regard "as proper to Shakespeare and Bacon was, in fact, the common knowledge or common error of the time." But unfortunately my accomplished critic has stumbled at the very threshold of his polemic. The question which I undertook to discuss was not the common knowledge or common error of the time, but the common knowledge and common error of Shakespeare and Bacon; and my critic will scarcely deny that in matters of science Bacon and Shakespeare had much in common. Whatever inferences may be deduced from the fact, it surely is a fact that the poet, like the philosopher, maintained the theory of pneumaticals, the theory of the transformation of species, the theory that the sun is the efficient cause of storms, the theory that flame is a fixed body, the theory that the stars are fires, and the theory that the heavens revolved around the earth. That the poet should have been as interested as the philosopher in scientific matters is surely a fact worth noting; and even if they resorted to the store of "the common knowledge or common error of the time," it surely is remarkable that they not only resorted to the same storehouse, but selected the same things, and incorporated the same things in their respective writings, and, so far as either their knowledge or their errors in matters of science were concerned, were in reality the same. But is it a fact that all that is proper to Shakespeare and to Bacon was the common knowledge or common error of the time? Take, for instance, the theory of pneumaticals. Bacon in his Natural History tells us that it was "scarce known" (s. 98); and yet it was as well known to Shakespeare as it was to Bacon. It fact it pervades the plays, as it pervades the ten centuries of the Sylva. Professor Dowden tells us, and I presume he is right, that the Shakespeare-Baconian theory of spirits is to be found in the Encyclopædia of Bar

tholomew Anglicus, and that it was possibly "influenced by Paracelsus," that Lemnius talks of "the vital and animal spirits," and that Scaliger was of opinion that music plays upon "the spirits about the heart." But the Professor's string of learning about Scaliger, Lemnius, Paracelsus, and Bartholomew Anglicus, I fancy, would have had much the same effect on the Professor's player that the Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Lucanus Ocellus of Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson had on Dr. Primrose.

Professor Dowden tells us that the expression "Expense of spirits" is "not peculiar to the writer of the Sonnets or the writer of the Sylva"; but he inadvertently, no doubt, omits what is in reality peculiar to them-the fact that the one uses it in connection with "the use of Venus" and the other in connection with "the waste of shame." But was the expression one in common use? The Professor tells us that it may be found in Bright's Treatise of Melancholy 1586, and in Donne's Progress of the Soul, stanza xxi. Here I hope my friend will excuse me if I quote a remark of Dr. Johnson's. "If I come to an orchard," said the lexicographer to Boswell, "and say, "There's no fruit here,' and then comes a poring man, who finds two apples and three pears, and tells me, 'Sir, you are mistaken, I have found some fruit,' what would that be to the purpose?"

Bacon tells us that "the transmutation of species is in the vulgar philosophy pronounced impossible" (s. 525). The Darwinian theory, therefore, was not the common knowledge of the time. And yet the author of The Winter's Tale insists on the possibility of the transmutation of species as confidently as the author of the Sylva. And there is a marvellous coincidence on which I think my Shakespearean critic would do well to ponder. The De Augmentis was published in October 1623, and The

Winter's Tale was

published for the first time in the following November or December. If my friend will take the trouble to read the second chapter of the second book of Bacon's masterpiece he will find a protest against the philosophers who hold that art is "something different from nature,” a mere additamentum quoddam naturæ, which can perfect, mend, or assist nature, but cannot change it. My friend is familiar with the mind and art of Shakespeare, and if he will turn to the contemporaneous discussion between Perdita and Polixenes about the "streak'd gillyvers which some call nature's bastards," I think even he will own that the footmarks of Bacon may be detected in the Bohemian garden of The Winter's Tale.

Another word before I make my escape from the follower by whom, to use the language of the Nationalist about the Irish police, I have been "shadowed." The anti-Baconian editor of Bacon, Mr. Spedding, claims to have been the first to note the resemblances of thought and expression that exist between The Winter's Tale and the Essay on Gardens, which was published for the first time in 1625; and Mr. Spedding candidly admits that if the essay had been published before 1616 he would have suspected that it had been read by Shakespeare. My friend, to use his own expression, is not so "liberal in admissions," and in confirmaThe National Review.

tion of his theory that the comparison of the seasons of flowers with those of the life of man was one of the commonplaces of the time he cites a passage from The Blazon of Gentry by a forgotten notability of the name of Ferne, and he remarks that "the parallel between Ferne and Shakespeare is in its idea much closer than that between Shakespeare and Bacon." If my friend will allow me I will make him the present of a more specious argument. His Stratford Shakspere we know was anxious to be considered a gentleman and to obtain a grant of coat-armor from the College; what was then more natural than that he should consult The Blazon of Gentry by a herald?

