On the other hand, The Convent of Grey Penitents, one of the crops which rewarded Miss Wilkinson for tilling the lands of her imagination with the spade of her style, is very nearly consummate—­in badness.  It is a fair example of the worst imitations of Mrs. Radcliffe and Mat Lewis conjointly, though without the latter’s looseness.  The Marquis di Zoretti was an Italian nobleman—­“one of those characters in whose bosom resides an unquenchable thirst of avarice” ["thirst of avarice” is good!], etc.  He marries, however, a lovely signora of the odd name of Rosalthe, without a fortune, “which circumstance was overlooked by his lordship” for a very short time only.  He plots to be free of her:  she goes to England and dies there to the genteelest of slow music.  Their son Horatio falls in love with a certain Julietta, who is immured by wicked arts in the “Convent of Grey Penitents,” tormented by the head, Gradisca, but rescued, and so forth.  The book, if harmless, is about as worthless as a book can be:  but it represents, very fairly, the ruck, if not indeed even the main body, of the enormous horde of romances which issued from the press towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and which, in their different action on persons of genius, gave us Zastrozzi on the one side and Northanger Abbey on the other.

As for Miss Henrietta Mosse, otherwise Rouviere, she represents the other school of abortive historical novel. A Peep at Our Ancestors (1807) is fairly worthy of its ridiculous name.  It is preceded by expressions of thanks to the authorities of “the British Museum and the Heralds’ Office” for the “access to records” vouchsafed to its author.  As the date of the story is 1146 (it was long before Mr. Freeman wrote) access to records would certainly not have been superfluous.  The actual results of it are blocks of spiritless and commonplace historic narrative—­it is nearly all narrative, not action—­diversified by utterances like this of Malcolm III. of Scotland, “O my Edward! the deed which struck my son’s life has centred [sic] thy noble youthful bosom also,” or this of the heroine (such as there is), “the gentle elegant Adelaise,” “And do I not already receive my education of thee, mamma?” It is really a pity that the creator of this remarkable peep-show did not give references to her “records,” so that one might look up this “elegant” young creature of the twelfth century who talked about “education” and said “mamma!” But this absolute failure in verisimilitude is practically universal before Scott.