Envy, which is always on the loose, seeking for some reputation to devour. This, again, is Mr. Brown's rendering of the world of meaning to be found in sonnet 107 No consideration can controul my true friendship. In spite of death itself, I shall live in this verse, and it shall be your enduring monument. Now let the reader turn to the sonnet thus paraphrased. The historic circumstances and all the most precious particulars are lost with such a theory, the believers in which are blind to the jewelly sparkle that indicates the lode of the meaning in certain lines, rich in hidden treasure. So of sonnet 124; at Mr. Brown's touch the spirit passes out of it, the history of the time fades away, the dates grow dim, Shakspeare's meaning is dead, and Mr. Brown wraps it in a winding-sheet of witless words. In his account of sonnet 117, he takes no notice of four lines, which of themselves are sufficient to differentiate the characters and lives of Shakspeare and Southampton That I have frequent been with unknown minds, That should transport me farthest from your sight. Here was matter of great 'pith and moment,' but Mr. Brown knew not what to make of it. In sonnet 36, Mr. Brown professes to find this: "Perhaps I must not openly acknowledge you, lest the resentment I showed, which I bitterly lament, should be remembered to your shame!' And he conjectures-harping on his favourite stringthat the poet's resentment had been made public. Shakspeare wrote nothing of the sort. The speaker in that sonnet is the guilty person, whatsoever the guilt may be; his are the blots; so guilty is he, that for the other to take notice of him publicly, will be to court dishonour. THE PERSONAL READING OF SONNET 36. 25 My bewailed guilt,' is the guilt which I do bewail—am sorry for not which I did bewail and give expression to in public. Boaden, who is here followed by Gervinus, was driven to think that in this 36th sonnet, the poet must lament the difference of rank that existed betwixt them, and was fearful lest politic reasons might pull them apart. But this will not do any way. It is sufficient answer to know that this difference in rank had been no barrier to their intercourse; and if the patron had made no obstacle of the disparity in station, it would be a gratuitous insult for Shakspeare to set it up as one. Nor could he, after the secure self-congratulation on this very point in sonnet 25, have spoken of the difference of rank as the separating spite of Fortune; for he had expressly sung of the friendship as a gift beyond all the prizes of Fortune. Nor could the poet's lot in life be his 'bewailed guilt.' Also, theblots' are altogether of a personal character. And if the poet had done something so bad as is here implied, he would not have the right to say on behalf of both, that there was still but one respect, and the love on both sides yet remained the same. The sonnet cannot be read by such a theory. Then Mr. Brown has altogether ignored the discrepancies betwixt what is recorded of Shakspeare's personal character by those who knew him and what has been surmised of it by some who have read but never understood the sonnets. Nor has he hesitated to charge the greatest dramatic poet that ever lived with the grossest violation of dramatic proprieties poet ever made. He has assumed that Shakspeare was capable of mixing truth and falsehood in the wildest, most wanton way-as though he were a mountebank whose face was like one of those elastic playthings for children that may be squeezed or stretched into any shape, on purpose to mock us with a myriad transformations of appearances. Here are a few expressions thus assumed, without question, to have been addressed to a man by the most natural of all poets: I tell the day to please him, thou art bright, And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven; Sonnet 28. Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well shows, Being your slave, what should I do but tend Sonnet 40. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, Sonnet 57. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure. Sonnet 75. And prove thee virtuous though thou art forsworn. Sonnet 88. But what's so blessed fair that fears no blot? How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, Sonnet 92. If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.-Sonnet 93. As on the finger of a throned Queen The basest Jewel will be well esteemed, So are those errors that in thee are seen, Sonnet 96. For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my Rose! in it thou art my all. Sonnet 109. HIS SUPPOSED UNTRUTHFULNESS TO NATURE. 27 Mine appetite I never more will grind On newer proof to try an older friend.-Sonnet 110. Such Cherubins as your sweet self.-Sonnet 114. For why should others' false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood?-Sonnet 121. Thus, it is assumed that Shakspeare, the peerless Psychologist, the poet whose observance of natural law was infallible, whose writings contain the ultimate of all that is natural in poetry, should have sinned grossly against nature, in a matter so primal as the illustration of sex! Lastly, Mr. Brown remarks of the rival poet in sonnet 86, who this rival poet was is beyond my conjecture; nor does it matter!' But it matters much; for if this poet should prove to be Marlowe, that one fact alone would be of sufficient force to deal the death-blow to the vaunted theory that William Herbert was the only begetter' of Shakspeare's sonnets; because Marlowe died in the year 1593, when Herbert was exactly thirteen years and four months of age. And finally, the upholders of this Herbert Hypothesis have, in their helpless desperation, been driven to assert that the well-known 'sugred sonnets' of Shakspeare, spoken of so pointedly by Meres, as among the poet's 'private friends,' in the year 1598, must have been lost! The theory did indeed require to be supported with an audacity that would stick at nothing; but what a 'lame and impotent conclusion !' Mr. Brown's book leaves the subject just where he found it; dark and dubious as ever. His theory has only served to trouble deep waters, and make them so muddy that it was impossible to see to the bottom. OF THE PERIOD AT WHICH THE EARLIER SONNETS WERE WRITTEN, AND THE PERSON TO WHOM THEY ARE ADDRESSED. THAT the greater portion of Shakspeare's sonnets was written at too early a period for William Herbert to have been the begetter,' is capable of positive, absolute, and overwhelming proof. First, we have the poet's sugred sonnets among his private friends,' known to Meres in 1598. Then we find ample internal evidence to prove that the mass of these sonnets are the poet's early work, and possess the characteristics of his early composition. As Coleridge has remarked, and he did not enter into the controversy concerning the only begetter,' they have, like the Venus and Adonis,' and the Lucrece,' 'boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power teach more ease, præcipitandum liberum spiritum.' The abundant use of antithesis also shows that his fancy had more to do with their making, than his mature imagination. Besides which, he tells us plainly enough that the early sonnets were written |