NOVELS AND NOVELISTS.

CHAPTER I.

ANN RADCLIFFE.

ALTHOUGH Ann Radcliffe's parents were in rank no higher than respectable tradespeople, she was more than decently descended. Her paternal grandmother was a sister of Cheselden, the distinguished surgeon; her maternal grandmother was Anne Oates, a sister of Dr. Samuel Jebb, of Stratford, who was the father of Sir Richard Jebb; and she was lineally descended from a De Witt, a near relative of John and Cornelius, who came over from Holland to carry out a government plan to drain the fens of Lincolnshire; a design which the popular rising and the execution of Charles the First expelled from the minds of its projectors. Like many, and perhaps we may add the best of our female writers, Mrs. Radcliffe passed a retired life, which, apart from its literary results, affords few points of interest to the biographer. Her maiden name was Ward, and she was born in London on the 9th of July, 1764. Gifted with unusual beauty, the chief constituents of which were an exquisitely proportioned figure, a transparent complexion, and such bewitching lips and eyes as rarely fall to the lot of a girl, she was soon surrounded with admirers. At an

early age she was introduced into much desirable society; and at the house of her especially kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bentley (Wedgewood and Bentley), at Turnham Green, she made the acquaintance of Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Piozzi.

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When she was only three-and-twenty, the lovely creature gave her heart and hand to a Mr. William Radcliffe. This fortunate gentleman was a graduate of Oxford, a law student, and a man of considerable literary abilities. Upon his marriage, deeming it prudent to exercise his talents in some way that should reward his exertions with immediate payment, he relinquished his legal pursuits, and devoting his time and powers to journalism] event .ally became the proprietor and editor of the "English Chronicle."

Two years after her marriage Mrs. Radcliffe made her first appearance as a novelist, with "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne." This romance, which was published 1789, when she was only twenty-five years old, was not either as a work of art, or a commercial transaction, more successful than first attempts usually are.

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In 1790, however, she showed the world that she had "caught the knack;" for in that year appeared "the Sicilian Romance," which quickly became the favorite of the public, and convinced even the most crotchetty critics that she was an authoress of very unusual powers. Now that she had made a success, Mrs. Radcliffe determined wisely to keep her name before her admirers. 1791, she published "The Romance of the Forest." 1793, she visited Germany, paying especial attention to the scenery of the Rhine, and in the course of the same year she made a trip to the Westmoreland lakes. In the following year (1794) she published her excellent "Journey through Holland, the Western Frontier of Germany, with a return down the Rhine. To which are added Observations during a tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, &c.," and in the same year appeared "The Mysteries of Udolpho," for which she was paid £500-a sum then regarded as a very high one for a novel. In 1797 she published her last, and in the opinion of many her best, fiction-"The Italian "for which she was paid by a publisher the yet greater amount of £800,

Although Mrs. Radcliffe lived for more than a quarter of a century after the publication of "The Italian," she never again gave the world a romance. It is asserted that she was displeased at having called into existence that host of miserable imitators which afflicted the patrons of circulating libraries with monstrous stories, of which "the horrors and marvels were even more flat than the awkward diction in which they were presented to the reader, and that in disgust at having indirectly given birth to a vitiated literature, she resolved never again to touch a pen. But most likely this story is not more worthy of credit than the thousand and one others which were current in society about the famous authoress. Leading a life of domestic seclusion, and especially avoiding those circles where rank loftily patronizes literary celebrity, and mock genius fawns slavishly on fashion, circles into which a paltry vanity too often allures the best authors, Mrs. Radcliffe was utterly unknown to the thousands of English who, in London and in the country, were burning to learn something about her. At last, society, tired of being kept in such an ignominious state of ignorance, determined no longer to acknowledge herself unacquainted with the person, history, and circumstances of Mrs. Radcliffe, but to borrow from imagination the facts which that lady was so impertinent as to keep to herself. The consequence was that soon every coterie in London had its own absurd story about the authoress of "The Mysteries of Udolpho." At one time it was generally believed that the awful creations of her imagination haunted her incessantly, and that she was subject to distressing fits of gloom. The requisite improvements to this story were soon made, and it was stated that at length Mrs. Radcliffe's reason had given way, and that she was a maniac under confinement in one of the metropolitan asylums. And this picture being as painful, even disgusting, a one as it is well possible to conceive, society in spite of innumerable contradictions

cherished it, and clung to it, and extracted from it the most exquisite delight.

During the last twelve years of her life Mrs. Radcliffe was a terrible sufferer under that very painful disease, spasmodic asthma. On the 9th of January, 1822, her complaint displayed itself in a most threatening form, and she died on the following 7th of February, at her house in London.

It has been the fashion of late years to speak of Mrs. Radcliffe with contempt, and to point to her works as the best possible representatives of stupidity. This unjust scorn to a great extent is a result of the excellence of her works, which are still remembered and read, while the productions of nearly all her contemporaries are forgotten. Novel readers of the present generation, on turning to Mrs. Radcliffe's fictions, find them prolix, improbable, and wearisome, and 'speaking as they find' they utter their emphatic condemnation of her claims to respect. It would be well, if instead of indulging in hasty judgment, such censors compared critically Mrs. Radcliffe with novelists of her own time, and of the generations before. If they would have the patience to do so they would, supposing them to be endowed with ordinary sagacity, discover that the condemned authoress introduced a new element into fictitious literature perfectly distinct from the growls and groans and ridiculous horrors with which her name is associated in the popular mind. She was the first to adorn the 'English Novel' with what has ever since her time been regarded as necessary to a fiction of any pretensions to excellence,-truthful, graphic, attractive description of scenery! Read the following passage.

"Towards the close of the day, the road wound into a deep valley. Mountains, whose shaggy steeps appeared to be inaccessible, almost surrounded it. To the east, a vista opened, and exhibited the Appenines in their darkest horrors; and the long perspective of retiring summits rising over