I feel obliged by your intelligent correspondent "D.S." having
ascertained that De Foe was the author of the _Tour through Great
Britain_. Perhaps he may also be enabled to throw some light on a
subject of much curiosity connected with De Foe, that appears to me well
worth the inquiry.
Mrs. Bray, in her General Preface prefixed to the first volume of the
reprint, in series, of her _Novels and Romances_, when giving an account
of the circumstances on which she founded her very graphic and
interesting romance of _Trelawny of Trelawne_, says--
"In Gilbert's _History of Cornwall_, I saw a brief but striking
account, written by a Doctor Ruddell, a clergyman of Launceston,
respecting a ghost which (in the year 1665) he has seen and laid to
rest, that in the first instance had haunted a poor lad, the son of
a Mr. Bligh, in his way to school, in a place called the 'Higher
Broom Field.' This grave relation showed, I thought, the credulity
of the times in which the author of it lived; and so I determined
to have doctor, boy, and ghost in my story. But whereas, in the
worthy divine's account of the transaction, the ghost appears to
come on earth for no purpose whatever (unless it be to frighten the
poor boy), I resolved to give the spirit something to do in such
_post-mortem_ visitations, and that the object of them should be of
import to the tale. Accordingly I made boy, doctor, and the woman
(who is said after her death to have appeared to the lad) into
characters, invented a story for them, and gave them adventures."