d, but the passage
is incorrect and poor in detail compared with similar things in Scott.
The book was not an historical romance, and the manners, sentiments,
language, all were modern. Walpole knew little about the Middle Ages and
was not in touch with their spirit. At bottom he was a trifler, a
fribble; and his incurable superficiality, dilettantism, and want of
seriousness, made all his real cleverness of no avail when applied to
such a subject as "The Castle of Otranto."[14]

Walpole's tragedy, "The Mysterious Mother," has not even that degree of
importance which secures his romance a niche in literary history. The
subject was too unnatural to admit of stage presentation. Incest, when
treated in the manner of Sophocles (Walpole justified himself by the
example of "Oedipus"), or even of Ford, or of Shelley, may possibly claim
a place among the themes which art is not quite forbidden to touch; but
when handled in the prurient and crudely melodramatic fashion of this
particular artist, it is merely offensive. "The Mysterious Mother,"
indeed, is even more absurd than horrible. Gothic machinery is present,
but it is of the slightest. The scene of the action is a castle at
Narbonne and the _chatelaine_ is the heroine of the play. The other
characters are knights, friars, orphaned damsels, and feudal retainers;
there is mention of cloisters, drawbridges, the Vaudois heretics, and the
assassination of Henri III. and Henri IV.; and the author's Whig and
Protestant leanings are oddly evidenced in his exposure of priestly
intrigues.

"The Castle of Otranto" was not long in finding imitators. One of the
first of these was Clara Reeve's "Champion of Virtue" (1777), styled on
its title-page "A Gothic Story," and reprinted the following year as "The
Old English Baron." Under this latter title it has since gone through
thirteen editions, the latest of which, in 1883, gave a portrait of the
author. Miss Reeve had previously published (1772) "The Phoenix," a
translation of "Argenis," "a romance written in Latin about the beginning
of the seventeenth century, by John Barclay, a Scotchman, and supposed to
contain an allegorical account of the civil wars of France during the
reign of Henry III."[15] "Pray," inquires the author of "The Champion of
Virtue" in her address to the reader, "did you ever read a book called,
'The Castle of Otranto'? If you have, you will willingly enter with me
into a review of it. But perhaps yo