mode of this collective dynamic:

     Now May’rs and Shrieves all hush’d and satiate lay,
     Yet eat, in dreams, the custard of the day; 
     While pensive Poets painful vigils keep,
     Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep. (114)

     Of course, Pope does not mean that the readers will be 
bored by the products of sleepless poets or news writers. Quite 
the contrary. They will be thrilled, as by seeing their own image 
in the press. The readers’ sleep is of the spirit. In their wits they 
are not pained but impaired.

     Pope is telling the English world what Cervantes had told 
the Spanish world and Rabelais the French world concerning 
print. It is a delirium. It is a transforming and metamorphosing