Sleep and dreams : two lectures delivered at the Bristol Literary & Philosophical Institution / by John Addington Symonds.

  • Symonds, John Addington, 1807-1871.
Date:
[1857]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sleep and dreams : two lectures delivered at the Bristol Literary & Philosophical Institution / by John Addington Symonds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    those already in operation, strengthening the sense of duty, or some passionate enthusiasm. Thought of at first as a bare possibility, amusing the mind that contemplates it, it becomes familiar. Circumstances happen that bring it nearer to a probability, and at last the dreamer’s own will converts it into a certainty. Oliver Cromwell is said to have had a remarkable dream when a boy. “ He had laid himself down one day,” it is said, “ too fatigued with his youthful sports to hope for sleep, when suddenly the curtains of his bed were slowly withdrawn by a gigantic figure, which bore the aspect of a woman, and which, gazing at him silently for awhile, told him that he should, before his death, be the greatest man in England. He remembered, when he told the story, that the figure had not made mention of the word King.* Forty years of the life of this wonderful man passed without any occurrence that we can imagine likely to have reminded him of this incident as anything but a dream. By and by, in his fierce struggles with the regal power, the phantom might have passed before his mind, and still, perhaps, only raised a smile oh. the patriot’s stern countenance. At Naseby the phantom might have worn a more solemn aspect,—and at Worcester it might have grown into a spirit, and the voice into an oracle. Perhaps, on the floor of the House of Commons, when, by the breath of his mouth, he drove the Long Parliament from tho very scene of his anti-monarchical ' exertions, his soul at last became fully obedient to the spell 1 of the idea, which had now reached its full development. ' His strong will, then become dominant over every other, may have become the servant of his thought. He had realized ■ • Forster’s Cromwell, in the Lives of British Statesmen.