Sonnets, one or two might be spoken by Mercutio, when his wit of cheveril was stretched to an ell broad. To compenfate--Shakspere knew men and women a good deal better than did Milton, and probably no patches of his life are quite as unprofitably ugly as fome which diffigured the life of the great idealist. His daughter could love and honour Shakspere's memory. Lamentable it is, if he was taken in the toils, but at least we know that he escaped all toils before the end. May we dare to conjecture that Cleopatra, queen and courtefan, black from 'Phoebus' amorous pinches', a "lafs unparalleled', has fome kinship through the imagination with our dark lady of the virginal? had never seen her', fighs out Antony, and the fhrewd onlooker Enobarbus replies, 'O, fir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been bleft withal would have difcredited your travel'.

Would I

Shakspere did not, in Byron's manner, invite the world to gaze upon his trefpafs and his griefs. Setting afide two pieces printed by a

pirate in 1599, not one of these poems, as far as we know, faw the light until long after they were written, according to the most probable chronology, and when in 1609 the volume entitled Shake-fpeares Sonnets' was iffued, it had, there is reason to believe, neither the superintendence nor the consent of the author.1 Yet their literary merits entitled these poems to publication, and Shakfpere's verfe was popular. If they were written on fanciful themes, why were the Sonnets held fo long in referve? If, on the other hand, they were connected with real perfons, and painful incidents, it was natural that they should not país beyond the private friends of their poffeffor.

But the Sonnets of Shakfpere, it is faid, lack inward unity. Some might well be addreffed to Queen Elizabeth, fome to Anne Hathaway, fome to his boy Hamnet, fome to the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Southampton; it is impoffible to make all these poems (1.-CXXVI.) apply

1 The Quarto of 1609, though not careleffly printed, is far lefs accurate than Venus & Adonis. See note on cxxvI.

to a single person. Difficulties of this kind may perplex a painful commentator, but would hardly occur to a lover or a friend living where the beams of friendship are imminent'. The youth addressed by Shakspere is the master-mistress of his paffion' (xx.); fumming up the perfections of man and woman, of Helen and Adonis (LIII.); a liege, and yet through love a comrade; in years a boy, cherished as a fon might be; in will a man, with all the power which rank and beauty give. Love, aching with its own monotony, invites imagination to invest it in changeful forms. Besides, the varying feelings of at least three years (CIV.)—three years of lofs and gain, of love, wrong, wrath, forrow, repentance, forgiveness, perfected union-are uttered in the Sonnets. When Shakfpere began to write, his friend had the untried innocence of boyhood and an unfpotted fame; afterwards came the offence and the difhonour. And the loving heart practised upon itself the piteous frauds of wounded affection: now it can credit no evil of the beloved, now it must believe the worst.

While the world knows nothing but praise of one fo dear, a private injury goes deep into the foul; when the world affails his reputation, ftraightway loyalty revives, and even puts a ftrain upon itself to hide each imperfection from

view.

A painstaking student of the Sonnets, Henry Brown, was of opinion that Shakspere intended in these poems to fatirize the fonnet-writers of his time, and in particular his contemporaries, Drayton and John Davies of Hereford. Profeffor Minto, while accepting the series I.-CXXVI. as of serious import, regards the fonnets addreffed to a woman, CXXVII.-CLII. as exercises of skill undertaken in a spirit of wanton defiance and derifion of commonplace'. Certainly if

Shakspere is a fatirift in 1.-CXXVI., his irony is deep; the malicious smile was not noticed during two centuries and a half. The poems are in the taste of the time; lefs extravagant and less full of conceits than many other Elizabethan collections, more diftinguished by exquifite imagination, and all that betokens genuine feeling;

they are, as far as manner goes, fuch fonnets as Daniel might have chosen to write if he had had the imagination and the heart of Shakspere. All that is quaint or contorted or 'conceited' in them can be paralleled from paffages of early plays of Shakfpere, fuch as Romeo & Juliet, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, where affuredly no fatirical intention is discoverable. In the Sonnets CXXVII.-CLIV. Shakfpere addreffes a woman to whom it is impoffible to pay the conventional homage of fonneteers; he cannot tell her that her cheeks are lilies and roses, her breast is of snow, her heart is chafte and cold as ice. Yet he loves her, and will give her tribute of verfe. He praises her precisely as a woman who without beauty is clever and charming, and a coquette, would choose to be praised. True, fhe owns no commonplace attractions; she is no pink and white goddefs; all her imperfections he fees; yet she can fascinate by some nameless fpell; fhe can turn the heart hot or cold; if the is not beautiful, it is because fomething more rare and fine takes the place of beauty. She