by Thomas Nashe
Children they seduce with garish objects, and toyish babies, abusing them many years with slight vanities. So that you see all their whole influence is but thin overcast vapours, flying clouds dispersed with the least wind of wit or understanding.
None of these spirits of the air or the fire have so much predominance in the night as the spirits of the earth and the water; for they feeding on foggy-brained melancholy engender thereof many uncouth terrible monsters. Thus much observe by the way, that the grossest part of our blood is the melancholy humour, which in the spleen congealed whose office is to disperse it, with his thick steaming fenny vapours casteth a mist over the spirit and clean bemasketh the fantasy.
And even as slime and dirt in a standing puddle engender toads and frogs and many other unsightly creatures, so this slimy melancholy humour, still still thickening as it stands still, engendreth many misshapen objects in our imaginations. Sundry times we behold whole armies of men skirmishing in the air: dragons, wild beasts, bloody streamers, blazing comets, fiery streaks, with other apparitions innumberable. Whence have all these their conglomerate matter but from fuming meteors that arise from the earth? So from the fuming melancholy of our spleen mounteth that hot matter into the higher region of the brain, whereof many fearful visions are framed. Our reason even like drunken fumes it displaceth and intoxicates, and yields up our intellective apprehension to be mocked and trodden under foot by every false object or counterfeit noise that comes near it. Herein specially consisteth our senses’ defect and abuse, that those organical parts, which to the mind are ordained ambassadors, do not their message as they ought, but, by some misdiet or misgovernment being distempered, fail in their report and deliver up nothing but lies and fables.
Such is our brain oppressed with melancholy, as is a clock tied down with too heavy weights or plummets; which as it cannot choose but monstrously go a-square or not go at all, so must our brains of necessity be either monstrously distracted or utterly destroyed thereby.
Lightly this extremity of melancholy never cometh, but before some notable sickness; it faring with our brains as with bees, who, as they exceedingly toil and turmoil before a storm or change of weather, so do they beat and toil and are infinitely confused before sickness.
Of the effects of melancholy I need not dilate, or discourse how many encumbered with it have thought themselves birds and beasts, with feathers and horns and hides; others, that they have been turned into glass; others, that if they should make water they should drown all the world; others, that they can never bleed enough.
Physicians in their circuit every day meet with far more ridiculous experience. Only it shall suffice a little by the way to handle one special effect of it, which is dreams.
A dream is nothing else but a bubbling scum or froth of the fancy, which the day hath left undigested; or an after-feast made of the fragments of idle imaginations.
How many sorts there be of them no man can rightly set down, since it scarce hath been heard there were ever two men that dreamed alike. Divers have written diversely of their causes, but the best reason among them all that I could ever pick out was this: that as an arrow which is shot out of a bow is sent forth many times with such force that it flieth far beyond the mark whereat it was aimed, so our thoughts, intensively fixed all the daytime upon a mark we are to hit, are now and then overdrawn with such force that they fly beyond the mark of the day into the confines of the night. There is no man put to any torment, but quaketh and trembleth a great while after the executioner hath withdrawn his hand from him. In the daytime we torment our thoughts and imaginations with sundry cares and devices; all the night-time they quake and tremble after the terror of their late suffering, and still continue thinking of the perplexities they have endured. To nothing more aptly can I compare the working of our brains after we have unyoked and gone to bed than to the glimmering and dazzling of a man’s eyes when he comes newly out of the bright sun into the dark shadow.
Even as one’s eyes glimmer and dazzle when they are withdrawn out of the light into darkness, so are our thoughts troubled and vexed when they are retired from labour to ease, and from skirmishing to surgery.
You must give a wounded man leave to groan while he is in dressing. Dreaming is no other than groaning, while sleep our surgeon hath us in cure.
He that dreams merrily is like a boy new breeched, who leaps and danceth for joy his pain is passed. But long that joy stays not with him, for presently after, his master, the day, seeing him so jocund and pleasant, comes and does as much for him again, whereby his hell is renewed.
