RAPPING NO NOVELTY.
(Vol. viii., pp. 512. 632.)
The story referred to is certainly a very curious one, and I should like to know whether it is exactly as it was told by Baxter, especially as there seems to be reason for believing that De Foe (whom on other grounds one would not trust in such a matter) did not take it from the work which he quotes. Perhaps if you can find room for the statement, some correspondent would be so good as to state whether it has the sanction of Baxter:
"Mr. Baxter, in his Historical Discourse of Apparitions, writes thus: 'There is now in London an understanding, sober, pious man, oft one of my hearers, who has an elder brother, a gentleman of considerable rank, who having formerly seemed pious, of late years does often fall into the sin of drunkenness; he often lodges long together here in his brother's house, and whensoever he is drunk and has slept himself sober, something knocks at his bed's head, as if one knocked on a wainscot. When they remove his bed it follows him. Besides other loud noises on other parts where he is, that all the house hears, they have often watched him, and kept his hands lest he should do it himself. His brother has often told it me, and brought his wife, a discreet woman, to attest it, who avers moreover, that as she watched him, she has seen his shoes under the bed taken up, and nothing visible to touch them. They brought the man himself to me, and when we asked him how he dare sin again after such a warning, he had no excuse. But being persons of quality, for some special reason of worldly interest I must not name him.'"—De Foe's Life of Duncan Campbell, 2nd ed. p. 107.
After this story, De Foe says:
"Another relation of this kind was sent to Dr. Beaumont (whom I myself personally knew, and which he has inserted in his account of genii, or familiar spirits) in a letter by an ingenious and learned clergyman of Wiltshire," &c.
But he does not say that the story which he has already quoted as from Baxter stands just as he has given it, and with a reference to Baxter, in Beaumont's Historical, Physiological, and Theological Treatise of Spirits, p. 182. Of course one does not attach any weight to De Foe's saying that he knew Dr. Beaumont "personally," but does anybody know anything of him? Nearly four years ago you inserted somewhat similar inquiry about this Duncan Campbell, but I believe it has not yet been answered.
S. R. Maitland.