the consciousness of what matter of poem it is that we have read. And yet it is not the triumph of sound over sense. Each incident arouses its appropriate passion, and each passion clothes itself in its appropriate words. The exaggeration is between the parts and the whole, between the whole action and its accessories, not, as in Cervantic style, between the words and their immediate meaning. The poem has no grandiloquent absurdities; the utmost that can be said of it in this respect is that it has here and there very sweet music with a minimum of meaning beneath it. Such is the Prince's song in the fourth canto :

"O swallow, swallow, flying, flying south,

Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee." But in general the sentiments are commensurate with the language, however incommensurate with the absolute requirements of the story. Hence we feel no incongruity when we come on so mixed-Miltonic and Shakespearian-a speech as that of the Prince to Ida in the fourth canto :

66

"O not to pry and peer on your reserve," etc. So far as words, images, and power of expression go, the poet in "The Princess" had emancipated himself from the dreamy spontaneousness of his style. It is all the more striking then, as a witness to the strength which the passive attitude of mind has over him, that when he had emancipated himself from it, so far as the manner of his writing was concerned, he chose still to keep himself enthralled by it so far as his matter went. For he selected a story so loosely hung that, to justify it, he had to attribute it to the invention of seven consecutive narrators. He made its hero, for no evident necessity, a cataleptic subject, liable to day-dreams, in which he knew not the shadow from the substance. In the very tournament, which is the most stirring moment of the poem, the hero is made to fight as in a dream.

"Yet it seemed a dream, I dreamed of fighting."

The

It seems as if the dreaming side of life appeared in those days to Mr. Tennyson so exclusively its real and solemn side, that, on the other hand, all fierce action seemed grotesque, the proper subject for "raillery or false sublime," and unworthy of serious treatment by an earnest poet. This perhaps partly accounts for his success in this great poem. He was able to let himself down a peg or two, to unscrew himself from the tension of his sublime dreams, to come down upon his subject from above instead of climbing laboriously up to it. Yet in one sense he had climbed laboriously up to it. On reading his works consecutively, it is easy to see that many of the short pieces of 1842 were preludes and studies in which he essayed the form and the intention of this poem. pseudo-dramatic form which in the miscellanies of 1842 is so often affected by attributing the authorship of a piece to an alien pen, or by distributing its otherwise undistinguishable current among the conduits of more speakers than one, here finds its crown, if not its explanation and justification; and the intention of "The Princess" finds its anticipation in “The Day-Dream," with its morals and envoys, to explain its application, or rather its inapplicability to anything in particular. As for the idea of the poem, it has much in common with Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, where a male academe, a counterpart of the Princess's girl's college, is routed by the irruption of a princess and her court. It has also some analogies with Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh, and Charlotte's Brontë's Jane Eyre, both of which recount the failure of socialistic reformers. It must be owned, however, that the man shows himself much less of an enthusiast for the woman's reforms, than the women showed themselves for the male ideals round which they entwined their tales.

(To be concluded.)

Republished in ECLECTIC for January, 1871.

range together a considerable number of facts illustrative of the automatic action of the brain. My purpose in the present article is to treat more at length one class

of such phenomena to which I could not afford space proportionate to their interest, in the wide survey required by the design of the former article. I shall seek to obtain from some familiar and some more rare examples of dreams such light as they may be calculated to throw on the nature of brain-work, unregulated by the will. Perhaps I may be allowed to add, as an apology for once more venturing into this field of inquiry, that the large number of letters and friendly criticisms which my first paper called forth have both encouraged me to pursue the same subject by showing how much interest is felt in its popular treatment, and hence also afforded me the advantage of the experience of many other minds regarding some of the obscure mental phenomena in question. In the present case I shall feel grateful to any reader who will correct from personal knowledge any statement I may have used which he finds erroneous. Dr. Carpenter, I am permitted to state, proposes shortly to republish, with additional matter, the sections of the eleventh chapter of his "Human Physiology," withdrawn from the later editions of that work, which treat of the action of the cerebral organs and their relation to the operations of the mind. In this work the physiological theory of unconscious cerebration will be explained at length, with ample illustrations.

