




                        CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
                               (New Series)

                                * * * * *





                                   THE
                            CASTLE OF OTRANTO. * * * * *

                                    BY
                             HORACE WALPOLE. [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                       CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_
                                   1901




INTRODUCTION


HORACE WALPOLE was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the great
statesman, who died Earl of Orford. He was born in 1717, the year in
which his father resigned office, remaining in opposition for almost
three years before his return to a long tenure of power. Horace Walpole
was educated at Eton, where he formed a school friendship with Thomas
Gray, who was but a few months older. In 1739 Gray was
travelling-companion with Walpole in France and Italy until they differed
and parted; but the friendship was afterwards renewed, and remained firm
to the end. Horace Walpole went from Eton to King’s College, Cambridge,
and entered Parliament in 1741, the year before his father’s final
resignation and acceptance of an earldom. His way of life was made easy
to him. As Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of
the Estreats in the Exchequer, he received nearly two thousand a year for
doing nothing, lived with his father, and amused himself. Horace Walpole idled, and amused himself with the small life of the
fashionable world to which he was proud of belonging, though he had a
quick eye for its vanities. He had social wit, and liked to put it to
small uses. But he was not an empty idler, and there were seasons when
he could become a sharp judge of himself. “I am sensible,” he wrote to
his most intimate friend, “I am sensible of having more follies and
weaknesses and fewer real good qualities than most men. I sometimes
reflect on this, though, I own, too seldom. I always want to begin
acting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think I might be if I
would.” He had deep home affections, and, under many polite
affectations, plenty of good sense. Horace Walpole’s father died in 1745. The eldest son, who succeeded to
the earldom, died in 1751, and left a son, George, who was for a time
insane, and lived until 1791. As George left no child, the title and
estates passed to Horace Walpole, then seventy-four years old, and the
only uncle who survived. Horace Walpole thus became Earl of Orford,
during the last six years of his life. As to the title, he said that he
felt himself being called names in his old age. He died unmarried, in
the year 1797, at the age of eighty. He had turned his house at Strawberry Hill, by the Thames, near
Twickenham, into a Gothic villa—eighteenth-century Gothic—and amused
himself by spending freely upon its adornment with such things as were
then fashionable as objects of taste. But he delighted also in his
flowers and his trellises of roses, and the quiet Thames. When confined
by gout to his London house in Arlington Street, flowers from Strawberry
Hill and a bird were necessary consolations. He set up also at
Strawberry Hill a private printing press, at which he printed his friend
Gray’s poems, also in 1758 his own “Catalogue of the Royal and Noble
Authors of England,” and five volumes of “Anecdotes of Painting in
England,” between 1762 and 1771. Horace Walpole produced _The Castle of Otranto_ in 1765, at the mature
age of forty-eight. It was suggested by a dream from which he said he
waked one morning, and of which “all I could recover was, that I had
thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head like
mine, filled with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost banister of a
great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat
down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to
say or relate.” So began the tale which professed to be translated by
“William Marshal, gentleman, from the Italian of Onuphro Muralto, canon
of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto.” It was written in two
months. Walpole’s friend Gray reported to him that at Cambridge the book
made “some of them cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed
o’ nights.” _The Castle of Otranto_ was, in its own way, an early sign
of the reaction towards romance in the latter part of the last century. This gives it interest. But it has had many followers, and the hardy
modern reader, when he reads Gray’s note from Cambridge, needs to be
reminded of its date. H. M.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family
in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter,
in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The
principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of
Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of
barbarism. The style is the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have
happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first Crusade,
and 1243, the date of the last, or not long afterwards. There is no
other circumstance in the work that can lead us to guess at the period in
which the scene is laid: the names of the actors are evidently
fictitious, and probably disguised on purpose: yet the Spanish names of
the domestics seem to indicate that this work was not composed until the
establishment of the Arragonian Kings in Naples had made Spanish
appellations familiar in that country. The beauty of the diction, and
the zeal of the author (moderated, however, by singular judgment) concur
to make me think that the date of the composition was little antecedent
to that of the impression. Letters were then in their most flourishing
state in Italy, and contributed to dispel the empire of superstition, at
that time so forcibly attacked by the reformers. It is not unlikely that
an artful priest might endeavour to turn their own arms on the
innovators, and might avail himself of his abilities as an author to
confirm the populace in their ancient errors and superstitions. If this
was his view, he has certainly acted with signal address. Such a work as
the following would enslave a hundred vulgar minds beyond half the books
of controversy that have been written from the days of Luther to the
present hour. This solution of the author’s motives is, however, offered as a mere
conjecture. Whatever his views were, or whatever effects the execution
of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at
present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it
is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other
preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not
the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is
supposed to have happened.