Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;

And more, much more, than in my verse can sit
Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

(103.)

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation, or quick change?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and whence they did proceed?
O know, sweet Love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:

For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,'
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy! but yet like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name!
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,

(76.)

Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.

(108.)

What new to register.' The Quarto reads, 'What now to register,' but the opposition intended is, I think, between speaking and writing, and 'new' is the more immediately applicable to registering. Malone first made the change.

THE EARL'S CONSTANCY IN LOVE.

Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such and ever so :
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference:
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords!
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.

(105.)

255

DRAMATIC SONNETS.

1598-9.

THE EARL TO ELIZABETH VERNON-THEIR FINAL RECONCILIATION: WITH SHAKSPEARE'S SONNET ON THEIR MARRIAGE.

WHATSOEVER Shakspeare intended to put into the sonnets is there, and may be found in them. Whatsoever character he meant to pourtray will be there depicted. Such was the constitution of his mind that his work is sure to be dramatically true; no matter what the subject may be. In the sonnets that are personal, there will be found nothing opposed to what we know, and have reason to believe, of the Poet's character. Nothing but what is perfectly compatible with that wise prudence, careful forethought, uprightness of dealing, stability of spirit, contentedness with his own lot, proverbial sweetness and loveableness of disposition which we know, not by conjecture, but because his possession of these virtues is the most amply attested fact of his life. Moreover, the personal sonnets always illustrate that modesty of his nature which was great as was his genius. But, in this group of sonnets, the character delineated is the exact opposite in every respect to that of Shakspeare; separated from his by a difference the most profound. This is a youth speaking-as in sonnet the 2nd-whereas Shakspeare continually harps on his riper age, or, as we have read it, his elder brotherhood to the youth who is his friend. And this

SOUTHAMPTON'S CHARACTERISTICS.

257

youth, who is the speaker here, has been headstrong and wilful, imprudent and thoughtless; unstable as wind and wave, and easily made the sport of both; he is choleric and quickly stirred to breaking out and flying off at random. Again and again has he given pain to those that loved him most, who have had to turn from his doings with averted eyes. Again and again has he left the beloved, and gone away as far as wind and wave would carry him. He has heedlessly done things which have made him the mark of scandal

A fixéd figure of the time,' for Scorn

To point his slow unmoving finger at;'

made a fool of himself, as we say, and as he also says, publicly, to the view; 'gored his own thoughts' and made the heart of others bleed for him. He has been forgetful of that dearest love' to which all bonds' draw him closer and tie him tighter day by day; he has been wanting in those grateful offices of affection wherein he ought to have repaid the great deserts' of the person addressed.

These sonnets are very dramatic; intensely personal to the speaker; the feeling goes deep enough to carry the writer most near to nature, therefore they are certain to be representatively true. They are pathetic with a passionate pleading; filled with real confessions; self-criminating, and quick with repentance. But they are not true to the nature of our Poet, they have no touch of kinship, no feature of likeness to him. They are, I repeat, in all respects the precise opposite to what we know of Shakspeare, and to all that he says of himself, or others say of him. If ever there was a soul of ripe serenity and capacious calm, of sweet and large affections, wise orderliness of life, and an imagination that had the deep stillness of brooding love, it was the soul of Shakspeare. His was not a mind to be troubled

1 Surely this is the true reading of the above two lines-the 'of' and 'for' having changed places? Othello cannot mean that he is made into a clock or a dial, but the laughing-stock of the time?

S

and tossed by every breeze that blew, and billow that broke; not a temperament to be ever in restless eddy and ebb and flow; not a nature that was fussy or fretful, but steady and deep; of massive mould, majestic motion and smiling spaciousness. He was a man who could possess his soul in patience, and silently bide his time; who did not babble of his discontents with either tongue or pen.

Then, if Southampton be the friend who is addressed when Shakspeare speaks personally, his character should be to some extent reflected from Shakspeare's words; we should at least see his features, although in miniature, in Shakspeare's eyes. We know his character. It can be traced quite distinctly on the historic page. He was a brave and bounteous peer. A noble of nature's own making, munificent, chivalrous, full of warlike and other fire.. But he was one of those who will have the flash and outbreak of the passionate mind; and when stirred, the quick fire was apt to leap out into a world of dancing sparks. He was quick and sudden in quarrel; his hand flew as swiftly to his swordhilt as the hot blood to his face; lacking in prudence and patience, and unstable in all things but his ardent friendships. Even these he must have tried sorely. His mounting valour was of the restless irrepressive kind which, if it cannot find vent in battles abroad, is likely to break out in broils at home. He was easily swayed, and frequently swerved aside by the continual cross-currents of his wilful wanton blood; one of the chosen friends and kindred spirits of the madcap and feather-triumph Earl of Essex! But he was also one of those generous, self-forgetting foolish souls whose vices are often more amiable than some people's virtues. All this we may read in the records of the time. All this we may gather from the sonnets which are addressed to him. And all this is figured in the liveliest form and colour in those sonnets which I say are spoken BY the Earl of Southampton. These paint the past history of the speaker, and they