“It is impossible,” says Eastlake,[6] speaking of Walpole, “to peruse either the letters or the romances of this remarkable man, without being struck by the unmistakable evidence which they contain of his medieval predilections.  His ‘Castle of Otranto’ was perhaps the first modern work of fiction which depended for its interest on the incidents of a chivalrous age, and it thus became the prototype of that class of novel which was afterward imitated by Mrs. Radcliffe and perfected by Sir Walter Scott.  The feudal tyrant, the venerable ecclesiastic, the forlorn but virtuous damsel, the castle itself with its moats and drawbridge, its gloomy dungeons and solemn corridors, are all derived from a mine of interest which has since been worked more efficiently and to better profit.  But to Walpole must be awarded the credit of its discovery and first employment.”

Walpole’s complete works[7] contain elaborate illustrations and ground plans of Strawberry Hill.  Eastlake give a somewhat technical account of its constructive features, its gables, buttresses, finials, lath and plaster parapets, wooden pinnacles and, what its proprietor himself describes as his “lean windows fattened with rich saints.”  From this I extract only the description of the interior, which was “just what one might expect from a man who possessed a vague admiration for Gothic without the knowledge necessary for a proper adaptation of its features.  Ceilings, screens, niches, etc., are all copied, or rather parodied, from existing examples, but with utter disregard for the original purpose of the design.  To Lord Orford, Gothic was Gothic, and that sufficed.  He would have turned an altar-slab into a hall-table, or made a cupboard of a piscine, with the greatest complacency, if it only served his purpose.  Thus we find that in the north bed-chamber, when he wanted a model for his chimney-piece, he thought he could not do better than adopt the form of Bishop Dudley’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.  He found a pattern for the piers of his garden gate in the choir of Ely Cathedral.”  The ceiling of the gallery borrowed a design from Henry VII.’s Chapel; the entrance to the same apartment from the north door of St. Alban’s; and one side of the room from Archbishop Bourchier’s tomb at Canterbury.  Eastlake’s conclusion is that Walpole’s Gothic, “though far from reflecting the beauties of a former age, or anticipating those which were destined to proceed from a re-development of the style, still holds a position in the history of English art which commands our respect, for it served to sustain a cause which had otherwise been well-nigh forsaken.”