Dr.Johnson was fond of old romances.

When he was in Skye he amused himself by thinking of his Scottish tour as the journey of a knight-errant.

"These fictions of the Gothic romances," he said, "are not so remote from credibility as is commonly supposed." It is a mistake to suppose that the passion for mediaevalism began with either Coleridge or Scott.

Horace Walpole was as enthusiastic as either of them; good eighteenth century prelates like Hurd and Percy, found in what they called the Gothic an inexhaustible source of delight.

As was natural, what attracted them in the Middle Ages was not their resemblances to the time they lived in, but the points in which the two differed.