With all her limitations, Mrs. Radcliffe is a figure whom it is
impossible to ignore in the history of the novel. Her influence
was potent on Lewis and on Maturin as well as on a host of
forgotten writers. Scott admired her works and probably owed
something in his craftsmanship to his early study of them. She
appeals most strongly in youth. The Ettrick Shepherd, who was by
nature and education "just excessive superstitious," declares:
"Had I read _Udolpho_ and her other romances in my
boyish days my hair would have stood on end like that
o' other folk ... but afore her volumes fell into my
hauns, my soul had been frichtened by a' kinds of
traditionary terrors, and many hunder times hae I maist
swarfed wi' fear in lonesome spots in muir and woods at
midnight when no a leevin thing was movin but mysel'
and the great moon."[38]
There are dull stretches in all her works, but, as Hazlitt justly
claims, "in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and
making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and
fears, she is unrivalled among her countrymen."[39]
CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.
To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew
Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which depends
for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity, for
"the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even
stronger and more primitive instinct of fear.
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