the message they themselves have heard. O terque quaterque beati who, reading by sunlight instead of rushlight, can so prolong the legend that, like the wedding guest, the world cannot choose but stop to listen! And yet, blessed as these are, it is not to be forgotten that that way also madness lies. Among the names mentioned in Mr. Wyman's diligent bibliography of one minor branch of Shakespearean controversy (aside from the alleged innocuous lunacy of all the protagonists participant therein) are those of two who, by means of the controversy itself, have been driven. mad, besides that of one suicide! It behooves everybody, then, to guard himself vigilantly against excessive and exclusive poring over any material wherein no bank or basis of solidified fact exists upon which to cast a kedge whereby to draw-when all bearings have been lost in foggy and bewildering space-back to moorings. One of the seven wise men of Greece bases his credentials entirely upon his saying, "Let there be too much of nothing." To his sentiment let us add the rider, "even of Shakespearean criticism."

But, heeded or not, of one thing we may be sure. We may open William Shakespeare's grave. We may find the inventory of all the world's goods of which he died possessed—the catalogue of his library, the disposition of his first-best bed. We may even dispose forever of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. But neither with any nor with all of these may we lay the question as to what these sonnets mean. That catena will go on forever! As to every other human tangle there

is somebody somewhere to be subpoenaed. We can dive to find the submerged Atlantis; trace the successors of the lost tribes; supply the matter of the stolen books of Livy; we can import experts from Siam to testify as to the color of white elephants; but the sonnets will yet and forever remain mere sibylline leaves. As to the thread that will tie these together, neither ghost nor Daniel shall ever rise to depose!

III

Whose Sonnets ?

HE process by which the name of Southampton has become associated with these sonnets is not a logical one,

nor yet a very ancient one. In fact, it dates only from the moment when to some commentator occurred the happy thought of transposing the initial letters of that nobleman's name. The formula then became

I. The only other metrical matter supposed to have been written by the supposed author of these sonnets was dedicated to Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton.

II. The initials of "Henry Wriothesly" are "H. W.," which, being transposed, become "W. H."

III. The sonnets are dedicated to "Mr. W. H.” Ergo, they are a record of Lord Southampton's love-affairs.

This is absolutely the entire case. Except that it has grown with years-having been everywhere welcomed with that love of the unknowable, filmy and mysterious for which the guileless commentator race is remarkable-the above statement covers it completely.

Mr. Wm. D. O'Connor, in his irresistible and piquant little brochure, "Hamlet's Note-Book," 1 indeed holds that the sonnets were dedicated by T. T. (THOMAS HARIOT) to their author, WALTER RALEIGH, otherwise the "W. H." wanted. But, while quite as likely as any other solution where solution is only - and from the nature of things can only be-guess-work, Mr. O'Connor's does not seem at all likely to become the popular guesswork. Mr. O'Connor stands alone in his hypothesis; whereas, since Mr. Armitage Brown made the other theory fashionable (especially since Mr. Gerald Massey's tremendous volume 2 "interpreted" them for us so circumstantially), there is no end of exposition for the Southamptonistic view.

But the truth appears to be, not only that Southampton cannot be traced historically into any neighborhood of the sonnets, but only by a forced inference from accidental premises into that of the very poems to which his name became fortuitously attached. In favor of this Southampton-Brown-Massey hypothesis (unless the word has a meaning peculiar and apart when used in a Shakespearean connection) there is no

1 Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886.

2"The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets Unfolded, with the Characters Identified," etc., etc. London: Long1866.

mans.

evidence whatever. And we may, I think, go further yet, and assert: first, that it is highly improbable, if not impossible, that William Shakespeare wrote those sonnets; and, second, that if the Massey-Brown translation of them were correct, this improbability or impossibility would be increased to an indefinite extent. Of course, these propositions, at a distance of three hundred years from their substantive, can not be proved like a demonstration in Euclid. But that they can be so nearly established from circumstantial and critical—that is to say, external and internal -evidence as to satisfy most reasonable people, I think may be shown.

In a paper in the "Galaxy Magazine" for January, 1877, the late Richard Grant White pointed out certain passages in "Macbeth," which, in his opinion, William Shakespeare never wrote. Says Mr. White: "The person who wrote these unShakespearean passages was probably Middleton. Shakespeare, writing the tragedy in haste for an occasion, received a little help, according to the fashion of the time, from another playwright; and the latter, having imitated the supernatural parts of this play in one of his own, the players or managers afterward introduced from that play songs by him- music and a song, 'Come Away, Come Away,' iii. 5; and music and a song, 'Black Spirits,' etc., iv. 1. This was done to please the inferior part of the audience."

Only those who have attentively followed the course of modern and external or circumstantial Shakespearean study, know how the proofs of Shakespeare's having very often been "in haste