Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/177

 meaning very little? Nay! let the moralist by profession give, to whom he will, sa musique, sa flamme: to any practical person, who is a wise shareholder and zealous vestryman. For myself, my limited and dreamy self, I eschew these upright businesses; upright memories and meditations please me more, and to live with as little action as may be. Action: why do they talk of action? Match me, for pure activity, one evening of my dreams, when life and death fill my mind with their messengers, and the days of old come back to me. And now, homewards, for a little sleep; that profound and rich slumber at early dawn which is my choice delight. A sleep, bathed in musical impressions, and filled with fresh dreams, all impossible and happy; four hours, and five, and six perhaps: then the cathedral matin bell will chime in with my fancies, and I shall wake harmoniously. I shall feel infinitely cheerful, after the spirit of the Compleat Angler; I shall remember that I was once at Ware, and at Am well, those placid haunts of Walton. A conviction of beauty, and contentment in life will lay hold on me, more than commonly; it is probable that I shall read The Spectator, and Addison, rather than Steele, at breakfast. And I know which paper it will be: it will be about Will Wimble coming up to the house, with two or three hazel twigs in his hand, fresh cut in Sir Roger's woods. Or, if I prove faithful to my great Lucretius: the man, not the book, for I read him in the Giuntine: I will read that marvellous It ver et Venus; that dancing masque of beauty. For L'Allegro, I do not read that; it is read aloud to me by the morning, with exquisite, bright cadences. After my honey from the flowers of a very rustic farm, and my coffee, from some wonderful Eastern place; and my eggs, marked by the careful housewife as she took them from her henhouse, covered with stonecrop over its old tiles; after all these delicates, now comes the first cigarette, pungent and exhilarating. As the grey blue