Amongst other severities I have met with from some critics, the cruellest
for an old man is, that they will not let me be at quiet in my bed, but
pursue me to my very dreams. I must not dream but when they please, nor
upon long continued subjects, however visionary in their own natures;
because there is a manifest moral quite through them, which to produce as
a dream is improbable and unnatural. The pain I might have had from this
objection, is prevented by considering they have missed another, against
which I should have been at a loss to defend myself. They should have
asked me, whether the dreams I publish can properly be called
Lucubrations, which is the name I have given to all my papers, whether in
volumes or half-sheets: so manifest a contradiction _in terminis_, that I
wonder no sophister ever thought of it: But the other is a cavil. I
remember when I was a boy at school, I have often dreamed out the whole
passages of a day; that I rode a journey, baited, supped, went to bed,
and rose the next morning: and I have known young ladies who could dream
a whole contexture of adventures in one night large enough to make a
novel. In youth the imagination is strong, not mixed with cares, nor
tinged with those passions that most disturb and confound it, such as
avarice, ambition, and many others. Now as old men are said to grow
children again, so in this article of dreaming, I am returned to my
childhood. My imagination is at full ease, without care, avarice, or
ambition, to clog it; by which, among many others, I have this advantage
of doubling the small remainder of my time, and living four-and-twenty
hours in the day. However, the dream I am now going to relate, is as wild
as can well be imagined, and adapted to please these refiners upon sleep,
without any moral that I can discover.
"It happened that my maid left on the table in my bedchamber, one of her
story books (as she calls them) which I took up, and found full of
strange impertinences, fitted to her taste and condition; of poor
servants that came to be ladies, and serving-men of low degree, who
married kings' daughters. Among other things, I met this sage
observation, 'That a lion would never hurt a true virgin.' With this
medley of nonsense in my fancy I went to bed, and dreamed that a friend
waked me in the morning, and proposed for pastime to spend a few hours in
seeing the parish lions, which he had not done since he came to town; and
because they showed but once a week, he would not miss the opportunity. I
said I would humour him; though, to speak the truth, I was not fond of
those cruel spectacles; and if it were not so ancient a custom, founded,
as I had heard, upon the wisest maxims, I should be apt to censure the
inhumanity of those who introduced it." All this will be a riddle to the
waking reader, till I discover the scene my imagination had formed upon
the maxim, "That a lion would never hurt a true virgin." "I dreamed, that
by a law of immemorial time, a he-lion was kept in every parish at the
common charge, and in a place provided, adjoining to the churchyard:
that, before any one of the fair sex was married, if she affirmed herself
to be a virgin, she must on her wedding day, and in her wedding clothes,
perform the ceremony of going alone into the den, and stay an hour with
the lion let loose, and kept fasting four-and-twenty hours on purpose. At
a proper height, above the den, were convenient galleries for the
relations and friends of the young couple, and open to all spectators. No
maiden was forced to offer herself to the lion; but if she refused, it
was a disgrace to marry her, and every one might have liberty of calling
her a whore. And methought it was as usual a diversion to see the parish
lions, as with us to go to a play or an opera. And it was reckoned
convenient to be near the church, either for marrying the virgin if she
escaped the trial, or for burying the bones when the lion had devoured
the rest, as he constantly did."
To go on therefore with the dream: "We called first (as I remember) to
see St. Dunstan's lion, but we were told they did not shew to-day: From
thence we went to that of Covent-Garden, which, to my great surprise, we
found as lean as a skeleton, when I expected quite the contrary; but the
keeper said it was no wonder at all, because the poor beast had not got
an ounce of woman's flesh since he came into the parish. This amazed me
more than the other, and I was forming to myself a mighty veneration for
the ladies in that quarter of the town, when the keeper went on, and
said, He wondered the parish would be at the charge of maintaining a lion
for nothing. Friend, (said I) do you call it nothing, to justify the
virtue of so many ladies, or has your lion lost his distinguishing
faculty? Can there be anything more for the honour of your parish, than
that all the ladies married in your church were pure virgins? That is
true, (said he) and the doctor knows it to his sorrow; for there has not
been a couple married in our church since his worship has been amongst
us. The virgins hereabouts are too wise to venture the claws of the lion;
and because nobody will marry them, have all entered into vows of
virginity. So that in proportion we have much the largest nunnery in
the whole town. This manner of ladies entering into a vow of virginity,
because they were not virgins, I easily conceived; and my dream told me,
that the whole kingdom was full of nunneries, plentifully stocked from
the same reason.
