"The Castle of Otranto", Chapter 1, by Horace Walpole

It's a refreshing change to have an author who uses plain and simple language. So many of these authors, Lovecraft, Smith, Chambers, Machen, all are determined to use lots of advanced vocabulary that sends you to the dictionary every other sentence. Walpole eschewed that and gave us something we could get through with only a handful of dictionary look-ups per chapter. Hallelujah! And to think, he's the earliest of the authors to date, writing in the 18th century. Why later authors felt the need to sound ever more erudite is difficult to understand.

There is some archaic language, to clap a door, for example, or referring to servants as domestics, but on the whole the language is really quite straight forward and the native English speaker would have little difficulty in following along without a dictionary handy.

Also the story is very to-the-point: not much in the way of descriptions except to the extent a description is vital to a plot point. That's a huge change from later authors as well, who go to great lengths to describe all the things in intricate detail, even things that are of no importance to the action. Such over-descriptiveness may carry some historical interest to it when you are curious what things were like in a past period, but not so much story interest where it sometimes reaches the level of being clumsy and burdensome to wade through.

casque: helmet

durance: those who played Diablo II will be familiar with this word, but it is otherwise quite an archaic and obsolete word most modern readers would not be familiar with, meaning imprisonment or confinement.

disculpate: exculpate, to clear from alleged fault or guilt

I can't find any attribution for the picture, but it's clearly old enough to be public domain. It might well date back to the original publication of the story, or some version very soon thereafter. This is suggested to me by the fact that the helmet depicted is a 17th century Spanish style of helmet, not a Crusader-era Italian helmet that we should expect given the setting of the story (which was noted for us only in the Preface, so if you skipped that, go back and check it out now). I would expect most likely a bascinet. But most artists wouldn't know one helmet from the next, so they would just depict whatever they see in common use during their own lifetime. Hence my suspicion this was an illustration from some very early version of the book.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/696/696-h/696-h.htm