THE NIGHTMARE.

Somnia fallaci ludunt temeraria nocte,

Et pavidas mentes falsa timere jubent.

CATULLUS.

THE various phenomena of dreams have hitherto baffled the speculations of all the physiologists, from Wolfius down to Spurzheim. Visions arising in sleep, and floating over the surface of the mind, are still as unaccounted for as the congregated vapours which hover in the heavens. They are analogous to them in other respects as well, for they often present us the brightest and most fantastic imagery, and pour over our senses a dew, as refreshing as that which falls on earth "from the bosom of a dropping cloud." But were the illusory wonderings of the brain, during its demi-collapsed state-or when the nervous fluid ceases to communicate with it-or when our mental lethargy is broken by the excitement of some organ of sensation-or when, in short, (to quit the jargon of theory, and speak plainly,) we are asleepwere they but one continuous chain of pleasure, an article would never have been written "on the Nightmare." Passing, then, from those exquisite illusions of slumber, when "delighted thought in Fancy's maze runs mad," and forgetting the still more delicious waking dreams, those noontide trances, hung

With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys,

we must now turn to the dreadful visitings of that demon, who comes upon us at times, " making night hideous."

It has been supposed and asserted, that fearful dreams are the consequences of evil thoughts. It is true that they are often so; and, if the dreadful punishment of Incubus were to fall only on the docrs of bad deeds, its retributive inflictions might be considered endurable. But we know that the preceding frame of mind has no positive influence on the victims of this inexorable fiend, who often passes by the breast" the deepliest stained with sin," to fix on the bosom of innocence and beauty: for

Oft on his nightmare through the evening fog
Flits the squab fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog,
Seeks some love-wilder'd maid by sleep opprest,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.

Nor is sanctity itself a safeguard from the encounters of this evil spirit, call it by what name, or imagine it under what figure we may : Saint Withold footed thrice the would,

He met the nightmare, and her name he told;
Bade her alight, and her troth plight.

We find in these two last quoted passages a rather puzzling distinction in their respective personifications of the spirit, arising from the absurdity of the compound word which designates it in the English language, and which comes from Night, and, according to Temple, from Mara, the name of a spirit, that in the northern mythology was related to torment or suffocate sleepers. It would be hard to find an instance of a simple derivation more absurdly mismanaged than in the formation of our word, which has led Shakspeare to make the night-demon a mare, and Darwin, to convert it into a fiend mounted on a mare. The latter bold supposition is certainly the more tolerable of the two, and is daringly embodied in Fuseli's picture; which, though in itself the

as

essence of caricature, serves seriously to illustrate Burke's remark, to the ludicrous effect produced by painting, whenever it attempts to bring before us the palpable forms of those phantoms which poetry makes forcible and grand.

This demon has been, from the earliest times, the privileged tormentor of mankind, and a favourite subject with poets. The nocturni lemures of every age have been honoured with many a painful celebration; but probably the finest description of the morbid oppression in which all this phantasma originates, is that of Eliphaz, in the fourth chapter of the book of Job. "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. An image was before mine eyes; it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof."

Compared with the sublimity of this vague but appalling passage, all succeeding attempts seem feeble. The vision of Pompey, in Lucan's Pharsalia, is powerless beside it. Clarence's and Caliban's well-specified imaginings produce nothing of the same effect; and the details of Athalie's terrific dream, when her mother Jezabel appears before her, require the acting of Mademoiselle Duchesnois to make a legitimate horror rise superior to disgust.

En achevant ces mots épouvantables,
Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser;
Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour l'embrasser;
Mais je n'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible melange

D'os et de chair meurtris et traînés dans la fange.

These instances are, but a proof of the many efforts to produce a vivid image of the horrors of sleep, by means of spectral agency in its most revolting aspects. Other poets have traced the persecuting fancies which oppress the dreamer, unmixed with the personal terrors of those just cited. Thus Young

My soul fantastic measures trod

O'er fairy fields, or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or down the craggy steep

Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool,

Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds

And Coleridge, who, in the following powerful lines, seems to have been strongly imbued with the vague intensity that distinguishes the passage from holy writ above quoted:

But yesternight I pray'd aloud

In anguish and in agony,

Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :
A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorn'd, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mix'd,
On wild and hateful objects fix'd.
Fantastic passions! madd'ning brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which, all confused, I could not know,
Whether I suffer'd or I did:

For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or woe;
My own or others still the same,
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame!

