There are many simple modes of inducing slumber: I allude not to poppy and henbane, nor to the pillow of hops, which, in the case of the third George, was the charm that sealed up the lids of the king; but to other modes, such as a tedious recital, (something like my own dull prosing,) the gentle motion of a swing, a cot or cradle, the ripple of a stream, and the dashing of a waterfall, the waving of a fan, the caw of rooks, the hum of bees, the murmur of an Æolian harp—
CAST. So gracefully wound up in that quaint _morceau_, the “Fairy Queen,” when Archimago sends the spirit to fetch a dream from Morpheus—
“Cynthia still doth steepe In silver dew his ever-drooping head, Whiles sad night over him her mantle black doth spred.
And more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream, from high rocke tumbling downe, And ever dringling rain upon the loft, Mix’d with a murmuring winde, much like the soune Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune.”
“We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded by a sleep.” TEMPEST.
EV. In the transition _to_ and _from_ the repose of sleep, the mind is sinking into oblivion, and thought is fading, and the senses and sensation are overshadowed in their regress to insensibility: even instinct is well nigh a blank. This is the state of _slumber_. Then, I believe, and only then, are we ever wandering in the ideal labyrinth of DREAMS.
There is a curious calculation of Cabanis, that certain organs or senses of the body fall asleep at regular progressive periods; some, therefore, may be _active_ while others are _passive_, and in this interesting state, I may hint to you, consists the essence of a dream. It seems that in _dreamless_ sleep, the senses fall asleep altogether, as in the case of Plutarch’s friends, Thrasymenes and Cleon, and others who _never dreamed_.
ASTR. So there is some truth in the fanciful conceit of Cardanus, that “Sleep is the rest of the spirits,—waking their vehement motion, and dreaming their tremulous motion.”
CAST. And philosophy plumes herself on her wonderous intuition for this _discovery_. Let her blush, and kneel before the shrine of poesy. The poets, even of a ruder age than ours, have thought and written before you, Evelyn, and have unfolded these _arcana_. How doth Chaucer usher in his “Dreme?”—