LETTERS ON DEMONOLOGY
AND WITCHCRAFT
BY
SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
With An Introduction By Henry Morley Ll.d., Professor Of English
Literature At University College, London
London George Routledge And Sons
Broadway, Ludgate Hill
New York: 9 Lafayette Place
1884
INTRODUCTION.
Sir Walter Scott's "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" were his
contribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, which
appeared between the years 1829 and 1847, and formed a collection of
eighty volumes known as "Murray's Family Library." The series was
planned to secure a wide diffusion of good literature in cheap
five-shilling volumes, and Scott's "Letters," written and published in
1830, formed one of the earlier books in the collection.
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had been founded in
the autumn of 1826, and Charles Knight, who had then conceived a plan of
a National Library, was entrusted, in July, 1827, with the
superintendence of its publications. Its first treatises appeared in
sixpenny numbers, once a fortnight. Its "British Almanac" and "Companion
to the Almanac" first appeared at the beginning of 1829. Charles Knight
started also in that year his own "Library of Entertaining Knowledge."
John Murray's "Family Library" was then begun, and in the spring of
1832--the year of the Reform Bill--the advance of civilization by the
diffusion of good literature, through cheap journals as well as cheap
books, was sought by the establishment of "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal"
in the North, and in London of "The Penny Magazine."
In the autumn of that year, 1832, on the 21st of September, Sir Walter
Scott died. The first warning of death had come to him in February,
1830, with a stroke of apoplexy. He had been visited by an old friend
who brought him memoirs of her father, which he had promised to revise
for the press. He seemed for half an hour to be bending over the papers
at his desk, and reading them; then he rose, staggered into the
drawing-room, and fell, remaining speechless until he had been bled.
Dieted for weeks on pulse and water, he so far recovered that to friends
outside his family but little change in him was visible. In that
condition, in the month after his seizure, he was writing these Letters,
and also a fourth series of the "Tales of a Grandfather." The slight
softening of the brain found after death had then begun. But the old
delight in anecdote and skill in story-telling that, at the beginning of
his career, had caused a critic of his "Border Minstrelsy" to say that
it contained the germs of a hundred romances, yet survived. It gave to
Scott's "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" what is for us now a
pathetic charm. Here and there some slight confusion of thought or style
represents the flickering of a light that flashes yet with its old
brilliancy. There is not yet the manifest suggestion of the loss of
power that we find presently afterwards in "Count Robert of Paris" and
"Castle Dangerous," published in 1831 as the Fourth Series of "Tales of
My Landlord," with which he closed his life's work at the age of sixty.
Milton has said that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write
well in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem. Scott's life
was a true poem, of which the music entered into all he wrote. If in his
earlier days the consciousness of an unlimited productive power tempted
him to make haste to be rich, that he might work out, as founder of a
family, an ideal of life touched by his own genius of romance, there was
not in his desire for gain one touch of sordid greed, and his ideal of
life only brought him closer home to all its duties. Sir Walter Scott's
good sense, as Lord Cockburn said, was a more wonderful gift than his
genius. When the mistake of a trade connection with James Ballantyne
brought ruin to him in 1826, he repudiated bankruptcy, took on himself
the burden of a debt of £130,000, and sacrificed his life to the
successful endeavour to pay off all. What was left unpaid at his death
was cleared afterwards by the success of his annotated edition of his
novels. No tale of physical strife in the battlefield could be as heroic
as the story of the close of Scott's life, with five years of a
death-struggle against adversity, animated by the truest sense of
honour. When the ruin was impending he wrote in his diary, "If things go
badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his
grasp. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence.
He shall no longer have the delight of waking in the morning with bright
ideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to paper, and count them
monthly, as the means of planting such scaurs and purchasing such
wastes; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective visions of
walks by
'Fountain-heads, and pathless groves;
Places which pale passion loves.'
This cannot be; but I may work substantial husbandry--_i.e._ write
history, and such concerns." It was under pressure of calamity like this
that Sir Walter Scott was compelled to make himself known as the author
of "Waverley." Closely upon this followed the death of his wife, his
thirty years' companion. "I have been to her room," he wrote in May,
1826; "there was no voice in it--no stirring; the pressure of the coffin
was visible on the bed, but it had been removed elsewhere; all was neat
as she loved it, but all was calm--calm as death. I remembered the last
sight of her: she raised herself in bed, and tried to turn her eyes
after me, and said with a sort of smile, 'You have all such melancholy
faces.' These were the last words I ever heard her utter, and I hurried
away, for she did not seem quite conscious of what she said; when I
returned, immediately departing, she was in a deep sleep. It is deeper
now. This was but seven days since. They are arranging the chamber of
death--that which was long the apartment of connubial happiness, and of
whose arrangement (better than in richer houses) she was so proud. They
are treading fast and thick. For weeks you could have heard a footfall.
