Note 565:1 — ACT THE FOURTH

Against this passage Coleridge has written in MS. II:—'This will be held by many for a mere Tragedy-dream—by many who have never given themselves the trouble to ask themselves from what grounds dreams pleased in Tragedy, and wherefore they have become so common. I believe, however, that in the present case, the whole is here psychologically true and accurate. Prophetical dreams are things of nature, and explicable by that law of the mind in which where dim ideas are connected with vivid feelings, Perception and Imagination insinuate themselves and mix with the forms of Recollection, till the Present appears to exactly correspond with the Past. Whatever is partially like, the Imagination will gradually represent as wholly like—a law of our nature which, when it is perfectly understood, woe to the great city Babylon—to all the superstitions of Men!' P. W., 1893, p. 499.