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is, he will now do well. You need keep him no longer as a patient, but may discharge him. In the Rules of Civility, 1685 (translated from the French), we read, p. 64: "If his lordship chances to sneeze, you are not to bawl out, 'God bless you, sir,' but pulling off your hat, bow to him handsomely, and make that obsecration to yourself." In the Schcole of Slovenrie, or Cato turn'd wrong side outward, translated out of Latine into English Verse, to the use of all English Christendome except Court and Cittie; by R. F., Gent., 4to. Lond. 1605, p. 6, is the following:

"When you would sneeze, strait turne yourselfe into your neibour's face: As for my part, wherein to sneeze, I know no fitter place;

It is an order, when you sneeze good men will pray for you;
Marke him that doth so, for I thinke he is your friend most true.
And that your friend may know who sneezes, and may for you pray,
Be sure you not forget to sneeze full in his face alway.

But when thou hear'st another sneeze, although he be thy father,
Say not God bless him, but Choak up, or some such matter, rather."

The original of this ironical advice runs thus:

"Sternutare volens vicino obvertito vultum :
Quo potius vertas vix reor esse locum.
Mas habet ut quidam. bene sternutantibus optent,
Id tibi qui faciat forsan amicus erit.

Quo sciat ergo suum te sternutasse sodalem,

Illius ad faciem sit tua versa velim.

Tu tamen in simili causa bona nulla preceris,
Vel tua si graviter sternutet ipsa parens."

The following are found in Roberti Keuchenii Crepundia,

p. 113:

Sternutamentum.

"Sternutamentum medici prodesse loquuntur:
Sterno tamen mentem, critici sic esse loquuntur."

Idem.

"Sim vitium, sim morbusve, Salus mihi sufficit: ana

De nihili præscribe pari medicamine: prosit."

It is received at this day in the remotest parts of Africa. So we read in Codignus, that upon a sneeze of the emperor of Monotapha, there passed acclamations through the city. And as remarkable an example there is of the same custom in the remotest parts of the East, in the Travels of Pinto.

Sir Thomas Browne supposes that the ground of this ancient

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custom was the opinion the ancients held of sternutation,' which they generally conceived to be a good sign or a bad, and so upon this motion accordingly used a Salve," or Zev owoov, as a gratulation from the one, and a deprecation from the other.

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"Omnia quæ sensu volvuntur vota diurno,
Pectore sopito reddit amica quies.
Venator defessa toro cum membra reponit,
Mens tamen ad silvas, et sua lustra redit.
Judicibus lites, aurigæ somnia currus,

Vanaque nocturnis meta cavetur equis.
Me quoque musarum stadium, sub nocte silenti
Artibus assuetis sollicitare solet."

Claudiani in lib. iii. de Raptu Proserpinæ. Prefat.

"Dreams are but the rais'd

Impressions of premeditated things,

Our serious apprehension left upon

Our minds, or else th' imaginary shapes

Of objects proper to the complexion

Or disposition of our bodies."

Cotgrave's English Treasury of Wit and Language, p. 263.

DREAMS, as the Sacred Writings inform us, have on certain occasions been used as the divine mediums of revelation. The consideration of them in this view is foreign to our present purpose. The reader, inquisitive on this head, may be referred to Amyraldus on Divine Dreams, as translated by Ja. Lowde, 8vo. Lond. 1676. Dreams, as connected with our present design, may either come under the head of Omens or that of Divination. Homer has told us that the dream comes

He adds: "Some finding, depending it, effects to ensue; others ascribing hereto as a cause, what perhaps but casually or inconnexedly succeeded; they might proceed into forms of speeches, felicitating the good and deprecating the evil to follow."

from Jupiter, and in all ages and every kingdom the idea that some knowledge of the future is to be derived from them has always composed a very striking article in the creed of popular superstitions.

Cornelius Agrippa, in his Vanity of Sciences, p. 105, speaking of Interpretation of Dreams, says: "To this delusion not a few great philosophers have given not a little credit, especially Democritus, Aristotle, and his follower, Themistius; Sinesius, also, the Platonic; so far building upon examples of dreams, which some accident hath made to be true, that thence they endeavour to persuade men that there are no dreams but what are real. But as to the causes of dreams, both external and internal, they do not all agree in one judgment. For the Platonics reckon them among the specific and concrete notions of the soul. Avicen makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence moving the moon in the middle of that light with which the fancies of men are illuminate while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause thereof to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes places the cause in the imagination. Democritus ascribes it to little images or representatives separated from the things themselves; Albertus, to the superior influences which continually flow from the skie through many specific mediums. The physicians impute the cause thereof to vapours and humours; others to the affections and cares predominant in persons when awake. Others joyn the powers of the soul, celestial influences, and images together, all making but one cause. Arthemidorus and Daldianus have written of the interpretation of dreams; and certain books go about under Abraham's name, whom Philo, in his Book of the Gyants and of Civil Life, asserts to have been the first practiser thereof. Other treatises there are, falsified under the names of David and Salomon, wherein are to be read nothing but meer dreams concerning dreams. But Marcus Cicero, in his Book of Divination, hath given sufficient reasons against

A writer in the Gent. Mag. for Sept. 1751, vol. xxi. p. 411, wittily observes that "dreams have for many ages been esteemed as the noblest resources at a dead lift; the dreams of Homer were held in such esteem that they were styled golden dreams; and among the Grecians we find a whole country using no other way for information but going to sleep. The Oropians, and all the votaries of Amphiaraus, are proofs of this assertion, as may be seen in Pausan. Attic."

