of love (CIX.), he will never wander again (cx.); and his past faults were partly caused by his temptations as a player (CXI.); he cares for no blame and no praise now except thofe of his friend (CXII.). Once more he is abfent from his friend (Fourth Absence?), but full of loving thought of him (CXIII. CXIV.). Love has grown

and will grow yet more (cxv.).

Love is uncon-
Shakfpere confeffes

querable by Time (cxvI.).
again his wanderings from his friend; they
were tefts of Will's conftancy (CXVII.); and
they quickened his own appetite for genuine
love (cxvm.). Ruined love rebuilt is stronger
than at firft (cxIx.); there were wrongs on both
fides and must now be mutual forgiveness (CXX.).
Shakfpere is not to be judged by the report of
malicious cenfors (CXXI.); he has given away
his friend's present of a table-book, because he
needed no remembrancer (CXXII.); records and
registers of time are false; only a lover's memory
is to be wholly trufted, recognising old things
in what seem new (CXXIII.); Shakspere's love
is not based on felf-intereft, and therefore is

2

uninfluenced by fortune (CXXIV.); nor is it founded on external beauty of form or face, but is fimple love for love's fake (cxxv.). Will is ftill young and fair, yet he should remember that the end must come at laft (cxxvI.).

Thus the series of poems addreffed to his friend clofes gravely with thoughts of love and death. The Sonnets may be divided at pleasure into many smaller groups, but I find it poffible to go on without interruption from I. to XXXII.; from XXXIII. to XLII.; from XLIII. to LXXIV. ; from LXXV. to xcvi.; from XCVII. to XCIX.; from c. to cXXVI.1

I do not here attempt to trace a continuous fequence in the Sonnets addreffed to the darkhaired woman CXXVII.-CLIV.; I doubt whether

fuch continuous fequence is to be found in them; but in the Notes fome points of connexion between fonnet and fonnet are pointed

out.

1 Perhaps there is a break at LVIII. The most careful ftudies of the fequence of the Sonnets are Mr. Furnivall's in his preface to the Leopold Shakspere, and Mr. Spalding's in The Gentleman's Magazine, March 1878.

1

L

If Shakfpere unlocked his heart' in thefe 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 suffered anguish, he transcended his private injury, and learned to forgive. . . . The errors of his heart originated in his fenfitiveness, in his imagination (not at first inured to the hardness of fidelity to the fa&), in his quick consciousness of existence, and in the self-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 passions, which for ever stands upon the edge of utmost danger, and yet for ever remains in absolute security :

...

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

Even till his fail-yards tremble, his mafts crack,
And his rapt ship 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 stoop to any other law.

Such a mafter-spirit, preffing forward under ftrained canvas was Shakspere. 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 laft plays of Shakspere, The Tempeft, 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-sheets of my Introduction; Mr. W. J. Craig, for illuftrations of obsolete 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 some guidance in the matter of Shakspere portraiture; and Mr. L. C. Purser, for translations of the Greek epigrams connected with Sonnets CLIII., CLIV.