"We went to see another lion, where we found much company met in the
gallery; the keeper told us, we should see sport enough, as he called it;
and in a little time, we saw a young beautiful lady put into the den, who
walked up towards the lion with all imaginable security in her
countenance, and looked smiling upon her lover and friends in the
gallery; which I thought nothing extraordinary, because it was never
known that any lion had been mistaken. But, however, we were all
disappointed, for the lion lifted up his right paw, which was the fatal
sign, and advancing forward, seized her by the arm, and began to tear it:
The poor lady gave a terrible shriek, and cried out, 'The lion is just, I
am no true virgin! Oh! Sappho, Sappho.' She could say no more, for the
lion gave her the _coup de grace_, by a squeeze in the throat, and she
expired at his feet. The keeper dragged away her body to feed the animal
when the company was gone, for the parish-lions never used to eat in
public. After a little pause, another lady came on towards the lion in
the same manner as the former; we observed the beast smell her with great
diligence, he scratched both her hands with lifting them to his nose, and
clapping a claw on her bosom, drew blood; however he let her go, and at
the same time turned from her with a sort of contempt, at which she was
not a little mortified, and retired with some confusion to her friends in
the gallery. Methought the whole company immediately understood the
meaning of this, that the easiness of the lady had suffered her to admit
certain imprudent and dangerous familiarities, bordering too much upon
what is criminal; neither was it sure whether the lover then present
had not some sharers with him in those freedoms, of which a lady can
never be too sparing.
"This happened to be an extraordinary day, for a third lady came into the
den, laughing loud, playing with her fan, tossing her head, and smiling
round on the young fellows in the gallery. However, the lion leaped on
her with great fury, and we gave her for gone; but on a sudden he let go
his hold, turned from her as if he were nauseated, then gave her a lash
with his tail; after which she returned to the gallery, not the least out
of countenance: and this, it seems, was the usual treatment of coquettes.
"I thought we had now seen enough, but my friend would needs have us go
and visit one or two lions in the city. We called at two or three dens
where they happened not to shew, but we generally found half a score
young girls, between eight and eleven years old, playing with each lion,
sitting on his back, and putting their hands into his mouth; some of them
would now and then get a scratch; but we always discovered, upon
examining, that they had been hoydening with the young apprentices. One
of them was calling to a pretty girl of about twelve years, that stood by
us in the gallery, to come down to the lion, and upon her refusal, said,
'Ah! Miss Betty, we could never get you to come near the lion, since you
played at hoop and hide with my brother in the garret.'
"We followed a couple, with the wedding-folks, going to the church of St.
Mary-Axe. The lady, though well stricken in years, extremely crooked and
deformed, was dressed out beyond the gaiety of fifteen; having jumbled
together, as I imagined, all the tawdry remains of aunts, godmothers, and
grandmothers, for some generations past: One of the neighbours whispered
me, that she was an old maid, and had the clearest reputation of any in
the parish. There is nothing strange in that, thought I, but was much
surprised, when I observed afterwards that she went towards the lion with
distrust and concern. The beast was lying down, but upon sight of her,
snuffed up his nose two or three times, and then giving the sign of
death, proceeded instantly to execution. In the midst of her agonies, she
was heard to name the words, 'Italy' and 'artifices,' with the utmost
horror, and several repeated execrations: and at last concluded, 'Fool
that I was, to put so much confidence in the toughness of my skin.'
"The keeper immediately set all in order again for another customer,
which happened to be a famous prude, whom her parents after long
threatenings, and much persuasion, had with the extremest difficulty
prevailed on to accept a young handsome goldsmith, that might have
pretended to five times her fortune. The fathers and mothers in the
neighbourhood used to quote her for an example to their daughters. Her
elbows were rivetted to her sides, and her whole person so ordered as to
inform everybody that she was afraid they should touch her. She only
dreaded to approach the lion, because it was a he one, and abhorred to
think an animal of that sex should presume to breathe on her. The sight
of a man at twenty yards distance made her draw back her head. She always
sat upon the farther corner of the chair, though there were six chairs
between her and her lover, and with the door wide open, and her little
sister in the room. She was never saluted but at the tip of her ear, and
her father had much ado to make her dine without her gloves, when there
was a man at table. She entered the den with some fear, which we took to
proceed from the height of her modesty, offended at the sight of so many
men in the gallery. The lion beholding her at a distance, immediately
gave the deadly sign; at which the poor creature (methinks I see her
still) miscarried in a fright before us all. The lion seemed to be
surprised as much as we, and gave her time to make her confession, 'That
she was four months gone, by the foreman of her father's shop, that this
was her third big belly;' and when her friends asked, why she would
venture the trial? she said, 'Her nurse assured her, that a lion would
never hurt a woman with child.'" Upon this I immediately waked, and could
not help wishing, that the deputy-censors of my late institution were
endued with the same instinct as these parish-lions were.
[Footnote 1:
"Manditque, trahitque
Molle pecus."
_Aeneid_, ix. 340-341.
"Devours and tears the peaceful flock."
[T.S.]]
[Footnote 2: _I.e._ 1710-11. [T.S.]]