Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/125

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114
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.

air of mystery about him, which gives me great uneasiness.

Mr. Flosky.

That is strange. Nothing is so becoming to a man as an air of mystery. Mystery is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all that is sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental psychology. I am writing a ballad, which is all mystery: it is "such stuff as dreams are made of," and is, indeed, stuff made of a dream: for, last night I fell asleep, as usual, over my book, and had a vision of pure reason. I composed five hundred lines in my sleep; so that as I had a dream of a ballad, I am now officiating as my own Peter Quince, and making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it has no bottom.