[The following is spoken by Mr Flosky in Ch. 8 of NIGHTMARE ABBEY by Thomas Love Peacock.]
. . . nothing is so becoming to a man as an air of mystery. Mystery is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in poetry, all that is sacred in faith, and all that is recondite in transcendental phychology. I am writing a ballad which is all mystery; it is “such stuff as dreams are made of” and is, indeed, stuff made of a dream; for, last night I fell asleep as usual over my book, and had a vision of pure reason. I composed five hundred lines in my sleep; so that, having had a dream of a ballad, I am now officiating as my own Peter Quince, and making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it has no bottom.