The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

Andrew Lang · 1897 · 303 pages

The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

Andrew Lang45

So far The Times, in 1828. But two forms of a version of 1832 exist, one in a note to Mr. Walpole's Life of Perceval (1874), "an attested statement, drawn up and signed by Mr. Williams in the presence of the Rev. Thomas Fisher and Mr. Charles Prideaux Brune". Mr. Brune gave it to Mr. Walpole. With only verbal differences this variant corresponds to another signed by Mr. Williams and given by him to his grandson, who gave it to Mr. Perceval's great-niece, by whom it was lent to the Society for Psychical Research. These accounts differ toto coelo from that in The Times of 1828. The dream is not of May 11, but "about" May 2 or 3. Mr. Williams is not a stranger to the House of Commons; it is "a place well known to me". He is not ignorant of the name of the victim, but "understood that it was Mr. Perceval". He thinks of going to town to give warning. We hear nothing of Mr. Tucker. Mr. Williams does not verify his dream in the House, but from a drawing. A Mr. C. R. Fox, son of one to whom the dream was told before the event, was then a boy of fourteen, and sixty-one years later was sure that he himself heard of Mr. Williams's dream before the news of the murder arrived. After sixty years, however, the memory cannot be relied upon.

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