seem to most readers defective in their very conception, as lacking the stimulus which the intention of submitting them to the extemporaneous ocular judgement of the public can alone impart.  Among such works, however, “The Mysterious Mother” is admitted to rank high for vigorous description and poetic imagery.  A greater popularity, which even at the present day has not wholly passed away, since it is still occasionally reprinted, was achieved by “The Castle of Otranto,” which, as he explains it in one of his letters, owed its origin to a dream.  Novels had been a branch of literature which had slumbered for several years after the death of Defoe, but which the genius of Fielding and Smollett had again brought into fashion.  But their tales purported to be pictures of the manners of the day.  This was rather the forerunner of Mrs. Radcliffe’s[1] weird tales of supernatural mystery, which for a time so engrossed the public attention as to lead that “wicked wag,” Mr. George Coleman, to regard them as representatives of the class, and to describe how—­

A novel now is nothing more
Than an old castle and a creaking door;
A distant hovel;
Clanking of chains, a gallery, a light,
Old armour, and a phantom all in white,
And there’s a novel.

[Footnote 1:  “‘The Castle of Otranto’ was the father of that marvellous series which once overstocked the circulating library, and closed with Mrs. Radcliffe.”—­D’Israeli, “Curiosities of Literature,” ii. 115.]

He had published it anonymously as a tale that had been found in the library of an ancient family in the North of England; but it was not indebted solely to the mystery of its authorship for its favourable reception—­since, after he acknowledged it as his own work in a second edition, the sale did not fall off.  And it deserved success, for, though the day had passed when even the most credulous could place any faith in swords that required a hundred men to lift, and helmets which could only fit the champion whose single strength could wield such a weapon, the style was lively and attractive, and the dialogue was eminently dramatic and sparkling.

But the interest of all these works has passed away.  The “Memoirs” have served their turn as a guide and aid to more regular historians, and the composition which still keeps its author’s fame alive is his Correspondence with some of his numerous friends, male and female, in England or abroad, which he maintained with an assiduity which showed how pleasurable he found the task, while the care with which he secured the preservation of his letters, begging his correspondents to retain them, in case at any future time he should desire their return, proves that he anticipated the possibility that they might hereafter be found interesting by other readers than to those to whom they were addressed.