No such figure20 as the first chaos whereout the world was extraught,21 as our dreams in the night. In them all states, all sexes, all places, are confounded22 and meet together.
Our cogitations run on heaps like men to part a fray where every one strikes his next fellow. From one place to another without consultation they leap, like rebels bent on a head.23 Soldiers just up and down24 they imitate at the sack of a city, which spare neither age nor beauty: the young, the old, trees, steeples and mountains, they confound in one gallimaufry.25
Of those things which are most known to us, some of us that have moist brains make to ourselves images of memory. On those images of memory whereon we build in the day, comes some superfluous humour of ours, like a jackanapes, in the night, and erects a puppet stage or some such ridiculous idle childish invention.
A dream is nothing else but the echo of our conceits26 in the day.
But otherwhile it falls out that one echo borrows of another; so our dreams, the echoes of the day, borrow of any noise we hear in the night.
As for example: if in the dead of the night there be any rumbling, knocking or disturbance near us, we straight dream of wars or of thunder. If a dog howl, we suppose we are transported into hell, where we hear the complaint of damned ghosts. If our heads lie double or uneasy, we imagine we uphold all heaven with our shoulders, like Atlas. If we be troubled with too many clothes, then we suppose the night mare rides us.
I knew one that was cramped, and he dreamed that he was torn in pieces with wild horses; and another, that having a black sant27 brought to his bedside at midnight, dreamt he was bidden to dinner at Ironmongers’ Hall.
Any meat that in the daytime we eat against our stomachs, begetteth a dismal dream. Discontent also in dreams hath no little predominance; for even as from water that is troubled, the mud dispersingly ascendeth from the bottom to the top, so when our blood is chased, disquieted and troubled all the light imperfect humours of our body ascend like mud up aloft into the head.
The clearest spring a little touched is creased with a thousand circles; as those momentary circles for all the world, such are our dreams.
When all is said, melancholy is the mother of dreams, and of all terrors of the night whatsoever. Let it but affirm it hath seen a spirit, though it be but the moonshine on the wall, the best reason we have cannot infringe it.
Of this melancholy there be two sorts: one that, digested by our liver, swimmeth like oil above water and that is rightly termed women’s melancholy, which lasteth but for an hour and is, as it were, but a copy of their countenance; the other sinketh down to the bottom like the lees of the wine, and that corrupteth all the blood and is the causer of lunacy. Well-moderated recreations are the medicine to both: surfeit or excessive study the causers of either.
There were gates in Rome out of which nothing was carried but dust and dung, and men to execution; so, many of the gates of our senses serve for nothing but to convey our excremental vapours and affrighting deadly dreams, that are worse than executioners unto us.
Ah, woe be to the solitary man that hath his sins continually about him, that hath no withdrawing place from the devil and his temptations.
Much I wonder how treason and murder dispense with the darkness of the night, how they can shrive themselves to it, and not rave and die. Methinks they should imagine that hell embraceth them round, when she overspreads them with her black pitchy mantle.
Dreams to none are so fearful, as to those whose accusing private guilt expects mischief every hour for their merit. Wonderful superstitious are such persons in observing every accident that befalls them; and that their superstition is as good as an hundred furies to torment them. Never in this world shall he enjoy one quiet day, that once hath given himself over to be her slave. His ears cannot glow, his nose itch, or his eyes smart, but his destiny stands upon her trial, and till she be acquitted or condemned he is miserable.
A cricket or a raven keep him forty times in more awe than God or the devil.
If he chance to kill a spider, he hath suppressed an enemy; if a spinner creep upon him, he shall have gold rain down from heaven. If his nose bleed, some of his kinsfolks is dead; if the salt fall right against him, all the stars cannot save him from some immediate misfortune.
The first witch was Proserpine,28 and she dwelt half in heaven and half in hell; half-witches are they that pretending any religion, meddle half with God and half with the devil. Meddling with the devil I call it, when ceremonies are observed which have no ground from divinity.
