Such was his passion for study, and his ardent admiration of the great men whom he conversed with, that he often imagined in his sleep that he was travelling in Italy, Germany, and in England, where he saw and consulted the learned, and examined their curious libraries.

He had all his lifetime these literary dreams, but more particularly in his travels they reflected these images of the day.
If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading children of the imagination, and Snatch the faithless fugitives to light with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds itself forsaken and solitary.[A] ROUSSEAU has uttered a complaint on this occasion.

Full of enthusiasm, he devoted to the subject of his thoughts, as was his custom, the long sleepless intervals of his nights.

Meditating in bed with his eyes closed, he turned over his periods in a tumult of ideas; but when he rose and had dressed, all was vanished; and when he sat down to his breakfast he had nothing to write.

Thus genius has its vespers and its vigils, as well as its matins, which we have been so often told are the true hours of its inspiration; but every hour may be full of inspiration for him who knows to meditate.