Still, even to-day, a reader, with his taste jaded by trashy novels, will be conscious of Smollett's power, and of several thrills, likewise, as he reads about Fathom's experience in the loft in which the beldame locks him to pass the night.
This situation is melodramatic rather than romantic, as the word is used technically in application to eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature.

There is no little in Fathom, however, which is genuinely romantic in the latter sense.

Such is the imprisonment of the Countess in the castle-tower, whence she waves her handkerchief to the young Count, her son and would-be rescuer.

And especially so is the scene in the church, when Renaldo (the very name is romantic) visits at midnight the supposed grave of his lady-love.

While he was waiting for the sexton to open the door, his "soul.