I dreamed that a great prize had been offered in the Westminster Gazette for an essay competition. The subject of the essay was to be "The Books found in a Guest-chamber on a Week-end Visit." I was on my way to a country house, and I wondered what books I should actually find in the bed-room that I should occupy in the house to which I was going. . . . The big country house that I came to was like O------and I was taken upstairs on my arrival to a room which I recognised as one in which I had several times slept on visits there. With my thoughts running on the essay I went quickly to the bookshelf and looked eagerly at its contents. There was a little row of books. Those that I glanced at first were familiar to me, books that I had read, novels I think, but I did not look at them much, for they were of no use for my special purpose, for the essay which was absorbing my thoughts. I do not even remember what they were; but I found towards the end of the shelf a single volume entitled "Candide." Opening it, I found a short preface which stated that this was a quite newly discovered volume, hitherto unpublished, and of remarkable interest; a continuation, in fact, of "Candide's" story. I wondered if this might not serve my turn and provide stuff for the essay.

I thought that it might, and began to turn over its pages, when my eye fell on the last two volumes standing in the little row. They were dark-blue books, lettered in gold, and their title ran "Mr. Petulengro, Vol. I, and Mr. Petulengro, Vol. II." " Oh, wonderful and delightful discovery!" I thought; "imagine finding two perfectly new books by Borrow! A new 'Lavengro' and an unread and hitherto unheard-of 'Romany Rye'! How unexpected and how enchanting ! Could it be a mistake?"- and I eagerly opened the two blue volumes. No, the promise held good. Here on the first pages that I looked at were the familiar names, Jasper Petulengro, Mrs. Pettdengro, Ursula. . . . Chapter headings, too, there were that seemed familiar, but that yet were all new! . . . The opening of my essay began to frame itself in my mind. The sentences with which it should begin, and in which I should tell of my discovery to the world, came quite readily, and I repeated them over to myself, though the importance of the fifty-guinea prize faded quite away in comparison with the excitement of the discovery that I had made. But then - alas! the dark-blue volumes themselves began to fade.

I tried hard to keep them, but in vain; and I woke up to find that my favourite row of "bedside books" near at hand contained indeed the familiar slim green volumes which I knew so nearly by heart, but that "Mr. Petulengro, Vol. I, and Mr. Petulengro, Vol. II," had disappeared with my dream.

I have been obliged to illustrate these studies of dreaming by notes of my own dreams. This has been unavoidable, because actual experience has been their foundation, and experience is my only qualification for writing on this subject. Where I could obtain records made by friends I have done so, but this has not been often, because few people will make these notes immediately on awaking from sleep, and records made after the lapse of some hours are of comparatively little value. An apology must, however, be made for using my own dreams in this way. We have all suffered at times from having to listen to the recital of dreams, which, though of scanty interest to the hearer, doubtless still possess for the teller some of the humour and the charm that they seemed to have in the night. Somewhat imperfectly remembered, and narrated in the cold light of day, these poor shadows of dreams convey none of their original glamour. No doubt from the earliest ages the same thing has happened; dreams have been dreamed, and have been re-told, and have wearied their hearers.

Eighteen hundred years ago Epictetus laid down for his pupils the sound rule, which one amongst them evidently laid to heart and recorded: "Beware that thou never tell thy dreams, for notwithstanding thou mayst take pleasure in reciting the dreams of the night, the company will take little pleasure in hearing them." The moral, though a salutary one, now as it was then, is a discouraging maxim for a writer on dreams; but the reader, on the other hand, who is now duly forewarned, has a clear advantage over an unwilling listener, since it lies entirely within his own choice whether he reads, or whether he skips, the written dream.