It is very interesting how Clara Reeve respects The Castle of Otranto and criticizes it at the same time. The writer mentions several similarities between The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron. According to the preface to second edition, “this story is the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto, written upon the same plan, with a design to unite . . . the ancient Romance and modern Novel”. What it means is that both works of literature are examples of a “romance-novel” combination: there is a very fine line between fantasy and reality, immodesty and morality, imagination and nature. The characters look pretty real to me but the plot itself is very unrealistic. For example, we can assume that there was a real man named Manfred Martino who had a son, Conrad Carlo. Maybe his son even died… But, frankly speaking, his son could not be squished with a huge helmet… So quite real characters have magical thing happening in their lives – that is what Clara Reeve finds similar to The Old English Baron. Next, I think that both novels can be called “Gothic”. The atmosphere in The Castle of Otranto is important: dark and intensive. The castle itself is not a very light building – this fact help readers feel the “Gothic” in the novel. But the only thing that Clara Reeves does not like about The Castle of Otranto is that “the machinery is so violent, that it destroys the effect it is intended to excite”. I absolutely agree with this statement. All those “mysterious moments” seem to be too unreal. If Walpole had not exaggerated some details (the size of the helmet and the sword, the ghosts etc.), readers would have had a better impression while reading the novel. As a result, Reeve decided to write “a work upon the same plan, wherein these defects might be avoided; and the keeping, as in painting, might be preserved”.