pp. 115, 116 (note). Are we to understand the line as meaning 'Which this pencil of Time or this my pupil pen'; and is Time here conceived as a limner who has painted the youth so fair, but whose work cannot last for future generations? In xIx. 'Devouring Time' is tranfformed into a scribe; may not 'tyrant Time' be transformed here into a painter? In xx. it is Nature who paints the face of the beautiful youth. This masterpiece of twenty years can endure neither as painted by Time's pencil, nor as reprefented by Shakspere's unskilful, pupil pen. Is the 'painted counterfeit' of 1. 8 Shakspere's portrayal in his verfe? Cf. LIII., 1. 5.

11. Fair, beauty.

XVII. In xvi. Shakspere has said that his 'pupil pen' cannot make his friend live to future ages. He now carries on this thought; his verse, although not showing half his friend's excellencies, will not be believed in times to come.

12. Keats prefixed this line as motto to his Endymion; ftretched metre' means overstrained poetry.

13, 14. If a child were alive his beauty would verify the defcriptions in Shakfpere's verfe, and fo the friend would poffefs a twofold life, in his child and in his poet's rhyme.

XVIII. Shakfpere takes heart, expects immortality for his verse, and fo immortality for his friend as furviving in it.

3. May, a fummer month; May in Shakspere's time ran on to within a few days of our mid June. Compare Cymbeline, A&t 1. fc. 3, 1. 36:

And like the tyrannous breathing of the north
Shakes all our buds from growing.

5. Eye of heaven, fo King Richard II., A& III. fc. 2, 1. 37, the fearching eye of heaven'.

10. That fair thou oweft, that beauty thou poffeffeft.

11, 12. This anticipation of immortality for their verse was a commonplace with the Sonnet-writers of the time of Elizabeth. See Spenser: Amoretti, Sonnets 27, 69, 75 ; Drayton: Idea, Sonnets 6, 44; Daniel: Delia, Sonnet 39.

XIX. Shakspere, confident of the immortality of his friend in verfe, defies Time.

1. Devouring. S. Walker conjectures destroying. 5. Fleets. The Quarto has fleet'ft; I follow Dyce, believing that Shakspere cared more for his rhyme than his grammar. Compare confounds, Sonnet VIII. 1. 7.

XX. His friend is 'beauty's pattern', XIX. 12; as fuch he owns the attributes of male and female beauty.

1. A woman's face, but not, as women's faces are, painted by art.

2. Mafler-mifrefs of my paffion, who fways my love with united charms of man and woman. Mr. H. C. Hart suggests to me that passion may be used in the old senfe of love-poem, frequent in Watson.

5. Lefs falfe in rolling.

Compare Spenser,

Faerie Queene, B. III. c. i. s. 41 :-

Her wanton eyes (ill fignes of womanhed)
Did roll too lightly.

8. In the Quarto, 'A man in hew all Hews in his controwling'. The italics and capital letter fuggefted to Tyrwhitt that more is meant here than meets the eye, that the Sonnets may have been addreffed to fome one named Hews or Hughes, and that Mr. W. H. may be Mr. William Hughes. But the following words have also capital letters and are in italics :-Rose 1. 2; Audit IV. 12; Statues LV. 5; Intrim LVI. 9; Alien LXXVIII. 3; Satire c. II; Autumne civ. 5; Abisme cx11. 9; Alcumie cxiv. 4; Syren CxIx. I; Heriticke CXXIV. 9; Informer cxxv. 13; Audite CXXVI. II; Quietus CXXVI. 12. The word 'hue' was used by Elizabethan writers not only in the sense of complexion, but also in that of Shape, form. In Faerie Queene, B. v. c. ix. s. 17, 18, Talus tries to feize Malengin, who transforms himself into a fox, a bush, a bird, a stone, and then a hedgehog :-

Then gan it [the hedgehog] run away incontinent
Being returned to his former hew.

The meaning of lines 7, 8 in this Sonnet then may be 'A man in form and appearance, having the mastery over all forms in that of his, which fteals, etc.' With the phrafe controlling hues' compare Sonnet CVI. 8:

Even fuch a beauty as you master now.

11. Defeated, defrauded, disappointed; fo A MidSummer Night's Dream, A& iv. fc. 1, ll. 153-155:

They would have folen away; they would, Demetrius, Thereby to have defeated you and me,

You of your wife and me of my confent.

XXI. The first line of xx. fuggefts this fonnet. The face of Shakspere's friend is painted by Nature alone, and so too there is no false painting, no poetical hyperbole in the description. As containing examples of such extravagant comparisons, amorous fancies, far-fetched conceits of Sonnet-writers as Shakspere here speaks of, Mr. Main (Treasury of English Sonnets, p. 283) cites Spenfer's Amoretti, 9 and 64; Daniel's Delia, 19; Barnes's Parthenophil and Parthenophe, Sonnet XLVIII.; compare also Griffin's Fidella, Sonnet XXXIX.; and Conftable's Diana (1594), the sixth Decade, Sonnet 1.

5. Making a couplement of proud compare, joining in proud comparisons.

8. Rondure, circle, as in King John, А& 11. fc. 1, 1. 259, 'the roundure of your old-faced walls'. Staunton proposes 'vault' in place of 'air' in this line.

12. Gold candles, compare These blessed candles of the night'. The Merchant of Venice, A& v. 1. 220; alfo Romeo and Juliet, А& ш. fc. 5, l. 9; Macbeth, Act II. fc. 1, 1. 5.

13. That like of hearsay well. To like of' meaning to like' is frequent in Shakspere. Schmidt's explanation is that fall in love with what has been

praised by others'; but does it not rather mean, 'that like to be buzzed about by talk'?

14. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, A& iv. sc. 3, II. 239, 240:-

Fie, painted rhetoric! O, fhe needs it not:

To things of fale a feller's praise belongs.

XXII. The praise of his friend's beauty fuggefts by contraft Shakspere's own face marred by time. He comforts himself by claiming his friend's beauty as his own. Lines 11-14 give the first hint of poffible wrong committed by the youth against friendship.

4. Expiate, bring to an end. So King Richard III., А& ш. fc. 3, l. 23:

Make hafle: the hour of death is expiate (changed in the fecond Folio to now expired'). In Chapman's Byron's Confpiracie, an old courtier fays he is

A poor and expiate humour of the court.

Steevens conjectures in this sonnet expirate, which R. Grant White introduces into the text.

10. As I, etc., as I will be wary of myself for thy fake, not my own.

XXIII. The fincerity and filent love of his verses; returning to the thought of XXI.

1, 2. So Coriolanus, A& v. fc. 3, ll. 40-42:

Like a dull actor now,

I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full difgrace.