SLEEP. How many thousand of my poorest subjects Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 10. Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 20. Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them SHAKESPEARE's King Henry IV. A watch case, &c. To be as a sentinel's box, or as a general alarum bell. 2 To boot, in addition, into the bargain. [PATIENCE.] heart and the hearth, and the beauties of every day human life. Take the most commonplace of them: was Zeal-for-Truth Thoresby, of Thoresby Rise in Deeping Fen, because his father had thought fit to give him an ugly and silly name, the less of a noble lad? Did his name prevent his being six feet high? Were his shoulders the less broad for it? his cheeks the less ruddy for it? He wore his flaxen hair of the same length that everyone now wears theirs, instead of letting it hang half way to his waist in Idyllic poetry, short descriptive poetry chiefly relating to pastoral life. essenced curls; but was he therefore the less of a true Viking's son, bold-hearted as his sea-roving ancestors who won the Danelagh by Canute's side, and settled there on Thoresby Rise, to grow wheat and breed horses, generation succeeding generation, on the old moated grange? 2. He carried a Bible in his jack-boot; but did that prevent him, as Oliver rode past him with an approving smile on Naseby-field, thinking himself a very handsome fellow, with his moustache and imperial, and bright red coat, and cuirass well polished in spite of many a dint, as he sate his father's great black horse as gracefully and firmly as any long-locked and essenced cavalier in front of him? Or did it prevent him thinking, too, for a moment, with a throb of the heart, that sweet cousin Patience far away at home, could she but see him, might have the same opinion of him as he had of himself? 3. Was he the worse for the thought? He was certainly not the worse for checking it the next instant with manly shame for letting such 'carnal vanities' rise in his heart, while he was 'doing the Lord's work' in the teeth of death and hell; but was there no poetry in him then? No poetry in him five minutes after, as the long rapier swung round his head, redder and redder at every sweep? We are befooled by names. Call him Crusader instead of Roundhead, and he seems at once (granting him only sincerity, which he had, and that of a right awful kind) as complete a knight-errant as ever watched 'The Vikings were the leaders of the bands of Danes and other Northmen who, in the ninth century, ravaged the coasts of Europe. 2 Knight-errant, a knight wandering in search of adventures. and prayed, ere putting on his spurs, in fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath 'storied windows richly dight.' 4. Was there no poetry in him, either, half-anhour afterwards, as he lay bleeding across the corpse. of the gallant horse, waiting for his turn with the surgeon, and fumbled for the Bible in his boot, and tried to hum a psalm, and thought of Cousin Patience, and his father, and his mother, and how they would hear, at least, that he had played the man in Israel that day, and resisted unto blood, striving against sin and the Man of Sin? 5. And was there no poetry in him, too, as he came wearied along Thoresby Dyke, in the quiet autumn eve, home to the house of his forefathers, and saw afar off the knot of tall poplars rising over the broad misty flat, and the one great abele1 tossing its sheets of silver in the dying gusts, and knew that they stood before his father's door? Who can tell all the pretty child-memories which flitted across his brain at that sight, and made him forget that he was a wounded cripple? 6. And now he was going home, after a mighty victory, a deliverance from heaven, second only in his eyes to that Red-Sea one. Was there no poetry in his heart at that thought? Did not the glowing sunset, and the reed-beds which it transfigured before him into sheets of golden flame, seem tokens that the glory of God was going before him in his path? Did not the sweet clamour of the wild fowl, gathering for one rich pæan2 ere they sank into rest, seem to him as God's bells chiming him home in triumph, with peals sweeter and bolder than those of Lincoln or Peter1 Abele, the white poplar. 2 Pæan, a song of triumph. V. & VI. T borough steeple-house? Did not the very lapwing, as she tumbled softly wailing before his path, as she did years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the name of heaven? 7. Was there no happy storm of human tears and human laughter when he entered the courtyard gate? Did not the old dog lick his Puritan hand as lovingly as if it had been a Cavalier's? Did not lads and lasses run out shouting? Did not the old yeoman father hug him, weep over him, hold him at arm's length, and hug him again, as heartily as any other John Bull, even though the next moment he called all to kneel down and thank Him who had sent his boy home again, after bestowing on him the grace to bind kings in chains and nobles with links of iron, and contend to death for the faith delivered to the saints? 8. And did not Zeal-for-Truth look about as wistfully for Patience as any other man would have done, longing to see her, yet not daring even to ask for her? And when she came down at last, was she the less lovely in his eyes because she came, not flaunting with bare bosom, in tawdry finery and paint, but shrouded close in coif and pinner, hiding from all the world beauty which was there still, but was meant for one alone, and that only if God willed, in God's good time? And was there no faltering of their voices, no light in their eyes, no trembling pressure of their hands, which said more, and was more, ay, and more beautiful in the sight of Him who made them, than all the insincere cant of the court? What if Zeal-for-Truth had never strung together two rhymes in his life? Did not his heart go for inspiration to a loftier Helicon, when it whispered to |