perusals of the Sonnets have well nigh convinced me, that most of them were composed in an assumed cha

thesis, that Mr. W. H. is the Earl of Pembroke; and he thinks that the Sonnets ought to be divided into Six Poems, each Poem consisting of a certain number of Stanzas (Sonnets):

"FIRST POEM.

marry.

Stanzas 1 to 26. To his friend, persuading him to

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 warning 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 been some time silent, and disclaiming the charge of inconstancy.

SIXTH POEM. Stanzas 127 to 152. To his mistress, on her infidelity." (The two sonnets which close the collection he, of course, considers as quite foreign to all that precedes.)

From this examination of the Sonnets Shakespeare unfortunately does not come out spotless; for it ascertains that he had a mistress in London, while he had a wife at Stratford. "May no persons," says Mr. Brown, "be inclined, on this account, to condemn him with a bitterness equal to their own virtue! For myself, I confess I have not the heart to blame him at all,-purely because he so keenly reproaches himself for his own sin and folly." p. 98. Let us hope that, if a copy of the Sonnets reached Stratford, it was not read to Mrs. Shakespeare by some busy acquaintance :-that she herself could read, is not clear.

A writer in The Westminster Review for July 1857 is also a convert to Boaden's notion that Mr. W. H. is the Earl of Pembroke. "Does not the dedication," he says, "bear on the face of it a wish to conceal the person indicated, whoever he was,—plain commoner or peer of the realm? Why give only the initials, unless concealment was aimed at? The publisher had no other method than the one he adopted. Mr. W. H. was vague enough for the world generally, but not too vague for those who knew the Earl. Had the dedication ran [run] 'To the Earl of P., the only begetter,' &c., there would have been no secrecy, and the publisher might as well have given the title at full, for the choice is so limited among noblemen whose initial letter is P., whereas the letters W. H. told just sufficient, and no more. The publisher was like the watchman in the Agamemnon :'—

Μαθοῦσιν αὐδῶ, κοὐ μαθοῦσι λήθομαι ;

and the reason is obvious: the sonnets related purely to private and

racter, on different subjects, and at different times, for the amusement, if not at the suggestion, of the author's

personal matters, and were, in the first place, never meant to meet any one's eye but to whom [sic] they were addressed." p. 123. All this is merely specious: the writer forgets that in those days noblemen were invariably treated by their inferiors with the most profound respect. The Earl would hardly have forgiven the strange familiarity of such a dedication, however "vague it might be for the world generally:" and if the Sonnets "were never meant to meet any one's eye but his own," he had good reason to be offended with the publisher.

1863. A privately-printed tract, entitled The Sonnets of William Shakspere: a critical Disquisition suggested by a recent Discovery (1862), is put into my hands, by the kindness of its author, Mr. Bolton Corney, just as I am revising the present Memoir for a new edition. The "recent discovery" is that of M. Philarète Chasles, Conservateur de la Bibliothèque Mazarine, and relates to the inscription which precedes our poet's Sonnets in the quarto of 1609, and which stands there (in capital letters) with the following arrangement and punctuation :

"To. the. onlie. begetter. of.

These . insving. sonnets.
Mr. W. H. all. happinesse .

And. that. eternitie.

Promised.

By.

Ovr . ever-living. poet .

Wisheth.

The well-wishing.

Adventvrer. in.
Setting.
Forth.
T. T."

Hitherto every reader of the above inscription has gathered from it that "T. T. dedicates the Sonnets to Mr. W. H. ;" but M. Chasles has arrived at a very different conclusion: he determines

"1. That we have here no dedication, properly so called, at all, but a kind of monumental inscription. 2. That this inscription has not one continuous sense, but is broken up into two distinct sentences. 3. That the former sentence contains the real inscription, which is addressed by and not to W. H. 4. That the person to whom the inscription is addressed is, for some reasons, not directly named, but described by what the learned call an Autonomasia (the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets). 5. That the latter sentence is only an appendage to the real inscription. 6. That the publisher, in the latter sentence, is allowed to

intimate associates (hence described by Meres as "his sugred Sonnets among his private friends"): and though

express his own good wishes, not for an eternity of fame to the begetter of the sonnets, which would be an impertinence on his part, but for the success of the undertaking in which he, the adventurer, has embarked his capital."

The theory of M. Chasles is adopted without hesitation by Mr. Corney; who accordingly divides the inscription into two distinct sentences, newly punctuated. The first sentence (the real inscription) is— "To the onlie begetter of these insving sonnets, Mr. W. H. all happinesse and that eternitie promised by ovr ever-living poet wisheth." (which we are required to construe thus-" To the onlie begetter of these insving sonnets, Mr. W. H. wisheth all happinesse and that eternitie promised by ovr ever-living poet.")

