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 (Sonn. 33).

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, LITT. D.,

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

WITH ENGRAVINGS.

ΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΔΙΑΔ

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1893.

UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

ENGLISH

CLASSICS.

EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, LITT. D.

Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 56 cents per volume; Paper, 40 cents per volume.

GOLDSMITH'S SELECT POEMS.
GRAY'S SELECT POEMS.

MINOR POEMS OF JOHN MILTON.

Richard III.
Henry VIII.
King Lear.

The Taming of the Shrew.
All's Well that Ends Well.
Coriolanus.

The Comedy of Errors.
Cymbeline.

Antony and Cleopatra.

Measure for Measure.

Merry Wives of Windsor.
Love's Labour's Lost.
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Timon of Athens.

Troilus and Cressida.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, etc,
Sonnets.

Titus Andronicus.

BROWNING'S SELECT POEMS.

BROWNING'S SELECT DRAMAS.

MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME

WORDSWORTH'S SELECT POEMS.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or they will be sent by HARPER & BROTHERS to any address on receipt of price as quoted. if ordered sent by mail, 10 per cent. should be added to the price to cover cost of postage.

Copyright, 1883, bv HARPER & BROTHERS.

PREFACE.

In this volume, as almost every page of the Introduction and the Notes bears witness, I have been under special obligations to Professor Dowden's excellent editions of the Sonnets. I have not, however, drawn at all from Part II. of the Introduction to his larger edition (see the footnote on p. 11), which condenses into some seventy-five pages the entire literature of the Sonnets. For the critical student this careful résumé answers a double purpose: as a bibliography of the subject, directing him to the many books and papers that have been written upon the Sonnets, if he is moved to read any or all of them; and as a compact and convenient substitute for these books and papers, if he wants to know their gist and substance without the drudgery of wading through them. I doubt not that the majority of students will be thankful that Professor Dowden has relieved them of the drudgery by compressing many a dull volume or magazine article into a page or a paragraph.

I will only add that the text of the Sonnets, like that of the Poems, is given without omission or expurgation.

NOTE TO REVISED EDITION OF 1890.

For new matter, giving the substance of the latest researches in the history of the Sonnets, see "Addenda," p. 184 fol. Certain changes have also been made in the Introduction (pp. 10, 11, 12) and here and there in the Notes.