"
She is, in fact, more addicted to "gramarye" than to
"grammar"--the fault with which Byron, in a note to _English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, charged the hero and heroine of
Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Her heroes do not merely
love, they are "enamoured to a romantic degree." Her arbours are
"composed of jasmine, white rose, and other odoriferous sweets of
Flora." She sprinkles French phrases with an airy nonchalance
worthy of the Lady Hysterica Belamour, whose memoirs are included
in Barrett's _Heroine_. Her duchesses "figure away with
_eclat_"--"a party _quarrie_ assemble at their _dejeune_." It is
noteworthy that by 1820 even Miss Wilkinson had learnt to despise
the spectres in whom she had gloried during her amazing career.
In _The Spectre of Lanmere Abbey_ (1820) the ghost is
ignominiously exposed, and proved to be "a tall figure dressed in
white, and a long, transparent veil flowing over her whole
figure," while the heroine Amelia speaks almost in the accents of
Catherine Morland:
"My governess has been affirming that there are Gothic
buildings without spectres or legends of a ghostly
nature attached to them; now, what is a castle or abbey
worth without such appendage?; do tell me candidly, are
none of the turrets of your old family mansion in
Monmouth rendered thus terrific by some unquiet,
wandering spirit?, dare the peasantry pass it after
twilight, or if they are forced into that temerity, do
not their teeth chatter, their hair stand erect and
their poor knees knock together?"
That Miss Wilkinson, who, for twenty years, had conscientiously
striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last
to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a
piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen.
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