parents suffer from what is described by writers on psychology as “total recall,” and are unable to select the salient details.  The characters are rather dim and indistinct, the shadowiest of all being Emma, who has no personality at all, and is a mere complement to the immaculate Edmund’s happiness.  The good and bad are sharply distinguished.  There are no “doubtful cases,” and consequently there is no difficulty in distributing appropriate rewards and punishments at the close of the story—­the whole “furnishing a striking lesson to posterity of the overruling hand of providence and the certainty of retribution.”  Clara Reeve was fifty-two years of age when she published her Gothic story, and she writes in the spirit of a maiden aunt striving to edify as well as to entertain the younger generation.  When Edmund takes Fitzowen to view the fatal closet and the bones of his murdered father, he considers the scene “too solemn for a lady to be present at”; and his love-making is as frigid as the supernatural scenes.  The hero is young in years, but has no youthful ardour.  The very ghost is manipulated in a half-hearted fashion and fails to produce the slightest thrill.  The natural inclination of the authoress was probably towards domestic fiction with a didactic intention, and she attempted a “mediaeval” setting as a tour de force, in emulation of Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.  The hero, whose birth is enshrouded in mystery, the restless ghost groaning for the vindication of rights, the historical background, the archaic spelling of the challenge, are all ineffective fumblings towards the romantic. The Old English Baron is an unambitious work, but it has a certain hold upon our attention because of its limpidity of style.  It can be read without discomfort and even with a mild degree of interest simply as a story, while The Castle of Otranto is only tolerable as a literary curiosity.  A tragedy, Edmond, Orphan of the Castle (1799), was founded upon the story, which was translated into French in 1800.  Miss Reeve informs the public in a preface to a late edition of The Old English Baron that, in compliance with the suggestion of a friend, she had composed Castle Connor, an Irish Story, in which apparitions were introduced.  The manuscript of this tale was unfortunately lost.  Not even a mouldering fragment has been rescued from an ebony cabinet in the deserted chamber of an ancient abbey, and we are left wondering whether the ghosts spoke with a brogue.

When Walpole wrote disparagingly of Clara Reeve’s imitation of his Gothic story, he singled out for praise a fragment which he attributes to Mrs. Barbauld.  The story to which he alludes is evidently the unfinished Sir Bertrand, which is contained in one of the volumes entitled Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, published jointly by J. and A.L.  Aikin in 1773, and preceded by an essay On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror.  Leigh Hunt, who reprinted