_Getz von Berlichingen_. He delighted in
Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) where the verse gallops through
horrors so fearful that the "lights in the chamber burn blue,"
and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblin
dramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, as
Lewis's _Castle Spectre_ and Maturin's _Bertram_. His Latin
call-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis or
Harrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen--the disposal of the
dead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually added
to his store of quaint and grisly learning both from popular
tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's
_Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Sinclair's
_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, whence he borrowed the name
of the jackanapes in _Wandering Willie's Tale_, and the
horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's
_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Joseph Taylor's _History of
Apparitions_, from which he quotes in _Woodstock_. He was
familiar with all the niceties of ghostly etiquette; he could
distinguish at a glance the various ranks and orders of demons
and spirits; he was versed in charms and spells; he knew exactly
how a wizard ought to be dressed. This lore not only stood him in
good stead when he compiled his _Letters on Demonology and
Witchcraft_ (1830), but served to adorn his poems and novels.
There was nothing unhealthy in his attitude towards the spectral
world. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double room,
while a dead man occupied the other. Twice in his life he
confessed to having felt "eerie"--once at Glamis Castle, which
was said to be haunted by a Presence in a Secret Chamber, and
once when he believed that he saw an apparition on his way home
in the twilight; but he usually jests cheerfully when he speaks
of the supernatural. He was interested in tracing the sources of
terror and in studying the mechanism of ghost stories.

The axioms which he lays down are sound and suggestive:

"Ghosts should not appear too often or become too
chatty. The magician shall evoke no spirits, whom he is
not capable of endowing with manners and language
corresponding to their supernatural character. Perhaps,
to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and
in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret
mode of securing a certain necessary degree of
credulity from the hearers of a ghost