks which open only on one 
 side. 
 
 The Scots Magazine'^ again echoes the Monthly Review; 
 its reviews seem to consist of abridgements of those in other 
 magazines. 
 
 A Sicilian Romance, it seems, attracted some attention 
 other than that of reviewers who read it as a matter of duty. 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, in her Letters to Mrs. Montagu, 
 writes : 
 
 I have been reading with much pleasure the 'Sicilian Romance.' 
 The language is elegant, the scenery exquisitely painted, the 
 moral good, and the conduct and conclusion of the fable, I 
 think, original. Have you read it? And do you know the name 
 of the Authoress? I do not.^ 
 
 All the announcements of the book had read, By the 
 Authoress of the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. The 
 account of The Romance of the Forest, which appears in 
 the Critical Review for April, 1792,^ has this heading: 
 
 The Romance of the Forest ; interspersed with some Pieces of 
 Poetry. By the Authoress of 'A Sicilian Romance' etc. 3 vols. 
 9s. Sewed. Hookham. 
 
 The writer begins his review by saying: 
 
 We spoke with respect of the Sicilian Romance ; but this 
 lady, for by the term (authoress) we must suppose it to be the 
 production of a female's pen, has greatly exceeded her first 
 work. 
 
 He adds a note to this effect : Tn the advertisement to the 
 second edition, she styles herself Ann Radcliffe, and we have 
 
 ^ 52. 438. September, 1790. 
 "^Z-Z^Z- December 15, 1790. 
 'N. Ar. 4. 458. April, 1792. 
 
Work 37 
 
 no authority for prefixing Miss or Mrs.' The whole review 
 is in a tone of such decided enthusiasm that the author 
 seems to feel he may be criticized for going too far. He 
 stands his ground, however, in his concluding words : 
 
 If it may appear, that we have commended this novel with an 
 eager warmth, we can only say, in apology for it, that we have 
 copied our real sentiments. The lady is wholly unknown to us, 
 and probably will ever continue so. We must, however, con- 
 sider 'The Romance of the Forest' as one of the first works in 
 this line of novel-writing that we have seen. 
 
 Other reviews are equally commendatory. The English 
 Reviezv^ begins its discussion with the statement : 
 
 Of modern novels, The Romance of the Forest must certainly 
 be allowed to rank among the first class. 
 
 The Monthly Review'^ says : 
 
 'We have seldom met with a fiction which has more forcibly 
 fixed the attention, or more agreeably interested the feelings, 
 throughout the whole narrative.' 
 
 Both these reviewers give long extracts from the novel, to 
 justify their praise of the author's style. In the European 
 Magazine for October, 1795,^ we have a reference to the 
 book, which the writer begins as follows : 
 
 In Mrs. Radcliffe's 'Romance of the Forest,' (a Novel far 
 superior, I think, to her 'Mysteries of Udolpho') we have some 
 pleasing speculations on the reunion of friends in a future 
 state of existence; they deserve to be detached from the volume, 
 and inserted in your valuable miscellany. 
 
 This quotation introduces a question upon which there 
 has been some difference of opinion — that of the relative 
 literary value of The Romance of the Forest and The Mys- 
 teries of Udolpho. Mrs. Barbauld, in her preface to Mrs. 
 
 ^20.352. November, 1792. 
 "8.82. May, 1792. 
 '28.23a October. 1795. 
 
38 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Radcliffe's works/ speaks of The Romance of the Forest 
 as 'the first production of this lady, in which her peculiar 
 genius was strikingly developed, . . . and in some re- 
 spects . . . the best.' Later on, in referring to The 
 Mysteries of Udolpho, she says: 'It abounds still more with 
 instances of mysterious and terrific appearances, but has 
 perhaps less of character, and a more imperfect story.' 
 George Moir, on the other hand, in the seventh edition of 
 the Encyclopccdia Britannica, gives his opinion as follows : 
 
 It may be said in a word, that the Romance of the Forest, 
 founded on a French cause celebre, has the fewest faults ; that 
 the Italian, though extremely unequal, and in the third volume 
 a comparative failure, contains the most striking and dramatic 
 scenes ; but that the Mysteries of Udolpho is on the whole, and 
 justly, considered the best.^ 
 
 Miss Anna Seward, in a letter written August 3, 1794,^ 
 
 says : 
 
 Her Mysteries of Udolpho is a much superior work to her 
 Romance of the Forest. The first volume of that is fine, the 
 rest heavy, uninteresting, and contain very aflfected writing. 
 
 Some of the reviewers of The Mysteries of Udolpho, 
 while giving it high praise, seem reluctant to consider it an 
 advance over the earlier book. For instance, the Critical 
 Review for August, 1794,* has this statement: 
 
 With regard to the work before us, while we acknowledge the 
 extraordinary powers of Mrs. Radcliffe, some readers will be 
 inclined to doubt whether they have been exerted in the present 
 work with equal effect as in the Romance of the Forest. 
 
 A preference for the one work or the other is probably a 
 matter of personal fancy, although there may be some justice 
 in the comment of a reviewer that the author might write 
 a better story than The Mysteries of Udolpho 'when no 
 
 ^ British Novelists, Vol. 43. 
 
 ^ Treatises on Poetry, Modern Romance and Rhetoric, pp. 197-206. 
 
 ' Letters 3. 389. 
 
 * 2. 262. 
 
Work 39 
 
 longer disposed to sacrifice excellence to quantity, and 
 lengthen out a story for the sake of filling an additional 
 volume.'^ Mrs. Kavanagh remarks that the title of The 
 Romance of the Forest suggests some of the most delightful 
 associations in English poetry— Robin Hood, and the Forest 
 of Arden; that after Shakespeare there is a great gap in 
 forest-literature, and that Mrs. Radcliffe is the first after 
 him to give us once more woodland scenery in its freshness 
 and beauty. 
 
 Certainly the charm of the out-of-doors is felt in The 
 Romance of the Forest. Although the scene is presumably 
 in France, it was undoubtedly the author's love of English 
 woods that inspired her descriptions. Her devotion to 
 Windsor Forest is mentioned by her biographers; we are 
 told that she came to know certain trees there, and to feel 
 a special fondness for them as individuals. English scenery 
 was responsible for this new picture of life in a forest, just 
 as unmistakably as Shakespeare's knowledge of English 
 woodlands gave us the Forest of Arden. 
 
 One thing is beyond question. By the time of the publi- 
 cation of The Mysteries of Udolpho, Mrs. Radcliffe's place 
 as an author was assured. The appearance of a new book 
 bearing her name was evidently an important event in the 
 literary world, for it is heralded for weeks in the columns of 
 the London Chronicle, and the notices are always placed in 
 a prominent position, as if the book were considered of 
 especial importance. The first advertisement, on Thursday, 
 April 24, 1794 (77-391 ), reads as follows : 
 
 In a few Days will he published, 
 
 In Four very large Volumes Twelves, 
 
 The Mysteries of Udolpho: A Romance; interspersed with some 
 
 Pieces of Poetry, etc. 
 
 By Ann Radclifife, 
 
 Author of the Romance of the Forest, &c. 
 
 Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster row. 
 
 * Critical Review 2. 372. August, 1794- 
 
40 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 The first notice of actual publication occurs in the London 
 Chronicle for Saturday, May lo, 1794- 
 
 Incidentally it may be remarked that Mrs. Radcliflfe's 
 change of publisher possibly indicates her growing fame and 
 prosperity as an author. In Rees and Britain's Literary 
 London, from 1779 to 1833 (p. 37), this reference is made 
 to the Robinsons : 
 
 The Robinsons, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of 
 the nineteenth centuries, when I first became acquainted with the 
 firm, carried on the largest business of any house in London, 
 as general publishers, and also as wholesale and retail book- 
 sellers. . . . They published largely books of considerable 
 size and of great value. The head of the firm was considered 
 to have an excellent judgment in the difificult and often critical 
 undertaking of the superintendence and management of the 
 literary concerns of a publishing establishment. He greatly 
 respected meritorious authors, and acted with singular liberality 
 in his pecuniary dealings with them. 
 
 That a firm of such reputation was willing to pay £500 
 for a work of fiction is testimony to the distinction which the 
 author had already attained. 
 
 The reviews of The Mysteries of Udolpho are many, and, 
 for the most part, distinctly favorable. Almost invariably 
 they are given the dignity of a leading place in the magazine, 
 and most of the reviewers indulge in copious extracts to 
 illustrate the author's style. A few quotations will show the 
 general tone of the reviews. 
 
 The Monthly Review for November, 1794,^ in a long and 
 enthusiastic account of the book, contains these comments : 
 
 The works of this ingenious writer not only possess, in com- 
 mon with many other productions of the same class, the agree- 
 able qualities of correctness of sentiment and elegance of style, 
 but are also distinguished by a rich vein of invention, which sup- 
 plies an endless variety of incidents to fill the imagination of 
 the reader ; by an admirable ingenuity of contrivance to awaken 
 his curiosity, and to bind him in the chains of suspence; and 
 
 ' IS. 278. 
 
Work 41 
 
 by a vigour of conception and a delicacy of feeling which are 
 capable of producing the strongest sympathetic emotions, 
 whether of pity or terror. 
 
 . . The embellishments of the work are highly finished. 
 The descriptions are rich, glowing, and varied : they discover a 
 vigorous imagination and an uncommon command of language; 
 and many of them would furnish admirable subjects for the 
 pencil of the painter. 
 
 The British Critic^ has a review almost as appreciative : 
 
 We so very seldom find in a work of imagination, those quali- 
 ties combined, which are necessary to its successful accomplish- 
 ment, that when the event does happen, we distinguish it as a 
 place of repose from our severer labours, and are happy to be- 
 guile the hours of weariness and chagrin beneath the shade 
 which fancy spreads around. A tale, regularly told, neither 
 offending probability by its extravagance, nor fatiguing by its 
 want of vivacity or incident, has ever been esteemed among 
 those labours of the mind which the critic cannot disdain to 
 commend, nor genius to introduce, and when it is further em- 
 bellished by the charms o.f good writing, is the vehicle of ingenu- 
 ous sentiments, and inculcates the purest morality, it eminently 
 takes the lead in that class of writings, which is professedly 
 designed for entertainment. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe had before obtained considerable reputation, 
 from the cultivation of this branch of literature, and we are 
 happy that it has fallen to our province to record one of the 
 best and most interesting of her works. 
 
 The only serious criticism brought against the book is in 
 regard to the superabundance of description. The Euro- 
 pean Magazine^- speaks of the author as 'minute even to 
 tedious prolixity in her local descriptions,' but the reviewer 
 takes off the curse from this criticism by adding, 'a weight 
 which would have hung with deadening power about the 
 neck of a composition not animated by the utmost vigour of 
 imagination.' 
 
 ^4. no. August, 1794. 
 '25. 433. June, 1794. 
 
42 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Although some of the critics differ as to the relative 
 literary value of The Romance of the Forest and The Mys- 
 teries of Udolpho, most of them agree that the latter was, 
 of all Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, the most popular. This popu- 
 larity is natural enough. The greater complication of the 
 plot, the wider range of experience to which we are intro- 
 duced, the increased number of thrills and surprises, and the 
 really remarkable description of the Castle of Udolpho, all 
 were calculated to appeal to the popular taste. Even now 
 the charm has not wholly departed, if, forgetting to read 
 critically, we submit ourselves to its power. We feel a little 
 shiver of apprehension when the black pall on the bed slowly 
 begins to rise. We share Emily's excitement and hope 
 when, in her chamber in the gloomy castle, she hears the 
 notes of a familiar song, and thinks that her lover is near. 
 Talfourd's judgment is probably right when he says, 'Of all 
 the romances in the world, this is perhaps the most ro- 
 mantic.'^ It is, possibly, the excess of romance which has 
 made the world tire of it. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's next work was an attempt in an entirely 
 different field — an account of her trip through Holland and 
 Germany, and her visit to the English Lake-region. The 
 notice of this publication appears in the London Chronicle 
 for May 21, 1795. It received as much attention in the 
 magazines as the novels had — in fact, even more, so far as 
 space was concerned, for some of the magazines gave a 
 review long enough to be divided among two or three 
 numbers. Works of travel were popular at that time, and 
 it seems to have been generally conceded that Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's talent for description peculiarly fitted her for such 
 writing. It was suggested, however, in some of the reviews, 
 that she put too much of her strength into description of 
 natural scenery, instead of studying men and manners. One 
 
 ' Memoir, p. 126. 
 
Work 43 
 
 reviewer remarked that she looked at scenes 'not with the 
 eye of a philosopher, but a landscape painter.'^ 
 
 The same review contains Mrs. Radcliffe's explanation of 
 her use of the term zue : 
 
 She observes, in a preface, 'that her journey having been 
 performed in the company of her nearest relative and friend, 
 the account of it has been written so much from their mutual 
 observation, that there would be a deception in permitting the 
 book to appear without some acknowledgment which may dis- 
 tinguish it from works entirely her own. The title-page would, 
 therefore, have contained the joint names of her husband and 
 herself, if this mode of appearing before the public, besides 
 being thought by that relative a greater acknowledgment than 
 was due to his share of the work, had not seemed liable to the 
 imputation of a design to attract attention by extraordinary 
 novelty. It is, however, necessary to her own satisfaction, that 
 some notice should be taken of this assistance.' 
 
 Modern readers would probably find the Journey through 
 Holland too exclusively a work of description. The books 
 of travel which are popular to-day have more of the narra- 
 tive-interest. Most of us would like better the informal 
 notes of her journal, from which a few extracts have already 
 been given. To quote from a review of the Posthumous 
 Works : 
 
 They are far more interesting, and a thousand times more 
 graphic, than her published Journal of her tour to Holland and 
 Germany, where much of the original spirit of the sketches 
 seems to have evaporated in the process of preparation for the 
 press. 
 
 But for her contemporaries the Journey evidently pos- 
 sessed great interest, and some reviewers even seemed to 
 feel that it was a work which deserved more serious con- 
 sideration than the novels. The Critical Revieiv,- for 
 instance, remarks : 
 
 ^English Review 26. i. July, 1795. 
 ' N. Ar. 14. 241. July, 1795. 
 
44 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 The character of Mrs. RadcHffe's pen, for a peculiar felicity 
 in the description of objects of fancy, has been acknowledged 
 by universal suffrage. The repeated instances of this given in 
 the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' where the objects are fanciful, and 
 the descriptions consequently arbitrary, and sometimes redund- 
 ant, excited a public wish that she might engage in a work 
 where the same talent should be necessarily employed to 
 delineate the grandeur, beauty, or sublimity of real scenery, and 
 where the recurrence of description, following only the exhi- 
 bitions of nature, should not be oppressive. Such a work is 
 now before us, and we have not been disappointed in the ex- 
 pectations we were taught to form. 
 
