I find out a lot about myself by sleeping. Dreams, they are who I am when I’m too tired to be me.
But old Anchises, in a flow'ry vale, Review'd his muster'd race, and took the tale: Those happy spirits, which, ordain'd by fate, For future beings and new bodies wait- With studious thought observ'd th' illustrious throng, In nature's order as they pass'd along: Their names, their fates, their conduct, and their care, In peaceful senates and successful war. He, when Aeneas on the plain appears, Meets him with open arms, and falling tears. "Welcome," he said, "the gods' undoubted race! O long expected to my dear embrace! Once more 't is giv'n me to behold your face! The love and pious duty which you pay Have pass'd the perils of so hard a way. 'T is true, computing times, I now believ'd The happy day approach'd; nor are my hopes deceiv'd. What length of lands, what oceans have you pass'd; What storms sustain'd, and on what shores been cast? How have I fear'd your fate! but fear'd it most, When love assail'd you, on the Libyan coast." To this, the filial duty thus replies: "Your sacred ghost before my sleeping eyes Appear'd, and often urg'd this painful enterprise. After long tossing on the Tyrrhene sea, My navy rides at anchor in the bay. But reach your hand, O parent shade, nor shun The dear embraces of your longing son!" He said; and falling tears his face bedew: Then thrice around his neck his arms he threw; And thrice the flitting shadow slipp'd away, Like winds, or empty dreams that fly the day.
Then he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled the dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start.
"No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I found nothing save Fairfax Rochester's pride; and that did not scare me, because I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, as it grew dark, the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now--wild and high--but 'with a sullen, moaning sound' far more eerie. I wished you were at home. I came into this room, and the sight of the empty chair and fireless hearth chilled me. For some time after I went to bed, I could not sleep--a sense of anxious excitement distressed me. The gale still rising, seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound; whether in the house or abroad I could not at first tell, but it recurred, doubtful yet doleful at every lull; at last I made out it must be some dog howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear. I thought, sir, that you were on the road a long way before me; and I strained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop--but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every moment."
56:10. His watchmen are all blind, they are all ignorant: dumb dogs not able to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams.
The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees--two formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in space or in one's own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes on the horizon. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,--against all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood which does not shudder and which does not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is conscious of something hideous, as though one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness. This penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister in the case of a child.
AUBREY, JOHN (1626-1697), English antiquary, was born at Easton Pierse or Percy, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, on the 12th of March 1626, his father being a country gentleman of considerable fortune. He was educated at the Malmesbury grammar school under Robert Latimer, who had numbered Thomas Hobbes among his earlier pupils, and at his schoolmaster's house Aubrey first met the philosopher about whom he was to leave so many curious and interesting details. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1642, but his studies were interrupted by the Civil War. In 1646 he became a student of the Middle Temple, but was never called to the bar. He spent much of his time in the country, and in 1649 he brought into notice the megalithic remains at Avebury. His father died in 1652, leaving to Aubrey large estates, and with them, unfortunately, complicated lawsuits. Aubrey, however, lived gaily, and used his means to gratify his passion for the company of celebrities and for every sort of knowledge to be gleaned about them. Anthony à Wood prophesied that he would one day break his neck while running downstairs after a retreating guest, in the hope of extracting a story from him. He took no active share in the political troubles of the time, but from his description of a meeting of the Rota Club, founded by James Harrington, the author of _Oceana_, he appears to have been a theorizing republican. His reminiscences on this subject date from the Restoration, and are probably softened by considerations of expediency. In 1663 he became a member of the Royal Society, and in the next year he met Joan Somner, "in an ill hour," he tells us. This connexion did not end in