To live without sleep in our present fluctuating
state, however desirably it might seem to the lady in
Clelia, can surely be the wish only of the young or
the ignorant; to every one else, a perpetual vigil will
appear to be a state of wretchedness, second only
to that of the miserable beings, whom Swift has in
his travels so elegantly described, as "supremely
cursed with immortality."
Sleep is necessary to 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.
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