Background.
‘If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candlelight.‘ is a quotation from Sketches by Boz, Scenes, Chapter 15 (Early Coaches).
Sketches by Boz is a collection of short pieces written by Charles Dickens and published as a book in 1836.
Context.
Charles Dickens describes that feeling of not wanting to get up before dawn.
Taken from the following passage in Early Coaches:
If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candlelight. If you have ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, overnight, to be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream of a large church-clock with the small hand running round, with astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been ‘going off’ before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether; one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting à la Ducrow, on the off-leader; anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard an old schoolfellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence, by a singular illusion.
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