All these scattered allusions to the influence of night-mare in its various modifications, are but imperfect tributes to its potent operations, and only prove it a good auxiliary for poetic purposes. A more extended homage to its tyranny, and a wider elucidation of its effects, have been, however, lately furnished by a modern writer; and Nightmare, Incubus, or Oreinodynia, now stands upon its proper pedestal, in all the becoming obscurity and terror by which "it lives and has its being." All that has been before written on the subject of dreams falls short of the work now alluded to, in the detailed display of their afflicting attributes. We cannot, indeed, raise it to the level of the beautiful imaginings which abound in our own periodical writings-the Spectators, Guardians, Tatlers, &c.; nor does it give any glimpse into the philosophy so richly displayed in the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero. Its merits are, singularity of conception, great eloquence, and an occasional strain of chaste yet voluptuous feeling, which breaks through its generally exaggerated tone. It has been observed, that "La Poésie a ses monstres aussi bien que la Prose," and Smarra, or the Night-demons, is probably the most eminent of those extraordinary abstractions which the romantic extravagance of the age so fluently pours forth. It professes to be a translation from the Sclavonian; but the pretended translator and real author is M. Charles Nodier, a writer little known in England, but familiar to French readers from a wildness of genius, glowing style, and facility of composition, which hurry him on to fritter away his powers on works which can hope for no more lasting celebrity than that of the other ephemera of the day. One of his last effusions is "Smarra;" and he tells us in his preface, that, to enter with interest into the secret of its composition, it is, perhaps, a sine quá non to have suffered the illusions of the nightmare, of which triste phenomène Smarra is the primitive name.

It appears also, on the authority of this author, that Illyria is the chosen region of this frightful disease; for he tells us, that it is rare to meet with a family in that country, of which all the members are free from its attacks; and, without offering any needless explanation on the part of his supposed Sclavonian original, in whom it would have been quite natural to have devoted his talents to the illustration of this national infirmity, M. Nodier gives us a train of apologetical reasoning, which, as applied to himself, is ingenious and eloquent: but infinitely more eloquent is the rhapsody which follows, and whose only plan, If plan it may be called which plan hath none Distinguishable

is the recital of a tissue of dreams which never were dreamt, by a personage who never existed.

Lucius, the imaginary hero, travelling in Thessaly, in those days. when the magicians of that country enjoyed the amplest exercise of powers which mocked the conjurations of the Olympian Psychagogi, and apparently under their influence, falls asleep on his courser's neck: -but it is better to let him tell his own story." I had just completed my studies at the school of Athenian philosophy, and, eager to explore the beauties of Greece, I had visited for the first time the poetic land of Thessaly. My slaves awaited me at Larissa, in a palace prepared

for my reception. I longed to wander alone, at the awful hour of midnight, through that forest, renowned for the mystic rites of enchantresses, whose green masses of foliage extend like draperies along the banks of the Peneus. Deep shades had collected over the widespread canopy of the woods; and all was dark, save where the tremulous ray of some pale and mist-encircled star shot a fitful twinkling through the scanty openings which the woodman's axe had left at intervals in the overhanging boughs. My heavy lids closed in spite of me over my weary eye-balls, which ached from tracing the white path that hid itself in the copse-wood; and I could only bear up against the drowsiness which oppressed me, by observing the measured tramp of my horse, as the sand seemed to murmur hoarsely, or the parched grass to sigh beneath the pressure of his hoofs. If he chanced to stop, I was instantly aroused by the unusual pause; and, repeating his name in a loud voice, I urged his tardy pace to one better suited to my weariness and impatience. Startled suddenly by some unknown object, he bounded wildly from the path, poured from his fiery nostrils the half-smothered neigh of terror, wheeled round in dismay, and staggered back, still more terrified by the lightnings which flashed from the broken flints beneath his feet. Phlegon, Phlegon,' cried I, while my languid head fell on his neck, which he threw backwards in his alarm, oh, my faithful Phlegon! is it not time to reach Larissa, where every joy, and sleep the sweetest of all, awaits us? One effort more of courage, and thou shalt stretch thee on a litter of the choicest flowers, for the golden straw which is gathered for the oxen of Ceres is not fresh enough for thee.'-'See you not, see you not,' replied he, shuddering, the torches which they brandish before us, consuming the wild heath, and mingling a baleful vapour with the air I breathe? How can you expect me to dare their magic circles, and their threatening dances, sufficient to appal the very horses of the sun?' And still the measured tramp of my horse's hoofs ceased not to echo in my ears, and a slumber more profound brought a longer respite to my uneasiness only that, from time to time, a group of phantoms, lighted on their way by fantastic wreaths of flame, passed laughing over my head-or that a mis-shapen spirit, in the form of a beggar or a wounded wretch, clung to my foot, and, in a phrenzy of horrible joy, suffered himself to be dragged along-or that a hideous old man, whose ugliness seemed to record the loathsomeness of crime, as well as the deformity of years, leaped up behind me, and folded me in his skeleton arms. 'Courage, Phlegon,' cried I

