Your pensive mind with pleasing images?
A dream sets free the captive; can restore
Lost fields to soldiers; to wreck’d merchants wealth.
In dreams the exile visits his sweet home.
And o’er the sparkling bowl relates at large
His past distresses to his wondering friends.
The lover, too, the sad forsaken lover.
May dream, and feign the falsest mistress true.”—Tate.
It has been truthfully observed, that half the life of even the most miserable is as unruffled as that of the most happy of men, for that portion is spent in sleep—in the enjoyment of quiet repose—in peace and in security. A quiet reliance upon Providence, a conscience void of offence, temperance and regularity, every person can command, and these are the only requisites to secure sound and pleasant sleep and pleasant dreams. In these every one has happy moments—and in this life we cannot expect more than transient gleams of sunshine—a mixture of sours and sweets, whose agreeable or distasteful flavor depends much more upon ourselves than is commonly imagined.
Addison, the virtuous and religious Addison; often dwells in his writings upon dreams—published many of his stories as the result of them—sometimes treated of them seriously and earnestly, and at others brought all his powers of ridicule into play to expose their absurdity. “Dreams,” he says, “are an instance of that agility and perfection which is natural to the faculties of the mind, where they are disengaged from the body. The soul is clogged and retarded in her operations when she acts in conjunction with a companion that is so heavy and unwieldy in her motions. But in dreams it is wonderful to observe with what sprightliness and alacrity she exerts herself. The flow of speech makes unpremeditated harangues, or converses readily in languages that they are but little acquainted with. The grave abound in pleasantries, the dull in repartee and points of wit. There is not a more painful action of the mind than invention; yet in dreams it works with that ease and activity that we are not sensible of when the faculty is employed. For instance, I believe every one, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters, in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the compositions of another.” In another part of the same paper he gives the two following problems: “Supposing a man, always happy in his dreams and miserable in his waking thoughts, and that his life was equally divided between them—whether he would be more happy or miserable? Were a man a king in his dreams and a beggar awake, and dreamed as consequentially, and in continued unbroken schemes, as he thinks when awake—whether he would be in reality a king or a beggar, or rather, whether he would not be both?”