 Another bit of testimony as to contemporary opinion is 
 given by Thomas Green in his Diary of a Lover of Litera- 
 ture, in the entry for May 26, 1800: 
 
 Read Mrs. RadcHffe's Tour to the Lakes. Much might per- 
 haps be expected from this Lady's well known powers of 
 description, exerted on so congenial a theme: but to paint from 
 the imagination, and to copy nature, are such different achieve- 
 ments, that I was surprised, I confess, to find that she had 
 succeeded so well, and failed so little. Her pictures, though 
 somewhat overwrought and heavy compared with the expressive 
 etchings of Gray, exhibit as clear distinct and forcible images 
 to the mind's eye, as it is well possible for words to convey. 
 Such a series of them 'where pure description holds the place of 
 sense,' would probably pall on most palates ; but so strong a 
 passion do I feel for the keen delights of picturesque and moun- 
 tain scenery, that I was gratified, I own, to the last.' 
 
 The Italian was first announced in December, 1796. 
 About this book there has been more difference of opinion 
 than about any of the others. To some critics it was the 
 high-water mark of Mrs. RadcHffe's achievement ; to others 
 it showed a distinct falHng-off. Modern opinion would 
 perhaps incHne toward the former view. This story has 
 more unity of plot than the others ; it has more real delinea- 
 tion of character ; and its suggestion of the supernatural is, 
 if anything, more impressive than that in The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho. 
 
 ^ Diary of a Lover of Literature, p. 225. 
 
M^ork 45 
 
 Most of the reviewers unite in considering the monk, Sche- 
 doni, as the most successful of Mrs. RadcHfife's characters. 
 Some, indeed, find fault with him as being too appallingly 
 wicked, while others assert that, when she tries to soften his 
 character by a touch of parental affection, he becomes unreal. 
 But certainly he makes upon us the impression of a person- 
 ality; he is not, as Hazlitt said of her heroes — Valancourt, 
 Theodore, and the rest — merely 'a sounding name, a graceful 
 form.'^ 
 
 One interesting comment on the book is made by a writer 
 in the United States Review and Literary Gazette.'^ 
 
 No one, who thinks of the new power which seems suddenly 
 to have developed itself in 'The Italian,' but must feel sorry that 
 she did not set about another work while her mind was yet 
 glowing with the exercise of that she had just finished. We 
 allude to the masterly dialogues in that greatest of her works, 
 particularly in the interview between the Marchesa and Schedoni 
 in the church of San Nicolo; that between Schedoni and 
 Spalatro, when the latter refuses to murder EUena; and in the 
 scene, also, in which Schedoni discovers Ellena to be his 
 daughter. The deadly shrewdness, the sophistry with a mixture 
 of emotion in the first; the close, abrupt and highly impassioned 
 character of the next, and those following, have seldom been 
 approached by any novelist. It is this which puts life, indeed, 
 into a story, and when we think what Mrs. Radcliflfe might have 
 done, had she gone on thus, we cannot but feel sad at what we 
 have lost. 
 
 This praise seems, on the whole, just. Although passages 
 can be found in The Italian in which the conversation is 
 artificial and out of character, and although the faithful 
 servant Paulo strikes us as being wearisomely prosy rather 
 than amusing, the passages mentioned are certainly different 
 from anything found in the earlier novels. Mrs. Radclifife 
 here uses dialogue as a means both of revealing character 
 and of advancing the action ; and she does it skilfully. 
 
 * Sketches and Essays, p. 267. 
 '2. I. April, 1827. 
 
46 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Schedoni as a character is inevitably connected with 
 Schedoni as an actor in the most dramatic scene of the book. 
 It is melodrama if you like, but it is melodrama raised to its 
 most successful pitch, if we can trust its effect upon con- 
 temporary opinion. 
 
 The Monthly Review^ says of this scene : 
 
 The part, however, which displays the greatest genius, and 
 the most force of description, is the account of the scenes which 
 passed in the lone house on the shore of the Adriatic, between 
 Schedoni, Ellena, and Spalatro : — the horrible sublimity which 
 characterizes the discovery made by the former that Ellena 
 was his daughter, at the instant in which he was about to stab 
 her, is perhaps unparalleled. 
 
 The Edinburgh Reviezv,'^ in commenting upon Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's powers of description, refers to the same passage : 
 
 Do we not actually see before us that lone house by the 
 Mediterranean, with the scudding clouds, the screaming sea- 
 birds, the stormy sea — the scene selected for the murder of 
 Ellena by her father? 
 
 Dr. Nathan Drake, in his Literary Hours (i. 361), calls 
 Mrs. Radcliffe 'the Shakespeare of Romance Writers,' and 
 goes on to say : 
 
 In her last piece, termed The Italian, the attempt of Schedoni 
 to assassinate the amiable and innocent Ellena, whilst confined 
 with banditti in a lone house on the sea-shore, is wrought up 
 in so masterly a manner, that every nerve vibrates with pity 
 and terror, especially at the moment when, about to plunge a 
 dagger into her bosom, he discovers her to be his daughter ; 
 every word, every action of the shocked and self-accusing Con- 
 fessor, whose character is marked with traits almost super- 
 human, appal yet delight the reader, and it is difficult to ascertain 
 whether ardent curiosity, intense commiseration, or apprehen- 
 sion that suspends almost the faculty of breathing, be, in the 
 progress of this well-written story, most powerfully excited. 
 
 ^22. 282. March, 1797. 
 ' July, 1834. 
 
Work 47 
 
 It must be admitted that there were opinions less favorable 
 to the book. Green said/ 'This work will maintain, but not 
 extend Mrs. Radcliffe's fame as a novelist.' Anna Seward^ 
 declared that 'the story, ... as usual, toils after the 
 terrible ; but produces it, surely, with less effect than in her 
 former productions.' 
 
 A writer in the English Review^ seems to account very 
 reasonably for the disappointment which some people felt in 
 reading The Italian : 
 
 It was impossible to raise curiosity and expectation to a 
 higher pitch than she has done in her Mysteries of Udolpho ; 
 yet these mysteries she accounted for in a natural manner. 
 The reader of The Italian now before us sits down with this 
 conviction. As children who have been frighted, by an ideal 
 bugbear, and afterwards convinced that there was nothing in 
 it, will cry, 'No, no ! we know what it is ; you cannot frighten 
 us again :' so, we acknowledge, does the perusal of the present 
 romance affect us. 
 
 It seems very probable that, had The Italian appeared be- 
 fore Mrs. Radcliffe had so thoroughly accustomed the public 
 to her habit of explaining away her terrors, it would have 
 been universally considered, as it was considered by many 
 critics, the best of her works. Scott speaks with especial 
 enthusiasm of the opening scene of the story,* and he is in- 
 clined to defend the scenes dealing with the Inquisition, 
 which had received rather more unfavorable criticism than 
 the rest of the book. 
 
 The Italian was the last publication which appeared in 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's lifetime, with the exception of a slim volume 
 of poems, dated London, 1816. This volume has the fol- 
 lowing rather puzzling preface : 
 
 The Editor of this little volume trusts that he need not offer 
 any apology for presenting it to the public. The genius of the 
 
 ^ Diary of a Lover of Literature, p. 28. 
 
 "Letters 4. 382. 
 
 '28. 574. December, 1796. 
 
 * Lives of the Novelists, p. 218. 
 
 4 
 
48 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 author has been universally acknowledged. The merit of the 
 different pieces which compose this collection, is variable — some 
 are beautiful, and bear every mark of a poetical imagination. 
 Her genius was of the sterling kind, and partook much of the 
 masculine character : and the Editor feels assured that this 
 volume will be welcome to those who have repeatedly been 
 delighted by the efforts of that genius ! whose souls have started, 
 and whose eyes have wept, at the scenes of terror and pity which 
 she has portrayed. That her genius was poetical is proved by 
 the beautiful and sublime descriptions of scenery with which her 
 romances abound — descriptions seldom equalled, and, perhaps, 
 no where surpassed. 
 
 The Editor has only to add, that the pieces which occur be- 
 yond page 95 are his own, with whatever faults, therefore, they 
 are chargeable, they are to be placed to his own account. 
 
 One would suppose that such a preface could be vi^ritten 
 only by a close relative of the author, and that only one 
 nearly connected would presume to finish out a volume of 
 her poems with his own. But when we remember the care- 
 ful reserve with which Mr. RadclifTe spoke of his wife's 
 work, even after her death, we feel that this is not at all in 
 his style. Moreover, the past tense used throughout would 
 prevent us from ascribing it to him, for it would seem to 
 imply that the writer supposed Mrs. Radcliffe to be no longer 
 living. No help can be found in reviews, for the volume 
 seems to have attracted no attention. 
 
 With so long a gap — from The Italian in 1796 to her 
 posthumous works in 1826 — one might fancy that Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe would have been entirely forgotten. Nothing shows 
 more conclusively the place she had occupied in public favor 
 than the lively interest with which these last volumes were 
 received. The book was advertised, before its publication, 
 even more extensively than the earlier ones had been. The 
 Morning Chronicle began announcing it on March 20. The 
 announcement, the first in the column and in large type, 
 read : 
 
 The following new works will shortly be published by Mr. 
 Colburn. 
 
Work 49 
 
 Gaston de Blmdeville ; a Romance, with some Poetical Pieces. 
 By Anne Radclifife, Author of The Romance of the Forest, Mys- 
 teries of Udolpho, Italian, etc. To wHich will be prefixed, a 
 Memoir of the Author, and Extracts from her Diary. Published 
 from the originals, in the possession of William Radclifife, Esq. 
 4 vols, post 8vo. 
 
 The same announcement, or practically the same, followed 
 at intervals of a few days, ten times during the next three 
 months, until finally, on June 12, 1826, the actual publication 
 was announced. Before this final announcement, there ap- 
 peared on June 6 an advertisement of the complete works 
 of Mrs. Radcliffe: 
 
 Mrs. Radcliflfe's Works :— The whole of the Works of the 
 above celebrated Authoress can be had complete (embellished 
 with numerous Engravings) in the two first volumes of Lim- 
 bird's British Novelist, for the trifling sum of Ten Shillings in 
 boards. — Vol. I contains The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The 
 Sicilian Romance. — Vol. II contains The Romance of the Forest, 
 Italian, and The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. — Vols. Ill and 
 IV are nearly ready for delivery, price 5s. each. 
 
 Printed and published by J. Limbird, 143, Strand, London. 
 
 That news of the posthumous novel had spread even be- 
 fore the first announcement quoted above, and that it had 
 reached the literary public of America, as well as that of 
 England, is shown by an item in the Museum of Foreign 
 Literature and Science, published in Philadelphia and New 
 York^ : 
 
 Mr. Colburn will shortly publish a Romance by Ann Radclifife, 
 author of 'The Mysteries of Udolpho,' etc. This announcement 
 will, no doubt, excite the greatest interest among all classes of 
 the 'reading public,' who will eagerly welcome a new and genuine 
 work by the 'Great Enchantress,' whose pen has apparently been 
 so long idle. The forthcoming Romance would have been 
 published some years ago, had not the Author's nervous tem- 
 perament, arising from the state of her health (which declined 
 soon after the work in question was finished) made her hesitate 
 
 *8. 94. January, 1826. (N. S. I.) 
 
50 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 to plunge again in the bustle of literary competition ; and being 
 in affluent circumstances, she could afford to indulge in the 
 leisure and privacy she so much loved. Since the death of this 
 celebrated lady, which took place in 1823, Mr. Radcliffe, her 
 husband, has yielded to the solicitations pressed on him, and has 
 consented that her last Romance, which will be found quite 
 worthy of her fame, should be given to the world. 
 
 The judgments of the critics in regard to Gaston de 
 Blondeville show an amusing and bewildering variety. 
 The Edinburgh Magazine'^ declares : 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe has long borne undisputed, and almost solitary 
 sway over the regions of romance; and the book we shall now 
 refer to is certainly one of her own magical writing. If external 
 evidence were needed to establish the latter position, it would 
 find sufficient support in the intrinsic worth of the composition. 
 
 The Monthly Review,^ on the other hand, pronounces a 
 
 quite contrary opinion : 
 
 We must, nevertheless, take the liberty to say, that if the 
 authenticity of the posthumous writings now before us had not 
 been placed beyond all doubt, we should have hesitated to be- 
 lieve that they had proceeded from the author of 'The Mys- 
 teries of Udolpho.' 
 
 The London Literary Gazette^ says that the romance is, 
 'to our taste, much finer than the other works of the author,' 
 and adds : 
 
 In this romance, Mrs. Radcliffe has abandoned the principle 
 to which she confined herself in her former works, and has taken 
 advantage of ghostly aid. A spectre is introduced as a principal 
 agent in the awful plot of Gaston de Blondeville ; and we 
 venture to anticipate that this unearthly being will be pronounced 
 one of the most solemn creatures in our language. 
 
 Again, the opposite opinion is presented in the Edinburgh 
 
 Review*: 
 
 * 18. 703. June, 1826. 
 ' N. S. 2. 28a July, 1826. 
 ' May 27, 1826. 
 'July, 1834. 
 
Work 5 1 
 
 If anything . . . could reconcile us to Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 system of explaining every thing by natural causes in her former 
 romances, it would be to see how completely in this she has 
 failed in the management of a true spirit. 
 
 For the most part, however, the reviewers seem to have 
 welcomed the publication of these posthumous works as an 
 opportunity for a resume and appreciation of Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's work in general. The article in the Edinburgh 
 Review, just quoted, was a review, not of Gaston de Blonde- 
 ville in particular, but of the poems which accompanied it, 
 which had been reprinted, and apparently announced as 
 new volumes, in 1834. The ending of the review resembles 
 many of the others in the almost affectionate admiration 
 which it shows for Mrs. Radcliffe, even while recognizing 
 some of her imperfections : 
 
 We must now bid adieu to these poems. They are little 
 calculated certainly to increase the reputation of Mrs. Radcliffe ; 
 and perhaps her friends would have acted more judiciously if 
 they had allowed them to remain in that obscurity in which they 
 were left by their amiable authoress. Yet we are glad of the 
 opportunity they have afforded us of expressing our admiration 
 of her powers as a writer of romance, and of reviving in some 
 measure the recollection of that fascination which her scenes of 
 beauty and terror once exercised over our fancy. That a 
 critical perusal of them at the present moment, with the cool eye 
 of middle age, would probably point out to us many incongrui- 
 ties, and many weaknesses, is very probable. It is an experiment 
 which we should take care not to hazard. We prefer leaving 
 them as they float at present in our memory, here and there 
 freshly remembered in their better parts, the rest fading into 
 distance and half forgotten ; on the whole, a pleasing pageant 
 of gloomy castles and caves, — moon-illumined streets and pal- 
 aces, — dance and Provengal song, and vintage mirth, — aerial 
 music floating over fairy-haunted forests, — or choral chant of 
 monk or nun, borne to the- ear over the still waters of the 
 Adriatic. 
 
