صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

TH

THEORY

OF

DREAMS, &c.

CHAPTER XII.

FARTHER ACCOUNT OF MODERN DREAMS.

"You will own, 'tis no small pleasure with mankind to make their dreams pass for realities; and that the love of truth is, in earnest, not half so prevalent as this passion for novelty and surprise, joined with a desire of making impression and being admired. However, I am so charitable still as to think, there is more of innocent delusion than voluntary imposture in the world; and that they who have most imposed on mankind, have been happy in a certain faculty of imposing first upon themselves; by which they VOL. II.

B

have a kind of salvo for their consciences, and are so much the more successful, as they can act their part more naturally, and to the life.-Shaftesbury's Moralists, p. 211.

MR. J. Beal, in a letter to Mr. Boyle, dated Yeovill, October 12, 1670, informs him, that when he was a scholar at Eton, the town was infected with the plague, so that the scholars fled away. Upon this occasion, as his father was deceased, his mother at a great distance, and his other relations at court, and he had no address to any other person, the house in which he abode being surrounded by the plague, even at the next doors; the nature and fame of the disease begat in him a great horror. " In this distress," continues he, "I had an impressive dream, consisting of very many particulars. I told it to all the family, and within three days we found every circumstance true, though very strange and seeming casual. I foretold who were sent for me, what coloured horses, and very sore accidents which fell on

them in the way. From that time to this T have regarded some dreams in myself, and others, not without advantage by the premonitions." All this admits of easy explication, and we have only to reflect, that nothing could be more natural, than that a boy, under great distress of mind, should fancy that he was sent for by those who were most likely to be employed, and even imagine the common accidents which eventually happened. The incidents of childhood excite strong impressions; they are magnified on reflection, and are exaggerated on every repetition of the tale.

The relation which Mr. Morrison gives on his travels must be noticed. "While I was at Prague," says he, "having one night sat up late drinking at a feast, the morning sunbeams gleaming in my face in my bed, I dreamed that a shadow passing by told me, that my father was dead: at which awaking all in a sweat, and affected with this dream, I arose and wrote the day, hour, and all circumstances in a paper book, which, with many

other things, I put into a barrel, and sent tø England; and being at Nuremburg, a merchant, well acquainted with me and my relations, told me my father died some months past. When I returned into England, four years after, I would not open the barrel, nor look into the book in which I had written this dream, till I called my sisters and other friends to be witnesses; when myself and they were astonished to see my dream answer the very day of my father's death."

The same gentleman saith thus also: "I may lawfully swear, that in my youth at Cambridge I had the like dream of my mother's death; when my brother Henry lying with me, early in the morning I dreamed that my mother passed by with a sad countenance, and told me, that she could not come to my commencement, I being within five months to proceed master of arts, and she having promised at that time to come to Cambridge. 'When I related this dream to my brother, both of us awaking together in a sweat, he

« السابقةمتابعة »