"As soon as she was gone, I told the maid I would go up
and lie down on our lodger's bed, mine not being made, with
a charge to her at the same time not to disturb me, as it
was only rest I wanted. This injunction probably prov'd of
eminent service to me. As soon as I was got into the bed-
chamber, I unlaced my stays, and threw myself on the outside
of the bed-cloaths, in all the loosest undress. Here I gave
myself up to the old insipid privy shifts of my self-viewing,
self-touching, self-enjoying, in fine, to all the means of
self-knowledge I could devise, in search of the pleasure that
fled before me, and tantalized with that unknown something
that was out of my reach; thus all only serv'd to enflame
myself, and to provoke violently my desires, whilst the one
thing needful to their satisfaction was not at hand, and I
could have bit my fingers, for representing it so ill. After
then wearying and fatiguing myself with grasping shadows,
whilst that most sensible part of me disdain'd to content
itself with less than realities, the strong yearnings, the
urgent struggles of nature towards the melting relief, and
the extreme self-agitations I had used to come at it, had
wearied and thrown me into a kind of unquiet sleep: for, if
I tossed and threw about my limbs in proportion to the dis-
traction of my dreams, as I had reason to believe I did, a
bystander could not have help'd seeing all for love.
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