hauns, my soul had been frichtened by a' kinds of
traditionary terrors, and many hunder times hae I maist
swarfed wi' fear in lonesome spots in muir and woods at
midnight when no a leevin thing was movin but mysel'
and the great moon."[38]

There are dull stretches in all her works, but, as Hazlitt justly
claims, "in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors, and
making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and
fears, she is unrivalled among her countrymen."[39]




CHAPTER IV - THE NOVEL OF TERROR. LEWIS AND MATURIN.


To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew
Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense," which depends
for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity, for
"the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even
stronger and more primitive instinct of fear. Those who find Mrs.
Radcliffe's unruffled pace leisurely beyond endurance, or who
dislike her coldly reasonable methods of accounting for what is
only apparently supernatural, or who sometimes feel stifled by
the oppressive air of gentility that broods over her romantic
world, will find ample reparation in the melodramatic pages of
"Monk" Lewis. Here, indeed, may those who will and dare sup full
with horrors. Lewis, in reckless abandonment, throws to the winds
all restraint, both moral and artistic, that had bound his