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the course of his conversation, a familiar phrase or two of French or Italian." There is, however, a contemporary testimony to the acquirements of Shakspere which is of somewhat higher value than the assertions of any master "of all such reading as was never read "—of one, himself a true poet, who holds that all Shakspere's excellences were his freehold, but that his cunning brain improved his natural gifts :

the passage according to the common notion, | might pick up in the writers of the time, or it reads thus:-And although you knew little Latin and less Greek, to honour thee out of Latin and Greek I will not seek for names. According to this construction, the poet ought to have written, because "thou hadst small Latin," &c. But without any violence the passage may be read thus:-And although thou hadst in thy writings few images derived from Latin, and fewer from Greek authors, I will not thence (on that account) seek for names to honour thee, but call forth thundering Eschylus, &c. It is perfectly clear that Jonson meant to say, and not disparagingly, that Shakspere was not an imitator. Immediately after the mention of Aristophanes, Terence, and Plautus, he adds,

"Yet must I not give Nature all."

The same tone of commendation was taken in Shakspere's time by other writers. Digges says that he neither borrows from the Greeks, imitates the Latins, nor translates from vulgar languages. Drayton has these lines :

Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,

* 66

Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain As strong conception, and as clear a rage, As any one that traffick'd with the stage." To argue from such passages that the writers meant to reproach Shakspere as an ignorant or even as an unlearned man, in the common sense of the word, was an absurdity that was not fully propounded to the world till the discovery of Dr. Farmer, that, because translations existed from Latin, Italian, and French authors in the time of Shakspere, he was incapable of consulting the originals. This profound logician closes his judicial sentence with the following memorable words, which have become the true faith of some antiquarian critics up to this hour:"He remembered perhaps enough of his schoolboy learning to put the Hig, hag, hog, into the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans, and

* Farmer, the most insolent of the race of piddling black-letter bibliographers, has the profligacy not to quote these lines, but to say, "Drayton, the countryman and acquaintance of Shakspeare, determines his excellence to the natural brain only."

"This and much more which cannot be express'd

But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare's freehold, which his cunning
brain

Improved by favour of the ninefold train.
The buskin'd Muse, the Comic Queen, the
grand

And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair;
The silver-voiced Lady; the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose praise the heavenly body
chants;-

These jointly woo'd him, envying one another,
(Obey'd by all as spouse, but loved as brother,
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most
brave,

And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless
white,

The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted

spring,

Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each
string

Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run
Italian works whose thread the sisters spun ;
And there did sing, or seem to sing, the
choice

Birds of a foreign note and various voice.
Here hangs a mossy rock; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain purled: not the air,
Nor clouds, nor thunder, but were living
drawn,

Not out of common tiffany or lawn,
But fine materials, which the Muses know,
And only know the countries where they
grow."+

† Commendatory Verses, On Worthy Master Shakspeare and his Poems,' by I. M. S.

But if the passage which we have previously quoted from 'The Poetaster' be, as Gifford so plausibly imagined, intended for Shakspere, it is decisive as to Jonson's own opinion of his great friend's acquirements: it is the opinion of every man, now, who is not a slave to the authority of the smallest minds that ever undertook to measure the vast poetical region of Shakspere with their little tape, inch by inch :

"His learning savours not the school-like gloss That most consists in echoing words and terms,

And soonest wins a man an empty name." The verses of Jonson, prefixed to the folio of 1623, conclude with these remarkable lines:

"Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage;

