A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"" in the context of "Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911); cited from Michael Cox (ed.) Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp. 337-8." to mean that wisdom is timeless.