Oh, my God!"
A few years yet of his own battle, while the shadows of night and death
were gathering about him, and they were re-united. In these "Letters
upon Demonology and Witchcraft," addressed to his son-in-law, written
under the first grasp of death, the old kindliness and good sense,
joined to the old charm in story-telling, stand firm yet against every
assault; and even in the decay that followed, when the powers were
broken of the mind that had breathed, and is still breathing, its own
health into the minds of tens of thousands of his countrymen, nothing
could break the fine spirit of love and honour that was in him. When the
end was very near, and the son-in-law to whom these Letters were
addressed found him one morning entirely himself, though in the last
extreme of feebleness: his eye was clear and calm--every trace of the
wild fire of delirium was extinguished: "Lockhart," he said, "I may have
but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be virtuous, be
religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when
you come to lie here."
Another volume of this Library may give occasion to recall Scott in the
noontide of his strength, companion of
"The blameless Muse who trains her sons
For hope and calm enjoyment."
Here we remember only how from among dark clouds the last light of his
genius shone on the path of those who were endeavouring to make the
daily bread of intellectual life--good books--common to all.
H.M.
_February, 1884._
LETTERS
ON
DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT
To J.G. LOCKHART, ESQ.
LETTER I.
Origin of the general Opinions respecting Demonology among
Mankind--The Belief in the Immortality of the Soul is the main
inducement to credit its occasional re-appearance--The Philosophical
Objections to the Apparition of an Abstract Spirit little understood
by the Vulgar and Ignorant--The situations of excited Passion
incident to Humanity, which teach Men to wish or apprehend
Supernatural Apparitions--They are often presented by the Sleeping
Sense--Story of Somnambulism--The Influence of Credulity contagious,
so that Individuals will trust the Evidence of others in despite of
their own Senses--Examples from the "Historia Verdadera" of Bernal
Dias del Castillo, and from the Works of Patrick Walker--The
apparent Evidence of Intercourse with the Supernatural World is
sometimes owing to a depraved State of the bodily Organs--Difference
between this Disorder and Insanity, in which the Organs retain their
tone, though that of the Mind is lost--Rebellion of the Senses of a
Lunatic against the current of his Reveries--Narratives of a
contrary Nature, in which the Evidence of the Eyes overbore the
Conviction of the Understanding--Example of a London Man of
Pleasure--Of Nicolai, the German Bookseller and Philosopher--Of a
Patient of Dr. Gregory--Of an Eminent Scottish Lawyer, deceased--Of
this same fallacious Disorder are other instances, which have but
sudden and momentary endurance--Apparition of Maupertuis--Of a late
illustrious modern Poet--The Cases quoted chiefly relating to false
Impressions on the Visual Nerve, those upon the Ear next
considered--Delusions of the Touch chiefly experienced in
Sleep--Delusions of the Taste--And of the Smelling--Sum of the
Argument.
You have asked of me, my dear friend, that I should assist the "Family
Library" with the history of a dark chapter in human nature, which the
increasing civilization of all well-instructed countries has now almost
blotted out, though the subject attracted no ordinary degree of
consideration in the older times of their history.
Among much reading of my earlier days, it is no doubt true that I
travelled a good deal in the twilight regions of superstitious
disquisitions. Many hours have I lost--"I would their debt were
less!"--in examining old as well as more recent narratives of this
character, and even in looking into some of the criminal trials so
frequent in early days, upon a subject which our fathers considered as a
matter of the last importance. And, of late years, the very curious
extracts published by Mr. Pitcairn, from the Criminal Records of
Scotland, are, besides their historical value, of a nature so much
calculated to illustrate the credulity of our ancestors on such
subjects, that, by perusing them, I have been induced more recently to
recall what I had read and thought upon the subject at a former period.
As, however, my information is only miscellaneous, and I make no
pretensions, either to combat the systems of those by whom I am
anticipated in consideration of the subject, or to erect any new one of
my own, my purpose is, after a general account of Demonology and
Witchcraft, to confine myself to narratives of remarkable cases, and to
the observations which naturally and easily arise out of them;--in the
confidence that such a plan is, at the present time of day, more likely
to suit the pages of a popular miscellany, than an attempt to reduce the
contents of many hundred tomes, from the largest to the smallest size,
into an abridgement, which, however compressed, must remain greatly too
large for the reader's powers of patience.
A few general remarks on the nature of Demonology, and the original
cause of the almost universal belief in communication betwixt mortals
and beings of a power superior to themselves, and of a nature not to be
comprehended by human organs, are a necessary introduction to the
subject.
