And all who heard should see them there, And drank of the milk of Paradise. If horrible and fantastic dreams are the most perplexing, there are pathetic ones more saddening. A friend dreaming of the loss of his friend, or a lover of that of his mistress, or a kinsman of that of a dear relation, is steeped in the bitterness of death. To wake and find it not true,—what a delicious sensa. tion is that! On the other hand, to dream of a friend or a beloved relative restored to us,-to live over again the hours of childhood at the knee of a beloved mother, to be on the eve of marrying an affectionate mistress, with a thousand other joys snatched back out of the grave, and too painful to dwell upon,what a dreary rush of sensation comes like a shadow upon us when we awake! How true, and divested of all that is justly called conceit in poetry, is that termination of Milton's sonnet on dreaming of his deceased wife, But oh, as to embrace me she inclined, I waked; she fled; and day brought back my night. It is strange that so good and cordial a critic as Warton should think this a mere conceit on his blindness. An allusion to his blindness may or may not be involved in it; but the sense of returning shadow on the mind is true to nature, and must have been experienced by every one who has lost a person dear to him. There is a beautiful sonnet by Camoens on a similar occasion; a small canzone by Sanazzaro, which ends with saying, that although he waked and missed his lady's hand in his, he still tried to cheat himself by keeping his eyes shut; and three divine dreams of Laura by Petrarch, Sonnet xxxiv., Vol. 2, Sonne lxxix., ib., and the canzone beginning Quando il soave mio fido conforto. But we must be cautious how we think of the poets on this most poetica subject, or we shall write three articles instead of one. As it is, we have not left ourselves room for some very agreeable dreams, which we meant to have taken between these our gallant and imaginative sheets. They must be interrupted, as they are apt to be, like the young lady's in the Adventures of a Lapdog, who blushing divinely, had just uttered the words, "My Lord, I am wholly yours," when she was awaked by the jump ing up of that officious little puppy. 30 CHAPTER LVIII. A Human Animal, and the other Extreme. WE met the other day with the following description of an animal of quality in a Biographical Dictionary that was pub lished in the year 1767, and which is one of the most amusing and spirited publications of the kind that we remember to have seen. The writer does not give his authority for this particular memoir, so that it was probably furnished from his own knowledge; but that the account is a true one is evident. Indeed, with the exception of one or two eccentricities of prudence, which rather lean to the side of an excess of instinct, it is but an individual description, referring to a numerous class of the same nature, that once flourished with horn and hound in this country, and specimens of which are to be found here and there still.* The title we have put at the head of it is not quite correct and exclusive enough as a definition; since, properly speaking, we lords of th creation are all human animals; but the mere animal, or bodily and breathing faculty, is combined in us more or less with intellect and sentiment; and of these refinements of the perception, few bipeds that have arrived at the dignity of a coat and boots, have partaken so little as the noble squire before us. How far some of us, who take ourselves for rational pervery sons, do or do not go beyond him, we shall perhaps see in the course of our remarks. "The Honorable William Hastings, a gentleman of a very singular character," says our informant, "lived in the year 1638, and by his quality was son, brother, and uncle to the Earls of * Since writing this, we have discovered that the original is in Hutchins's History of Dorsetshire. See Gilpin's Forest Scenery or Drake's Shak speare and his Times. It is said to have been written by the first Earl of Shaftesbury Huntingdon. He was peradventure an original in our age, or rather the copy of our ancient nobility, in hunting, not in warlike times. "He was very low, very strong, and very active, of a reddish flaxen hair; his clothes green cloth, and never all worth, when new, five pounds. "His house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of a large park well stocked with deer, and near the house rabbits to serve his kitchen; many fish-ponds; great store of wood and timber; a bowling-green in it, long but narrow, and full of high ridges, it being never levelled since it was plowed; they used round sand bowls; and it had a banquetting house like a stand, a large one built in a tree. "He kept all manner of sport hounds, that run buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger; and hawks, long and short-winged. He had all sorts of nets for fish; he had a walk in the New Forest ; and in the manor of Christ Church: this last supplied him with red deer, sea and river fish. And indeed all his neighbors' grounds and royalties were free to him; who bestowed all his time on these sports, but what he borrowed to caress his neighbors' wives and daughters; there being not a woman, in all his walks, of the degree of a yeoman's wife, and under the age of forty, but it was extremely her fault, if he was not intimately acquainted with her. This made him very popular; always speaking kindly to the husband, brother, or father, who was to boot very welcome to his house whenever he came. "There he found beef, pudding, and small beer in great plenty, a house not so neatly kept as to shame him or his dusty shoes; the great hall strewed with marrow-bones, full of hawks, perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers; the upper side of the hall hung with the fox-skins of this and the last year's killing; here and there a pole-cat intermixed; game-keepers' and hunters' poles in great abundance. "The parlor was a great room as properly furnished. On a great hearth, paved with brick, lay some terriers, and the choicest hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the great chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be disturbed; he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and a little white round stick of fourteen inches long lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them. accoutrements. "The windows, which were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, cross-bows, stone-bows, and other such-like The corners of the room, full of the best chose hunting and hawking-poles. An oyster-table at the lower end; which was of constant use, twice a day, all the year round. For he never failed to eat oysters, before dinner and supper, through all seasons; the neighboring town of Pool supplied him with them. "The upper part of the room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a Church Bible; and, on the other, the Book of Martyrs. On the tables were hawks-hoods, bells, and such like; two or three old green hats, with their crowns thrust in, so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of poultry which he took much care of, and fed himself. In the whole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes that had been used. "On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly observed. For he never exceeded in drink or permitted it. "On the other side was the door into an old chapel, not used for devotion. The pulpit, as the safest place, was never wanting of a cold chine of beef, venison pasty, gammon of bacon, or great apple-pie, with thick crust extremely baked. His table cost him not much, though it was good to eat at. "His sports supplied all but beef and mutton; except Fridays, when he had the best of salt fish (as well as other fish) he could get; and was the day his neighbors of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and always sung it in with My pearl lies therein-a.' He drank a glass or two of wine at meals; very often syrup of gilliflowers in his sack; and had always a tun glass without feet, stood by him, holding a pint of small beer, which he often stirred with rosemary. |