That this series of Sonnets, powerful as they are, displaying not only the most abundant variety of imagery, but the greatest felicity in making the whole harmonious, constitutes a poem ambitious only of the honours of a work of Art, is, we think, manifest. If it had been addressed to a real person, no other object could have been proposed than a display of the most brilliant ingenuity. In the next age it would have been called an exquisite "copy of verses." But in the next age, probably-certainly in our own-the author would have been pronounced arrogant beyond measure in the anticipation of the immortality of his rhymes. There is a show of modesty, indeed, in the expressions "barren rhyme" and "pupil pen;" but that is speedily cast off, and "eternal summer" is promised through "eternal lines ;" and

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Regarding these nineteen Sonnets as a continuous poem, wound up to the climax of a hyperbolical promise of immortality to the object whom it addresses, we receive the 20th Sonnet as the commencement of another poem in which the same idea is retained. The poet is bound to the youth by ties of strong affection; but nature has called upon the possessor of that beauty

A man in hue, all hues in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.-20.

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

Since every one hath, every one, one's shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;

On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and foizon of the year;
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear,
And you in every blessed shape we know.

In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant
heart.-53.

Between the 20th Sonnet and the 53rd occur, as it appears to us, a number of fragments which we have variously classified.

amazeth,"

to cultivate closer ties. This Sonnet, through an utter misconception of the language of Shakspere's time, has produced a comment sufficiently odious to throw an unpleasant shade over much which follows. The idea which it contains is continued in the 53rd Sonnet; and we give the two in connexion:

A woman's face, with nature's own hand painted,

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

praises of that "unknown youth" who has been supposed to preside over five-sixths of the entire series of verses. We have little doubt that the "begetter" of the Sonnets was not able to beget, or obtain, all; and that there is a considerable hiatus between the 20th Sonnet and the second hyperbolical close, which he filled up as well as he could, from other "sugared sonnets amongst private friends:"

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds

discloses :

But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours
made:

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade, by verse distils your truth.-54.

Not marble, not the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these con-

tents

Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish

time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still
find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
-55.

Wherever we meet with these magnificent promises of the immortality which the poet's verses are to bestow, we find them associated with that personage, the representative at once of “Adonis” and of "Helen," who presents himself to us as the unreal coinage of the fancy. In many of the lines which we have given in the second division of this inquiry, the reader will have noticed the affecting modesty, the humility without abasement, of the great poet comparing himself with others. Here Shakspere indeed speaks. For example, take the whole of the 32nd Sonnet. We should scarcely imagine, if the poem were continuous, as Mr. Brown believes, that the last stanza of the second portion of it in his classification would conclude with these lines :

"Not marble, not the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”

so say I severally of Sir Philip Sidney's, Spenser's, Daniel's, Drayton's, Shakespeare's, and Warner's works." What Ovid and Horace said is imitated in the 55th Sonnet. But we greatly doubt if what Meres would have said of Shakspere he would have said of himself, except in some assumed character, to which we have not the key. Ben Jonson, to whom a boastful spirit has with some justice been objected, never said anything so strong of his own writings; and he wrote with too much reliance, in this and other particulars, upon classical examples. But Jonson was not a writer of Sonnets, which, pitched in an artificial key, made this boastful tone a constituent part of the whole performance. The man, who never once speaks of his own merits in his dramas, the greatest

productions of the human intellect, when he put on the imaginary character in which a poet is weaving a fiction out of his supposed | form himself to the practice of other masters | personal relations, did not hesitate to conof the art. Shakspere here adopted the tone which Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton had remarkable; and we must beg the indulgence adopted. The parallel appears to us very of our readers while we present them a few passages from each of these writers.

And first of Spenser. His 27th Sonnet will furnish an adequate notion of the general tone of his 'Amoretti,' and of the self-exaltation which appears to belong to this species of poem :

"Fair Proud! now tell me, why should fair be proud,

Sith all world's glory is but dross unclean. And in the shade of death itself shall shroud. However now thereof ye little ween!

That goodly idol, now so gay beseen,
Shall doff her flesh's borrow'd fair attire ;
And be forgot as it had never been;
That many now much worship and admire!
Ne any then shall after it inquire,
Ne any mention shall thereof remain,
But what this verse, that never shall expire,
Shall to you purchase with her thankless pain!
Fair! be no longer proud of that shall perish,
But that, which shall you make immortal,
cherish."

