There was an idiot once, who was in the habit of amusing himself constantly by counting the hours as they were struck on the clock. It chanced, after some time, that the works of the clock were injured, so that the striking for a time had ceased. The idiot, notwithstanding, continued to measure the day with perfect correctness, by counting and beating the hour. This is a story of Dr. Plott’s, in his History of Staffordshire.
There is one of more modern date, somewhat analogous to this.
I may quote Holy Writ in support of this passive condition of true sleep; nay, even its similitude to death. How often do we find allusions to sleep and death as synonymous! Sir Thomas Brown was impressed so deeply with this _likeness_, that he “did not dare to trust it without his prayers.” And the Macedonian, who wished for more worlds to conquer, confessed his sleep proved to him his mortality. I may quote ancient poetry also in my support. Homer and Virgil describe sleep as the “Brother of Death;” and, among the profane poets of later times, the same sublime association is traced of this
Among the ancient allegories, sleep is portrayed as a female, with black unfolded wings,—in her left hand, a white child, the image of Sleep; in her right, a black child, the image of Death.
On the tomb of Cypselus, according to Pausanias, _night_ is thus personified.
CAST. How true, then, was the thought of the first deep sleeper, on the sensation of slumber:—
“——There gentle sleep First found me, and with soft oppression seiz’d My drownéd sense, untroubled; tho’ I thought I then was passing to my former state, Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.”
But how fearful is this resemblance which changes “tir’d nature’s sweet restorer” into a type of death! Pr’ythee, Evelyn, do not affright me thus, by clothing sleep with terror, as if it were disease and danger.
EV. Why tremble for the mortal sleep of the just and good, who will feel, with William Hunter, on their death-bed, “how _pleasant_ and easy it is to die;” and with another moralist,—
“Oh what a wonder seems the fear of death, Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep; Night following night!”
Fear not, Castaly; I do not term _slumber_ and _gentle_ sleep disease, but signs of health. Not so, however, many a _profound_ sleep, and its advances towards _coma_; those results of exhaustion from excess, or from intense and direct narcotics, as opium sleep, and the paralyzing senselessness from extreme cold, as in the story of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander in the antarctic regions.