And this very consideration brings us into touch with a remarkable fact of dreams that has been noticed long ago, the extremely moderate calibre of dream wit, dream intellect, dream humour and the mental operations of dreams altogether. It has often been observed that in dreams we seem to have hit now and again on a wonderfully illuminating thought, a remarkably neat epigram or a solution of a problem that has baffled everybody - perpetual motion has probably been solved again and again by dreamers - but whenever one has awaked with any exact remembrance of those achievements, they have proved to waking criticism the merest drivel and only vaguely coherent. This at least is my personal experience of the intellectual efforts of dreams, and on the whole I think that it is confirmed by general consensus. On the other side it is only fair that 1 should quote instances to the contrary and among them I may include certain passages in some of the letters that correspondents were good enough to write me about the first essay. "Feats of considerable intellectual energy," one writes, "have been satisfactorily accomplished in dreams, e.g., a friend of the writer once composed a parody on Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel and remembered it quite well in the morning.

Schoolboys and schoolgirls too, have worked out problems in their dreams which have defeated their best efforts in consciousness, and they remembered the working and solutions with satisfactory results the next day."

On this point it is to be said that the fact of composing a parody on the Lay of the Last Minstrel does not in itself of necessity amount to a great intellectual performance. It is only the quality of the performance that should be the measure of its greatness, and of that the writer gives us no assurance. To remember the parody in the morning was indeed a feat, but it was a feat of the waking, rather than the dreaming, intellect. In regard to the solution of problems by boys and girls during sleep, I can only say that I have heard few instances in support of it, although it is very true, and the fact has been noticed more than once already, that a piece of repetition conned over at night and very imperfectly known then, is sometimes remembered quite pat for early school the next morning. There is a strong inference that it must have occupied the mind during sleep, but that does not bring it within the sphere of dreaming as defined by an operation of the mind during sleep of which one is conscious on awaking. It is one of the most curious points in this connection that it should have thus occupied the mind during sleep, without consciousness of that occupation being - retained.

Common fairness demanded that I should put on record this statement of my corre spondent, although it does not agree with my own experience, nor with the experience that I believe to be general. There is the old tale of Coleridge, it is true, and his Kubla Khan; but in the first place it is to be noted that this poem, if composed in sleep at all, was composed in the unnatural sleep of opium, and it is permitted to suspect that, while the scenes described were doubtless dreamt, the language in which they were put on paper occurred to the poets mind as he wrote. If by feats of "considerable intellectual energy" my correspondent referred only to the range of thought, it would accord with the common experience of all dreamers, but referring it to the power and quality of the thought, as it is referred in the case of solution of hard problems, it is almost certainly at variance with what we commonly find to be the facts. Lawyers are said to have written in their dreams lucid opinions of cases submitted to them.

This, if true, and the evidence is strong, is very wonderful; but to accept it as true does not prevent our recording it as very exceptional, nor invalidate very seriously the statement that most of the intellectual feats which strike us as so brilliant in dreams appear folly to our waking criticism. The people who have written on dreams seem generally to have accepted without much suspicion every statement as to the feats of intellect performed, of problems solved, and the rest, in dreams. They ought at least to have weighed, on the other hand, the illuminating thoughts, the splendid humour, that seem to be discovered to us in dreams and which yet, on waking, we find to be the height of imbecility. This is a fact that ought to have raised a certain suspicion about the quality of the feats said to have been done while the best part of the mind was not in working order. In case any should doubt that it is a fact, that the quality of dream humour and dream composition is not generally high, I may perhaps quote one or two letters from correspondents to bear me out; but I do not think that many who have looked into the matter at all will require much confirmation of the statement. "Sense of humour," one writes, "in dreams, is another curious thing.

It is strange how exceedingly amused one may be with some exquisite joke, that wakening may prove to be hopelessly commonplace or, more often, gibberish.' "More often gibberish," is, I am afraid, the usual verdict of the wide awake critic on all the mental efforts that have seemed to him so fine and grand in his sleep. "In another class of dreams," writes another correspondent, "the dreamer imagines conversation in which he or some other person says things so amusing that they actually laugh in their sleep." He does not say, however, that he has ever been largely rewarded when he has sent these efforts of humour to Punch, or any of the comic papers, on awaking. Yet another says "This dream was a long one" (I have spoken of it elsewhere) " and under its influence I wrote a lot of doggerel which exists somewhere amongst my papers, and begins: -

"Iwas in the early morning, when dreams they say are true, Just as the sun was rising, turning the grey to blue."

This is really a fine poetic effort as judged by the ordinary standard of dream composition. 1 am told by one of my correspondents that the present method of shot - making was discovered by some one in a dream: "A man dreamed of taking up some height a sieve or colander and pouring molten lead through into water beneath, and found that the morsels of lead were quite round, which led to the experiment of making lead by this dream process". Sir Walter Scott, I think, refers to this in some of his writings; but the chance discovery can scarcely be called a great intellectual feat; neither can dreaming the winner of the Derby. Both are valuable dreams. The trouble is that so many people have dreamt the wrong winners of the Derby. And that, on the contrary, is not a valuable, but a very expensive dream, if acted on with much conviction of its truth. James Payn dreamed of his Lost Sir Massingberd - lost in a hollow tree trunk. But none of these are exactly intellectual feats. They are rather to be called lucky fancies. And in this modified sense it is not to be doubted that much good work has been done, thanks to dream suggestion.