The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes | Page 8

the happy to prevent satiety, and to endear life by
a short absence; and to the miserable, to relieve them by intervals of
quiet. Life is to most, such as could not be endured without frequent
intermission of existence: Homer, therefore, has thought it an office
worthy of the goddess of wisdom, to lay Ulysses asleep when landed
on Phaeacia.
It is related of Barretier, whose early advances in literature scarce any
human mind has equalled, that he spent twelve hours of the
four-and-twenty in sleep: yet this appears from the bad state of his
health, and the shortness of his life, to have been too small a respite for
a mind so vigorously and intensely employed: it is to be regretted,
therefore, that he did not exercise his mind less, and his body more:
since by this means, it is highly probable, that though he would not

then have astonished with the blaze of a comet, he would yet have
shone with the permanent radiance of a fixed star.
Nor should it be objected, that there have been many men who daily
spend fifteen or sixteen hours in study: for by some of whom this is
reported it has never been done; others have done it for a short time
only; and of the rest it appears, that they employed their minds in such
operations as required neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery
of collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting dictionaries, or
accumulating compilations.
Men of study and imagination are frequently upbraided by the
industrious and plodding sons of care, with passing too great a part of
their life in a state of inaction. But these defiers of sleep seem not to
remember that though it must be granted them that they are crawling
about before the break of day, it can seldom be said that they are
perfectly awake; they exhaust no spirits, and require no repairs; but lie
torpid as a toad in marble, or at least are known to live only by an inert
and sluggish locomotive faculty, and may be said, like a wounded
snake, to "drag their slow length along."
Man has been long known among philosophers by the appellation of
the microcosm, or epitome of the world: the resemblance between the
great and little world might, by a rational observer, be detailed to many
particulars; and to many more by a fanciful speculatist. I know not in
which of these two classes I shall be ranged for observing, that as the
total quantity of light and darkness allotted in the course of the year to
every region of the earth is the same, though distributed at various
times and in different portions; so, perhaps, to each individual of the
human species, nature has ordained the same quantity of wakefulness
and sleep; though divided by some into a total quiescence and vigorous
exertion of their faculties, and, blended by others in a kind of twilight
of existence, in a state between dreaming and reasoning, in which they
either think without action, or act without thought.
The poets are generally well affected to sleep: as men who think with
vigour, they require respite from thought; and gladly resign themselves
to that gentle power, who not only bestows rest, but frequently leads
them to happier regions, where patrons are always kind, and audiences
are always candid; where they are feasted in the bowers of imagination,
and crowned with flowers divested of their prickles, and laurels of

unfading verdure.
The more refined and penetrating part of mankind, who take wide
surveys of the wilds of life, who see the innumerable terrours and
distresses that are perpetually preying on the heart of man, and discern
with unhappy perspicuity, calamities yet latent in their causes, are glad
to close their eyes upon the gloomy prospect, and lose in a short
insensibility the remembrance of others' miseries and their own. The
hero has no higher hope, than that, after having routed legions after
legions, and added kingdom to kingdom, he shall retire to milder
happiness, and close his days in social festivity. The wit or the sage can
expect no greater happiness, than that, after having harassed his reason
in deep researches, and fatigued his fancy in boundless excursions, he
shall sink at night in the tranquillity of sleep.
The poets, among all those that enjoy the blessings of sleep, have been
least ashamed to acknowledge their benefactor. How much Statius
considered the evils of life as assuaged and softened by the balm of
slumber, we may discover by that pathetick invocation, which he
poured out in his waking nights: and that Cowley, among the other
felicities of his darling solitude, did not forget to number the privilege
of sleeping without disturbance, we may learn from the rank that he
assigns