MRS RADCLIFFE.

AN

NNE WARD was born in London, of respectable parents, on the 9th of July 1764. Her family was of good descent, having sprung from one of the celebrated De Witts of Holland, who had come to England prior to the outbreak of the Great Revolution, to reclaim the Lincolnshire fens ; a work which the Great Revolution prevented. Her education was of a very ordinary kind, yet, with the acquisitive power of true genius, she gathered up stores of knowledge which none suspected, and which afterwards she made admirable use of. In person she was short, but gracefully proportioned, and possessed the signal gift of beauty—that gift "twice blessed," which blesses her who owns it, and those who live in its lustre. Her complexion, it is said, was exquisitely pure; her mouth very sweet and tender; her dark eyes shone with the light of feeling and imagination. She possessed, moreover, a sweet voice,—an excellent thing in woman, and sang with much taste and expression.

In 1787, at the age of twenty-three, this accomplished woman was married to Mr William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate, and a student of law, who afterwards became editor and proprietor of the Weekly Chronicle. He had the tact to discern and appreciate the rare mental powers of his beautiful wife, and he encouraged her to use them in the labour of composition. As the management of the newspaper frequently occupied him until a late hour, Mrs Radcliffe was glad to occupy herself during her enforced solitude by embodying in words the thick-coming fancies of an inventive brain. She wrote rapidly, and her husband, on his return, would often be astonished at the amount of work she had accomplished. He found still greater reason for astonishment in its quality, and it is said

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A MELO-DRAMATIC GENIUS.

that many of the chapters which flowed from her fertile and original fancy he did not dare to read alone by night.

The first book, published in 1789, was entitled "The Castles of Ashton and Dunbayne," and though altogether inferior to its successors, gave evidence of that strength of wing which afterwards enabled her genius to venture upon such daring flights. "The Sicilian Romance," in the following year, at once convinced the reading world that its suffrages were claimed by a writer of no ordinary power and originality. Its vivid descriptive passages, and its romantic succession of adventures, produced quite a new sensation when contrasted with the stage-tricks and commonplace inventions of Horace Walpole. For if Horace Walpole had shown the way, it was followed out by Mrs Radcliffe with a vigour and a boldness to which her dilletante predecessor had no pretensions.

The remarkable impression produced by "The Sicilian Romance" was greatly deepened by "The Romance of the Forest," which appeared in 1791, and which extorted, not only the favourable opinions of the public at large, but the well-considered suffrages of such men as Fox and Pitt, Burke and Sheridan. It was seen that this most original writer sought not for interest in the vulgar sources which had contented former novelists. As Mrs Barbauld remarks, she loved to excite the soul even to a paroxysm of terror by the half-developed, half-conceived presence of perils always on the verge of bursting. The scenes which she chose for the display of her tragedies were likewise new to an English public,-old towns shattered by time, long dark corridors haunted by mysterious echoes, forests impenetrable to the light of day, and dungeons tenanted by memories of crime and suffering. Nor were the characters unworthy of these gloomy accessories. Their singular and nefarious schemes were as shadowy as they were criminal. They seemed to belong to some far-off world of sorrow and crime, and borrowed from the unknown and undefinable sentiment of secrecy and awe.

The most popular of Mrs Radcliffe's romances, though, perhaps, not the most artistic, was "The Mysteries of Udolpho," published in 1794. We believe that no one ever read this wonderful book and forgot it. There are obvious faults of construction, and even of taste; but so thrilling is the interest of the story, and so terrible is the grandeur of the incidents, that you are prevented from recognising the spots on the sun.

MRS RADCLIFFE'S ROMANCES.

223

Scott remarks upon its great superiority to "The Romance of the Forest." Its plot is, as he says, of a more agitating and tremendous nature; the scenery of a wilder and more terrific description; the characters are distinguished by fiercer and more gigantic features.

About this time, Mrs Radcliffe and her husband made a tour through Holland and the Western Provinces of Germany, of which she published an account in 1795, adding to it a picturesque narration of a journey through the Lake Districts of England. As might be expected, her sketches are distinguished by richness of colour, as well as by accuracy of outline.

