cleverly if he himself had taken pains to endorse them publicly. When once the Sonnets were in print, if they had told anything, as in a glass darkly, against the fair fame of Shakspeare-if there had been such a story as modern ingenuity has discovered, we may be sure there were eyes keen enough amongst the Poet's contemporaries to have spied it out and made the most of it. His friendship with Southampton was known. His Sonnets were read with interest. Meres had called attention to them. He himself had publicly proclaimed that Southampton was part in all that he had devoted to him! Yet there is not a whisper against him. And why but because it was understood that they were Sonnets, not personal confessions, but Sonnets on subjects chosen or given? It was not strange in 1609 that a great dramatic poet should write dramatically in his Sonnets. And there was nothing suspicious in the Poet's life or personal bearing to cause the lynx-eyed to pry, no summons issued for a feast of the vultures; neither when the book of Sonnets was printed, nor when the writer himself was dead and his grave had become the fair mark for a foul bird. No one rakes there for rottenness; no one ventures to deposit dirt there. Moreover, as Benson alleges, the enigmatical nature of the Sonnets did not pass unquestioned ! They had excited suspicion enough for Shakspeare to vindicate their purity-if he did not explain the secret drama of the Private Friendship. And in vouching for the purity of his Sonnets, as Benson declares he did, Shakspeare would be giving the lie personally to the Autobiographic rendering of the dark Story in the Southampton Sonnets, and to the personal application of the Latter Sonnets. Doubtless that is what is meant by his testifying to their purity. He could never contend that the Dark Lady was a woman of pure character, but he would defend himself against the false inference that she was his mistress, and insist that such Sonnets were written dramatically on subjects supplied or suggested by the "Private Friends." He was not the only "Will" in the world. Anyway, with his own name written by himself in connection with the Circe of the Latter Sonnets, there is not an ill-breath breathed against the moral reputation of our Poet, either from rival dramatist or chronicler of scandal, in all the letters of the time. Now character is evidence in any properly constituted court of justice. Not as against facts, but as an element in the right interpretation of them. Here, however, there are no facts to array against the character, only inferences, whereas the character stands irremovably fixed, with all the facts for buttresses around it. No one like Shakspeare in all literature has ever mirrored so magically the tenderness and purity of womanly love. No man like him has ever nestled in the innermost holy of holies of the most purely perfect of female natures as the very spirit of daintiest purity; pure as the dewdrop in the fragrant heart of a flower. Think of Imogen, Miranda, Cordelia, and Desdemona, as nurslings of Shakspeare's purity in love.1 He left the statue of a life as clean and white as Carrara marble. For more than two centuries no hand was raised to throw mud at it, no dirty dog ever ven 1 Those who saw Helena Faucit as Imogen will remember a rare vision of one of Shakspeare's pure women upon the stage. The soul of love and doubled life was smiling in her face; "Twas music when she moved, and in the stillness of her grace tured to defile it. For purity's sake all women ought to stop their ears against this calumny of the would-be polluters of his purity, and all men who have listened to these scand l-mongers should turn sick of them, cast out the poison, and slough off the Lues Browniana. As representative of all humanity the nature of Shakspeare was one-half woman. And to that fresh force of morality, of spirituality, of conscience, of divine instinct now being introduced as a new literary and political factor contributed by cultured womankind, we must make appeal in this matter on Shakspeare's behalf. The proper jury to be empanelled for the Dark Story of the Sonnets will contain one-half of either sex, with the doubled likelihood of justice being done. So far from being a lecher, Shakspeare shows no toleration for adultery, but is hard and stern as steel in reflecting the evil features of the vice they charge him with, as in the character of Antony! He is the very evangelist of marriage and of purity in wedded life; as such he began the writing of his Sonnets. He who had to be reproached and reproved for his "sin of silence" by the friend who was so fond of being written of would be the last man in the world to become a self-defaming blabber on the subject of an illicit love. He, the one writer of his age who showed the supremest, most judicious reticence concerning himself, was not the man to make known in Sonnets that were to live and give life to the facts enshrined in them "so long as men can breathe or eyes can see," that he had been co-partner in keeping a courtesan. It may be remarked in passing that the scandal-mongers who accept the Autobiographic theory, and its supposed revelations of illicit love, also maintain the present order of the Sonnets. "Repeated perusals," says Professor Dowden, "have convinced me that the Sonnets stand in the right order." 1 Very well then-if the story of Shakspeare being false to himself, to his wife, and his own good reputation, and of his friend being treacherous to him, had been true, the circumstances must have occurred previous to the writing of the 70th Sonnet, in which Shakspeare says to this same false friend who had been seduced by the Poet's own siren, or who had filched her from Shakspeare— (A KEY-SONNET.) "That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, A Crow that flies in Heaven's sweetest air! If some suspect of ill masked not thy show 1 Shakspeare's Sonnets. London, 1880. Introd. p. 10. You cannot have it both ways, nor win by playing fast and loose. This is a key-sonnet, and one of the most precious of the whole series. The anchorage of personality in it is assured. It is in reality Shakspeare's own personal reply to the false charges brought against him by Brown, which were derived from preceding Sonnets. It gives the lie point-blank to the assertion that the friend had robbed the Poet of his mistress in the earlier time. Even if he had been charged with doing so, this Sonnet would obviously reduce it to a case of false suspicion and consequent slander. For if this had been the fact he could not have been the "victor being charged "—at least not in the sense implied. And as Shakspeare is able to congratulate his friend in this way, that fully disproves Mr. Brown's reading of the story. Something had occurred; the Earl had been blamed for his conduct; slander had been at work. Shakspeare takes part with his friend, and says, the blame of others is not necessarily a defect in