Diffident as to the success of so "wild" a story in an age
devoted to good sense and reason, he sent forth his mediaeval
tale disguised as a translation from the Italian of "Onuphrio
Muralto," by William Marshall. It was only after it had been
received with enthusiasm that he confessed the authorship. As he
explained frankly in a letter to his friend Mason: "It is not
everybody that may in this country play the fool with
impunity."[14] That Walpole regarded his story merely as a
fanciful, amusing trifle is clear from the letter he wrote to
Miss Hannah More reproving her for putting so frantic a thing
into the hands of a Bristol milkwoman who wrote poetry in her
leisure hours.[15] _The Castle of Otranto_ was but another
manifestation of that admiration for the Gothic which had found
expression fourteen years earlier in his miniature castle at
Strawberry Hill, with its old armour and "lean windows fattened
with rich saints."[16] The word "Gothic" in the early eighteenth
century was used as a term of reproach. To Addison, Siena
Cathedral was but a "barbarous" building, which might have been a
miracle of architecture, had our forefathers "only been
instructed in the right way."[17] Pope in his _Preface to
Shakespeare_ admits the strength and majesty of the Gothic, but
deplores its irregularity. In _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_,
published two years before _The Castle of Otranto_, Hurd pleads
that Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ should be read and criticised as a
Gothic, not a classical, poem. He clearly recognises the right of
the Gothic to be judged by laws of its own. When the nineteenth
century is reached the epithet has lost all tinge of blame, and
has become entirely one of praise. From the time when he began to
build his castle, in 1750, Walpole's letters abound in references
to the Gothic, and he confesses once: "In the heretical corner of