Chapter V: A. I

SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP.

If a dream should come in now to make you afear'd,
With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard,
Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes,
And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose?

BEN JONSON.

The wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in John Bunyan hath not explained. Some have conceited that unembodied spirits have access to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (_exuviæ scilicet rerum, vel effluvia_, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain the _Fata Morgana_) the atomists I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies,

_Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur_[1]

assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from a cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse;—(I know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism); and the soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been there.—Faugh!

[Footnote 1: Lucretius.]

Whether then my spirit that night found its way out at the nose, (for I sleep with my mouth shut) and actually sallied out seeking adventures; or whether the spectrum of the Horse floated into my chamber; or some benevolent genius or dæmon assumed the well-known and welcome form; or whether the dream were merely a dream,—

_si fuè en espiritu, ò fuè
en cuerpo, no sè; que yo
solo sè, que no lo sè;_[2]

so however it was that in the visions of the night I mounted Nobs. Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's wooden steed; nor

Of that wonderous horse of brass
Whereon the Tartar King did pass;

nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a night-journey that ever man bestrode. Tell me not even of Pegasus! I have ridden him many a time; by day and by night have I ridden him; high and low, far and wide, round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know all his earth-paces, and his sky-paces. I have tried him at a walk, at an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand-gallop, at full gallop and at full speed. I have proved him in the _manége_ with single turns and the _manége_ with double turns, his bounds, his curvets, his _pirouettes_, and his _pistes_, his _croupade_ and his _balotade_, his gallop-galliard and his capriole. I have been on him when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a bittern with a strong spiral flight, round, round and round, and upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he has gone full sail, or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs.

[Footnote 2: Calderon.]

Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see?—What did we do?—Or rather what did we not see! and what did we not perform!