Drake writes (Shakspeare and His Times, vol. ii. p. 63)Perhaps one of the most striking proofs of this pofition [that the Sonnets are addressed to the Earl of Southampton] is the hitherto unnoticed fact that the language of the Dedication to the Rape of Lucrece, and that of part of the twenty-fixth fonnet are almost precisely the fame. The Dedication runs thus:-The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end. . . . The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my urtutored lines, makes it affured of acceptance. What I have is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part of all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would fhow greater'. previously noted the parallel.

C. [Capell] had

1, 2. Compare Macbeth, A& ш. fc. 1, ll. 15-18, 'Duties . . . knit'.

8. Beflow it, lodge it. As in The Tempest, A& v. l. 299:

Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.

Shakspere fays-I hope fome happy idea of yours will convey my duty, naked as it is, into your foul's thought.

12. Thy fweet refped, regard. The Quarto reads their for thy, an error which occurs feveral times. XXVII. Written on a journey, which removes Shakspere farther and farther from his friend.

3. Modern edd. put a comma after 'head'. But is not the conftruction a journey in my head begins ༦ to work my mind'?

6. Intend, bend, purfue: ufed frequently of

travel. Cæfar through Syria intends his journey' Antony & Cleopatra, A& v. fc. 1, 1. 200.

10. Thy.

XXVI. 12.

The Quarto reads their. See

11, 12. Compare Romeo & Juliet, A& 1. fc. 5, 11. 47, 48:—

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.

13, 14. By day my limbs find no quiet, for myfelf, i.e. on account of business of my own; by night my mind finds no quiet for thee, i.e. thinking of you.

XXVIII. A continuation of Sonnet XXVII.

9. Cambridge edd. and Furness read 'I tell the day, to please him thou art bright'.

12. Twire, peep. Compare Ben Jonfon, Sad Shepherd, A& II. fc. 1 :—

Which maids will twire at, tween their fingers, thus. Marston: Antonio & Mellida, A& iv. (Works, vol. i. p. 52, ed. Halliwell), 'I fawe a thing stirre under a hedge, and I peep't, and I spyed a thing, and I peer'd and I tweerd underneath'.

Malone conjectured 'twirl not'; Steevens, 'twirk not'; Maffey, 'tire not', in the sense of attire.

12. Gild't. The Quarto reads 'guil'st'.

13, 14. Dyce and others read 'And night doth nightly make grief's ftrength feem stronger', which poffibly is right. The meaning of the Quarto text muft be: Each day's journey draws out my forrows to a greater length; but this procefs of drawing-out

does not weaken my forrows, for my night-thoughts come to make my forrows as ftrong as before, nay ftronger. C. [Capell] fuggefted to Malone 'draw my forrows ftronger . . . 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 speaking of his own poems.

12. Sings hymns at heaven's gate. Cymbeline, А& 1. fc. 3, ll. 21, 22:—

Compare

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate fings,
And Phabus 'gins arise.

Lyly: Campafpe, A&t 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, A& m. fc. 3, ll. 138-141, ' apprehenfions. in feffion fit'.

6. Dateless, endless, as in Sonnet CLIII., 'a dateless, lively heat, still to endure'.

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 fubject of xxx.-Shakspere's friend compenfates all loffes in the past.

2,

5. Obfequious, funereal, as in Hamlet, A& 1. fc. 1. 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

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.

M

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

I tell thee, fellow,

Thy general is my lover.

'Ben Jonfon 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, Reserve 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, А& ш. fc. 1, ll. 77-80:

The glorious fun Stays in his course and plays the alchemist, 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&t 1. fc. 2, ll. 221-227: