[In the following excerpt from The History of Fiction (1814, 1816), Dunlop declares The Castle of Otranto to be true to its Gothicism but a failure at meeting Walpole's intentions.]

The production was ill received on its first appearance, and the extravagant commendations heaped on the imaginary author by the real one, appear abundantly absurd, now that the deception has been discovered.

The work is declared by Mr Walpole to be an attempt to blend the ancient romance and modern novel; but, if by the ancient romance be meant the tales of chivalry, the extravagance of the Castle of Otranto has no resemblance to their machinery. What analogy have skulls or skeletons—sliding pannels—damp vaults—trapdoors—and dismal apartments, to the tented fields of chivalry and its airy enchantments?

It has been much doubted, whether the Castle of Otranto was seriously or comically intended; if seriously, it is a most feeble attempt to excite awe or terror; an immense helmet is a wretched instrument for inspiring supernatural dread, and the machinery is so violent that it destroys the effect it was intended to raise. A sword which requires a hundred men to lift it—blood dropping from the nose of a statue—the hero imprisoned in a helmet, resemble not a first and serious attempt at a new species of composition, but look as if devised in ridicule of preceding extravagance, as Don Quixote was written to expose the romances of chivalry, by an aggravated representation of their absurdities.

But, whether seriously intended or written in jest, the story of the Castle of Otranto contains all the elements of this species of composition. We have hollow groans, gothic windows that exclude the light, and trap-doors with flights of steps descending to dismal vaults. The deportment, too, of the domestics, the womanish terrors of waiting-maids, and the delay produced by their coarse pleasantries and circumlocutions, have been imitated in all similar productions. For this incongruity, Mr Walpole offers as an apology, that Shakspeare was the model he copied, who, in his deepest tragedies, has introduced the coarse humour of grave-diggers and clumsy jests of Roman citizens. He argues, that however important may be the duties, and however grave and melancholy the sensations, of heroes and princes, the same affections are not stamped on their domestics, at least they do not express their passions in the same dignified tone, and the contrast thus produced between the sublime of the one, and the naïveté of the other, sets the pathetic of the former in a stronger point of view.