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. 1, 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

* What wontellt & give if I could en this ShondrianY

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,
With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard,
Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes,
And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose?
BEN JONSON.

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. Others 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

en cuerpo, no se; que yo
solo sè, que no lo sè

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
Whereon the Tartar king did pass;

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, * Lucretius. † Calderon.

his pirouettes, and his pistes, his croupade and his balotade, his gallop galliard and his capriole. I have been on him when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a bittern, with a strong spiral flight, round, round and round, and upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he has gone full sail or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs. Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see? What did we do? Or rather what did we not see! and what did we not perform!

CHAPTER IV. A. I.

A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

• Tel condamne mon Coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens. LA PRETIEUSE.

I WENT down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joyous thoughts. For mirth and for music the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then full of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the book to her. "What book?" she replied. "The History," said I, "of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his horse Nobs." She answered, "No, indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to me!" and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: "Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it to you?" She raised her eyes, inclined her head forward with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the hon"Commandante," said I, to my wife and commandress, "shall I dedicate it then to you?" My commandante made answer," Not unless you have something better to dedicate." So, ladies!" said I, "the stone which the builders rejected"-and then looking at my wife's youngest sister"Oh, it will be such a book!" The manner and the tone were so much in earnest that they arrested the bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, "Why you never can be serious?" "Not serious," said I ; "why I have done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night." "He told me so," rejoined my commandante, "the first thing in the morning." "Ah, Stupey!" cried my wife's eldest sister,

our.

66

accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been made in it by the tooth drawer; hiatus valde lacrymabiles.

“Two volumes,” said I,“ and this in the title page!" So, taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the digamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy.

66

It passed from hand to hand. Why he is not in earnest ?" said my wife's youngest sister. "He never can be," replied my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye-"A pretty subject, indeed, for you to employ your time upon! You-vema whehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athancod!" I have thought proper to translate this part of my commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue.

CHAPTER III. A. I.

THE UTILITY OF POCKETS-A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED.

La tasca è propria cosa da Christiani.

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

My eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my son had finished his Greek; and I was sitting at my desk, pen in hand, and in mouth at the same time; (a substitute for biting the nails which I recommend to all onygophagists;) when the Bhow Begum came in with her black velvet reticule, suspended as usual from her arm by its silver chain.

Now of all the inventions of the tailor, (who is of all artists the most inventive,) I hold the pocket to be the most commodious, and saving the fig leaf, the most indispensable. Birds have their craw; ruminating beasts their first or ante-stom