He sees spectres, blue lights, and the
corpse of Horror herself. When he slays Walleran the enchantments
disappear. At the end of a winding passage he finds a cavern
illuminated by a globe of light, and discovers Adeline asleep on
a couch. He awakes her with a kiss. Thunder shakes the earth, a
raging whirlwind tears the castle from its foundations, and the
lovers awake from their trance in a beautiful, moonlit vale where
they hear enchanting music and see knights, nymphs and spirits. A
beauteous queen tells them that the spirits of the blest have
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 Fouque 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.
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