[In the following excerpt from his Lectures on the Comic Writers, delivered to the Surrey Institute in 1819, Hazlitt declares the ineffectiveness of Walpole's supernatural imagery.]

The Castle of Otranto (which is supposed to have led the way to this style of writing) is, to my notion, dry, meagre, and without effect. It is done upon false principles of taste. The great hand and arm, which are thrust into the court-yard, and remain there all day long, are the pasteboard machinery of a pantomime; they shock the senses, and have no purchase upon the imagination. They are a matter-of-fact impossibility; a fixture, and no longer a phantom. Quod sic mihi ostendis, incredulus odi.¹ By realising the chimeras of ignorance and fear, begot upon shadows and dim likenesses, we take away the very grounds of credulity and superstition; and, as in other cases, by facing out the imposture, betray the secret to the contempt and laughter of the spectators.

Notes

¹ 'Whatever you thus show me openly leaves me incredulous and revolted'; Horace, Art of Poetry, 1. 188.