There was in the university of Gottingen the physician Walderstein. He was a constant dreamer, and this is his account of one of these illusions. “I dreamt that I was condemned to the stake, and during my execution I was perfectly composed, and indeed _reasoned_ calmly on the mode in which it was conducted;—whispering to myself, ‘Now I am burning, and presently I shall be converted into a cinder.’” It seems that he was dissatisfied with his dream, on account of this apathetic calmness; and he concludes: “I was fearful I should become all thought, and no feeling.” _I_ would say, he was all illusion and no judgment.
It is but lately that I dreamed I was reciting a metaphysical poem, which my vanity whispered me possessed a deal of merit. During the recitation I thought there was a turning up of noses, and of tongues into cheeks—a very expressive sign of incredulity and satire. At length a general murmur ran through the assembly that it was a complete “boggle.” Nothing daunted, I assured them that it was a very abstruse passage, and the fault was in the shallow comprehension of my audience. Need I add, that I should blush at such an evasion in my waking judgment?
How different also is our dream from a waking thought, in which we can control the fancy!
If in the dream the chain be abruptly broken, the waking mind does not then carry on the train, and if any thing occur in waking, associating with the dream, to join the broken link, the dream is not completed, but the ideas _revert_, or are retraced, to their source; and if any idea at the origin of the dream be _re-excited_, there will be no consistent continuance of it beyond the dream itself, or, if there be, it will bear the stamp of reasoning, losing all connexion with the illusion. On the contrary, if we read as we are falling asleep, we continue _in the dream_ the subject of our study, but _erroneously_; and if we then start and wake, we shall find that at the moment of slumber we had _changed the integrity_ of our thinking. Be assured, then, that Virgil is correct in this—
“She seems alone To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown, _Guideless_ and _dark_.”
CAST. And now, Sir Knight, deign to look on the other side of the shield. Answer me with sincerity,—if your words be true, is not this a high privilege of imaginative minds, to lift themselves out of the gloomy atmosphere of this world of woe; to soar with fancy, not to drudge with fact? How do I envy a romantic dreamer, like him of whom Master Edmund Spenser writes,—