SLEEP AND SLEEPERS.
NEARLY all proverbs are true,—no doubt because they are truisms. The existence of the same proverbs in nearly all nations of similar civilisation proves this. But we venture the proposition that there is one set of proverbs which are flagrantly and aetuoustrably untrue, and these relate to sleep. Is there not a proverb that a man requires six hours' sleep, a woman seven, a child eight, and only a fool more ? If this be true, thousands of great men were, and are, fools. Experience surely tells us that there can be no rule for the amount of our sleep ; and if that had not been proved many times, it would be proved now by the testimony of public men who have been induced by Mr. Stead to publish their opinions in the Review of Reviews. Even the wise Coke erred in thinking that there could be rules for sleep. "Give six hours to sleep," he said ; "as many to the study of righteous laws ; for four hours pray, and give two to meals." That seems austere enough to be right, but we are very glad to be able honestly to believe that it is wrong. Perhaps we harbour a certain resentment against those objectionable persons who do with much less sleep than their fellows, and never even give us the gratification of fulfilling our prophecy that they will break down. Anyhow, it is a just resentment, and we are ready to avow it. It is time to protest against ascribing a high degree of virtue to the rare persons who, thanks to some constitutional peculiarity, can do with very little sleep and make a standard for others. It would be at least as reasonable to look upon them as the blacklegs of the intellectual labour market.
Mr. Stead sums up his symposium by saying "One or two very exceptional persons profess to have survived the experi- ment of sleeping only three or four hours, but careful perusal of all the returns sent in justifies me in saying that people who have arrived at the top are, for the most part, people who take good care to sleep from six to nine hours every night." There is good sense. What could be more convincing —or more pleasant ? " Hurrah!" we exclaimed as we read it. And Mr. Stead has the support of Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote to a friend on December 15th, 1716 :—" You ask me how, with so mach study, I manage to retain my health. Ab, my dear doctor, you have a better opinion of your lazy friend than he bath of himself. Morpheus is my last companion; without eight or nine hours of him your correspondent is not worth one scavenger's peruke. My
practices did at ye first hurt my stomach, but new I eat heartily enou', as y' will see when I come down beside you." We fancy that a certain error is introduced into the returns of sleep supplied by some distinguished men owing to the surreptitious nap. It is useless to pride oneself—even if it were not a fundamental mistake to suppose it a just cause of pride—on sleeping only five or six hours at night if one invariably "meditates with closed eyes" during a daily railway journey, or dozes after dinner. Mr. Stead's symposium presents us with one fresh idea, which is that some hard workers incline deliberately to split up their sleep into portions. No one appears to have reduced the plan to a system, but might it not suit some people w119se fund of nervous energy is rapidly consumed and as rapidly restored to distribute their time, like that of a sailor, into watches ? A hard morning's work- would be followed by a siesta, and the afternoon's or evening's work would be approached at full- pressure instead of at half-pressure. Mr. Beerbohm Tree sleeps with some regularity in the afternoon, and Dr. Clifford slumbers simultaneously with innumerable comfortable Tories after his dinner. Plautus, if we are not mistaken, warned his readers against the after-dinner nap, but Dr. Clifford is a noble testimony to the futility of any such rule. Probably it is a question of digestion. Many men, unlike dogs, cannot digest while they sleep; for them Plautus may be a sound guide. Countless fathers, on the other hand, have been saved from a dyspeptic old age by being stirred out of their armchairs after dinner by their sons to walk miles round billiard-tables.
Here are some examples from Mr. Stead's list. Sir W. M. Ramsay, who says that he finds three or four hours of sleep plenty, would give us for the first time cause to think of him as a rather sinister Professor of Humanity were it not that be adds that when be is engaged in high intel- lectual work he can do just as many hours' work as he sleeps. That is a happy balance, and we can only conclude that, after all, this admirable archaeologist and historian sleeps a good deal. Sir Charles Wyndham sleeps five and a half hours ; Sir Felix Schuster five to six; Sir Theodore Martin six; and Miss Ellen Terry four or six. But we soon get into the reasonable domains of seven, eight, and nine. Dr. Clifford sleeps eight hours, apparently in addition to rounding off his dinner with asleep; My. Zangwill eight or nine; Sir E. Ray Lankester eight or nine; Sir Robert Ball eight or nine; and Sir George Lewis eight or nine. Mr. Forbes- Robertson likes a nap after luncheon, and so do Lord Meath, Sir Henry Roscoe, and (but are we really to believe this after what we have already been told ?) Dr. Clifford. Miss Ellen Terry "courts sleep with regularity" (we trust, therefore, with success) for half-an-hour at 4 p.m. Mr. W. M. Rossetti, who makes us feel as much at peace with the world as he must be himself, sleeps nine to nine and a half hours, and, so far as we can make out, an hour or more occasionally in the afternoons as well. Sir Robert Ball has "occasional naps, voluntary and involuntary," throughout the day. That is what we should expect of an astronomer, whose hours of sleep must move in rather irregular orbits. But we are sure the stolen naps are the sweetest, as in the case of the Rabelaisian monk who only slept really well during a sermon.
