word Touîv which signifies to make or feign. Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For the fable and fiction are as it were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem.

A poem, as I have told you, is the work of the poet; the end and fruit of his labour and study. Poesy is his skill or craft of making; the very fiction itself, the reason or form of the work. And these three voices differ as the thing done, the doing, and the doer; the thing feigned, the feigning, and the feigner; so the poem, the poesy, and the poet. Now the poesy [or feigning] is the habit or the art.'

Although Shakespeare 'feigned,' or 'made,' or 'imitated,' in his plays in 'expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony,' he feigned and formed a fiction more strictly, more completely, in the Sonnets, where he pretends to be addressing a friend and a mistress of flesh and blood; and it is to Shakespeare's making, feigning, imitating, fabling there, that Jonson refers when he says,

'thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.'

There is not a word that follows the above, until he leaves the subject after 'Sweet Swan of Avon!' that does not markedly support-indeed demand-this construction:

'Yet must I not give Nature all thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter Nature be,1

This line is elliptical; the word "there" being understood after "though."

::

His Art doth give the fashion and that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same,

And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
For a good Poet's made, as well as born.

And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnéd, and true-filéd lines;

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.

Sweet Swan of Avon!'

Let us examine the foregoing lines in detail. The words,

'and that he

Who casts to write a living line,'

refer to the stated purpose of the writer of the Sonnetsthe conclusion of the opening sequence being that he will cause his subject to live ever in the verse he is about to write:

SON. 17. 'But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.'

And this purpose is afterwards emphasized repeatedly:

SON. 18.

'Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

SON. 19. Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.'

D

SON. 54.

SON. 55.

'And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
'Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of Princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.'
SON. 60. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.'

SON. 63.

'His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.'

SON. 65, 'O fearful meditation! where, alack,

SON, 81.

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.'
'Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live-such virtue hath my pen

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.'

SON. 107. 'Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
When he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes :
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.'

The next words:

must sweat,

and strike the second heat

Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same,

And himself with it, that he thinks to frame,'

are reflected throughout the Sonnets-the poet appearing to rack himself in his efforts to do justice to his subject. His striking the second heat' is shown in the quotations just given; and the following show how he' sweats, turns the same, and himself with it':

SON. 23.

SON. 59.

'As an imperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put beside his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might.

'If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composéd wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.

O, sure I am, the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.'

SON, 80. O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof, spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!'
'What's in the brain that ink may character,

SON. 108.

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.'

The next words,

'Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,'

note the fact that the Sonnets were written for the express purpose of gaining that laurel of laurels the love of posterity, by showing his heart given to the love of Beauty.

The next words,

'For a good poet's made as well as born,'

make the same contrast as was made by the words,

'Yet must I not give Nature all: thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.'

For whereas Shakespeare, in coining his heart in the Sonnets, has to rack himself, he wrote his plays with the greatest facility-as Jonson knew. As a dramatist, as a mirrorer of Nature, he was 'born.'

The next words,

'Look how the father's face

Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnéd, and true-filéd lines,'

are a notice of the purpose of the opening sequence of the Sonnets are a notice that Shakespeare, in proving to the 'lovely youth' that it was his duty to get a son that his beauty might live again in him, was expressing what he felt to be his own duty as regarded his mind and heart: Jonson stating that just as a father's face lives in his issue, Shakespeare's mind and manners shine in his wellturned Sonnets. The expressions 'well-turned' and true-filed' are evidently both intended to apply to the same lines; but-much of the plays being prose-they