 Looking over the reviews of Mrs. Radcliffe's work, one 
 finds them, on the whole, distinctly favorable. Indeed, most 
 
52 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 of them are more than this ; they are warmly enthusiastic. 
 Even the first book, weak as it is in comparison with her 
 later eflforts, is spoken of in terms that would not entirely 
 discourage a young author. A Sicilian Romance, as we 
 have seen, received a considerable degree of praise, and 
 from the time of the publication of The Romance of the 
 Forest, probably no writer of fiction could vie with her in 
 popularity. The reviews of her posthumous works give 
 more general comment on her position as an author than the 
 reviews of individual novels. One^ speaks of her as 'the 
 finest writer in this kind of fiction that ever existed,' and as 
 'confessedly at the head of her class.' Another^ refers to 
 the volumes of poetry published in 1834 as 'the last relic of 
 a highly-gifted and amiable mind, which, in its day, exer- 
 cised no mean influence over the spirit of literature, and the 
 charm of whose productions has perhaps been acknowledged 
 more universally, and with less dispute, than that of any 
 other writer of fiction.' The same writer goes on to say that 
 Mrs. Radclifife's reputation has suffered from the many imi- 
 tators who tried to use her methods, without possessing her 
 skill : 
 
 But Mrs. Radcliffe was as truly an inventor, a great and 
 original writer in the department she had struck out for her- 
 self — whether that department was of the highest kind or not — 
 as the Richardsons, Fieldings, and Smolletts, whom she suc- 
 ceeded and for a time threw into the shade; or the Ariosto of 
 the North, before whom her own star has paled its ineffectual 
 fires. 
 
 When we consider the almost unanimous expressions of 
 admiration which these reviews contain, the suggestion in 
 some of the obituary notices that unfavorable criticism 
 caused Mrs. Radclifife to give up her writing seems hardly 
 reasonable. It is true that certain of the reviews contained 
 qualifying judgments — that many critics objected to her 
 
 ^London Literary Gazette, May 27, 1826. 
 ^Edinburgh Review, July, 1834. 
 
Work 53 
 
 use of description, or detected errors in her local color. 
 But the praise far overbalanced the blame, and no author 
 of sense could object to intelligent and reasonable criticism. 
 The only comment which might have seriously hurt the 
 feelings of a writer sensitive to public opinion is found in an 
 article on Terrorist Novel Writing in the Spirit of Public 
 Journals for 1797.^ This is in the form of a letter, ridi- 
 culing the novels 'in which it has been the fashion to make 
 terror the order of the day/ and it is followed by a note 
 which has a rather sneering tone : 
 
 It is easy to see that the satire of this letter is particularly 
 levelled at a literary lady of considerable talent, who has pre- 
 sented the world with three novels, in which she has found out 
 the secret of making us 'fall in love with what we fear to look 
 on.' . . . The systoii of terror which she has adopted is not 
 the only reproach to which she is liable. Besides the tedious 
 monotony of her descriptions, she afifects in the most disgusting 
 manner a knowledge of languages, countries, customs, and ob- 
 jects of art of which she is lamentably ignorant. She suspends 
 tripods from the ceiling by chains, not knowing that a tripod 
 is a utensil standing upon three feet. — She covers the kingdom 
 of Naples with India figs because St. Pierre has introduced 
 those tropical plants in his tales, of which the scene is laid in 
 India — and she makes a convent of monks a necessary appendage 
 to a monastery of nuns. This shows how well a lady under- 
 stands the wants of her sex. Whenever she introduces an 
 Italian word it is sure to be a gross violation of the language. 
 Instead of making a nobleman's servant call him Padrone, or 
 Illustrissinio, she makes him address him by the title of Maestro, 
 which is Italian for a teacher. She converts the singular of 
 Laczaroni into Lazzaro, etc. etc. etc. 
 
 This lady's husband told a friend that he was going to Ger- 
 many with his wife, the object of whose journey was to pick 
 up materials for a novel. I think in that case answered his 
 friend, that you had better let her go alone! 
 
 It would seem, however, that, if there were enough un- 
 favorable criticisms to affect Mrs. Radcliffe to any great 
 
 "i- 323. 
 
54 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 degree, they must have appeared, not in magazines of the 
 better class, but in more ephemeral periodicals, not accessible 
 to us to-day. 
 
 One sure testimony to popularity is imitation, and of that 
 Mrs. Radcliffe had her full share. This has been unfor- 
 tunate for her reputation, for not enough distinction has 
 been made between the original and the very inferior copies. 
 From about 1795 on, we find reviewed a constant succession 
 of novels, the only distinction of which seems to be a more 
 or less successful imitation of Mrs. Radcliffe's style. A 
 review of Austenbnrn Castle, in 1796,^ tells us the plight of 
 the reviewer : 
 
 Since Mrs. Radcliffe's justly admired and successful romances, 
 the press has teemed with stories of haunted castles and vis- 
 ionary terrors ; the incidents of which are so little diversified, 
 that criticism is at a loss to vary its remarks. 
 
 A reference to the number of imitations occurs in a review 
 of Valomhrosa, or the Venetian Nun, in 1805- : 
 
 Amongst the numerous, or, to speak with more propriety, 
 innumerable, imitations of 'the Mysteries of Udolpho,' with which 
 the press has groaned, we must rank the present production. 
 
 As late as 181 2, when we should imagine Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 vogue to have been somewhat past, we have notice of an- 
 other attempt to rival her, Rosalie, or the Castle of Montala- 
 hretti.^ 
 
 One thing is noticeable — ^that the reviewers all make care- 
 ful distinction between Mrs. Radcliffe and her imitators, a 
 distinction which later critics have not always observed. 
 The same attitude is taken as a rule by her contemporaries 
 whenever they comment upon her. They seem to have 
 realized that she had originated, or at least developed to a 
 high degree, a really new style of writing, and that she was 
 
 ^ Critical Review, N. Ar. 16. 222. 
 * Critical Review, N. Ar. 43. 329. 
 ' Monthly Review 67. 320. 
 
Work 55 
 
 not responsible for the abuse which it received at the hands 
 of lesser authors. This attitude is expressed in a passage in 
 one of Miss Seward's letters, August 3, 1794^: 
 
 I read not, neither doubtless do you, the Novel trash of the 
 day. Hours are too precious for such frivolous waste, where 
 the mind has in itself any valuable resources ; yet are there a 
 few pens which possess the power so to inspirit those fond 
 fancies of the brain, as to render them gratifj'ing to an imagin- 
 ation which demands more to please it than amorous story. 
 Mrs. Radcliflfe's pen is of this number. Though she aims not 
 at the highly important morality of the great Richardson, nor 
 possesses scarce a portion of his ample, his matchless ability, in 
 discriminating characters, 
 
 ' Yet does she mount, and keep her distant way 
 Above the limits of the vulgar page.' 
 
 A book entitled Literary Memoirs of Living Authors of 
 Great Britain, pubHshed in 1798, speaks of Mrs. Radcliffe as 
 'a lady of great distinction in the literary world as a Novel- 
 writer. . . . Her powers of pleasing, in this line of 
 composition, are very singularly great ; and the happy com- 
 bination of various talents which her pieces display, entitles 
 their author to rank among the first novel-writers of her 
 age.' Two French biographical works, published shortly 
 after her death, have extended notices of her: — the Bio- 
 graphic Universelle/ and the Biographic Nouvcllc des Con- 
 temp orains.^ 
 
 This discussion of Mrs. Radcliflfe as estimated by her con- 
 temporaries has, of necessity, presented many anonymous 
 judgments, for the reviews in magazines of the time were, 
 for the most part, unsigned. They are important, however, 
 since the leading magazines reflected to a considerable extent 
 the general literary opinion. One might with good excuse 
 include here the opinions of some of the more famous 
 
 ^ Letters 3. 389. 
 '36. 525. 
 'Vol. 17. 
 
56 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 authors who were practically her contemporaries— men like 
 Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, Byron and Shelley. But their 
 period of production came later than hers, so that they seem 
 to belong to a different generation. Moreover, their judg- 
 ments of her, and the general question of her influence upon 
 them, have been already more discussed than the points 
 which I am intending to treat here. My attempt has been 
 to show how Mrs. Radcliffe's books were received on their 
 appearance, to consider her as an active writer, rather than 
 to estimate her influence upon the literature of a later period. 
 It is well to remember, however, that not only those of her 
 own generation, but many in the generation succeeding, 
 read her works with interest and admiration. In the Ro- 
 mantic movement she was a transitional figure, developing 
 and passing on to the later men tendencies and themes with 
 which the earlier ones had been experimenting; and it was 
 her extreme popularity, as shown in these contemporary 
 expressions, which enabled her to pass on so much. 
 
 Section 2. Sources of the Novels. 
 
 The first two of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels point to no very 
 definite source. They show in general more influence from 
 Walpole and Clara Reeve than the later books. The 
 Castles of Athlin and Dunhayne resembles The Castle of 
 Otranto in having for one of its principal characters a noble- 
 natured young man, supposedly a peasant, who turns out 
 to be a long-missing heir, and who finally makes a happy 
 marriage. The same theme was used in The Old English 
 Baron. 
 
 A Sicilian Romance uses Walpole's scheme of pretending 
 to find his story in an old manuscript. The story itself, 
 however, does not show much resemblance to either of its 
 predecessors, unless we see in the Marquis' cruel and unjust 
 treatment of his wife and daughters some suggestion of 
 The Castle of Otranto. 
 
Work 57 
 
 In The Romance of the Forest Mrs. Radcliffe seems to 
 declare her source frankly : 
 
 Whoever has read Guyot de Pitaval, the most faithful of 
 those writers who record the proceedings in the Parliamentary- 
 Courts of Paris, during the seventeenth century, must surely 
 remember the striking story of Pierre de la Motte, and the 
 Marquis Phillipe de Montalt ; let all such, therefore, be in- 
 formed, that the person here introduced to their notice was that 
 individual Pierre de la Motte/ 
 
 A search through de Pitaval's Causes Cclchres, however, 
 has failed to reveal any suit recorded under these names. 
 The only place, apparently, where the name La Motte oc- 
 curred, was in connection with an entirely different suit. 
 Whether Mrs. Radcliffe took some one of the stories, and 
 changed the names, or whether she merely ascribed her 
 story to de Pitaval, to have a plausible-sounding source, 
 seems uncertain. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe would have been most likely to know de 
 Pitaval, perhaps, in a series of stories which were translated 
 and adapted from the Causes Cclcbres by Charlotte vSmith, 
 in 1787, under the title The Romance of Real Life. The 
 probability that she was familiar with this work is increased 
 by the fact that she and Charlotte Smith both have the same 
 misspelling of de Pitaval's name, writing it Guyot instead 
 of Gayot. One of these stories might have given some 
 suggestion for The Romance of the Forest. This is the 
 account of Mademoiselle de Choiseul. In this, the Duke de 
 la Valliere promised his sister to take care of her child : 
 
 . . . but when he found that, by suppressing what he knew 
 of her birth, he should divide considerable property as heir to 
 that sister, he scrupled not to violate every promise he had given 
 her, not only on the birth of her child, but again when she was 
 dying; and now, when her daughter claimed her own property, 
 desired to have authentic proof of what he knew better than any- 
 one — proofs, which it was more difficult for her to bring, as all 
 
 * Romance of the Forest, p. 2. 
 
58 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 the family papers were in the hands of the very person who de- 
 manded them, and whose interest it was to conceal every me- 
 morial of the contested fact/ 
 
 This is not unlike the situation in The Romance of the 
 Forest. Here the Marquis has actually had his brother put 
 to death, in order to get the money which that brother had 
 inherited from his wife. The young daughter is put in a 
 convent, and, when she refuses to take the veil, the Marquis 
 orders her death. When, later on, he finds that she has 
 escaped his cruel commands, he tells La Motte to kill her. 
 Again his tool fails to obey. At the end of the story the 
 truth is revealed. Adeline is to appear in a trial-scene 
 under very similar circumstances to those in The Romance 
 of Real Life, when the trial is made unnecessary by the 
 suicide of the Marquis. 
 
 We still find in The Romance of the Forest details in- 
 herited from Walpole and Clara Reeve. One of the most 
 striking resemblances in situation is Adeline's dream when 
 she has been reading the manuscript she finds in the room 
 net hers in the old abbey. ^ It is very similar to Edmund's 
 dream in The Old English Baron, and the cause is the same. 
 Adeline, like Edmund, is sleeping near the unburied bones 
 of her father. Incidentally it may be remarked that this is 
 one touch of the supernatural which Mrs. Radcliffe does not 
 explain away. 
 
 In regard to The Mysteries of Udolpho, one source is 
 mentioned by Green in his Diary of a Lover of Literature^ : 
 
 Read the first volume of Mrs. Piozzi's Travels in Italy. Tol- 
 erably amusing, but for a pert flippancy, and ostentation of 
 learning. Mrs. Radcliffe has taken from this work her vivid 
 description of Venice and of the Brenta, but oh! how improved 
 in the transcript. 
 
 * Romance of Real Life 3. 136. 
 
 ^ 1.269. 
 
 ^ Nov. 25, 1800. Quoted in the Gentleman's Magazine, N. S. i. 10. 
 
Work 59 
 
 This suggestion is interesting, because it shows us some- 
 thing ^f Mrs. Radcliffe's methods of work. She evidently- 
 had more groundwork of fact in her descriptions than she 
 was sometimes given credit for ; she took the authentic 
 record of actual travel, and let her imagination play about 
 it. A comparison of a few passages from The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho with corresponding passages from Mrs. Piozzi's 
 Journey will show that one was undoubtedly the source of 
 the other ; in fact, at times the resemblance is so close that 
 we wonder that Mrs. Piozzi did not claim credit as a 
 collaborator. 
 
 Take first the description of the Brenta itself. Mrs. 
 Piozzi's version^ : 
 
 It was on the twenty-first of May then that we returned up 
 the Brenta in a barge to Padua, stopping from time to time to 
 give refreshment to our conductors and their horse, which 
 draws on the side, as one sees them at Richmond ; where the 
 banks are scarcely more beautifully adorned by art, than here by 
 nature; though the Brenta is a much narrower river than the 
 Thames at Richmond, and its villas, so justly celebrated, far 
 less frequent. The sublimity of their architecture however, 
 the magnificence of their orangeries, the happy construction of 
 the cool arcades, and general air of festivity which breathes 
 upon the banks of this truly wizard stream, planted with dancing, 
 not weeping willows, to which on a bright evening the lads and 
 lasses run for shelter from the sun beams, Et fugit ad salices, et 
 se cupit ante videri; are I suppose, peculiar to itself. 
 
