Even till his fail-yards tremble, his mafts crack, Such a mafter-spirit, preffing forward under ftrained canvas was Shakspere. If the hip dipped and drank water, she rose again; and at length we behold her within view of her haven failing under a large, calm wind, not without tokens of ftrefs of weather, but if battered, yet unbroken by the waves'. The laft plays of Shakspere, The Tempeft, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Henry VIII., illuminate the Sonnets and justify the moral genius of their writer. I thank Profeffor Atkinson for help given in reading the proof-fheets of my Introduction; Mr. W. J. Craig, for illuftrations of obsolete words; Mr. Furnivall, for hints given from time to time in our difcuffion by letter of the grouping of the Sonnets. Mr. Edmund Goffe and Dr. Grofart, for the loan of valuable books; Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, for a note on the date of Lintott's reprint; Mr. Hart, for feveral ingenious fuggeftions; Dr. Ingleby, for fome guidance in the matter of Shakspere portraiture; and Mr. L. C. Purfer, for translations of the Greek epigrams connected with Sonnets CLIII., CLIV. I. From faireft creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Thyself thy foe, to thy fweet felf too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy fpring, Within thine own bud burieft thy content And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. A II. When forty winters shall befiege thy brow This were to be new made when thou art old, III. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest Or who is he fo fond will be the tomb Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, But if thou live, rememb'red not to be, Die fingle, and thine image dies with thee. |