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BL Add. MS 28268, ff. 338–39; published in Hart, p. 60
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
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I am going to relate to you a very extraordinary dream from which I am yet scarcely awake, and which fills my mind with unspeakable delight. Methought that I was hurried away to London which I had so lately left, and told to sleep in an attick story in Fleet Street, and to visit half the Sugar Warehouses in Town, climbing up slimy stairs amidst treacle, Figgs, and Barrels of Raisins. Soon after I thought I was whirl'd away 'in the Spirit' to Rochester, and had to gaze from the top of the old Castle, and tried in vain to encompass the works at Chatham amidst a pouring rain! From hence I was compeld to ride or fly through a fog as blue as the smoke of Gunpowder, and was surrounded by tongues speaking every thing but what I understood. Nothing ran in my head but French prisoners, and that I was going with them to Dover! Cossacks in bearskings help'd to fill the crowded road before us, and I once for a moment, which is the case with other dreams, saw as plainly as I ever did awake, the tower of Canterbury Cathedral. After this, night seem'd to close in fast, and with my whole company I was destined to descend steep chalk hills, and go headlong into the Sea. It was in vain to expostulate with the palefaced Spectre who directed our course, I found myself surrounded by a hubbub of voices, and trunks of old clothes, (you know I am always busy in that way in my sleep) and the roar of the Sea-beach, mingled with loud discharges of immense Artillery place'd on Cliffs over our heads. I saw Queen Ann's pocket piece
We hope to see Ramsgate and Margate, and to be home by next Thursday, but we expect to see the great visitors land here on Monday, when all the bustle will be renewd. Yon cannot write to me because after Monday we shall fly round the Coast like Sea-Gulls in search of what we can catch. Pray do not mention my Dream in your letters home, untill I can see you, or pass by you to Shefford.—
God bless you, my dear life untill good fortune sends me to you again. These glorious scenes I wish to Heaven you could see, but it cannot be now.—