editions of Bell, Clark and Wright, Collier, Delius, Dyce, Halliwell, Hazlitt, Knight, Palgrave, Staunton, Grant White; the translations of François-Victor Hugo, Bodenstedt, and others, and the greater portion of the extensive Shakspere Sonnets literature, English and German. It is forrowful to confider of how fmall worth the contribution I make to the knowledge of these poems is, in proportion to the time and pains bestowed.
To render Shakspere's meaning clear has been my aim. I do not make his poetry an occasion for giving leffons in etymology. It would have been easy, and not useless, to have enlarged the notes with parallels from other Elizabethan writers; but they are already bulky. I have been fparing of fuch parallel paffages, and have illuftrated Shakspere chiefly from his own writings. Repeated perusals have convinced me that the Sonnets ftand in the right order, and that fonnet is connected with fonnet in more inftances than have been obferved. My notes on each fonnet commonly begin with an attempt to point