The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish].

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of sleep / [Robert Macnish]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in the silence of night, the “still small voice” is heard like an echo from the tomb; then, a crowd of doleful remembrances rush in upon the crimi- nal, no longer to be debarred from visiting the depths of his spirit; and when dreams succeed to such broken and miserable repose, it is only to ageravate his previous horrors, and present them in a character of still more overwhelming dread.* “Though thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep ; There are shades which will not vanish, There are thoughts thou canst not banish ; By a power to thee unknown, Thou canst never be alone ; Thou art wrapt as with a shroud, Thou art gathered in a cloud ; And forever shalt thou dwell In the spirit of this spell.” * “ No fiction of romance presents so awful a picture of the ideal tyrant as that of Caligula by Suetonius, His palace — radiant with purple and gold, but murder every where lurking beneath flowers; his smiles and echoing laughter, masking (yet hardly meant to mask) his foul treachery of heart; his hideous and tumultuous dreams; his baffled sleep, and his sleepless nights, compose the picture of an Aischylus. What a master’s sketch lies in those few lines : —‘Incitabatur insomnio maxime ; neque enim plus tribus horis nocturnis quiescebat ; ac ne his placida quiete, at pavida miris rerum imaginibus: ut qui inter ceteras pelagi quondam speciem colloquentem secum videre visus sit. Ideoque magna parte noctis, vigiliz cubandique tedio, nunc toro residens, nunc per longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque expectare lucem consueverat ;?—i. e. But above all, he was tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness ; for he enjoyed not more than three hours of nocturnal repose; nor even these in Q*
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