midnight
Her influence was potent on Lewis and on Maturin as well as on a host of forgotten writers . Scott admired her works and probably owed something in his craftsmanship to his early study of them . She appeals most strongly in youth . The Ettrick Shepherd , who was by nature and education `` just excessive superstitious , '' declares : `` Had I read _ Udolpho _ and her other romances in my boyish days my hair would have stood on end like that o ' other folk ... but afore her volumes fell into my hauns , my soul had been frichtened by a ' kinds of traditionary terrors , and many hunder times hae I maist swarfed wi ' fear in lonesome spots in muir and woods at midnight when no a leevin thing was movin but mysel ' and the great moon . '' -LSB- 38 -RSB- There are dull stretches in all her works , but , as Hazlitt justly claims , `` in harrowing up the soul with imaginary horrors , and making the flesh creep and the nerves thrill with fond hopes and fears , she is unrivalled among her countrymen . '' -LSB- 39 -RSB- To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew Gregory Lewis is to leave `` the novel of suspense , '' which depends for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity , for `` the novel of terror , '' which works almost entirely on the even stronger and more primitive instinct of fear .