less, his bed dishonoured, and had revenged the imagined injury by poison.-My God! I can scarce, at this moment, believe that I have waked and seen this! But his servant now came running into the room, calling for us to hasten into his master's chamber, for that he feared he was dead. We rushed into the room together-it was too true: Montauban was no more! The doctor tried, he confessed without hope, several expedients to revive him; but they failed of success. I hung over the bed, entranced in the recollection of the fateful events I had seen. Arpentier, from the habit of looking on the forms of death, was more master of himself; after examining the body, and pondering a little on the behaviour of the Count, he went into the closet, where he found, on a small table, a phial uncorked, which he brought to me. It explained the fate of Montauban; a label fastened to it, was inscri bed LAUDANUM; its deadly contents he had swallowed in his delirium, before he went to bed. Such was the conclusion of a life distinguished by the exercise of every manly virtue; and, except in this instance, unstained by a crime. While I mourn the fate of his most amiable wife, I recal the memory of my once dearlyvalued friend, and would shelter it with some apology if I could. Let that honour which he worshipped plead in his defence. That honour we have worshipped together, and I would not weaken its sacred voice; but I look on the body of Montauban-I weep over the pale corpse of Julia !—I shudder at the sacrifices of mistaken honour, and lift up my hands to pity and to justice. END OF JULIA DE ROUBIGNÉ. THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO; A GOTHIC STORY. BY HORATIO WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD. Vanc Fingentur species, tamen ut pes, et caput uni Reddantur formæ.—HOR. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first crusade, and 1243, the date of the last, or not long afterwards. There is no other circumstance in the work, that can lead us to guess at the period in which the scene is laid: the names of the actors are evidently fictitious, and probably disguised on purpose: yet the Spanish names of the domestics seem to indicate that this work was not composed until the establishment of the Arragonian kings in Naples had made Spanish appellations familiar in that country. The beauty of the diction, and the zeal of the author, (moderated however by singular judgment,) concur to make me think that the date of the composition was little antecedent to that of the impression. Letters were then in the most flourishing state in Italy, and contributed to dispel the empire of superstition, at that time so forcibly attacked by the reformers. It is not unlikely that an artful priest might endeavour to turn their own arms on the innovators; and might avail himself of his abilities as an author, to confirm the populace in their ancient errors and superstitions. If this was his view, he has certainly acted with signal address. Such a work as the following would enslave a hundred vulgar minds beyond half the books of controversy that have been written from the days of Luther to the present hour. This solution of the author's motives is, however, offered as a mere conjecture. Whatever his views were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times, who should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but he must represent his actors as believing them. If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. Allow the possibility of the facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation. There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Every thing tends directly to the catastrophe. Never is the reader's attention relaxed. The rules of the drama are almost observed throughout the conduct of the piece. The characters are well drawn, and still better maintained. Terror, the author's principal engine, prevents the story from ever languishing; and it is so often contrasted by pity, that the mind is kept up in a constant vicissitude of interesting passions. Some persons may perhaps think the characters of the domestics too little serious for the general cast of the story; but besides their opposition to the principal personages, the art of the author is very observable in his conduct of the subalterns. They discover many passages essential to the story, which could not be well brought to light but by their naivetè 1 |