1829." Recollections of a Night of Fever. 487 
old hag, and sounded tremendous even to my own hearing. At first she 
only stared, like one struck by sudden wonder ; then, as surprise gave 
way to fear, she covered her face with her hands, as if to shut out the 
sounds that were too horrible for bearing; and, finally, fled with the 
long-protracted howl of the wolf when driven from its prey. 
I was dead, and knew that I was dead. I had consciousness without 
life—sense only for suffering—and lay a fettered prisoner in my narrow 
prison-house. Still sext¥, that centre-point to which in life all pain and 
all pleasure are referred—that individual but invisible existence, which 
remains entire even when the limbs are lopped away from the trunk— 
which, mutilate the body as you will, retains in its wholeness the same 
capacity of suffering and enjoyment—this seLF still was. J lived, though 
my body had perished ; and the stings and bruisings of the insensible 
flesh were, by some mysterious agency, reflected on the spirit. 
But I was soon to be called to another sphere, and to loftier modes of 
suffering. While I was yet mouldering, a voice reached me, and it 
sounded like a tempest—“ Let the dead arise!” Death, which had 
closed my ears to all other sounds, could not make me deaf to this awful 
summons. I arose from the grave as from a bed, shaking off the mould- 
ering garment of the flesh, and was in eternity, myself a portion of it, 
however indefinite. There was neither sun, nor moon, nor star, nor 
earth, nor space, nor time: all was eternity—immeasurable, incompre- 
hensible eternity!) And there I was alone with my own conscience, 
that, with a thousand tongues spoke out the sentence of anguish, and 
drove me onward through the boundless without rest, for in it was no 
resting-place. I called on Death ; but Death himself had passed away 
with the world. Not even an echo answered to my cry. I called on 
those who, like me, were to know anguish ; but either they were not, 
or else were lost in the void. 
On a sudden a whirlwind arose. I heard the mighty flapping of its 
wings as it rushed on towards me through the boundless, and again felt 
that there was hope. The darkness rolled away before it ; the sound of 
many instruments came up from the deep ; and I was hurried onward, 
till at last, by a transition as rapid as the passing of a sunbeam over the 
water, I found myself in a state, blissful indeed, but such as almost sets 
description at defiance. I heard the voice of those I loved so dearly ; I 
saw their little fairy forms gliding dimly about me, as if in mist; but I 
could neither move, nor speak, nor in any way, as it seemed, make them 
sensible of my nearness. They were talking of me. I heard one say to 
the other, “ To-morrow is his birth-day!” And then they began to sing 
in low, plaintive tones, one of the wild strains of a wild drama that I 
had written many years before, and which was even too apt to my situa- 
tion. Strange to say, though till that moment I could as soon have 
repeated the whole of the Iliad as my own lines, yet, ever since, the 
address of the poor Adine to Faustus has remained indelibly written 
‘upon my memory. It ran thus :— 
tg Oh, Saul! oh, king! 
Wake from thy fearful dream ! 
The chains, that bind 
Thy horror-haunted mind, 
Drop from thee, as the stream 
Of music gushes from the trembling string. 