In another kind, witches may be said to meddle half with GOD and half with the Devil, because in their exorcisms, they use half scripture and half blasphemy.
The greatest and notablest heathen sorcerers that ever were, in all their hellish adjurations used the name of the one true and everliving God; but such a number of damned potestates29 they joined with him, that it might seem the stars had darkened the sun, or the moon was eclipsed by candlelight.
Of all countries under the sky, Persia was most addicted unto dreams. Darius, King of the Medes and Persians, before his fatal discomfiture, dreamt he saw an estrich30 with a winged crown overrunning the earth and devouring his jewel-coffer as if it had been an ordinary piece of iron. The jewel-coffer was by Alexander surprised,31 and afterward Homer’s works in it carried before him, even as the mace or purse is customably carried before our Lord Chancellor.
Hannibal dreamed a little before his death that he was drowned in the poisonous Lake Asphaltites,32 when it was presently his hap within some days’ distance, to seek his fate by the same means in a vault under the earth.
In India, the women very often conceive by devils in their sleep.
In Iceland, as I have read and heard, spirits in the likeness of one’s father or mother after they are deceased do converse with them as naturally as if they were living.
Other spirits like rogues they have among them, destitute of all dwelling and habitation, and they chillingly complain if a constable ask them Chevala33 in the night, that they are going unto Mount Hecla34 to warm them.
That Mount Hecla a number conclude to be hell mouth; for near unto it are heard such yellings and groans as Ixion,35 Titius,36 Sisyphus37 and Tantalus38 blowing all in one trumpet of distress could never conjoined bellow forth.
Bondmen in Turkey or in Spain are not so ordinarily sold as witches sell familiars there. Far cheaper may you buy a wind amongst them than you can buy wind39 or fair words in the Court. Three knots in a thread, or an odd40 grandam’s blessing in the corner of a napkin will carry you all the world over.
We when we frown knit our brows, but let a wizard there knit a noose or a riding snarl41 on his beard, and it is hail, storm and tempest a month after.
More might be spoken of the prodigies this country sends forth, if it were not too much erring from my scope. Whole islands they have of ice, on which they build and traffic as on the mainland.
Admirable, above the rest, are the incomprehensible wonders of the bottomless Lake Vether,42 over which no fowl flies but is frozen to death, nor any man passeth but he is senselessly benumbed like a statue of marble.
All the inhabitants round about it are deafened with the hideous roaring of his waters when the winter breaketh up, and the ice in his dissolving gives a terrible crack like to thunder, whenas out of the midst of it, as out of Mont-Gibell,43 a sulphureous stinking smoke issues, that wellnigh poisons the whole country.
A poison light on it, how come I to digress to such a dull, lenten, northern clime, where there is nothing but stock-fish, whetstones and cods’ heads? Yet now I remember me: I have not lost my way so much as I thought, for my theme is the terrors of the night, and Iceland is one of the chief kingdoms of the night, they having scarce so much day there as will serve a child to ask his father blessing. Marry, with one commodity they are blest: they have ale that they carry in their pockets like glue, and ever when they would drink, they set it on fire and melt it.
It is reported that the Pope long since gave them a dispensation to receive the sacrament in ale, insomuch as, for their uncessant frosts there, no wine but was turned to red emayle44 as soon as ever it came amongst them.
Farewell, frost: as much to say as ‘Farewell, Iceland’, for I have no more to say to thee.
I care not much if I dream yet a little more, and to say the troth, all this whole tractate is but a dream, for my wits are not half awaked in it; and yet no golden dream, but a leaden dream is it, for in a leaden standish45 I stand fishing all day, but have none of Saint Peter’s luck to bring a fish to the hook that carries any silver in the mouth. And yet there be of them that carry silver in the mouth too, but none in the hand; that is to say, are very bountiful and honourable in their words, but (except it be to swear indeed) no other good deeds come from them.
