274 ANT IE NT METAPHYSICS. Book IV. 



Not Titian s pencil cer could fo array. 

 So fleece ninth clouds, the pure aethereal /pace ; 

 Ne could it eerfuch melting forms difplay. 

 As loofe infloivery beds all languiJJnngly lay. 



Such Dreams a man of poetic genius will have, if his body be 

 not difeafed, nor Mind difordered by PafTion. But, if he be a phi- 

 lofopher of the higheft kind, whofe thoughts, as Milton fays, 

 * Commerce with the fkies,' he may enjoy io his Dreams a kind of 

 beatific vifion, fuch as is mentioned in a piece of very antient phi- 

 lofophy, entitled, ' The Chaldean Oracles *:' And I am perfuaded 

 that it was in Vifions or Dreams fuch as thefe, thatPlotinus andfomc 

 others of thofe myftical Platonifts of later times pretended to be 

 united with the Supreme God f. Of this every man may believe 

 what he thinks proper ; but I have no doubt that a man, fuch as I 

 have defcribed, will, in his Sleep, live in a world very different from 

 that he lives in while awake, and very much finer. 



On the other hand, if Men live intemperately, if their pleafures 

 are chiefly of the corporeal kind, their Imaginations, fleeping as 

 well as waking, will be filled with grofs and fenfual objeds ; and 

 their Dreams will be wild, broken, and diforderly ; and, as the dif- 

 orders of their Mind and Body increafe, their Dreams will become 

 moft terrible, fuch as the fame Poet defcribes. 



But 



• There is a colkaion of thefe Oracles made by Pletho, with a commentary, both 

 of him and Pfellus, upon them, publifhed in Paris in 1007, by one Johannes Op- 

 fopoaeus. See page 81. and 90. of that colleftion, where it is faid that the Philo- 

 fopher, in fuch Dreams, fees nothing that has form or fliape, but only a (hining 

 light. Synefius alfo fpeaks of men in their Dreams bein^ thus exalted to an imme- 

 diate communication with the Divinity. 



t See Vol. I. page 140. 



