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No. XX.

ON DREAMS.

Et cui quisque ferè studio úevinctus adhæret,
Aut quibus in rebus multùm sumus morati,
Atque in quâ ratione fuit contenta magis mens,
In somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire.

LUCRETIUS.

And when soft sleep the body lays at ease,
And from the heavy mass the fancy frees,
Whate'er it is in which we take delight,
And think of most by day, we dream by night.

ΑΝΟΝ.

FROM the consideration of Sleep, which was the subject of my last paper, the transition is very natural to that of Dreams, the wonderful and mysterious phenomena of that state, the ideal transactions and vain illusions of the mind. According to Wolfius, an eminent Silesian philosopher, every dream takes its rise from some sensation, and is continued by the succession of phantasms in the mind. He observes, that when we dream, we imagine something, or the mind produces phantasms; but no phantasm can arise in the mind without some previous sensation. And yet, it is not easy to confirm this by experience; it being often difficult to distinguish those slight sensations, which give rise to dreams, from phantasms, or objects of imagination. -The series of phantasms, which thus constitute a dream, seem to be accounted for by the law of the imagination, or association of ideas; although it may be very difficult to assign the cause of every minute difference, not only in different subjects, but

Wolf, Psychol. Empir. sect. 123.

in the same, at different times, and in different circumstances. And hence Formey, who adopts the opinion of Wolfius, concludes, that those dreams are supernatural, which either do not begin by sensation, or are not continued by the law of the imagination'.

This opinion is as old as Aristotle, who asserted, that a dream is only, the φανθασμα, or appearance of things, excited in the mind, and remaining after the objects are removed. The opinion of Lucretius, in my motto, was likewise that of Tully 3. Mr. Locke, also, traces the origin of dreams to previous sensations, and says, that the dreams of sleeping men, are all made up of the waking man's ideas, though, for the most part, oddly put together. And Dr. Hartley, who explains all the phenomena of the imagination by his theory of vibrations and associations, says, that dreams are nothing but the imaginations or reveries of sleeping men, and that they are deducible from three causes, namely, the impressions and ideas lately received, and particularly those of the preceding day; the state of the body, particularly of the stomach and brain; and association5.

Were I to enter more deeply into the subject of this mysterious phenomenon, my present lucubration would become too abstruse; and, after all, perhaps, no philosophical or satisfactory account can be given of it. Such of my readers, therefore, who would wish for a more minute inquiry

Mem. de l'Acad. de Berlin, tom. ii, p. 316.

2 De Insomn. cap. 3.

3 Quæ in vitâ usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident, quæque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea cuique in somno accidunt. De Div.

Essay on Human Understanding, book ii, chap. 1, into the opinions I have stated above, I must re fer to the respective authors whom I have quoted'.

sec. 17.

5 Observations on Man, vol. i, sec. 5, p. 383.

From the scenes of nocturnal imagination, the reader, who is fond to find amusement even in a serious subject, will be glad, perhaps, to be transported into the regions of poetical fiction. And here we find, that the Fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. I shall begin first with that admirable speech in Romeo and Juliet, on the effects of the imagination in dreams:

O, then I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the Fancy's midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agat stone
On the fore finger of an alderman;
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Prickt from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies coachmakers:
And in this state she gallops night by night,
Thro' lovers brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers knees, that dream on curtsies strait;
O'er lawyers fingers, who strait dream on fees;
O'er ladies lips, lips, who strait on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:
And sometimes come she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling the parson as he lies asleep;

See also Baxter on the Soul, vol. ii. Stewart's Ele ments of the Philos. of the Mind, p. 328, 348, and Good's Lucretius, note to Lib. iv, ver. 936.

Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep! and then anon
Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes;
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again.

Lucretius, in the verses that immediately follow my motto, and Petronius, in his poem on the Vanity of Dreams, had preceded our immortal bard in a description of the effects of dreams on different kinds of persons. Both the passages, to which I allude, only serve to show the vast superiority of Shakspeare's boundless genius: their sense is thus admirably expressed by Stepney:

At dead of night, imperial Reason sleeps,
And Fancy, with her train, her revels keeps.
Then airy phantoms a mixed scene display,
Of what we heard, or saw, or wished by day;
For Memory those images retains
Which passion formed, and still the strongest reigns;
Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run,
And generals fight again their battles won.
Spectres and furies haunt the murderer's dreams;
Grants and disgraces are the courtier's themes,
The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard;
The cit's a knight; the sycophant a lord,
Thus Fancy's in the wild distraction lost,
With what we most abhor, or covet most.
Honours and state before this phantom fall;
For Sleep, like Death, its image, equals all.

Chaucer, in his tale of the Cock and Fox, has a fine description, thus versified by Dryden:

Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes:
When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A court of coblers, and a mob of kings:
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad:
Both are the reasonable soul run mad;

And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.
Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.
The nurse's legends are for truths received,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed.
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,
The night restores our actions done by day,
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.
In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece,
Chimeras all; and more absurd or less.

And Shakspeare again:

I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain phantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind.

Nor must Milton be omitted:

In the soul

Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things,
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aëry shapes,
Which Reason joining, or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm, or what deny, or call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell, when Nature rests.
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes,
To imitate her; but misjoining shapes,
Wild works produces oft, but most in dreams,
Ill matching words or deeds, long past or late..

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From these poetical descriptions let us proceed to take a view of the principal phenomena in dreaming. But I shall first give Mr. Locke's beautiful account of Modes of Thinking, as it will greatly illustrate the preceding observations:

"When the mind (says he) turns its view inward upon itself, and contemplates its own actions thinking is the first that occurs. In it the mind

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