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 post-initial 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, past 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 night-mare. “Leave me, leave me to repose!”
Twelve by the kitchen clock!—still restless!—One! O 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 hybernate 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 mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, 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 candle-light 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-syrup, 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.