<gr> --'Oduseuoes fulloisi caluyato' t<y?> d' ar' 'Aq<hnh>
<gr> "Gpnon eoep' <ommasi ce<u?>', ina min pauseie tacista
<gr> Duspon<es cam<atoio>.-------- HOM. E'. 491.
--Pallas pour'd sweet slumbers on his soul;
And balmy dreams, the gift of soft repose,
Calm'd all his pains, and banish'd all his woes. POPE.
IF every day did not produce fresh instances of
the ingratitude of mankind, we might, perhaps,
be at a loss, why so liberal and impartial a
benefactor as sleep, should meet with so few historians
or panegyrists. Writers are so totally absorbed by
the business of the day, as never to turn their
attention to that power, whose officious hand so
seasonably suspends the burthen of life; and without
whose interposition man would not be able to endure
the fatigue of labour, however rewarded, or
the struggle with opposition, however successful.
Night, though she divides to many the longest
part of life, and to almost all the most innocent and
happy, is yet unthankfully neglected, except by
those who pervert her gifts.
The astronomers, indeed, expect her with
impatience, and felicitate themselves upon her arrival:
Fontenelle has not failed to celebrate her praises;
and to chide the sun for hiding from his view the
worlds, which he imagines to appear in every
constellation. Nor have the poets been always deficient
in her praises: Milton has observed of the night,
that it is "the pleasant time, the cool, the silent."
These men may, indeed, well be expected to pay
particular homage to night; since they are indebted
to her, not only for cessation of pain, but increase
of pleasure; not only for slumber, but for knowledge.
But the greater part of her avowed votaries are the
sons of luxury; who appropriate to festivity the
hours designed for rest; who consider the reign of
pleasure as commencing when day begins to withdraw
her busy multitudes, and ceases to dissipate
attention by intrusive and unwelcome variety; who
begin to awake to joy when the rest of the world
sinks into insensibility; and revel in the soft affluence
of flattering and artifical lights, which "more shadowy
set off the face of things."
Without touching upon the fatal consequences of
a custom, which, as Ramazzini observes, will be for
ever condemned and for ever retained; it may be
observed, that however sleep may be put off from
time to time, yet the demand is of so importunate a
nature, as not to remain long unsatisfied: and if, as
some have done, we consider it as the tax of life, we
cannot but observe it as a tax that must be paid,
unless we could cease to be men; for Alexander
declared, that nothing convinced him that he was not a
divinity, but his not being able to live without sleep.
To live without sleep in our present fluctuating
state, however desirably it might seem to the lady in
Clelia, can surely be the wish only of the young or
the ignorant; to every one else, a perpetual vigil will
appear to be a state of wretchedness, second only
to that of the miserable beings, whom Swift has in
his travels so elegantly described, as "supremely
cursed with immortality."
Sleep is necessary to the happy to prevent satiety,
and to endear life by a short absence; and to the
miserable, to relieve them by intervals of quiet. Life
is to most, such as could not be endured without
frequent intermission of existence: Homer, therefore,
has thought it an office worthy of the goddess
of wisdom, to lay Ulysses asleep when landed on
Phaeacia.
It is related of Barretier, whose early advances in
literature scarce any human mind has equalled, that
he spent twelve hours of the four-and-twenty in
sleep: yet this appears from the bad state of his
health, and the shortness of his life, to have been
too small a respite for a mind so vigorously and
intensely employed: it is to be regretted, therefore,
that he did not exercise his mind less, and his body
more: since by this means, it is highly probable,
that though he would not then have astonished with
the blaze of a comet, he would yet have shone with
the permanent radiance of a fixed star.
Nor should it be objected, that there have been
many men who daily spend fifteen or sixteen hours
in study: for by some of whom this is reported it
has never been done; others have done it for a short
time only; and of the rest it appears, that they
employed their minds in such operations as required
neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery of
collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting
dictionaries, or accumulating compilations.
Men of study and imagination are frequently
upbraided by the industrious and plodding sons of care,
with passing too great a part of their life in a state
of inaction. But these defiers of sleep seem not to
remember that though it must be granted them that
they are crawling about before the break of day, it
can seldom be said that they are perfectly awake;
they exhaust no spirits, and require no repairs; but
lie torpid as a toad in marble, or at least are known
to live only by an inert and sluggish loco-motive
faculty, and may be said, like a wounded snake, to
"drag their slow length along."
