In regard to wine, Lamb and myself had the same habit--perhaps it
rose to the dignity of a principle--viz., to take a great deal
_during_ dinner--none _after_ it. Consequently, as Miss
Lamb (who drank only water) retired almost with the dinner itself,
nothing remained for men of our principles, the rigor of which we
had illustrated by taking rather too much of old port before the
cloth was drawn, except talking; amoebaean colloquy, or, in Dr.
Johnson's phrase, a dialogue of "brisk reciprocation." But this was
impossible; over Lamb, at this period of his life, there passed
regularly, after taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. It
descended upon him as softly as a shadow. In a gross person, laden
with superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this would have been
disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry
as an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by
scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a network
of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb--more like a golden haze
falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud exhaling
upwards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair as a bust,
breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly alive, he
presented the image of repose midway between life and death, like
the repose of sculpture; and to one who knew his history a repose
affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal storms of
his life.
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