It is quite possible, at least, that Miss Stuart Belches
may have regarded this vehement admirer of spectral wedding journeys
and skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for her that comfortable,
trim, and decorous future which young ladies usually desire. At any
rate, the bold stroke failed. The young lady admired the verses, but,
as we have seen, declined the translator. Perhaps she regarded banking
as safer, if less brilliant work than the most effective description
of skeleton riders. Indeed, Scott at this time--to those who did not
know what was in him, which no one, not even excepting himself,
did--had no very sure prospects of comfort, to say nothing of wealth.
It is curious, too, that his first adventure in literature was thus
connected with his interest in the preternatural, for no man ever
lived whose genius was sounder and healthier, and less disposed to
dwell on the half-and-half lights of a dim and eerie world; yet
ghostly subjects always interested him deeply, and he often touched
them in his stories, more, I think, from the strong artistic contrast
they afforded to his favourite conceptions of life, than from any
other motive.
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