And the 69th Sonnet is still more like the model upon which Shakspere formed his 55th:

"The famous warriors of the antique world
Us'd trophies to erect in stately wise,
In which they would the records have enroll'd
Of their great deeds and valorous emprise.
What trophy then shall I most fit devise,
In which I may record the memory
Of my love's conquest, peerless beauty's prize,
Adorn'd with honour, love, and chastity?
Even this verse, vow'd to eternity,
Shall be thereof immortal monument;
And tell her praise to all posterity,

That may admire such world's rare wonder-
ment;

The happy purchase of my glorious spoil, Gotten at last with labour and long toil." Spenser's 75th Sonnet also thus closes: "My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."

Of Daniel's Sonnets, the 41st and 42nd furnish examples of the same tone, though somewhat more subdued than in Shakspere or Spenser :

"Be not displeas'd that these my papers should Bewray unto the world how fair thou art; Or that my wits have show'd the best they could.

(The chastest flame that ever warmed heart!) Think not, sweet Delia, this shall be thy shame, My muse should sound thy praise with mourn

ful warble;

How many live, the glory of whose name Shall rest in ice, when thine is grav'd in marble!

Thou mayst in after ages live esteem'd,

Unburied in these lines, reserv'd in pureness; These shall entomb those eyes, that have redeem'd

Me from the vulgar, thee from all obscureness. Although my careful accents never mov'd thee,

Yet count it no disgrace that I have lov'd thee."

'Delia, these eyes, that so admire thine, Have seen those walls which proud ambition rear'd

To check the world; how they entomb'd have lien

Within themselves, and on them ploughs have ear'd.

Yet never found that barbarous hand attain'd
The spoil of fame deserv'd by virtuous men;
Whose glorious actions luckily had gain'd
The eternal annals of a happy pen.

And therefore grieve not if thy beauties die;
Though time do spoil thee of the fairest veil
That ever yet cover'd mortality;

And must enstar the needle and the rail. That grace which doth more than enwoman thee,

Lives in my lines, and must eternal be." But Drayton, if he display not the energy of Shakspere, the fancy of Spenser, or the sweetness of Daniel, is not behind either in the extravagance of his admiration or his confidence in his own power. The 6th and the 44th 'Ideas' are sufficient examples:"How many paltry, foolish, painted things, That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, Ere they be well wrapp'd in their windingsheet!

When I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;
Virgins and matrons, reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve they liv'd not in these
times,

To have seen thee, their sex's only glory:
So thou shalt fly above the vulgar throng,
Still to survive in my immortal song."

"Whilst thus my pen strives to eternize thee,
Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face,
Where, in the map of all my misery,
Is modell'd out the world of my disgrace:
Whilst, in despite of tyrannizing rhymes,
Medea-like, I make thee young again,
Proudly thou scorn'st my world out-wearing
rhymes,

And murther'st virtue with thy coy disdain; And though in youth my youth untimely perish,

To keep thee from oblivion and the grave, Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish, Where I entomb'd my better part shall save; And though this earthly body fade and die, My name shall mount upon eternity."

We now proceed to what appears another continuous poem amongst Shakspere's Sonnets, addressed to the same object as the

first nineteen stanzas were addressed to, and devoted to the same admiration of his personal beauty. The leading idea is now that of the spoils of Time, to be repaired only by the immortality of verse:

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forgett'st so long

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song, Darkening thy power, to lend base subjects light?

Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent ;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, restive Muse, my love's sweet face sur-
vey,

If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,

And make Time's spoils despised everywhere. Give my love fame, faster than Time wastes life;

So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.-100.

O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say,
"Truth needs no colour with his colour fix'd,
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd?"-
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be
dumb?

Excuse not silence so; for it lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how To make him seem long hence as he shows now.-101.

My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear; That love is merchandis'd whose rich esteeming

The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays; As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:

Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burthens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my

tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song. -102.

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument, all bare, is of more worth,
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
O blame me not if I no more can write !
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That overgoes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend,
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
And more, much more, than in my verse
can sit,

Your own glass shows you when you look in it.-103.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters'
cold

Have from the forest shook three summers pride;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,

In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes
burn'd,

Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth
stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd. For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,

Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead.-104.

Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be,
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse, to constancy confin'd,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope
affords.

Fair, kind, and true, have often liv'd alone, Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.-105.

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to
sing;

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.-106.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to

come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me sub-
scribes,

Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.

And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.-107.

Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,

I must each day say o'er the very same';
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;

Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead.-108.

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd,
Which labouring for invention bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child!
O, that record could, with a backward look,
E'en of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could
say

To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whe'r better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.

O! sure I am, the wits of former days To subjects worse have given admiring praise.-59.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes

before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time, that gave, doth now his gift con-
found.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall
stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

-60.

Of these eleven stanzas nine are consecutive in the original, being numbered 100 to 108. The other two, the 59th and 60th, are certainly isolated in the first arrangement; but the idea of the 108th glides into the