Mr. Stead goes on to the important question of sleeplessness. We judge from the answers that reading in bed has ceased to be regarded as a vice, as surely it was regarded in the minds of many worthy persons a generation ago. Is this change of view the result of the substitution of electricity for dangerous lamps and candles P Lord Avebtny recommends reading "some book on subjects far removed from the current affairs of life, such as the Bible." But is the practical wisdom of the Bible so very far removed from current affairs? Among the cures for sleeplessness we must mention what we may be allowed to class as the naval and military cures. General Kelly-Kenny says:—" A certain remedy, if circumstances admit, and also weather : drive slowly in an open carriage along the seashore (of the Atlantic for choice)." A Rear- Admiral who does net wish his name to be mentioned gives the naval view :—" Remedy: the mountains and moor- lands of the Western Highlands." Thus both the Army and the Navy converge upon the Atlantic; but we cannot think, in spite of this striking conjunction of opinion. Chat the remedy can be generally applied.
Very few of Mr. Stead's correspondents recommend the old
tricks of Counting sheep, numbers, and so forth. All these seem to be going out of fashion. We live in an age of infidelity. We are naturally glad to learn what Mr. W. M. Rossetti's plan is, for our readers will have noticed that it is conspicuous by its success. Fortunately Mr. Rossetti, for whom we would express our esteem as a man of sense and honesty, has explained it all. Sometimes he counts from one to a hundred and fifty or two hundred. This is clearly his.favourite cure, and it will be noticed that it is very quickly efficacious. No one would hesitate. to begin counting if he felt assured that, even though he were still awake at a hundred and fifty, two hundred would be his maximum. Mr. Rossetti's second plan is to repeat Dante ; be has often repeated the first two cantos. "At an earlier age," be says, "I found some benefit in uttering menially, and as rapidly as I could, any of the most incongruous combinations of words and images." We Can imagine Mr. Rossetti repeating as rapidly as he could, for example, "Burgess's Fish Sauce Shop." Success in that feat always increases one's self-respect. Lady Warwick says : "Dismiss all thoughts or anxieties of the daytime, concentrating on the blessed thought of being 'a day's march nearer home.'" All people have their special aptitudes, and Lady Warwick is fortunate if, after she has "nightly pitched her moving tent," she can dismiss all anxieties by merely 'willing them away. The trouble with most people is simply that they cannot. Nor Would every one be composed, like Lady Warwick, by concentrating the mind on the rapid lapse of time. "Eheu fugaces, Postunte, Postunie," would soon be in competition with "a day's march nearer home." The present writer remembers a hard-working vicar in a slum being serenaded by some of his faithful flock on New Year's Eve, when the hymn chosen reminded him that "a few more years shall roll and we shall be with those that rest, asleep within the tomb." The excuse there was that the repertory of the flock was small, and that they sang that hymn better than most. Dr. Clifford—we have omitted to say that he goes to bed at ten o'clock except when "the meetings are on" in the winter—gives as one of his rules "relax the muscles of the face," conjuring up a picture of determined severity during the day which, we are sure, is foreign to one whose principles are so sound and genial in the matter of sleep. Finally, Mr. Stead quotes the opinion of Professor Upson, who thinks insensible affections of the teeth cause much sleeplessness. One enters dangerous territory in aftmitting the evidence of experts. Would not the barber say insomnia was caused by hair-trouble, the pedicurist by foot-trouble, the 'oculist by eye-trouble, and so on indefinitely ? We trust the simple man more than the expert, and the simpler the better. That champion of sim- plicity, Sancho Panza, would not, we may be sure, have cut according to a universal rule that which he said "covers a man all over like a cloak." In sleep, as well as in clothes, every man must have his own fit.
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