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the arguments ; but I say the proverb is a fallacy ; that it begins with a misnomer , and that on a cool , elastic , hair mattress , or better still , on Dr . Arnott's delicious water-bed , ( O it is pleasant to float o ' er the sea /) one is most truly ' up with the lark / sailing on the bosom of the air , playing with the stars , or gliding afar off in the faint pearly car of the crescent moon . From such a state to rise is to fall ; the getting up is only a prelude to the coming down , and there ought to be a good reason for it . True , they say that ,
Early to bed and early to rise Is the way to be healthy , and wealthy , and wise . But that I doubt too . Goethe used to sit up late o'nights , and he had more of all three together than any man of modern times . Besides , I don ' t like the proverb . There is something suspicious in the way in which the three qualities are put together . If in this trinity , ' none is afore or after the other , ' I refuse my worship . It looks as if the inventor thought first of his stomach , secondly of his pocket , and , thirdly , of his brains . I turn round and ask with my old friend , the mathematician , ' What does this poem prove ? ' I do not see the connexion between the first line and the second . The poor factory children are bundled to bed the minute their work is over , and up early enough , but they are neither healthy , wealthy , nor wise . A comfortable farmer , with just cunning enough to vote for a Corn Law candidate at the County election is , I think , as much as such means can realize . Some of the finest parts of f Paradise Lost' were written in the
night . Whether Milton be one of your healthy , wealthy , and wise people I cannot say ; but , certainly , he was one of the best and purest specimens of humanity , physically , mentally , and morally , that nature has yet produced . Non Anglns , sed Ancjelus . There are hosts of proverbs which are apocryphal . Their inspiration is only that of Mammon . They are often the dirty excuses of the dirty tricks of a dirty majority . Nevertheless , 1 will get up , for the same reason that a lark sometimes will come down ; I
hear sweet sounds which may * wile a lav ' rock frae the lift . ' I shall give the whole long day , and would it were longer , to this locality . Ask me at night what it proves ? but ask me not before . The premises first , the conclusion afterwards . The
situation of this house is curious , inasmuch as it is the only one from which a particular effect which I am about to mention could be produced . It is chosen in defiance of the ordinary inducements for the selection of a site ; a little further one way , and it would have been more convenient of access ; a little further another way , and it would have had a more diversified view ; a little further in a third direction , him ! there would have been ampler space for lawn and garden ; a . little down the lull , and it would have been sheltered from the winds , which now rave round it and rattle through it ; but here it is , and here am I , starting from
Untitled Article
Local Logic . 417
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 417, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/57/
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