signified the obtainer: as to get and getter, in the present day, mean obtain and obtainer, or to procure and the procurer." But then, on the other hand, it is held that, when the bookseller wishes Mr. W. H. "that eternity promised by our ever-living poet," he means promised him. This inference we must think is somewhat strained. Be this as it may, the material question to examine is this are the greater portion of the Sonnets, putting aside those which manifestly apply to a female, or females, addressed to one male friend? Or are these the " sugared Sonnets" scattered among many "private friends?" When Meres printed his 'Palladis Tamia,' in 1598, there can be no doubt that Shakspere's Sonnets, then existing only in manuscript, had obtained a reputation in the literary and courtly circles of that time. Probably the notoriety which Meres had given to the "sugared Sonnets" excited a publisher, in 1599, to produce something which should gratify the general curiosity. In that year appeared a collection of poems bearing the name of Shakspere, and published by W. Jaggard, entitled 'The Passionate Pilgrim.' This little collection contains two Sonnets which are also given in the larger collection of 1609. They are those numbered 138 and 144 in that collection. In the modern reprints of 'The Passionate Pilgrim' it is usual to omit these two Sonnets without explanation, because they have been previously given in the larger collection of Sonnets. But it is essential to bear in mind the fact that in 1599 two of the Sonnets of the hundred and fifty-four published in 1609 were printed; and that one of them especially, the one numbered 144, has been held to form an important part of the supposed 'integral poem." We may therefore conclude that the other Sonnets which appear to relate to the same persons as are referred to in the 144th Sonnet were also in existence. Further, the publication of these Sonnets in 1599 tends to remove the impression that might be derived from the tone of some of those in the larger collection of 1609,-that they were written when Shakspere had passed the middle period of life. For example, in the 73rd Sonnet the poet refers to 66 66 the autumn of his years, the twilight of his day, the ashes of his youth. In the 138th, printed in 1599, he describes himself as "past the best"-as old." He was then thirty-five. Dante was exactly this age when he described himself in "the midway of this our mortal life." In these remarkable particulars, therefore, the mention of two persons real or fictitious, who occupy an important position in the larger collection, and in the notice of the poet's age, the two Sonnets of The Passionate Pilgrim' are strictly connected with those published in 1609, of which they also form a part; and they lead to the conclusion that they were obtained for publication out of the scattered leaves floating about amongst "private friends." The publication of 'The Passionate Pilgrim' was unquestionably unauthorised and piratical. The publisher got all he could which existed in manuscript; and he took two poems out of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' which was printed only the year before. In 1609, we have no hesitation in believing that the same process was repeated; that without the consent of the writer the hundred and fifty-four Sonnets-some forming a continuous poem, or poems; others isolated, in the subjects to which they relate, and the persons to whom they were addressed-were collected together without any key to their arrangement, and given to the public. Believing as we do that " W. H.," be he who he may, who put these poems in the hands of "T. T.," the publisher, arranged them in the most arbitrary manner (of which there are many proofs), we believe that the assumption of continuity, however ingeniously it may be maintained, is altogether fallacious. Where is the difficulty of imagining, with regard to poems of which each separate poem, sonnet, or stanza, is either a “leading idea," or its ". variation," that, picked up as we think they were from many quarters, the supposed connexion must be in many respects fanciful, in some a result of chance, mixing what the poet wrote in his own person, either in moments of elation or depression, with other apparently continuous stanzas that painted an imaginary character, indulging in all the warmth of an ex aggerated friendship, in the complaints of an abused confidence, in the pictures of an unhallowed and unhappy love; sometimes speaking with the real earnestness of true friendship and a modest estimation of his own merits; sometimes employing the language of an extravagant eulogy, and a more extravagant estimation of the powers of the man who was writing that eulogy? Suppose, for example, that in the leisure hours, we will say, of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and William Shakspere, the poet should have undertaken to address to the youth an argument why he should marry. Without believing the Earl to be the W. H. of the Dedication, we know that he was a friend of Shakspere. There is nothing in the first seventeen Sonnets which might not have been written in the artificial tone of the Italian poetry, in the working out of this scheme. Suppose, again, that in other Son- | nets the poet, in the same artificial spirit, complains that the friend has robbed him of his mistress, and avows that he forgives the falsehood. There is nothing in all this which might not have been written essentially as a work of fiction,-received as a work of fiction,-handed about amongst "private friends" without the slightest apprehension that it would be regarded as an exposition of the private relations of two persons separated in rank as they probably were in their habitual intimacies,-of very different ages, the one an avowedly profligate boy, the other a matured man. But this supposition does not exclude the idea that the poet had also, at various times, composed, in the same measure, other poems, truly expressing his personal feelings,-with nothing inflated in their tone, perfectly simple and natural, offering praise, expressing love to his actual friends (in the language of the time "lovers"), showing regret in separation, dreading unkindness, hopeful of continued affection. These are also circulated amongst "private friends." Some "W. H." collects them together, ten, or twelve, or fifteen years after they have been written; and a publisher, of course, is found to give to the world any productions of a so eminent as Shakspere. But who man arranged them? Certainly not the poet himself for those who believe in their continuity must admit that there are portions which it is impossible to regard as continuous. In the same volume with these Sonnets was published a most exquisite narrative poem, 'A Lover's Complaint.' The form of it entirely prevents any attempts to consider it autobiographical. The Sonnets, on the contrary, are personal in their form; but it is not therefore to be assumed that they are all personal in their relation to the author. It is impossible to be assumed that they could have been printed with the consent of the author as they now stand. If he had meant in all of them to express his actual feelings and position, the very slightest labour on his part-a few words of introduction either in prose or verse-would have taken those parts which he would have naturally desired to appear like fiction, and which to us even now look like fiction, out of the possible range of reality. The same slight labour would, on the other hand, have classed amongst the real, apart from