The Castle of Otranto

All night he pleased him­self with vis­ions of love;

in which the hearts of both had drunk so deeply of a pas­sion, which both now tasted for the first time.

Hor­ace Wal­pole’s father died in 1745

He was born in 1717,

ser­vant, who had not stayed long enough to have crossed the court to Con­rad’s apart­ment, came run­ning back breath­less, in a frantic man­ner, his eyes star­ing, and foam­ing at the mouth.

It was sug­ges­ted by a dream from which he said he waked one morn­ing, and of which “all I could re­cover was, that I had thought my­self in an an­cient castle (a very nat­ural dream for a head like mine, filled with Gothic story), and that on the up­per­most ban­is­ter of a great stair­case I saw a gi­gantic hand in ar­mour. In the even­ing I sat down and began to write, without know­ing in the least what I in­ten­ded to say or re­late.”

Hor­ace Wal­pole was the young­est son of Sir Robert Wal­pole, the great states­man, who died Earl of Or­ford. He was born in 1717

And on whom were thy dreams em­ployed?

Can I stoop to wish for the af­fec­tion of a man, who rudely and un­ne­ces­sar­ily ac­quain­ted me with his in­dif­fer­ence?

for the idea of Mat­ilda had im­prin­ted it­self so strongly on his heart, that he could not bear to ab­sent him­self at much dis­tance from her abode.