marriage, and a lawsuit with the lady complicated his already embarrassed affairs. He lost estate after estate, until in 1670 he parted with his last piece of property, Easton Pierse. From this time he was dependent on the hospitality of his numerous friends. In 1667 he had made the acquaintance of Anthony à Wood at Oxford, and when Wood began to gather materials for his invaluable _Athenae Oxonienses_, Aubrey offered to collect information for him. From time to time he forwarded memoranda to him, and in 1680 he began to promise the "Minutes for Lives," which Wood was to use at his discretion. He left the task of verification largely to Wood. As a hanger-on in great houses he had little time for systematic work, and he wrote the "Lives" in the early morning while his hosts were sleeping off the effects of the dissipation of the night before. He constantly leaves blanks for dates and facts, and many queries. He made no attempt at a fair copy, and, when fresh information occurred to him, inserted it at random. He made some distinction between hearsay and authentic information, but had no pretence to accuracy, his retentive memory being the chief authority. The principal charm of his "Minutes" lies in the amusing details he has to recount about his personages, and in the plainness and truthfulness that he permits himself in face of established reputations. In 1592 he complained bitterly that Wood had destroyed forty pages of his MS., probably because of the dangerous freedom of Aubrey's pen. Wood Was prosecuted eventually for insinuations against the judicial integrity of the earl of Clarendon. One of the two statements called in question was certainly founded on information provided by Aubrey. This perhaps explains the estrangement between the two antiquaries and the ungrateful account that Wood gives of the elder man's character. "He was a shiftless person, roving and magotic-headed, and sometimes little better than crased. And being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many letters sent to A.W. with follies and misinformations, which sometimes would guide him into the paths of error."[1] In 1673 Aubrey began his "Perambulation" or "Survey" of the county of Surrey, which was the result of many years' labour in collecting inscriptions and traditions in the country. He began a "History of his Native District of Northern Wiltshire," but, feeling that he was too old to finish it as he would wish, he made over his material, about 1695, to Thomas Tanner, afterwards bishop of St Asaph. In the next year he published his only completed, though certainly not his most valuable work, the _Miscellanies_, a collection of stories on ghosts and dreams. He died at Oxford in June 1697, and was buried in the church of St Mary Magdalene. Entry: AUBREY
Sickness among primitive races is conceived to be a material substance to be extracted, or an evil spirit to be driven away by incantation. Religion and medicine are thus at the beginning almost one and the same thing. In Anatolia, in the groups of villages (cf. Ramsay as above, i. 101) under the theocratic government of a central [Greek: ieron] or temple, the god Men Karou was the physician and saviour ([Greek: soter] and [Greek: sozon]) of his people. Priests, prophets and physicians were his ministers. He punished wrong-doing by diseases which he taught the penitent to cure. So elsewhere pollution, physical or moral, was chastened by disease and loss of property or children, and further ills were avoided by sacrifice and expiation and public warning. In the temple and out of this phase of thought grew up schools of medicine, in whose practice dreams and religious ritual retained a place. The newer gods, Asclepius and Apollo, succeeded the older local divinities; and the "sons" of Asclepius became a profession, and the temple with its adjacent buildings a kind of hospital. There were many temples of Asclepius in Greece and elsewhere, placed generally in high and salubrious positions. After ablution the patient offered sacrifices, repeating himself the words of the hymn that was chanted. Then, when night came on, he slept in the temple. In the early dawn he was to dream "the heavenly dream" which would suggest his cure; but if he did not dream, relations and others--officials at the temple--might dream for him. At dawn the priests or sons of Asclepius came into the temple and visited the sick, so that, in a kind of drama, where reality and appearance seemed to meet, the patients believed that they saw the god himself. The next morning the prescription and treatment were settled. At hand in the inn or guest-chambers of the temple the patient could remain, sleeping again in the temple, if necessary, and carrying out the required regimen. In the temple were votive tablets of cases, popular and awe-inspiring, and records and prescriptions, which later found their way into the medical works of Galen and others. At the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus was an inn ([Greek: katagogion]) with four courts and colonnades, and in all 160 rooms. (Cf. Pausanias ii. 171; and _Report, Archaeol. in Greece_, R.C. Bosanquet, 1899, 1900.) Entry: 1