1826.] Fashionable Novels. 155 
plans of human passion with an influence of the most imaginative and mind- 
engrossing nature. Those impressions have now passed away, and they 
are incapable of revival. No eye will henceforth follow the progress of 
her stern and sepulchral genius with the straining anxiety and fearful 
suspense that once laid all England under her spell. But it is impossible 
to look over her volumes without surprise at the vast and varied beauty, 
the rich and noble expression, and the solemn and profound power of 
this extraordinary woman’s mind. Her last work, Gaston de Blonde- 
ville, is unworthy of her fame; but it was probably written under cir- 
cumstances of mental depression, fatal to thought. Its publication may 
do honour to the pious homage of her friends, but it does none to their 
regard for her fame. No verdict ought to be more scrupulously con- 
fined to living action, than that which decides on the honours of author- 
ship. The intense popularity of Mrs. Radcliffe’s writings soon perished. 
Sudden decay is of the nature of all that literature which excites sudden 
admiration. The instances of this maxim are many and incontroverti- 
ble. We have seen it in Scott’s poetry, in Lewis's, and in a large 
variety of those exertions of talent, which have for their time been 
signally attractive. But the Romance of the Forest, the Italian, and 
still more, Udolpho, will be long looked to with the grave admiration of 
those who feel a gratification in examining into the secrets of that 
authorship by which the popular mind is to be especially stirred. The 
interval that followed between the disappearance of this class of novel 
and the rise of any rival in popularity was long, and but feebly filled up 
by the extravagancies of Lewis, and others of his school. A few senti- 
mental novels, from female pens, had an abortive and passing notoriety ; 
and Miss Edgeworth, by her sketches of Irish character, her minute 
observation of peasant life, and her seeming prudence and power of 
advising the young, became partially popular. But the world soon 
grew weary of her cold, laborious, and unnatural style. Her mind was 
altogether mechanical: her world was the nursery at Edgeworthstown. 
Her wisdom was the dry and crippled manufacture of old-maidism and 
governess-ship. How to turn a shilling to the best advantage, or to 
make the most of a pin-case, superseded the knowledge of life ; and her 
scheme, which was totally founded on selfishness under the name of 
prudence, and which, under the name of morality, dispensed with the 
influences of religion, was opposed to the common-sense of the people. 
She, too, passed away, and the governess-style was at an end. She 
now scribbles “ children’s books,” and enlightens the rising generation 
at the rate of sixpence a volume. 
The Scotch novels now started into notice: they had the double 
attraction of newness and mystery. By adopting the historic style, the 
author relieved himself from the labour of invention. Characters and 
conversations were already made for him. The facts of his narrative 
were things of history; the names of his personages in general came 
to us with the interest attached to.the celebrated actors in the most 
celebrated times. The author availed himself of the proverbial vanity of 
Scotchmen, by making their poor and struggling nation the scene of 
his stories. All nations are fond of talking of their ancestry, and fond 
of this in proportion to their present eclipse by the superior wealth, 
intelligence, and power of their neighbours. The Scotch, now a mere 
dependency of England, and known only as furnishing a travelling 
population of rugged and hard-working men, for the minor manual, and 
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