The general, or, it may be termed, the universal belief of the
inhabitants of the earth, in the existence of spirits separated from the
encumbrance and incapacities of the body, is grounded on the
consciousness of the divinity that speaks in our bosoms, and
demonstrates to all men, except the few who are hardened to the
celestial voice, that there is within us a portion of the divine
substance, which is not subject to the law of death and dissolution, but
which, when the body is no longer fit for its abode, shall seek its own
place, as a sentinel dismissed from his post. Unaided by revelation, it
cannot be hoped that mere earthly reason should be able to form any
rational or precise conjecture concerning the destination of the soul
when parted from the body; but the conviction that such an
indestructible essence exists, the belief expressed by the poet in a
different sense, _Non omnis moriar_ must infer the existence of many
millions of spirits who have not been annihilated, though they have
become invisible to mortals who still see, hear, and perceive, only by
means of the imperfect organs of humanity. Probability may lead some of
the most reflecting to anticipate a state of future rewards and
punishments; as those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb
find that their pupils, even while cut off from all instruction by
ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own unassisted
conjectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the
distinction between the soul and body--a circumstance which proves how
naturally these truths arise in the human mind. The principle that they
do so arise, being taught or communicated, leads to further conclusions.
These spirits, in a state of separate existence, being admitted to
exist, are not, it may be supposed, indifferent to the affairs of
mortality, perhaps not incapable of influencing them. It is true that,
in a more advanced state of society, the philosopher may challenge the
possibility of a separate appearance of a disembodied spirit, unless in
the case of a direct miracle, to which, being a suspension of the laws
of nature, directly wrought by the Maker of these laws, for some express
purpose, no bound or restraint can possibly be assigned. But under this
necessary limitation and exception, philosophers might plausibly argue
that, when the soul is divorced from the body, it loses all those
qualities which made it, when clothed with a mortal shape, obvious to
the organs of its fellow-men. The abstract idea of a spirit certainly
implies that it has neither substance, form, shape, voice, or anything
which can render its presence visible or sensible to human faculties.
But these sceptic doubts of philosophers on the possibility of the
appearance of such separated spirits, do not arise till a certain degree
of information has dawned upon a country, and even then only reach a
very small proportion of reflecting and better-informed members of
society. To the multitude, the indubitable fact, that so many millions
of spirits exist around and even amongst us, seems sufficient to support
the belief that they are, in certain instances at least, by some means
or other, able to communicate with the world of humanity. The more
numerous part of mankind cannot form in their mind the idea of the
spirit of the deceased existing, without possessing or having the power
to assume the appearance which their acquaintance bore during his life,
and do not push their researches beyond this point.
Enthusiastic feelings of an impressive and solemn nature occur both in
private and public life, which seem to add ocular testimony to an
intercourse betwixt earth and the world beyond it. For example, the son
who has been lately deprived of his father feels a sudden crisis
approach, in which he is anxious to have recourse to his sagacious
advice--or a bereaved husband earnestly desires again to behold the form
of which the grave has deprived him for ever--or, to use a darker yet
very common instance, the wretched man who has dipped his hand in his
fellow-creature's blood, is haunted by the apprehension that the phantom
of the slain stands by the bedside of his murderer. In all or any of
these cases, who shall doubt that imagination, favoured by
circumstances, has power to summon up to the organ of sight, spectres
which only exist in the mind of those by whom their apparition seems to
be witnessed?
If we add, that such a vision may take place in the course of one of
those lively dreams in which the patient, except in respect to the
single subject of one strong impression, is, or seems, sensible of the
real particulars of the scene around him, a state of slumber which often
occurs; if he is so far conscious, for example, as to know that he is
lying on his own bed, and surrounded by his own familiar furniture at
the time when the supposed apparition is manifested, it becomes almost
in vain to argue with the visionary against the reality of his dream,
since the spectre, though itself purely fanciful, is inserted amidst so
many circumstances which he feels must be true beyond the reach of doubt
or question. That which is undeniably certain becomes, in a manner, a
warrant for the reality of the appearance to which doubt would have been
otherwise attached. And if any event, such as the death of the person
dreamt of, chances to take place, so as to correspond with the nature
and the time of the apparition, the coincidence, though one which must
be frequent, since our dreams usually refer to the accomplishment of
that which haunts our minds when awake, and often presage the most
probable events, seems perfect, and the chain of circumstances touching
the evidence may not unreasonably be considered as complete. Such a
concatenation, we repeat, must frequently take place, when it is
considered of what stuff dreams are made--how naturally they turn upon
those who occupy our mind while awake, and, when a soldier is exposed to
death in battle, when a sailor is incurring the dangers of the sea, when
a beloved wife or relative is attacked by disease, how readily our
sleeping imagination rushes to the very point of alarm, which when
waking it had shuddered to anticipate. The number of instances in which
such lively dreams have been quoted, and both asserted and received as
spiritual communications, is very great at all periods; in ignorant
times, where the natural cause of dreaming is misapprehended and
confused with an idea of mysticism, it is much greater. Yet, perhaps,
considering the many thousands of dreams which must, night after night,
pass through the imagination of individuals, the number of coincidences
between the vision and real event are fewer and less remarkable than a
fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect. But in countries
where such presaging dreams are subjects of attention, the number of
those which seemed to be coupled with the corresponding issue, is large
enough to spread a very general belief of a positive communication
betwixt the living and the dead.
