"Dark and unearthly is the scowl
That glares beneath his dusky cowl:

"The flash of that dilating eye
Reveals too much of times gone by.
Though varying, indistinct its hue
Oft will his glance the gazer rue."

Of the Corsair, it is said:

"There breathe but few whose aspect might defy
The full encounter of his searching eye."

Lara is drawn from the same model:

"That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last
And spoke of passions, but of passions past;
The pride but not the fire of early days,
Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
A high demeanour and a glance that took
Their thoughts from others by a single look."

The feminine counterpart of these bold impersonations of evil is
the tyrannical abbess who plays a part in _The Romance of the
Forest_ and in _The Italian_, and who was adopted and exaggerated
by Lewis, but her crimes are petty and malicious, not daring and
ambitious, like the schemes of Montoni and Schedoni.

One of Mrs. Radcliffe's contemporaries is said to have suggested
that if she wished to transcend the horror of the Inquisition