At Nightfall and Midnight:

MUSINGS AFTER DARK.

BY

FRANCIS JACOX,

AUTHOR OF

“CUES FROM ALL QUARTERS,” “ASPECTS OF AUTHORSHIP,"

“TRAITS OF CHARACTER,” ETC.

“In the TWILIGHT, in the EVENING, in the black and dark NIGHT."

Prov. vii. 9

“In the gloaming came the musings that take form with waning light;
And they sadden'd, and they darken’d, as eve sadden'd into night.”

Nicias Foxcar.

London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27 & 31, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCLXXIII.

270. f. 381.

BUTLER & TANNER, THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS,

FROME, AND LONDON.

CONTENTS.

I. TWILIGHT:

PAGE

Crepuscular effects in the Poets. Abstracting power of Twilight.

-Sunset and Gloaming.-Eve saddening into Night.—Tran-

quillizing twilight-the Twilight of Dawn.—The distinction,

with a difference, between the two Twilights—the 'innocent

brightness of a new-born day.'-De Quincey on Daybreak.-

Looking forward and looking back.—The birth of Day, and

its death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-33

II. HOMEWARDS AT NIGHTFALL; AND HOME FOR THE NIGHT:

The labourer's welcome home at eventide.—The Cottar's Satur-

day Night.- Illustrations from Cobbett, Gray, Dr. Holland,

Richter, Byron, Mrs. Norton, Scott, Wordsworth · · · 34-42

III. SHADOWS:

Philosophy and poetry of shadows.-Citations from Dante,

Dryden, Swift, George Eliot, Hawthorne, etc.—Shadows in

Shakspeare, Queen Elizabeth, etc.--Grotesque shadows.-

Shadows in song, fable, and romance.-The Shadowless Man

and his congeners.—Spectre shadows—the shadow of death 43-65

IV. A MOONLIGHT RIDE WITH WORDSWORTH:

Wordsworth’s Lucy.--'If Lucy should be dead !'-Anticipatory

misgivings on nearing home.-In suspense between hope and

fear.-Afraid to knock at the door.—Coming home to be

homeless.-Forebodings on the threshold.— Wordsworth's

Leonard in the churchyard, Tennyson's Enoch Arden in the

street, Patmore's angel in the house . . . . . . . . 66-80

Night-walking Noteworthies.—Poetical aspects of noctambulism.

-Sanitary question.—'Noctambule' and 'Noctivague.'-

Midnight ramblings in the streets of great cities.—Day and

night transposed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81-98

VI. GLIMPSES WITHIN BY GAZERS WITHOUT:

Outside observers of fireside interiors.—Wistful watchers out in

the cold.-Stealthy glances in fiction far and wide.-Contrasts

of within and without.—Miss Ferrier's Ronald.—Mrs. Gaskell's

Philip Hepburn.—Enoch Arden again . . . . . . 99-118

VII. BIRD'S-EYE VIEWS BY NIGHT:

Lucifer's lullaby.—What Night looks down upon here below.-

Revelations of an unroofed city.-Asmodeus and Cleofas.-

The night-side of great cities.—Downward glances from

aloft.—Describing a circle of contradictions . .... 119-131

VIII. WIND AND RAIN BY NIGHT:

A wild night out of doors, cozy within. — The Miller's Maid.-

Wordsworth's Wanderer.—'What a night for the Abbey !'-

Wail of the Midnight wind . . . . . . . . . . 132-144

IX. FIRE-GAZING: A CHAPTER OF INSTANCES:

Abbot Boniface.-Frank Osbaldistone.—The Man of Feeling.-

Paul Dombey.-Arthur Clennam.-Louisa Gradgrind.—Joe

Gargery.—Lizzie Riderhood.—Hawthorne's fireside studies.-

Freaks of fancy in fire-gazing: Leigh Hunt, H. Taine, V.

Hugo, Chateaubriand, Béranger, Longfellow, Cowper, Cole-

ridge, A. Trollope, Joanna Baillie.—Figures and faces in the

fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145-158

X. NIGHT STUDENTS: A CHAPTER OF INSTANCES :

Sanitary aspect of Night study, a vexed question.—Early rising

a fallacy?-Night students, imperial, astronomical, scholastic,
histrionic, etc.—Pliny, Constantine, Justinian, Avicenna,

· PAGE

Shafei, Maimonides, Akbar, Ronsard and Baïf, Ascham,

Tycho Brahe, Melanchthon, Richelieu, Archbp. Williams,

Salmasius, Selden, Varignon, Dr. Hooke, Voltaire, Mdme. du

Châtelet, Bichat, Watt, Mirabeau, Bessel, Winckelmann, the

Herschels, Marat, Napoleon I., Rivarol, Cuvier, Schleier-

macher, A. von Humboldt, Dr. T. Brown, W. Irving,

Channing, Polevoy, J. D. Hume, J. C. Loudon, Sir W.

Hamilton, Coleridge, De Quincey, Hood, Byron, Scott,

Tegner, Ampère, Campbell, A. Bell, G. Sand, Barham, Mrs.

Gore, Julian Fane . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159-183

XI. MIDNIGHT MEMORANDA:

Getting up at night to jot down a sudden inspiration.—'The

Nocturnal Remembrancer.'—Eureka !—Composed in sleep-
absorbing ideas by night-fixing a flitting fancy-scrawling a
strophe in the dark-window-pane inscription by moonlight

184-195

XII. CONSOLATIONS OF LITERATURE:

Testimony of Chateaubriand, Chesterfield, Hood, Cicero, Mon-

taigne, Feltham, Mendoza, Machiavelli, Garcilasso de la

Vega, Montesquieu, Gibbon, Lady Mary, Baxter, Daru, R.

Jephson, Aug. Thierry, De Sacy, Mountstuart Elphinstone, F.

Horner, Cowper, A. Murphy, Washington Irving ·· 196-211

XIII. SOUTHEY'S 'DAYS AMONG THE DEAD':

Living with the great Dead.—Dead to all but books—Hazlitt

on Salisbury Plain.—The old friends who are never seen with
new faces.—'Our best acquaintance are the dead.'-Time-tried
friends (on the shelf)—'C'est avec les morts qu'il faut vivre'

212–225

XIV. TAKING UP A NEW STUDY IN OLD AGE: ,

Never too old to learn.—Old boys beginning the Greek alpha-

bet.—To school in one's grand climacteric.—Graduating B.A.
at fourscore.—A medley of elderly scholars: Cato, Petrarch,