him, Shakspere will fide against himself (LXXXVIII. LXXXIX.). But if his friend is ever to hate him, let it be at once, that the bitterness of death may foon be paft (xc.). He has dared to say farewell, yet his friend's love is all the world to Shakspere, and the fear of losing him is misery (XCI.); but he cannot really lose his friend, for death would come quickly to fave him from such grief; and yet Will may be falfe and Shakspere never know it (xcm.); fo his friend, fair in seeming, false within, would be like Eve's apple (XCIII.); it is to fuch felf-contained, paffionless perfons that nature entrusts her rarest gifts of grace and beauty; yet vicious felf-indulgence will spoil the fairest human foul (xciv.). So let Will beware of his youthful vices, already whispered by the lips of men (xcv.); true, he makes graces out of faults, yet this should be kept within bounds (xcvi.). Here again, perhaps, is a gap of time.1 Sonnets XCVII.-XCIX.

1 The last two lines of xcvI.-not very appropriate I think in that fonnet-are identical with the last two lines of xxxvI. It occurs to me as a poffibility that the мs. in Thorpe's hands may here have been imperfect, and that

are written in absence, which fome ftudents, perhaps rightly, call Third Absence. These three fonnets are full of tender affection, but at the clofe of XCIX. allufion is made to Will's vices, the canker in the rofe. After this followed a period of filence. In c. love begins to renew itself, and fong awakes. Shakfpere excufes his filence (CI.); his love has grown while he was filent (CII.); his friend's loveliness is better than all fong (CII.); three years have paffed fince first acquaintance; Will looks as young as ever, yet time must infenfibly be altering his beauty (CIV.). Shakspere fings with a monotony of love (cv.). All former fingers praising knights and ladies only prophefied concerning Will (CVI.); grief and fear are past; the two friends are reconciled again; and both live for ever united in Shakspere's verfe (CVII.). Love has conquered time and age, which deftroy mere beauty of face (CVIII.). Shakfpere confeffes his errors, but now he has returned to his home

he filled it up fo far as to complete xcvi. with a couplet - from an earlier fonnet.

of love (CIX.), he will never wander again (cx.); and his past faults were partly caused by his temptations as a player (CXI.); he cares for no blame and no praise now except those of his friend (CXII.). Once more he is abfert from his friend (Fourth Abfence?), but full of loving thought of him (cxIII. CXIV.). Love has grown and will grow yet more (cxv.). Love is unconquerable by Time (cxvI.). Shakspere confeffes again his wanderings from his friend; they were tefts of Will's conftancy (cxvii.); and they quickened his own appetite for genuine love (CXVIII.). Ruined love rebuilt is stronger than at first (CXIX.); there were wrongs on both fides and must now be mutual forgiveness (cxx.). Shakspere is not to be judged by the report of malicious cenfors (CXXI.); he has given away his friend's prefent of a table-book, because he needed no remembrancer (cxxII.); records and registers of time are false; only a lover's memory is to be wholly trufted, recognifing old things in what seem new (cxxIII.); Shakspere's love is not based on self-intereft, and therefore is

uninfluenced by fortune (CXXIV.); nor is it founded on external beauty of form or face, but is fimple love for love's fake (cxxv.). Will is ftill young and fair, yet he should remember that the end must come at last (CXXVI.).

Thus the series of poems addressed to his friend closes gravely with thoughts of love and death. The Sonnets may be divided at pleasure into many fmaller groups, but I find it poffible to go on without interruption from I. to XXXII.; from XXXIII. to XLII.; from XLIII. to LXXIV. ; from LXXV. to XCVI.; from XCVII. to XCIX. ; from c. to cxXXVI.1

I do not here attempt to trace a continuous fequence in the Sonnets addreffed to the darkhaired woman CXXVII.-CLIV.; I doubt whether fuch continuous fequence is to be found in them; but in the Notes fome points of connexion between fonnet and fonnet are pointed

out.

1 Perhaps there is a break at LVIII. The most careful studies of the sequence of the Sonnets are Mr. Furnivall's in his preface to the Leopold Shakfpere, and Mr. Spalding's in The Gentleman's Magazine, March 1878.

If Shakfpere unlocked his heart' in these Sonnets, what do we learn from them of that great heart? I cannot answer otherwise than in words of my own formerly written. 'In the Sonnets we recognise three things: that Shakfpere was capable of measureless perfonal devotion; that he was tenderly sensitive, sensitive above all to every diminution or alteration of that love his heart fo eagerly craved; and that, when wronged, although he suffered anguish, he transcended his private injury, and learned to forgive. . . . The errors of his heart originated in his fenfitiveness, in his imagination (not at first inured to the hardness of fidelity to the fact), in his quick consciousness of existence, and in the self-abandoning devotion of his heart. There are fome noble lines by Chapman in which he pictures to himself the life of great energy, enthusiasms and paffions, which for ever stands upon the edge of utmoft danger, and yet for ever remains in abfolute fecurity:

Give me a Spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves to have his fails fill'd with a lufty wind