can make of dreams is observation, and by that, our own correction or encouragement. For 'tis not doubtable but that the mind is working in the dullest depth of sleep. I am confirmed by Claudian. Omnia quæ sensu volvuntur vota diurno, Me quoque Musarum studium, sub nocte silenti, Day thoughts, transwinged from th' industrious All seem re-acted in the night's dumb rest. Dreams do sometimes call us to a recognition of our inclinations, which print the deeper in so undisturbed times. I could wish men to give them their consideration but not to allow them their trust, though sometimes 1 Panegyricus de sexto consulatus Honorii Augusti, 1 ff. 'tis easy to pick out a profitable moral. Antiquity had them in much more reverence and did oft account them prophesies, as is easily found in the sacred volume; and among the heathen nothing was more frequent. Astyages had two, of his daughter Mandana, the vine and her urine.1 Calphurnia of her Cæsar,2 Hecuba of Paris, and almost every Prince among them had his fate showed in interpreted dreams. Galen tells of one that dreamed his thigh was turned to stone, when soon after it was struck with a dead palsy.-The aptness of the humors to the like effects might suggest something to the mind, then apt to receive. So that I doubt not but either to preserve health or amend the life, dreams may, to a wise observer, be of special benefit. I would neither depend upon any to incur a prejudice, nor yet cast them all away in a prodigal neglect and scorn. I find it of one that having long been troubled with the paining spleen, that he dreamt if he opened a certain vein between two of his fingers, he should be cured; which he, awaked, did and mended. But indeed, I would rather believe this, than be drawn to practice after it. These plain predictions are more rare, foretellings used to be wrapped in more obscure folds; and now, that art lost, Christianity hath settled us to less inquisition; 'tis for a Roman soothsayer to read those darker spirits of the night and tell that still dictator, his dream of copulation with his mother signified his subjecting the world to himself. 'Tis now so out of use, that I think it not to be recovered. And were it not for the power of the Gospel in crying down the vains of men, it would appear a wonder how a science so pleasing to humanity, should fall so quite to ruin. 1 HERODOTUS, I, 107–8. 2 PLUTARCH, Life of Caesar, ch. 63. OF POETS AND POETRY SURELY he was a little wanton with his leisure, that first invented poetry. 'Tis but a play which makes words dance in the evenness of a cadency; yet without doubt, being a harmony, it is nearer to the mind than prose, for that itself is a harmony in height. But the words being rather the drossy part, conceit I take to be the principal. And here, though it disgresseth from truth, it flies above her, making her more rare by giving curious raiment to her nakedness. The name the Grecians gave the men that wrote thus, showed how much they honored it; they called them Makers. And had some of them had power to put their conceits in act, how near would they have come to deity. And for the virtues of men, they rest not on the bare demeanor, but slide into imagination, so proposing things above us, they kindle the reader to wonder and imitation. And certainly, poets that write thus, Plato never meant to banish. His own practice shows he excluded not all. He was content to hear Antimachus recite his poem, when all the herd had left him;1 and he himself wrote both tragedies and other pieces. Perhaps he found them a little too busy with his gods; and he being the first that made philosophy divine and rational, was modest in his own beginnings. Another name they had of honor, too, and that was Vates. Nor know I how to distinguish between the prophets and poets of Israel. What is Jeremiah's Lamentation, but a kind of Sapphic elegy? David's Psalms are not only poems but songs, snatches and raptures of a flaming spirit. And this indeed I observe to the honor of poets; I never found them covetous or scrapingly base. The Jews had not two such kings in all their catalogue, as Salomon and his 1 PLUTARCH, Life of Lysander, ch. 18. father, poets both. There is a largeness in their souls beyond the narrowness of other men; and why may we not then think, this may embrace more both of heaven and God? I cannot but conjecture this to be the reason that they, most of them, are poor; they find their minds so solaced with their own flights that they neglect the study of growing rich; and this, I confess again, I think, turns them to vice and unmanly courses. Besides, they are for the most part mighty lovers of their palates, and this is known an impoverisher. Antigonus, in the tented field, found Antagoras cooking of a conger himself.1 And they all are friends to the grape and liquor, though I think many, more out of a ductile nature and their love to pleasant company, than their affection to the juice alone. They are all of free natures, and are the truest definition of that philosopher's man, which gives him animal risibile. Their grossest fault is that you may conclude them sensual, yet this does not touch them all. Ingenious for the most part they are. I know there be some rhyming fools; but what have they to do with poetry? When Sallust would tell us, that Sempronia's wit was not ill, says he,-Potuit versus facere, et jocum movere; 2 She could make a verse and break a jest. Something there is in it more than ordinary in that it is all in such measured language as may be marred by reading. I laugh heartily at Philoxenus his jest, who passing by, and hearing some Masons missensing his lines (with their ignorant sawing of them) falls to breaking their bricks amain; they ask the cause, and he replies, they spoil his work, and he theirs.3 Certainly, a worthy poet is so far from being a fool that there is some wit required in him that shall be able to 1 ERASMUS, Apothegms (Ed. Leyden, 1547), p. 359. 2 Bellum Catilinae, ch. 25. * ERASMUS, Apothegms, p. 678. read him well, and without the true accent, numbered poetry does lose of the gloss. It was a speech becoming an able poet of our own, when a lord read his verses crookedly, and he beseeched his Lordship not to murder him in his own lines. He that speaks false Latin, breaks Priscian's head: but he that repeats a verse ill, puts Homer out of joint. One thing commends it beyond oratory, it ever complieth to the sharpest judgments. He is the best orator that pleaseth all, even the crowd and clowns. But poetry would be poor, that they should all approve of. If the learned and judicious like it, let the throng bray. These, when 'tis best, will like it the least. So they contemn what they understand not, and the neglected poet falls by want. Calpurnius makes one complain the misfortune, Frange puer calamos, et inanes desere Musas: Two things are commonly blamed in poetry; nay, you take away that, if them; and these are lies and flattery. But I have told them in the worst words; for 'tis only to the shallow insight that they appear thus. Truth may dwell more clearly in an allegory or a moralled fable than in a bare narration. And for flattery, no man 1 CALPURNIUS SICULUS, Eclogue IV, 23. |