lly accepted for performance; painters of
distinction were at work on subjects from it; it had reached the stages
of Madrid and of London (where one critic had called it "a very
beautiful composition"), while French approval had been practically
unanimous. Nay, a game had been founded thereon, and--crowning, but
perhaps rather ominous honour--somebody had actually published a
burlesque imitation.

I have seldom read greater rubbish than _Le Solitaire_. It is a
historical-romantic story (the idolatrous preface refers both to Scott
and to Byron), and bears also strong, if sometimes distinctly
unfortunate, resemblances to Mrs. Radcliffe, the Germans, and
Chateaubriand. The scene is that of Charles the Bold's defeat at Morat:
and the "Solitary" is Charles himself--the identification of his body
after the decisive overthrow at Nancy _was_ a little doubtful--who has
hidden there partly to expiate, by good deeds, his crime of massacring
the monks of the adjoining Abbey of Underlach, and partly to avail
himself of a local tradition as to a _Fantome Sanglant_, who haunts the
neighbourhood, and can be conveniently played by the aid of a crimson
mantle. The slaughter of the monks, however, is not the only event or
circumstance which links Underlach to the crimes of Charles, for it is
now inhabited by a Baron d'Herstall (whose daughter, seduced by the
Duke, has died early) and his niece, Elodie de Saint-Maur, whose father,
a former favourite of the Burgundian, that prince has killed in one of
his fits of rage. Throw in a local priest, Anselm, and you have what may
be called the chief characters; but a good Count Ecbert de Norindall, a
wicked Prince of Palzo, and divers others figure. Everybody, including
the mysterious Bleeding-Phantom-Solitary-Duke himself, falls in love
with Elodie,[78] and she is literally "carried off" (that is to say,
shouldered) several times, once by the alarming person in the crimson
shroud, but always rescued, till it is time for her to die and be
followed by him. There are endless "alarums and excursions"; some of the
_not_ explained supernatural; woods, caves, ruins, underground
passages--entirely at discretion. Catherine Morland would have been
perfectly happy with it.

It is not, however, because it contains these things that it has been
called "rubbish." A book might contain them all--Mrs. Radcliffe's own
do, with the aggravation of the explained wonders--and not be that. It
is because of the extrao