An essay on various kinds of death, together with the just before and just after.
The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after being seen, humble and cringing, in the streets of a city for many years, at length, by some means or other, gets admittance into a rich man's mansion, and there dies, assuming state and striking awe into the breasts of those who had looked down on him.
To write a dream, which shall resemble the real course of a dream, with all its inconsistency, its strange transformations, which are all taken as a matter of course, its eccentricities and aimlessness, with nevertheless a leading idea running through the whole. Up to this old age of the world, no such thing ever has been written.
To allegorize life with a masquerade, and represent mankind generally as masquers. Here and there a natural face may appear.
With an emblematical divining-rod, to seek for emblematic gold,—that is, for truth,—for what of Heaven is left on earth.