Casaubon was once induced
by the entreaties of his friends to take a few days entire rest,
but he returned to his work with the remark, that it was easier to
bear illness doing something, than doing nothing.
When Charles Lamb was released for life from his daily drudgery of
desk-work at the India Office, he felt himself the happiest of
men. "I would not go back to my prison," he said to a friend,
"ten years longer, for ten thousand pounds." He also wrote in the
same ecstatic mood to Bernard Barton: "I have scarce steadiness of
head to compose a letter," he said; "I am free! free as air! I
will live another fifty years.... Would I could sell you some of
my leisure! Positively the best thing a man can do is--Nothing;
and next to that, perhaps, Good Works." Two years--two long and
tedious years passed; and Charles Lamb's feelings had undergone an
entire change. He now discovered that official, even humdrum work
--"the appointed round, the daily task"--had been good for him,
though he knew it not. Time had formerly been his friend; it had
now become his enemy. To Bernard Barton he again wrote: "I assure
you, NO work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself--
the most unwholesome of food. I have ceased to care for almost
anything.... Never did the waters of heaven pour down upon a
forlorner head. What I can do, and overdo, is to walk. I am a
sanguinary murderer of time.
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