discovering a foul and unnatural murder, not amusing himself with a tune on an organ. This new style of writing, or old romance revived, generated or regenerated in France or Switzerland, received its clothing from the literary taylors of Germany; and a ponderous garbit was containing the heavy armour and escutcheons, and heraldic blazonry of the feudal times, and the motly patch-work of modern illuminism. It obtained from its uncouth enormity, the name of the Gigantesque. If dexterity or skill happened, at any time, to betake themselves to this species of exhibition, they excited a horror and amazement, which, for a time, might suspend the faculties of the reader, but the gross improbability soon dispelled the deception; but it was reserved for English genius so to temper the marvellous with the probable, and so to mingle
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