him. The mark of slander has always been "the fair," just as the cankers love the sweetest buds. Suspicion attaches to beauty, and sets it off;-it is the black crow flying against the sweet blue heaven. It is in the natural order of things, that one in the position of the Earl, and having his gifts and graces, should be slandered. But, "so thou be good," he says, "Slander only proves thy worth the greater, being wooed of Time." Slander, in talking of him without warrant, will but serve to call attention to his patient suffering and heroic bearing under this trial and tyranny of Time. So Shakspeare did think the Earl was slandered, and he accounts for it on grounds the most natural. He then offers his testimony as to character— A singular thing to say, if Mr. Brown's version of the earlier Sonnets were true. Very singular, and so Mr. Brown has omitted it! Further, the Sonnet is a striking illustration of the mutual relationship of poet and peer-a most remarkable thing that Shakspeare should congratulate the Earl for his Josephlike conduct, and call him a "victor." Very few young noblemen of the time, we think, would have considered that a victory, or cared to have had it celebrated. Yet this fact, which Shakspeare says is to the Earl's praise, will not be sufficient to tie up Envy,-nor, he might have added, shut up Folly. We have still further personal testimony in Sonnet 105. When that was written Shakspeare had been false to his wife, his friend had been false to him and stolen his mistress; and, as the story goes, the Poet had commemorated the inconstancy of both in Sonnets that were to live for ever. To all such charges this is Shakspeare's unconscious but conclusive reply— "Let not my love be call'd idolatry, Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords : Sonnet 105. When those two Sonnets were written the "sins" and "crimes" had been committed which are afterwards admitted and lamented; the lapses and 'frailties" had been found out; the treachery discovered; the "hell of time" suffered; the speaker's name had been "branded" publicly and his brow stamped with "vulgar scandal." Also, the Sonnets supposed to record the "facts" referred to had been composed and sent to the friend, and treasured up by him with all their prophecies and promises of everlasting fame (or infamy). But as these things were not personal to Shakspeare, it follows that the Sonnets which are personal to himself recognize nothing of all this unfaithfulness in love that is so pitifully confessed in others where he is NOT the speaker and his is NOT the character portrayed, because such Sonnets are not personal to himself. But to conclude the argument-we will step in yet a little closer. After the supposed Dark Story has been told in the Sonnets, which they assure us have no meaning if they do not proclaim the young friend's inconstancy in love and unfaithfulness in friendship, as the deceiver who has inflicted a public disgrace on the speaker of Sonnet 34; who has been a base betrayer of all trust in Sonnet 35; a thief and a robber in Sonnet 40; the breaker of "twofold truth" in Sonnet 41; the same person, the thief, traitor, deceiver, betrayer, injurer, and living effigy of falsehood and inconstancy, is idiotically supposed to be told by Shakspeare in a neighbouring Sonret (53) that there is "None, none, like you, for constant heart!" Thus his false perfidious friend is extolled as the express image of unswerving faithfulness! In Sonnet 54 he is assured that truthfulness is the crown jewel of his character, the "sweet ornament" of his beauty, and that the object of the Poet's verse is to distil his truth! The personal Sonnets deny that the inconstancy, the unfaithfulness, the betrayal of trust, and all the rest of a lover's sins and crimes were committed in relation to the writer of the Sonnets, and necessarily point to an explanation in some other way. Here it will be necessary to consider the feeble and entirely ineffectual exegesis by which the unsavoury surmise was sought to be substantiated. Mr. Brown's mode of dispersing the mystery is by furnishing his own facts, and getting rid of those recorded by Shakspeare in the Sonnets. He makes no application of the comparative method, without which nothing final can ever be established. Without testing his assumption by means of Shakspeare's use and wont and way of working in the dramas, he dogmatically asserts that the first 125 Sonnets are all addressed to a male friend. Here, for example, are a few of the expressions assumed without comparison or question to have been addressed to a man by the most natural of all poets: I tell the day to please him, thou art bright, So flatter I the swart-complexioned night. Nor think the bitterness of absence sour, Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake else- From me far off, with others all too near. Sonnet 61. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, sworn. And prove thee virtuous though thou art for- How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, For nothing this wide universe I call, Mine appetite I never more will grind Sonnet 110. Here the Autobiographic Theory demands, and it is consequently assumed, that Shakspeare, the peerless Psychologist, the poet whose observance of natural law was infallible, whose writings contain the ultimate of all that is natural in poetry, should have sinned grossly in this way against nature, in a matter so primary as the illustration of sex! All such imagery is feminine, and has been held so by all poets that ever wrote in our language; and I consider his instinct in such a matter to be so natural that he could not thus violate the sex of his images. That there are certain warranted exceptions is true; that there are moods in which the expression demanded rises above sex is also true. Shakspeare makes a woman a god" in love, in her power to re-create the lover. In such wise he has a manmuse, a man-fish, a man-mistress, a mankind witch, a mankind woman, as well as a woman of the God-kind. In fact, he dare do anything on occasion, only there must be the occasion. But his ordinary practice is to do as other poets have done. 66 Those who cannot or will not see the impossibility of these expressions being addressed to a man by the manliest of men, but will continue to babble blasphemy against Shakspeare in their blindness, deserve to be hissed off the stage. Rather than think that Shakspeare had so mistaken the nature of sex as to amorously reverse its imagery in his Sonnets, one would sooner suspect that there had been some congenital confusion in the nature of their own. Messrs. Brown and Furnivall have the confidence to assure us that Shakspeare, whose instinct in poetry was as unerringly true to nature as is the power of breathing in sleep, offered those and many other kindred delicates to a man, and thus violated the sex in its own images. But would he, could he, did he sin in this way against |