HORRID MYSTERIES (in two volumes). From the Ger- man of
the Marquis of Grosse. By P. Will. The " Jane Austen " Horrid Novels. Edited by the Rev. Montague Summers. (R. Holden and Co., Ltd. 7s. 6d.)-" Are they all horrid ? Are you sure they are horrid ? " Catherine Morland asked Isabella Thorpe in the Pump Room at Bath ; and a like doubt assails us on reading those " Mysteries " that are thus emphatically labelled. The publishers are to be commended for their public spirit in giving again to the world this series. That they represent a phase in the development of the novel is undoubted, but it is one that hitherto had to be studied in museums rather than in reprints, for the " Gothic romance " was a passing conceit, not a stage of healthy growth in the art of fiction. The present age has been accused of a love of send sationalism, but our wildest efforts pale before the " roman- ticism " of 1797. Castles, chapels, monasteries, grottos, deep forests, " boskage," masked and draped figures-recalling the Ku Klux Klan-they are all here ; earth and its fulness are insufficient for the needs of the author, the Heavenly Host are conscribed for his service, and we gasp to think what he might have done with electricity, six-shooters, and aeroplanes. Some doubt surrounds the marquisate of the author, but none attaches to his characters ; we are all counts or countesses, with an unlimited retinue of servants and saddled horses at call. And the horrors ! Caverns open at our feet, mysterious voices speak out of the night, yet-we return to Catherine Morland-" Are you sure they are all horrid ? "-and we confess they are not. The most lurid passages move us to unholy mirth.
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