After this opening, the reader is somewhat prepared for, though he finds it hard to follow, the mazes of unreal terrors which fill up the remainder of the work. The frightful train of adventures, of which the sleeping Lucius is the fancied witness, and in part the victim, are recited with a teeming and terrific minuteness.

"Have you not seen at Athens, in the first days of the year, when the all-regenerating rays of the new-born sun fall gloriously on the Ceramicus, a long train of wan and ghastly wretches lining its walls? Their limbs are motionless, their cheeks hollowed by famine, their looks spectral and unmeaning. Some bend groveling to the earth, like brutes; others are standing, but they lean against the pillars, and seem half sinking beneath the weight of their emaciated frames. These living spectres have scarcely preserved a trace of aught human. Their

skin is like white parchment outstretched on a framework of bones; their eye-balls shew not a single spark of soul; their livid lips writhe with horror and dismay, or with mirth still more hideous, for they curl into a smile as fierce and scornful as the last thought of a criminal who braves and spurns his fate. Most of them are agitated by weak but unceasing convulsions, and tremble like the iron tongue of that sonorous instrument which children love to sound between their teeth. The most wretched of all are those who, by the dire award of all-conquering fate, are doomed to terrify every beholder by the monstrous deformity of their gnarled limbs and inflexible attitudes.

"It is only during the periods which intervene between the regular returns of sleep that they taste any respite to their woes. Foredoomed to glut the vengeance of the enchantresses of Thessaly, they relapse into agonies which no tongue can express, as soon as the sun, sinking beneath the horizon, has ceased to protect them from the redoubtable queens of darkness. For this it is, that, with eyes rivetted on his path, they follow his too rapid career, in the ever-baffled hope that he may for once forget his azure bed, and remain suspended in the golden clouds of the west. But no sooner does night come to undeceive them, shedding from his wings of crape a gloom, unbroken even by one of those livid gleams which tinged just now the summits of the trees, than a fearful murmur arises amongst them. Their teeth chatter with despair and rage: they crowd together, or shun each other's contact, and seem at each step to shrink from an assassin or a ghost. "Tis night! Hell re-opens

Among the merciless magicians who sport in the misery of their victims, Meroé, the sorceress, is the leading personage; and, of all the hideous monsters who figure in her train, Smarra is her favourite and well-beloved familiar. This precious fiend receives from his mistress a special mandate to torment the persecuted sleeper. "She spoke, and the monster sprang from her burning hand, turned writhingly and rapidly in the air, outspread his wildly-fashioned wings, uprose, sank down, expanded, shrunk—and, in the semblance of a deformed and spiteful dwarf, with nails of a metal sharper than steel, which pierced without tearing the flesh, he darted upon my breast, enlarged to a monstrous size, raised his enormous head, and burst into a fiendish laugh. In vain my glazed eye sought for some object of support. Thousands of night-demons played around me :-women of stunted growth and drunken aspect-red and violet-coloured serpents spitting flame-lizards, with hideous human faces, crawling in blood and mire -heads newly struck from still palpitating bodies, looking on me with glaring eyes, and bounding on the legs and feet of reptiles. They danced in a circle around me, deafening me with their cries, terrifying me with their atrocious gambols, and parching my quivering lips with their disgusting caresses. Meroé guided their movements as she floated above them, with her long hair flashing forth flames of livid blue. Her features were the same as usual; but under their wonted loveliness I was shocked to discern, as through a transparent gauze, the leaden tints and sulphur-coloured limbs of the enchantress: her fixed and hollow eyes were floating in crimson; sanguined tears trickled down her cheeks; and her hand, as she waved it in the air, seemed to print upon the void the trace of a hand of blood."