ours
together, I came to my lodging, and hastened to bed. My
_valet-de-chambre_[147] knows my University trick of reading there; and
he being: a good scholar for a gentleman, ran over the names of Horace,
Tibullus, Ovid, and others, to know which I would have. "Bring Virgil,"
said I, "and if I fall asleep, take care of the candle." I read the
sixth book over with the most exquisite delight, and had gone half
through it a second time, when the pleasing ideas of Elysian Fields,
deceased worthies walking in them, sincere lovers enjoying their
languishment without pain, compassion for the unhappy spirits who had
misspent their short daylight, and were exiled from the seats of bliss
for ever; I say, I was deep again in my reading, when this mixture of
images had taken place of all others in my imagination before, and
lulled me into a dream, from which I am just awake, to my great
disadvantage. The happy mansions of Elysium by degrees seemed to be
wafted from me, and the very traces of my late waking thoughts began to
fade away, when I was cast by a sudden whirlwind upon an island,
encompassed with a roaring and troubled sea, which shaked its very
centre, and rocked its inhabitants as in a cradle. The islanders lay on
their faces, without offering to look up, or hope for preservation; all
her harbours were crowded with mariners, and tall vessels of war lay in
danger of being driven to pieces on her shores. "Bless me!" said I, "why
have I lived in such a manner that the convulsion of nature should be so
terrible to me, when I feel in myself, that the better part of me is to
survive it? Oh! may that be in happiness." A sudden shriek, in which the
whole people on their faces joined, interrupted my soliloquy, and turned
my eyes and attention to the object which had given us that sudden
start, in the midst of an inconsolable and speechless affliction.
Immediately the winds grew calm, the waves subsided, and the people
stood up, turning their faces upon a magnificent pile in the midst of
the island. There we beheld an hero of a comely and erect aspect, but
pale and languid, sitting under a canopy of state. By the faces and dumb
sorrow of those who attended we thought him in the article of death. At
a distance sat a lady, whose life seemed to hang upon the same thread
with his: she kept her eyes fixed upon him, and seemed to smother ten
thousand thousand nameless things, which urged her tenderness to clasp
him in her arms: but her gr