Mrs. RADCLIFFE.
This lady’s novels have a bewitching interest. The power of painting the terrible and the mysterious is hers, in an eminent degree, but her sketches of landscape, though always indicating a skilful painter, are too numerous and minute. They may be called the miniature pictures of nature. Whether in the vales of Arno, or among the craggs of the Appennines, unsatisfied with general description, she chooses to note every spire of grass, and every shrub of the rocks. In the labyrinthian scenes of her castles and her forests, the attentive critic may discern a degree of finesse and stage trick, which, often repeated, offends, rather than surprises. When curiosity pants to discover the secrets of a desolate chamber, or a ruinated abbey, some, perhaps many, impediments may be judiciously thrown in Fancy’s way. But the rusty and bloody key, the glimpse of fancied apparitions, the perplexed path and the impracticable stair case, occur so often in Mrs. Radcliffe’s midnight rambles, that they soon lose their power of deception. But let pruning criticism lop what it may, the laurels of this lady cannot be injured. Her style pure, harmonious and forcible, might be a model, even to masculine writers. In the exhibition of the nicer, and less obvious shades of character, she has caught the strength and the spirit of Tacitus and Shakespeare. The family of La Lue is an enchanting group, not less agreeable from its resemblance to the La Roche of Mackenzie; and the fierceness of Montoni, and the fears of Emily St. Aubert, are admirably contrasted.
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.