killer, and Robin Hood, as set
forth and embellished in the chapbooks which cottagers treasured
"on the deal shelf beside the cuckoo-clock."[110] And in his
poem, _Sir Eustace Grey_, he presents with subtle art a mind
tormented by terror.

CHAPTER VIII - SCOTT AND THE NOVEL OF TERROR.

In 1775 we find Miss Lydia Languish's maid ransacking the
circulating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloak
novels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twenty
years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost
from all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of
_Udolpho_," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in her pocket-book
the "horrid" titles of romances from the German. In 1814,
apparently, the vogue of the sentimental, the scandalous, the
mysterious, and the horrid still persisted. Scott, in the
introductory chapter to _Waverley_, disrespectfully passes in
review the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed to be
supplanted by the series of romances he was then beginning:

"Had I announced in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, A Tale
of Other Days,' must not every novel reader have
anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
of which the eastern wing has been long uninhabited,
and the keys either lost or consigned to the care of
some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps
about the middle of the second volume were doomed to
guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts?
Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried
in my very title page? and could it have been possible
to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce
any scene more lively than might be produced by the
jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the
garrulous narrative of the heroine's
_fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of
blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's
hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance
from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image
forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and
Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls,
caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and
dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my
work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
sufficient presage of a heroine wit