INTENSE IMPRESSION.—MEMORY.
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Dendy, Walter Cooper
Then Richmond exclaims: “My heart is very jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream.” While the coward conscience of Richard thus speaks:
“By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard,
Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers.”
Aufidius thus recounts his slumbering memory of the prowess of Coriolanus:
“This happy Roman, this proud Marcius, haunts me.
Each troubled night, when slaves and captives sleep,
Forgetful of their chains, I in my dreams
Anew am vanquish’d; and beneath his sword
With horror sinking, feel a tenfold death —
The death of honour.”
And yet another:
“Tho’ thy slumber may be deep,
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep.
There are shades that will not vanish;
There are thoughts thou canst not banish.”
And, lastly, Crabbe, in his “World of Dreams:”
“That female fiend, why is she there?
Alas! I know her. Oh, begone!
Why is that tainted bosom bare?
Why fixed on me that eye of stone?
Why have they left us thus alone?
I saw the deed——”
Astr. You will drown us in a flood of Helicon, fair lady, if you thus dole out the thoughts of these maudlin poets. The records of national and domestic history, the dreams of the conqueror of thousands, and of the midnight assassin, are replete with incidents, if we will search for them, more impressive, ay, and more romantic, than all this rhyming; and from the legends of history alone I could select a legion of dreaming mysteries, which would dissolve all these fine-spun theories of Evelyn, regarding the essence, as he terms it, of the dream. He must adopt a clearer course, in showing us his causes, than by harping on this favourite theme of memory; and we must listen through another moonlight, ere we be made wiser, by the unfolding of this grand secret of visions.