Sensitive
Plant_, the tortures of Prometheus, all show how Shelley strove
to work on the instinctive emotion of fear. In _The Cenci_ he
touches the profoundest depths of human passion, and shows his
power of finding words, terrible in their simple grandeur, for a
soul in agony. In the tragedies of Shakespeare and of his
followers--Ford, Webster and Tourneur--Shelley had heard the true
language of anguish and despair. The futile, frenzied shrieking
of Matilda and her kind is forgotten in the passionate nobility
or fearful calm of the speeches of Beatrice Cenci.

CHAPTER VII - SATIRES ON THE NOVEL OF TERROR.

A conflict between "sense and sensibility" was naturally to be
expected; and, the year after Mrs. Radcliffe published _The
Italian_, Jane Austen had completed her _Northanger Abbey_,
ridiculing the "horrid" school of fiction. It is noteworthy that
for the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Mrs. Radcliffe received L500, and
for _The Italian_ L800; while for the manuscript of _Northanger
Abbey_, the bookseller paid Jane Austen the ungenerous sum of
L10, selling it again later to Henry Austen for the same amount.
The contrast in market value is significant. The publisher, who,
it may be added, was not necessarily a literary critic, probably
realised that if the mock romance were successful, its tendency
would be to endanger the popularity of the prevailing mode in
fiction. Hence for many years it was concealed as effectively as
if it had lain in the haunted apartment of one of Mrs.
Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. Among Jane Austen's early unpublished
writings were "burlesques ridiculing the improbable events and
exaggerated sentiments which she had met with in sundry silly
romances"; but her spirited defence of the novelist's art in
_Northanger Abbey_ is clear evidence that her raillery is
directed not against fiction in general, but rather against such
"horrid" stories as those included in the list supplied to
Isabella Thorpe by "a Miss Andrews, one of the sweetest creatures
in the world."

It has sometimes been supposed that the more fantastic titles in
this catalogue were figments of Jane Austen's imagination, but
the identity of each of the seven stories may be established
beyond question. Two of the stories--_The Necromancer of the
Black Forest_, a translation from the German, and _The Castle of
Wolfenbach_, by Mrs. Eliza Parsons (who was also responsible for
_Mysterious Warnings_)--may still be read in _The Romancist