No longer mourn for me when I am dead From this vile world, with vilest worms to Nay, if you read this line, remember not If thinking on me then should make you O, if (I say) you look upon this verse, And mock you with me after I am gone. O, lest the world should task you to recite And so should you, worth.-72. to love things nothing That time of year thou mayst in me behold But be contented: when that fell arrest The earth can have but earth, which is his due; The worth of that, is that which it contains, Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; Thirteen of these stanzas, the 62nd to the 74th, follow in their original order. The first of the fifteen, the 22nd Sonnet, stands quite alone, although its idea is continued in the 62nd. The last of the series, the 81st, not only stands alone, but actually cuts off the undoubted connexion between the 80th and the 82nd Sonnets. The 71st to the 74th Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds Sonnets seem bursting from a heart oppressed sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day Which by and by black night doth take away, with a sense of its own unworthiness, and surrendered to some overwhelming misery. There is a line in the 74th which points at suicide. We cling to the belief that the sentiments here expressed are essentially dramatic. In the 32nd Sonnet, where we recognise the man Shakspere speaking in his own modest and cheerful spirit, death is to come across his "well-contented day." The opinion which we have endeavoured To love that well which thou must leave to sustain of the probable admixture of the ere long.-73. artificial and the real in the Sonnets, arising from their supposed original fragmentary | in a poem, or poems, of fifty stanzas, written state, necessarily leads to the belief that upon a plan by which it is obviously presome are accurate illustrations of the poet's sented as a work of fiction, in which the poet situation and feelings. It is collected from displays his art in a style accordant with the these Sonnets, for example, that his pro- existing fashion and the example of other fession as a player was disagreeable to him; poets. The theme is the personal beauty of and this complaint is found amongst those a wonderful youth, and the strong affection portions which we have separated from the of a poet. Beauty is to be perpetuated series of verses which appear to us to be by marriage, and to be immortalized in the written in an artificial character; it might poet's verses. Beauty is gradually to fade be addressed to any one of his family, or before Time, but is to be still immortalized. some honoured friend, such as Lord South- Beauty is to yield to Death, as the poet himampton:self yields, but its memory is to endure in "eternal lines." Separating from this somewhat monotonous theme those portions of a hundred and fifty-four Sonnets which do not appear essentially to belong to it, we separate, as we believe, more or less, what has a personal interest in these compositions from what is meant to be dramatic-the real from the fictitious. Our theory, we well know, is liable to many objections; but it is based upon the unquestionable fact that these one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets cannot be received as a continuous poem upon any other principle than that the author had written them continuously. If there are some parts which are acknowledged interpolations, may there not be other parts that are open to the same belief? If there are parts entirely different in their tone from the bulk of these "O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, Thence comes it that my name receives a And almost thence my nature is subdued But if from his professional occupation his nature was felt by him to be subdued to what it worked in,-if thence his name re ceived a brand,—if vulgar scandal sometimes assailed him, he had high thoughts to console him, such as were never before imparted to mortal. This was probably written in some period of dejection, when his heart was ill at ease, and he looked upon the world with a slight tinge of indifference, if not of dislike. Every man of high genius has felt something of this. It was reserved for the highest to throw it off, "like dewdrops from the lion's mane." But the profound self-abasement and despondency of the 74th Sonnet, exquisite as the diction is, appear to us unreal, as a representation of the mental state of William Shakspere; written, as it most probably was, at a period of his life when he revels and luxuriates (in the comedies which belong to the close of the sixteenth century) in the spirit of enjoyment, gushing from a heart full of love for his species, at peace with itself and with all the world. We have thus, if we have not been led away by imaginary associations, connected the verses addressed to "the world's fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring," Sonnets, may we not consider that one por tion was meant to be artificial and another real,-that the poet sometimes spoke in an assumed character, sometimes in a natural one? This theory we know could not hold if the poet had himself arranged the sequence of these verses; but as it is manifest that two stanzas have been introduced from a poem printed ten years earlier, that others are acknowledged to be out of order, and others positively dragged in without the slightest connexion,-may we not carry the separation still further, and, believing that the "begetter”—the getter-up-of these Sonnets had levied contributions upon all Shakspere's "private friends,”—assume that he was indifferent to any arrangement which might make each portion of the poem tell its own history? There is one decided advantage in the separation which we have proposed—the K K The poet says, idea with which the series opens, and which | dulgence of his passions. "chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, There are three points connected with the opinion we have formed with regard to the entire series of Sonnets, which we must briefly notice before we leave the subject. 