The historical side of her novels (which she does to some extent attempt) is a failure, as everything of the kind was before Scott: that we may leave till we come to Scott himself.

But one important engine of the novelist she set to work in a fashion which had never been managed before, and that is elaborate description.

She shows an early adaptation of that "picturesque," of which we see the beginnings in Gray, when she was in the nursery, which was being directly developed by Gilpin, but which, as we may see from her _Travels_, she had got not merely from books, but from her own observation.

She applies it both within and without: at one moment giving pages on the scenery of the Apennines, at another paragraphs on the furniture of her abbeys and castles.

The pine forests and the cataracts; the skyline of Udolpho bathed in sunset glow, while a "melancholy purple tint" steals up the slopes to its foundations--are all in the day's work now; but they were not so then, and it is fair to say that Mrs.Radcliffe does them well.