 Mrs. Radchffe's^ : 
 
 The noble Brenta, pouring its broad waves into the sea, now 
 appeared, and, when she reached its mouth, the barge stopped, 
 that the horses might be fastened which were to tow it up the 
 stream. This done, Emily gave a last look to the Adriatic, and 
 to the dim sail, 
 
 That from the sky-mix'd wave 
 
 Dawns on the sight, 
 
 ^ Observations and Reflections made in the Course of a Journey 
 through France, Italy and Germany, p. 221. 
 ^Mysteries of Udolpho 2. 121. 
 
6o Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 and the barge slowly glided between the green and luxuriant 
 slopes of the river. The grandeur of the Palladian villas, that 
 adorn these shores, was considerably heightened by the setting 
 rays, which threw strong contrasts of light and shade upon the 
 porticos and long arcades, and beamed a mellow lustre upon the 
 orangeries and tall groves of pine and cypress, that overhung 
 the buildings. The scent of oranges, of flowering myrtles, and 
 other odoriferous plants was diffused upon the air, and often, 
 from these embowered retreats, a strain of music stole on the 
 calm, and 'softened into silence.' 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe here makes an addition very characteristic 
 of her — the setting sun. She is rarely content to give us 
 merely the features of the landscape ; she shows them as 
 affected by atmospheric conditions. Also her description 
 becomes more vivid than Mrs. Piozzi's from her inclusion 
 i of odors and sounds, as well as those things which appeal to 
 the sense of sight. Both give much the same impression of 
 the ladies of Venice. 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi^ : 
 
 A Venetian lady has in particular so sweet a manner naturally 
 that she really charms without any settled intent to do so, merely 
 from that irresistible good-humor and mellifluous tone of voice 
 which seize the soul, and detain it in despite of Juno-like 
 majesty, or Minerva-like wit. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe^ : 
 
 In the evening, Madame Montoni . . . received visits 
 from some Venetian ladies, with whose sweet manners Emily 
 was particularly charmed. They had an air of ease and kindness 
 towards the strangers, as if they had been their familiar friends 
 for years ; and their conversation was by turns tender, senti- 
 mental, and gay. 
 
 Another comparison will show that one of Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's most famous passages,^ although she — once more 
 
 ' Op. cit., p. 183. 
 
 ^ Op. cit., p. 67. 
 
 ' The one which Byron recalls in Childe Harold, Canto 4, stanza i. 
 
Work 6 1 
 
 aided by the setting sun — has added much, is not entirely 
 her own inspiration. 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi^ : 
 
 St. Mark's place, after all I had read and all I had heard of 
 it, exceeded expectation ; such a cluster of excellence, such a 
 constellation of artificial beauties, my mind had never ventured 
 to excite the idea of within herself ; though assisted with all 
 the powers of doing so which painters can bestow, and with all 
 the advantages derived from verbal and written description. 
 . . . The general effect produced by such architecture, such 
 painting, such pillars ; illuminated as I saw them last night by 
 the moon at full, rising out of the sea, produced an effect like 
 enchantment. . . . From the top [of the tower in St. Mark's 
 Place] is presented to one's sight the most striking of all pros- 
 pects, water bounded by land — not land by water. The curious 
 and elegant islets upon which, and into which, the piles of Venice 
 are driven, exhibiting clusters of houses, churches, palaces, every 
 thing — started up in the midst of the sea, so as to excite amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe^ : 
 
 Nothing cculd exceed Emily's admiration, on her first view of 
 Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, 
 whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its 
 colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the waves and the 
 lofty mountains of Friuli, which skirts the northern shores of 
 the Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos 
 and colonnades of St. Mark were thrown the rich lights and 
 shades of evening. As they glided on, the grander features of 
 this city appeared more distinctly; its terraces, crowned with airy 
 yet majestic fabrics, touched, as they now were, with the 
 splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been 
 called up from the ocean by the wand of an enchanter, rather 
 than reared by mortal hands. 
 
 Several other passages might be quoted, but these are 
 probably enough to shov^ Mrs. Radcliffe's debt to Mrs. 
 Piozzi. 
 
 ^Observations, etc., p. 151. 
 ^Mysteries of Udolpho 2. 35. 
 
62 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Another possible source for the trip on the Brenta may- 
 be found in Schiller's Ghostseer^ : 
 
 Our little voyage was exceedingly delightful. A picturesque 
 country, which at every winding of the river seemed to increase 
 in richness and beauty ; the serenity of the sky, which formed a 
 May day in the middle of February; the charming gardens and 
 elegant country-seats which adorned the banks of the Brenta ; 
 the majestic city of Venice behind us, with its lofty spires, and 
 a forest of masts, rising as it were out of the waves ; all this 
 afforded us one of the most splendid prospects in the world. 
 
 One difficulty here, however, is that the English trans- 
 lation of Der Geisterseher did not appear until i795, too 
 late to have had any influence upon The Mysteries of Udol- 
 pho. Unless we are to think that Mrs. Radcliffe was famil- 
 iar with the original, we must consider the resemblance in 
 the passages as merely accidental. We have perhaps no 
 positive reason for concluding that she did not know the 
 original. Buyers, in an article on The Influence of Schil- 
 ler's Drama and Fiction upon English Literature,^ says : 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe, apparently, knew no German, nor are there 
 any references to German literature in her account of a Journey 
 through Holland and the western frontier of Germany. 
 
 This is, however, rather negative proof. Moreover, 
 Buyers seems to forget his own conclusion when to his 
 statement, 'Schedoni alone of Mrs. Radcliffe's characters 
 seems to owe something to the influence of Schiller,' he 
 adds this note : 
 
 Since this was written, it has struck me that very possibly 
 Montoni may be a fearsome blend of the Armenian and the 
 brothers Moor. 
 
 If The Ghostseer could influence the character of Mon- 
 toni, Mrs. Radcliffe must certainly have had some knowl- 
 edge of the book prior to the writing of The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho. 
 
 ' P. 384. 
 
 ' Englische Studien 48. 350. 
 
Work 63 
 
 Buyers seems justified in pointing out Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 indebtedness to The Ghostseer in The Italian, although he is 
 perhaps not quite accurate in saying that Schiller's influence 
 is found only in the character of Schedoni. It is not Sche- 
 doni who speaks in the voice of warning and prophecy ; it is 
 the mysterious monk of Paluzzi, Schedoni's enemy. 
 
 But, as he points out, there are several scenes which show 
 striking similarity. One which he mentions takes place 
 between Vivaldi and the monk, when Vivaldi is on his way 
 to see Ellena : 
 
 'You are too late,' said a sudden voice beside Vivaldi, who 
 instantly recognized the thrilling accents of the monk. 'It is 
 past midnight ; she departed an hour ago. Look to your steps !' 
 
 This certainly does suggest the words of the Armenian, 
 in The Ghostseer. *Neun Uhr.' 'Wiinschen sie sich Gliick, 
 prinz. Um neun Uhr ist er gestorben.' 
 
 Vivaldi's comment is : 
 
 I am warned of evils that await me, of events that are regu- 
 larly fulfilled ; the being who warns me crosses my path per- 
 petually, yet, with the cunning of a demon, as constantly eludes 
 my grasp and baffles my pursuit. 
 
 This is very much like the reflection in The Ghostseer^ : 
 
 A superior power attends me. Omniscience surrounds me. 
 An invisible Being whom I cannot escape, watches over my steps. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe also may have been indebted to The Ghost- 
 seer for Schedoni's crime — the murder of his brother in 
 order to marry the brother's wife. 
 
 One other resemblance may be pointed out between the 
 two works. The Sicilian's explanation of his tricks, after 
 he has puzzled his audience with them, may suggest Mrs. 
 Radcliffe's method of explaining the apparently supernat- 
 ural. We could hardly give Schiller the credit of originat- 
 ing her method, however, since she used it to some extent 
 from the first. 
 
 ' P. 386. 
 
64 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Another question of comparison occurs in the consider- 
 ation of The Italian. This is the question of its connection 
 with The Monk of Matthew Gregory Lewis. 
 
 Lewis made the statement in a letter to his mother^ that 
 it was the reading of The Mysteries of Udolpho, during his 
 trip abroad, which gave him the inspiration to go on with 
 the romance which he had begun. It seems possible that 
 Lewis' novel had some reciprocal influence upon Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's work, at least to the extent of leading her to select a 
 monk as her central figure. She had, it is true, made con- 
 siderable use of religious machinery in her earlier books. 
 In A Sicilian Romance Julia takes refuge in a convent, and 
 so does Emily in The Mysteries of Udolpho. Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's attitude toward monastic life is interesting: as an 
 artist she seems to have been fascinated by it ; as a human 
 being, she was repelled. 
 
 This mixture of feeling comes out in her comment on 
 some of the English Lake scenery, where she is remarking 
 on its resemblance to the Rhine : ' 
 
 Once too, there were other points of resemblance, in the ruins 
 of monasteries and convents, which, though reason rejoices that 
 they no longer exist, the eye may be allowed to regret.^ 
 
 In The Italian, however, the dominating power is the 
 Church; and the figure of Schedoni — sinister, mysterious, 
 and apparently austere, but inwardly depraved — is not unlike 
 Lewis' conception of his Monk. In part this resemblance 
 may be explained by the theory that both have a common 
 source. A review of The Monk^ suggests that the character 
 of the wandering Jew, in Lewis' book, is 'copied as to its 
 more prominent features from Schiller's incomprehensible 
 Armenian.' The Armenian may also in some details have 
 influenced Lewis' picture of his monk, and Mrs. Radclifife's 
 
 "^ Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis i. 123. 
 
 ^Journey 2. 250. 
 
 ' Critical Review, N. Ar. 19. 194. 
 
Work 65 
 
 inspiration for Schedoni may have come directly from The 
 Ghostseer, and not from Lewis at all. It would not seem 
 unlikely, however, that, finding him successful with this 
 theme, she resolved to try her hand at it. Lewis' book 
 was probably the only one of the time which rivaled Mrs. 
 Radcliffe's works in popularity. It made a considerable 
 stir, in spite of the widespread condemnation of its morals. 
 She might have thought it worth while to attempt a study 
 in the same field, which should, however, not be open to the 
 same objections on the score of morality. 
 
 One passage in the Journey through Holland^ seems to 
 point toward The Italian. It suggests that Mrs. Radcliffe 
 was not wholly indebted to other writers, but that her own 
 impressions helped to shape the figure of Schedoni : 
 
 Here two Capuchins, belonging probably to the convent above, 
 as they walked along the shore, beneath the dark cliffs of Bop- 
 part, wrapt in the long black drapery of their order, and their 
 heads shrowded in cowls, that half concealed their faces, were 
 interesting figures in a picture, always gloomily sublime. 
 
 This recalls the scene in which Ellena, trying to escape 
 from the house where she has been confined, meets the 
 gloomy form of the monk on^^the sea-shore, and is followed 
 by him until she is forced to return. 
 
 Mrs. Radclifife's travels came too late to influence her 
 earlier books. The last, Gaston de Blondeville, seems to 
 owe its inspiration almost entirely to one of her expeditions, 
 her visit to Kenil worth in 1802. Several passages occur in 
 her account of the trip which seem to contain suggestions 
 of the story which she developed. One is in her description 
 of Warwick Castle^ : 
 
 But what struck me most was near the end of the gallery 
 (when it makes a sudden turn into the tower that terminates 
 the castle), where appeared before me a broad, yet dark stair- 
 
 *2. 64. 
 
 'Memoir, p. 59. 
 
66 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 case of oak, and at the foot of it, as if guarding the passage, a 
 large figure in complete armour, the beaver down, and a sword 
 in its hand I The general twilight, with the last western gleam 
 breaking through the painted window at the foot of the stair- 
 case, and touching the bronze, gave full effect to this scene, and 
 heightened the obscurity of the stairs, in perspective. 
 
 This figure, as she suddenly caught sight of it, probably 
 had a ghostly effect, and might have suggested to her the 
 spectre, dressed in the armor of a knight, which plays such a 
 part in Gaston de Blondeville. Her interest in Kenilworth 
 led her to study its past history with regrettable industry. 
 Gaston de Blondeville is the one book in which she made a 
 conscientious attempt to reproduce the life of the past, and 
 the result is a wearisome minuteness of detail. 
 
 One attempt to connect her literary work with her travels 
 seems to take no account of times and seasons. Miss 
 Seward, in a letter written February 4, 1796,^ says: 
 
 When speaking of Mrs. Radcliffe's Tour, I forgot to observe 
 the probability that the impressions left on the author's imagin- 
 ation, by the local vestiges at Hardwicke of the unfortunate 
 Mary Stewart ; — the bed and chairs, worked by her own fingers ; 
 — the little confessional, and prayer-book, all preserved exactly 
 as she left them; — that these objects suggested to Mrs. R. 
 the idea of the marchioness's apartment in the Mysteries of 
 Udolpho. I thought that scene much the finest and best 
 imagined part of the novel. 
 
 But, as has been said before, Mrs. Radcliffe made her 
 tour of the Lakes in the summer of 1794, and The Mysteries 
 of Udolpho had already been published in the spring of 
 1794. The sight of the relics of Mary Queen of Scots 
 could hardly have suggested the Marchioness' apartment, 
 though the memory of her own imaginative conception 
 might have increased her interest in this other deserted 
 chamber. 
 
 ^ Letters 4. 151. 
 
 1 
 
Work 67 
 
 Two general sources to which Mrs. Radcliffe is indebted 
 may be mentioned briefly, though it has been my intention 
 to confine the discussion to the more definite sources. One 
 is the German Hterature which was becoming popular in 
 England about the time she began writing ; the other is the 
 Elizabethan. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's obligation to The Ghostseer has been 
 mentioned. We know that she greatly admired The Rob- 
 bers. Lord Woodhouselee's English translation of the 
 latter appeared in 1792, and she was probably familiar with 
 it before writing The Mysteries of Udolpho. Traces of its 
 influence can be found in her hero-villains, such as Montoni 
 and Schedoni, who are in a sense outlaws; in her tendency 
 toward strained and extravagant situations ; and in her sen- 
 timentality. It must be said, however, that Mrs. Radcliffe 
 never showed the confused sense of moral responsibility 
 which characterized the German school. 
 
 The Elizabethan influence is even stronger. Not only 
 do we find in the informal nptes of Mrs. Radcliffe's journals 
 references to Shakespeare which show an intimate knowl- 
 edge of his plays, but in the novels scene after scene is 
 found which is evidently of Shakespearian inspiration. Sev- 
 eral situations in The Mysteries of Udolpho recall Macbeth. 
 Among these are the half-crazed ravings of the dying nun^ ; 
 the rising from the table in confusion, when Montoni's 
 story is interrupted by the mysterious voice ; and the sound- 
 ing of the portal-bell as Emily enters the castle. Another 
 strong resemblance to Macbeth is found in The Italian, when 
 Schedoni and the assassin Spalatro are disputing as to who 
 shall murder EUena, and the Confessor ends the matter 
 with the words, 'Give me the dagger, then.' The influence 
 of Hamlet seems discernible in the whole circumstance of 
 the mysterious figure which is seen on the terrace outside 
 of Emily's window.^ The whole of Gaston de Blondeville 
 
 ^ Mysteries of Udolpho 4. 362. 
 ' Ibid. 3. 73-4. 
 
