angers her lover; he declares to her face that she is odious, and at the fame moment he is at her feet.

A writer whose diftinction it is to have produced the largest book upon the Sonnets, Mr. Gerald Maffey, holds that he has rescued Shakfpere's memory from fhame by the discovery of a fecret hiftory legible in these poems to rightly illuminated eyes.1 In 1592, according to this theory, Shakspere began to addrefs pieces in fonnet-form to his patron Southampton. Prefently the Earl engaged the poet to write love fonnets on his behalf to Elizabeth Vernon; affuming also the feelings of Elizabeth Vernon, Shakspere wrote dramatic fonnets, as if in her perfon, to the Earl. The table-book containing Shakfpere's autograph fonnets was given by Southampton to Pembroke, and at Pembroke's request was written the dark-woman series; for Pembroke, although authentic history knows nothing of the facts, was enamoured of Sidney's Stella, now well advanced in years, the unhappy 1 The first hint of this theory was given by Mrs. Jamelon.

C

Lady Rich. A few of the fonnets which pafs for Shakspere's are really by Herbert, and he, the Mr. W. H.' of Thorpe's dedication, is the 'only begetter', that is, procurer of these pieces for the publisher. The Sonnets require rearrangement, and are grouped in an order of his own by Mr. Massey.

Mr. Maffey writes with zeal; with a faith in his own opinions which finds fcepticism hard to explain except on fome theory of intellectual or moral obliquity; and he exhibits a wide, mifcellaneous reading. The one thing Mr. Maffey's elaborate theory feems to me to lack is fome evidence in its fupport. His arguments may well remain unanswered. One hardly knows how to tug at the other end of a rope of fand.

With Wordsworth, Sir Henry Taylor, and Mr. Swinburne, with François-Victor Hugo, with Kreyffig, Ulrici, Gervinus, and Hermann Ifaac,1

1 A learned and thoughtful ftudent of the fonnets, to whom I am indebted for fome valuable notes. See his articles in Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 1878-79.

We shall

with Boaden, Armitage Brown, and Hallam, with Furnivall, Spalding, Roffetti, and Palgrave, I believe that Shakspere's Sonnets exprefs his own feelings in his own person. To whom they were addreffed is unknown. never discover the name of that woman who for a feafon could found, as no one else, the inftrument in Shakspere's heart from the lowest note to the top of the compass. To the eyes of no diver among the wrecks of time will that curious talisman gleam. Already when Thorpe dedicated these poems to their 'only begetter', she perhaps was loft in the quick-moving life of London, to all but a few in whose memory were stirred as by a forlorn, small wind, the grey ashes of a fire gone out. As to the name of Shakspere's youthful friend and patron, we conjecture on flender evidence at the best. Setting claimants afide on whose behalf the evidence is abfolutely none, except that their Christian name and furname begin with a W and an H, two remain whose pretenfions have been fupported by accomplished advocates. Drake

(1817), a learned and refined writer, was the first to suggest that the friend addressed in Shakfpere's Sonnets was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, to whom Venus & Adonis was dedicated in 1593, and in the following year Lucrece, in words of ftrong devotion resembling thofe of the twenty-fixth Sonnet.1 B. Heywood Bright (1819), and James Boaden (1832), independently arrived at the conclusion that the Mr. W. H. of the dedication, the 'begetter' or inspirer of the Sonnets, was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to whom with his brother, as two well-known patrons of the great dramatift, his fellows Heminge and Condell dedicated the First Folio. Wriothefley was born in 1573, nine years after Shakspere; Herbert in 1580. Wriothesley at an early age became the lover of Elizabeth Vernon, needing therefore no entreaties to marry (I.-XVII.); he was not beautiful; he

1 Drake did not, as is fometimes ftated, fuppofe that Mr. W. H. was Southampton. He took 'begetter' to mean obtainer; and left Mr. W. H. unidentified. Others hold that 'W. H.' are the initials of Southampton's names reverfed as a blind to the public.

bore no resemblance to his mother (ш. 9); his life was active, with varying fortunes, to which allufions might be looked for in the Sonnets, fuch as may be found in the verses of his other

poet, Daniel. Further, it appears from the punning Sonnets (cxxxv. and CXLIII., fee Notes), that the Christian name of Shakspere's friend was the fame as his own, Will, but Wriothesley's name was Henry. To Herbert the punning

Sonnets and the 'Mr. W. H.' of the dedication can be made to apply. He was indeed a nobleman in 1609, but a nobleman might be ftyled Mr.; Lord Buckhurst is entered as M. Sackville in 'England's Parnaffus' (Minto); or the Mr. may have been meant to disguise the truth. Herbert was beautiful; was like his illuftrious mother; was brilliant, accomplished, licentious; 'the most universally beloved and esteemed', fays Clarendon,' of any man of his age'. Like Southampton he was a patron of poets, and he loved the theatre. In 1599 attempts were unfuccefffully made to induce him to become a fuitor for the hand of the Lord Admiral's