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Untitled Article
of the player , while the fingers are striking those notes . Such is the sort of intelligence which the nerves convey to the brain in sleep . Godwin , when a young man , used to receive it frequently and strongly ; although that mighty brain of his , with its stately logic , and broad generalizations , and calm abstractions , might seem so inuch of an independent world in itself , as to render him little subject to the quick , unconscious vibrations of a more sensitive organization . What a splendid outpouring of eloquence is the dream of St . Leon , in the deep sleep which followed his draught of the elixir of life . I will not , as a critic , answer for it now , but I shall never forget how I read it when a boy , and seemed to
grow a god in reading it . But these things change strangely , or we change . I tried to read the ' Pilgrim ' s Progress * " the other day , and could not . It made me melancholy . I feared my heart or my imagination was growing old ; but I took up the ' Arabian Nights , ' and all was right again ; glory to ' the good Haroun Alraschid . ' But to end this dream of the undreaming intelligences of sleep ; prepared by their prelibations for the
certainty of waking bliss , 1 opened my eyes , not knowing upon what , only sure that I was not in Paternoster Row , or within ear-shot of the ringing of Bow bells , or the tolling of St . Paul ' s . And there were the blue heaven , and the green hill gently kissing , * with bright and dark clouds ( cumulo-cirrhus and cirrho-stratus ) curling , clustering , and flowing about , like golden and hyacinthine
locks . ' Up with the lark / says I to myself , always up with the lark in the country ; and then , before the impulse went into action , that everlasting and universal scepticism , which is the bane of all exertion , and the torment of all orthodoxy ; to which medical men are so prone , that religio medici means no religion at all ; which makes our literati write so feebly and skittishly , all for want of faith ; which , since the French revolution , has been so rife
in the world , extending even to the foundations of our timehallowed institutions , and the principles of our Constitution , once the wonder and envy of the world ; that sceptical spirit , I say , whispered in mine ear , * What means up with the lark T Call you it c up to exchange this easy recumbency , so favourable to meditation , philosophy , and poetry , for the mechanical drudgery of walking , or the stiff and stark conventionalism of sitting on a straight-backed chair ? Call you it ' up * to stop this easy flow of
thoughts and images that are gently trickling through the brain like a brook in springtide , rich with winter ' s legacies , and musical with its own murmurs , for talk and argument , marshalled like soldiers by beat of drum , and parading hither and thither at the word of command . I say , the true * up with the lark' is to lie still , and 4 feed on thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers . This is no idleness . I never laid in bed , like H ., till full noontide , reading * Letters on Early Rising , ' and balancing * Stolen , — fc A heavtm-kissing hill . —SAakspeure , Boaden ' s Ed . V . D .
Untitled Article
416 Local Logic .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 416, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/56/
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