68 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 is built on the theme of Hamlet, and in the Introduction we 
 have a direct reference to it in the remark that Warwick 
 Castle has towers 'that would do honour to Hamlet.' 
 
 Without going further into the consideration of parallel 
 situations and parallel themes, one may say that Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's work shows plainly her admiration for Shakespeare 
 and her familiarity with him, and also that in tendency and 
 theme she suggests not only Shakespeare but the later Eliz- 
 abethans, with their inclination toward the sensational and 
 the gruesome. The fact that, just before Mrs. Radcliffe 
 began writing, there had been a considerable revival of in- 
 terest in Elizabethan plays, both on the stage and in publi- 
 cation, makes this influence seem a very natural one.^ 
 
 Section j. Translations and Dramatic Versions. 
 In the account given of Mrs. Radcliffe in the Biographic 
 Nouvelle des Contcmporains we have this statement : 
 
 Les Romans d'Anne Radcliffe ont ete traduit dans presque 
 toutes les langues de I'Europe. 
 
 A list of French translations follows : 
 
 Les Chateaux de Dumblaine et d'Athlin, 1819. 
 La Foret. ou I'Abbaye de Saint-Clair, 1798. 
 Julia, ou les Souterrains du Chateau de Maszini, 1801. 
 Les Mysteres d' Udolphe (ce roman, souvent reimprime, a ete 
 traduit en frangais, 4 vol. in- 12, 1794). 
 
 ^ Professor Thorndike, in chap. IX of his book on Tragedy, gives a 
 list of thirteen old plays revived in the decade 1778-1788. An- 
 other play which he does not mention is Arden of Feversham, 
 which received its first performance in 1790. Between the years 
 1708 and 1765, seven editions of Shakespeare's works were published. 
 Editions of Massinger were brought out in 1759, 1761, and 1779. 
 In 1744, Dodsley published twelve volumes of Old Plays, and these 
 were reprinted, with some changes, by Isaac Reed in 1780. In 
 1773 another collection was published by Hawkins. An edition of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's plays was brought out in 1778. We also 
 find evidence of the printing of individual plays: The Witch, by 
 Middleton, was first published in 1778, and The Atheist's Tragedy of 
 Tourneur was reprinted in 1792. 
 
Work 69 
 
 Voyage fait dans I'ete de 1794 en Hollande et sur la frontiere 
 d'Allemagne, avec des observations faites dans une tournee pres 
 des lacs de Lancashire, Westmoreland, et Cumberland, 1795. 
 Second edition, 1799. Translated by Cantwel. 
 
 L'ltalien, ou le Confessional des Penitens noirs, translated by 
 the Abbe Morellet. Several editions, 1795-1819. 
 
 Eleonore de Rosalba, another translation of The Italian, by 
 Mary Guy Allard. 
 
 The Catalogue of the British Museum has the following 
 list, varying somewhat from the one just given: 
 
 Les Chateaux d'Athlin et de Dunbayne. Roman traduit de 
 I'anglais . . . par I'auteur des Memoires de Cromwell etc. 
 2 tom. Paris, 1819. 
 
 Gaston de Blondeville . . . Roman . . . traduit de 
 I'anglais par le traducteur des romans de Sir W. Scott [A. J. B. 
 Defauconpret]. 3 tom. Paris, 1826. 
 
 Les Mysteres d'Udolphe . . . Traduit de I'anglais sur la 
 troisieme edition, par V. de Chastenay. 6 tom. Paris, 1808. 
 
 French imitations of Mrs. Radcliffe's works are also 
 given here : 
 
 Barbarinski, ou les Brigands du chateau de Wissegrade. Imite 
 de I'anglais d'Anne Radcliflfe. 2 tom. Paris, 1818, par Madame 
 la Comtesse de Nardouet. 
 
 Le Panache rouge, ou le Spectre de Feu, imite de I'anglais 
 d'Anne Radcliflf, par Madame la Comtesse de Nardouet. 2 tom. 
 Paris, 1824. 
 
 Several Italian versions are also listed, and it is interesting 
 to note that these are all late editions : 
 
 Gli Assassini di Ercolano. (Romanzo . . . traduzione del 
 Francese [i. e. a French version of Mrs. Radcliffe's "Romance 
 of the Forest."]. Edizione ricorretta e splendidamente illustrata. 
 Milano, 1871. 
 
 / Sottcranei di Mazzini . . . [An Italian Version of the 
 "Sicilian Romance."] Con illustrazioni. Milano, 1883. 
 
 Giulia ; o, i Sotteranei del Castello di Mazzini, etc. [A version 
 of "A Sicilian Romance."] Milano, 1889. 
 
 The Yale Library possesses a copy of a Spanish version 
 of A Sicilian Romance, entitled Julia Los Suhterraneos del 
 Castillo de Mazzini. 
 
7© Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 Novela escrita en ingles par Mad. de Radcliff. Traduicida 
 del frances al castellano. Par I. M. P. Valencia, 1819. 
 
 Mobius, in his dissertation on The Gothic Romance, gives 
 a list of German translations : 
 
 Die Ndchtliche Erscheinung im Schlosse Mazsini. [A Sicilian 
 Romance.] Hannover, 1792. Translated by D. M. Liebeskind. 
 
 Adeline oder das Abenteuer im Walde. [Romance of the 
 Forest.] Leipzig, Bohme, 1793. D. M. Liebeskind. 
 
 Udolphos Geheimnisse. Riga, Hartknoch, 1795. D. M. 
 Liebeskind. 
 
 Die Italienerin, oder der Beichtstuhl der Schwarzen Biissenden. 
 Konigsberg, Nicolovius, 1797. D. M. Liebeskind. 
 
 Ellena, die Italienerin, oder die Warnungen in den Ruinen von 
 Paluzzi, 1801. 
 
 The German translators of The Italian, it appears, did 
 not realize that Schedoni was meant to be the dominant 
 figure in the book, since in translating they made the word 
 feminine, and so threw the emphasis upon Ellena and her 
 sufferings. The mistake is a fairly good comment, how- 
 ever, on the unsatisfactory nature of the title. There was 
 no particular point in giving to one figure the title of The 
 Italian, when all the personages of the story were supposed 
 to be of that nationality. 
 
 No doubt many other translations exist which do not 
 appear on any of these lists, but those of which we have 
 record give testimony to the popularity of Mrs. Radcliffe in 
 other countries than her own. 
 
 Besides the French romances written in imitation of her, 
 there appears in the British Museum Catalogue one dramatic 
 work. 
 
 Le Chateau des Apennins ou le Fantome Vivant, drame en 
 cinq actes, en prose. Imite du roman Anglais, les Mysteres 
 d'Udolphe [of Anne Radcliffe, by R. C. Guilbert de Pixere- 
 court.] Paris, 1799. 
 
 English dramatists did not neglect the opportunity which 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's works gave for stage-thrills. Her stories 
 
Work 71 
 
 were quite in accord with the theatrical fashions of the day, 
 especially with the German influence, which, beginning with 
 The Robbers, culminated in the 'Kotzebue-mania.' They 
 offered sentiment, as well as spectacular scenes, and her 
 use of suspense made her books particularly suitable for 
 dramatization. 
 
 A Sicilian Romance was dramatized by Henry Siddons, 
 son of the great actress, and was first performed at Covent 
 Garden, May 28, 1794. The consensus of opinion seems 
 to have been that the play was decidedly inferior to the 
 novel. Genest says of it : 
 
 This Op. in 3 short acts was written by Henry Siddons. 
 . . . It is founded on Mrs. Radclifife's Romance of the same 
 name. . . . The Romance is interesting, . . . but H. 
 Siddons has dramatized it most vilely.' 
 
 Comments upon the play, not particularly enthusiastic, 
 appear in the European Magazine^ and the Critical Review.^ 
 
 Not much more praise was given to the dramatization of 
 The Romance of the Forest, by James Boaden. This play, 
 under the title of Fontainville Forest, was first acted at 
 Covent Garden, March 25, 1794. Genest's comment is: -V*-^''^ 
 
 This is a moderate play by Boaden. . . . The plot is pro- 
 fessedly borrowed from the Romance of the Forest. . . . 
 The last scene of the 3'd act is rendered contemptible by the in- 
 troduction of a Phantom. 
 
 A later entry, Jan. 8, 1796, mentions the performance of the 
 play, 'compressed into 4 acts by the author.' Reviews of the 
 play appear in the European Magazine,'^ in the Critical 
 Review,^ in the English Revieiv,^ and in the British Critic.'' 
 
 ^History of the English Stage. C. G. May 28, 1794. 
 
 '25. 467. 
 
 'N. Ar. 13. 338. March, 1795. 
 
 '25. 308. 
 
 ^N. Ar. II. 409. 
 
 "23.455. 
 
 '4- 186. 
 
72 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 We should have expected The Mysteries of Udolpho, 
 from its popularity and the dramatic quality of its situations, 
 to receive effective treatment on the stage; but the only 
 play which seems to have any connection with it owed little 
 to the novel, and did not meet with great success. This was 
 The Mysteries of the Castle, by Miles Peter Andrews, pre- 
 sented at Covent Garden, January 31, 1795. The European 
 Magazine^ says of it : 
 
 In this drama it was expected that 'The Mysteries of Udolpho' 
 would have furnished the principal part of the plot. The name 
 of Montoni only is taken from thence, but the character exhibits 
 few of the daring, bold qualities of that fierce assassin. 
 Although nothing else is taken from Udolpho, Mr. Andrews has 
 availed himself of a striking incident in 'The Sicilian Romance' 
 of the same Author, which forms the tragic part of this absurd 
 mixture of tragedy, comedy, farce, opera, and pantomime. 
 
 The Critical Review"^ remarks : 
 
 It is one of those pieces which must depend on song and 
 scenery. The story is partly taken from Mrs. Radcliflfe's excel- 
 lent romance; but we fear that lady will not feel herself 
 flattered by the relationship. 
 
 Mr. Boaden tried his hand at a dramatization of The 
 Italian, in The Italian Monk, acted at the Haymarket, 
 August 15, 1797. The reviews of this play are for the most 
 part less favorable than those of F ontainville Forest. The 
 comment of Genest upon it is : 
 
 This play in 3 acts is Mrs. Radcliffe's interesting Romance 
 
 badly dramatized by Boaden. ... It is written partly in 
 
 blank verse and partly in prose. ... It would have been 
 better if the whole had been in prose. 
 
 A scathing review appeared in The Monthly Visitor for 
 August, 1797.^ In this, The Italian Monk is considered as 
 a sort of parody on The Italian. Mr. Boaden is blamed for 
 
 '27. 124. 
 
 'N. Ar. 14. loi. 
 
 '2. 157- 
 
Work 73 
 
 changing the characters, and for introducing needless buf- 
 foonery. His only successful passages, according to this 
 writer, are those in which he keeps very close to Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's own words. 
 
 Certainly the songs, quoted in some of the reviews, and 
 published separately in the Lady's Magazine for September, 
 1797/ ^^^ ^ot at all in keeping with the sombre tone of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe's book. One of them is sung by Fioresca, a char- 
 acter created by Mr. Boaden, to make a sweetheart for 
 Paullo, the (supposedly) humorous servant: 
 
 Other maidens bait their hooks 
 With practis'd glances, tender looks, 
 And study tricks from subtle books, 
 To hold the lover fast. 
 Their golden line of locks so fine 
 Before his simple eye they cast, 
 With bending bait, and swimming gait, 
 To make him sure at last. 
 
 Nonny, nonny, nonnino, 
 
 Nonny, nonny, nonnino, 
 
 Nonny, nonny, nonnino — 
 
 To make him sure at last. 
 
 When the village youth vv^ould bear 
 
 Me trinkets from the distant fair, 
 
 However they were rich or rare. 
 
 My Paullo pleased me best: 
 What though, the work of costly art. 
 They call'd for praise in ev'ry part? 
 My Paullo with it gave his heart ; 
 And what was all the rest, 
 Nonny, nonny, etc. 
 And what was all the rest? 
 
 Mr. Boaden also changed the character of Schedoni, and 
 the whole climax of the plot. Instead of having actually 
 murdered his brother, the monk merely thinks he has 
 murdered his wife. In the end he discovers his mistake, 
 
 * 28. 424. 
 
74 -^nn Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 and is happily reunited to her, instead of dying in agony, 
 as in Mrs. Raddiffe's version. 
 
 On the whole. The Italian Monk seems to have been quite 
 in the fashion of the day. It was much the sort of thing 
 which Lewis did in The Castle Spectre, a hash of melo- 
 drama and absurdity, with here and there a touch of flip- 
 pancy, showing that the author himself did not take it very 
 seriously. It surely is not an adequate dramatization of 
 The Italian, a book which contains material for an excellent 
 melodrama, or even, perhaps, if correctly managed, a gen- 
 uine tragedy. 
 
 Mrs. Raddiffe's last romance was dramatized, but appar- 
 ently never produced. The play Gaston de Blondeville is 
 published in the Dramatic Works of Mary Russell Mitford. 
 In the introduction to the 1854 edition^ the author makes 
 the statement : 
 
 'Sadak and Kalasrade' was written to gratify a young musician, 
 and 'Gaston de Blondeville' because I thought, and still think, 
 that the story, taken from Mrs. Radclifife's posthumous romance, 
 would be very effective as mere spectacle — a play to look at — 
 upon the stage. 
 
 In one of her letters^ Miss Mitford wrote : 
 
 William Harness has been most unexpectedly struck with 
 'Gaston de Blondeville.' . . . The book from which it was 
 taken had no story, so that, except the real ghost, and the 
 first hint of the supernatural pageants, it is really my own. 
 William declares that it made his blood run cold. 
 
 Miss Mitford here seems hardly fair to her source. Her 
 hst of characters is practically the same as Mrs. Raddiffe's, 
 and the play follows closely the sequence of events in the 
 romance. Hugh Woodreeve, the merchant, accuses the 
 king's favorite of robbery and murder. The merchant is 
 imprisoned in the tower, and preparations go on for the 
 bridal of Gaston, the favorite, with the daughter of the Earl 
 
 ' P. XXXI. 
 
 ^ Letters and Life 2. 219. 
 
Work 75 
 
 of Huntington. The bridal is interrupted by the appearance 
 of the ghost. The scene of the banquet, with the supernat- 
 ural pageants, is the same. The merchant is condemned to 
 be tried for witchcraft. He summons Gaston to the wager 
 of battle. Then comes the principal change in the story. 
 Miss Mitford has introduced a new character, Albert, the 
 page, and there has been hint of a love-affair between him 
 and Gaston's destined bride. When Woodreeve is in need 
 of a champion, Albert appears with a scroll proving that he 
 is the son of Sir Reginald de Tolville, whose ghost has been 
 demanding vengeance. He fights with Gaston, and, being 
 young and inexperienced, is about to be overcome, when the 
 ghost appears. Gaston falls, dropping his sword, and Albert 
 kills him. 
 
