'A Very Wild Extravagant Dream'

In his Spectator essay for January 15, 1712, Joseph Addison tells us he spent the day with friends, “an Assembly of Virtuosos,” one of whom describes “many curious Observations” regarding human anatomy. The conversation inspires in Addison “a very wild Extravagant Dream” in which he witnesses the dissection of a “Beau’s Head” and a “Coquet’s Heart.” Addison is writing in deep satirical mode, so you might anticipate where this is going.

A “Beau” in the eighteenth century, according to Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, signified “a man of dress; a man whose great care is to deck his person.” We might say fop, dandy or clothes horse. For “coquette,” Johnson gives “a gay, airy girl; a girl who endeavours to attract notice.” Both are types still with us, of course.

Most of the essay concerns the Beau and a detailed and fanciful catalogue of his brain and its parts:

“There was a large Cavity on each side of the Head, which I must not omit. That on the right Side was filled with Fictions, Flatteries, and Falshoods, Vows, Promises, and Protestations; that on the left with Oaths and Imprecations. There issued out a Duct from each of these Cells, which ran into the Root of the Tongue, where both joined together, and passed forward in one common Duct to the Tip of it. We discovered several little Roads or Canals running from the Ear into the Brain, and took particular care to trace them out through their several Passages. One of them extended itself to a Bundle of Sonnets and little musical Instruments. Others ended in several Bladders which were filled either with Wind or Froth. But the latter Canal entered into a great Cavity of the Skull, from whence there went another Canal into the Tongue. This great Cavity was filled with a kind of Spongy Substance, which the French Anatomists call Galimatias, and the English, Nonsense.”

Johnson’s definition of gallimatias, from the French: “nonsense; talk without meaning.” Addison stresses the conventional humanity of the Beau, his averageness. He was no oddity or freak:

“As for the Skull, the Face, and indeed the whole outward Shape and Figure of the Head, we could not discover any Difference from what we observe in the Heads of other Men. We were informed, that the Person to whom this Head belonged, had passed for a Man above five and thirty Years; during which time he Eat and Drank like other People, dressed well, talked loud, laught frequently, and on particular Occasions had acquitted himself tolerably at a Ball or an Assembly; to which one of the Company added, that a certain Knot of Ladies took him for a Wit. He was cut off in the Flower of his Age by the Blow of a Paring-Shovel, having been surprized by an eminent Citizen, as he was tendring some Civilities to his Wife.”

If taken a little too seriously by a modern reader, Addison’s schtick is grotesque and probably offensive, but he’s no Swift whose savagery is often muted by a rational, reasonable, deadpan tone. He doesn't go that far. Both are two of the reasons I love the eighteenth century. Go here to read the sequel, Addison’s account of dissecting the Coquet’s heart.