No XXI.

On Dreams.

X

THE operations of the mind, in sleep have never yet been explained in any manner the least satisfactory. Numerous have been the disquisitions on the subject; but none seem to approach to a clear elucidation of it. Our dreams are sometimes made up of materials, which have employed our waking thoughts; but they are frequently compounded of ideas and images which have no apparent connection with the previous occupations of the brain. But the degree of vividness with which objects impress themselves on the intellect during slumber seems so far beyond the powers of memory or fancy, as to be almost of a different kind. No voluntary effort of the imagination in its most brilliant moments can bring before its view forms and scenes so distinct and forcible as a dream constantly produces.

x Baxter's Theory is very interesting and at least plausible. Beattie's Essay on the subject has, I think, been more commended than it deserves.

No part of this astonishing power of the human faculties is more extraordinary than the alternate character which the same mind can thus take on those occasions; when it can carry on a dialogue or argument between contending parties, and assume successively the strength of each, with no more power of anticipating the other's reply than would happen in reality. How this rapid shifting of character, so much more full of life, than any waking talent can effect, is caused, must be left for our dim knowledge to wonder at in vain!

What scenes of stupendous splendour have I seen in my dreams! what more than mortal music has thrilled on my senses! My sluggish fancy cannot even catch a glimpse of these visions by day; and I try in vain to recall the tones of the heavenly harmony that I have thus heard.

Perhaps it is owing to this acute employment of the intellect in sleep, that its sensibility seems more tender at first waking, than when the body, worn out with fatigue, was consigned to rest. Subjects of regret and sorrow, which had been quieted before we closed our eyes at night, return, as the morning rouses us, with a double sting. When I go to sleep with an aching heart, the moment, of my grief that I most dread is when I first wake. Then it is that the painful object of my suffering

or my fears shews itself to my tremulous nerves in all its horrors.

It was thus that I suddenly waked in the depth of night, not long ago, with the impression of poignant regret at having neglected to make proper returns to the flattering attention of a friend. How my conscience had thus worked, while my body was reposing, I know not; but I endeavoured to soothe myself to quiet again by recording the occurrence in the following sonnet.

SONNET TO A FRIEND.

Written at Midnight, Dec. 13. 1807.

Methought I heard thy voice, when sunk in sleep, High sounding thro' still midnight's silence drear;

Why mute, thou son of song? Why meets my ear "No effort of that tongue, which wont to keep "Its airy course, o'er every bar and steep,

"Thro' intellectual realms? No more I hear "Thy plaintive notes, to feeling bosoms dear, "Nor indignation pour his tones more deep!" Thereat I trembling woke; and still the sound Quiver'd upon my nerves; I seiz'd the lyre, And strove to make its untun'd strings rebound With strains congenial to its former fire!

But thus I prove by these insipid lays

The object worthless of thy generous praise!

It must not be admitted then that the hours spent in sleep are all lost; it is at those times that the mind is often employed with the most activity; and I do not doubt that many important hints and bright inventions have first arisen, when the body was in that state of quiescence.

Jan. 1, 1808.

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N° XXII.

On Books.

ARE books, in truth, a dead letter? To those who have no bright mirror in their own bosoms to reflect their images, they are! but the lively and active scenes, which they call forth in well-framed minds, exceed the liveliness of reality. Heads and hearts of a coarser grain require the substance of material objects to put them in motion.

Books instruct us calmly, and without intermingling with their instruction any of those painful impressions of superiority, which we must necessarily feel from a living instructor. They wait the pace of each man's capacity; stay for his want of perception, without reproach; go backward and forward with him at his wish; and furnish inexhaustible repetitions.

How is it possible to express what we owe, as intellectual beings, to the art of printing? When a man sits in a well furnished library, surrounded by the collected wisdom of thousands of the best endowed minds, of various ages and countries,