The interest of the
story turns on the struggle of Fenwick to gain his bride, and to
wrest her from the influence of Margrave. The plot, intricately
tangled, is unravelled with patient skill. In spite of the
wearisome explanations of Dr. Faber, who is lucid but verbose,
there is a fascination about the book which compels us to go
forward.
In Lytton's hands the barbarity of the novel of terror has been
gracefully smoothed away. It has, indeed, become almost
unrecognisably refined and elevated, and something of its native
vigour is lost in the process. Amid all the amenities of Vrilya
and Intelligences, we miss the vulgar blatancy of an honest,
old-fashioned spectre.
CHAPTER X - SHORT TALES OF TERROR.
For the readers of their own day the Gothic romances of Walpole,
Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe possessed the charm of novelty.
Before the close of the century we may trace, in the
conversations of Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Morland in
_Northanger Abbey_, symptoms of a longing for more poignant
excitement. It was at this time that Mrs. Radcliffe, after the
publication of _The Italian_ in 1797, retired quietly from the
field. From her obscurity she viewed no doubt with some disdain
the vulgar achievements of "Monk" Lewis and a tribe of imitators,
who compounded a farrago of horrors as thick and slab as the
contents of a witch's cauldron.
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