ity on which this legend
reposes, certainly Balcarres does not tell the tale in his own
report, or memoirs, for James II. (Bannatyne Club, 1841). The
doctor then grumbles that he does not know 'a syllable of the state
of Lord Balcarres's health at the time'. The friend of Bayle and of
Marlborough, an honourable politician, a man at once loyal and
plain-spoken in dealings with his master, Lord Balcarres's word
would go for much, if he gave it. {190} But Dr. Hibbert asks for no
authority, cites none. He only argues that, 'agreeably to the well-
known doctrine of chances,' Balcarres might as well have this
hallucination at the time of Dundee's death as at any other (p.
232). Now, that is a question which we cannot settle, without
knowing whether Lord Balcarres was subject to hallucinations. If he
was, cadit quaestio, if he was _not_, then the case is different.
It is, manifestly, a problem in statistics, and only by statistics
of wide scope, can it be solved. {191} But Dr. Hibbert was content
to produce his easy solution, without working out the problem.

His second case is of 1662, and was taken down, he says, by the
Bishop of Gloucester, from the lips of the father of Miss Lee. This
young lady, in bed, saw a light, then a hallucination which called
itself her mother. The figure prophesied the daughter's death at
noon next day and at noon next day the daughter died. A physician,
when she announced her vision, attended her, bled her, and could
find nothing wrong in her health. Dr. Hibbert conjectures that her
medical attendant did not know his business. 'The coincidence was
_a fortunate one_,' that is all his criticism. Where there is no
coincidence, the stories, he says, are forgotten. For that very
reason, he should have collected contemporary stories, capable of
being investigated, but that did not occur to Dr. Hibbert. His last
case is the apparition of Mrs. Donne, with a dead child, to Dr.
Donne, in Paris, as recorded by Walton. As Donne was a poet, very
fond of his wife, and very anxious about her health, this case is
not evidential, and may be dismissed for 'a fortuitous coincidence'
(p. 332).

Certainly Dr. Hibbert could come to no conclusion, save his own, on
the evidence he adduces. But it was by his own fault that he chose
only evidence very remote, incapable of being cross-examined, and
scanty, while we know that plenty of contemporary evidence was
within his reach. Possibly the possessors