The second sentence (the subscription) is—

"The well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,

T. T."

In the later and more original portion of his pamphlet Mr. Corney endeavours to show that "the only begetter of these Sonnets," or, in other words, the patron who caused the Sonnets to be written, was Henry Wriothesly Earl of Southampton; that the Sonnets, as we now have them, were written soon after 1594, they being, in fact, "the future doings" which Shakespeare had promised Lord Southampton in the Dedication to Lucrece, first published during 1594; that the Sonnets are, with very slight exceptions, mere poetical exercises, and must not be ⚫ regarded as containing any materials for the biography of the poet; that the initials W. H. denote William Lord Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who inscribes the Sonnets to the Earl of Southampton; that T. T. is, of course, Thomas Thorpe, who does no more than express his wishes for the success of the publication; and that the Sonnets were published without the sanction of the author or of his patrons. "Nevertheless," continues Mr. Corney, "the volume of 1609 was no clandestine impression; nor was Thorpe an obscure man. . . . . The discovery of the channel through which the manuscript of the Sonnets reached the press is now hopeless. A mystery was no doubt designed, and a mystery it remains. We must have recourse to the balance of probabilities, and I submit a new theory. Be it assumed that the volume of Sonnets was a transcript made by order of William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke that it was then inscribed by him to the Earl of Southampton as a gift-book—and that it afterwards came into the possession of the publisher in a manner which required concealment. With this theory, which the inscription and the other peculiarities of the volume seem to justify, the perplexities of the question vanish! I anticipate

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
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I would not deny that one or two of them reflect his genuine feelings,21 I contend that allusions scattered through the whole series are not to be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of Shakespeare. In the general excellence of these Sonnets,-in their depth of thought, their tenderness, their picturesqueness, their grace, their harmony, we forget their occasional conceits and quibbles: 22 and, indeed, no English sonnets are worthy, in all respects, of being ranked with Shakespeare's, if we except the few by Milton,-so severe and so majestic. A poem of considerable beauty, called A

one objection. As copies of the Sonnets were in the hands of the private friends of our poet, a copy was surely in the hands of his patron! How then could W. H. offer the noble earl so superfluous a gift?—It might have been a substitute for a lost copy, or a revised text, or a specimen of penmanship. This was a caligraphic age, and specimens of the art were frequently offered as gift-books. Esther Inglis, for example, presented one of her specimens to the Earl of Essex, and another to Elizabeth. Other instances occur in the royal Progresses. W. H. himself, at a later period of his career, was a munificent donor of manuscripts -as Oxford witnesses. In short, the unceremonious title of the volume seems to have been copied from a private memorandum, and the arrangement of the inscription almost reveals the imitation of an ornamented manuscript."

But I am unable to persuade myself that the Inscription prefixed to the quarto of 1609 is any thing else than a dedication of the Sonnets to Mr. W. H. by Thomas Thorpe :-the idea of M. Chasles, that the inscription consists of two distinct sentences, appears to me a groundless fancy; and his notion that, in the first of those sentences, “Mr. W. H.” is the nominative to the verb "wisheth," offends me as a still wilder dream. I must confess, too, that Mr. Corney's attempt to account for the Sonnets having found their way to the press is very far from satisfying me,— ingenious as it doubtless is.

22 What Robert Gould, in The Play House, A Satire (Works, ii. 245, ed. 1709), says of our author's dramas, applies also to his poems; "And Shakespeare play'd with words, to please a quibbling age."

Lover's Complaint, and evidently written by our author in his earlier days, is appended to the original edition of his Sonnets.

Troilus and Cressida and Pericles were also printed in 1609. The title-pages of both attribute them wholly to Shakespeare; but that some parts of the former, and the greater portion of the latter play, are from another and a very inferior hand is unquestionable.—Of the dramas produced by Shakespeare subsequently to this date none were committed to the press during his life. "Timon of Athens," observes Mr. Collier,23" Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, all seem to belong to a late period. of our poet's theatrical career, and some of them were doubtless written between 1609 and the period, whatever that period might be, when he entirely relinquished dramatic composition."24

seen,

Of our author's brother Gilbert, who, as before

25 resided at Stratford, no particulars are known later than March 5th, 1609-10, when he signed his name as witness to a deed still extant.-The " Gilbertus Shackspeare adolescens," whose burial is entered in the Stratford register under Feb. 3d, 1611-12, was perhaps his son.

In a list of donations "colected towardes the charge

23 Life of Shakespeare, p. 200, sec. ed.

24 The draft of a warrant, dated Jan. 4th, 1609-10, empowering Daborne, Shakespeare, Field, and Kirkham to train up a company of juvenile performers, which was discovered by Mr. Collier among the Ellesmere Papers, is certainly a forgery. See it in Appendix, No. X. 25 See p. 77.