So Daniel: Delia, Sonnet xxx. (on Delia's eyes) :— Stars are they fure, whose motions rule defires ; 6. Pointing. Write 'Pointing, i.e. appointing; or at least fo understand the word. Tarquin & Lucrece, ftanza CXXVI. :— "Whoever plots the fin, thou [Opportunity] point' the feafon". W. S. WALKER. 8. Oft predia, frequent prognostication. Sewell (ed. 2) reads 'By ought predict'. 10-14. I introduce the inverted commas before truth after convert, before Thy and after date. 10. Read fuch art, gather by reading fuch truths of science as the following. 12. Store, fee note on XI. 9. Convert, rhyming here with 'art'; so in Daniel, Delia, Sonnet XI. ' convert' rhymes with 'heart'. 9, 10. Compare Love's Labour's Loft, A& iv. fc. 3, 11. 350-353:— From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: XV. Introduces Verse as an antagonist of Time. The ftars in XIV. determining weather, plagues, dearths, and fortune of princes reappear in xv. 4, commenting in fecret influence on the shows of this world. 3. Stage, Malone reads ftate. But the word prefent like how is theatrical, and confirms the text of the Quarto. Compare Antony & Cleopatra, А& ш. sc. 13, II. 29-31 :— Yes, like enough, high-battled Cæfar will Unflate his happiness, and be staged to the show, 9. Conceit, conception, imagination. 11. Debateth with Decay, hoids a discussion with Decay; or combats along with Decay. Debate is ufed frequently by Shakspere in each of these senses. XVI. The gardening image 'engraft' in xv. 14 fuggefts the thought of maiden gardens', and 'living flowers' of this fonnet. 7. Bear your living flowers; bear you' Lintott, Gildon, Malone, and others; but 'your living flowers' stands over against 'your painted counterfeit '. 8. Counterfeit, portrait. 9. Lines of life, i.e. children. The unusual expreffion is felected because it fuits the imagery of the fonnet, lines applying to (1) Lineage, (2) delineation with a pencil, a portrait, (3) lines of verse as in XVIII. 12. Lines of life are living lines, living poems and pictures, children. 10. This, Time's pencil. The Quarto reads 'this (Times penfel or my pupill pen)'. G. Maffey conjectures 'this time's pencil', adding :-'This pencil of the time may have been Mirevelt's; he painted the Earl [of Southampton's] portrait in early manhood'. Shakspere's Sonnets and his Private Friends, pp. 115, 116 (note). Are we to understand the line as meaning 'Which this pencil of Time or this my pupil pen'; and is Time here conceived as a limner who has painted the youth so fair, but whose work cannot laft for future generations? In xix. 'Devouring Time' is tranfformed into a scribe; may not 'tyrant Time' be transformed here into a painter? In xx. it is Nature who paints the face of the beautiful youth. This masterpiece of twenty years can endure neither as painted by Time's pencil, nor as reprefented by Shakfpere's unskilful, pupil pen. Is the 'painted counterfeit' of 1. 8 Shakfpere's portrayal in his verfe? Cf. LIII., 1. 5. 11. Fair, beauty. XVII. In xvi. Shakspere has faid that his 'pupil pen' cannot make his friend live to future ages. He now carries on this thought; his verse, although not showing half his friend's excellencies, will not be believed in times to come. 12. Keats prefixed this line as motto to his Endymion; ftretched metre' means overstrained poetry. 13, 14. If a child were alive his beauty would verify the descriptions in Shakspere's verse, and so the friend would poffefs a twofold life, in his child and in his poet's rhyme. XVIII. Shakspere takes heart, expects immortality for his verse, and fo immortality for his friend as furviving in it. 3. May, a fummer month; May in Shakspere's time ran on to within a few days of our mid June. Compare Cymbeline, A& 1. sc. 3, 1. 36: -: And like the tyrannous breathing of the north 5. Eye of heaven, fo King Richard II., A& III. fc. 2, 1. 37, 'the fearching eye of heaven'. 10. That fair thou oweft, that beauty thou poffeffeft. 11, 12. This anticipation of immortality for their verse was a commonplace with the Sonnet-writers of the time of Elizabeth. See Spenfer: Amoretti, Sonnets 27, 69, 75; Drayton: Idea, Sonnets 6, 44 ; Daniel: Delia, Sonnet 39. XIX. Shakspere, confident of the immortality of his friend in verse, defies Time. 1. Devouring. S. Walker conjectures deftroying. 5. Fleets. The Quarto has fleet'ft; I follow Dyce, believing that Shakspere cared more for his rhyme than his grammar. Compare confounds, Sonnet VIII. 1. 7. XX. His friend is 'beauty's pattern', XIX. 12; as fuch he owns the attributes of male and female beauty. 1. A woman's face, but not, as women's faces are, painted by art. 2. Maßler-mistress of my paffion, who fways my love with united charms of man and woman. Mr. H. C. Hart suggests to me that passion may be used in the old senfe of love-poem, frequent in Watson. Compare Spenser, 5. Lefs falfe in rolling. Her wanton eyes (ill fignes of womanhed) 8. In the Quarto, 'A man in hew all Hews in his controwling'. The italics and capital letter fuggefted to Tyrwhitt that more is meant here than meets the eye, that the Sonnets may have been addressed to some one named Hews or Hughes, and that Mr. W. H. may be Mr. William Hughes. But the following words have alfo capital letters and are in italics :-Rose 1. 2; Audit IV. 12; Statues LV. 5; Intrim LVI. 9; Alien LXXVIII. 3; Satire c. II; Autumne civ. 5; Abisme cxII. 9; Alcumie cxrv. 4; Syren cxix. 1; Heriticke CXXIV. 9; Informer cxxv. 13; Audite CXXVI. II; Quietus CXXVI. 12. The word 'hue' was used by Elizabethan writers not only in the sense of complexion, but also in that of Shape, form. In Faerie Queene, B. v. c. ix. s. 17, 18, Talus tries to seize Malengin, who transforms himself into a fox, a bush, a bird, a stone, and then a hedgehog: Then gan it [the hedgehog] run away incontinent The meaning of lines 7, 8 in this Sonnet then may be 'A man in form and appearance, having the mastery over all forms in that of his, which fteals, etc.' With the phrafe 'controlling hues' compare Sonnet cvi. 8: Even fuch a beauty as you mafter now. |