That he should have given admiration and love without measure to a youth highborn, brilliant, accomplished, who fingled out the player for peculiar favour, will feem wonderful only to those who keep a constant guard upon their affections, and to those who have no need to keep a guard at all. In the Renascence epoch among natural products of a time when life ran fwift and free, touching with its current high and difficult places, the ardent friendship of man with man was one. To elevate it above mere perfonal regard a kind of Neo-Platonifm was at hand, which reprefented Beauty and Love incarnated in a human creature as earthly vice-gerents of the Divinity. It was then not uncommon', obferves the fober Dyce, for one man to write verses to another in a strain of fuch tender affection as fully warrants us in terming them amatory'. Montaigne, not prone to take up extreme pofitions, writes of his dead Eftienne de la Boëtie with paffionate tenderness which will not hear of moderation. The haughtieft fpirit of Italy, Michael Angelo, does homage to

the worth and beauty of young Tommaso Cavalieri in fuch words as these :

Heavenward your spirit flirreth me to ftrain; E'en as you will I blush and blanch again, Freeze in the fun, burn 'neath a frofty sky, Your will includes and is the lord of mine.

The learned Languet writes to young Philip Sidney: Your portrait I kept with me fome hours to feast my eyes on it, but my appetite was rather increased than diminished by the fight'. And Sidney to his guardian friend: 'The chief object of my life, next to the everlafting blessedness of heaven, will always be the enjoyment of true friendship, and there you fhall have the chiefeft place'. Some', faid Jeremy Taylor, live under the line, and the beams of friendship in that position are imminent and perpendicular'. 'Some have only a dark day and a long night from him [the Sun], fnows and white cattle, a miferable life and a perpetual harvest of Catarrhes and Confumptions, apoplexies and dead palfies; but fome have splendid fires and aromatick spices, rich wines and well

digefted fruits, great wit and great courage, because they dwell in his eye and look in his face and are the Courtiers of the Sun, and wait upon him in his Chambers of the East; just so it is in friendship'. Was Shakfpere less a courtier of the fun than Languet or Michael Angelo?

If we accept the obvious reading of the Sonnets, we must believe that Shakspere at fome time of his life was fnared by a woman, the reverse of beautiful according to the conventional Elizabethan ftandard-dark-haired, darkeyed, pale-cheeked (CXXXII.); fkilled in touching the virginal (cxxvIII.); skilled also in playing on the heart of man; who could attract and repel, irritate and foothe, join reproach with carefs (CXLV.); a woman faithless to her vow in wedlock (CLII.). Through her no calm of joy came to him; his life ran quicker but more troubled through her spell, and she mingled strange bitternefs with its waters. Mistress of herself and of her art, she turned when it pleased her from the player to capture a more distinguished prize, his friend. For a while Shakspere was kept in the

torture of doubt and suspicion; then confeffion and tears were offered by the youth. The wound had gone deep into Shakspere's heart:—

Love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

But, delivering himself from the intemperance of wrath, he could forgive a young man beguiled and led aftray. Through further difficulties and eftrangements their friendship travelled on to a fortunate repose. The series of Sonnets, which is its record, climbs to a high funlit reftingplace. The other feries, which records his paffion for a dark temptrefs, is a whirl of moral chaos. Whether to dismiss him, or to draw him farther on, the woman had urged upon him the claims of conscience and duty; in the latest fonnets-if this feries be arranged in chronological order-Shakfpere's paffion, grown bitter and fcornful (CLI., CLII.), ftrives, once for all, to defy and wrestle down his better will.

Shakfpere of the Sonnets is not the Shakspere ferenely victorious, infinitely charitable, wise with

all wisdom of the intelle&t and the heart, whom we know through The Tempest and King Henry VIII. He is the Shakspere of Venus & Adonis and Romeo & Juliet, on his way to acquire fome of the dark experience of Measure for Measure, and the bitter learning of Troilus & Creffida. Shakspere's writings affure us that in the main his eye was fixed on the true ends of life; but they do not lead us to believe that he was inacceffible to temptations of the fenfes, the heart, and the imagination. We can only guess the frailty that accompanied fuch ftrength, the risks that attended fuch high powers; immense demands on life, vaft ardours, and then the void hour, the deep dejection. There appears to have been a time in his life when the springs of faith and hope had almost ceased to flow; and he recovered these not by flying from reality and life, but by driving his shafts deeper towards the centre of things. So Ulyffes was tranfformed into Profpero, worldly wisdom into spiritual infight. Such ideal purity as Milton's was not poffeffed nor fought by Shakspere; among these