But why continue this discussion? I might easily confute all that the Professor has said by way of confutation about the theory of storms, the theory of flame, the theory of the stars, the theory of the heavens, and all the other Shakespeare-Baconian speculations through which I have been shadowed by my critic. But I fear I should cease to be "entertaining," and I console myself with the reflection of Archbishop Whately, that the world will never miss the brilliant things that I have failed to say. I am, Sir,

Yours obediently,
Thomas E. Webb.

Why man should spend a considerable part of his sleeping hours in seeing sights, hearing sounds, and undergoing experiences that have no easily discoverable connection with actual fact, is a problem that must have always vexed the curious. The savage accounts for it by supposing that his

incorporeal part leaves him during slumber, and that his dream adventures are but those which happen to his spirit in the spirit-world. The survival of this idea may be traced in all the religions of antiquity, which looked on dreams as one of the means by which the gods communicated their will

to man. But when these ideas were outgrown, a logical explanation of dreams seemed farther off than ever, and it was not, perhaps, until that versatile genius, Alfred Maury, undertook, some fifty years ago, a series of experiments upon himself that any theory of dreams could be founded upon a scientific basis. Even now it cannot be said that the facts upon which the best account of the matter rest are indisputable or thoroughly ascertained. For, as Maury himself pointed out, our only record of our thoughts during sleep is what we remember of them when we wake up, and the remembered is likely to differ considerably from the original impression. It is as well to bear this in mind in listening to any stories of remarkable dreams, or even to any theory that may be derived from them.

With this caution it may be said that the theory to which nearly all physiologists since Maury have inclined is that dreams are for the most part the result of impressions received by the senses of the sleeper from the external world. Maury, when a child, dreamed that his head was being hammered on the anvil of a smithy, and discovered on awaking that a blacksmith was in fact making horseshoes in a neighboring building. When grown up, he dreamed that he was about to be guillotined, and woke up to find that a lath from the head of the bed had fallen and was pressing upon his neck. Dr. Gregory, in like manner, went to sleep with a hot-water bottle at his feet and dreamed that he was climbing Mount Etna and walking over hot lava. So it has been shown by actual experiment that water dropped into the open mouth of a sleeper will make him dream that he is swimming, a silk handkerchief laid over the mouth and nose that he is suffocated or buried alive, and a mustard plaster laid on the head that he is being scalped by IndiThe strength of such sensory impressions, which may even translate

ans.

themselves into actions without awaking the sleeper, may be easily observed in the case of dogs asleep before a fire, who will often move their paws and open cry as if they were actually hunting. In this case, it is probably the increased flow of blood to the legs caused by the heat of the fire which is the determining cause of the dream.

From this it might be gathered that everyone in the same circumstances would dream the same thing, and to a certain extent this is no doubt true. The tendency of shipwrecked sailors upon short allowance of food and drink to dream of abundant dishes and flowing streams has often been noted, and it is said that the dreams of soldiers the night before the battle often bear a strong family likeness to each other. So, too, we can explain the practice of "incubation" in many ancient temples, where he who would enquire of the god was allowed to sleep near the shrine, and generally managed to dream something which could be twisted into an answer to the question he had come to ask. But it should be remembered that the concepts of our waking moments are never simple, but are largely made up of memories of our former impressions, and it is not reasonable to expect that our sleeping concepts should differ from them. Just as an artist and farmer see different things when they look at a beautiful landscape, so does the personal equation count for much in dreams. Dr. Maudsley tells us that in his experience those whom years of practice in observation and reflection have trained to think coherently will alone have coherent dreams; while M. Lorain says that the amount of cerebral activity manifested by the individual during the day is the measure of cerebral capacity shown by him in dreamland. People who do not use their brain much-children, women, and handicraftsmen, as he rather ungallantly puts it-according to this last,

seldom show any intellectual power in their dreams.