Somnambulism and other nocturnal deceptions frequently lend their aid to
the formation of such _phantasmata_ as are formed in this middle state,
betwixt sleeping and waking. A most respectable person, whose active
life had been spent as master and part owner of a large merchant vessel
in the Lisbon trade, gave the writer an account of such an instance
which came under his observation. He was lying in the Tagus, when he was
put to great anxiety and alarm by the following incident and its
consequences. One of his crew was murdered by a Portuguese assassin, and
a report arose that the ghost of the slain man haunted the vessel.
Sailors are generally superstitious, and those of my friend's vessel
became unwilling to remain on board the ship; and it was probable they
might desert rather then return to England with the ghost for a
passenger. To prevent so great a calamity, the captain determined to
examine the story to the bottom. He soon found that, though all
pretended to have seen lights and heard noises, and so forth, the weight
of the evidence lay upon the statement of one of his own mates, an
Irishman and a Catholic, which might increase his tendency to
superstition, but in other respects a veracious, honest, and sensible
person, whom Captain ----had no reason to suspect would wilfully deceive
him. He affirmed to Captain S---- with the deepest obtestations, that
the spectre of the murdered man appeared to him almost nightly, took him
from his place in the vessel, and, according to his own expression,
worried his life out. He made these communications with a degree of
horror which intimated the reality of his distress and apprehensions.
The captain, without any argument at the time, privately resolved to
watch the motions of the ghost-seer in the night; whether alone, or with
a witness, I have forgotten. As the ship bell struck twelve, the sleeper
started up, with a ghastly and disturbed countenance, and lighting a
candle, proceeded to the galley or cook-room of the vessel. He sate down
with his eyes open, staring before him as on some terrible object which
he beheld with horror, yet from which he could not withhold his eyes.
After a short space he arose, took up a tin can or decanter, filled it
with water, muttering to himself all the while--mixed salt in the water,
and sprinkled it about the galley. Finally, he sighed deeply, like one
relieved from a heavy burden, and, returning to his hammock, slept
soundly. In the next morning the haunted man told the usual precise
story of his apparition, with the additional circumstances, that the
ghost had led him to the galley, but that he had fortunately, he knew
not how, obtained possession of some holy water, and succeeded in
getting rid of his unwelcome visitor. The visionary was then informed of
the real transactions of the night, with so many particulars as to
satisfy him he had been the dupe of his imagination; he acquiesced in
his commander's reasoning, and the dream, as often happens in these
cases, returned no more after its imposture had been detected. In this
case, we find the excited imagination acting upon the half-waking
senses, which were intelligent enough for the purpose of making him
sensible where he was, but not sufficiently so to judge truly of the
objects before him.
But it is not only private life alone, or that tenor of thought which
has been depressed into melancholy by gloomy anticipations respecting
the future, which disposes the mind to mid-day fantasies, or to nightly
apparitions--a state of eager anxiety, or excited exertion, is equally
favourable to the indulgence of such supernatural communications. The
anticipation of a dubious battle, with all the doubt and uncertainty of
its event, and the conviction that it must involve his own fate and that
of his country, was powerful enough to conjure up to the anxious eye of
Brutus the spectre of his murdered friend Cæsar, respecting whose death
he perhaps thought himself less justified than at the Ides of March,
since, instead of having achieved the freedom of Rome, the event had
only been the renewal of civil wars, and the issue might appear most
likely to conclude in the total subjection of liberty. It is not
miraculous that the masculine spirit of Marcus Brutus, surrounded by
darkness and solitude, distracted probably by recollection of the
kindness and favour of the great individual whom he had put to death to
avenge the wrongs of his country, though by the slaughter of his own
friend, should at length place before his eyes in person the appearance
which termed itself his evil genius, and promised again to meet him at
Philippi. Brutus' own intentions, and his knowledge of the military art,
had probably long since assured him that the decision of the civil war
must take place at or near that place; and, allowing that his own
imagination supplied that part of his dialogue with the spectre, there
is nothing else which might not be fashioned in a vivid dream or a
waking reverie, approaching, in absorbing and engrossing character, the
usual matter of which dreams consist. That Brutus, well acquainted with
the opinions of the Platonists, should be disposed to receive without
doubt the idea that he had seen a real apparition, and was not likely to
scrutinize very minutely the supposed vision, may be naturally
conceived; and it is also natural to think, that although no one saw the
figure but himself, his contemporaries were little disposed to examine
the testimony of a man so eminent, by the strict rules of
cross-examination and conflicting evidence, which they might have
thought applicable to another person, and a less dignified occasion.
