in Languages that they are but little acquainted with.  The Grave abound in Pleasantries, the Dull in Repartees and Points of Wit.  There is not a more painful Action of the Mind, than Invention; yet in Dreams it works with that Ease and Activity, that we are not sensible when the Faculty is employed.  For instance, I believe every one, some time or other, dreams that he is reading Papers, Books, or Letters; in which case the Invention prompts so readily, that the Mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own Suggestions for the Compositions of another.

I shall, under this Head, quote a Passage out of the Religio Medici, [1] in which the ingenious Author gives an account of himself in his dreaming and his waking Thoughts.

’We are somewhat more than our selves in our Sleeps, and the Slumber of the Body seems to be but the Waking of the Soul.  It is the Litigation of Sense, but the Liberty of Reason; and our waking Conceptions do not match the Fancies of our Sleeps.  At my Nativity my Ascendant was the watery Sign of_ Scorpius:  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 Galliardize of Company; yet in one Dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the Action, apprehend the Jests, and laugh my self awake at the Conceits 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 chuse for my Devotions:  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 confused and broken Tale of that that has passed—­Thus it is observed that Men sometimes, upon the Hour of their Departure, do speak and reason above themselves; for then the Soul beginning to be freed from the Ligaments of the Body, begins to reason like her self, and to discourse in a strain above Mortality.’

We may likewise observe in the third Place, that the Passions affect the Mind with greater Strength when we are asleep, than when we are awake.  Joy and Sorrow give us more vigorous Sensations of Pain or Pleasure at this time, than at any other.  Devotion likewise, as the excellent Author above-mentioned has hinted, is in a very particular manner heightned and inflamed, when it rises in the Soul at a time that the Body is thus laid at Rest.  Every Man’s Experience will inform him in this matter, though it is very probable, that this may happen differently, in different Constitutions.  I shall conclude this Head with the two following Problems, which I shall leave to the Solution of my Reader.  Supposing a Man always happy in his Dreams, and miserable in his waking Thoughts, and that his Life was equally divided between them, whether would he be more happy or miserable?  Were a Man a King in his Dreams, and a Beggar awake, and dreamt as consequentially, and in as continued unbroken Schemes as he thinks when awake, whether he would be in reality a King or Beggar, or rather whether he would not be both?