I WAS in the fourth night of the story of the doctor and his horse, and had broken it off, not like Scheherezade because it was time to get up, but because it was time to go to bed. It was at thirty-five minutes after ten o'clock, on the 20th of July, in the year of our Lord 1813. I finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its side, as if making music to my meditations, and having my eyes fixed upon the Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the head of her own table, I said, "It ought to be written in a book!" There had been a heavy thunder storm in the afternoon; and though the thermometer had fallen from 78 to 70, still the atmosphere was charged. If that mysterious power by which the nerves convey sensation and make their impulses obeyed be (as experiments seem to indicate) identical with the galvanic fluid; and if the galvanic and electric fluids be the same, (as philosophers have more than surmised ;) and if the lungs (according to a happy hypothesis) elaborate for us from the light of heaven this pabulum of the brain, and material essence, or essential matter of genius, it may be that the ethereal fire which I had inhaled so largely during the day produced the bright conception, or at least impregnated and quickened the latent seed. The punch, reader, had no share in it. I had spoken as it were abstractedly, and the look which accompanied the words was rather cogitative than regardant. The Bhow Begum laid down her snuffbox and replied, entering into the feeling, as well as echoing the words, "It ought to be written in a book-certainly it ought.” They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our auxiliary verbs give us a power which the ancients, with all their varieties of mood, and inflections of tense, never could obtain. "It must be written in a book," said I, encouraged by her manner. The mood was the same, the tense was the same; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as well as admired. "Pshaw! nonsense! stuff!" said my wife's eldest sister, who was sitting at the right hand of the Bhow Begum; "I say write it in a book indeed!" My wife's youngest sister was sitting diagonally opposite to the last speaker: she lifted up her eyes and smiled. It was a smile which expressed the same opinion as the late vituperative tones; there was as much of incredulity in it; but more of wonder and less of vehemence. My wife was at my left hand, making a cap for her youngest daughter, and with her tortoise shell paper workbox before her. I turned towards her and repeated the words, "It must be written in a book!" But I smiled while I was speaking, and was conscious of that sort of meaning in my eyes, which calls out contradiction for the pleasure of sporting with it. "Write it in a book?" she replied, "I am sure you won't!" and she looked at me with a frown. Poets have written much upon their ladies' frowns, but I do not remember that they have ever described the thing with much accuracy. When my wife frowns, two perpendicular wrinkles, each three quarters of an inch in length, are formed in the forehead, the base of each resting upon the top of the nose, and equi-distant from each other. The poets have also attributed dreadful effects to the frown of those whom they love. I cannot say that I ever experienced anything very formidable in my wife's. At present she knew her eyes would give the lie to it if they looked at me steadily for a moment; so they wheeled to the left about quick, off at a tangent, in a direction to the Bhow Begum, and then she smiled. She could not prevent the smile; but she tried to make it scornful. My wife's nephew was sitting diagonally with her, and opposite his mother, on the left hand of the Bhow Begum. "Oh!" he exclaimed, "it ought to be written in a book! it will be a glorious book! write it, uncle, I beseech you!" My wife's nephew is a sensible lad. He reads my writings, likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in politics: a youth of parts and considerable promise. "He will write it!" said the Bhow Begum, taking up her snuffbox, and accompanying the words with a nod of satisfaction and encouragement. "He will never be so foolish!" said my wife. My wife's eldest sister rejoined, "He is foolish enough for anything." CHAPTER VI. A. I. SHOWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKE BY HIS OWN IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR EFFECT UPON HIS READERS. Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear; a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow. WEBSTER. WHEN I ought to have been asleep the "unborn pages crowded on my soul.". The chapters ante-initial and postinitial appeared in delightful prospect "long drawn out:" the beginning, the middle, and the end were evolved before me: the whole spread itself forth, and then the parts unravelled themselves and danced the hays. The very types rose in judgment against me, as if to persecute me for the tasks which during so many years I had imposed upon them. Capitals and small letters, pica and long primer, brevier and bourgeois, English and nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans and Italics, black letter and red, passed over my inward sight. The notes of admiration!!! stood straight up in view as I lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to avoid them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump backs??? Then came to recollection the various incidents of the eventful tale. "Visions of glory spare my aching sight!" The various personages, like spectral faces in a fit of the vapours, stared at me through my eyelids. The doctor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the horse-he became a perfect nightmare. "Leave me, leave me to repose!" Twelve by the kitchen clock!-still restless! One! oh, doctor, for one of thy comfortable composing draughts! Two! here's a case of insomnolence. I, who in summer close my lids as instinctively as the daisy when the sun goes down; and who in winter could hibernate as well as bruin, were I but provided with as much fat to support me during the season, and keep the wick of existence burning; I, who, if my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to have descended from one of the seven sleepers, and from the sleeping beauty in the wood. I put my arms out of bed. I turned the pillow for the sake of applying a cold surface to my cheek. I stretched my feet into the cold corner. I listened to the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarin's head on the chimneypiece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed revolved with me round and round. Still the doctor visited me as perseveringly as if I had been his best patient; and, call up what thoughts I would to keep him off, the horse charged through them all. At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere, and the streamy candlelight were all alike somnific; where he who by strong effort lifted up his head, and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip wine, poppy sirup, mandragora, hop pillows, spiders' web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have failed: but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date I found benefit from having attended the course. CHAPTER V. A. I. SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP. If a dream should come in now to make you afeard, THE wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in, John Bunyan hath not explained. Some have conceited that unimbodied spirits have access to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (exuvia scilicet rerum, vel effluvia, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain the Fata Morgana,) the atomists, I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies, Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur* assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory, all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Öthers again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from the cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse; (I know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism;) and the soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been there. Faugh! Whether then my spirit that night found its way out at the nose, (for I sleep with my mouth shut,) and actually sallied out seeking adventures; or whether the spectrum of the horse floated into my chamber; or some benevolent genius or demon assumed the well-known and welcome form; or whether the dream were merely a dream si fuè en espiritu, ò fuè so, however, it was that in the visions of the night I mounted Nobs. Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's wooden steed, nor Of that wondrous horse of brass nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a night journey that ever man bestrode. Tell me not even of Pegasus! I have ridden him many a time; by day and by night have I ridden him; high and low, far and wide, round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know all his earth paces and his sky paces. I have tried him at a walk, at an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand gallop, at full gallop, and at full speed I have proved him in the manége with single turns and the manége with double turns, his bounds, his curvets, VOL. I. -3 Lucretius. B + Calderon. |