66 The first is, the inconsistencies which obviously present themselves in adopting the theory that the series of Sonnets—or at least the first hundred and twenty-six Sonnets are addressed to one person. It is not our intention to discuss the question to whom they were addressed, which question depends upon the adoption of the theory that they are addressed to one. Drake's opinion that they were addressed to Lord Southampton rests upon the belief that Shakspere looked up to some friend to whom they point, "with reverence and homage." The later theory, that William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was their object, is supported by the facts, derived from Clarendon and others, that he was a man of noble and gallant character, though always of a licentious life." W. H. is held to be William Herbert; and Mr. Hallam says, "Proofs of the low moral character of 'W. H.' are continual." We venture to think that the term "continual" is somewhat loosely applied. The one "sensual fault," of which the poet complains, is obscurely hinted at in the 33rd, 34th, 35th, 40th, 41st, and 42nd stanzas; and the general faults of his friend's character, from which the injury proceeded, are summed up in the 94th, 95th, and 96th. We shall search in vain throughout the hundred and fifty-four Sonnets for any similar indications of the "low moral character of the person addressed. But the supposed continuity of the poem implies arrangement, and therefore consistency, in the author. In the 41st stanza the one friend, according to this theory, is reproached for the treachery which is involved in the in Again, in the 95th stanza we have these lines: : "How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame, Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!" And, "O, what a mansion have those vices got, Which for their habitation chose out thee!" Here are not only secret "vices," but "shame,” "Tongues" make defacing the character. "lascivious comments on the story of his days. Is it to this person that in the 69th Sonnet we have these lines addressed ?— "Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend." Is it to this person that the 70th Sonnet is devoted, in which are these remarkable words?— "Thou present'st a pure unstained prime, Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days, Either not assail'd, or victor being charg'd." These lines, be it remembered, occur between the first reproof for licentiousness in the 41st stanza, and the repetition of the blame in the 95th. Surely, if the poem is to be taken as continuous, and as addressed to one person, such contradictions would make us believe that the whole is based on unreality, and that the poet was satisfied to utter the wildest inconsistencies, merely to produce verses of exquisite beauty, but of no-meaning." true The second point to which we would briefly request attention is the supposed date of the series of Sonnets. The date must, it is evident, be settled in some measure according to the presiding belief in the person to whom they are held to be addressed. Mr. Hallam, who thinks the hypothesis of William Herbert sufficiently proved to demand our assent, says, "Pembroke succeeded to his father in 1601: I incline to think that the Sonnets were written about that time, some probably earlier, some later." Pembroke was born in 1580. Now, in the earlier Sonnets, according to the hypothesis, he might be called "beauteous and lovely youth," or "sweet boy;" but Southampton could not be so addressed unless the earlier Sonnets were written even before the dedication of the Venus and Adonis' to him, in 1593, for Southampton was born in 1573. Further, it is said that, whilst the person addressed was one who stood "on the top of happy hours,” the poet who addressed him was "Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity," as in the 62nd Sonnet; "With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn," as in the 63rd; and approaching the termination of his career, as so exquisitely described in the 73rd: "That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds In me thou seest the twilight of such day To love that well which thou must leave ere Most distinctly in this particular portion of the Sonnets the extreme youth of the person addressed is steadily kept in view. But some are written earlier, some later; time is going on. In the 104th Sonnet the poet says that three winters, three springs, and three summers have passed "Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green." But, carrying on the principle of continuity, we find that in the 138th Sonnet the poet's "days are past the best;" and he adds "And wherefore say not I that I am old?” That Sonnet, we have here to repeat, was published in 'The Passionate Pilgrim' when the poet was thirty-five. But let us endeavour to find one more gleam of light amidst this obscurity. In one of the Sonnets in which the poet upbraids his friend with his licentiousness, the 94th, we