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume's light." From 1616, the year of Shakspere's death, to 1623, the date of the first edition of his collected works, Jonson himself had written nothing for the stage. Beaumont had died the year before Shakspere; but Fletcher alone was sustaining the high reputation which he had won with his accomplished associate. Massinger had been in London from 1606, known certainly to have written in conjunction with other dramatists before the period of Shakspere's death, and, without doubt, assisting to fill the void which he had left; for 'The Bondman' appears in the list of the Master of the Revels in 1623. The indefatigable Thomas Heywood was a writer for the stage from the commencement of the seventeenth century to the suppression of the theatres. Webster was a poet of Shakspere's own theatre, immediately after his death, and a leading character in 'The Duchess of Malfi' was played by Burbage. Rowley produced some of his best works at the same period. Chapman had not ceased to write. Ford was known as a rising poet. Many others were there of genius and learning who at this particular time were struggling for the honours of the drama, and some with

great success. And yet Jonson does not hesitate to say, that since the death of Shakspere the stage mourns like night. Leonard Digges, writing at the date of the publication of the folio, says of Shakspere's dramas,

"Happy verse, thou shalt be sung and heard, When hungry quills shall be such honour barr'd.

Then vanish, upstart writers to each stage, You needy poetasters of this age!" This man speaks authoritatively, because he speaks the public voice. But it is not with the poetasters only that he compares the popularity of Shakspere; he tells us that the players of the Globe live by him dead; and that prime judgments, rich veins,

"have fared

The worst with this deceased man compared;" and he then proceeds to exhibit the precise character of the popular admiration of Shakspere :

"So have I seen, when Cæsar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were Brutus and Cassius, O, how the audience Were ravish'd! with what wonder they went thence!

When, some new day, they would not brook a line

Of tedious, though well-labour'd, Catiline;
Sejanus too was irksome: they prized more
'Honest' lago, or the jealous Moor.
And though the Fox and subtle Alchymist,
Long intermitted, could not long be miss'd,
Though these have shamed all th' ancients,
and might raise

Their author's merit with a crown of bays,
Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire
Acted, have scarce defray'd the sea-coal fire
And door-keepers: when, let but Falstaff

come,

Hal, Poins, the rest,-you scarce shall have a room,

All is so pester'd: Let but Beatrice
And Benedict be seen, lo! in a trice
The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full,
To hear Malvolio, that cross-garter'd gull.
Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught
book,

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look:

Like old-coin'd gold, whose lines in every page

Shall pass true current to succeding age." We have said enough, we think, to show how inconsiderate is the assertion, that Shakspere's "pre-eminence was not acknowledged by his contemporaries." Should this fact, however, be still thought to be a matter of opinion, we will place the opinion of a real critic, not the less sound for being an enthusiastic admirer, against this echo of

the babble of the cold and arrogant school of criticism that has still some small disciples and imitators: "Clothed in radiant armour, and authorised by titles sure and manifold as a poet, Shakspere came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the dramatic

poet of England. His excellences compelled throne, although there were giants in those days even his contemporaries to seat him on that contending for the same honour."*

* Coleridge's' Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 53.

BOOK X.

THE SONNETS.

THE original edition of this collection of | parted from, but the lyrical poems of 'The poems bore the following title:-'Shake- Passionate Pilgrim' scattered here and speare's Sonnets. Never before imprinted. there, and sometimes a single Sonnet, someAt London, by G. Eld, for T. T., and are to times two or three, and more rarely four or be sold by John Wright, dwelling at Christ five, distinguished by some quaint title. No Church-gate. 1609.' The volume is a small title includes more than five. In the ediquarto. In addition to the Sonnets it con- tions of the Poems which appeared during a tains, at the end, 'A Lover's Complaint. By century afterwards, the original order of the William Shake-speare.' In this collection Sonnets was adopted in some-that of the the Sonnets are numbered from 1 to 154. edition of 1640 in others. Lintot's, in 1709, Although the arrangement of the Sonnets in for example, adheres to the original; Curll's, this first edition is now the only one adopted in 1710, follows the second edition. Cotes, in editions of Shakspere's Poems, another the printer of the second edition, was also order occasionally prevailed up to the time the printer of the second edition of the plays. of the publication of Steevens's fac-simile re- That the principle of arrangement adopted print of the Sonnets in 1766. An interval in Cotes' edition was altogether arbitrary, of thirty-one years elapsed between the and proceeded upon a false conception of publication of the volume by T. T. (Thomas many of these poems, we can have no hesitaThorpe) in 1609, and the demand for a re- tion in believing; but it is remarkable that print of these remarkable poems. In 1640 within twenty-four years of Shakspere's appeared 'Poems, written by Wil. Shake- death an opinion should have existed that speare, Gent. Printed at London by Tho. the original arrangement was also arbitrary, Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson.' and that the Sonnets were essentially that This volume, in duodecimo, contains the collection of fragments which Meres described Sonnets, but in a totally different order, the in 1598, when he wrote, "As the soul of original arrangement not only being de- Euphorbus was thought to live in Pytha

