does not weaken my forrows, for my night-thoughts come to make my forrows as strong as before, nay ftronger. C. [Capell] fuggefted to Malone draw my forrows stronger . . . length seem longer'.

XXIX. These are the night-thoughts referred to in the last line of xxvIII.; hence a special appropriateness in the image of the lark rising at break of day.

8. With what I most enjoy contented leaft. The preceding line makes it not improbable that Shakfpere is here fpeaking of his own poems. 12. Sings hymns at heaven's gate. Cymbeline, А& 11. fc. 3, ll. 21, 22:—

Compare

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate fings,

And Phabus 'gins arise.

Lyly: Campafpe, Aa v. fc. 1

How at heaven's gates fhe [the lark] claps her wings, The morne not waking till fhee fings.

XXX. Sonnet XXIX. was occupied with thoughts of present wants and troubles; xxx. tells of thoughts of past griefs and loffes.

1, 2. Compare Othello, А& 1. fc. 3, ll. 138-141, ' apprehenfions . . . in feffion fit'.

6. Dateless, endless, as in Sonnet CLIII., lefs, lively heat, ftill to endure'.

a date

8. Moan the expenfe. Schmidt explains expense as lofs, but does not 'moan the expenfe' mean pay my account of moans for? The words are explained by what follows:

Tell o'er

The fad account of fore-bemoaned moan
Which I now pay as if not paid before.

Malone has a long note idly attempting to show that fight is used for sigh.

10. Tell o'er, count over.

XXXI. Continues the subject of xxx.-Shakspere's friend compenfates all loffes in the past.

5. Obfequious, funereal, as in Hamlet, A&t 1. fc. 2, l. 92, ' To do obfequious forrow'.

6. Dear religious love. In A Lover's Complaint, the beautiful youth pleads to his love that all earlier hearts which had paid homage to him now yield themselves through him to her service (a thought fimilar to that of this fonnet); one of these fair admirers was a nun, a fifter fanctified, but (1. 250):

Religious love put out Religion's eye.

8. In thee lie.

The Quarto reads 'in there lie'. 10. Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone. Compare from the fame paffage of A Lover's Complaint (1. 218):—

Lo, all these trophies of affections hot

must your oblations be.

XXXII. From the thought of dead friends of whom he is the furvivor, Shakfpere paffes to the thought of his own death, and his friend as the furvivor. This fonnet reads like an Envoy.

4. Lover, commonly used by Elizabethan writers generally for one who loves another, without reference to the special passion of love between man and woman. In Coriolanus, A& v. sc. 2, 1. 13, Menenius fays:

I tell thee, fellow,

Thy general is my lover.

'Ben Jonson concludes one of his letters to Dr. Donne, by telling him that he is his " ever true lover"; and Drayton, in a letter to Mr. Drummond of Hawthornden, informs him that Mr. Joseph Davies is in love with him'.—MALONE.

5, 6. May we infer from these lines (and 10) that Shakspere had a sense of the wonderful progress of poetry in the time of Elizabeth ?

7. Referve, preferve; fo Pericles, A& iv. fc. I, 1. 40, Referve that excellent complexion'.

XXXIII. A new group feems to begin with this fonnet. It introduces the wrongs done to Shakspere by his friend.

4. Compare King John, A& 111. fc. 1, ll. 77-80:

The glorious fun Stays in his courfe and plays the alchemift, etc.

6. Rack, a mass of vapoury clouds.

'The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above (which we call the rack),' Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, S 115, p. 32, ed. 1658 (quoted by Dyce, Glossary under rack). Compare with 5, 6, 1 King Henry IV., A& 1. sc. 2, ll. 221-227:

Herein will I imitate the fun,
Who doth permit the bafe contagious clouds
To fmother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly miss
Of vapours that did seem to firangle him.
8. To weft, Steevens proposes to rest.

12. The region cloud, compare Hamlet, A& 11. fc. 2, 1. 606, 'the region kites'. Region 'originally a divifion of the fky marked out by the Roman augurs. In later times the atmosphere was divided into three regions, upper, middle, and lower. By Shakespeare the word is used to denote the air generally'.-Clarendon Prefs Hamlet.

14. Stain, used in the tranfitive and intranfitive fenfes for dim. Watfon, Tears of Fancie, Sonnet LV., fays of the fun and the moon 'his beauty flains her brightness'. Faithleffness in friendship is spoken of in the fame way as a flain in Sonnet CIX. II, 12.

XXXIV. Carries on the idea and metaphor of xxxIII. 4. Rotten Smoke; we find smoke meaning vapour in 1 King Henry vг., A& 11. fc. 2, 1. 27: compare Coriolanus, A& ш. fc. 3, 1. 121, 'reek o' the rotten fens'.

12. Cross, the Quarto reads losse. The fortyfecond fonnet confirms the emendation, and explains what this cross and this lofs were :

Lofing her [his mistress], my friend hath found that Both find each other, and I lose both twain, [lojs; And both for my fake lay on me this cross.

See also Sonnet cxxxш. addressed to his lady, in which Shakspere speaks of himself as 'croffed' by her robbery of his friend's heart; and Sonnet cxXXIV. 1. 13, ‘Him have I lost'.

XXXV. The 'tears' of xxxiv. fuggeft the opening. Moved to pity, Shakspere will find guilt in himself rather than in his friend.

5, 6. And even I, etc., and even I am faulty in this, that I find precedents for your misdeed by comparisons with roses, fountains, fun, and moon.

7. Salving thy amifs, Shakfpere's friend offers a falve, xxxiv.; see also cxx. 12; here Shakspere in his turn tries to 'falve' his friend's wrong-doing. Capell proposes corrupt in falving'.

8. The word thy in this line is twice printed their in the Quarto. Steevens explains the line thus: :'Making the excufe more than proportioned to the offence'. Stanton proposes more than thy fins bear', i.e. I bear more fins than thine.

9. In fenfe, Malone propofed incenfe. Senfe here means reason, judgment, difcretion. If we receive the prefent text, 'thy adverfe party' (1. 10) muft mean Shakspere. But may we read :—

For to thy fenfual fault I bring in fenfe, [i.e. judgment, reafon]

Thy adverfe party, as thy advocate.

Senfe-against which he has offended-brought in as his advocate?

14. Sweet thief, etc., compare Sonnet XL. :

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief.