Max Muller, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill's
edition of Bozzy's "Life of Dr. Johnson." But Mrs. Radcliffe has been
read diligently, and copiously annotated.
This lady was, in a literary sense, and though, like the sire of Evelina,
he cast her off, the daughter of Horace Walpole. Just when King Romance
seemed as dead as Queen Anne, Walpole produced that Gothic tale, "The
Castle of Otranto," in 1764. In that very year was born Anne Ward, who,
in 1787, married William Radcliffe, Esq., M.A., Oxon. In 1789 she
published "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne." The scene, she tells us,
is laid in "the most romantic part of the Highlands, the north-east coast
of Scotland." On castles, anywhere, she doted. Walpole, not Smollett or
Miss Burney, inspired her with a passion for these homes of old romance.
But the north-east coast of Scotland is hardly part of the Highlands at
all, and is far from being very romantic. The period is "the dark ages"
in general. Yet the captive Earl, when "the sweet tranquillity of
evening threw an air of tender melancholy over his mind . . . composed
the following sonnet, which (having committed it to paper) he the next
evening dropped upon the terrace. He had the pleasure to observe that
the paper was taken up by the ladies, who immediately retired into the
castle." These were not the manners of the local Mackays, of the
Sinclairs, and of "the small but fierce clan of Gunn," in the dark ages.
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