 It is true that the introduction of Albert supplies more 
 plot-interest. But in view of all that she took from Mrs. 
 Radcliffe, Miss Mitford does not really seem justified in 
 saying that the story was entirely her own. In some re- 
 spects, however, the play has the advantage of the novel. 
 As some of the critics remarked, the plot of Gaston de 
 Blondeville had hardly enough complication and incident to 
 make a complete novel. It does better in the compression of 
 dramatic form. Then, too, of necessity the ghost must make 
 fewer appearances, and this makes him more effective. 
 
 On the whole, the dramatizations of Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 stories seem to have had small value of their own. They 
 are chiefly interesting because they furnish some additional 
 testimony to her popularity. It must be said, too, that they 
 emphasize the weaker side of her work, the side which was 
 in harmony with the melodramatic stage-fashions of the day. 
 The faults of the novels become more glaring in the plays. 
 When the drama is in the condition it had reached in the 
 last decade of the eighteenth century, a novel, in taking to 
 the stage, must say goodbye to any artistic unity. Shake- 
 speare's plays, it is true, still held their place, and there had 
 recently been some revival of interest in minor Elizabethans. 
 
76 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 But the German influx had begun. Monk Lewis and other 
 translators and adaptors were giving the pubHc a full portion 
 of what it seemed to want — sensation and sentimentality. 
 No wonder that any novel which had a supply of these de- 
 sirable qualities was eagerly seized upon, and too often used 
 unscrupulously. 
 
 A comment quite to the point was made in the European 
 Magazine for March, 1799,^ in an article entitled Instance of 
 Posthumous Friendship, with a hint to the Dramatizers of 
 Romances. 
 
 It is related of the gypsies, that they commit depredations 
 upon the poultry of those who reside in distant parts of the 
 country, while they carefully abstain from attacks on their 
 immediate neighbors. Such should be the policy of the Romance 
 clippers of the present day. A young gentleman or young 
 lady (probably the latter) sits down to write a romance; — good. 
 The romance happens to have an extensive sale; — good again. 
 A certain dramatic Author, with more cunning than genius, lays 
 his unmerciful hands upon the book, melts it down in his scenic 
 crucible, and vends it as his own. . . . 
 
 By such unfair proceedings, the original Author or Authoress 
 is reduced to an unfortunate dilemma ; — if the play succeeds, it 
 runs away with all the popularity; if it fails, the failure casts a 
 shade of ridicule and disgrace on the romance. Thus has it 
 fared with many a writer's effusions, and particularly with those 
 natural, moral, and meritorious productions, Caleb Williams, 
 The Italian, and The Monk; whose fairest flowers are withered 
 by the dulness of The Iron Chest, The Italian Monk, and Aurelio 
 and Miranda. 
 
 We may not wholly agree with this writer when he calls 
 a book like Lewis' Monk 'natural, moral, and meritorious,' 
 but when he speaks of the 'depredations' of the playwrights, 
 he is probably characterizing pretty aptly a tendency of the 
 time. 
 
 '35. 161. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CONTRIBUTION TO THE NOVEL 
 
 Most critics who have given any attention to Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe as a novelist have decided that she is important chiefly 
 for her use of the supernatural, and for her emphasis upon 
 landscape. Although she is, indeed, a pioneer in both these 
 fields, it has seemed to me that, after all, her most important 
 contribution is a matter not of theme, but of structure. 
 
 Dibelius attributes Mrs. Radcliffe's methods almost en- 
 tirely to the influence of Fielding and Richardson, assisted 
 by the French romances.^ He works out an elaborate par- 
 allel between the technique of Fielding and that of the 'new 
 romances' as originated by Walpole and perfected by Mrs. 
 Radcliffe. 
 
 Professor Cross, in his History of Henry Fielding, speaks 
 of both Richardson and Fielding as adopting a dramatic 
 structure in their stories. 'From the structural point of 
 view,' he says, 'this dramatic manner was the novelty that 
 Richardson at a stroke brought into fiction.'^ And in re- 
 lation to Fielding — 'Being a dramatist, Fielding could not 
 conceive of a novel without an elaborate plot. . 
 Upon his plot, too, he depended for keeping his readers alert 
 through six volumes.'^ 
 
 It is true that both Richardson and Fielding departed 
 considerably from the simple picaresque method of Defoe 
 and Smollett. Most of the incidents of their stories had 
 their part in the working out of a definitely conceived plan. 
 But this plan was not, after all, the most important part of 
 the work. Professor Cross suggests a different point of 
 
 ^ Englische Romankunst i. 287-8. 
 
 '2.158. 
 
 * 2. 160. 
 
78 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 view when he says, ' "Tom Jones" . . . was to be the ful- 
 filment of that earlier design of a comic epic such as Homer 
 might have written.'^ And Fielding suggests it himself 
 when, in the first chapter of Tom Jones, he says that the 
 provision he has made for his readers is human nature. 
 
 Tom Jones develops the picaresque form into an epic, in 
 which the hero and his adventures show us the men and 
 manners of a whole period. Fielding does, it is true, experi- 
 ment with the dramatic structure, but only as an additional 
 interest, not as an aim in itself. When Dibelius speaks of 
 misleading the reader as part of Fielding's technique,^ it 
 seems to me that he stresses the point too much. We never 
 feel convinced that Tom is the son of Jenny Jones; we 
 know that the suggestion is only a cloak to conceal his real 
 parentage. And when Fielding pretends to be afraid that 
 he cannot rescue Tom from his calamities,^ we understand 
 that it is mere pretense, and that within a few chapters a 
 happy marriage is due. The interesting thing is the process 
 by which this end is achieved. Tom's reaction upon his 
 surroundings, and the comprehensive picture of English life 
 which the book gives, hold the reader, in my opinion, more 
 than the working out of the plot. Professor Cross himself 
 admits that Fielding's method is, in general, epic rather 
 than dramatic, when he says, 'Perhaps Fielding did all that 
 could be done in adapting the structure of the Odyssey to a 
 novel, but the form at best remains awkward.'* 
 
 In Richardson's novels, again, we are not so much in- 
 terested in what is going to happen as in how it happens, 
 and in his case the how is a matter of human character. 
 The people who read Clarissa Harloive, and begged the 
 author not to let Clarissa die, did not care whether the end- 
 ing was a logical development of circumstances ; they were 
 
 ^2. i6o. 
 
 ' I. 122. 
 
 ' Tom Jones 3. 247. 
 ' 2. 327. 
 
Contribution to the Novel 79 
 
 interested in the ending because they were interested in 
 Clarissa. 
 
 In none of these novelists, then, do we find the main in- 
 terest in plot. Character, manners, adventure in and for 
 itself, not necessarily contributing toward the final climax 
 — these are emphasized in the work of Defoe, Richardson, 
 Fielding, and Smollett. 
 
 It is not until we reach Walpole that we have a definite 
 attempt to found the novel upon the technique of the drama. 
 In his preface to the first edition of The Castle of Otranto, 
 Walpole says, 'The rules of the drama are almost observed 
 throughout the piece.' In the preface to the second edition 
 he defends his inclusion of comic characters by the example 
 of Shakespeare, who, he says, 'in his deepest tragedies, 
 has introduced the coarse humor of grave-diggers and 
 clumsy jests of the Roman citizens.' This, by the way, 
 seems to oppose Dibelius' theory that the servant as intro- 
 duced in Mrs. Radclifife's novels and in The Castle of 
 Otranto is imitated from Sancho Panza.^ Not only was Mrs. 
 Radcliffe, in copying Walpole's talkative servants, carrying 
 on a Shakespearian inspiration, but she may have gone 
 directly to Shakespeare herself for some of her minor 
 characters. Her garrulous old women, like Dorothee and 
 Teresa in The Mysteries of Udolpho, might easily have been 
 suggested by Juliet's nurse. 
 
 Walpole's attempt at dramatic structure was a feeble at- 
 tempt enough, but it contained the essential elements of 
 the method which Mrs. RadclifTe was to carry to a much 
 higher development. His aim was to excite the curiosity of 
 the reader, and keep him waiting for the final denouement. 
 To a modern reader, however, the whole thing is so absurdly 
 improbable that it excites no curiosity at all, and the climax 
 is a matter of indifference. 
 
 Mrs. Radclifife's method is founded upon the principle 
 
 ' i: 297. 
 
8o Ann RadcUffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 which Walpole tried with imperfect success to embody in 
 his work — the principle of suspense ; and it is to this 
 method, probably, that she owed not only her immediate 
 popularity, but much of her importance in literary history. 
 The essentially dramatic quality of her stories is shown by 
 the fact which I have already pointed out, that all but one 
 were dramatized, and most of the resulting plays were suc- 
 cessfully performed. It is interesting to notice that her 
 handling of this element of suspense grows more skilful in 
 each successive book, excepting, perhaps, Gaston de Blonde- 
 ville, which was an experiment in a new field. It may be 
 worth while to make a very brief survey of the different 
 plots from this point of view. 
 
 In The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, Malcolm has slain 
 the Earl of Athlin. The Earl's widow survives him, with 
 two children, Osbert and Mary. Osbert, while wandering 
 about the country, is entertained in a peasant's cottage, and 
 a young peasant, Alleyn, guides him home. A festival is 
 held at the castle, and Alleyn wins first place in the games. 
 As a reward, he is permitted to dance with Mary, and at 
 once falls in love with her. Osbert, wishing to avenge his 
 father, summons the clan for an attack on the Castle of 
 Dunbayne. They succeed in getting inside the castle, but 
 find that Malcolm has been warned by spies, and has armed 
 men ready to seize them. Osbert and Alleyn are both im- 
 prisoned, but Alleyn escapes just in time to save Mary, who 
 is being carried off by Malcolm's horsemen. He leads the 
 clan in an attempt to rescue Osbert. Malcolm brings Osbert 
 to the ramparts, and tells the besiegers that the moment of 
 attack is the moment of Osbert's death. The only ransom 
 he will accept is the gift of Mary as his wife. Mary is 
 ready to consent in order to save her brother, although she 
 loves Alleyn. Alleyn finally succeeds in getting one of the 
 soldiers on guard to help Osbert escape. Meanwhile, 
 Osbert has become acquainted with the widow and daughter 
 of Malcolm's brother, who have been defrauded of their 
 
Contribution to the Novel 8i 
 
 property, and are kept imprisoned in the castle. A relative 
 of theirs, the Count de Santmorin, is received at the Castle 
 of Athlin after Osbert's return, and asks for Mary's hand, 
 but she is unwilling to receive him as a suitor. Malcolm 
 besieges the castle, and is mortally wounded by Osbert. 
 After he has been taken back to his own castle, he confesses 
 to the Baroness that her son did not die, but was en- 
 trusted to some peasants. In the meantime, there has been 
 a second attempt to carry off Mary, this time by the Count. 
 She is again rescued by Alleyn, and they go on to the Castle 
 of Dunbayne, where Osbert and Laura, the daughter of the 
 Baroness, were about to be married when Mary's disap- 
 pearance caused delay. The Baroness immediately recog- 
 nizes Alleyn as her son by his resemblance to his father, 
 and confirms her recognition by finding the strawberry- 
 mark on his arm. A double wedding is celebrated — Osbert 
 and Laura, Alleyn and Mary. 
 
 It will be clear from this brief resume that only rather 
 ordinary means of suspense are employed here, as in the 
 case of Mary's two abductions, with the opportune rescue. 
 The most striking instance is the scene in which Osbert is 
 brought to the ramparts, and his clansmen are warned that 
 if they attack, his life is lost. It is evident, of course, when 
 Alleyn falls in love with Mary, that something must be done 
 to prove him of noble birth, and as soon as we find out that 
 the Baroness has had a son, the ending is clear. 
 
 A Sicilian Romance shows a decided advance in plot- 
 making. In fact, it may be said that there is too much plot : 
 the events follow each other with the rapidity of a moving 
 picture. The very first part of the story shows the use of 
 suspense in exciting the reader's curiosity. The Marquis 
 of Mazzini has been married a second time, to a very beauti- 
 ful and pleasure-loving woman. Madame de Menon, a 
 friend of his first wife, has charge of the education of his 
 two daughters. The southern wing of the castle has been 
 closed for years, but a mysterious light has been seen there, 
 
82 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 which has aroused the anxiety of Madame de Menon and the 
 superstition of the servants. One of the servants, Vincent, 
 on his death-bed tries to tell the secret, and does confess to 
 the priest, but dies before he can tell Madame de Menon. 
 Ferdinand, the son of the marquis, comes of age, and there 
 is a great party to celebrate his majority. The marchioness 
 is jealous because Hippolitus, Count de Vereza, whom she 
 admires, prefers Julia. He leaves unexpectedly. Julia 
 and Emilia are obliged to give up their rooms to the mar- 
 chioness, and are put into rooms adjoining the southern 
 wing. Here they are frightened by strange noises, and tell 
 Ferdinand, who explores the wing, but finds nothing. Hip- 
 politus returns, and declares his love for Julia, but the 
 marquis insists that she shall marry the Duke de Luovo. 
 Ferdinand and Hippolitus plan an elopement, but it is pre- 
 vented, and Julia is imprisoned. Her maid helps her to 
 escape. The Duke searches for her in vain. Madame de 
 Menon leaves the castle, finds Julia, and takes her to the 
 monastery of St. Augustine, to the protection of the church. 
 From this point, the story is a series of escapes and dis- 
 coveries. Julia is about to become a nun, to avoid being 
 given back to her father, when Ferdinand comes and tells 
 her that Hippolitus is not dead, as she has heard. They 
 leave the monastery, and reach a ship which is to take them 
 to Italy, but are shipwrecked. They take refuge in a villa. 
 Meanwhile Hippolitus has come in search of Julia, and finds 
 that she has left the monastery. He loses his way, and 
 arrives at a ruin, where he finds a crowd of banditti, with 
 a man who seems to be dying. In fleeing from the banditti, 
 he reaches a chamber where he finds Julia. Some officers 
 come to their aid, but more banditti arrive, and overpower 
 them. Julia and Hippolitus escape. They are pursued by 
 the Duke and his followers ; Julia leaves Hippolitus resisting 
 them, and runs into a cavern. She goes through a 3oor and 
 closes it, wanders on until she reaches another door, and 
 unbolts it. Through this she enters a room, and finds a 
 
Contribution to the Novel 83 
 
 woman who greets her as a daughter. She has reached 
 the southern wing of the castle, and the secret is revealed. 
 The marquis shut his first wife up here, because he wished 
 to marry another woman, and here he has kept her all these 
 years. Julia remains with her mother, going out into the 
 passage whenever the marquis comes with food. He re- 
 solves to kill his wife, because he wants to put the proof of 
 his guilt out of the way. He puts poison in the food he 
 brings to her, but on that very day Hippolitus has traced 
 Julia to her mother's chamber, and they make their escape 
 just after the marquis' visit. The marquis, on returning to 
 his room, feels dizzy and faint, and a servant finds him in 
 agony. Ferdinand runs to the room of his stepmother, and 
 finds her stabbed by her own hand. A letter beside her tells 
 the marquis she has poisoned him. The marquis, before he 
 dies, tells Ferdinand about his mother. Julia and Hippolitus 
 are married, and the family is happily united. 
 
