7.
But I have not yet given up all hope of finding some
way of hastening the approach of sleep. Even yet there
is a glimmer,
for rereading (not for the first, and, please Heaven!
not the last time)
Lamb's letters, I came upon the following, in a note
to Southey; "But there is a man in my office,
a Mr. H., who proses it away from morning to night,
and never gets beyond corporal
and material verities!
... When I can't sleep o' nights, I imagine a dialogue
with Mr. H., upon a given subject, and go prosing
on in fancy with him, till I either laugh or fall
asleep. I have
literally found it answer .... " There is
promise in this, and we all have our Mr. H.'s, whose
talk, 
bare
of anything like fancy and wit, acts upon us
like a dose
of
laudanum. This very night I will dismiss such
trivial phantasies as jumping sheep and crooked
pictures, and evoke
the phantom of a
crushing, stupendous
Bore.