goras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives | friend was has been the subject of infinite in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare: witness his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' his sugared Sonnets among his private friends." Upon the question of the continuity of the Sonnets depend many important considerations with reference to the life and personal character of the poet; and it is necessary, therefore, to examine that question with proportionate care.

The Sonnets of Shakspere are distinguished from the general character of that class of poems by the continuity manifestly existing in many successive stanzas, which form, as it were, a group of flowers of the same hue and fragrance. Mr. Hallam has justly explained this peculiarity:

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discussion. Chalmers maintains that it was Queen Elizabeth, and that there was no impropriety in Shakspere addressing the queen by the masculine pronoun, because a queen is a prince; as we still say in the Liturgy, our queen and governor." The reasoning of Chalmers on this subject, which may be found in his 'Supplementary Apology,' is one of the most amusing pieces of learned and ingenious nonsense that ever met our view. We believe that we must very summarily dismiss Queen Elizabeth. But Chalmers with more reason threw over the idea that the dedication of the bookseller to the edition of 1609 implied the person to whom the Sonnets were addressed. T. T., who dedicates, is, as we have mentioned, Thomas Thorpe, the publisher. W. H., to whom the dedication is addressed, was, according to the earlier critics, an humble person. He was either William Harte, the poet's nephew, or William Hews, some unknown individual; but Drake said, and said truly, that the per

"No one ever entered more fully than Shakspeare into the character of this species of poetry, which admits of no expletive imagery, no merely ornamental line. But though each Sonnet has generally its proper unity, the sense-I do not mean the grammatical construction-will sometimes be found to spread from one to another, inde-son addressed in some of the Sonnets thempendently of that repetition of the leading idea, like variations of an air, which a series of them frequently exhibits, and on account of which they have latterly been reckoned by some rather an integral poem than a collection of Sonnets. But this is not uncommon among the Italians, and belongs, in fact, to those of Petrarch himself."

selves was one of rank; and he maintained that it was Lord Southampton. "W. H.,” he said, ought to have been H. W.-Henry Wriothesley. But Mr. Boaden and Mr. Brown have subsequently affirmed that "W. H.” is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who, in his youth and his rank, exactly corre sponded with the person addressed by the poet. The words "begetter of these Sonnets," in the dedication, must mean, it is maintained, the person who was the immediate cause of their being written-to whom they were addressed. But he was "the only be

But, although a series may frequently exhibit a “repetition of the leading idea, like variations of an air," it by no means follows that they are to be therefore considered "rather an integral poem than a collection of Sonnets." In the edition of 1640 the "va-getter of these Sonnets." The latter porriations" were arbitrarily separated, in many cases, from the "air;" but, on the other hand, it is scarcely conceivable that in the earlier edition of 1609 these verses were intended to be presented as "an integral poem." Before we examine this matter, let us inquire into some of the circumstances connected with the original publication.