Even in the field of death, and amid the mortal tug of combat itself,
strong belief has wrought the same wonder, which we have hitherto
mentioned as occurring in solitude and amid darkness; and those who were
themselves on the verge of the world of spirits, or employed in
dispatching others to these gloomy regions, conceived they beheld the
apparitions of those beings whom their national mythology associated
with such scenes. In such moments of undecided battle, amid the
violence, hurry, and confusion of ideas incident to the situation, the
ancients supposed that they saw their deities, Castor and Pollux,
fighting in the van for their encouragement; the heathen Scandinavian
beheld the Choosers of the slain; and the Catholics were no less easily
led to recognize the warlike Saint George or Saint James in the very
front of the strife, showing them the way to conquest. Such apparitions
being generally visible to a multitude, have in all times been supported
by the greatest strength of testimony. When the common feeling of
danger, and the animating burst of enthusiasm, act on the feelings of
many men at once, their minds hold a natural correspondence with each
other, as it is said is the case with stringed instruments tuned to the
same pitch, of which, when one is played, the chords of the others are
supposed to vibrate in unison with the tones produced. If an artful or
enthusiastic individual exclaims, in the heat of action, that he
perceives an apparition of the romantic kind which has been intimated,
his companions catch at the idea with emulation, and most are willing to
sacrifice the conviction of their own senses, rather than allow that
they did not witness the same favourable emblem, from which all draw
confidence and hope. One warrior catches the idea from another; all are
alike eager to acknowledge the present miracle, and the battle is won
before the mistake is discovered. In such cases, the number of persons
present, which would otherwise lead to detection of the fallacy, becomes
the means of strengthening it.
Of this disposition, to see as much of the supernatural as is seen by
others around, or, in other words, to trust to the eyes of others rather
than to our own, we may take the liberty to quote two remarkable
instances.
The first is from the "Historia Verdadera" of Don Bernal Dias del
Castillo, one of the companions of the celebrated Cortez in his Mexican
conquest. After having given an account of a great victory over extreme
odds, he mentions the report inserted in the contemporary Chronicle of
Gomara, that Saint Iago had appeared on a white horse in van of the
combat, and led on his beloved Spaniards to victory. It is very curious
to observe the Castilian cavalier's internal conviction that the rumour
arose out of a mistake, the cause of which he explains from his own
observation; whilst, at the same time, he does not venture to disown the
miracle. The honest Conquestador owns that he himself did not see this
animating vision; nay, that he beheld an individual cavalier, named
Francisco de Morla, mounted on a chestnut horse, and fighting
strenuously in the very place where Saint James is said to have
appeared. But instead of proceeding to draw the necessary inference, the
devout Conquestador exclaims--"Sinner that I am, what am I that I should
have beheld the blessed apostle!"
The other instance of the infectious character of superstition occurs in
a Scottish book, and there can be little doubt that it refers, in its
first origin, to some uncommon appearance of the aurora borealis, or the
northern lights, which do not appear to have been seen in Scotland so
frequently as to be accounted a common and familiar atmospherical
phenomenon, until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The passage
is striking and curious, for the narrator, Peter Walker, though an
enthusiast, was a man of credit, and does not even affect to have seen
the wonders, the reality of which he unscrupulously adopts on the
testimony of others, to whose eyes he trusted rather than to his own.
The conversion of the sceptical gentleman of whom he speaks is highly
illustrative of popular credulity carried away into enthusiasm, or into
imposture, by the evidence of those around, and at once shows the
imperfection of such a general testimony, and the ease with which it is
procured, since the general excitement of the moment impels even the
more cold-blooded and judicious persons present to catch up the ideas
and echo the exclamations of the majority, who, from the first, had
considered the heavenly phenomenon as a supernatural weapon-schaw, held
for the purpose of a sign and warning of civil wars to come.