have these lines:"The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." The thought is here quite perfect, and the image of the last line is continued from the 11th and 12th, ending in a natural climax. But we have precisely the same line as the last in a play of Shakspere's age—one, indeed, which has been attributed to himself, 'The Reign of King Edward III.' Let us transcribe the passage where it occurs, in the scene where Warwick exhorts his daughter to resist the dangerous addresses of the King: "That sin doth ten times aggravate itself Is sin and subornation: Deck an ape Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds; We doubt, exceedingly, whether the author of the 94th Sonnet, where the image of the festering lilies is a portion of the thought which has preceded it, would have transplanted it from the play, where it stands alone as an apophthegm. It seems more probable that the author of the play would have borrowed a line from one of the "sugared sonnets amongst private friends." The extreme fastidiousness required in the composition of the Sonnet, according to the poetical notions of that day, would not have warranted the adaptation of a line from a drama “sundry times played about the city of London," as the title-page tells us this was; but the play, without any injury to its poetical reputation (to which, indeed, in the matter of plays, little respect was paid), might take a line from the Sonnet. Our reasoning may be defective, but our impression of the matter is very strong. The play was published in 1596, after being "sundry times played" in different theatres. William Herbert must have begun his career of licentiousness unusually early, and have had time to make a friend and abuse his confidence before he was fifteen -if the line is original in the Sonnet. The last point to which we shall very briefly draw the reader's attention, is the doubt which has been stated whether the hundred and fifty-four Sonnets published in 1609 were the same as Meres mentioned, in 1598, as amongst the compositions of Shakspere, and familiar to his "private friends." Mr. Hallam thinks they are not the same, "both on account of the date, and from the peculiarly personal allusions they contain." One of the strongest of the personal allusions is contained in the 144th, originally printed in 'The Passionate Pilgrim.' Where could the printer of 'The Passionate Pilgrim' have obtained that Sonnet except from some one of Shakspere's "private friends?" If he so obtained it, why might not the collector of the volume of 1609 have obtained others of a similar character from a similar source? Would such productions have been circulated at all if they had been held to contain "peculiarly personal allusions?” If these are not the Sonnets which circulated amongst Shakspere's "private friends," where are those Sonnets? Would Meres have spoken of them as calling to mind the sweetness of Ovid if only those published in 'The Passionate Pilgrim' had existed, many of which were "Verses to Music," afterwards printed as such? Why should those Sonnets only have been printed which contain, or are supposed to contain, "peculiar personal allusions?" The title-page of the collection of 1609 is 'Shake-speare's Sonnets.' We can only reconcile these matters with our belief that in 1609 were printed, without the cognizance of the author, all the Sonnets which could be found attributed to Shakspere; that some of these formed a group of continuous poems; that some were detached; that no exact order could be preserved; and that accident has arranged them in the form in which they first were handed down to us. If we have succeeded in producing satisfactory evidence that many of the Sonnets are not presented in a natural and proper order in the original edition,—if we have shown that there is occasionally not only a digression from the prevailing train of thought, by the introduction of an isolated Sonnet amongst a group, but a jarring and unmeaning interruption to that train of thought,- -we have established a case that the original arrangement is no part of the poet's work, because that arrangement violates the principles of art, which Shakspere clings to with such marvellous judgment in all his other productions. The inference, therefore, is that the author of the Sonnets did not sanction their publication-certainly did not superintend it. This, we think, may be proved by another course of argument. The edition of 1609, although, taken as a whole, not very inaccurate, is full of those typographical errors which invariably occur when a manuscript is put into the hands of a printer to deal with it as he pleases, without reference to the author, or to any competent editor, upon any doubtful points. Malone, in a note upon the 77th Sonnet, very truly says, "This, their, and thy are so often confounded in these Sonnets, that it is only by attending to the context that we can discover which was the author's word." He is speaking of the original edition. It is evident, therefore, that in the progress of the book through the press there was no one capable of deciphering the obscurity of the manuscript by a regard to the context. The manuscript, in all probability, was made up of a copy of copies; so that the printer even was not responsible for those errors which so clearly show the absence of a presiding mind in the conduct of the printing. Malone has suggested that these constantly recurring mistakes in the use of this, their, thy, and thine, probably originated in the words being |