Dreams are to our waking thoughts much like echoes to music; but their reverberations are so partial, so varied, so complex, that it is almost in vain we seek among the notes of consciousness for the echoes of the dream. If we could by any means ascertain on what principle our dreams for a given night are arranged, and why one idea more than another furnishes their cue, it would be comparatively easy to follow out the chain of associations by which they unroll themselves afterwards; and to note the singular ease and delicacy whereby subordinate topics, recently wafted across our minds, are seized and woven into the network of the dream. But the reason why from among the five thousand thoughts of the day, we revert at night especially to thoughts number 2, 3, 4, 5, instead of to thoughts number 2, 3, 4, 6, or any other in the list, is obviously impossible to conjecture. We can but observe that the echo of the one note has been caught, and of the others lost amid the

Certain

obscure caverns of the memory. broad rules, however, may be remarked as obtaining generally as regards the topics of dreams. In the first place, if we have any present considerable physical sensation or pain, such as may be produced by a wound, or a fit of indigestion, or hunger, or an unaccustomed sound, we are pretty sure to dream of it in preference to any subject of mental interest only. Again, if we have merely a slight sensation of uneasiness, insufficient to cause a dream, it will yet be enough to color a dream otherwise suggested with a disagreeable hue. Failing to have a dream suggested to it by present physical sensation, the brain seems to revert to the subjects of thought of the previous day, or of some former period of life, and to take up one or other of them as a theme on which to play variations. As before remarked, the grounds of choice among all such subjects cannot be ascertained, but the predilection of Morpheus for those which we have not in our waking hours thought most interesting, is very noticeable. Very rarely indeed do our dreams take up the matter which has most engrossed us for hours before we sleep. A wholesome law of variety comes into play, and the brain seems to decide, "I have had enough of politics, or Greek, or fox-hunting, for this time. Now I will amuse myself quite differently." Very often, perhaps we may say generally, it pounces on some transient thought which has flown like a swallow across it by daylight, and insists on holding it fast through the night. Only when our attention to any subject has more or less transgressed the bounds of health, and we have been morbidly excited about it, does the main topic of the day recur to us in dreaming at night; and that it should do so, ought, I imagine, always to serve as a warning that we have strained our mental powers a little too far. Lastly, there are dreams whose origin is not in any past thought, but in some sentiment vivid and pervading enough to make itself doubly felt even in sleep. Of the nature of the dreams so caused we shall speak presently.

The subject of a dream being, as we must now suppose, suggested to the brain on some such principles as the above, the next thing to be noted is, How does the brain treat its theme when it has got it? Does it drily reflect upon it, as we are

wont to do awake? Or does it pursue a course wholly foreign to the laws of waking thoughts? It does, I conceive, neither one nor the other, but treats its theme, whenever it is possible to do so, according to a certain very important, though obscure, law of thought, whose action we are too apt to ignore. We have been accustomed to consider the myth-creating power of the human mind as one specially belonging to the earlier stages of growth of society and of the individual. It will throw, I think, a rather curious light on the subject if we discover that this instinct exists in every one of us, and exerts itself with more or less energy through the whole of our lives. In hours of waking consciousness, indeed, it is suppressed, or has only the narrowest range of exercise, as in the tendency, noticeable in all persons not of the very strictest veracity, to supplement an incomplete anecdote with explanatory incidents, or to throw a slightly known story into the dramatic form with dialogues constructed out of our own consciousness. But such small play of the myth-making faculty is nothing compared to its achievements during sleep. instant that daylight and common sense are excluded, the fairy-work begins. At the very least half our dreams (unless I greatly err) are nothing else than myths formed by unconscious cerebration on the same approved principles whereby Greece and India and Scandinavia gave us the stories which we were once pleased to set apart as "mythology" proper. Have we not here, then, evidence that there is a real law of the human mind causing us constantly to compose ingenious fables explanatory of the phenomena around us, a law which only sinks into abeyance in the waking hours of persons. in whom the reason has been highly cultivated, and which resumes its sway even over their well-tutored brains when they sleep?

The

Most dreams lend themselves easily to the myth-making process; but preeminently dreams originating in Sensation or in Sentiment do so. Of those which arise from memory of Ideas only we shall speak by and by.

