having told him on the last evening of the year 1824, when they were
talking over this subject, that "having once arrived at a country inn,
he was told there was no bed for him. 'No place to lie down at all?'
said he. 'No,' said the people of the house; 'none, except a room in
which there is a corpse lying.' 'Well,' said he, 'did the person die
of any contagious disorder?' 'Oh, no; not at all,' said they. 'Well,
then,' continued he, 'let me have the other bed. So,' said Sir Walter,
'I laid me down, and never had a better night's sleep in my life.'" He
was, indeed, a man of iron nerve, whose truest artistic enjoyment was
in noting the forms of character seen in full daylight by the light of
the most ordinary experience. Perhaps for that reason he can on
occasion relate a preternatural incident, such as the appearance of
old Alice at the fountain, at the very moment of her death, to the
Master of Ravenswood, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, with great effect.
It was probably the vivacity with which he realized the violence which
such incidents do to the terrestrial common sense of our ordinary
nature, and at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail with
which he narrated them, rather than any, even the smallest, special
susceptibility of his own brain to thrills of the preternatural kind,
which gave him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with such
preternatural elements. Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a little
too muscular to produce their due effect as ghosts. In translating
Bürger's ballad his great success lay in the vividness of the
spectre's horsemanship. For instance,--

"Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee,"