 It is easy to see the opportunity for suspense in the var- 
 ious wanderings and reunions. Some good examples are 
 found in Julia's flight. Madame De Menon, when she starts 
 out, does not find Julia in the cottage where she had expected 
 to take refuge, and it seems for a time that the plan has mis- 
 carried. Again, Julia thinks she is pursued by the Duke, 
 but finds that her pursuer is a man who is trying to recover 
 his daughter. The same situation occurs when the Duke 
 thinks he has found Julia, and discovers that he has been 
 following the wrong couple. The most striking example 
 of suspense, however, is Vincent's attempt to tell the secret, 
 and his dying before he can reveal it. The reader does not 
 discover the truth until far along in the story, when Julia 
 comes upon her mother in the secret chamber. 
 
 The Romance of the Forest has more simplicity of plot, 
 and better treatment of suspense as a means of arousing 
 interest. At the very first our curiosity is excited, when 
 La Motte, inquiring his way at the cottage in the woods, is 
 asked to take away a beautiful and distressed girl. When 
 
84 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 they come to the ruined abbey, and decide to stay there, we 
 are constantly kept in suspense as to whether their hiding- 
 place will be discovered. The peculiar behavior of La 
 Motte, when he first sees the Marquis of Montalt, shows 
 that there is some dark secret between them. When Theo- 
 dore, after rescuing Adeline from the marquis' villa, wounds 
 the marquis and is arrested, we fear evil consequences. 
 Another moment of suspense comes when Adeline has been 
 given once more into the charge of La Motte in the abbey, 
 and the marquis, after seeing a note which Adeline has 
 written to Theodore, orders La Motte to kill her. Again, 
 Theodore is about to be executed when Louis La Motte 
 hears of accusations which have been made against the 
 marquis, and has the execution delayed. It develops that 
 Adeline is the daughter of the marquis' brother, whom he 
 has murdered in order to get the property. He discovered 
 her identity by her mother's seal on the letter she had writ- 
 ten, and had intended to have her put out of the way also. 
 A characteristic use of suspense in this story is found where 
 Adeline is obliged to stop reading at an exciting point in 
 the manuscript, because her light goes out. Another time 
 of anxiety is at the apparent discovery of La Motte's hid- 
 ing-place, when the intruder turns out to be his own son. 
 
 The Mysteries of Udolpho is full of complications and 
 unexpected turns, but the main story can be told in few 
 words. Emily St. Aubert and her father, after Madame 
 St. Aubert's death, set out on a journey. They meet Val- 
 ancourt, who falls in love with Emily. During the journey 
 St. Aubert dies, leaving Emily to the care of her aunt. 
 This aunt, after some encouragement of Valancourt, for- 
 bids the marriage, and herself marries Montoni, an Italian. 
 They take Emily to Venice, and afterward to Montoni's 
 castle, Udolpho, in the Apennines. The rest of the story 
 narrates Emily's adventures in the castle, her escape, her 
 reception in the Chateau de Villefort, and her final union 
 with Valancourt. It would be superfluous to mention all 
 
Contribution to the Novel 85 
 
 the places in this story where Mrs. RadcHffe makes use of 
 suspense. Before they leave home, Emily sees her father 
 looking intently at a miniature which she knows is not a 
 picture of her mother. When he is dying, he asks her to 
 burn certain papers without looking at them. In burning 
 them, she notices involuntarily two lines of writing which 
 make a terrible impression upon her. She is tempted to 
 read on, but obeys her father's request. Her curiosity re- 
 mains unsatisfied, and the reader's is still more so, for he 
 has not even seen the two lines. The most famous incident 
 in the story is that of the black veil. Emily has been told 
 of a mysterious picture, concealed behind a black curtain. 
 Coming upon it by accident, she is urged by curiosity to lift 
 the curtain. She falls senseless to the floor, and it is not 
 until the end of the book that we find out what she has seen. 
 Another scene almost as hair-raising is the visit of Emily 
 and Dorothee to the room of the dead marchioness, when 
 the black pall on the bed begins slowly to rise, and Emily is 
 sure that she sees peering from beneath it a human face. 
 The disappearance of Ludovico from this same room is 
 another good example of suspense ; it is not until after 
 many pages that we get the explanation — a band of smug- 
 glers has been using that wing of the chateau as a hiding- 
 place for stolen goods, and they have carried off Ludovico 
 to encourage the belief that the rooms are haunted. The 
 whole book is a study in suspense ; we are interested not 
 so much in the adventures themselves as in the ovitcome of 
 the adventures, the explanation of the mysteries. 
 
 The Italian has perhaps the most dramatic plot of all. 
 In its essential theme it is rather hackneyed, for it is the 
 old story of true love which does not run smooth. Vin- 
 centio di Vivaldi has seen Ellena Rosalba at church, and has 
 fallen in love with her. He forms an acquaintance with 
 her and her aunt, and visits them at their villa. His father 
 and mother, however, object to the connection. The monk, 
 Schedoni, conspires with Vivaldi's mother, the Marchesa, 
 
86 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 to get Ellena out of the way. She is first taken to a con- 
 vent, but Vivaldi finds her, and effects her escape. They 
 are about to be married, when they are arrested in the name 
 of the Inquisition. Vivaldi is imprisoned at Rome ; Ellena 
 is taken to a lonely house on the sea-shore, where occurs 
 the scene mentioned before — that in which Schedoni, about 
 to kill her, recognizes his own picture about her neck, and 
 thinks that she is his daughter. At the end of the book, 
 Schedoni poisons both himself and the monk who has be- 
 trayed him. Ellena finds her mother in the nun who has 
 befriended her; she learns that she is the niece, not the 
 daughter, of Schedoni ; and she and Vivaldi are happily 
 married. 
 
 Suspense is a powerful element in the story. Vivaldi, 
 in his visits to Ellena's villa, meets by the ruined fort a 
 mysterious monk who warns him not to go on. The appear- 
 ances and disappearances of this monk excite our curiosity, 
 especially when Vivaldi follows him into the ruin, and we 
 are not told what he has found. When Vivaldi and Paulo 
 visit the place together, Vivaldi tells Paulo to pause and 
 consider whether he can depend upon his courage, for it may 
 be severely tried. This, again, arouses wonder as to what 
 Vivaldi has discovered. The whole incident of Vivaldi's 
 visit to the convent in disguise and his rescue of Ellena 
 keeps us constantly in suspense as to the outcome. In the 
 house of the assassin, Ellena's fate trembles in the balance. 
 In the Inquisition-scenes our attention is held by the mys- 
 terious voice whidh speaks to Vivaldi in his cell, and which 
 afterwards accuses Schedoni ; we can easily believe that 'the 
 silence of expectation rapt the court.' 
 
 One way in which Mrs. Radclifife reinforces this element 
 of suspense is by the use of music for dramatic effect. She 
 was, as we have seen, very fond of music, and in all her 
 stories she introduces it freely. Her heroines, in gazing at 
 a beautiful landscape, are almost as sure to hear sweet music 
 as they are to compose poetry. But it is not used merely 
 
Contribution to the Novel 87 
 
 to enforce description ; it has often a more distinct aim. 
 A striking example is the scene in The Italian, where Sche- 
 doni and the Marchesa are planning Ellena's death : 
 
 'Aye,' muttered the Confessor, still musing, — 'in a chamber of 
 that house there is ' 
 
 'What noise is that?" said the Marchesa, interrupting him. 
 They listened. A few low and querulous notes of the organ 
 sounded at a distance, and stopped again. 
 
 'What mournful music is that?' enquired the Marchesa in a 
 tremulous voice. 'It was touched by a fearful hand! Vespers 
 were over long ago !' 
 
 'Daughter,' observed Schedoni, somewhat sternly, 'you said you 
 had a man's courage. Alas ! you have a woman's heart.' 
 
 'Excuse me, father ; I know not why I feel this agitation, but 
 I will command it. That chamber?' . . . 
 
 'A passage leads to the sea,' continued Schedoni. . . . 
 'There, on the shore, when darkness covers it ; there, plunged 
 amidst the waves, no stain shall hint of 
 
 'Hark!' interrupted the Marchesa, starting, 'that note again!' 
 
 The organ sounded faintly from the choir, and paused, as be- 
 fore. In the next moment, a slow chaunting of voices was 
 heard, mingling with the rising peal, in a strain particularly 
 melancholy and solemn. 
 
 'Who is dead?' said the Marchesa, changing countenance; 'it 
 is a requiem !' 
 
 Here the music has a direct dramatic relation to the action, 
 in its working upon a guilty soul. 
 
 Similar examples, where music plays a part in the course 
 of the narrative, are found in the earlier novels. In The 
 Castles of Athlin and Ditiibayne, Osbert is confined in the 
 castle of his enemy when 'the soft notes of a lute surprised 
 his attention.' Through this he is led to discover the pres- 
 ence in the castle of the two ladies, one of whom immediately 
 inspires his love. 
 
 In The Romance of the Forest, Adeline is recalled from 
 melancholy and despair to hopefulness by strains of music 
 which, by changing her mood, seem to hint at the happy 
 outcome of her troubles. The Mysteries of Udolpho makes 
 
88 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 constant use of music to help in maintaining suspense. Per- 
 haps the most dramatic instance is the scene in which Emily 
 and the old servant, Dorothee, visit the chamber of the dead 
 marchioness : 
 
 'I will only tell what happened. My lord, the Marquis ' 
 
 'Hush, Dorothee, what sounds were those?' said Emily. 
 Dorothee changed countenance, and, while they both listened, 
 
 they heard, on the stillness of the night, music of uncommon 
 
 sweetness. 
 
 Dibelius speaks of the tendency to emphasize individual 
 scenes as a characteristic which distinguishes Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's method from that of Fielding and Smollett. This, 
 it seems to me, is proof that her style is more distinctly 
 dramatic. In thinking of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's stories, 
 as in thinking of a play, one is inclined to remember striking 
 scenes rather than a continuous narrative. Especially is 
 this true in The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. 
 Certain definite pictures stand out — Madame Montoni's 
 burial ; the duel of Montoni and the Count ; the visit of 
 Emily and Dorothee to the marchioness' apartment ; the 
 scene in the bandits' cave; Ellena, aroused from sleep in 
 her gloomy chamber to find Schedoni bending over her ; 
 Ellena and Vivaldi standing before the priest ready for the 
 marriage ceremony, rudely interrupted by the band of 
 ruffians. 
 
 In this matter of structure, one can hardly deny that Mrs. 
 Radcliffe made a contribution which was distinctive and 
 important. Her deliberate use of suspense as an artistic 
 principle is something entirely different from the method of 
 Richardson and Fielding in shaping the incidents of their 
 stories to fit into a general plan. Just how far her method 
 affected later writers is a question which it would be diffi- 
 cult to answer conclusively. Scott had a strong feeling for 
 the individual scene, and we know that in many ways he 
 was influenced by Mrs. Radcliffe's work. The great novels 
 of the nineteenth century show a combination of the picar- 
 
Contribution to the Novel 89 
 
 esque and the dramatic methods, with the emphasis, prob- 
 ably, upon the latter. The short stories, from Poe down 
 to the latest attempts in our magazines, are founded upon 
 the principle of suspense ;' and the modern detective story, 
 with its elaborate mystification, and its often disappointing 
 solution, no doubt owes much to Mrs. Radcliffe's methods. 
 She gave a new emphasis to action — not action in and for 
 itself, as in the picaresque novel, but action as bringing 
 about complications, and resolving them. 
 
 It seems hardly fair, then, to think of the 'Gothic' novel 
 as a mere side-issue in the development of the type — a 'blind 
 alley' leading nowhere. Walpole, with his clumsy begin- 
 nings, and Mrs. Radcliffe, with the perfected method, 
 added something to the plot as Richardson and Fielding had 
 conceived it, and so had their direct share in the develop- 
 ment of the novel. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's influence upon the subject-matter of the 
 novel has received more general attention than her influence 
 upon its structure. Without going into detail upon this 
 question, we may briefly recall the general character of her 
 contribution. Scott says of her that she appeals 'to those 
 powerful and general sources of interest, a latent sense of 
 supernatural awe, and curiosity concerning whatever is 
 hidden and mysterious.' 
 
 In this appeal Scott himself followed her. Certain of his 
 novels, like Woodstock and Anne of Geierstein, remind us 
 of Mrs. Radcliffe not only in subject-matter, but in treat- 
 ment. 'Gothic' themes persisted in the literature of the 
 first half of the nineteenth century. Mrs. Shelley, in 
 Frankenstein, produced a tale of terror which carried the 
 supernatural into the pseudo-scientific. Maturin's Mclmoth 
 the Wanderer makes striking use of physical immortality as 
 a means of spiritual torture. For stories of mystery we 
 have Bulwer's Zanoni and Godwin's St. Leon. Crime be- 
 comes an important element in novels like Bulwer's Eugene 
 Aram, Godwin's Caleb Williams, and Ainsworth's Rook- 
 
90 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 wood and Jack Sheppard. This tendency to picture the Hfe 
 and character of criminals is shown later in Dickens, and in 
 the vivid representation of outlaw-life which we find in 
 Lama Doonc. And the climax of Gothicism, with its appeal 
 to the 'sense of supernatural awe and curiosity concerning 
 ■whatever is hidden and mysterious,' came in the middle of 
 the century with Emily Bronte's Wiithering Heights. 
 
 In America the influence is quite as striking. Charles 
 Brockden Brown shows perhaps most directly and unmis- 
 takably the resemblance to Mrs. Radcliffe. Hawthorne and 
 Poe are to a considerable extent 'Gothic' in their treatment 
 of the supernatural and the mysterious. Poe also resembles 
 Mrs. Radclifife in the fact that his chief aim seems to be to 
 produce in his reader a certain emotional effect, and in his 
 method of exciting interest by suspense. 
 
