ough hardly in it, he found the New Romance.

In Horace's case also, as in that of Frances, though the success was
even more momentous, the successors were slow and doubtful, though not
quite so slow. In some dozen years Walpole read Miss Clara Reeve's _Old
English Baron_ (1777), and as in another celebrated case "thought it a
bore." It _is_ rather a bore. It has more consecutiveness than
_Otranto_, and escapes the absurdities of the copiously but clumsily
used supernatural by administering it in a very minute dose. But there
is not a spark of genius in it, whereas that spark, though sometimes
curiously wrapped up in ashes, was always present (Heaven knows where he
got it!) in Sir Robert's youngest son. And the contagion spread. For
general and epidemic purposes it had to wait till the Germans had
carried it over the North Sea and sent it back again. For particular
ones, it found a new development in one of the most remarkable of all
novels, twenty years younger than _Otranto_, and a few years older than
the new outburst of the "Gothic" supernatural in the works of Anne
Radcliffe and Mat Lewis.

_Vathek_ (1786) stands alone--almost independent even of its
sponsors--it would be awkward to say godfathers--Hamilton and Voltaire;
apart likewise from such work as it, no doubt, in turn partly suggested
to Peacock and to Disraeli. There is, perhaps, no one towards whom it is
so tempting to play the idle game of retrospective Providence as towards
the describer of Batalha and Alcobaca, the creator of Nouronnihar and
the Hall of Eblis. Fonthill has had too many vicissitudes since
Beckford, and Cintra is a far cry; but though his associations with Bath
are later, it is still possible, in that oddly enchanted city, to get
something of the mixed atmosphere--eighteenth century, nineteenth, and
of centuries older and younger than either--which, _tamisee_ in a
mysterious fashion, surrounds this extraordinary little masterpiece.
Take Beckford's millions away; make him coin his wits to supply the want
of them; and what would have been the result? Perhaps more _Vatheks_;
perhaps things even better than _Vathek_;[14] perhaps nothing at all. On
the whole, it is always wiser not to play Providence, in fact or fancy.
All that need be said is that Anthony Hamilton and Voltaire are
certainly not by themselves--good as they are, and admirable as the
first is--enough to account for _Vathek_. Romance has passed there as
well as persiflage and so