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the vanity and folly of those that give credit to dreams, which I purposely here omit."

Henry, in his History of Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 575, tells us: "We find Peter of Blois, who was one of the most learned men of the age in which he flourished, writing an account of his dreams to his friend the Bishop of Bath, and telling him how anxious he had been about the interpretation of them; and that he had employed for that purpose divination by the Psalter. The English, it seems probable, had still more superstitious curiosity, and paid greater attention to dreams and omens than the Normans; for, when William Rufus was dissuaded from going abroad on the morning of that day on which he was killed, because the Abbot of Gloucester had dreamed something which portended danger, he is said to have made this reply: 'Do you imagine that I am an Englishman, to be frighted by a dream, or the sneezing of an old woman?" "

In the Sapho and Phao of Lilly (the play-writer of the time of Queen Elizabeth), 4to. Lond. 1584, are some pleasant observations on dreams, act iv. sc. 3: "And can there be no trueth in dreams? Yea, dreams have their trueth. Dreames are but dotings, which come either by things we see in the day, or meates that we eate, and so the common sense pre

1 In Moresini Papatus, p. 162, we read: "Somniandi modus Franciscanorum hinc duxit originem. Antiqui moris fuit oracula et futurorum præscientiam quibusdam adhibitis sacris per insomnia dari: qui mos talis erat, ut victimas cæderent, mox sacrificio peracto sub pellibus cæsarum ovium incubantes, somnia captarent, eaque lymphatica insomnia verissimos exitus sortiri. Alex. ab Alex. lib. iii. c. 26. Et monachi super storea cubant in qua alius frater ecstaticus fuerat somniatus, sacrificat missam, preces et jejunia adhibet, inde ut communiter fit de amoribus per somnia consulit, redditque responsa pro occurrentibus spectris," &c. Bartholinus de Causis contemptæ a Danis, &c. Mortis, p. 678, says “Itaque divinationem ex somniis apud omnes propemodum gentes expetitam fuisse certissimum, licet quædam magis præ aliis ei fuerint deditæ. Septentrionales veteres sagaci somniorum interpretatione pollentes fuisse, Arngrimus annotavit; in tantum sane eorum fuerunt observantes, ut pleraque quæ sibi obversabantur, momentosa crediderint et perfectam idcirco ab eis futurorum hauriendam cognitionem." In the same work, p. 677: "Pronunciante apud Ordericum Vitalem Gulielmo Rege dicto Rufo, somnia stertentium sibi referri indignante, quod Anglorum ritus fuerit, pro sternutatione et somnio vetularum, dimittere iter suum, seu negotium."

ferring it to be the imaginative. I dreamed," says Ismena, "mine eye-tooth was loose, and that I thrust it out with my tongue. It fortelleth," replies Mileta, "the losse of a friend; and I ever thought thee so full of prattle, that thou wouldest thrust out the best friend with thy tatling."

Gaule, in his Mag-astromancers posed and puzzel'd, p. 181, gives us, among many other vain observations and superstitious ominations thereupon-" the snorting in sleep,"-" the dreaming of gold, silver, eggs, gardens, weddings, dead men, dung," &c.

The following from Cicero will be thought to contain some pleasantry on the subject of dreams: "Cicero, among others, relates this: a certain man dreamed that there was an egg hid under his bed; the soothsayer to whom he applied himself for the interpretation of the dream told him that in the same place where he imagined to see the egg there was treasure hid; whereupon he caused the place to be digged up, and there accordingly he found silver, and in the midst of it a good quantity of gold, and, to give the interpreter some testimony of his acknowledgment, he brought him some pieces of the silver which he had found; but the soothsayer, hoping also to have some of the gold, said: 'And will you not give me some of the yolk too?" Lowde's Amyraldus on Divine Dreams, p. 22.

Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, p. 102, informs us of "the art and order to be used in digging for money, revealed by dreams." "There must be made," says he, "upon a hazel wand three crosses, and certain words must be said over it, and hereunto must be added certain characters and barbarous names. And whilst the treasure is a digging, there must be read the psalms De profundis, &c., and then a certain prayer; and if the time of digging be neglected, the devil will carry all the treasure away.'

The knitting a true-love-knot to see the person one is to marry in a dream has been already noticed from the Connoisseur, and some verses on the occasion, similar to those already quoted, are preserved in Aubrey's Miscellanies, p. 137.

Gregory, in his Posthuma, Episcopus Puerorum, p. 113, mentions a singular superstition: "Some are so superstitiously given as upon the night of St. Gregorie's day to have their

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