4. That. So that.

7. Summer's story.

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"By a summer's story Shakspeare

seems to have meant some gay fiction. founded on the adventures of the king

Thus, his comedy

and queen of the

fairies, he calls A Midsummer Night's Dream. On the other hand, in The Winter's Tale he tells, a sad tale's best for winter.' So also in Cymbeline, Act III. sc. 4,

11. 12-14:

-if it be summer news,

Smile to it before: if winterly, thou need'st
But keep that countenance still."

MALONE.

But is not A Midsummer Night's Dream so named because on Midsummer Eve men's dreams ran riot, ghosts were visible, maidens practised divination for husbands, and "midsummer madness (Twelfth Night, III. 4, 61) reached its height?

8. The lily's white. The Quarto has lilies; so Malone and other editors.

11. They were but sweet. Malone proposed "they were, my sweet, but," etc. The poet declares, as Steevens says, that the flowers "are only sweet, only delightful, so far as they resemble his friend." Lettsom proposes, "They were but fleeting figures of delight."

XCIX. In connection with the last line of Sonnet XCVIII. The present sonnet has fifteen lines, as also has one of the sonnets in Barnes's Parthenophil and Parthenophe.

6. Condemned for thy hand, condemned for theft of the whiteness of thy hand.

7. And buds of marjoram, etc. Compare Suckling's Tragedy of Brennoralt, Act IV. sc. 1 :

Hair curling, and cover'd like buds of marjoram ;
Part tied in negligence, part loosely flowing.

Mr. H. C. Hart tells me that buds of marjoram are dark purple-red before they open, and afterwards pink; dark auburn, I suppose, would be the nearest approach to marjoram in the colour of hair. Mr. Hart suggests that the marjoram has stolen not colour but perfume from the young man's hair. Gervase Markham gives sweet marjoram as an ingredient in "The water of sweet smells," and Culpepper says "marjoram is much used in all odoriferous waters." Cole (Adam in Eden, ed. 1657) says, "Marjerome is a chief ingredient in most of those powders that Barbers use, in whose shops I have seen great store of this herb hung up.

8. On thorns did stand. To "stand on thorns" is an old proverbial phrase.

Mr. Massey compares with these flower sonnets Constable's Diana (before 1594), First Decade, Sonnet 9 :—

My Lady's presence makes the Roses red,
Because to see her lips they blush for shame.
The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became ;
And her white hands in them this envy bred.
The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spread;
Because the sun's and her power is the same.
The Violet of purple colour came,

Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed.

In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take,
From her sweet breath their sweet smells do proceed.

Compare also Spenser, Amoretti, 64.

9. One. The Quarto has “our."

12. A vengeful canker eat him, etc. So Venus and Adonis, 1. 656:

This canker that eats up Love's tender spring.

The metaphor of the canker appears also in a sonnet not far distant, XCV.

14. But sweet. Sidney Walker proposes scent.

C. Written after a cessation from sonnet-writing, during which Shakspere had been engaged in authorship,writing plays for the public as I suppose, instead of poems for his friend.

3. Fury, poetic enthusiasm, as in Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV. sc. 3, 1. 229.

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9. Resty, torpid. "Resty, piger, lentus," Coles's Latin and English Dictionary (quoted by Dyce). Compare Resty-stiff," Edward III., Act II. sc. 3 (p. 51, ed. Delius). "Resty" in Cymbeline, Act III. sc. 6, 1. 34, may mean uneasy. In Troilus and Cressida, Act 1. sc. 3, 1. 263, the Folios have rusty.

11. Satire. "Satire is satirist. Jonson, Masque of Time Vindicated, Gifford, vol. viii. p. 5:—

EARS.

Who's this?

'Tis Chronomastix, the brave satyr. NOSE. The gentleman-like satyr, cares for nobody.

Poetaster, V. I. vol. ii. p. 524 :—

The honest satyr hath the happiest soul."

W. S. WALKER.

14. Prevent'st, dost frustrate by anticipating.

CI. Continues the address to his muse, calling on her to sing again the praises of his friend; c. calls on her to praise his beauty; CI. his " truth in beauty dyed." 6. His colour, the colour of my love (i.e., my friend). 7. To lay, to spread on a surface, to lay on. Twelfth Night, Act I. sc. 5, 1. 258 :—

'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white

Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.

CII. In continuation. An apology for having ceased to sing.

3. That love is merchandiz'd, etc. So in Love's Labour's Lost, Act II. sc. 1, ll. 13-16:

My beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues.

7. Summer's front. So The Winter's Tale, Act IV. sc. 4,

1.3:

No shepherdess, but Flora

Peering in April's front.

Coriolanus, Act II. sc. 1, 1. 57, "One that converses with the forehead of the morning.”

8. Her pipe. The Quarto has "his pipe." Corrected by Housman in his Collection of English Sonnets (1835). Compare Twelfth Night, Act I. sc. 4, 1. 32:

Thy small pipe

Is as the maiden's organ.

1

CIII. Continues the same apology.

3. The argument, all bare, the theme of my verse merely as it is in itself.

6, 7. So The Tempest, Act IV. sc. 1, l. 10:

For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise
And make it halt behind her.

9, 10. So King Lear, Act 1. sc. 4, 1. 369 :-
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

And King John, Act IV. sc. 2, 11. 28, 29:

When workmen strive to do better than well,
They do confound their skill in covetousness.

CIV. Resumes the subject from which the poet started in Sonnet C. After absence and cessation from song, he resurveys his friend's face, and inquires whether Time has stolen away any of its beauty. Note the important reference to time-three years "since first I saw you fresh." 2. Eyed. So in The Two Noble Kinsmen, "I ear'd her language."

3. Three winters cold. Dyce reads, perhaps rightly, "winters' cold." The Quarto in 3, 4, has "Winters cold summers pride."