from prejudice, but because the tendency of Shakspere's mind could not have been to scepticism of good like Iago's. "Hamlet's" very doubts dissolve the base questionings of the Italian, for the greater not only includes, but rules the less. It was in this sense only that the epithet of "universal poet" is a just one, as comprehending the lesser spheres-to be universal in mind is the distinction of humanity, as it is of all else, to include everything beneath itself, within itself.

To turn to the sonnets themselves, Shakspere, no longer appears the arch magician and enchanter, like Prospero, passionless, directing powers of a loftier and more etherial nature to execute his behests. He has buried his staff certain fathoms in the earth and is human. They are full of the repinings of conscience, of the throes of ambition, of the whispering of hope, such as beset us all; of contrasts with himself, of his fortunes, and defects, with others, all combined semblably together by that tinge of melancholy so marked in Jaques and Hamlet. Mr. Knight thinks but few of the sonnets united, and treats them in the only part of his criticisms with which I disagree, as isolated jottings on different themes. I on the contrary coincide with Mr. J. Brown, that the first 120, are clearly and indissolubly, one poem. A poem in a stanza of which there were precedents in the poetry of the age. I do not insist on more than the first 126, because these alone are material to my argument. Mere's reference to Shakspere's sugared sonnets, 1599, may have referred to others, and the two surreptiously published in 1590, with the "Passionate Pilgrim," do not fall among the 126, though that would not materially affect their unity of construction, though it would impair the present belief in their dedication.

In the 17th stanza the poet, after praising the subject of his song, says―

"The age to come would say this poet lies-
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces;
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned like old men, of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
Or stretched metre of an antique song.

But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme."
In the last couplet of the 18th stanza—

"So long as men can breathe, as eye can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

and in the 19th

"Yet do thy worst old Time, despite thy wrong;
My love shall in my verse ever live young."
In the 55th, absorbing the whole stanza-
“Not marble, not the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry;

Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn,

The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So till the judgment, that yourself arise-
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes."

This may be fanciful, but it seems to me very like sincere belief. Not to multiply examples by further quotation, it appears to me that any person who can, after their perusal, declare that the poet had no legitimate or natural craving for immortality, must be a bold man. The occasional humility they disclose, the doubts, the quick sense, of wrong, of human injustice, and of the prevalence of evil, so far from weighing against this testimony, authenticate it. He has an undoubted faith in

the eternal remembrance of his muse. To presume that he believed his sonnets alone entitled to this distinction, is to presume such an absence of discrimination and judgment in the poet as would be well nigh impossible, if not absurd. It is scarcely less, to assume that they were simulated expressions, and that the circuit of his great soul was bounded in itself, and lacked, that last infirmity of noble minds, ambition.

On the evidence, then, of these verses from this sonnet poem, which by their undoubted authenticity, and because they do not fall under the restrictions proper to the plays, I believe I am justified in using, I assume that it is positively incorrect, and even ridiculous, to assert that Shakspere was not sensible to considerations of fame. There is no proof extant, but the negative one adverted to, that he was so far exceptional to our common nature as to lack that ordinary self-consciousness attendant on all genius, perhaps on all intellect whatever.

Next, the allusion in his dedication to the "Venus and Adonis" as "being the first heir of his invention," to which, however, very little attention need be attached. Mr. Knight and Mr. Brown have each explained this expression fully and reasonably. Shakspere may have written nothing completely or entirely for the stage before this poem, or he may have written it at a very early age, though he published it many years after, when he found a patron to whom to dedicate it. In either sense it would have been the first heir of his invention; and it is not necessary therefore to assume that he considered his dramas inferior to his poems, and in this deferred to the prejudice of his age in its preference of this kind of composition. The fact of his not having written an entire play at this date solves every difficulty. The third objection, that he allowed the issue of piratical and incorrect editions of his plays without protest, which I may couple,

for despatch sake, with the fourth: that he adopted the plays of other authors-old manuscripts from the property chests of the theatre-and accepted partnership in his labours with humbler men, early and late in life.

The reply to these charges is, that it is obviously improper for us to attach to productions of this kind the rule which we would apply to laboured literary effusions of the present day. The whole cycle of thought is changed. The nature of the audience, the conditions of publication, are widely different. The same laws do not hold with respect to artistic results produced under oppcsite, almost antagonistic circumstances. The fact that a result is produced, in the direct exercise of a profession for subsistence, or wholly for reputation's sake, materially alters the case. A difference also should be estimated between that which is produced, in the assurance of celebrity, and that which is wrought only in the hope or belief of fame, though that belief be of the strongest kind. To illustrate by a sister art, Mr. Chantrey, in his later years, it is asserted, on good authority, allowed works to issue from his atelier which he had worked on very slightly, or not at all: and this from two causes—one, that though there was great difference between his labours and that of others, that difference was not likely, in the general ignorance which prevailed in art, to be soon detected, or if detected, seriously regarded; the other, that general usage sanctioned it. The fraud was trivial, because the persons apprized of their loss could not estimate the extent or even nature of their wrong. The fraud was not considered criminal, no one being injured. by it. It ceased even to possess that element of deceit which would justify my use of the word, though in every other sense it is fraud to accept pecuniary consideration for that which is not what it professes to be. Fashion preferred what was not the labour of his

hands, but which was assigned to him, to that which could not be so bestowed. It has seemed to me that the dramatic poet was in the condition, in reference to the Elizabethan age, that a sculptor was to the Georgian era. He appealed directly and chiefly to a select few, whose judgments not infallible, were easily satisfied. Like an orator, an improvisatore, a sculptor, or a painter; and not like a modern literary man who knows that every word will be duly published and read, criticised, punished, or rewarded. In the exercise of his profession he wrote certain plays in haste for immediate exigencies without, I will not say a due, regard to the perfection of the result that he held in reference to other of his labours. That in fine, he wrote for a livelihood, as well as for fame. As Mr. Chantrey produced one or two of the noblest portraitstatues of modern times, and several master-pieces, marked by a careful and conscientiously achieved excellence, greater artist, Shakspere himself, laboured on some of his works to give them the perfection he desired, and to acccomodate their theme to the desires of his mind.

That he subsequently altered and amended many plays produced in haste, in youth, or for specific occasions and representation, is now proved. In this he might have presumed, being placed in similar circumstances to a painter or a sculptor, that his fame would be vindicated by his great works, and that the lesser ones would drop quietly into oblivion. To suppose this, is to presume no indifference in him to the nobler plays. The association of an artist with his labours was much less perfect once than it is now, and when great painters took pupils, and established schools, was not as fully understood. If it were customary for poets or novelists in this age to follow such a usage, we should hold, as a rule, much less scrupulous identity between an author and his works.