After reading the Preface to Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron, it brought back to the helmet that fell on Conrad. Clara Reeve talked about conceiving an idea. The kind of ideas where one can imagine while reading a book and picturing it in his or her mind. However, she goes on to saying that there is a point where that idea one can envision in the mind can only go so far. “For instance, we can conceive, and allow of, the appearance of a ghost; we can even dispense with an enchanted sword and helmet; but then they must keep within certain limits or credibility…When your expectation is wound up to the highest pitch, these circumstances take it down with a witness, destroy the work of imagination, and, instead of attention, excite laughter” (Preface, The Old English Baron). Reeve is noting that sometimes a writer should not go too far into exaggerating an idea. Like the helmet that fell on Conrad. It was not just a regular helmet, it was “a hundred times more larger than any casque ever made for human being” (28, Walpole). The helmet is enormous that it not only makes Manfred taken aback, but also the reader.  In a way it ruins the reader trying to imagine in their minds because it is just too funny and ridiculous of an idea that a helmet that big fell out of no where and crushes Conrad. Therefore, the point is, too much imagination and fantasy may take away from how a reader will envision an idea that is being read because it might just be too much.