No doubt I had fallen asleep" (he has just said that he was awake and on the point of leaving the bath), "and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment doubt.

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." On 16th October, 1862, Lord Brougham copied this extract for his Autobiography, and says that on his arrival in Edinburgh he received a letter from India, announcing that G--- had died on 19th December.

He remarks "singular coincidence!" and adds that, considering the vast number of dreams, the number of coincidences is perhaps fewer than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect.
This is a concession to common-sense, and argues an ignorance of the fact that sane and (apparently) waking men may have hallucinations.
On the theory that we _may_ have inappreciable moments of sleep when we think ourselves awake, it is not an ordinary but an extraordinary coincidence that Brougham should have had that peculiar moment of the "dream" of G--- on the day or night of G---'s death, while the circumstance that he had made a compact with G--- multiplies the odds against accident in a ratio which mathematicians may calculate.
Brougham was used to dreams, like other people; he was not shocked by them.