The
innate desire for the marvellous was met at this period not by
the novel, but by oral tradition and by such works as Galland's
translation of _The Arabian Nights_, the Countess D'Aulnoy's
collection of fairy tales, Perrault's _Contes de ma Mere Oie_.
Chapbooks setting forth mediaeval legends of "The Wandering Jew,"
the "Demon Frigate," or "Dr. Faustus," and interspersed with
anecdotes of freaks, monsters and murderers, satisfied the
craving for excitement among humbler readers.[8] Smollett, who,
in his _Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom_ (1753), seems to
have been experimenting with new devices for keeping alive the
interest of a _picaresque_ novel, anticipates the methods of Mrs.
Radcliffe. Although he sedulously avoids introducing the
supernatural, he hovers perilously on the threshold. The
publication of _The Castle of Otranto_ in 1764 was not so wild an
adventure as Walpole would have his readers believe. The age was
ripe for the reception of the marvellous.
The supernatural had, as we have seen, begun to find its way back
into poetry, in the work of Gray and Collins. In Macpherson's
_Ossian_, which was received with acclamation in 1760-3, the
mountains, heaths and lakes are haunted by shadowy, superstitious
fears. Dim-seen ghosts wail over the wastes.
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