COMPOSITION IN DREAMS.
Condorcet is said to have attained the conclusion of some of his most abstruse unfinished calculations in his dreams. Franklin makes a similar admission concerning some of his political projects, which in his waking moments sorely puzzled him. Herschel composed the following lines in a dream:—
“Throw thyself on thy God, nor mock him with feeble denial;
Sure of his love, and, oh! sure of his mercy at last;
Bitter and deep though the draught, yet drain thou the cup of thy trial,
And, in its healing effect, smile at the bitterness past.”
Goethe says in his Memoirs, “The objects which had occupied my attention during the day often reappeared at night in connected dreams. On awakening, a new composition, or a portion of one I had already commenced, presented itself to my mind.” Coleridge composed his poem of the Abyssinian Maid during a dream. Cockburn says of Lord Jeffrey:—“He had a fancy that though he went to bed with his head stuffed with the names, dates, and other details of various causes, they were all in order in the morning; which he accounted for by saying that during sleep they all crystallized round their proper centres.”