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ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

[A Household Book of English Poetry. London, 1868.] "Shakespeare's Sonnets are so heavily laden with meaning, so double-shotted-if one may so speak—with thought, so penetrated and pervaded with a repressed passion, that, packed as all this is into narrowest limits, it sometimes imparts no little obscurity to them." Of Sonnet CXXIX., Archbishop Trench says: "The subject, the bitter delusion of all sinful pleasures, the reaction of a swift remorse which inevitably dogs them, Shakespeare must have most deeply felt, as he has expressed himself upon it most profoundly. I know no picture of this at all so terrible in its truth as in The Rape of Lucrece, the description of Tarquin after he has successfully wrought his deed of shame. But this sonnet on the same theme is worthy to stand by its side."

RICHARD SIMPSON.

[An Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets (pp. 82). London, 1868.]

The Sonnets are in their first intention philosophical, real persons and events may perhaps be used to illustrate the philosophy. Mr. W. H., "the begetter," was some young man of birth and wit, whose arguments and disputations provoked the poet to embody his conception of the "two loves of comfort and despair."

Love, as Plato says, is the passion for begetting or creating in the beautiful; beauty is both physical and metaphysical, and love is that of matter, or that of

spirit, or that of both matter and spirit. Love of the mind alone, intellectual love, is called, in the Italian sonnet philosophy, the good dæmon; love of the body alone, the evil dæmon. Shakspere deals with the first in Sonnets I.-CXXVI.; with the second in Sonnets CXXVII.— CLIV. The love depicted in the first series (friendship) is a force ever growing, triumphing over obstacles, and becoming ever purer and brighter; while the love sung in the second series (concupiscence) is bad in its origin, interrupted but not destroyed by fits of remorse, and growing worse and worse with time. The two series of sonnets are correlative, and both arranged on the same principle. According to the Platonic sonneteers, love in its ascent is transformed from imaginative love to ideal love. Each of these divisions separates into three subdivisions. In the first division-Imaginative lovelove is (i.) born of the eyes, Sonnets I.-XXV.; (ii.) nursed in the fancy through absence, Sonnets XXVI.-XXXVII.; (iii.) generalized in thought, Sonnets XXXVIII.-XLV. Then after the transition to ideal love, sentiment concurs with sense, the heart supersedes the eyes. In this second division— Ideal love (i.) the heart, more truly than the eye, furnishes the idea, Sonnets XLVI.-LXV.; (ii.) the idea is purified in the furnace of jealousy, Sonnets LXVI.-XCVI.; and (iii.) at last it is rendered universal and absolute in the reason, Sonnets XCVII.-CXXV. The second series (the Sonnets CXXVII.-CLIV., to the evil dæmon of love, the dark woman) go through a similar descending scale—Imaginative love— (i.) love through the eyes, Sonnets CXXVII.-CXXX.; (ii.) love transferred from the sight to the fancy, Sonnets CXXXI., CXXXII.; (iii.) the generalization of fancy, CXXXIII.,

CXXXIV. Ideal love (i.), the lover's heart identified with his mistress's will, passes a false judgment on her, Sonnets CXXXV.-CXXXVII. ; (ii.) this false judgment triumphs over falsehood, slander, the disillusion of the senses, and jealousy, Sonnets CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.; (iii.) love growing to despair and hate, with darkened and perverted conscience, Sonnets CXLIV., CLII.

The indications of time in the Sonnets are imaginary; the indications of jealousy (of the rival poet) are also imaginary. The Sonnets suggest questions about Shakspere's life, but do not answer them.

Mr. Simpson's little book is of much value in illustrating the Renaissance theories respecting love and beauty.

T. D. BUDD.

[Shakespeare's Sonnets, with commentaries. Philadelphia, J. Campbell, 1868. 172 pp. 4to.]

"The author maintains that the Sonnets are addressed to the soul materialized, and they are thus applicable to mankind generally, individually, and to the poet in particular." "1

H. VON FRIESEN.

[(i.) Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, iv. 1869. Ueber Shakespeare's Sonette, pp. 94-120. (ii.) Altengland und William Shakespeare. 1874. pp. 324348.]

The greater number of Sonnets I.-CXXVI. were addressed to a real person, probably the Earl of Southampton;

1 Catalogue of the Works of William Shakespeare, original and translated, Barton Collection, Boston Public Library. By James Mascarene Hubbard. Boston, 1878. p. 51.

some may have been written as love sonnets for him, some perhaps form fragments of a poetical correspondence. Everything in the Sonnets is not to be taken literally, but they are founded on fact. They do not form a continuous series; nor are we to look for a harmonious interdependence among poems written in various moods and on various occasions. The Sonnets to the dark woman are but half serious in their description of her person and character. The date of the Sonnets lies between 1590 and 1595.

CARL KARPF.

[Tò tí ĥv elva.... Die Idee Shakespeare's und deren Verwirklichung. Sonnettenerklärung und Analyse des Dramas Hamlet. Hamburg, 1869. pp. 166.]

Sonnets I.-CXXVI. do not relate to any other person than Shakspere; they treat of the genius of the poet, his creative activity, the Divine spirit in his spirit. Sonnets CXXVII.-CLIV. refer to the poet's art-practice and his Muse (the dark woman). The theory differs from Barnstorff's chiefly in the discovery of Aristotelian philosophy in Shakspere's Sonnets.

HENRY BROWN.

[The Sonnets of Shakespeare Solved, and the Mystery of his Friendship, Love, and Rivalry revealed. By Henry Brown. London, 1870.]

Mr. W. H., the young friend spoken of so much in the Sonnets, was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. The date, 1598-1604. The Sonnets are in proper order, and

The first

form two poems, I.-CXXVI., and CXXVII.-CLIV. poem consists of two parts, I.-LXXVII. and LXXVIII.-CXXVI., an interval of twelve months (1601–1602), during which Shakspere ceased to write sonnets separating the two parts. There are three currents of purpose in the sonnets:

First, they are satires on mistress-sonneting, and upon the sonneteers of Shakspere's day. Drayton, and afterwards Davies, were more directly the subjects of his sportive musings and feignings.

Second, they are autobiographical.

Third, the key which unlocks the heart of the mystery is the conceit of Shakspere's having married his Muse to Herbert by wedlock of verse and mind. They were written at Herbert's' request, who thus, wedded to Shakspere's Muse, was their "only begetter."

The rival poet who addressed dedications to Herbert, and of whose "great verse" Shakspere writes ironically, was John Davies, of Hereford. Shakspere alludes ironically to his fame for calligraph (LXXXIII., LXXXIV., LXXXV.).

The lady of the sonnets, beloved by Herbert, is unknown. Shakspere professes love to her only because she was beloved by his friend, who was one with himself. It was arranged between Herbert and Shakspere that the latter should picture Herbert's love of the dark lady as a satire upon mistress-sonneting, with pointed allusions to Lady Rich, whom Sidney - Pembroke's uncle-had, to the dishonour of the Pembroke family, celebrated in Astrophel and Stella.

Mr. Brown divides the first 126 Sonnets into 40 groups;

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