Walpole speaks of a DREAM, but he soon has other, if not better,
information. Writing to Mason on December 11, he says that ghost
stories from the north will now be welcome. 'Lord Lyttelton's
vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an
APPARITION should despair of getting access to his Lordship's bed,
in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the
disguise of a robin-redbreast.' What was an apprehension or
prophecy has become a dream, and the dream has become an apparition
of a robin-redbreast and a young woman.

If this excite suspicion, let us hasten to add that we have
undesigned evidence to Lord Lyttelton's belief that he had beheld an
APPARITION--evidence a day earlier than the day of his death. Mrs.
Piozzi (then Mrs. Thrale), in her diary of Sunday, November 28,
writes: 'Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she
had been at Drury Lane on Friday night. "How," I asked, "were you
entertained?" "Very strangely indeed! Not with the play, though,
but the discourse of a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of
his, Lord Lyttelton, has SEEN A SPIRIT, who has warned him that he
will die in three days. I have thought of nothing else since."'

Next day, November 29, Mrs. Piozzi heard of Lord Lyttelton's death.*

*Notes and Queries. Series V., vol. ii. p. 508. December 26,1874.

Here is proof absolute that the story, with apparition, if not with
robin, was current THE DAY BEFORE LORD LYTTELTON'S DECEASE.

Of what did Lord Lyttelton die?