ELIZABETH VERNON'S SHAKSPEARE-ALBUM. 319 be effaced, never given away. The gift of gifts was herself, not her gift-book, and the true tables are not that book, but his living brain. That 'poor retention' could not hold his love for her, nor does he need' tallies,' her dear love to score,' therefore he made bold to give away the book, the tallies which contained his love-reckonings, the memorandum-book which retained her, as is cunningly suggested, on purpose to trust his memory and mental record all the more. If he had kept such a thing to remind him of her, it would have been a kind of reproach to himself, as it would charge him with being forgetful, so he has just dispensed with this artificial memory, and henceforth will depend on his natural one alone! Besides, it was altogether incapable of holding his large love! This book was something very special for a sonnet to be written on the subject of its having been given away. The purpose to which it had been devoted is likewise as choice and particular. Shakspeare was not in the least likely to fill a book with sonnets about the Earl and then give it away, when they had been written for the Earl, nor did he keep' tallies' to score the Earl's dear love for himself. The sonnet supports my reading in each single point, and by its total weight of evidence. The tallies, thy dear love to score,' were none other than the leaves of this gift-book, in which the Poet wrote his dramatic sonnets on the love of his friend for Elizabeth Vernon. The book had been a present from Mistress Vernon to the Earl of Southampton; his parting with it was one of her grievances; and Shakspeare had enriched its value with sonnets in his own hand-writing. It may have been a table-book, such as were then in use, elegantly bound for a dainty hand. Aubrey, speaking of Sir Philip Sidney, says, my great uncle, Mr. T. Browne, remembered him; and said that he was wont to take his table-book out of his pocket and write down his notions C as they came into his head, when he was writing his "Arcadia," as he was hunting on our pleasant plains.' But thy gift-thy Tables,' does not necessarily mean the Table-book which you gave me. What the gift was has to be inferred from its use and by comparison. Thy Tables' signifies the most sensitive receiver of her true impression. Shakspeare is writing in his inclusive and, we may add, infusive way; he speaks of two things, and the larger contains the lesser. This book, then, in which Shakspeare wrote sonnet 77, and which has been given away by the Earl in sonnet 122, must, Southampton being the speaker, have been the record of his love written, the tally that was kept by Shakspeare, the poor retention' of Elizabeth Vernon's beauty and goodness, which the Poet had held up so steadily in view of his friend, by means of the dramatic sonnets written in it! The lady has felt exceedingly annoyed that he should have held her gift and its contents so lightly, and this sonnet was written to soothe her all it could. The reader will recollect that, in my reading of sonnet 38 (p. 157), I proposed to unclasp a secret book. This was not merely a metaphor; it was a veritable fact, but I have till now reserved my concluding argument and crowning illustration. In that sonnet, as we saw, the Poet was about to adopt a new argument, at the Earl's own suggestion, and a new method of writing which was of the Earl's own invention. This new argument is something too secretly precious to be written in the ordinary way, or even on the ordinary paper which the Poet has been accustomed to use. It is too excellent,' he says, for every vulgar paper to rehearse.' That is, the new subject of the Earl's suggesting and the new form of the Earl's inventing are too choice to be committed to common paper: which means that Shakspeare had until then written his personal sonnets on slips of paper provided by himself, THE BOOK PROBABLY GIVEN TO WILLIAM HERBERT. 321 and now the excelling argument of the Earl's love is to be written in Southampton's own book-the book which was given to him by his Mistress for our Poet to write in. Thus, in sonnet 38, we see that Shakspeare is beginning to write in the book, which in sonnet 77 he is positively writing in; and that in the following sonnet this same book has been given away by the Earl of Southampton. In sonnet 38 it was to be devoted to the Earl's love, and in sonnet 122 it has been devoted to the celebration of his love for Elizabeth Vernon. There is a reference to the circle of private friends,' who were to read the sonnets in this book. If my slight Muse do please these curious days' must mean the private friends of the Earl and his Mistress, as the sonnets were not for public readers. It points to the privileged ones who were in the secret, and who were permitted to look at Mistress Vernon's gift-book. I further hold that the Earl of Southampton gave these MSS. to William Herbert, and that the first cause why Shakspeare's sonnets came into the world in so mysterious a manner, may be legitimately supposed to originate in this fact, that the Earl had given them away privately on his own account, and thus forestalled the Poet in the right to possess or print them; in all probability frustrating any such intentions of publishing, as he may at one time have entertained. THE EARL TO ELIZABETH VERNON ON PARTING WITH A Thy gift-thy tables-are within my brain. Beyond all date, even to eternity; Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart 1 That idle rank.' The sonnets were the work of Shakspeare's 'idle hours!' Y Till each to raised oblivion yield his part (122.) 1 'That poor retention is the table-book given to him by his friend.'—MALONE. Nothing of the kind. The book spoken of in sonnet 77 is not Shakspeare's. It belongs to the person addressed. The speaker is writing in it, and he asks the Earl to commit his own thoughts to the waste blanks, the vacant leaves, of this book, which he calls 'thy book,' just as he says 'thy glass,' and' thy dial.' So that it is impossible for the Earl's book of sonnet 77 to be given away by Shakspeare in sonnet 122. It is a paper book having some leaves written on, others blank. The speaker does not, in either case, say thy 'table-book.' He says in effect the gift-book which contained the lady's tables. Table being the ancient term for a picture, Shakspeare uses it in the pictorial, rather than in the note-book sense. This book, which was the lady's gift, contained pictures of her, charactered by the Pen. The Earl has parted with the book, but he says her tables, not her book, are within his brain, her truest picture-place, not to be parted with and never to be effaced. DRAMATIC SONNETS. THE DARK' LADY OF THE LATTER SONNETS. 'Nothing of him that doth fade Into something rich and strange.' We now come to the last group of Shakspeare's sonnets a series that tells a somewhat doubtful story; doubtful, that is, in regard to the speaker and the person addressed; otherwise, the story is uncommonly plain, and the speaker is infatuated with a Mistress whose character is not in the least doubtful. The passion is one of those which Horace calls the tortures that urge men to confess their secret.' Others wonder what he sees in her to compel his worship with such fire-offerings of love. They cannot find anything in her face or features that should make 'love groan.' Nor can he, when he comes to look closely at her. He is astonished that it should be so; he finds no warrant for her wonderful sway over his foolish heart, and he asks: 'Oh, from what power hast thou this powerful might with insufficiency my heart to sway, to make me give the lie to my true sight, so that in the very refuse of thy deeds thou canst so influence my mind that I think thy worst exceeds the best of all others?' He is told, and he himself sees, her moral deformity; her character is quite plain to him, it lies before his eyes, bare and black as the harbour-mouth at the lowest ebb of tide, and |
