freed them from Horror's dread agents. The music dies away, the
spirits flee and the lovers find themselves in a country road. A
story of the same type is told by De La Motte Fouqué in _The
Field of Terror_.[33] Before the steadfast courage of the
labourer who strives to till the field, diabolical enchantments
disappear. It is an ancient legend turned into moral allegory.

In the essay on _Objects of Terror_, which precedes _Montmorenci,
a Fragment_, Drake discusses that type of terror, which is
"excited by the interference of a simple, material causation,"
and which "requires no small degree of skill and arrangement to
prevent its operating more pain than pleasure." He condemns
Walpole's _Mysterious Mother_ on the ground that the catastrophe
is only productive of horror and aversion, and regards the old
ballad, _Edward_, as intolerable to any person of sensibility,
but praises Dante and Shakespeare for keeping within the "bounds
of salutary and grateful pleasure." The scene in _The Italian_,
where Schedoni, about to plunge a dagger into Ellena's bosom,
recoils, in the belief that he has discovered her to be his own
daughter, is commended as "appalling yet delighting the reader."
In the productions of Mrs. Radcliffe, "the Shakespeare of Romance
Writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the
softer graces of a Claude," he declares,

"may be found many scenes truly terrific in their
conception, yet so softened down, and the mind so much
relieved, by the intermixture of beautiful description,
or pathetic incident, that the impression of the whole
never becomes too strong, never degenerates into
horror, but pleasurable emotion is ever the