"Processit longe flammantia mœnia mundi."
"His vigorous and active mind was hurl'd
Beyond the flaming limits of the world."—Creech.
In the former part of the dialogue, his poetical coruscations appeared only as brilliant sparks thrown off by the rapidity of the machinery which he worked for a useful end and for a definite purpose; his vivid imagination may now be compared to a display of fire-works, which dazzle and confound without enlightening the senses, and leave the spectator in still more profound darkness.
His Second Dialogue, entitled "Discussions connected with the Vision in the Colosæum," may be considered as a commentary upon the views he had unfolded; and a more appropriate spot, perhaps, could not have been selected for a conversation upon the progress of civilization, than the summit of Vesuvius, from which, to adopt the language of Ambrosio, "We see not only the power and activity of man as existing at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the steam-boat departing from Palermo, but we may likewise view scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and as it were make us live with the generations of past ages."
The author, who assumes throughout this dialogue the name of Philalethes, after having been duly rallied by his friends on the subject of his vision, thus expresses himself:—"I will acknowledge that the vision in the Colosæum is a fiction; but the most important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of space, under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin and progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I had many years ago; and it was in the reverie which happened when you quitted me in the Colosæum, that I wove all these thoughts together, and gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.—I do not say that they are strictly to be considered as an accurate representation of my waking thoughts; for I am not quite convinced that dreams are always the representations of the state of the mind, modified by organic diseases or by associations. There are certainly no absolutely new ideas produced in sleep; yet I have had more than one instance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinations occurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on my feelings, my imagination, and my health."
Philalethes now relates a fact to which his preceding observation more immediately referred; he anticipates unbelief,—but he declares that he mentions nothing but a simple fact.
"Almost a quarter of a century ago, I contracted that terrible form of typhus fever known by the name of jail fever,—I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons of the metropolis.[118] My illness was severe and dangerous; as long as the fever continued, my dreams and deliriums were most painful and oppressive; but when weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but, in fact, my mind was peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual conversation."
Ambrosio and Onuphrio very naturally suggest that this could have been no other than the image of some favourite maiden which had haunted his imagination; but Philalethes rejects with indignation such an explanation of the vision. "I will not," he exclaims, "allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point, till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful maiden fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of the narrative: ten years after,—twenty years after my first illness, at a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady, which for many years threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my visionary female; and to her kindness and care, I believe, I owe what remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my guardian genius during the illness of my youth."
The reader will probably agree with Onuphrio, in seeing in this history nothing beyond the influence of an imagination excited by disease.