Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 by Various
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(who is said after her death to have appeared to the lad) into
characters, invented a story for them, and gave them adventures." Mrs. Bray adds-- "Soon after the publication of _Trelawny_, my much esteemed friend, the Rev. F.V.T. Arundell[1], informed me, that, whilst engaged in his antiquarian researches in Cornwall, he found among some old and original papers the manuscript account, in Dr. Ruddell's own hand-writing, of his encounter with the ghost in question. This he lent Gilbert, who inserted it in his _History of Cornwall_; and there I first saw it, as stated above. A few months ago, I purchased some of the reprinted volumes of the _Works of Daniel De Foe_. Among these was the _Life of Mr. Duncan Campbell_, a fortune-teller. To my great surprise, I found inserted in the Appendix (after verses to Mr. Duncan Campbell), without either name of the author, reference, or introduction, under the heading, 'A remarkable Passage of an Apparition, 1665,' no other than Dr. Ruddell's account of meeting the ghost which had haunted the boy, so much the same as that I had read in Gilbert, that it scarcely seemed to differ from it in a word. The name of Mr. Bligh, the father of the boy, was, however, omitted; and Dr. Ruddell could only be known as the author of the account by the lad's father calling the narrator Mr. Ruddell, in their discourse about the youth. The account is so strangely inserted in the Appendix to the volume, without comment or reference, that, had I not previously known the circumstances above names by Mr. Arundell, I should have fancied it a fiction of De Foe himself, like the story {242} of the ghost of Mrs. Veal, prefixed to _Drelincourt on Death_. |
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