bookseller wishes Mr. W. H. " that eternity promised by our everliving poet," he means promised him. This inference, we must think, is somewhat strained. Be this as it may, the material question to examine is this: Are the greater portion of the Sonnets, putting aside those which manifestly apply to a female, or females, addressed to one male friend? Or are these the "sugared Sonnets" scattered among many private friends ”? When Meres printed his "Palladis Tamia," in 1598, there can be no doubt that Shakspeare's Sonnets, then existing only in manuscript, had obtained a reputation in the literary and courtly circles of that time. Probably the notoriety which Meres had given to the "sugared Sonnets " excited a publisher, in 1599, to produce something which should gratify the general curiosity. In that year appeared a collection of poems bearing the name of Shakspeare, and published by W. Jaggard, entitled "The Passionate Pilgrim." This little collection contains two Sonnets which are also given in the larger collection of 1609. They are those numbered CXXXVIII. and CXLIV. in that collection. In the modern reprints of The Passionate Pilgrim it is usual to omit these two Sonnets without explanation, because they have been previously given in the larger collection of Sonnets. But it is essential to bear in mind the fact, that in 1599 two of the Sonnets of the hundred and fifty-four published in 1609 were printed; and that one of them especially, that numbered CXLIV., has been held to form an important part of the supposed "integral poem." We may, therefore, conclude that the other Sonnets which appear to relate to the same persons as are referred to in the 144th Sonnet were also in existence. Further, the publication of these Sonnets in 1599 tends to remove the impression that might be derived from the tone of some of those in the larger collection of 1609 — that they were written when Shakspeare had passed the middle period of life. For example, in the 73d Sonnet the poet refers to the autumn of his years, the twilight of his day, the ashes of his youth. In the 138th, printed in 1599, he describes himself as past the best " as "old." He was then thirty-five. Dante was exactly this age when he described himself in "the midway of this our mortal life." In these remarkable particulars, therefore, the mention of two persons, real or fictitious, who occupy an important position in the larger collection, and in the notice of the poet's age, the two Sonnets of The Passionate Pilgrim are strictly connected with those published in 1609, of which they also fom a part; and they lead to the conclusion that they were were obtained for publication out of the scattered leaves floating about amongst "private friends." The publication of The Passionate Pilgrim was unquestionably unauthorized and piratica The publisher got all he could which existed in manuscript; and he took two poems out of Love's Labour's Lost, which was printed only the year before. In 1609, we have no hesitation in believing that the same process was repeated; that without the consent of the writer the hundred and fifty-four Sonnets some forming a continuous poem, or poems; others isolated, in the subjects to which they relate, and the persons to whom they were addressed collected together without any key to their arrangement, and given to the public. Believing as we do that "W. H.," be he who he may, who put these poems in the hands of "T. T.," the publisher, arranged them in the most arbitrary manner, (of which there are many proofs,) we believe that the assumption of continuity, however ingeniously it may be maintained, is altogether fallacious. Where is the difficulty of imagining, with regard to poems of which each separate poem, sonnet, or stanza is either a " leading idea," or its "variation," that, picked up, as we think they were, from many quarters, the supposed connection must be in many respects fanciful, in some a result of chance, mixing what the poet wrote in his own person, either in moments of elation or depression, with other apparently continuous stanzas that painted an imaginary character, indulging in all the warmth of an exaggerated friendship, in the complaints of an abused confidence, in the pictures of an unhallowed and unhappy love; sometimes speaking with the real earnestness of true friendship and a modest estimation of his own merits; sometimes employing the language of an extravagant eulogy, and a more extravagant estimation of the powers of the man who was writing that eulogy? Suppose, for example, that in the leisure hours, we will say, of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and William Shakspeare, the poet should have undertaken to address to the youth an argument why he should marry. Without believing the earl to be the W. H. of the Dedication, we know that he was a friend of Shakspeare. There is nothing in the first seventeen Sonnets which might not have been written in the artificial tone of the Italian poetry, in the working out of this scheme. Suppose, again, that in other Sonnets the poet, in the same artificial spirit, complains that the friend has robbed him of his mistress, and avows that he forgives the falsehood. There is nothing in all this which might not have been written essentially as a work of fiction, received as a work of fiction, handed about amongst "private friends" without the slightest apprehension that it would be regarded as an exposition of the private relations of two persons separated in rank as they probably were in their habitual intimacies 66 of very different ages, other a matured man. the one an avowedly profligate boy, the But this supposition does not exclude the idea that the poet had also, at various times, composed, in the same measure, other poems, truly expressing his personal feelings, with nothing inflated in their tone, perfectly simple and natural, offering praise, expressing love to his actual friends, (in the language of the time, "lovers,") showing regret in separation, dreading unkindness, hopeful of continued affection. These are also circulated amongst private friends." Some " W. H." collects them together, ten, or twelve, or fifteen years after they have been written; and a publisher, of course, is found to give to the world any productions of a man so eminent as Shakspeare. But who arranged them? Certainly not the poet himself; for those who believe in their continuity must admit that there are portions which it is impossible to regard as continuous. In the same volume with these Sonnets was published a most exquisite narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint. The form of it entirely prevents any attempt to consider it autobiographical. The Sonnets, on the contrary, are personal in their form; but it is not therefore to be assumed that they are all personal in their relation to the author. It is impossible to be assumed that they could have been printed with the consent of the author as they now stand. If he had meant in all of them to express his actual feelings and position, the very slightest labor on his part—a few words of introduction, either in prose or verse would have taken those parts which he would have naturally desired to appear like fiction, and which to us even now look like fiction, out of the possible range of reality. The same slight labor would, on the other hand, have classed amongst the real, apart from the artificial, those Sonnets which he would have desired to stand apart, and appear to us to stand apart, as the result of real moods of the poet's own mind. It is our intention, without at all presuming to think that we have discovered any real order in which these extraordinary productions may be arranged, to offer them to the reader upon a principle of classification, which, on the one hand, does not attempt to reject the idea that a continuous poem, or rather several continuous poems, may be traced throughout the series, nor adopt the belief that the whole can be broken up into fragments; but which, on the other hand, does no violence to the meaning of the author by a pertinacious adherence to a principle of continuity, sometimes obvious enough, but at other times maintained by links as fragile as the harness of Queen Mab's chariot : "Her traces of the smallest spider's web, Her collars of the moonshine's watery beams." The reader will have the text of the first edition before him ; and he will be enabled at every step to judge whether the original arrangement, to which we must constantly refer, was a systematic or an arbitrary one. I. THE earliest productions of a youthful poet are commonly Love-Sonnets, or Elegies, as they were termed in Shakspeare's time. The next age to that of the schoolboy is that of "the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad We commence our series with three Sonnets which certainly bear the marks of juvenility, when compared with others in this collection, as distinctly impressed upon them as the character of the poet's mind at different periods of his life is impressed upon Love's Labor's Lost and Macbeth: Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will, 135. If thy soul check thee that I come so near, Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one, Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will, 143. 136. The figures which we subjoin to each Sonnet show the place which it occupies in the collection of 1609. If the reader will turn to our reprint of that text, he will see where these Sonnets, through each of which the same play upon the poet's name is kept up with a boyish vivacity, are found. The two first follow one of those from which Mr. Brown derives the title of what he calls |