So far, therefore, it might be said that all our dreams are composed of impressions received from the outer world, and this would be the end of the matter were man only the "bundle of sensations" that Kingsley's Aben Ezra once thought himself. But the fact that the great organs of the body-the heart, the lungs, and the liver-continue to work when the senses are drowned in sleep, shows that this is not so, and that behind the "moi sensoriel," or sensory self, there stands the "moi splanchnique" or visceral self which discharges all the functions necessary to the maintenance of life and well-being without reference to the individual consciousness. What part this second personality within us plays in the composition of our dreams is not yet clear, and it is possible that it never does so directly, but only by such a disarrangement or interruption of the machinery as forces itself upon the attention of the senses. The question seems for the present to be outside the range of experiment, but it appears to be well established that any lesion of the more important viscera, such as paralysis, locomotor ataxy, and certain forms of heart and lung disease herald their approach by nightly-recurring dreams of the most terrifying character. To go further into this subject would take me beyond the scope of these articles, and I will only refer those curious on the subject to Dr. Tissie's little work Les Rêves, whch forms a lucid and readable introduction to its study.

Subject to this, however, the theory that dreams are made up of past and present impressions holds the field, and this receives nightly confirmation in the case of most of us. Fantastic and odd as our dreams-or rather what we remember of them-appear to our wak

The Academy.

ing minds, patient analysis generally decomposes them into a sort of kaleidoscopic combination of sensations received during sleep with the events or thoughts occurring to us in the past. Thus, in Maury's decapitation dream mentioned above, the guillotine in the affair is accounted for by the fact that he had been reading before falling asleep some of the chronicles of the Reign of Terror. So, in a case quoted in Weygandt's Enstehung der Träume, a man who cherished delightful memories of a country house where he had for the first time met with a certain scent, used to direct his servant to scatter, at times unknown to him, that particular perfume upon his pillow with the certainty that he would again visit in his dreams the scene of his enchantment. It may even be said that the same proposition can be proved conversely. The dream of entertaining royalty, which the cynical say comes to every lady at some time during her life, is probably composed of the memory of past social triumphs coupled with an acquaintance with the features of august personages gained from photographs or otherwise; yet it is said at the same time that no woman ever dreams of entertaining persons utterly unknown to her. So also children who are born blind never dream that they are seeing; while those who become blind after the age of seven dream frequently of sights seen by them before the failure of their eyesight. Unromantic as the idea may be, everything goes to show that our nightly dreams come neither through the horn nor the ivory gate of the poet, but are partly drawn from what is going on around our sleeping forms, and partly from the memories of past experiences stored up within our bodies as within other forms of matter.

F. Legge.

The Scribners have added "Kim" to their "Outward Bound" edition of Kipling's works.

Mr. Winston Churchill has been entrusted with the writing of the biography of the late Lord Randolph Churchill by the literary executors.

Joel Chanler Harris's first real novel is "Gabriel Tolliver", a story of the Reconstruction period in Georgia, which is to be published this fall.

It is a surprise, but an agreeable one, to learn that enough hitherto unpublished material from the writings of Horace Bushnell remains to make a volume of sermons and fragments which the Scribners will soon publish under the title "The Spirit in Man."

A new pocket edition of Hawthorne's writings is promised for this season by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. It will bear the title of the New Wayside Edition, and will be complete in thirteen volumes. Few authors are more beguiling for pocket companions than Haw. thorne, as was shown by the reception accorded years ago to the Little Classic edition.

Friends of authors who are in the habit of expecting presentation copies of their writings should bear in mind the fact that authors have to buy the books which they present to their friends; and, however desirous they may be of increasing the sale of their books few of them are able, without inconvenience, to achieve this result by buying copies themselves. An English author complains, in the London Morning Post, of receiving a six

months' account from his publisher and finding that he owed him three pounds, and all because of inconsiderate friends.

A novel and interesting application of kindergarten methods to Bible study is found in "The Beginners' Course" published by The Pilgrim Press, in which are given fifty-two Bible studies for pupils under six years of age. The volume is arranged by the International Sunday School Lesson Commit. tee, is fully illustrated and seems admirably adapted to its purpose.

There is no lack of anthologies of divers kinds in the diary form, but the compilation called "Every Day in the Year" which is announced by Dodd, Mead & Co. is on a novel plan. It is a collection of nearly eight hundred poems intended to commemorate great events in history and arranged under the days celebrated. It is edited by James L. and M. K. Ford. Every day is commemorated by from one to half a dozen poems, and the result is a sort of ready-reference book in verse.

In "The Beautiful Mrs. Moulton" Nathaniel Stephenson has essayed to paint an American type less rare than complex-a woman beautiful, rich, ambitious, selfish and shallow-with a companion picture of the heavy, obstinate, apoplectic husband, neglected at home and absorbed in business. While the portraits lack the real vital quality, they make a certain impression by the abundance of color and the multiplicity of accessories. The interest of the narrative, which opens and closes in some unnamed Western city, presumably Chicago, but gives glimpses by