Lanterna Rally

Author: Austin Dobson

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 9781230314457

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...half an hour after one in the morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph.'1 The work of which the origin is thus de-1 Letter to Cole, 9 March, 1765. scribed was published in a limited edition on the 24th December, 1764, with the title of The Castle of Olranto, a Story, translated by William Marshal, Gent., from the original Italian of Onu-phrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. The name of the alleged Italian author is sometimes described as an anagram from Horace Walpole, --a misconception which is easily demonstrated by counting the letters. The book was printed, not for Walpole, but for Lownds, of Fleet Street, and it was prefaced by an introduction in which the author described and criticised the supposed original, which he declared to be a black-letter printed at Naples in 1529. Its success was considerable. It seems at first to have excited no suspicion as to its authenticity, and it is not clear that even Gray, to whom a copy was sent immediately after publication, was in the secret. ' I have received the Castle of Otranto, ' he says, ' and return you my thanks for it. It engages our attention here at Cambridge, makes some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights.' In the second edition, which followed in April, 1765, Walpole dropped the mask, disclosing his authorship in a second preface of great ability, which, among other things, contains a vindication of Shakespeare's mingling of comedy and tragedy against the strictures of Voltaire, --a piece of temerity which some of his French friends feared might prejudice him with that formidable critic. But what is