Nothing can better illustrate the Sensation myth than the well-known story recorded of himself by Reid. "The only

distinct dream I had ever since I was about

sixteen, as far as I remember, was two years ago. I had got my head blistered for a fall. A plaster which was put on it after the blister pained me excessively for the whole night. In the morning I slept a little, and dreamed very distinctly that I had fallen into the hands of a party of Indians and was scalped." *

The number of mental operations needful for the transmutation of the sensation of a blistered head into a dream of Red Indians, is very worthy of remark. First, Perception of pain, and allotment of it to its true place in the body. Secondly, Reason seeking the cause of the phenomenon. Thirdly, Memory suppressing the real cause, and supplying from its stores of knowledge an hypothesis of a cause suited to produce the phenomenon. Lastly, Imagination stepping in precisely at this juncture, fastening on this suggestion of memory, and instantly presenting it as a tableau vivant, with proper decorations and couleur locale. The only intellectual faculty which remains dormant seems to be the Judgment, which has allowed memory and imagination to work regardless of those limits of probability which would have been set to them awake. If, when awake, we feel a pain which we do not wholly understand, say a twinge in the foot, we speculate upon its cause only within the very narrow series of actual probabilities. It may be a nail in our boot, a chilblain, a wasp, or so on. It does not even cross our minds that it may be a sworn tormentor with red-hot pincers; but the same sensation experienced asleep will very probably be explained by a dream of the sworn tormentor or some other cause which the relations of time and space render equally inapplicable. Let it be noted, however,

* Works of Dugald Stewart. Edited by Sir W. Hamilton. Vol. x. p. 321.

prolonged dream is too striking to be overlooked by any student of the latter subject. The delusions of insanity seem in fact little else but a series of such myths accounting for either sensations or sentiments as those above ascribed to dreaming. The maniac sees and hears more than a man

The analogy between insanity and a state of

asleep, and his sensations consequently give rise to numberless delusions. He is also usually possessed by some morbid moral sentiment, such as suspicion, hatred, avarice, or extravagant self-esteem (held by Dr. Carpenter nearly always to precede any intellectual failure), and these sentiments similarly give rise to their appropriate delusions. In the first case we have maniacs like the poor

that even in the waking brain a great deal of myth-making goes on after the formation of the most rational hypothesis. If we imagine that a pain is caused by any serious disease, we almost inevitably fancy we experience all the other symptoms of the malady, of which we happen to have heard--symptoms which disappear, as if by magic, when the physician laughs at our fears, and tells us our pain is caused by some trifling local affection.

Each of my readers could doubtless supply illustrations of myth-making as good as that of Dr. Reid. It happened to me once to visit a friend delirious from fever, who lay in a bed facing a large old mirror, whose gilt wood-frame, of Chinese design, presented a series of innumerable spikes, pinnacles, and pagodas. On being asked how she was feeling, my poor friend complained of much internal dolour, but added with touching simplicity: "And it is no great wonder, I am sure! (whisper) I've swallowed that looking-glass!"

Again as regards Sentiments. If we have seen a forbidding-looking beggar in the streets in the morning, nothing is more probable than that our vague and transient sense of distrust will be justified by ingenious fancy taking up the theme at night, and representing a burglar bursting into our bedroom, presenting a pistol to our temples, and at the supreme momemt disclosing the features of the objectionable mendicant. Hope, of course, when vividly excited, represents for us scores of sweet scenes in which our desire is fulfilled with every pleasing variation; and Care and Fear have, alas! even more powerful machinery for the realization of their terrors. The longing of affection.

lady who wrote her confessions to Dr. Forbes Winslow ("Obscure Diseases of the Brain," p. 79), and who describes how, on being taken to an asylum, the pillars before the door, the ploughed field in front, and other details, successively suggested to her the belief that she was in a Romish convent where she would be "scourged and taken to purgatory," and in a medical college where the inmates were undergoing a process preparatory to dissection! In the second case, that of morbid Sentiments, we have insane delusions like those which prompted the suspicious Rousseau to accuse Hume of poisoning him, and all the mournfully grotesque train of the victims of pride who fill our pauper hospitals with kings, queens, and prophets. Merely suppose these poor maniacs are recounting dreams, and there would be little to remark about them except their persistent char

acter.

for the return of the dead has, perhaps more than any other sentiment, the power of creating myths of reunion, whose dissipation on awakening are amongst the keenest agonies of bereavement. By a singular semi-survival of memory through such dreams we seem always to be dimly aware that the person whose return we greet so rapturously has been dead; and the obvious incongruity of our circumstances, our dress, and the very sorrow we confide at once to their tenderness, with the sight of them again in their familiar places, drives our imagination to fresh shifts to explain it. Sometimes the beloved one has been abroad, and is come home; sometimes the death was a mistake, and some one else was buried in that grave wherein we saw the coffin lowered; sometimes a friendly physician has carried away the patient to his own home, and brought us there after long months to find him recovered by his care.

