OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 45 



reign of the Universe was known only as the Universal Parent, no 

 altar but the pure heart, and thanksgiving and grateful love the 

 sole sacrifice. 



How far we are to receive the doctrine of human perfectibility— 

 not by conversion, but rather creation — from infancy to age,* the 

 reader must determine by a self-examination of the arguments. 

 Certainly all inclination implies acquirement, which also involves 

 agency or cause, and that cause must be independent of our will, 

 otherwise a contradiction in terms. But it may be dangerous for 

 an individual to pursue this inquiry ; the world is not yet ripe for 

 reason. 



" Alonzo — I would with such perfection govern, Sir, 

 To excel the golden age." 



Thus discoursing, they " lose and neglect the creeping hours of 

 time." Ariel enters, and with his music <{ charms up their sense in 

 sleep." 



"Alonzo. — What, all so soon asleep ! I wish mine eyes 

 Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts : I find 

 They are inclined to do so. 



Sebastian. — Please you. Sir, 

 Do not omit the heavy offer of it : 

 It seldom visits sorrow ; when it doth 

 It is a comforter." 



That is, the consciousness of thought. Shakspeare has minutely 

 anatomised sleep, in all its states and relations : there is nothing 

 within its verge but he has described. Dr. Young's apostrophe to 

 sleep, though fine, is but an amplification of this one line — 



" It seldom visits sorrow ; when it doth 

 It is a comforter." 



How perfectly the balm of sleep is appreciated ! — it is raised into 

 positive enjoyment. 



* Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care." 



Shakspeare must often have shuddered at the agonies he depicted, 

 and thereby grew finely sensible of " the balm of hurt minds." — 

 His personification of sleep, in Henry IV., is above all praise. 



" Sebastian — What a strange drowsiness possesses them ! 

 Antonio — It is the quality o' the climate." 



This is another of those signs of observation, and expresses more 

 * Owenism. 