Filthy Italianate compliment-mongers they are who would fain be counted the Court’s Gloriosos, and the refined judges of wit; when if their wardrobes and the withered bladders of their brains were well searched, they have nothing but a few moth-eaten cod-piece suits, made against the coming of Mounsier,46 in the one, and a few scraps of outlandish proverbs in the other, and these alone do buckler them from the name of beggars and idiots. Otherwhile perhaps they may keep a coil47 with the spirit of Tasso, and then they fold their arms like braggarts, writhe their necks alla Neapolitano, and turn up their eye-balls like men entranced.
Come, come, I am entranced from my text, I wote well, and talk idly in my sleep longer than I should. Those that will harken any more after dreams, I refer them to Artimidorus, Synesius, and Cardan, with many others which only I have heard by their names, but I thank God had never the plodding patience to read, for if they be no better than some of them I have perused, every weatherwise old wife might write better.
What sense is there that the yoke of an egg should signify gold, or dreaming of bears, or fire, or water, debate and anger, that everything must be interpreted backward as witches say their Pater Noster, good being the character of bad, and bad of good?
As well we may calculate from every accident in the day, and not go about any business in the morning till we have seen on which hand the crow sits.
‘Oh Lord,’ I have heard many a wise gentlewoman say, ‘I am so merry and have laughed so heartily, that I am sure ere long to be crossed with some sad tidings or other’ – all one as if men coming from a play should conclude, Well, we have seen a comedy today, and therefore there cannot choose but be a tragedy tomorrow.’
I do not deny but after extremity of mirth follow many sad accidents, but yet those sad accidents, in my opinion, we merely pluck on with the fear of coming mischief, and those means we in policy most use to prevent it soonest enwrap us in it; and that was Satan’s trick in the old world of gentilism48 to bring to pass all his blind prophecies.
Could any men set down certain rules of expounding of dreams, and that their rules were general, holding in all as well as in some, I would begin a little to list to them; but commonly that which is portentive in a king is but a frivolous fancy in a beggar, and let him dream of angels, eagles, lions, griffons, dragons never so, all the augury under heaven will not allot him so much as a good alms.
Some will object unto me for the certainty of dreams, the dreams of Cyrus, Cambyses, Pompey, Caesar, Darius and Alexander. For those I answer that they were rather visions than dreams, extraordinarily sent from heaven to foreshow the translation49 of monar
chies.
The Greek and Roman histories are full of them, and such a stir they keep with their augurers and soothsayers, how they foretold long before by dreams and beasts’ and birds’ entrails the loss of such a battle, the death of such a captain or emperor, when, false knaves, they were all as prophet Calchas,50 pernicious traitors to their country and them that put them in trust, and were many times hired by the adverse part to dishearten and discourage their masters by such conycatching51 riddles as might in truth be turned any way.
An easy matter was it for them to prognosticate treasons and conspiracies, in which they were underhand inlinked themselves; and however the world went, it was a good policy for them to save their heads by the shift, for if the treasons chanced afterwards to come to light, it would not be suspected they were practisers in them, insomuch as they revealed them; or if they should by their confederates be appealed52 as practisers, yet might they plead and pretend it was done but of spite and malice to supplant them for so bewraying and laying open their intents.
This trick they had with them besides, that never till the very instant that any treason was to be put in execution, and it was so near at hand that the Prince had no time to prevent it, would they speak one word of it, or offer to disclose it. Yea, and even then such unfit seasons for their colourable53 discovery would they pick forth, as they would be sure he should have no leisure to attend it.
But you will ask why at all as then, they should step forth to detect it. Marry, to clear themselves to his successors, that there might be no revenge prosecuted on their lives.
So did Spurina, the great astrologer; even as Caesar in the midst of all his business was going hastily to the Senate House, he popped a bill in his hand of Brutus’ and Cassius’ conspiracy, and all the names of those that were colleagued with them.
Well he might have thought that in such haste by the highway side, he would not stay to peruse any schedules, and well he knew and was ascertained that as soon as ever he came into the Capitol the bloody deed was to be accomplished.