One of the most affecting mythical dreams which have come to my knowledge, remarkable also as an instance of dreampoetry, is that of a lady who confessed to have been pondering on the day before her dream on the many duties which "bound her to life." The phrase which I have used as a familiar metaphor became to her a visible allegory. She dreamed that Life-a strong, calm, cruel womanwas binding her limbs with steel fetters, which she felt as well as saw; and Death as an angel of mercy hung hovering in the distance, unable to approach or deliver her. In this most singular dream her feelings found expression in the following touching verses, which she remembered on waking, and which she has permitted me to quote precisely in the fragmentary state in which they remained on her memory.

"Then I cried with weary breath,
Oh be merciful, great Death!
Take me to thy kingdom deep,
Where grief is stilled in sleep,
Where the weary hearts find rest.

A dream twice occurred to me at intervals of years where the mythical character almost assumed the dimensions of the sublime, insomuch that I can scarcely recall it without awe. I dreamed that I was standing on a certain broad grassy space before the door of my old home. It was totally dark, but I was aware that I was in the midst of an immense crowd. We were all gazing upward into the murky sky, and a sense of some fearful calamity was over us, so that no one spoke aloud. Suddenly overhead appeared, through a rift in the black heavens, a branch of stars which I recognized as the belt and sword of Orion. Then went forth a cry of despair from all our hearts! We knew, though no one said it, that these stars proved it was not a cloud or mist, which, as we had somehow believed, was causing the darkness. No, the air was clear; it was high noon, and the sun had not risen! That was the tremendous reason why we beheld the stars. The sun would never rise again!

In this dream, as it seems to me, a very complicated myth was created by my unconscious brain, which having first by some chance stumbled on the picture of a crowd in the dark, and a bit of starry sky over them, elaborated, to account for such facts, the bold theory of the sun not having risen at noon; or (if we like to take it the other way) having hit on the idea of the sun's disappearance, invented the appropriate scenery of the breathless expectant crowd, and the apparition of the

stars.

Next to the myth-creating faculty in dreams, perhaps the most remarkable circumstance about them is that which has given rise to the world-old notion that dreams are frequently predictions. At the outset of an examination of this matter, we are struck by the familiar fact that our most common dreams are continually recalled to us within a few hours, by some insignificant circumstance bringing up again the name of the person or place about which we had dreamed. On such occasions, as the vulgar say, "My dream is out." Nothing was actually predicted, and nothing has occurred of the smallest consequence, or ever entailing any consequence, but yet, by some concatenation of events, we dreamed of the man from whom we received a letter in the morning; or we saw in our sleep a house on fire, and

before the next night we pass a street where there is a crowd, and, behold! a dwelling in flames. Nay, much more special and out-of-the-way dreams than these come "out" very often. If we dream of Nebuchadnezzar on Saturday night, it is to be expected that on Sunday (unless the new lectionary have dispensed with his history), that the lesson of the day will present us with the ill-fated monarch and his golden image. Dreams of some almost unheard-of spot, or beast, or dead and gone old worthy, which by wild vagary have entered our brain, are perpetually followed by a reference to the same spot, or beast, or personage, in the first book or newspaper we open afterwards. To account for such coincidences on any rational principle, is, of course, difficult. But it is at least useful to attempt to do so, seeing that here, at all events, the supernatural hypothesis is too obviously absurd to be entertained by anybody; and if we can substitute for it a plausible theory in these cases, the same theory may serve equally well for problems a little more dignified, and therefore more liable to be treated superstitiously.

In the first place, a moment's reflection will show that the same sort of odd coincidences take place continually among the trivial events of waking life. It has chanced to myself within the last few hours to remark to a friend how the word "subtle" applied to the serpent in Genesis, is always spelled "subtil," and within a few minutes to take up The Index, of Toledo, Ohio, and read the following anecdote: "A poor negro preacher was much troubled by the cheating of the sutlers of the army which he followed. chose accordingly for the text of his sermon, Now the serpent was more sutler than any beast of the field,' &c." It will be owned that this is precisely the kind of chance coincidence which occurs in dreams, and which, when it happens to concern any solemn theme, is apt to seem portentous.

He

But ascending beyond these trivial coincidences, we arrive at a mass of dream literature tending to show that revelations of all sorts of secrets and predictions of future events are made in dreams. Taking them in order, we have, first, discoveries of where money, wills, and all sorts of lost valuables are to be found, and such dreams have long been rightly explained as having