Part 45

This did not escape Chaucer, as I remember in Dryden’s version of a fable:

“Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. The nurse’s legends are for truths receiv’d, And the man dreams but what the boy believ’d. Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, The night restores our actions done by day.”

EV. Yet do not associate this brilliancy of infantine reminiscence with vigour of the thought. The brain in children is, as it were, like wax, easily impressible. And remember, the ideas of children are more resembling the imperfect associations of our dreams; the tutorage of our advancing mind fills it with more serious and rational images characterized by judgment.

The first impressions of childhood are bright as fancy; so that we think in waking more of things present. But, in dreams of things long agone there is, in fact, no complete oblivion, in a healthy mind, for any one of our infantile impressions may chance to be brought to us in our dream.

But if impression be intense, it may assimilate that of childhood, and become as permanent. My friend, Dr. Uwins, told me of a patient who, in a joke, once amused himself by throwing stones at the gibbeted pirates on the bank of the Thames. An epileptic tendency succeeded; and ever after this, his dreams were of gibbets and chains, and to that degree, that his judgment and philosophy were powerless in controlling his fears.

And in the book of the Prussian, Greding, we read of J. C. V., a youth, who, in his eighth year, had been attacked by a dog. His future, and, indeed, nightly dreams, were of this creature, and these so intense, as to reduce his health to a very low degree.

Now it is easy to believe the period of slumber so limited, that the subject of reflection shall not have disappeared, that the thought had scarcely time to cool:

“Lateat scintillula forsan.”

Thus Moses Mendelssohn had all the sounds, heard during the day, reverberating in his slumbering mind.

Or we may suppose, that the idea last imprinted on the mind, or by which it had been exclusively occupied, and the thoughts which are so much modified by our temperament, study, and contemplation, would be the first to influence as the mind awakened, ere the image of fresh objects had been again perceived.

Sir Walter, in his diary, thus writes: “When I had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. I am in the habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself when I am at a loss, ‘Never mind, we shall have it all at seven o’clock to-morrow morning.’”

Warton, the professor of poetry at Oxford, after partaking of a Sunday dinner with a friend, repaired to his service at his Church. On his way, he was powerfully saluted with a cry of “Live mackarel.” He slumbered in his pulpit during the singing of the psalm, and, on the organ ceasing, he arose, half awake, and instead of his solemn prayer, cried with a loud voice, “All alive, all alive oh!”

I remember the storytellers in the coffee-houses at Aleppo, as if aware of this last impression, used to run out when they perceived they had excited a deep interest.

IDA. It is curious to hear, even by your own quotations, Evelyn, that poets have so revelled in the luxury of dreams, from Homer to Pope, chiefly employing them, however, as the materiel of their poesy. Have they condescended to glance at their causes?

EV. Lucretius, Claudian, George Stepney, Dryden, and a few others. Apropos as to causes.

In the “Anatomy of Melancholy” we have the following quaint summary: “As Tully notes, for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our phantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, so do men dream on such subjects they thought on last:

“‘Somnia quæ mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris, Nec delubra deûm nec ab æthere numina mittunt, Sed sibi quisque facit,’” &c.

For that cause, when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had posed the seventy interpreters in order, and asked the nineteenth man what would make one sleep quietly in the night, he told him “the best way was to have divine and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the daytime.” Lod. Vives wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly and were not terrified in the night, they had such monstrous questions and thought of such terrible matters all day long. They had need amongst the rest to sacrifice to god Morpheus, whom Philostratus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn, and ivory box full of dreams of the same colours, to signify good and bad.

Cast. These are the manufacture, I presume, of two of those sons of sleep, born to him by a beautiful but erring grace, “Phantasus,” or Fancy, and “Phobetor,” or Terror. With the relations and illustrations of these good and bad dreams, the pages of both fiction and authentic history abound: another poetical batch of causes, Ida. Lucia exclaims:

“Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man, Oh Marcia! I have seen thy godlike father— A kind refreshing sleep is fallen upon him. I saw him stretch’d at ease, his fancy lost In pleasing dreams. As I drew near his couch, He smil’d, and cried: ‘Cæsar, thou cans’t not hurt me.’”

Another poet writes thus:

“But most we mark the wonders of her reign, When sleep has lock’d the senses in her chain: When sober judgment has his throne resign’d, She smiles away the chaos of the mind; And, as warm fancy’s bright elysium glows, From her each image springs, each colour flows. She is the sacred guest, th’ immortal friend; Oft seen o’er sleeping innocence to bend, In that dead hour of night, to silence giv’n, Whispering seraphic visions of her heav’n.”

Then Richmond exclaims: “My heart is very jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream.” While the coward conscience of Richard thus speaks:

“By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers.”

Aufidius thus recounts his slumbering memory of the prowess of Coriolanus:

“This happy Roman, this proud Marcius, haunts me. Each troubled night, when slaves and captives sleep, Forgetful of their chains, I in my dreams Anew am vanquish’d; and beneath his sword With horror sinking, feel a tenfold death— The death of honour.”

And yet another:

“Tho’ thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep. There are shades that will not vanish; There are thoughts thou canst not banish.”