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
predominating result."

The famous scene in _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, the description of
Danger in Collins' _Ode to Fear_, the Scottish ballad of
_Hardyknute_ are mentioned as admirable examples of the fear
excited by natural causes. In the fragment called _Montmorenci_,
Drake aims at combining "picturesque description with some of
those objects of terror which are independent of supernatural
agency." As the curfew tolls sullenly, Henry de Montmorenci and
his two attendants rush from a castle into the darkness of a
stormy night. They hurry through a savage glen, in which a
swollen torrent falls over a precipice. After hearing the crash
of falling armour, they suddenly come upon a dying knight on
whose pale features every mark of horror is depicted. Led by
frightful screams of distress, Montmorenci and his men find a
maiden, who has been captured by banditti. Montmorenci slays the
leader, but is seized by the rest of the banditti and bound to a
tree overlooking a stupendous chasm into which he is to be
hurled. By almost superhuman struggles he effects his escape,
when suddenly--there at this terror-fraught moment, the fragment
wisely ends.

In _The Abbey of Clunedale_ Drake experiments feebly and
ineffectively with the "explained supernatural" in which Mrs.
Radcliffe was an adept. The ruined abbey, deemed to be haunted,
is visited at night as an act of penance by a man named Clifford
who, in a fit of unfounded jealousy, has slain his wife's
brother. Clifford, accompanied by his sister, and bearing a
light, kneels at his wife's tomb, and is mistaken for a spectral
being.

The Gothic tale entitled _Sir Egbert_ is based on an ancient
legend associated with one of the turrets of Rochester Castle.
Sir Egbert, searching