friend. 'I should be glad if you were caught', writes Languet to Philip Sidney, that so you might give to your country fons like yourself'. 'If you marry a wife, and if you beget children like yourself, you will be doing better service to your country than if you were to cut the throats of a thousand Spaniards and Frenchmen'. ""Sir", faid Crofus to Cambyfes', Languet

writes to Sidney, now aged twenty-four, "I confider your father must be held your better, because he was the father of an admirable prince, whereas you have as yet no fon like yourself"." It is in the manner of Sidney's own Cecropia that Shakspere urges marriage upon his friend.1 'Nature when you were first born, vowed you a woman, and as fhe made you child of a mother, fo to do your best to be mother of a child' (Sonnet XIII. 14); 'she gave you beauty to move love; fhe gave you wit to know love; she gave you an excellent body to reward love;

1 Arcadia, Lib. III. Noticed by Mr. Maffey in his 'Shakespeare's Sonnets and his Private Friends', pp. 36

37.

which kind of liberal rewarding is crowned with an unspeakable felicity. For this as it bindeth the receiver, fo it makes happy the bestower ;. this doth not impoverish, but enrich the giver (VI. 6). O the comfort of comforts, to see your children grow up, in whom you are as it were eternised! ... Have you ever seen a pure Rosewater kept in a crystal glass, how fine it looks, how sweet it smells, while that beautiful glass imprisons it! Break the prison and let the water take his own course, doth it not embrace duft, and lofe all his former fweetness and fairnefs; truly fo are we, if we have not the ftay, rather than the reftraint of Crystalline marriage (v.); . . . And is a folitary life as good as this? then, can one ftring make as good mufic as a confort (VIII.)'.

...

In like manner Shakspere urges the youth to perpetuate his beauty in offfpring (I-XVII.).1 But if Will refuses, then his poet will make war against Time and Decay, and confer immortality

1 In what follows, to avoid the confusion of he, and him, I call Shakfpere's friend, as he is called in CXXXV., Will.

upon his beloved one by Verse (xv.-xIx.). Will is the pattern and exemplar of human beauty (XIX.), so uniting in himself the perfections of man and woman (xx.); this is no extravagant praise but simple truth (xxI.). And fuch a being has exchanged love with Shakfpere (XXII.), who muft needs be filent with excess of paffion (XXIII.), cherishing in his heart the image of his friend's beauty (XXIV.), but holding still more dear the love from which no unkind fortune can ever separate him (xxv.), Here affairs of his own compel Shakspere to a journey which removes him from Will (xxvI., XXVII.). Sleepless at night, and toiling by day, he thinks of the absent one (XXVII. XXVIII.); grieving for his own poor eftate (XXIX.), and the death of friends, but finding in the one beloved amends for all (XXX., XXXI.); and fo Shakfpere commends to his friend his poor verses as a token of affection which may furvive if he himself should die (XXXII). At this point the mood changes-in his abfence his friend has been falfe to friendship (xxxIII.); now, indeed, Will would let the

sunshine of his favour beam out again, but that will not cure the difgrace; tears and penitence are fitter (XXXIV.); and for fake of such tears Will fhall be forgiven (xxxv.); but henceforth their lives must run apart (XXXVI.); Shakspere, separated from Will, can look on and rejoice in his friend's happiness and honour (XXXVII.), finging his praise in verse (XXXVIII.), which he could not do if they were fo united that to praife his friend were felf-praise (XXXIX.); feparated they must be, and even their loves be no longer one; Shakspere can now give his love, even her he loved, to the gentle thief; wronged though he is, he will still hold Will dear (XL.); what is he but a boy whom a woman has beguiled (XLI.)? and for both, for friend and mistress, in the midst of his pain, he will try to feign excufes (XLII.). Here there feems to be a gap of time. The Sonnets begin again in

absence, and some students have called this, perhaps rightly, the Second Absence (XLIII., Jqq.). His friend continues as dear as ever, but confidence is fhaken, and a deep distrust begins

to grow (XLVIII.). What right indeed has a poor player to claim conftancy and love (XLIX.)? He is on a journey which removes him from Will (L. LI.). His friend perhaps profeffes unfhaken loyalty, for Shakspere now takes heart, and praises Will's truth (LIII. LIV.)-takes heart, and believes that his own verfe will for ever keep that truth in mind. He will endure the pain of abfence, and have no jealous thoughts (LVII. LVIII.); ftriving to honour his friend in fong better than ever man was honoured before (LIX.); in fong which shall outlast the revolutions of time (LX.). Still he cannot quite get rid of jealous fears (LXI.); and yet, what right

has one fo worn by years and

a young man's love (LXII.)?

care to claim all

Will, too, in his

turn must fade, but his beauty will survive in verse (LXIII.). Alas! to think that death will take away the beloved one (LXIV.); nothing but Verse can defeat time and decay (LXV.). For his own part Shakspere would willingly die, were it not that, dying, he would leave his friend alone in an evil world (LXVI.). Why