To see the greyhound course, the hound in chase,
_Whilst little dormouse sleepeth out her eyne;_
The lambs and rabbits sweetly run at base,[68]
Whilst highest trees the little squirrels climb,
The crawling worms out creeping in the showers,
And how the snails do climb the lofty towers.

What a love of animated nature there is in the lovely lady! I am all but
confident, however, that second line came to her from watching her
children asleep. She had one child at least: that William Herbert, who is
generally, and with weight, believed the W.H. of Shakspere's Sonnets, a
grander honour than the earldom of Pembroke, or even the having Philip
Sidney to his uncle: I will not say grander than having Mary Sidney to
his _mother_.

Let me now turn to Sidney's friend, Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brooke, who
afterwards wrote his life, "as an intended preface" to all his "Monuments
to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney," the said _monuments_ being Lord
Brooke's own poems.

My extract is from _A Treatise of Religion_, in which, if the reader do
not find much of poetic form, he will find at least some grand spiritual
philosophy, the stuff whereof all highest poetry is fashioned. It is one
of the first poems in which the philosophy of religion, and not either
its doctrine, feeling, or history, predominates. It is, as a whole, poor,
chiefly from its being so loosely written. There are men, and men whose
thoughts are of great worth, to whom it never seems to occur that they
may utter very largely and convey very little; that what is clear to
themselves is in their speech obscure as a late twilight. Their utterance