I was born in the planetary hour of
Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet
in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the
mirth and galliardise<99> of company; yet in one dream
I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, ap-
prehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the con-
ceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my
reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my
dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devo-
tions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold
of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the
story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a con-
fused and broken tale of that which hath passed. Aris-
totle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath
not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen,
though he seem to have corrected it; for those
noctam-
bulos and night-walkers, though in their sleep, do yet
enjoy the action of their senses. We must therefore say
that there is something in us that is not in the juris-
diction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and
ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corpses, as
spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem
to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are
destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties
that should inform them.
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