Even till his fail-yards tremble, his mafts crack,
And his rapt fhip runs on her fide fo low
That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air;
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is,—there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.

Such a mafter-spirit, preffing forward under ftrained canvas was Shakspere. If the hip dipped and drank water, she rose again; and at length we behold her within view of her haven failing under a large, calm wind, not without tokens of ftrefs of weather, but if battered, yet unbroken by the waves'. The laft plays of Shakspere, The Tempeft, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Henry VIII., illuminate the Sonnets and justify the moral genius of their writer.

I thank Profeffor Atkinson for help given in reading the proof-fheets of my Introduction; Mr. W. J. Craig, for illuftrations of obsolete words; Mr. Furnivall, for hints given from time to time in our difcuffion by letter of the grouping of the Sonnets. Mr. Edmund Goffe and

Dr. Grofart, for the loan of valuable books; Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, for a note on the date of Lintott's reprint; Mr. Hart, for feveral ingenious fuggeftions; Dr. Ingleby, for fome guidance in the matter of Shakspere portraiture; and Mr. L. C. Purfer, for translations of the Greek epigrams connected with Sonnets CLIII., CLIV.

I.

From faireft creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy fweet felf too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy fpring,

Within thine own bud burieft thy content

And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

A

II.

When forty winters shall befiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, fo gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held :
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lufty days,
To say, within thine own deep-funken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldft answer This fair child of mine
Shall fum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by fucceffion thine!

This were to be new made when thou art old,
And fee thy blood warm when thou feel'ft it cold.

III.

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Difdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he fo fond will be the tomb
Of his felf-love, to stop pofterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live, rememb'red not to be,

Die fingle, and thine image dies with thee.