"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede."
From these several letters sufficiently appear the causes for the
insomnia of Shakespeare, which are some of the same causes resulting in
its prevalence to-day. They illustrate anew that history repeats itself
forever; that humanity is always the same; that like temptations and
errors come to men with like results in all the centuries; that the
sleeplessness of Shakespeare came, because, merely as a matter of form,
he had indorsed for a friend,--because he had bought more stocks than he
could pay for, and when his margins were absorbed, came forth a shorn
and shivering lamb,--because of the turbulence of labor,--because, alas!
he too had been dazzled and bewildered by
"The light that lies
In woman's eyes."
Marvellous as were the endowments of the master, yet was he human and as
one of us.