Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels - Page 2

skipped, even by her contemporary devotees. "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne" frankly do not permit themselves to be read, and it was not till 1790, with "A Sicilian Romance," that Mrs. Radcliffe "found herself," and her public. After reading, with breathless haste, through, "A Sicilian Romance," and "The Romance of the Forest," in a single day, it would ill become me to speak lightly of Mrs. Radcliffe. Like Catherine Morland, I love this lady's tender yet terrific fancy.

Mrs. Radcliffe does not always keep on her highest level, but we must remember that her last romance, "The Italian," is by far her best. She had been feeling her way to this pitch of excellence, and, when she had attained to it, she published no more. The reason is uncertain. She became a Woman's Rights woman, and wrote "The Female Advocate," not a novel! Scott thinks that she may have been annoyed by her imitators, or by her critics, against whom he defends her in an admirable passage, to be cited later. Meanwhile let us follow Mrs. Radcliffe in her upward course.

The "Sicilian Romance" appeared in 1790, when the author's age was twenty- six. The book has a treble attraction, for it contains the germ of "Northanger Abbey," and the germ of "Jane Eyre," and--the germ of Byron! Like "Joseph Andrews," "Northanger Abbey" began as a parody (of Mrs. Radcliffe) and developed into a real novel of character. So too Byron's gloomy scowling adventurers, with their darkling past, are mere repetitions in rhyme of Mrs. Radcliffe's Schedoni. This is so obvious that, when discussing Mrs. Radcliffe's Schedoni, Scott adds, in a note, parallel passages from Byron's "Giaour." Sir Walter did not mean to mock, he merely compared two kindred spirits. "The noble poet" "kept on the business still," and broke into octosyllabics, borrowed from Scott, his descriptions of miscreants borrowed from Mrs. Radcliffe.

"A Sicilian Romance" has its scene in the palace of Ferdinand, fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the northern coast of Sicily. The time is about 1580, but there is nothing in the manners or costume to indicate that, or any other period. Such "local colour" was unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, as to Clara Reeve. In Horace Walpole, however, a character goes so far in the mediaeval way as to say "by my halidome."

The Marquis Mazzini had one son and two daughters by his first amiable consort, supposed to be long dead when the story opens. The son is the original of Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey," and in General Tilney does Catherine Morland recognise a modern Marquis of Mazzini. But the Marquis's wife, to be sure, is not dead; like the first Mrs. Rochester she is concealed about the back premises, and, as in "Jane Eyre," it is her movements, and those of her gaolers,