So I turn on a light and call for one of my bedside friends.  They stand there in noble comradeship, ready to talk, willing to remain silent, only asking to do my pleasure.  Oh, blessed be the name of Gutenberg, the Master Printer.  A German?  I care not.  Even if he had been a Prussian—­which I rejoice to think he was not—­I would still say:  “Blessed be the name of Gutenberg,” though Sir Richard Cooper, M.P., sent me to the Tower for it.  For Gutenberg is the Prometheus not of legend but of history.  He brought down the sacred flame and scattered the darkness that lay on the face of the waters.  He gave us the Daily Owl, it is true, but he made us also freemen of time and thought, companions of the saints and the sages, sharers in the wisdom and the laughter of the ages.  Thanks to him I can, for the expenditure of a few shillings, hear Homer sing and Socrates talk and Rabelais laugh; I can go chivvying the sheep with Don Quixote and roaming the hills with Borrow; I can carry the whole universe of Shakespeare in my pocket, and call up spirits to drive Dismal Jemmy from my pillow.

Who are these spirits?  In choosing them it is necessary to avoid the deep-browed argumentative fellows.  I do not want Plato or Gibbon or any of the learned brotherhood by my bedside, nor the poets, nor the novelists, nor the dramatists, nor even the professional humorists.  These are all capital fellows in their way, but let them stay downstairs.  To the intimacy of the bedside I admit only the kindly fellows who come in their dressing-gowns and slippers, so to speak, and sit down and just talk to you as though they had known you ever since you were a little nipper, and your father and your grandfather before you.  Of course, there is old Montaigne.  What a glorious gossip he is!  What strange things he has to tell you, what a noble candour he shows!  He turns out his mind as carelessly as a boy turns out his pockets, and gives you the run of his whole estate.  You may wander everywhere, and never see a board warning you to keep off the grass or reminding you that you are a trespasser.

And Bozzy.  Who could do without Bozzy by his bedside—­dear, garrulous old Bozzy, most splendid of toadies, most miraculous of reporters?  When Bozzy begins to talk to me, and the old Doctor growls “Sir,” all the worries and anxieties of life fall magically away, and Dismal Jemmy vanishes like the ghost at cock-crow.  I am no longer imprisoned in time and the flesh:  I am of the company of the immortals.  I share their triumphant aloofness from the play that fills our stage and see its place in the scheme of the unending drama of men.