Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part CXXIII. No! Time, thou shalt not boaft that I do change Not wondering at the prefent nor the past; CXXIV. If my dear love were but the child of ftate, No, it was builded far from accident; It fuffers not in filing pomp, nor falls. 3 That poor retention could not so much bold,] That poor reten tion is the table-book given to him by his friend, incapable of retaining, or rather of containing, fo much as the tablet of the brain. MALONE. Under the blow of thralled difcontent, Which works on leafes of fhort-number'd hours, That it not grows with heat, nor drowns with fhowers. To this I witnefs call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have liv'd for crime. CXXV. Were it aught to me I bore the canopy, Which prove more fhort than wafte or ruining? But all alone flands hugely politick,] This line brings to mind. Dr. Akinfide's noble defcription of the Pantheon : "Mark how the dread Pantheon ftands, "How fimply, how feverely great!" STEEVENS. 5 That it not grows with beat, nor drowns with fhowers.] Though a building may be drown'd, i. e. deluged by rain, it can hardly grow under the influence of beat.-I would read-glows. STEEVENS, Though the poet had compared his affection to a building, he feems to have deserted that thought; and here, perhaps, meant to allude to the progrefs of vegetation, and the accidents that retard it. So, in the 15th Sonnet: "When I perceive that every thing that grows, "When I perceive that men as plants increase, the fools of time, MALONE. Which die for goodness, who bave liv'd for crime.] Per. haps this is a stroke at fome of Fox's Martyrs. STEEVENS. With my extern the outward honouring,] Thus, in Othello; "When my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart Have I not feen dwellers on form and favour Hence, thou fuborn'd informer! a true foul, CXXVI. O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power 8 Which is not mix'd wtth feconds,—] I am just informed by an old lady, that feconds is a provincial term for the Second kind of flour, which is collected after the smaller bran is fifted. That our author's oblation was pure, unmixed with baser matter, is all that he meant to fay. STEEVENS. O thou, my lovely boy,-] This Sonnet differs from all the others in the prefent collection, not being written in alternato rhimes. MALONE. And her quietus-] So, in Hamlet : 66 might his quietus make "With a bare bodkin " See note on that paffage, edit. 1778. Vol. X. p. 277. CXXVII. CXXVII. In the old age' black was not counted fair, But In the old age &c.] The reader will find almost all that is faid here on the subject of complexion, is repeated in Love's Labour's loft: 66 O, who can give an oath? where is a book? "That I may fwear beauty doth beauty lack, "If that fhe learn not of her eye to look? "No face is fair that is not full so black. "O, if in black my lady's brow be deck'd, And therefore is the born to make black fair." In the old age &c.] All the remaining Sonnets are addressed to a female. MALONE. A Sonnet was furely the contrivance of fome literary Procruftes. The fingle thought of which it is to confiit, however luxuriant, inuft be cramped within fourteen verses, or, however fcanty, must be fpun out into the fame number. On a chain of certain links the existence of this metrical whim depends; and its reception is fecure as foon as the admirers of it have counted their expected and ftatutable proportion of rhimes. The gra tification of head or heart, is no object of the writer's ambition. That a few of these trifles deserving a better character may be found, I fhall not venture to deny; for chance co-operating with art and genius, will occafionally produce wonders. Of the Sonnets before us, one hundred and twenty-fix are infcribed (as Mr. Malone obferves) to a friend: the remaining twenty-eight (a fmall proportion out of fo many) are devoted to a miftrefs. Yet if our author's Ferdinand and Romeo had not expreffed themfelves in terms more familiar to human understanding, I believe few readers would have rejoiced in the happiness of the one, or fympathized with the forrows of the other. Perhaps, indeed, quaintnefs, obfcurity, and tautology, are to be regarded as the conflituent parts of this exotick species of compofition. But, in whatever the excellence of it may confift, I profefs I am one of those who fhould have wifhed it to have expired in the country where it was born, had it not fortunately provoked the ridicule of Lope de Vega, which, being faintly imitated by Voiture, was at lat But now is black beauty's fucceffive heir, For laft transfufed into English by Mr. Roderick, and exhibited as follows, in the fecond volume of Dodfley's Collection. A SONNET. "Capricious Wray a fonnet needs must have; "Yet I fhall ne'er find rhymes enough by half, "Said I, and found myself i' the midft o' the fecond. "If twice four verfes were but fairly reckon❜d, "I should turn back on th' hardest part, and laugh. "Thus far, with good fuccefs, I think I've fcribled, "And of the twice feven lines have clean got o'er ten. "Courage! another'll finish the first triplet. "Thanks to thee, Mufe, my work begins to fhorten, "There's thirteen lines got through, driblet by driblet. "'Tis done. Count how you will, I warr'nt there's fourteen." Let those who might conceive this fonnet to be unpoetical, if compared with others by more eminent writers, perufe the next, being the eleventh in the collection of Milton. "A book was writ of late call'd Tetrachordon, "And woven close, both matter, form and ftyle; "Cries the ftall-reader, Blefs us! what a word on "Stand fpelling falfe, while one might walk to Mile- "Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Gallafp? "Those rugged names to our like mouths grow fleek, "That would have made Quintilian ftare and gasp. "Thy age, like ours, O foul of sir John Cheek, "Hated not learning worse than toad or afp, "When thou taught'ft Cambridge, and king Edward Greek," The |