If Shakspere

unlocked his heart' in these

Sonnets, what do we learn from them of that great heart? I cannot answer otherwise than in words of my own formerly written. 'In the Sonnets we recognise three things: that Shakspere was capable of measureless personal devotion; that he was tenderly sensitive, sensitive above all to every diminution or alteration of that love his heart fo eagerly craved; and that, when wronged, although he fuffered anguish, he tranfcended his private injury, and learned to forgive. . . . The errors of his heart originated in his fenfitivenefs, in his imagination (not at first inured to the hardness of fidelity to the fact), in his quick consciousness of existence, and in the felf-abandoning devotion of his heart. There are some noble lines by Chapman in which he pictures to himself the life of great energy, enthusiasms and paffions, which for ever stands upon the edge of utmoft danger, and yet for ever remains in abfolute fecurity :

Give me a Spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves to have his fails fill'd with a lufty wind

Even till his fail-yards tremble, his mafts crack,
And his rapt fhip runs on her fide fo low
That he drinks water, and her keel ploughs air;
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is,-there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should floop to any other law,

Such a master-fpirit, preffing forward under ftrained canvas was Shakfpere. If the ship dipped and drank water, she rose again; and at length we behold her within view of her haven failing under a large, calm wind, not without tokens of stress of weather, but if battered, yet unbroken by the waves'. The last plays of Shakspere, The Tempest, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Henry VIII., illuminate the Sonnets and justify the moral genius of their writer.

I thank Profeffor Atkinson for help given in reading the proof-fheets of my Introduction; Mr. W. J. Craig, for illuftrations of obfolete words; Mr. Furnivall, for hints given from time to time in our difcuffion by letter of the grouping of the Sonnets. Mr. Edmund Goffe and

Dr. Grofart, for the loan of valuable books; Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, for a note on the date of Lintott's reprint; Mr. Hart, for several ingenious fuggeftions; Dr. Ingleby, for fome guidance in the matter of Shakspere portraiture; and Mr. L. C. Purfer, for translations of the Greek epigrams connected with Sonnets CLIII., CLIV.

From fairest creatures we defire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'ft thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyfelf thy foe, to thy fweet felf too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

II.

When forty winters shall befiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, fo gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held :
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lufty days,
To fay, within thine own deep-funken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,

If thou couldft answer This fair child of mine

Shall fum my count and make my old excufe,'
Proving his beauty by fucceffion thine!

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And fee thy blood warm when thou feel'ft it cold.