Page:Edinburgh Review Volume 59.djvu/340

328 romance of Gaston de Blondeville. The tale occupied two volumes, and ninety pages of the third; the remaining volume and a half being occupied with the sheets which are now 'done up' in these two volumes, bearing the date of 1834. The publisher, in short, has disjoined them from the romance, and has sent them forth in a new cover, apparently in the expectation that the oblivious public would receive them as a new arrival.

We do not much quarrel, however, with their appearance. Their merits are certainly not high; but were they less than they are, they would still be received with grateful interest, as the last relic of a highly-gifted and amiable mind, which, in its day, exercised no mean influence over the spirit of literature, and the charm of whose productions has perhaps been acknowledged more universally, and with less dispute, than that of any other English writer of fiction. Tastes have no doubt greatly altered since the days when each successive tale of mystery from her pen was hailed with curiosity and delight; another people have arisen that know not Joseph; other principles of composition, other objects of interest, have superseded, in novel-writing, the stimulus of wonder and superstitious fear; nor, with the exception of the anonymous romance of Forman (which we recollect perusing with deep interest, and which, though its name is probably unknown to most of our readers, we had the satisfaction of finding had been a favourite with Sir Walter Scott), and the wild creations of Maturin, in his Montorio and Melmoth, has any author of superior talent for a long time past ventured to strike the chord which had, in her hands, been made to discourse such eloquent music. Yet there is a charm in her compositions which can never entirely fade; and she need have little apprehension for her posthumous fame, whose romances have been praised by Sheridan, commented on with admiration by Fox, placed by Scott among the élite of English fiction, and associated by Byron with the works of Shakspeare, Otway, and Schiller, as having stamped upon his mind, by anticipation, the image of the City of the Sea.

Mrs Radcliffe has shared the fate of many an inventor. She has been made answerable for the sins of her imitators; and the just tribute to which she was entitled, as having opened up an original walk in composition, has been withheld, from disgust at the extravagances of the 'rabble rout' who had rushed in after her, filling every dingle and bushy dell of that wild wood into