rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspeare rose.

This is converting learning into a bricklayer, and would have come with
a better grace from Ben Jonson than from Sam. But however that may be,
under such an architect, ghosts would naturally be enrolled in the
company. Dr. Farmer may say what he pleases, but I firmly believe
Shakspeare had Latin enough to talk to his own ghosts; though I doubt
whether I can express the same belief as to certain modern writers, who,
by reviving ghosts to squeal and gibber on the London stages, have taken
the same liberties as Shakspeare, without taking the same talents--"we
have no cold beef sir," said the landlady at Glastonbury to a hungry
traveller; "but we have excellent mustard!" All this however is foreign
to the Prince of Denmark,

_Horatio._ ----I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day.

Doctor Fungus will have it, that cock should be clock, and ground his
opinions upon the situation of St. Paul's clock. But this would spoil
the poetry of the whole passage. What an accurate picture does the
creative pencil of our great poet present to the _mind's eye_! The
epithet _lofty_ has fallen through the sieves of all the commentators
excepting Theobaldus Secundus. It obviously alludes to the high roosting
perch of that valiant bird; nor is the mythological imagery in this
sentence to be passed by without its merited eulogium. Lingo, by way of
_agreeable surprise_, informs us that the cock is the bird of
Pallas--Pallas is the goddess of wisdom, and of course an early
riser----

Early to bed, and early to rise, &c.

Her favourite bird undoubtedly awoke her with his shrill note, and at
the same time roused the slumbering fop Phoebus, who answered in the
words of Dr. Watts----

"You have wak'd me too soon, I must slumber again."

and being the god of wit, when he rubbed his own eyes, doubtless vented
an imprecation on those of Minerva.

"Thus wit and judgment ever are at strife."--_Pope._

The moral is obvious;--they who, like Mr. Sheridan, aim only to be men
of wit, lie a bed; while they who, like Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Burke, and
a very few others, aspire to be men of wisdom, rise with the lark.
Horatio in continuation--

"The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine."

"The extravagant i. e. got out of his bounds"--_Warburton_--Bravo! old
Hurlo-t