LXI. The jealous feeling of LVII. reappears in

this fonnet.

7. Idle hours. So in the dedication of Venus & Adonis, 'I . . . vowe to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver

labour'.

11. Defeat, deftroy. Othello, A& rv. fc. 2, l. 160, 'His unkindness may defeat my life'.

LXII. Perhaps the thought of jealousy in LXI. fuggefts this. 'How felf-loving to suppose my friend could be jealous of such an one as I—beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity! My apology for fuppofing that others could make love to me is that my friend's beauty is mine by right of friendship.' 7. And for myself, etc. Sidney Walker conjectures 'so define'; Lettsom 'And so myself'. Does 'for myself' mean 'for my own satisfaction '? 8. As I, [define] in such way that I. 10. Beated and chopp'd. Beated was perhaps a mifprint for 'bated. 'Bated is properly overthrown; laid low; abated; from abattre, Fr. . . . Beated, however, the regular participle from the verb to beat, may be right. . . . In King Henry v. we find cafted, and in Macbeth, thrufled '.—MALONE.

a

Steevens conjectured blafted; Collier, beaten. Compare The Merchant of Venice, Act II. sc. 3, 1. 32, 'These griefs and loffes have fo bated me'. Chopp'd. Dyce reads chapp'd. 13. 'Tis thee, myself, etc.

'Tis thee my alter ego,

my second self, that I praife as if myself.

LXIII. Obviously in close continuation of LXII.

5. Steepy night. So King Richard III., A& IV. fc. 4, 1. 16; dimm'd your infant morn to aged night'. The epithet steepy' is explained by Sonnet VII. 5, 6. Youth and age are on the steep ascent, and the steep decline of heaven.

9. For fuch a time. In anticipation of fuch a time.

Fortify, ere& defenfive works.

Compare the wreckful fiege of battering days', Sonnet LXV. 6.

LXIV. In LXIII. 12, the thought of the loss of his 'lover's life' occurs; this fonnet (see l. 12) carries on the train of reflection there started. 'Time's fell hand', l. I repeats 'Time's injurious hand' of LXIII. 2. 5, 9. Compare 2 King Henry iv., А& ш. fc. I, 11. 45-53:

O God! that one might read the book of fate
And fee the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent,

Weary of folid firmness, melt itself

Into the fea! and, other times, to fee

The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips.

The king goes on to meditate on the 'interchange of state' in his time in England.

13. Which cannot choose; this thought, which cannot choose, etc., is as a death.

LXV. In clofe connexion with LXIV. The firft line enumerates the conquefts of time recorded in LXIV. 1-8.

3. This rage.

Malone proposed ‘his rage'.

4. Adion.

Is this word used here in a legal

fense? fuggefted perhaps by hold a plea' of 1. 3.

6. Wreckful fiege.

See Sonnet LXIII. 9, and note.

10. Time's chest. Theobald proposed 'Time's queft'. Malone shows that the image of a jewel in its cheft or casket is a favourite one with Shakspere. See Sonnet XLVIII., King Richard 11., A& 1. sc. 1, 1. 180; King John, Act v. fc. 1, l. 40.

12. Of beauty. The Quarto has or, a manifeft

error.

LXVI. From the thought of his friend's death Shakfpere turns to think of his own, and of the ills of life from which death would deliver him.

1. All these. following lines.

The evils enumerated in the

4. Unhappily, evilly. See in Schmidt's Shakefpeare-Lexicon the words, unhappied, unhappily, unhappiness, and unhappy.

9. Art made tongue-tied by authority; art is commonly used by Shakspere for letters, learning, science. Can this line refer to the censorship of the stage?

11. Simplicity, i.e. in the fenfe of folly.

LXVII. In close connexion with LXVI. Why fhould my friend continue to live in this evil world? 4. Lace, embellish, as in Macbeth, А& 11. fc. 3, 1. 118.

6. Dead feeing. Why should painting steal the lifeless appearance of beauty from his living hue? Capell and Farmer conjecture feeming.

12. Proud of many lives, etc. Nature, while she boafts of many beautiful perfons, really has no treasure of beauty except his.

13. Stores. See note on Sonnet XI. 9.

LXVIII. Carries on the thought of LXVII. 13, 14; compare the last two lines of both fonnets.

1. Map of days out-worn, compare Lucrece, 1. 1350, 'this pattern of the worn-out age'. 'Map', a picture or outline. King Richard II., A& v. sc. 1,

1. 12, 'Thou map of honour'.

3. Fair, beauty.

Born. The Quarto prints borne, and so Malone. But the Quarto borne probably is our born, the word 'baftard' suggesting the idea of birth.

5, 6. Malone notes that Shakspere has inveighed against the practice of wearing false hair in The Merchant of Venice, А& ш. sc. 2, 11. 92-96, and again in Timon of Athens, A& iv. fc. 3, 1. 144. 10. Without all ornament, all, i.e. any, as Sonnet LXXIV. 2, 'without all bail'.

Itfelf. Malone proposed himself.

LXIX. From the thought of his friend's external beauty Shakspere turns to think of the beauty of his mind, and the popular report against it.

3. Due. The Quarto has end, which, Malone obferves, arose from the printer tranfpofing the letters of due, and inverting the u; but more probably the printer's eye caught the end of 'mend' 1. 2, and his fingers repeated it in the next line. 5. Thy outward.

The Quarto has Their out

ward; Malone read Thine, but thy is sometimes found before a vowel, and the mistake their' for 'thy' is of frequent occurrence in the Quarto.

14. The foil is this. The Quarto has folye. Malone and Dyce read folve. Caldecott conjectures foil. The Cambridge editors write: As the verb "to foil" is not uncommon in Old English, meaning "to folve", as for example: "This question could not one of them all foile" (Udal's Erasmus, Luke, fol. 134 b), fo the substantive "foil" may be used in the fenfe of "folution". The play upon words thus suggested is in the author's manner'.

LXX. Continues the fubject of the laft Sonnet, and defends his friend from the fuspicion and slander

of the time.

3. Sufped, fufpicion, as in l. 13, and Venus & Adonis, 1. 1010.

6. Thy worth. The Quarto has their. Being woo'd of time.

'Time is used by our early writers as equivalent to the modern expreffion, the times'.-Hunter, New Illuftrations of ShakeSpeare, vol. ii. p. 240. Hunter quotes King Richard III., A& iv. fc. 4, l. 106, where, however, the proposed meaning feems doubtful. Steevens quotes from Ben Jonson, Every Man out of His Humour, Prologue, 'Oh, how I hate the monftrousness of time,' i.e. the times. Being woo'd of time' feems, then, to mean being folicited or tempted by the present times. Malone conjectured and withdrew 'being void of crime'. C. [probably Capell] fuggefted 'being wood of time,' i.e. flander being wood or frantic. Delius