when judged by the modern standard (set up if not always acted up to!) that an argument might be founded on it to the effect that Shakspeare was ONLY imitating Sidney in these Sonnets instead of drawing from his own life and making autobiographic confessions on the shady side of his own character. The position, however, as I apprehend it was this. Shakspeare as friend of the young Southampton plays the part or assumes the character of Languet the elder friend of Philip Sidney. Languet had been especially anxious for Sidney to be married, as we learn from one of the "Zurich Letters," March 1578, in which Sidney says "I wonder . . . that when I have not as yet done anything worthy of me, you would have me bound in the chains of matrimony."

Sidney also writes of this his friend and teacher

"The song I sang old Languet had me taught-
Languet, the shepherd best swift Ister knew

For clerkly rede, and hating what is naught;

For faithful heart, clean hands, and mouth as true;

With his sweet skill my skilless youth he drew

To have a feeling taste of him that sits

Beyond the heaven, far more beyond our wits.

He liked me but pitied lustful youth,

His good strong staff my slippery years up-bore;

He still hoped well because I loved truth." (A. S. 70, Grosart.)

It is possible that these first Sonnets were thus intended to be a reminder of Sidney the Hero, Scholar, Poet, and Peerless Peer of his time, the very mirror of knighthood, the perfect flower of England's chivalry. Shakspeare was quite capable of modestly sheltering himself under the aegis of Sidney when setting up to offer advice on this subject of marriage. With his known quotations he would virtually be saying it is not I alone who advocate the wedded life as happiest, noblest, purest, best. You hear what Philip Sidney says-Sidney who was

"The Courtier's, Soldier's, Scholar's eye, tongue, sword;

The expectancy and Rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form."

"Sidney as he fought,

And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot,"

must have left the imprint of his natural nobility, heroic lineaments, and intellectual graces permanently stampt upon the soul of Shakspeare; and I am inclined to think it was a poetic conceit of his to bring the influence of Sidney to bear more cunningly by means of memory and suggestion upon the character of his friend the young Earl of Southampton.

PERSONAL SONNETS.

The argument for marriage continued, with the introduction of a new theme; that of the writer's power to immortalize his friend.

1 This line could not be read whilst printed as heretofore

"Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen."

It was impossible to see what this meant. What Shakspeare says is, that the best painter, the master pencil of the time, or his own pen of a learner, will alike fail to draw the Earl's lines of life as he himself can do it, by his "own sweet skill." This pencil of the time may have been Mirevelt's; he painted the Earl's portrait in early manhood.

Are windows to my breast, where-thro' the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their

art

They draw but what they see, know not the
heart.
(24)

Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom Fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlooked-for joy in that I honour most:
Great Princes' favourites their fair leaves
spread,

But as the marygold at the sun's eye;
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die :
The painful warrior famousèd for worth
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour rased forth,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:

Then happy I, that love and am beloved
Where I may not remove, nor be removed.

(25)

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit:
Duty so great which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show
it;

But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, a l naked will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee :
Till then, not show my head where thou
mayst prove me.
(26)

This second group of Personal Sonnets continues the argument for marriage with a new theme added to the subject matter. The Poet had pleaded with Southampton on behalf of his House now going to decay and on account of posterity, but as the friend will not marry to perpetuate himself and his comeliness in his children it becomes the object of his Poet to rescue him from oblivion.

This supplies the second motive for further Sonnets. Then begins the Poet's "War with Time," for love of his friend. As old Time takes from him, it is the writer's work to "engraft" anew the youth, the beauty, the lovable features of his friend. Thus it behoves Shakspeare to do that which Southampton declines to do for himself when the Poet advises him to "Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time," by a "mightier way" and "means more blessed" than his own barren rhymes. There are many maidens who with "virtuous wish" would miror back a picture of himself "much liker" life than any fainted portrait or likeness poetized, whether drawn by the Master Pencil of the time or the Poet's "Pupil Pen." If he would truly live in the "eyes of men it must be by means of the portrait that can only be drawn by his "own sweet skill" and not by that of painter or poet. Besides, who would believe the Poet's tale in times to come if he were to fill his verse with his friend's deserts, and do justice to his character and his personal attractions. They would say, "this Poet lies." But if a child of his were extant as a witness then he would live twice over, once in his offspring, and again in the Poet's rhyme. His most ingenious argument goes subtly on its winding way to the heart of the matter with a serpentining sort of grace. He commences his portrait directly in Sonnet 18 with a sudden leap in the pulse of his power. He makes an immense stride in lines like these, as if he had put on the sevenleague boots

"But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest :

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."-Sonnet 18.

In the following Sonnet his challenge to Time is defiant as it was previously to Death-

"Yet, do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
My Love shall in my verse live ever young."

The portrait is more expressly painted in Sonnet 20, when he describes the
beauty of both sexes. But he protests against all extravagance even in
sonneteering. It is not with him as it is with those who are "stirred by a
painted beauty," and who make all sorts of false comparisons. His argument,
like his practice, is for truth to nature. Sonnet 21 contains an answer to those
who hold that the flowery tenderness and exquisite spring-tints of Sonnets 98
and 99 were devoted to a man as the object of them. The Poet here says he
does not compare his friend "with April's first-born flowers and all things rare,
that Heaven's air in this huge rondure hems." He protests that he does not use
the "gross painting" the "strained touches Rhetoric can lend."
It is the very
opposite of his nature and art to write in the extravagant style and "high-
astounding terms," so often used: he most emphatically rebukes those who
have assumed that he perpetrated all kinds of sonneteering nonsense, and
exceeded all others in his fantastic exaggeration and amorous reversal of the
sexes. In these Sonnets he tells us that he writes of and from reality.

The tone of this Sonnet has a manly ring. It contains no phrase effeminately fond; no outward signs of inward servitude to falsehood of any kind. His love being true he will write truthfully. Elsewhere he says

"Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized

In true, plain words by thy true-telling friend."

The Muse here aimed at is evidently that of Sidney. It was he who did use "Heaven itself for ornament" in designating his love by the name of "Stella," and ransacking external nature to lavish on her the most extravagant comFarisons he could make. Shakspeare says his love is as fair

that is, he will not compare him or clothe him with the stars, as Sidney did his Stella! It is a fact still more interesting, that the seal-ring of Shakspeare, now preserved at Stratford, the ring he used to seal his letters with, shows the truelover's knot entwining about his initials W. S. Therefore "True in Love" was his own chosen personal motto, the sense of which, as this Sonnet shows, was not limited to the outside of his letters, for he has identified himself by name and in the character of True-in-love; "oh, let me, true in love but truly write," in keeping with the motto on his seal. In Sonnet 22 the intimacy is so near that the two are as one. On this account the Poet pleads

"Oh, therefore Love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill!"

And the man who personally utters this protecting sentiment with almost motherly tenderness of feeling, is the one they say who was all the time keeping