Four spend in prayer; the rest on Nature fix."
A more estimable character than Lord Coke, in whose life clustered literary as well as professional honors, Sir William Jones, himself a model of the industry he inculcated, has said in a well-known distich:—
"Six hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to Heaven."
The one hour here unappropriated is absorbed in the "all to Heaven." Sir Matthew Hale, another eminent name in jurisprudence, studied sixteen hours a day for the first two years after he commenced the law, but almost brought himself to the grave thereby, though of a strong constitution, and he afterwards came down to eight hours; but he would not advise anybody to so much,—believing that six hours a day, with constancy and attention, were sufficient, and adding, that "a man must use his body as he would his horse and his stomach, not tire him at once, but rise with an appetite."[136] Here is at once example and warning.
Sleep is the most exacting of masters; it must be obeyed. Couriers slumber on their horses; soldiers drop asleep on the field of battle, even amidst the din of war. In that famous retreat of Sir John Moore, English soldiers are said to have slept while still moving. Ambition and the pride of victory yield to sleep. Alexander slept on the field of Arbela, and Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz. Bereavement and approaching death are forgotten in sleep. The convict sleeps in the few hours before his execution. According to Homer, sleep overcomes even the gods, excepting Jupiter alone. Its beneficence is equal to its power; nor has this ever been pictured more wonderfully than in those agonized words of Macbeth, where he says,—
"Macbeth does murther sleep, the innocent sleep,—
Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,