ild and the
adventurous, the commonplaces of life were to me inexpressibly tame and
joyless. And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, was
more inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action which can alone
wring enterprise from life. Meditation was my natural element. I loved
to spend the noon reclined by some shady stream, and in a half sleep
to shape images from the glancing sunbeams. A dim and unreal order of
philosophy, that belongs to our nation, was my favourite intellectual
pursuit; and I sought amongst the Obscure and the Recondite the variety
and emotion I could not find in the Familiar. Thus constantly watching
the operations of the inner mind, it occurred to me at last that sleep
having its own world, but as yet a rude and fragmentary one, it might
be possible to shape from its chaos all those combinations of beauty,
of power, of glory, and of love, which were denied to me in the world in
which my frame walked and had its being. So soon as this idea came upon
me, I nursed and cherished and mused over it, till I found that the
imagination began to effect the miracle I desired. By brooding ardently,
intensely, before I retired to rest, over any especial train of
thought, over any ideal creations; by keeping the body utterly still and
quiescent during the whole day; by shutting out all living adventure,
the memory of which might perplex and interfere with the stream
of events that I desired to pour forth into the wilds of sleep, I
discovered at last that I could lead in dreams a life solely their own,
and utterly distinct from the life of day. Towers and palaces, all
my heritage and seigneury, rose before me from the depths of night; I
quaffed from jewelled cups the Falernian of imperial vaults; music from
harps of celestial tone filled up the crevices of air; and the smiles of
immortal beauty flushed like sunlight over all. Thus the adventure and
the glory that I could not for my waking life obtain, was obtained for
me in sleep. I wandered with the gryphon and the gnome; I sounded the
horn at enchanted portals; I conquered in the knightly lists; I planted
my standard over battlements huge as the painter's birth of Babylon
itself.

"But I was afraid to call forth one shape on whose loveliness to pour
all the hidden passion of my soul. I trembled lest my sleep should
present me some image which it could never restore, and, waking from
which, even the new world I had created might be left d