touch the bottom and gauge the meaning of sonnets 133 and 134. "Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard.' Against what, if a man were the speaker? And how could a man use the expression for I being pent in thee,' or 'thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,' when the least sense of humour would suggest that his friend had been all too free, if these complaints and charges had been made by a man. And, what would be the bond' alluded to, when sonnet 144, the darkest of all, shows the case to be one of suspicion only, a jealousy on account of the lady's character, not one of certainty, and the most passionate sonnet of the whole series expresses nothing more than a doubt after all? The most searching investigation yet made will prove that there is not the least foundation for the dark story as told against our Poet, save that which has been laid in the prurient imagination of those who have so wantonly sought to defile the memory of Shakspeare. And for the rest of our lives we may safely and unreservedly hold of him, what Anthony Bacon said of his brother Francis, that he was too wise to be abused; too honest to abuse."

DRAMATIC SONNETS.

ELIZABETH VERNON'S JEALOUSY OF HER LOVER, LORD SOUTHAMPTON, AND HER FRIEND, LADY RICH.

1

ELIZABETH VERNON'S SOLILOQUY.

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair;
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill :
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side, '
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil;
Wooing his purity with her foul2 pride:
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,3
I guess one angel in another's hell!

Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

'Tempteth my better Angel from my side.'

So in Othello, Yea, curse his better Angel from his side.'

(144.)

The copy of this sonnet in the Passionate Pilgrim' reads 'with her fair pride.'

3 'Both to each friend.' Here is proof that the absent twain were friends before this affair.

'Till my bad Angel fire my good one out.'

We may perhaps get at the root idea of this line by aid of an expression of tragic intensity in King Lear' He that parts us shall bring a brand from Heaven and fire us hence like foxes.' In the present instance. I presume,

ELIZABETH VERNON TO THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my Sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow,
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region-cloud hath masked him from me now:
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ;
Suns of the world may stain when Heaven's sun
staineth.

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me on my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotton smoke?
"Tis not enough that thro' the cloud thou break
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Tho' thou repent, yet I have still the loss ;

The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief

To him that bears the strong offence's cross:

(33.)

Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

(34.)

the fox who is in hiding,-the Earl who is foxing it will have to be fired out with a brand from the other place. The allusion-here humorously used is to the burning out of the fox with fire-brands, at which Shakspeare must have assisted when he was a country lad.

1 This 'him' has misled readers into thinking it characterised the speaker's sex, but it is merely and obviously a general allusion to a wellknown proverbial truth. The speaker's sex is suppressed through the whole of these sonnets. We have only the feeling, which in poetry is the greatest fact of all, to guide us, and that indicates a woman, and proves the passion to be one of winnowed purity.

THE LADY'S EXCUSE FOR HER LOVER'S FAULTS.

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done :
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both Moon and Sun,
And loathsome cankers live in sweetest bud:
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorising thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting,' salving thy amiss;
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,2
Thy adverse party is thy Advocate,—
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence;
Such civil war is in my love and hate

That I an accessary needs must be3

To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art :
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailéd ;

207

(35.)

1 Myself corrupting.' It has been supposed that the speaker of this sornet, being a man, finds a precedent for the fault of his friend by comparing it with his own. A fair sample of the way in which these sonnets have been unfairly read! The sonnet contains nothing of the sort. The speaker says, 'All men make faults,' and on that account she has tried to excuse him; has excused him even more than his sins called for. Her fault is that she has authorised his fault by making this comparison in his favour; corrupted herself in excusing him and 'salving' his misbehaviour. Even I in this am to blame, but such is my love I cannot help it.' Here is absolute proof that the speaker is not and cannot be that corrupt married man supposed. If he had been so corrupt it did not remain for him to corrupt himself by being so charitable when salving the misbehaviour of his young friend. 'To thy sensual fault I bring in sense.'

2

Something very like this in thought and expression is reversed in Measure for Measure': Angelo says of Isabel

'She speaks such sense that my sense breeds with it.'

3 Needs must be.' That is an allusion to the powerful bond of sonnet 134. Pretty' in the sense of 'little.'

'There is a saying old, but not so witty,

That when a thing is little it is pretty.'-Taylor, the Water Poet. Also see the subject illustrated by 'Moth' for the edification of Don Armado.

And when a woman woos,' what woman's son

2

Will sourly leave her till she have prevailéd?

Ay me! but yet thou might'st, my Sweet!3 forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,

Who lead thee in their riot even there

Where thou art forced to break a two-fold truth,

Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee;

Thine, by thy beauty being false to me!

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief;
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly:
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye!

金

(41.)

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her;'
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her :

1 When a woman woos.'

'For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood ? '

5

The Earl to Eliz. Vernon, Sonnet 121.

2 Till she have prevailed.' The Quarto reads, "Till he have prevailed.' An obvious misprint, corrected by Tyrwhitt.

3 My sweet, forbear.' The Quarto reads, my seat, forbear,' which has been made the most of by the advocates of the Personal Theory. Malone held that the context showed it to be a corruption; this my reading proves 'My Sweet' might fairly be accepted as the true text, if only on account of the 'sourly' of the preceding line,-these are two of the poet's favourite twinterms, almost inseparable: e. g.

'That sweet thief which sourly robs from me.'-Sonnet 35.

'Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave.'—Sonnet 39.
'To make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.'

Troilus and Cressida, act iii. sc. 1.

'Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.'

4 Thou dost love her because thou knowest I love her' is not an argument for a man to use. A man in such a case would not love the mistress because he knew that she was his friend's. The philosophy is altogether

womanly and innocent, not impure and pimpish.

5 To approve her.' To 'approve' in Shakspeare's age signified to make good, to establish, and is so defined in 'Cawdrey's Alphabetical Table of Hard English Words' (1604). Thus the meaning here is, that the absent lady has