60 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



lead the Greeks to battle, he does not represent him as disposing the 

 monarch's mind by any exertion of supernatural power, but dis- 

 patches the shadow of Nestor to present itself to his mind in a 

 dream: 



" Swift as the word, the vain illusion fled, 

 Descends, and hovers o*er Atrides* head, 

 Clothed in the figure of the Pylian sage, 

 Renown'd for wisdom, and rever'd for age ; 

 Around his temples spreads bis golden wing — 

 And thus the flattering dream deceives the king.** 



The imagination of the poet is exercised in strict subservience to the 

 philosophical theories of his day, which were revived in the schools 

 of the Epicureans.* 



It is strange, that at so late a period as that in which Baxter, the 



* The theory of Lucretius, which was compounded from those of Epicu_ 

 rus and Democritus, is extremely curious and speculative. Dreams and 

 spectral illusions were both explained by it, as being produced by 



" Forms that, like pellicles, when once thrown off 



Clear from the surface of whate'er exists, 



Float unrestrained throui^h scther. Fearful these. 



Oft through the day, when obvious to the sense ; 



But chief at midnight, when in dreams we view 



Dire shapes and apparitions, from the light 



Shut out for erer ; and each languid limb 



With horror gaunt convulsing in its sleep." 



Consistently with the doctrine of the perpetual emanation of pellicles, or 

 images from every existing object, this philosopher supposed that such kind» 

 of images are incessantly thrown forth also from the corses of the dead, after 

 their interment : but so thin is the membrane ejected, that it passes with as 

 much ease and as little injury through the surrounding coffin and superin- 

 cumbent earth or marble, as light passes through glass. In the day-time we 

 are generally prevented from noticing these floating forms, hy the more 

 forcible and direct assault of the images of bodies that immediately surround 

 us, which attract our notice in a superior degree r occasionally, however, when 

 we are abstracted from the noise and bustle of the world in solitude and 

 quiet, the eye, or the mind itself— to which the eye is only the avenue, be- 

 comes sensible of their presence : and it was upon this principle that Cassius 

 accounted to Brutus for the apparition that stood before him in his tent, pre- 

 vious to the battle of Pharsalia. In the silence of midnight and of sleep, we 

 are still more susceptible of these impulses : the eye is, it is true, at this pe- 

 riod, closed, and all is darkness around us; but, for the very reason that this 

 filmy emanation is capable of piercing through the coffin and sepulchre in 

 which the corse is confined that ejects it, is it capable, also, of insinuating 

 itself through all the pores of the body, till it reach and stimulate the very 

 soul itself, without the exercise of its external organs of sense. From these 

 ideal circumstances were deduced and developed all the phenomena of 

 dreams — Lucretius, De Rerum Natur& ; translated, with copious notes and 

 illustrations, by J. M. Good, M. D. London, 1805, 