the artificial, those Sonnets which he would have desired to stand apart, and which appear to us to stand apart, as the result of genuine | moods of the poet's own mind. It is our intention, without at all presuming to think that we have discovered any real order in which these extraordinary pro- | ductions may be arranged, to offer them to the reader upon a principle of classification, which, on the one hand, does not attempt to reject the idea that a continuous poem, or rather several continuous poems, may be traced throughout the series, nor adopt the belief that the whole can be broken up into fragments; but which, on the other hand, does no violence to the meaning of the author by a pertinacious adherence to a principle of continuity, sometimes obvious enough, but at other times maintained by links as fragile as the harness of Queen Mab's chariot : "Her traces of the smallest spider's web, Her collars of the moonshine's watery beams." The reader will have the ordinary text before him in every modern edition of Shak spere containing "The Poems;' and he will be enabled at every step to judge whether the original arrangement, to which we must constantly refer, was a systematic or an arbitrary one. I. The earliest productions of a youthful poet are commonly Love-Sonnets, or Elegies as they were termed in Shakspere's time. The next age to that of the school-boy is that of "the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad We commence our series with three Sonnets which certainly bear the marks of juvenility, when compared with others in this collection, as distinctly impressed upon them as the character of the poet's mind at different periods of his life is impressed upon 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'Macbeth: '— Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will, If thy soul check thee that I come so near, Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov'st me,-for my name is Will.-136. Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; If thou turn back, and my loud crying still. -143. The figures which we subjoin to each Sonnet show the place which it occupies in the collection of 1609. If the reader will turn to the reprints of that text, he will see where these Sonnets, through each of which the same play upon the poet's name is kept up with a boyish vivacity, are found. The first two follow one of those from which Mr. Brown derives the title of what he calls "The Sixth Poem,' being 'To his Mistress, on her Infidelity.'* Mr. Brown, however, qualifies the dissimilarity of tone by the following admission:-"All the stanzas in the preceding poems (to Stanza 126) are retained in their original order; the printers, without disturbing the links, having done no worse than the joining together of five chains into one. But I suspect the same attention has not been paid to this address to his mistress. Indeed, I farther suspect that some stanzas, irrelevant to the subject, have been introduced into the body of it." The stanzas to which Mr. Brown objects are the 135th and 136th, just given. But let us proceed. The poet now sings the praise of those eyes which so took his brother-poet, Phineas Fletcher: *Shakspeare's Autobiographical Poems,' p. 96. "But most I wonder how that jetty ray, Which those two blackest suns do fair display, Should shine so bright, and night should make so sweet a day." We know not the colour of Anne Hathaway's eyes; but how can we affirm that the following three Sonnets were not addressed to her? In the old age black was not counted fair, Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy hour, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, Her eyes so suited; and they mourners seem At such, who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Slandering creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so.-127. Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel: For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel. To say they err, I dare not be so bold, And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.-131. Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain; Have put on black, and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. And truly not the morning sun of heaven Better becomes the gray cheeks of the east, Nor that full star that ushers in the even, And suit thy pity like in every part. Then will I swear beauty herself is black, And all they foul that thy complexion lack. -132. But the last two immediately precede the Sonnet beginning "Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan, For that deep wound it gives my friend and me:" and so the lady of the "mourning eyes is associated with a tale of treachery and sin. The line of the 131st Sonnet, "In nothing art thou black, save in thy deeds," may be held to imply something atrocious. The first two lines, however, show of what the poet-lover complains: "Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel." The 128th Sonnet has never been exceeded in airy elegance, even by the professed writers of amatory poems: How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st, The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, reap, At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand! To be so tickled, they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips, O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more bless'd than living lips. Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. -128. The 130th, too, is one of the prettiest vers de société that a Suckling, or a Moore, could have produced: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak,-yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go,— My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.130. And of what character is the 129th Sonnet, which separates these two playful compositions? It is a solemn denunciation against unlicensed gratifications—a warning "To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell." If we are to bring those Sonnets in apposition where the "leading idea" is repeated, we shall have to go far back to find one that will accord with the 130th: So is it not with me as with that muse, With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare That heaven's air in his huge rondure hems. I will not praise, that purpose not to sell. This is the 21st Sonnet; and it has as much the character of a love-sonnet as any we have just given. The tyranny of which the poet complains in the 131st Sonnet forms the subject of the three following: O, call not me to justify the wrong That my unkindness lays upon my heart; Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue; Use power with power, and slay me not by art. Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but, in my sight, Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside. What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might Is more than my o'erpress'd defence can 'bide? foes, That they elsewhere might dart their injuries: Yet do not so; but, since I am near slain, Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.-139. Be wise as thou art cruel: do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain; Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain. near, No news but health from their physicians know ;) For, if I should despair, I should grow mad, And in my madness might speak ill of thee: Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. That I may not be so, nor thou belied, Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.-140. Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, |