opened the prospect of public usefulness, he was assailed by a persecution, which rejected him as incompetent to the duties for which other men are fit, and drove him back to his former state of dependence and seclusion. It is probably to the period when he experienced so determined an opposition from the people of Kirkcudbright, that we are to refer the composition of his Paraclesis; for he informs us in the preface that his motive for writing that work was "to alleviate the pressure of repeated disappointments, to soothe his anguish for the loss of departed friends, to elude the rage of implacable and unprovoked enemies,—in a word, to support his own mind, which, for a number of years, besides its literary difficulties and its natural disadvantages, had maintained an incessant conflict with fortune." At no other period but that above referred to, are we aware that Blacklock was the object of any thing like an angry feeling.
On the day of Mr Blacklock's ordination was afforded, in his person, an instance of sleep-walking, perhaps the most remarkable and complicated on record. As such the reader may be pleased to see an account of it as it is preserved in Dr Cleghorn's thesis De Somno, which was published in Blacklock's own lifetime (in 1783). The facts were authenticated by Mrs Blacklock, Mr Gilbert Gordon,[1] and a numerous party of friends who dined with him at the inn of Kirkcudbright on the occasion in question. "Harassed by the censures of the populace," says Dr Cleghorn, "whereby not only his reputation, but his very subsistence was endangered, and fatigued with mental exertion, Blacklock fell asleep after dinner. Some hours afterwards he was called by a friend, answered his salutation, rose and went into the dining-room, where his friends were met. He joined with two of them in a concert, singing tastefully as usual, and without missing a word. He ate an egg to supper, and drank some wine, and other liquors. His friends, however, observed him to be a little absent. By and bye he began to speak to himself; but in so low a tone, and so confusedly, as to be unintelligible. At last, being pretty forcibly roused, he awoke with a sudden start, unconscious of all that had happened." We have no example of a person in sleep performing so many of the functions of one awake, and in so exact a manner, as Blacklock is here stated to have done. He spoke, walked, sung, took wine, and must have observed with accuracy many of the little courtesies of social life; for his friends did not suspect that he was asleep till he began to talk to himself. The time, however, was convenient for so unusual an exhibition; and perhaps many other somnambulists would join in the occupations or amusements of those around them, if the world were astir when they make their rounds. Circumstances, however, are quite different in ordinary cases; the person gets up when all others are at rest, and performs one or two acts, to which his half-awakened fancy impels him, without being involved, as it were, in any current of events extraneous to himself, which, by the habit of association, might have led him on to other mechanical exertions of the mental or bodily faculties; thus the original excitement, receiving no casual addition, soon expends itself, and allows him to relapse into slumber. Blacklock, on the contrary, when partially roused, found the business of life in progress, and was drawn on from one act to another in the usual course, no excitement occurring strong enough wholly to burst the bonds of sleep. This intermediate state between sleeping and waking, when part of the faculties are alert and active, and the other part entirely dormant, may be approached from either confine; and whether from sleeping we become half awake, or from waking fall half asleep, the effects are strikingly similar. Many instances of what is called absence, or reverie, disclose phenomena equally surprising with those of somnambulism; and a comparison between them
- ↑ Author of the Short Account of the Life and Writings of Blacklock, prefixed to the second edition of his poems, 1754.