"In the year 1686, in the months of June and July," says the honest
chronicler, "many yet alive can witness that about the Crossford Boat,
two miles beneath Lanark, especially at the Mains, on the water of
Clyde, many people gathered together for several afternoons, where there
were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, and swords, which covered the trees
and the ground; companies of men in arms marching in order upon the
waterside; companies meeting companies, going all through other, and
then all falling to the ground and disappearing; other companies
immediately appeared, marching the same way. I went there three
afternoons together, and, as I observed, there were two-thirds of the
people that were together saw, and a third that saw not; and, _though I
could see nothing_, there was such a fright and trembling on those that
did see, that was discernible to all from those that saw not. There was
a gentleman standing next to me who spoke as too many gentlemen and
others speak, who said, 'A pack of damned witches and warlocks that have
the second sight! the devil ha't do I see;' and immediately there was a
discernible change in his countenance. With as much fear and trembling
as any woman I saw there, he called out, 'All you that do not see, say
nothing; for I persuade you it is matter of fact, and discernible to all
that is not stone-blind.' And those who did see told what works (_i.e._,
locks) the guns had, and their length and wideness, and what handles the
swords had, whether small or three-barr'd, or Highland guards, and the
closing knots of the bonnets, black or blue; and those who did see them
there, whenever they went abroad, saw a bonnet and a sword drop in the
way."[1]
[Footnote 1: Walker's "Lives," Edinburgh, 1827, vol. i. p. xxxvi. It is
evident that honest Peter believed in the apparition of this martial
gear on the principle of Partridge's terror for the ghost of Hamlet--not
that he was afraid himself, but because Garrick showed such evident
marks of terror.]
This singular phenomenon, in which a multitude believed, although only
two-thirds of them saw what must, if real, have been equally obvious to
all, may be compared with the exploit of the humourist, who planted
himself in an attitude of astonishment, with his eyes riveted on the
well-known bronze lion that graces the front of Northumberland House in
the Strand, and having attracted the attention of those who looked at
him by muttering, "By heaven it wags! it wags again!" contrived in a few
minutes to blockade the whole street with an immense crowd, some
conceiving that they had absolutely seen the lion of Percy wag his tail,
others expecting' to witness the same phenomenon.
On such occasions as we have hitherto mentioned, we have supposed that
the ghost-seer has been in full possession of his ordinary powers of
perception, unless in the case of dreamers, in whom they may have been
obscured by temporary slumber, and the possibility of correcting
vagaries of the imagination rendered more difficult by want of the
ordinary appeal to the evidence of the bodily senses. In other respects
their blood beat temperately, they possessed the ordinary capacity of
ascertaining the truth or discerning the falsehood of external
appearances by an appeal to the organ of sight. Unfortunately, however,
as is now universally known and admitted, there certainly exists more
than one disorder known to professional men of which one important
symptom is a disposition to see apparitions.
This frightful disorder is not properly insanity, although it is
somewhat allied to that most horrible of maladies, and may, in many
constitutions, be the means of bringing it on, and although such
hallucinations are proper to both. The difference I conceive to be that,
in cases of insanity, the mind of the patient is principally affected,
while the senses, or organic system, offer in vain to the lunatic their
decided testimony against the fantasy of a deranged imagination. Perhaps
the nature of this collision--between a disturbed imagination and organs
of sense possessed of their usual accuracy--cannot be better described
than in the embarrassment expressed by an insane patient confined in the
Infirmary of Edinburgh. The poor man's malady had taken a gay turn. The
house, in his idea, was his own, and he contrived to account for all
that seemed inconsistent with his imaginary right of property--there
were many patients in it, but that was owing to the benevolence of his
nature, which made him love to see the relief of distress. He went
little, or rather never abroad--but then his habits were of a domestic
and rather sedentary character. He did not see much company--but he
daily received visits from the first characters in the renowned medical
school of this city, and he could not therefore be much in want of
society. With so many supposed comforts around him--with so many visions
of wealth and splendour--one thing alone disturbed the peace of the poor
optimist, and would indeed have confounded most _bons vivants_. "He was
curious," he said, "in his table, choice in his selection of cooks, had
every day a dinner of three regular courses and a dessert; and yet,
somehow or other, everything he eat _tasted of porridge_." This dilemma
could be no great wonder to the friend to whom the poor patient
communicated it, who knew the lunatic eat nothing but this simple
aliment at any of his meals. The case was obvious. The disease lay in
the extreme vivacity of the patient's imagination, deluded in other
instances, yet not absolutely powerful enough to contend with the honest
evidence of his stomach and palate, which, like Lord Peter's brethren in
"The Tale of a Tub," were indignant at the attempt to impose boiled
oatmeal upon them, instead of such a banquet as Ude would have displayed
when peers were to partake of it. Here, therefore, is one instance of
actual insanity, in which the sense of taste controlled and attempted to
restrain the ideal hypothesis adopted by a deranged imagination. But the
disorder to which I previously alluded is entirely of a bodily
character, and consists principally in a disease of the visual organs,
which present to the patient a set of spectres or appearances which have
no actual existence. It is a disease of the same nature which renders
many men incapable of distinguishing colours; only the patients go a
step further, and pervert the external form of objects. In their case,
therefore, contrary to that of the maniac, it is not the mind, or rather
the imagination, which imposes upon and overpowers the evidence of the
senses, but the sense of seeing (or hearing) which betrays its duty and
conveys false ideas to a sane intellect.
