The “Sicilian Romance” appeared in 1790, when the author’s age was twenty-six.  The book has a treble attraction, for it contains the germ of “Northanger Abbey,” and the germ of “Jane Eyre,” and—­the germ of Byron!  Like “Joseph Andrews,” “Northanger Abbey” began as a parody (of Mrs. Radcliffe) and developed into a real novel of character.  So too Byron’s gloomy scowling adventurers, with their darkling past, are mere repetitions in rhyme of Mrs. Radcliffe’s Schedoni.  This is so obvious that, when discussing Mrs. Radcliffe’s Schedoni, Scott adds, in a note, parallel passages from Byron’s “Giaour.”  Sir Walter did not mean to mock, he merely compared two kindred spirits.  “The noble poet” “kept on the business still,” and broke into octosyllabics, borrowed from Scott, his descriptions of miscreants borrowed from Mrs. Radcliffe.

“A Sicilian Romance” has its scene in the palace of Ferdinand, fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the northern coast of Sicily.  The time is about 1580, but there is nothing in the manners or costume to indicate that, or any other period.  Such “local colour” was unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, as to Clara Reeve.  In Horace Walpole, however, a character goes so far in the mediaeval way as to say “by my halidome.”

The Marquis Mazzini had one son and two daughters by his first amiable consort, supposed to be long dead when the story opens.  The son is the original of Henry Tilney in “Northanger Abbey,” and in General Tilney does Catherine Morland recognise a modern Marquis of Mazzini.  But the Marquis’s wife, to be sure, is not dead; like the first Mrs. Rochester she is concealed about the back premises, and, as in “Jane Eyre,” it is her movements, and those of her gaolers, that produce mystery, and make the reader suppose that “the place is haunted.”  It is, of course, only the mystery and the “machinery” of Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bronte adapted.  These passages in “Jane Eyre” have been censured, but it is not easy to see how the novel could do without them.  Mrs. Radcliffe’s tale entirely depends on its machinery.  Her wicked Marquis, having secretly immured Number One, has now a new and beautiful Number Two, whose character does not bear inspection.  This domestic position, as Number Two, we know, was declined by the austere virtue of Jane Eyre.

“Phenomena” begin in the first chapter of “A Sicilian Romance,” mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and are vainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis.  This Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning Marchioness, is adored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia.  Jealousy and revenge are clearly indicated.  But, in chasing mysterious lights and figures through mouldering towers, Ferdinand gets into the very undesirable position of David Balfour, when he climbs, in the dark, the broken turret stair in his uncle’s house of Shaws (in “Kidnapped").  Here is a fourth author