The chrononaut of the Republic of Letters

For scholars: how much does what you study influence your dream activity?

Preface: I am writing a dissertation in philosophical methodology on republicanism (staying up until three in the morning to write), and republicanism is the worldview I adhere to (specifically, I am a Mazzinian, but I also have a lot of sympathy for the English and French Revolutions).

Last night I dreamt that I was travelling back in time with Jean-Jacques Rousseau to save Algernon Sidney from the gallows: for some reason we were going to Rome, where Sidney had spent the first years of his exile (but some twenty years before his martyrdom for the sacred cause of liberty), to warn him of the danger (so it made a vague chronological sense). The problem was the characters of the two republicans: I mean, Sidney in the dream did indeed have the bad temper that the sources attest to (which does not detract from the fact that I was so excited by the idea of meeting him that I did not immediately speak to him out of emotion, except to tell him how much I admired him), but Rousseau in the dream was far too friendly (it is also true that in the dream he was halfway between a mentor and a comrade in this important mission: It was his idea to save Sidney, though I cannot remember how I met him in the first place), he was also, in theory, bad tempered. Oh, it must be that I'm reading about the influence of Sidney's work on Rousseau.