tion of the Sonnets are unquestionably addressed to a female, which at once disposes of the assertion that he was the only begetter, assuming the "begetter" to be used in the sense of inspirer. Chalmers disposes of this meaning of the word very cleverly:-"W. H. was the bringer forth of the Sonnets. Beget is derived by Skinner from the Anglo-Saxon The first seventeen Sonnets contain a begettan, obtinere. Johnson adopts this de'leading idea" under every form of "va- rivation and sense: so that begetter, in the riation." They are an exhortation to a quaint language of Thorpe the bookseller, friend, a male friend, to marry. Who this | Pistol the ancient, and such affected persons,

|

signified the obtainer: as to get and getter, in | the autumn of his years, the twilight of his the present day, mean obtain and obtainer, or day, the ashes of his youth. In the 138th, to procure and the procurer." But then, on printed in 1599, he describes himself as the other hand, it is held that, when the "past the best"-as "old." He was then bookseller wishes Mr. W. H. "that eternity thirty-five. Dante was exactly this age when promised by our ever-living poet," he means he described himself in “the midway of this promised him. This inference we must our mortal life." In these remarkable parthink is somewhat strained. Be this as it ticulars, therefore, the mention of two permay, the material question to examine is sons real or fictitious, who occupy an imthis are the greater portion of the Sonnets, portant position in the larger collection, and putting aside those which manifestly apply in the notice of the poet's age, the two to a female, or females, addressed to one Sonnets of "The Passionate Pilgrim' are male friend? Or are these the "sugared strictly connected with those published in Sonnets" scattered among many "private 1609, of which they also form a part; and friends?" When Meres printed his 'Pal- they lead to the conclusion that they were ladis Tamia,' in 1598, there can be no doubt obtained for publication out of the scattered that Shakspere's Sonnets, then existing only leaves floating about amongst "private in manuscript, had obtained a reputation in friends." The publication of 'The Passionate the literary and courtly circles of that time. Pilgrim' was unquestionably unauthorised Probably the notoriety which Meres had and piratical. The publisher got all he given to the "sugared Sonnets" excited a could which existed in manuscript; and he publisher, in 1599, to produce something took two poems out of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' which should gratify the general curiosity. which was printed only the year before. In In that year appeared a collection of poems 1609, we have no hesitation in believing bearing the name of Shakspere, and published that the same process was repeated; that by W. Jaggard, entitled "The Passionate without the consent of the writer the hunPilgrim.' This little collection contains two dred and fifty-four Sonnets-some forming a Sonnets which are also given in the larger continuous poem, or poems; others isolated, collection of 1609. They are those num- in the subjects to which they relate, and the bered 138 and 144 in that collection. In the persons to whom they were addressed-were modern reprints of 'The Passionate Pilgrim' collected together without any key to their it is usual to omit these two Sonnets without arrangement, and given to the public. Beexplanation, because they have been pre- lieving as we do that" W. H.," be he who viously given in the larger collection of he may, who put these poems in the hands Sonnets. But it is essential to bear in mind of “T. T.," the publisher, arranged them in the fact that in 1599 two of the Sonnets of the most arbitrary manner (of which there the hundred and fifty-four published in 1609 are many proofs), we believe that the aswere printed; and that one of them espe- sumption of continuity, however ingeniously cially, the one pumbered 144, has been held it may be maintained, is altogether fallacious. to form an important part of the supposed Where is the difficulty of imagining, with "integral poem." We may therefore con- regard to poems of which each separate clude that the other Sonnets which appear poem, sonnet, or stanza, is either a “leading to relate to the same persons as are referred idea," or its "variation," that, picked up as to in the 144th Sonnet were also in existence. we think they were from many quarters, the Further, the publication of these Sonnets in supposed connexion must be in many re1599 tends to remove the impression that spects fanciful, in some a result of chance, might be derived from the tone of some of mixing what the poet wrote in his own perthose in the larger collection of 1609,-that son, either in moments of elation or dethey were written when Shakspere had pression, with other apparently continuous passed the middle period of life. For ex- stanzas that painted an imaginary character, ample, in the 73rd Sonnet the poet refers to indulging in all the warmth of an ex

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