It is not too much to believe that Hodge did not grudge, occasionally, a half-hour over, to a good master. Then he had to stable his horses--Star and Smiler--rub them down--bed them--fill rack and manger--water them--make sure their noses were in the oats--lock the stable before the nags were stolen--and then, and not till then, "The Ploughman homewards plods his weary way." For he does not sleep on the Farm--he has a wife and small family--that is, a large family of smallish children--in the Hamlet, at least two miles off--and he does not walk for a wager of a flitch of bacon and barrel of beer--but for his accustomed rasher and a jug--and such endearments as will restore his weariness up to the proper pitch for a sound night's sleep. God bless him! BULLER. Shorn of your beams, Mr North, eclipsed. TALBOYS. The ploughman, then, does not return "two or three hours before the curfew rings." Nor has "the glimmering landscape long ceased to fade before the curfew." Nor is "the parting day incorrect." Nor "has the day long finished." Nor, when it may have finished, or may finish, can any man in the hamlet, during all that gradual subsiding of light and sound, take upon him to give any opinion at all. NORTH. My boy, Talboys. TALBOYS. "And leave the world to darkness and to me." Ay--into his hut goes the ploughman, and leaves the world and me to darkness--which is coming--but not yet come--the Poet knows it is coming--near at hand its coming glooms; and Darkness shows her divinity as she is preparing to mount her throne. NORTH. Nothing can be better. TALBOYS. "'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incident, instead of being progressive, falls back, and makes the picture confused and inharmonious." Confused and inharmonious! By no manner of means. Nothing of the sort. There is no retrogression--the day has been unwilling to die--cannot believe she is dying--and cannot think 'tis for her the curfew is tolling; but the Poet feels it is even so; the glimmering and the fading, beautiful as they are, are sure symptoms--she is dying into Evening, and Evening will soon be the dying into Night; but to the Poet's eye how beautiful the transmutations! Nor knows he that the Moon has arisen, till, at the voice of the nightbird, he looks up the ivied church-tower, and there she is, whether full, waning, or crescent, there are not data for the Astronomer to declare. NORTH. My friend Mr Mitford says of the line, "No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed"--That "here the epithet _lowly_, as applied to _bed_, occasions an ambiguity, as to whether the Poet means the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid;" and he adds, "there can be no greater fault in composition than a doubtful meaning." TALBOYS.