Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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“A blessing,” says Sancho Panza, “on him who first invented sleep; it wraps a man all round like a cloak.” But neither Sancho nor any one else will give us a blessing if we suffer ourselves to go to sleep in thinking over it, at the very threshold of our enterprise, and before indulging in communion with the seven sisters of whom we have spoken. It was a trite remark of a divine that “where drowsiness begins, devotion ends,” and needs application as much to book writers as to sermon preachers. Although we may not have the power to check an occasional yawn, in which there may be as much temporal relief as in a good sneeze, let us avoid the premonitory sinking of the upper eyelids, by calling in the aid of Francesco Berni to release us from the spell of sleep, and introduce us to “the sisters” of the olden time.

“Quella diceva ch’era la piu bella

Arte, il piu bel mestier che si facesse;

Il letto er’ una veste, una gonella

Ad ognun buona che se la mettesse.”

Orland. Innamor, lib. iii. cant. vii.