'Common dreams are but a senseless paraphrase on our waking thoughts,
or of the business of the day past, or are the result of our over
engaged affections when we betake ourselves to rest.' . . . Yet
'Almighty God (though the causes of dreams be often unknown) hath even
in these latter times also, by a certain illumination of the soul in
sleep, discovered many things that human wisdom could not foresee.'
Walton is often charged with superstition, and the enlightened editor of
the eighteenth century excised all the scene of Mrs. Donne's wraith as
too absurd. But Walton is a very fair witness. Donne, a man of
imagination, was, he tells us, in a perturbed anxiety about Mrs. Donne.
The event was after dinner. The story is, by Walton's admission, at
second hand. Thus, in the language of the learned in such matters, the
tale is 'not evidential.' Walton explains it, if true, as a result of
'sympathy of souls'--what is now called telepathy. But he is content
that every man should have his own opinion. In the same way he writes of
the seers in the Wotton family: 'God did seem to speak to many of this
family' (the Wottons) 'in dreams,' and Thomas Wotton's dreams 'did
usually prove true, both in foretelling things to come, and discovering
things past.' Thus he dreamed that five townsmen and poor scholars were
robbing the University chest at Oxford. He mentioned this in a letter to
his son at Oxford, and the letter, arriving just after the robbery, led
to the discovery of the culprits. Yet Walton states the causes and
nature of dreams in general with perfect sobriety and clearness. His
tales of this sort were much to Johnson's mind, as to Southey's. But
Walton cannot fairly be called 'superstitious,' granting the age in which
he lived. Visions like Dr. Donne's still excite curious comment.
To that cruel superstition of his age, witchcraft, I think there is no
allusion in Walton. Almost as uncanny, however, is his account of
Donne's preparation for death
'Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he
brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and
having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied
with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead
bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin or
grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so
much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and death-
like face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from which he
expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In this
posture he was drawn at his just height, and, when the picture was
fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bedside, where it
continued, and became his hourly object till death.'