" This Lord Middleton had a great friendship with the Laird
Bocconi, and they had made an agreement, that the first of them that
died should appear to the other in extremity. The Lord Middleton was
taken prisoner at Worcester fight, and was prisoner in the Tower of
London, under three locks. Lying in his bed pensive, Bocconi appeared
to him; my Lord Middleton asked him if he were dead or alive ? he
said, dead, and that he was a ghost; and told him, that within three
days he should escape, and he did so, in his wife's cloaths. When he
had done his message, he gave a frisk, and said,
Givenni Givanni 'tis very strange,
In the world to see so sudden a change.
And then gathered up and vanished. This account Sir William Dugdale
had from the Bishop of Edinburgh. And this, and the former account he
hath writ in a book of miscellanies, which I have seen, and is now
reposited with other books of his in the Musaeum at Oxford.
Anno 1670, not far from Cirencester, was an apparition: being
demanded, whether a good spirit, or a bad ? returned no answer, but
disappeared with a curious perfume and most melodious twang. Mr. W.
Lilly believes it was a fairy. So Propertius.
Omnia finierat; tenues secessit in auras:
Mansit odor; posses scire fuisse Deam.
Here, her speech ending, fled the beauteous fair,
Melting th' embodied form to thinner air,
Whom the remaining scent a goddess did declare.
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