Man has been long known among philosophers
by the appellation of the microcosm, or epitome of
the world: the resemblance between the great and
little world might, by a rational observer, be detailed
to many particulars; and to many more by a fanciful
speculatist. I know not in which of these two classes
I shall be ranged for observing, that as the total
quantity of light and darkness allotted in the course
of the year to every region of the earth is the same,
though distributed at various times and in different
portions; so, perhaps, to each individual of the
human species, nature has ordained the same quantity
of wakefulness and sleep; though divided by
some into a total quiescence and vigorous exertion
of their faculties, and, blended by others in a kind of
twilight of existence, in a state between dreaming
and reasoning, in which they either think without
action, or act without thought.
The poets are generally well affected to sleep: as
men who think with vigour, they require respite from
thought; and gladly resign themselves to that gentle
power, who not only bestows rest, but frequently
leads them to happier regions, where patrons are
always kind, and audiences are always candid; where
they are feasted in the bowers of imagination, and
crowned with flowers divested of their prickles, and
laurels of unfading verdure.
The more refined and penetrating part of
mankind, who take wide surveys of the wilds of life, who
see the innumerable terrours and distresses that are
perpetually preying on the heart of man, and discern
with unhappy perspicuity, calamities yet latent in
their causes, are glad to close their eyes upon the
gloomy prospect, and lose in a short insensibility
the remembrance of others' miseries and their own.
The hero has no higher hope, than that, after having
routed legions after legions, and added kingdom to
kingdom, he shall retire to milder happiness, and
close his days in social festivity. The wit or the sage
can expect no greater happiness, than that, after
having harassed his reason in deep researches, and
fatigued his fancy in boundless excursions, he shall
sink at night in the tranquillity of sleep.
The poets, among all those that enjoy the blessings
of sleep, have been least ashamed to acknowledge
their benefactor. How much Statius considered
the evils of life as assuaged and softened by the balm
of slumber, we may discover by that pathetick
invocation, which he poured out in his waking nights:
and that Cowley, among the other felicities of his
darling solitude, did not forget to number the
privilege of sleeping without disturbance, we may learn
from the rank that he assigns among the gifts of
nature to the poppy, "which is scattered," says he,
"over the fields of corn, that all the needs of man
may be easily satisfied, and that bread and sleep may
be found together."
Si quis invisum Cereri benignae
Me putat germen, vehementer errat;
Illa me in partem recipit libenter
Fertilis agri.
Meque frumentumque simul per omnes
Consulens mundo Dea spargit oras;
Creseite, O! dixit, duo magna susten-
tacula vitae.
Carpe, mortalis, mea dona laetus,
Carpe, nec plantas alias require,
Sed satur panis, satur et soporis,
Caetera sperne.
He wildly errs who thinks I yield
Precedence in the well-cloth'd field,
Tho' mix'd with wheat I grow:
Indulgent Ceres knew my worth,
And to adorn the teeming earth,
She bade the Poppy blow.
Nor vainly gay the sight to please,
But blest with pow'r mankind to ease,
The goddess saw me rise:
"Thrive with the life-supporting grain,"
She cried, "the solace of the swain,
The cordial of his eyes.
Seize, happy mortal, seize the good;
My hand supplies thy sleep and food,
And makes thee truly blest:
With plenteous meals enjoy the day,
In slumbers pass the night away,
And leave to fate the rest." C. B.
Sleep, therefore, as the chief of all earthly
blessings, is justly appropriated to industry and
temperance; the refreshing rest, and the peaceful night,
are the portion only of him who lies down weary
with honest labour, and free from the fumes of
indigested luxury; it is the just doom of laziness and
gluttony, to be inactive without ease, and drowsy
without tranquillity.
Sleep has often been mentioned as the image of
death[f]; "so like it," says Sir Thomas Brown, "that
I dare not trust it without my prayers:" their
resemblance is, indeed, apparent and striking; they
both, when they seize the body, leave the soul at
liberty: and wise is he that remembers of both, that
they can be safe and happy only by virtue.
[f] Lovely sleep! thou beautiful image of terrible death
Be thou my pillow-companion, my angel of rest!
Come, O sleep! for thine are the joys of living and dying:
Life without sorrow, and death with no anguish, no pain.
From the German of Schmidt.