Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/132

 tumbled-like Achilles or Orlando—first on one side, then on the other—repeated to himself several hundred lines of poetry—counted a thousand—began again, and counted another thousand—in vain:—the beautiful Cephalis was the predominant image in all his soliloquies, in all his repetitions—even in the numerical process from which he sought relief, he did but associate the idea of number with that of his dear tormentor, till she appeared to his mind's eye in a thousand similitudes—distinct, not different. These thousand images, indeed, were but one, and yet the one was a thousand, a sort of uni-multiplex phantasma, which will be very intelligible to some understandings.

He arose with the first peep of day, and sallied forth to enjoy the balmy breeze of morning, which any but a lover might have thought too cool: for it was an intense frost;