 We may say, then, that Mrs. Radcliffe's contribution to 
 the nineteenth-century novel was not only a matter of 
 structure, but a certain more indefinite spirit — the spirit of 
 curiosity and awe before the mystery of things. As in 
 structure her method of dramatic suspense was combined 
 with the picaresque type which had preceded it, so in theme 
 this new romantic spirit blended with the other spirit of 
 realism and satire that the earlier and greater novelists had 
 introduced. Dickens is following, part of the time, in the 
 footsteps of realists like Fielding and Smollett. But when, 
 in Great Expectations, we see Miss Havisham by her dusty 
 dressing-table, on which lies the satin slipper turned yellow 
 with age, or gaze at the banqueting-table with the wedding- 
 cake mouldering in the centre, we might be in the dread 
 chamber of the chateau where Emily and Dorothee found 
 the clothes of the marchioness lying just as she had thrown 
 them off, 'and, on the dressing-table, a pair of gloves and a 
 long black veil, which, as Emily took it up to examine, she 
 perceived was dropping to pieces with age.' In the first 
 part of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte gives a vivid and ap- 
 parently realistic picture of a child's suffering. But in her 
 portra3'al of Rochester she seems to be returning, in some 
 
Contribution to the Novel 91 
 
 degree, to Mrs. Radcliffe's conception of the 'villain-hero.' 
 Still more is this true of Emily Bronte, in her amazing and 
 terrific picture of Heathcliffe. 
 
 Many people have considered that Mrs. RadcliflFe's most 
 valuable contribution to the novel was her use of natural 
 scenery. Miss Reynolds has shown that eighteenth-century 
 novelists in general had little interest in the surroundings of 
 their heroes. Except in the novels of Charlotte Smith, 
 there had been little use of landscape in fiction until, as Miss 
 Reynolds says, 'In these novels by Mrs. Radclifife the roman- 
 tic landscape was presented in its complete form.'^ 
 
 It is unnecessary to go into any discussion of the im- 
 portance of scenery in the later novels. We may present it 
 as our general conclusion that Mrs. Radclifife modified to 
 some degree both the structure and the theme of the novel. 
 In structure she developed the principle of suspense, adapt- 
 ing to fiction more completely than had been done before the 
 technique of the drama. In the matter of theme her con- 
 tribution was twofold, dealing both with the supernatural 
 and with the natural — that is, with natural scenery. 
 
 One must of course realize that in none of these 
 fields did Mrs. Radclifife take the very first step. Wal- 
 pole, as I have said before, made some use of dramatic 
 climax and suspense, although it was pretty feeble. Thomas 
 Leland, in his Longsword, published in 1762, has the earl 
 kept in ignorance of the fate of his household, but the 
 interruption to his inquiries is not very reasonable: 
 
 Now, when restored to a degree of tranquillity, he again 
 offered at some inquiries on his part, of his house, his son and 
 wife, but was instantly interrupted by Randolph, who reminded 
 him of rest.^ 
 
 The supernatural — or rather, the apparently supernatural, 
 with a natural ending, quite in the style of Mrs. Radclifife — 
 is found in Smollett's Ferdinand, Count Fathom, where 
 Melvil, going to mourn in the church where he supposes his 
 
 ^ The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry, p. 219. 
 'Longsword i. 131. 
 
92 Ann RadcUffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 love to be buried, sees what he thinks to be her spectre, but 
 discovers that it is the Hving woman. The treatment here is 
 much more suggestive of Mrs. RadcHffe's method than the 
 clumsy magic of Walpole's tale. Charlotte Smith had made 
 some use of landscape, and others, as Miss Reynolds points 
 out, had introduced little touches of description. Smollett 
 has one passage which Miss Reynolds does not mention, 
 where Ferdinand 
 
 Found himself benighted in the midst of a forest, far from 
 the habitations of men. The darkness of the night, the silence 
 and solitude of the place, the indistinct images of the trees that 
 appeared on every side, 'stretching their extravagant arms 
 athwart the gloom,' conspired with the dejection of spirits 
 occasioned by his loss, to disturb his fancy, and raise strange 
 phantoms in his imagination.^ 
 
 This is quite in the tone of 'Gothic' description, especially 
 when we realize that it leads up to a scene of robbery. 
 
 But, after all, a first step is not necessarily a decisive step. 
 These tentative beginnings might lead to nothing if Mrs. 
 Radcliflfe had not assembled the scattered hints, and shaped 
 them into a distinctly characteristic method, into a typejof 
 novel strong enough to win popularity. Smollett's sug- 
 gestion of 'Gothicism,' Walpole's patchwork of ghosts and 
 giants, even the attempt at historical romance in Longszvord, 
 might have had little effect upon the development of the 
 novel, if 'Gothic' themes had not been triumphantly estab- 
 lished in The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of 
 Udolpho. 
 
 Mrs. Radcliffe did, then, make a definite and important 
 contribution to the novel. One question, however, remains. 
 If she did make such a decided change in structure, such a 
 considerable addition in theme, how does it happen that 
 her contribution was not in itself more permanent? Why 
 are her books relegated to the darkest and dustiest corner 
 of the library shelves — if, indeed., the modern library owns 
 them at all ? 
 
 ^Ferdinand, Count Fathon;, p. 145. 
 
Contribution to the Novel 93 
 
 The answer lies in one undeniable weakness — her failure 
 to individualize her characters. It has been said that we 
 are interested in the places which Scott describes because 
 we always associate them with the people that he has 
 created. Quite the opposite is true of Mrs. Radcliffe. We 
 are interested in her people, for the most jiart, only because 
 of the situation or the place in which they happen to find 
 themselves. 
 
 This lack of characterization leads, naturally, to a loss of 
 interest after one reading. At first, as Talfourd says, we 
 put ourselves into the place of the hero or heroine, and 
 follow the adventures with an almost personal interest. But 
 when once the outcome is known, there is no incentive to 
 rereading; there are no characters which fascinate us by 
 their humanness, so that we wish to associate with them over 
 and over again. 
 
 Then, too, lack of character-drawing leads to lack of 
 motivation. When the people have no individuality, there 
 is no reason why they should do one thing more than 
 another. Therefore situation is emphasized in and for it- 
 self ; there is usually no logical relation of action to char- 
 acter. It is this condition that, in a play, gives melodrama ; 
 and, indeed, Mrs. Radcliffe's novels have to those of George 
 Eliot or of Scott at his best a relation not unlike that of 
 melodrama to genuine tragedy or tragi-comedy. 
 
 Different conditions confront us, however, when we meas- 
 ure her by the novelists who were her immediate contem- 
 poraries. Novels were being turned out in ever increasing 
 numbers, but only a few of the writers received anything 
 like the recognition which was accorded Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 Those most prominently mentioned in the reviews of the 
 time are Matthew Gregory Lewis, Mrs. Inchbald, and Char- 
 lotte Smith. 
 
 Lewis has already been spoken of. There is no doubt 
 that he received much of his inspiration from Mrs. Rad- 
 cliffe's Mysteries of Udolplw, although, as has been said be- 
 fore, he may in turn have given her some suggestions for 
 
94 ^WM Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 The Italian. In his psychological treatment of character 
 he has probably surpassed her ; some real power of analysis 
 is shown in the monk's struggle between religion and pas- 
 sion. But the crudity of his horrors make his book absurd ; 
 it survives, so far as it survives at all, as a literary curiosity. 
 Byron wrote of nt :^ 'These descriptions ought to have been 
 written by Tiberius at Caprea — they are forced — the phil- 
 ter ed ideas of a jaded voluptuary. It is to me inconceivable 
 how they could have been composed by a man of only 
 twenty.' The cynicism of the book, and its open disregard 
 of conventional morality, called forth reviews which were 
 distinctly unfavorable. Although Lewis was for a time 
 much talked of, he was a man of one book, and his influence 
 was not equal to that of Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 
 One of the reviews of The Mysteries of Udolpho closes 
 with these words : 'This is the best composition of this kind 
 that has appeared since Mrs. Inchbald's Simple Story/^ 
 The expression, 'this kind,' is a little puzzling here. The 
 reviewer must surely be thinking of fiction in general, for, 
 except that they are both fiction, two compositions could 
 hardly be more unlike than The Mysteries of Udolpho and 
 A Sim,ple Story. 
 
 Mrs. Inchbald's book was very popular, and it is not hard 
 to understand why it should have been so. Its chief recom- 
 mendation is that it really is 'A Simple Story' ; the language 
 is unaffected, and the situations and emotions are of the sort 
 that have a general appeal. But in structure it is faulty ; 
 the break of seventeen years in the middle of the story is 
 awkward, especially so because after the seventeen years 
 we have to readjust completely our ideas of the principal 
 characters. Moreover, the ethical purpose of the book is 
 rather too obvious for successful art. Mrs. Radcliffe, it is 
 true, was strictly moral ; her stories may all be said to be 
 elaborations of the theme, 'those that were good shall be 
 happy' ; but her main interest does not lie there. Mrs. 
 
 * Journal, Dec. 6, 1813. 
 ^ English Review 2^. 464. 
 
Contribution to the Novel 95 
 
 Inchbald is a follower of Rousseau, in that her book is to 
 some extent an educational treatise in disguise. 
 
 Mrs. Smith may more justly be considered a rival of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe, for we find in her work two of Mrs. Radcliflfe's 
 most notable characteristics — the so-called 'Gothic' element, 
 and the interest in natural scenery. These characteristics 
 are most prominent, however, in The Old Manor House, 
 which was published in 1793, after A Sicilian Romance and 
 The Romance of the Forest. So it is quite possible that 
 Mrs. Smith deliberately imitated the methods which were 
 bringing her sister-novelist success. 
 
 She evidently had a genuine love of nature, and some of 
 her English landscapes are very well done. Miss Mitford 
 referred to her as a 'landscape poet.'^ But when she at- 
 tempted foreign scenes, the result was less satisfactory. I 
 have spoken of Mrs. Radcliffe's habit of steadying her 
 imagination by reference to books of travel, as for instance 
 in her adaptation of Mrs. Piozzi's descriptions of Venice. 
 If Mrs. Smith consulted any books of travel, either she was 
 unfortunate in her source, or she made no geographical 
 distinction between North and South America. Her de- 
 scription of early spring in a Canadian wilderness is 
 startling : 
 
 On the opposite side of the river lay an extensive savannah, 
 alive with cattle, and coloured with such a variety of swamp 
 plants, that their colour, even at that distance, detracted some- 
 thing from the vivid green of the new-sprung grass. . . . 
 The acclivity on which the tents stood sinking very suddenly on 
 the left, the high clififs there gave place to a cypress swamp, 
 . . . while on the right the rocks, rising suddenly and sharply, 
 were clothed with wood of various species; the evergreen oak, 
 the scarlet oak, the tulip tree and magnolia, seemed bound to- 
 gether by festoons of flowers, some resembling the convolvuluses 
 of our gardens, and others the various sorts of clematis, with 
 vignenias, and the Virginia creeper. . . . Beneath these 
 fragrant wreaths that wound about the trees, tufts of rhodo- 
 dendrons, and azalea, of andromedas and calmias, grew in the 
 most luxuriant beauty; and strawberries already ripenmg, or 
 
 * Letters 2. 29. 
 
 7 
 
g6 Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time 
 
 even ripe, peeped forth among the rich vegetation of grass and 
 flovi^ers/ 
 
 And this spring is supposed to follow 'only a f ew^ days after 
 the severest weather, which had buried the whole country in 
 snow.' 
 
 But Mrs. Smith, though inferior to Mrs. Radcliffe in de- 
 scription and plot, has surpassed her in one direction. She 
 has created one triumphantly successful character. Mrs. 
 Rayland, in The Old Manor House, never announcing her 
 intention of making young Orlando her heir, yet governing 
 his destiny by her slightest nod, and maintaining his whole 
 family in awe, is a masterpiece. If Charlotte Smith had 
 developed more fully the power of character-drawing which 
 she showed in this one figure, she would occupy a very dif- 
 ferent place in the line of novelists from her present obscure 
 niche. But she wrote, for the most part, hurriedly, and 
 under pressure of financial need. Mrs. Carter, writing of 
 one of the earlier books to Mrs. Montagu, says : 
 
 I was glad to find that you were pleased with the 'Orphan of 
 the Castle.' I heartily wish it was fashionable enough to be of 
 any essential benefit to the author, who has been obliged to pur- 
 chase her freedom from a vile husband, by giving up part of the 
 little fortune she had left ; so that she has at present little more 
 than a hundred a year to support herself and six or seven 
 children.^ 
 
 This personal note was rather common in the consider- 
 ation of books by feminine authors. Several reviews, not 
 very favorable in tone, of books by women, add as an ex- 
 tenuating circumstance that the writer has a worthy object, 
 the support of children, parents, or a husband, as the case 
 may be. The difference in attitude in the reviews of Mrs. 
 Radcliife's work is very noticeable. There is never any 
 mention of her personal circumstances ; the books are con- 
 sidered wholly upon their merits, and, in the case of the 
 earlier ones, the reviewer is evidently uncertain whether to 
 
 ^ The Old Manor House 3. 349. 
 ' Letters, June 30, 1788. 
 
Contribution to the Novel 97 
 
 attribute them to a man or a woman. That Mrs. Radcliffe 
 stood apart from the general crowd of feminine writers who 
 were taking possession of the field of fiction, is evident from 
 a comment in The Pursuits of Literature, by T. Mathias, a 
 production which is rather severe upon writers in general 
 and novelists in particular : 
 
 Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Mary Robinson, 
 Mrs. etc. etc. though all of them are ingenious ladies, yet they 
 are too frequently whining or frisking in novels, till our girls' 
 heads turn wild with impossible adventures, and now and then 
 are tainted with democracy. . . . Not so the mighty magician 
 of The Mysteries of Udolpho, bred and nourished by the Floren- 
 tine Muses in their sacred solitary caverns amid the paler 
 shrines of Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness of in- 
 chantment : a poetess whom Ariosto would with rapture have 
 acknowledged, as the 
 
 La nudrita 
 Damigella Trivulzia al sacro speco. (O. F. c. 46)^ 
 
 In summing up the impressions gained from this study, 
 one is inclined to try to relate literature to life, and to con- 
 clude that the chief defect in Mrs. Radcliffe's art was a 
 natural result of her temperament. Her journals are filled 
 with descriptions of scenery ; there are few comments upon 
 people. She has left no evidence of any strong personal 
 friendships outside of her own family. It is natural to con- 
 clude that she was not keenly interested in the men and 
 women around her, that she had not a quick eye for the 
 little oddities of human character. The fairies gave her 
 many gifts, but they held back the one which a novelist 
 most needs. With the possible exception of Schedoni, she 
 has not left us a single figure which deserves a place in the 
 portrait-gallery of fiction. But the gifts were not wasted. 
 They made her immensely popular at a time when the novel 
 had, perhaps, advanced about as far as it could along one 
 line and was ready for a change. They made it possible 
 for her to influence men and women who possessed the one 
 precious gift which she lacked, and, by her influence upon 
 them, to affect the whole development of the novel. 
 
 ' Pursuits of Literature, p. 20. 
 
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Yale Studies in English 
 
 107 
 
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io8 
 
 Yale Studies in English 
 
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 LXII. Ann Radcliffe in Relation to her Time. Clara Frances 
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