Yet sometime, "Tarquin," was pronounced plain, Then son and father weep with equal strife The one doth call her his, the other his, He weeps for her, for she was only mine, "O," quoth Lucretius, "I did give that life 66 My daughter!" and "my wife!" with clamours fill'd Brutus, who pluck'd the knife from Lucrece' side, Began to clothe his wit in state and pride, Burying in Lucrece' wound his folly's show. As silly-jeering idiots are with kings, For sportive words and uttering foolish things. But now he throws that shallow habit by "Thou wronged lord of Rome," quoth he, “arise; 66 Now set thy long-experienc'd wit to school. Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds? Which she too early and too late hath spill'd!] By "too late" is meant too recently. The same conceit is found in "Henry VI." Part III. Act II. Sc. 5,— "O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon, Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?] The repetition is so inelegant that we cannot but believe Shakespeare wrote, "Do wounds salve wounds," &c. or, "Do wounds heal wounds," &c. VOL. VI. FF Is it revenge to give thyself a blow For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds? To slay herself, that should have slain her foe. "Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart That they will suffer these abominations, Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgrac❜d, "Now, by the Capitol that we adore, And by this chaste blood so unjustly stain'd, By heaven's fair sun that breeds the fat earth's store, This said, he struck his hand upon his breast, When they had sworn to this advised doom, allow:] Approve. b - plausibly- Meaning perhaps, as Steevens conjectured, with expressions of applause. From Plausibilis. So in the "Argument "of the poem: "-wherewith the people were so moved that with one consent and a general acclamation, the Tarquins were all exiled," &c. SONNETS. INTRODUCTION. THE earliest known edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets is the quarto published in 1609, which commonly bears the imprint, "At London. By G. Eld for T. T. and are to be solde by William Aspley. 1609;" though, in the title-pages of some copies for William Aspley," we have, "John Wright, dwelling at Christ Church Gate. 1609." The "T. T." for whom this edition was printed is proved by an entry on the Stationers' Registers to have been Thomas Thorpe : "20. May. 1609. A booke called Shakespeare's Sonnets." Thorpe has prefixed to his quarto a dedication silly in form and very puzzling in expression, yet of so much interest in connexion with the party to whom Shakespeare is supposed to have addressed these effusions, that we are tempted to reprint it precisely as it stands in the original :— TO. THE ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF. THESE. INSVING. SONNETS. MR. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE. AND. THAT. ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY. OUR. EVER-LIVING. POET. WISHETH. THE WELL-WISHING. ADVENTVRER. IN SETTING. T. T This enigmatical preamble has provoked much controversy. The first inquiry has been directed to what the writer meant by "The only begetter." By some critics the phrase has been held to signify, the sole object or inspirer of the Sonnets; while others conceive that "begetter' imports no more than the getter or obtainer of them in manuscript from the hands of the poet." The next and more important question which this dedication has raised is, who the " only begetter" typified by the contraction, "Mr. W. H." really was. Dr. Farmer supposed him to be "The begetter is merely the person who gets or procures a thing, with the common prefix be added to it. So in Decker's Satiromastic, I have some cousin-germans at court shall beget you the reversion of the master of the king's revels.'"-BOSWELL. William Hart, Shakespeare's nephew; but as he was not born until 1600, and Meres speaks of the Sonnets in 1598,* this supposition may be at once dismissed. Tyrwhitt conjectured from a line in the twentieth Sonnet "A man in hew all Hews in his controwling" that the unknown might be a William Hughes. This hypothesis is ingenious, but, unfortunately, if admitted, it involves the perplexing task of discovering who was William Hughes. Chalmers has laboured hard to prove that the whole of the Sonnets were addressed to Queen Elizabeth! Drake was convinced that the initials "W. H." should be transposed, and that they represent Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton. Another and more plausible theory, first broached, we believe, by Mr. Boaden,† is that "Mr. W. H." is no other than William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, one of "the most Noble and Incomparable Paire of Brethren," to whom the first folio was inscribed. This opinion has been taken up with great fervour by Mr. Armitage Brown, and is very ably sustained by him. But here again we are met by a troublesome objec tion. Thorpe's edition, as we have seen, was not published before 1609, while William Herbert succeeded to the title of Pembroke in 1601. at all probable that, at a period when the distinctions of rank were punctiliously maintained, any bookseller would have presumed to address a nobleman of such eminence as "Mr. W. H."? Let the reader determine. Is it Attempts have been made to illustrate Shakespeare's character, as well as his life, from his Sonnets; § but nothing satisfactory in either respect has been elicited. The truth we apprehend to be, that although these poems are written in the poet's own name, and are, apparently, grounded on actual incidents in his career, they are, for the most part, if not wholly, poetical fictions. We have the authority of Meres for the fact that these productions were scattered among the poet's "private friends;" and when we find some flatly contradicting others, it is reasonable to conclude that they were written on different occasions, and with no more adaptation of fact to fancy than is usually found in imaginary positions. || com. "As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare: witnes his ens and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c."-Palisas Tamia, 1598. "On the Sonnets of Shakespeare, identifying the Person to whom they were ad dressed, and elucidating several points in the Poet's History. By James Boaden." 1838. Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, &c. 1838. One of the most elaborate and ingenious of these is contained in the work of Mr. Armitage Brown, already mentioned. Mr. Brown is of a different opinion. He conceives the Sonnets to contain "a clear allusion to events in Shakespeare's life, or rather a history of them, with his thoughts and feelings as comments on them." He maintains, indeed, that, correctly speaking, they are not Sonnets, but Stanzas, of which 152 out of the 154 are divisible into six separate poems, according to the following arrangement: FIRST POEM, Stanzas 1 to 26.-To his friend, persuading him to marry. SECOND POEM, Stanzas 27 to 55.-To his friend, who had robbed the poet of his mistress, forgiving him. THIRD POEM, Stanzas 56 to 77.—To his friend, complaining of his coldness, and wariing him of life's decay. FOURTH POEM, Stanzas 78 to 101.-To his friend, complaining that he prefers another poet's praises, and reproving him for faults that may injure his character. FIFTH POEM, Stanzas 102 to 126.-To his friend, excusing himself for having bun some time silent, and disclaiming the charge of inconstancy. SIXTH POEM, Stanzas 127 to 152-To his mistress, on her infidelity. SONNETS. I. FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,a To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. II. When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, This were to be new-made when thou art old, From fairest creatures we desire increase,-] As Boswell remarked, the first nineteen of these sonnets are only an expansion of the stanza in "Venus and Adonis," beginning, "Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, By law of nature thou art bound to breed,' b mak'st waste in niggarding.] Compare "Romeo and Juliet," Act I. Sc. 1,— |