refer to a woman beloved by the writer; the second is that remarkable poem beginning

Two loves I have of comfort and despair.

For ten years we hear no more of the Sonnets. On May 20, 1609, 'a book called Shakespeares Sonnettes' was entered on the Stationers' Regifter by Thomas Thorpe, and in the fame year the Quarto edition appeared: Shakespeares Sonnets. Never before Imprinted. At London by G. Eld for T. T. [Thomas Thorpe] and to be folde by William Apfley. 1609'.1 Edward Alleyn notes in that year that he bought a copy for fivepence. The Sonnets had not the popularity of Shakspere's other poems. No fecond edition was published until 1640 (printed 1639), when they formed part of 'Poems: written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent', a volume containing many pieces not by Shakspere.

Here

the Sonnets are printed with small regard to their order in the edition of 1609, in groups, with the poems of The Paffionate Pilgrim inter

1 Some copies instead of 'William Apfley' have 'Iohn Wright dwelling at Christ Churchgate'.

spersed, each group bearing a fanciful title. The bookfeller Benfon introduced the Poems with an addrefs to The Reader, in which he afferts that they are of the fame purity the Authour then living avouched', and that the reader will find them 'feren, clear and elegantly plain'. The titles given to the groups carry the fuggestion that the Sonnets, with few exceptions, were addreffed by a lover to his lady.

This edition of 1640 was reprinted several times in the eighteenth century; the text of the quarto 1609, by Lintott 1711, in Steevens's 'Twenty Plays', 1766, and by Malone. Gildon and Sewell, editors of the first half of the century, having the 1640 text before them, affumed that the Sonnets were addreffed to Shakspere's mistress. It remained for the editors and critics of the fecond half of the century to discover that the greater number were written for a young man. To a careful reader of the original it needed small research to ascertain that a friend is addreffed in the first hundred and twenty-five fonnets, to which the poem in twelve lines,

numbered cxxvI., is an Envoy; while the Sonnets CXXVII.-CLIV. either address a mistress, or have reference to her and to the poet's passion for her.

The ftudent of Shakspere is drawn to the Sonnets not alone by their ardour and depth of feeling, their fertility and condensation of thought, their exquifite felicities of phrase, and their frequent beauty of rhythmical movement, but in a peculiar degree by the poffibility that here, if nowhere else, the greatest of English poets may -as Wordfworth puts it-have unlocked his heart'.

It were strange if his filence, deep as 1 Poets differ in the interpretation of the Sonnets as widely as critics:

"With this fame key Shakespeare unlocked his heart' once more!

Did Shakespeare? If fo the less Shakespeare he!" So, Mr. Browning; to whom replies Mr. Swinburne, No whit the less like Shakespeare, but undoubtedly the lefs like Browning.' Some of Shelley's feeling with reference to the Sonnets may be gueffed from certain lines to be found among the 'Studies for Epipfychidion and Cancelled Paffages' (Poetical Works: ed. Forman, vol. ii. pp. 392, 393), to which my attention has been called by Mr. E. W. Goffe:

If any fhould be curious to difcover

Whether to you I am a friend or lover,

that of the fecrets of Nature, never once knew interruption. The moment, however, we regard the Sonnets as autobiographical, we find ourfelves in the prefence of doubts and difficulties, exaggerated, it is true, by many writers, yet certainly real.

If we must escape from them, the simplest mode is to affume that the Sonnets are the free outcome of a poetic imagination' (Delius). It is an ingenious fuggeftion of Delius that certain groups may be offfets from other poetical works of Shakspere; those urging a beautiful youth to perpetuate his beauty in offfpring may be a derivative from Venus & Adonis; thofe declaring love for a dark complexioned woman may re

Let them read Shakspeare's sonnets, taking thence
A whetstone for their dull intelligence

That tears and will not cut, or let them guess
How Diotima, the wife prophetess,

Inftructed the inftructor, and why he
Rebuked the infant fpirit of melody

On Agathon's fweet lips, which as he spoke
Was as the lovely star when morn has broke
The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn,
Half-hidden and yet beautiful.

handle the theme fet forth in Berowne's paffion for the dark Rofaline of Love's Labour's Loft; those which tell of a mistress refigned to a friend may be a non-dramatic treatment of the theme of love and friendship presented in the later fcenes of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Perhaps a few fonnets, as cx. CXI., refer to circumstances of Shakspere's life (Dyce); the main body of these poems may ftill be regarded as mere exercises of the fancy.

Such an explanation of the Sonnets has the merit of fimplicity; it unties no knots but cuts all at a blow; if the collection confifts of difconnected exercises of the fancy, we need not try to reconcile discrepancies, nor shape a story, nor afcertain a chronology, nor identify perfons. And what indeed was a sonneteer's paffion but a painted fire? What was the form of verse but an exotic curiously trained and tended, in which an artificial fentiment imported from Italy gave perfume and colour to the flower?

And yet, in this as in other forms, the poetry of the time, which poffeffes an enduring vitality,