accurate observer of Nature: he notes the markings of the violet and the
daisy; the haunts of the honeysuckle, the mistletoe, and the woodbine.
He marks the fealty of the marigold to its god the sun, and even touches
the freaks of fashion, condemning in some woman of his time an usage,
long obsolete, in accordance with which she adorned her head with "the
golden tresses of the dead." But it was as an observer and a delineator
of man in all his moods that he was the bright, consummate flower of
humanity. His experiences were wide and varied. He had absorbed into
himself and made his own the pith and wisdom of his day. As the fittest
survives, each age embodies in itself all worthy of preservation in the
ages gone before. In Shakespeare's pages we find a reflection, perfect
and absolute, of the age of Elizabeth, and therefore of all not
transient in the foregone times,--of all which is fixed and permanent
in our own. He "held the mirror up to Nature." So "his eternal summer
shall not fade," because

"He sang of the earth as it will be
When the years have passed away."

If, therefore, insomnia had prevailed in or before his time, in his
pages shall we find it duly set forth. If he had suffered, if the
"fringed curtains of his eyes were all the night undrawn," we shall find
his dreary experiences--his hours of pathetic misery, his nights of
desolation--voiced by the tongues of his men and women.

Shakespeare speaks often of the time in life when men have left behind
them the dreamless sleep of youth. Friar Laurence says:--

"Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep can never lie;