Excerpt from The Lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Doctor Robert Sanderson Life. Hence we may presume, that the strictest and most severe inquiry was made before its introduction. Plutarch is not es teemed a credulous writer yet he has given a full and circum stantial history of the appearances that presented themselves to Dion and to Brutus. And in modern times Dr. Doddridge, a most sed nlous examiner of facts, and of all men the least liable to credu lity and weakness of understanding, published a relation of an extraordinary vision. Let it he remarked that, according to the Opinion of a medical writer of great eminence, a discriminating symptom of human insanity is the rising up in the mind of images not distinguishable by the patient from impressions upon the senses. T O a momentary delusion, originating from some bod ily disorder, We may safely attribute the visions or false percep tions, of which many authentic descriptions have been transmitted to us and we may easily suppose that Dr. Donne, separated from his beloved wife and family, whom he had left in a very distress ful situation, must have suffered the most poignant anxiety of mind, and of course much indisposition of body. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.