theme, or carrying on a love-story to its iffue, profperous or the reverse. Sometimes advance is made through the need of discovering new points of view, and the movement, always delayed, is rather in a circuit than straight forward. In Spenfer's Amoretti we read the progrefs of love from humility through hope to conqueft. In Aftrophel & Stella, we read the story of passion struggling with untoward fate, yet at last mastered by the resolve to do high deeds : Sweet! for a while give refpite to my heart Which pants as though it ftill would leap to thee; In Parthenophil & Parthenophe the story is of a new love fupplanting an old, of hot and cold fevers, of despair, and, as last effort of the desperate lover, of an imagined attempt to subdue the affections of his cruel lady by magic art. But in reading Sidney, Spenfer, Barnes, and ftill more Watson, Conftable, Drayton, and others, although a large element of the art-poetry of the Renascence is common to them and Shakspere, the ftudent of Shakspere's fonnets does not feel at home. It is when we open Daniel's 'Delia' that we recognise close kinship. the mafter proves himself of tardier imagination and lefs ardent temper. Diction, imagery, rhymes, and, in fonnets of like form, versification distinctly resemble those of Shakspere Malone was surely right when he recognised in Daniel the master of Shakspere as a writer of sonnets—a mafter quickly excelled by his pupil. And it is in Daniel that we find fonnet ftarting from fonnet almost in Shakspere's manner, only that Daniel often links poem with poem in more formal wife, the last or the penultimate line of one poem supplying the first line of that which immediately follows. The manner is the same, though Let us attempt to trace briefly the sequence of incidents and feelings in the Sonnets I.-CXXVI. A young man, beautiful, brilliant, and accomplished, is the heir of a great houfe; he is exposed to temptations of youth, and wealth, and rank. Poffibly his mother defires to fee him married; certainly it is the defire of his d friend. 'I fhould be glad if you were caught', writes Languet to Philip Sidney, 'that so you might give to your country fons like yourself'. 'If you marry a wife, and if you beget children like yourself, you will be doing better fervice to your country than if you were to cut the throats of a thousand Spaniards and Frenchmen'. "Sir", faid Crofus to Cambyfes', Languet writes to Sidney, now aged twenty-four, "I confider your father must be held your better, because he was the father of an admirable prince, whereas you have as yet no fon like yourself”. It is in the manner of Sidney's own Cecropia that Shakfpere urges marriage upon his friend.1 Nature when you were first born, vowed you a woman, and as fhe made you child of a mother, so to do your best to be mother of a child' (Sonnet XIII. 14); 'fhe gave you beauty to move love; she gave you wit to know love; she gave you an excellent body to reward love; 1 Arcadia, Lib. III. Noticed by Mr. Maffey in his 'Shakespeare's Sonnets and his Private Friends', pp. 36 37. which kind of liberal rewarding is crowned with an unspeakable felicity. For this as it bindeth ... Have the receiver, so it makes happy the bestower; this doth not impoverish, but enrich the giver (VI. 6). O the comfort of comforts, to see your children grow up, in whom you are as it were eternifed! you ever seen a pure Rosewater kept in a crystal glass, how fine it looks, how fweet it smells, while that beautiful glass imprisons it! Break the prison and let the water take his own course, doth it not embrace duft, and lose all his former sweetness and fairnefs; truly so are we, if we have not the stay, rather than the reftraint of Cryftalline marriage (v.); . . . And is a solitary life as good as this? then, can one string make as good music as a confort (vIII.)'. § In like manner Shakspere urges the youth to perpetuate his beauty in offfpring (I-XVII.). But if Will refuses, then his poet will make war against Time and Decay, and confer immortality 1 In what follows, to avoid the confufion of he, and him, I call Shakspere's friend, as he is called in cxxxv., Will. upon his beloved one by Verse (xv.-xIx.). Will is the pattern and exemplar of human beauty (XIX.), so uniting in himself the perfections of man and woman (xx.); this is no extravagant praise but fimple truth (xxI.) And such a being has exchanged love with Shakfpere (XXII.), who must needs be filent with excefs of paffion (XXIII.), cherishing in his heart the image of his friend's beauty (XXIV.), but holding still more Idear the love from which no unkind fortune can ever separate him (xxv.). Here affairs of his own compel Shakspere to a journey which removes him from Will (XXVI., XXVII.). Sleepless at night, and toiling by day, he thinks of the absent one (XXVII. XXVIII.); grieving for his own poor eftate (XXIX.), and the death of friends, but finding in the one beloved amends for all (XXX., XXXI.); and fo Shakfpere commends to his friend his poor verses as a token of affection which may survive if he himself should die (XXXII.). At this point the mood changes-in his abfence his friend has been falfe to friendship (xxxIII.); now, indeed, Will would let the |