"The Mysteries of Udolpho" had brought her what was then considered the unusually large sum of £500. For her next, and most perfect work, "The Italian," she received £800. It not only displays her singular art of weaving into one all powerful story the most ingeniouslydevised and terribly-conceived incidents, but a faculty for portraying character which it was not supposed she possessed. "Schedoni," the monk, is a consummate and original portrait, which has served as the prototype and model of all the loftier villains of our later literature, and suggested to Byron his "Corsair" and his "Lara,”—those heroes whose

names are

"Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes."

It affords a satisfactory proof of the excellence Mrs Radcliffe might have attained in the highest branches of her art, if she had cared to develop all her natural powers.

"The Italian" was the last of her romances which appeared in her lifetime. Her husband had received a legacy from a relative, which, added to their own accumulations, enabled them to retire from further exertion, and to occupy themselves in her especial pleasure-travelling. She went from length to breadth of England, visiting all its famous places and memorable shrines. But she published nothing more. She continued to write, however; and after her death the romance of "Gaston de Blondeville" was given to the world, in which she attempted to blend the characteristics of her own with those of the Scott school; also "St Alban's Abbey," a poem of some merit, and various minor compositions. During the latter years of her life Mrs Radcliffe suffered from spas

224

HER LEADING CHARACTERISTICS.

modic asthma, and it was an attack of this disease which at last carried her off, on the 7th of February 1823, in the fifty-ninth year of her age, after a few weeks' illness.

Mrs Radcliffe's great excellence as a novelist depends on her command of the supernatural, on her power of surprising and exciting the reader, on the masterly evolution of her incidents, on the breadth and beauty of her imaginary landscapes. "Her best descriptions," says Miss Kavanagh, "with the accessory figures, remind us of such paintings as the old masters delighted in. You see lovely valleys, hazy mountains, clear sheets of water, sunlit castles, and noble trees; they are true, but not re:1; they belong to that unknown world of the mind which is to our daily thoughts what fairyland was formerly to earth." The truth is, Mrs Radcliffe was essentially a poet,-a poet in feeling and imagination, and her ideal pictures are such as poets love to contemplate. She had all a poet's sympathy with nature; and whether she painted the waterfall shimmering against a background of dark pines, or the hoary castle cresting the summit of an Alpine peak, or the bright lake sleeping in the glory of an Italian sky, it was with a force and a power as intense as Byron's. "Before all," as Hazlitt says," she excelled in describing the indefinite-in clothing phantoms with an actual and visible form." She alone, of modern novelists, has known how to communicate the interest of reality to the supernatural. She alone has known how to conquer the scepticism of the reader by the air of fidelity with which she has invested her surprising scenes, and the imposing circumstances with which she has surrounded her romantic characters.

TH

THE MYSTERIES OF THE CASTLE.*

HE castle was buried in sleep when Ferdinand again joined his sisters in Madame's apartment. With anxious curiosity they followed him to the chamber. The room was hung with tapestry. Ferdinand carefully sounded the wall which communicated with the southern building. From one part of it a sound was returned which convinced him there was something less solid than stone. He removed the tapestry, and behind it appeared, to his inexpressible satisfaction, a small door. With a hand trembling through eagerness, he undrew the bolts, and was rushing forward, when he perceived that a lock withheld his passage. The keys of Madame and his sisters were applied in vain, and he was compelled to submit to disappointment at the very moment when he congratulated himself on success, for he had with him no means of forcing the door.

He stood gazing at the door, and inwardly lamenting, when a low hollow sound was heard from beneath. Emilia and Julia seized his arm; and, almost sinking with apprehension, listened in profound silence. A footstep was distinctly heard as if passing through the apartment below, after which all was silent. Ferdinand, fired by this confirmation of the last report, rushed on to the door, and again tried to burst his way, but it resisted all the efforts of his strength. The ladies now rejoiced in that circumstance which they so lately lamented; for the sounds had renewed their terror, and though the night passed without further disturbance, their fears were very little abated.

Ferdinand, whose mind was wholly occupied with wonder, could with difficulty await the return of night. Emilia and Julia were scarcely less impatient. They counted the minutes as they passed; and when the family retired to rest, hastened with palpitating hearts to the apartment of Madame. They were soon after joined by Ferdinand, who brought with him tools for cutting away the lock of the door. They paused a few moments in the chamber in fearful silence, but no sound disturbed the stillness of night. Ferdinand applied a knife to the door, and in a short time separated the lock. The door yielded, and disclosed a large and

From A Sicilian Romance." (Edit. London, 1790. 2 vols.)