SOURCE: Critical Review, August, 1794, pp. 361-72.

In the following essay, Coleridge notes the weaknesses of The Mysteries of Udolpho, including its repetitive descriptions, flat characterizations, and anticlimactic conclusion.

… In this contest of curiosity on one side, and invention on the other, Mrs. Radcliffe has certainly the advantage. She delights in concealing her plan with the most artificial contrivance, and seems to amuse herself with saying, at every turn and doubling of the story, “Now you think you have me, but I shall take care to disappoint you.” This method is, however, liable to the following inconvenience, that in the search of what is new, an author is apt to forget what is natural; and, in rejecting the more obvious conclusions, to take those which are less satisfactory. The trite and the extravagant are the Scylla and Charybdis of writers who deal in fiction. With regard to the work...