1832.] Monthly Review of Literature. 241 



which I possess any knowledge, have, in their characters no matter when their 

 era, or where their scenes of action are laid the manners, feelings, institutions, 

 and usages, which belong to the age and country of their respective authors." 

 In support of this sweeping and paradoxical assertion, the author adduces a 

 passage from the Revue Encyclopedique, in which the demand for these pro- 

 prieties in dramas is styled " an extra condition now imposed upon dramatic 

 poets." " Local verity," to use the reviewer's phrase, we presume has been 

 acknowledged both by critics and poets, as a sine qua non in dramatic poetry 

 ever since the time when Melpomene was worshipped in a waggon. 



" Si dicentis erunt fortunis absona dicta 

 llomani tollent equites peditesque Cachinnum. 

 Intererit multum Davasne loquatur an heros 

 Colchus, an Assyrius ; Thebis nutritus, an Argis." 



When Mr. Pennie too says, that in Shakspeare's plays " there is little or no 

 due keeping, no vivid colouring of manners and national customs," he is unad- 

 visedly, we think, setting up a high standard indeed of merit in the walk of 

 literature he now adventures in ; and it seems like a hectoring challenge to 

 critics to put his plays to the most rigid test in this particular. It appears to 

 us, that the present dramas have as little pretension to the credit of " due 

 keeping" in " national customs and local verity" as any we ever read ; and we 

 would be bound to point out in them nearly as gross anachronisms as the quo- 

 tation of Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida, or the tricks of Robin Good- Fellow 

 at Athens. In the very preface, and almost in the same page in which he 

 inveighs against ignorance of national custom, &c., we are told that senatus 

 consultum is "assemblies of wise men and elders!" p. xiii. In the first play, 

 Arixina, the marriage between Claudia, a Roman patrician lady, with Cymbaline, 

 a foreign barbarian, and King of Britain, is celebrated in the Roman camp a 

 custom not in very " good keeping" with the national forms of the Romans, 

 who had a law non erat cum externo connubium without permission from the 

 senate. It was not till the time of Caracalla that freedom of intermarriage came 

 in vogue. Again, marriage was not a religious ceremony at Rome, except by the 

 obsolete form called Confarreatio. Neither can we imagine Britons in the time 

 of the Roman invasion talking of tigers (p. 29), the "dark centre" of the 

 earth (88), or "chivalry" (116); or little drummer-boys beating their reveille 

 and "go to bed, Tom," in the camp of Csesar. (Vid. p. 25). 



THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS AND OTHER TRANSIENT ILLUSIONS, BY 

 WALTER C. DENDY. 



THE "visions of the night" are a subject of interest to most individuals, from 

 the venerable maiden, who duly recounts every morning over her bohea, the 

 shadowy visitants that have enlivened the sad solitude of her slumbers, to the 

 profound psychologist who burns to break through the veil with which sleep 

 partially conceals the nightly revels of the mind. We conceive that all such 

 persons will feel indebted to Mr. Dendy for his ingenious explanation of " the 

 phenomena of dreams." Many of the remarks are highly amusing, and, we con- 

 fess, novel to us ; for instance, that on the influence of " posture " on the mind. 

 " The posture of supination will unavoidably induce an increased flow of blood 

 to the brain, which, under certain states of this fluid, is so essential to the pro- 

 duction of brilliant thoughts ; an end, indeed, attained so often by another mode, 

 the use of opium. Some persons always retire to bed when they wish to think" 

 (Pope is instanced). " I must also allow that some few individuals compose 

 best whilst they are walking, but this peripatetic exertion also is calculated to 

 produce what we term determination of blood to the head. The most remark- 

 able instance of the power of position in influencing mental energy is that of a 

 German student, who was accustomed to study and compose, with his head rest- 

 ing on the ground, and his feet elevated and supported against a wall." p. 53. 

 En passant what a profound thinker must Grimaldi have been who walked so 



M. M. Series. VOL. XIII, No. 74. R 



