To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion.
He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poems
or his romances. In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ he had,
indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a leading part, but
the imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the natural
baseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs into
the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in _The
Monastery_ (1830)--a boisterous creature who rides on horseback,
splashes through streams and digs a grave--was wisely withdrawn
in the sequel, _The Abbot_. In the Introduction Scott states:
"The White Lady is scarcely supposed to have possessed
either the power or the inclination to do more than
inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is always
subjected by those mortals who ... could assert
superiority over her."
The only apology Scott could offer to the critics who derided his
wraith was that the readers "ought to allow for the capriccios of
what is after all but a better sort of goblin." She was suggested
by the Undine of De La Motte Fouque. In his next novel, _The
Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the
magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch--not one bounce on the drum of
Tedworth--not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch
in the wainscot.
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