"The heavy body loaded by excess The sympathetic mind will oft depress, Weigh down the spirit of celestial birth. And chain its glorious faculties to earth."

Horace. Sat. i. L. ii. Corpus onust.

Although it has appeased in the preceding chapters that dreams are to be regarded as the creation of the mind, it has been admitted -that the feelings of the body often interfere in suggesting sensations which affect the character of our thoughts, and are productive of reflections correspondent to the impressions excited.

Much of the composure and satisfaction of our dreams was attributed by the ancients to the sobriety of our bodies when committed to sleep, and no dreams that could be subservient to divination were supposed to arise from the fumes of indigestion. Socrates is represented by Plato to have remarked, that when the intelligent spirit of the mind languishes in a profound sleep, and the fiercer and more sensual affections intoxicated, as it were, by immoderate food exult in ascendancy; the ideas that present themselves are devoid of reason, and full of incestuous and evil fancies; but when we take rest after wholesome and moderate food, that part of the mind in which there is reason and judgment being erect and capacious of good thoughts, and the body being neither distressed by want, nor loaded by satiety, the mind shines forth fresh and lively, and tranquil, and sure dreams arise*. On similar consideration dreams which obtain towards the morning, as not likely to be the suggestions of heavy sensations, were regarded as most clear and prophetic.

• Cicero de Divin.

In a composed state of the body there is certainly a more even tenor in our dreams, which resemble the calm reflections of our waking thoughts in tranquillity; the same scenes are renewed, and the same particulars recur. Unusual dreams argue often not only a disturbed state of mind, but a body gross and abounding with humour; and hence it is that physicians, as did particularly Hippocrates, with some degree of truth deduce conclusions concerning the temperament of our body from the nature and cast of our dreams. It is notorious that persons drunk, or in fevers, contemplate horrid spectres in their sleep; those who are oppressed with bilious melancholy behold triste and cadaverous figures; those whose constitution is choleric dream of fire and slaughter; those who are phlegmatic, of water, and those who are sanguine, of merriment. Levinus Lemnius was, however, perhaps, too fanciful when he affirmed, that to dream of wallowing in filth and mud argued fetid and putrid humours; but to dream of odoriferous and fragrant flowers proved that pure and wholesome juices predominated*.

Suck theories must not be too much depended upon, since it is certain that our imagination, even in its most sober and confined exertions, frames every variety of circumstance, and wanders through every change of scene.

"Fantastic Morpheas! Ten thousand mimic fancies fleet around him, Subtle as air, and various in their natures ; Each has ten thousand thousand different forms, In which they dance confused before the sleeper, While the vain god laughs to behold what pain Imaginary evils give mankind† ."

We may believe the account of Apuleius, who tells us, that when he retired somewhat intoxicated, the night produced grievous and fierce images ‡; without, in general, considering the body as the principal agent in the production of dreams, as they certainly may originate independent of its influence in the sole recollection and energies of the mind, which in its ordinary speculation revives the days of childhood, recalls the friends and events of distant periods by sudden and unexpected starts unconnected with present sensations, places them in circumstances in which we never have beheld them, and in which they never have existed, blends and diversifies particulars fantastically with novel combinations, and metamorphoses persons into a thousand forms, who with Protean versatility appear to practise the frauds of every shape.

• De Occult Nat Mirac. L. ii. C. S.

† Rowe's Ulysses.

‡ Plut. Sympos. L viii. Quest. 10.

"Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes, When monarch Reason sleeps then mimic wakes, Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A court of coolers, and a mob of kings. Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad, Both are the reasonable soul run mad; And many monstrous things in dreams we see That never were, nor are, nor ere can be.

Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, The night restores our actions done by day, As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.

Sometimes forgotten things long cast behind Rush forward to the brain and come to mind, The nurses legends are for truths received, And the man dreams but what the boy believed In short the farce of dreams is of a piece, Chimeras all, and more absurd or less*."

If Mr. Hobbes speak of dreams universally, the author does not agree with him, that different dreams are to be attributed to different distempers, though he feel no inclination to refute the position, that lying cold may produce dreams of fear, as it would unquestionably produce the symptom of fear, shivering, and chattering teeth. We must allow for poetical representation when we read that

"All dreams Are from repletion and complect ion bred From rising fumes of undigested food. And noxious humours that infest the blood. When choler overflows, then dreams are bred Of flames, and all the families of red;

* Dryden from Chaucer's Tale of the Cock and Fox.

Red dragons and red beasts in sleep we view, For humours are distinguished by their hue. From hence we dream of war and warlike things. And wasps and hornets with their double stings. Choler adust congeals our blood with fear, Then black bulls toss us, and black devils tear. In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound, With rheums oppress'd we sink, in rivers drown'd; The dominating humour makes the dream*."