“Though both my mind and body were in a tolerable state of sanity all this time, and these phantasms became so familiar to me that they did not cause me the slightest uneasiness, and I even sometimes amused myself with surveying them, and spoke jocularly of them to my physician and my wife; I yet did not neglect to use proper medicines, especially when they began to haunt me the whole day, and even at night as soon as I awaked.”
“At last it was agreed that leeches should be again applied to me, as formerly; which was actually done, April 20th 1791, at eleven o’clock in the morning. No person was with me besides the surgeon; but during the operation my chamber was crowded with human phantasms of all descriptions. This continued uninterruptedly till about half an hour after four o’clock, just when my digestion commenced. I then perceived that they began to move more slowly. Soon after, their colour began to fade, and at seven o’clock they were entirely white. But they moved very little, though the forms were as distinct as before: growing however by degrees more obscure; yet not fewer in number as had generally been the case. The phantoms did not withdraw, nor did they vanish; which previous to that time had frequently happened. They now seemed to dissolve in the air; while fragments of some of them continued visible a considerable time. About eight o’clock the room was entirely cleared of my fantastic visitors.”
“Since this time I have felt, twice or three times a sensation as if these phantasms were going to re-appear; without however actually seeing any thing. The same sensation surprised me just before I drew up this account, while I was examining some papers relative to these apparitions which I had drawn up in the year 1791.”
This is one of the extreme cases of delusion, which a man of strong natural judgment has ventured to record of himself. Cardan, who fancied himself visited by supernatural impulses, never produced so marvellous a story.
Cardan, however, describes himself as amused, in his youth, with recollected images, similar to those which I have described, in the first chapter. Before he left his bed, in the morning, he saw a succession of figures, composed of brazen rings, like links of mail, (though he had never seen mail-armour at that time,) moving, in a circular direction, upwards, from right to left, till they disappeared. Castles, houses, animals, trees, men in different dresses; trumpeters, appearing to blow their trumpets, though no sound was heard; soldiers, and landscapes; all passed before him, in circular compartments. “Videbam ego imagines diversas quasi corporum æreorum. (Constare enim videbantur ex annulis minimis, quales sunt loricarum, cum tamen loricas nunquam eousque vidissem) ab imo lecti angulo dextro ascendentes per semicirculum, lenté et in sinistrum occidentes, ut prorsus non apparerenti Areium, domorum, animalium, equorum cum equitibus, herbarum, arborum, instrumentorum musicorum, hominum diversorum habituum, vestiumque variarum, tubicines præcipue cum tubis quasi sonantibus, nulla tamen vox aut sonus exandiebatur: præterea milites, populos, arva, formasque corporum usque ad hune diem mihi invisas: lucos et sylvas, aliaque quorum non memini, quandoque multarum rerum congeriem simul irruentium, non tamen ut se confunderent, sed ut ut properarent. Erant autem perspicua illa, sed non ita ut proinde esset, ac si non adessent, nec densa ut oculo pervia non essent. Sed ipsi circuli opaci erant spatia prorsus perspicua.”[8]
Ben Jonson, also, falls under this description, from the Heads of Conversation, published by the executors of Drummond of Hawthornden, who have deprived posterity of Drummond’s original account of these interesting interviews. Jonson told him, that “when the king came to England, about the time that the plague was in London, he being in the country, at Sir Robert Cotton’s house with old Cambden, he saw in a vision his eldest son, then a young child and at London, appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came unto Mr. Cambden’s chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension, at which he should not be dejected. In the mean time there came letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him, he said, of a manly shape, and of that growth he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”
“He said, that he had spent a whole night in looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians fight in his imagination.”[9]
Such sights as youthful poets dream,
On summer’s eve, by haunted stream!
That extraordinary, and much misrepresented character, the Maid of France, appears to have been a visionary of this kind, and to have been enthusiastically sincere in her belief of supernatural communications. The ancient memoirs of this heroine, published by Denys Godefroy, convey a high idea of her sagacity and elevation of mind. When she induced Charles VII. to the bold attempt of procuring his inauguration at Rheims, she described the celestial voice as having said to her, while she was engaged in prayer, Fille, va, va, je seray a ton ayde, va.