WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

1564-1616.

THE sonnets of Shakespeare are a puzzle to his commentators, who cannot agree upon the person to whom they were addressed. They-the sonnets, not the commentators -were published for the first time in 1609, and dedicated by the publisher, T. T. (Thomas Thorpe), to Mr. W. H., whom he declared to be their "onlie begetter." Who Mr. W. H. was, has never been settled. Dr. Farmer supposed the initials were those of William Harte, the poet's nephew; but as that young gentleman was only nine years old when the sonnets were published, his suggestion refuted itself. Tyrwhitt pointed out a line in the twentieth sonnet,

"A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,"

and because the word hues was printed Hews in the old edition, inferred that they stood for William Hews, or Hughes. Dr. Drake was for reversing them, when they would stand for those of Henry Wriothesley, the patron and friend of Shakespeare, to whom "VENUS AND ADONIS," and "THE RAPE OF LUCRECE" were dedicated. Mr. Boaden, and Keats' friend, Mr. Charles Armitage Brown, were for letting them remain, and interpreting them as the initials of William Herbert, Sydney's nephew, and the son of the Earl of Pembroke. Whether this young nobleman, who, by the by, was Earl of Pembroke himself, when the sonnets were published, his father dying in 1601, could with propriety be styled Mr. William Herbert, is still a subject of dispute. Not being a Shakespearean commentator, I shall not favour the reader with any theory of my own, but leaving him to take his choice of the persons suggested, pass on to what more immediately concerns me, which is, whether the enigmatical Mr. W. H. was what Thorpe declared him to be, the "onlie begetter" of the sonnets. To this there can be but one answer: He was not. That the majority of the sonnets were addressed to a man, is certain; but that a considerable number of them, about one third, I should say, were addressed to a woman, is equally certain. The difficulty hitherto has been the way in which they were originally printed. Instead of being divided into poems of a certain length, they were huddled together carelessly, no order being preserved, except in the first twenty or thirty. Whether the blame rests with Thorpe, or the person who

furnished him the copy, can not of course be ascertained, but probably with the latter. There is reason to think that Shakespeare did not assist in their publication, but that they were given to the world without his concurrence, as was the case with all his plays printed in his lifetime. Had he published the sonnets himself, he would have printed them, I am convinced, in a different order to that in which they now stand, and not as sonnets proper, but rather as poems in the sonnet stanza, like Spenser's "VISIONS OF PETRARCH," " VISIONS OF BELLAY," etc. He would have classified then, as Mr. Brown and others have since done. Whether his classification would have corresponded with theirs, is another matter. Mr. Brown divides them into six consecutive poems, or parts. With this division I agree in the main, although it seems to me in some respects imperfect. I would shift some of the stanzas into different poems, and would re-arrange the order of the whole. Especially I would add to the last division, which Mr. Brown christens, "To his mistress, on her infidelity,” because it is the only writing of Shakespeare's extant, which seems to be autobiographical. Whether it is so, or not, we shall probably never know. For my own part I love to think it is. It is a pleasure to me when I read the sonnets, to think that I am obtaining a glimpse of Shakespeare an insight, however slight, into the emotions of that great Spirit. Ile permits me to read a page in the volume of his heart-a page of all others the most interesting the story of his love.

"And who was she the lady of his love?"

Not Mistress Shakespeare, of Stratford, née Anne Hathaway, though he doubtless loved her as his wife, and the mother of his children, but some light dame who consoled him for her absence when he was living in London. Of this Siren, who had black eyes and black hair, we know nothing, except that Shakespeare loved her, and that she was false to him. When this happened we can only conjecture: I imagine it to have been between 1593 and 1598; certainly not much later than the last year, when Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets" were well enough known to be mentioned in print. (MERE'S WIT'S TREASURY.) My reasons for this supposition are various. First, the form of the verse in which Shakespeare celebrated this mysterious episode in his life-the Sonnet. It was not an early form with him, as far as we can ascertain, for his two earliest poems, "VENUS AND ADONIS," published in 1593, and "THE RAPE OF LUCRECE," published in 1594, are in measures the music of which is utterly at variance with that of the Sonnet. If he had tried the Sonnet before the six and seven line stanzas of these poems, it would have been difficult for him to have avoided its cadences while writing them. He was a master of rhythm, it is true; but it is equally true that at certain periods of his poetical life, he wrote in certain styles, and in no other. He began, like all young poets, with some peculiar rhythm or tune in his head; but as his mind enlarged with practice and knowledge, he learned new ones, and shaped his creations according to their laws. My second reason for thinking the sonnets were written after "VENUS AND ADONIS," and "THE RAPE OF LUCRECE," is, that they are in all respects superior to those poems. It might not be safe to apply this test to the works of some of the modern poets, for their latest works are frequently their worst; but it is safe to apply it to Shakespeare, for his