No edition of Shakspere's Sonnets,1 apart from his other writings, with fufficient explanatory notes, has hitherto appeared. Notes are an evil, but in the case of the Sonnets a neceffary evil, for many paffages are hard to understand. I have kept beside me for several years an interleaved copy of Dyce's text, in which I fet down from time to time anything that seemed to throw light on a difficult paffage. From these jottings, and from the Variorum Shakspeare of 1821,2 my annotations have been chiefly drawn. I have had before me in preparing this volume the
1 The poet's name is rightly written Shakespeare; rightly alfo Shakfpere. If I err in choofing the form Shakspere, I err with the owner of the name.
2 To which this general reference may fuffice. I often found it convenient to alter flightly the notes of the Variorum Shakspere, and I have not made it a rule to refer each note from that edition to its individual writer.