More than one learned physician, who have given their attestations to
the existence of this most distressing complaint, have agreed that it
actually occurs, and is occasioned by different causes. The most
frequent source of the malady is in the dissipated and intemperate
habits of those who, by a continued series of intoxication, become
subject to what is popularly called the Blue Devils, instances of which
mental disorder may be known to most who have lived for any period of
their lives in society where hard drinking was a common vice. The joyous
visions suggested by intoxication when the habit is first acquired, in
time disappear, and are supplied by frightful impressions and scenes,
which destroy the tranquillity of the unhappy debauchee. Apparitions of
the most unpleasant appearance are his companions in solitude, and
intrude even upon his hours of society: and when by an alteration of
habits, the mind is cleared of these frightful ideas, it requires but
the slightest renewal of the association to bring back the full tide of
misery upon the repentant libertine.
Of this the following instance was told to the author by a gentleman
connected with the sufferer. A young man of fortune, who had led what is
called so gay a life as considerably to injure both his health and
fortune, was at length obliged to consult the physician upon the means
of restoring, at least, the former. One of his principal complaints was
the frequent presence of a set of apparitions, resembling a band of
figures dressed in green, who performed in his drawing-room a singular
dance, to which he was compelled to bear witness, though he knew, to his
great annoyance, that the whole _corps de ballet_ existed only in his
own imagination. His physician immediately informed him that he had
lived upon town too long and too fast not to require an exchange to a
more healthy and natural course of life. He therefore prescribed a
gentle course of medicine, but earnestly recommended to his patient to
retire to his own house in the country, observe a temperate diet and
early hours, practising regular exercise, on the same principle avoiding
fatigue, and assured him that by doing so he might bid adieu to black
spirits and white, blue, green, and grey, with all their trumpery. The
patient observed the advice, and prospered. His physician, after the
interval of a month, received a grateful letter from him, acknowledging
the success of his regimen. The greens goblins had disappeared, and with
them the unpleasant train of emotions to which their visits had given
rise, and the patient had ordered his town-house to be disfurnished and
sold, while the furniture was to be sent down to his residence in the
country, where he was determined in future to spend his life, without
exposing himself to the temptations of town. One would have supposed
this a well-devised scheme for health. But, alas! no sooner had the
furniture of the London drawing-room been placed in order in the gallery
of the old manor-house, than the former delusion returned in full force:
the green _figurantés_, whom the patient's depraved imagination had so
long associated with these moveables, came capering and frisking to
accompany them, exclaiming with great glee, as if the sufferer should
have been rejoiced to see them, "Here we all are--here we all are!" The
visionary, if I recollect right, was so much shocked at their
appearance, that he retired abroad, in despair that any part of Britain
could shelter him from the daily persecution of this domestic ballet.
There is reason to believe that such cases are numerous, and that they
may perhaps arise not only from the debility of stomach brought on by
excess in wine or spirits, which derangement often sensibly affects the
eyes and sense of sight, but also because the mind becomes habitually
predominated over by a train of fantastic visions, the consequence of
frequent intoxication; and is thus, like a dislocated joint, apt again
to go wrong, even when a different cause occasions the derangement.
It is easy to be supposed that habitual excitement by means of any other
intoxicating drug, as opium, or its various substitutes, must expose
those who practise the dangerous custom to the same inconvenience. Very
frequent use of the nitrous oxide which affects the senses so strongly,
and produces a short but singular state of ecstasy, would probably be
found to occasion this species of disorder. But there are many other
causes which medical men find attended with the same symptom, of
embodying before the eyes of a patient imaginary illusions which are
visible to no one else. This persecution of spectral deceptions is also
found to exist when no excesses of the patient can be alleged as the
cause, owing, doubtless, to a deranged state of the blood or nervous
system.
The learned and acute Dr. Ferriar of Manchester was the first who
brought before the English public the leading case, as it may be called,
in this department, namely, that of Mons. Nicolai, the celebrated
bookseller of Berlin. This gentleman was not a man merely of books, but
of letters, and had the moral courage to lay before the Philosophical
Society of Berlin an account of his own sufferings, from having been, by
disease, subjected to a series of spectral illusions. The leading
circumstances of this case may be stated very shortly, as it has been
repeatedly before the public, and is insisted on by Dr. Ferriar, Dr.
