History represents human nature as it is in real life, alas, too often
a melancholy retrospect! Romance displays only the amiable side of the
picture; it shews the pleasing features, and throws a veil over the
blemishes: Mankind are naturally pleased with what gratifies their
vanity; and vanity, like all other passions of the human heart, may be
rendered subservient to good and useful purposes.

I confess that it may be abused, and become an instrument to corrupt
the manners and morals of mankind; so may poetry, so may plays, so may
every kind of composition; but that will prove nothing more than the
old saying lately revived by the philosophers the most in fashion,
"that every earthly thing has two handles."

The business of Romance is, first, to excite the attention; and
secondly, to direct it to some useful, or at least innocent, end: Happy
the writer who attains both these points, like Richardson! and not
unfortunate, or undeserving praise, he who gains only the latter, and
furnishes out an entertainment for the reader!

Having, in some degree, opened my design, I beg leave to conduct my
reader back again, till he comes within view of The Castle of Otranto;
a work which, as already has been observed, is an attempt to unite the
various merits and graces of the ancient Romance and modern Novel. To
attain this end, there is required a sufficient degree of the
marvellous, to excite the attention; enough of the manners of real
life, to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of the
pathetic, to engage the heart in its behalf.

The book we have mentioned is excellent in the two last points, but has
a redundancy in the first; the opening excites the attention very