"[88] On this principle,
Hobbes has ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have
appeared to Brutus; and the well-known story told by Clarendon, of the
apparition of the duke of Buckingham's father will admit of a similar
solution. There was no man at that time in the kingdom so much the topic
of conversation as the duke; and, from the corruptness of his character,
he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the corruptness of the times.
Sir George Villiers is said to have appeared to the man at
midnight--there is therefore the greatest probability that the man was
asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was
likely to be repeated.
History furnishes us with numerous instances of a forecast having been
communicated through the medium of dreams, some of which are so
extraordinary as almost to shake our belief that the hand of Providence
is not sometimes evident through their instrumentality. Cicero, in his
first book on Divination, tells us, that Heraclides, a clever man, and
who had been a disciple of Plato, writes that the mother of Phalaris saw
in a dream the statues of the gods which she had consecrated in the
house of her son; and among other things, it appeared to her, that from
a cup which Mercury held in his hand, he had spilled some blood from it,
and that the blood had scarcely touched the ground, than rising up in
large bubbles it filled the whole house.
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