Hibbert, and others who have assumed Demonology as a subject. Nicolai
traces his illness remotely to a series of disagreeable incidents which
had happened to him in the beginning of the year 1791. The depression of
spirits which was occasioned by these unpleasant occurrences, was aided
by the consequences of neglecting a course of periodical bleeding which
he had been accustomed to observe. This state of health brought on the
disposition to see _phantasmata_, who visited, or it may be more
properly said frequented, the apartments of the learned bookseller,
presenting crowds of persons who moved and acted before him, nay, even
spoke to and addressed him. These phantoms afforded nothing unpleasant
to the imagination of the visionary either in sight or expression, and
the patient was possessed of too much firmness to be otherwise affected
by their presence than with a species of curiosity, as he remained
convinced from the beginning to the end of the disorder, that these
singular effects were merely symptoms of the state of his health, and
did not in any other respect regard them as a subject of apprehension.
After a certain time, and some use of medicine, the phantoms became less
distinct in their outline, less vivid in their colouring, faded, as it
were, on the eye of the patient, and at length totally disappeared.
The case of Nicolai has unquestionably been that of many whose love of
science has not been able to overcome their natural reluctance to
communicate to the public the particulars attending the visitation of a
disease so peculiar. That such illnesses have been experienced, and have
ended fatally, there can be no doubt; though it is by no means to be
inferred, that the symptom of importance to our present discussion has,
on all occasions, been produced from the same identical cause.
Dr. Hibbert, who has most ingeniously, as well as philosophically,
handled this subject, has treated it also in a medical point of view,
with science to which we make no pretence, and a precision of detail to
which our superficial investigation affords us no room for extending
ourselves.
The visitation of spectral phenomena is described by this learned
gentleman as incidental to sundry complaints; and he mentions, in
particular, that the symptom occurs not only in plethora, as in the case
of the learned Prussian we have just mentioned, but is a frequent hectic
symptom--often an associate of febrile and inflammatory
disorders--frequently accompanying inflammation of the brain--a
concomitant also of highly excited nervous irritability--equally
connected with hypochondria--and finally united in some cases with gout,
and in others with the effects of excitation produced by several gases.
In all these cases there seems to be a morbid degree of sensibility,
with which this symptom is ready to ally itself, and which, though
inaccurate as a medical definition, may be held sufficiently descriptive
of one character of the various kinds of disorder with which this
painful symptom may be found allied.
A very singular and interesting illustration of such combinations as Dr.
Hibbert has recorded of the spectral illusion with an actual disorder,
and that of a dangerous kind, was frequently related in society by the
late learned and accomplished Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, and sometimes, I
believe, quoted by him in his lectures. The narrative, to the author's
best recollection, was as follows:--A patient of Dr. Gregory, a person,
it is understood, of some rank, having requested the doctor's advice,
made the following extraordinary statement of his complaint. "I am in
the habit," he said, "of dining at five, and exactly as the hour of six
arrives I am subjected to the following painful visitation. The door of
the room, even when I have been weak enough to bolt it, which I have
sometimes done, flies wide open; an old hag, like one of those who
haunted the heath of Forres, enters with a frowning and incensed
countenance, comes straight up to me with every demonstration of spite
and indignation which could characterize her who haunted the merchant
Abudah in the Oriental tale; she rushes upon me, says something, but so
hastily that I cannot discover the purport, and then strikes me a severe
blow with her staff. I fall from my chair in a swoon, which is of longer
or shorter endurance. To the recurrence of this apparition I am daily
subjected. And such is my new and singular complaint." The doctor
immediately asked whether his patient had invited any one to sit with
him when he expected such a visitation. He was answered in the negative.
The nature of the complaint, he said, was so singular, it was so likely
to be imputed to fancy, or even to mental derangement, that he had
shrunk from communicating the circumstance to any one. "Then," said the
doctor, "with your permission, I will dine with you to-day,
_téte-à-téte_, and we will see if your malignant old woman will venture
to join our company." The patient accepted the proposal with hope and
gratitude, for he had expected ridicule rather than sympathy. They met
at dinner, and Dr. Gregory, who suspected some nervous disorder, exerted
his powers of conversation, well known to be of the most varied and
brilliant character, to keep the attention of his host engaged, and
prevent him from thinking on the approach of the fated hour, to which he
was accustomed to look forward with so much terror. He succeeded in his
purpose better than he had hoped. The hour of six came almost unnoticed,
and it was hoped might pass away without any evil consequence; but it
was scarce a moment struck when the owner of the house exclaimed, in an
alarmed voice, "The hag comes again!" and dropped back in his chair in a
swoon, in the way he had himself described. The physician caused him to
be let blood, and satisfied himself that the periodical shocks of which
his patient complained arose from a tendency to apoplexy.