But in terms the most emphatic and explicit does he point to his object, in the sonnet which we are about to quote entire, distinctly marking the sex, the dignity, the rank, and moral virtue of his friend:

"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 dignify'D.
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 out-live 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."

Son. 101.

To whom can this sonnet, or indeed all the passages which we have quoted apply, if not to Lord Southampton, the bosom-friend, the munificent patron of Shakspeare, the noble, the elegant, the brave, the protector of literature and the theme of many a song. And let it be remembered, that if the hundreth and first sonnet be justly ascribed to Lord Southampton, or if any one of the passages which we have adduced, be fairly applicable to him, the whole of the hundred and twenty-six sonnets must necessarily apply to the same individual, for the poet has more than once affirmed this to have been his plan and object:

It may be objected, that the opening and closing sonnet of the collection which we conceive to be exclusively devoted to Lord Southampton, admit neither of reconcilement with each other, nor with the hypothesis which we wish to establish. This discrepancy,

however, will altogether vanish, if we compare the import of these sonnets with that of two others of the same series.

It will be allowed that the expressions, "the world's fresh ornament," the "only herald to the gaudy spring," and the epithets " tender churl," in the first sonnet, may with great propriety be applied to a young nobleman of twenty-one, just entering on a public and splendid career; but, if it be true, that these sonnets were written at various times, between the years 1594 and 1609, how comes it, that in the hundred and twenty-sixth, the last addressed to his patron, he still uses an equally youthful designation, and terms him "my lovely boy," an appellation certainly not then adapted to His Lordship, who, in 1609, was in his thirty-sixth year?

That the sonnets were written at different periods, he tells us in an apology to his noble friend for not addressing him so frequently as he used to do at the commencement of their intimacy, assigning as a reason, that as he was now the theme of various other poets, such addresses must have lost their zest:

"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 musick burdens 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."

Son. 102.

The mystery arising from the use of the juvenile epithets, he completely clears up in his hundred and eighth sonnet, where he that having exhausted every figure to express says, his patron's merit and his own affection, he is compelled to say the same things over again; that he is determined to consider him as young as when he first hallowed his fair name; that friendship, in fact, weighs not the advance of life, but adheres to its first conception, when youth and beauty clothed the object of its regard. In pursuance of this deter

mination, he calls him, in this very sonnet, "sweet boy;" but it will be more satisfactory to copy the entire poem, in order to show, that our interpretation is not, in the smallest degree, strained:

"WHAT'S in the brain that ink may character,
Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
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 hallowed 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."

In conformity with this resolution of considering his friend as endowed whilst he lives with perpetual youth, he closes his sonnets to him, not only with the repetition of the juvenile epithet "boy," but he positively assures him that he has time in his power, that he grows by waning, and that nature, as he goes onward, still plucks him back, in order to disgrace time. The conceit is somewhat puerile, though clearly explanatory of the systematic intention of the poet :

"O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold time's fickle glass, his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st;
If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill."

He terminates this sonnet, however, and his series of poetical addresses to Lord Southampton, with a powerful corrective of all flattery, in reminding him that although nature “ may detain," she cannot " keep her treasure," and that he must ultimately yield to

death.

We must also observe, that the poet has marked the termination of these sonnets to his friend, not only by the solemn nature of the concluding sentiment, but by a striking deviation from the customary form of his composition in these pieces; the closing poem not being constructed with alternate rhimes, but consisting of six couplets!

After thus attempting, at considerable length, and we trust with some success, to solve a mystery hitherto deemed inexplicable, we shall offer but a few observations on the object of the remaining twenty-eight sonnets.

In the first place, it is not true, as Mr. Malone has asserted, that they are all addressed to a female. Two, at least, have not the slightest reference to any individual; the hundred and twentyninth sonnet being a general and moral declamation on the misery resulting from sensual love, and the hundred and forty-sixth, an address to his own soul of a somewhat severe and religious cast.

Of the residue, four have no very determinate application, and to whom the twenty-two are dedicated, is not now to be ascertained, and, if it were, not worth the enquiry; for, a more worthless character, or described as such in stronger terms, no poet ever drew. We much wish, indeed, these sonnets had never been published, or that their subject could be proved to have been perfectly ideal. We are the more willing to consider them in this light, since, if we dismiss these confessional sonnets, not the slightest moral stain can rest on the character of Shakspeare; as the frolic in Sir Thomas Lucy's park, from his youth, and the circumstances attending it, must be deemed altogether venial. It is very improbable, also, that any poet should publish such an open confession of his own culpability.

Of the grossly meretricious conduct of his mistress, of whose personal charms and accomplishments we know nothing more than that she had black eyes, black hair, and could play on the virginal, Sonnets 137. 142. and 144. bear the most indubitable evidence. Well, therefore, might the poet term her his "false plague," his

"worser spirit," his "female evil," and his "bad angel;" well might he tell her, notwithstanding the colour of her eyes and hair,

Well might he blame his pliability of temper, his insufficiency of judgment and resolution, well might he call himself" past cure,' and "frantick-mad," when, addressing this profligate woman, he exclaims,

"Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill,
That in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou should'st not abhor

my state;

If thy unworthiness rais'd love in me,
More worthy I to be belov'd by thee." *

Son. 150.

Now, weighing, what almost every other personal event in our author's life establishes, the general moral beauty of his character, and reflecting, at the same time, that he was at this period a husband, and the father of a family, we cannot but feel the most entire conviction, that these sonnets were never directed to a real object: but that, notwithstanding they appear written in his own person, and two of them, indeed, (Sonnets 135. and 136.) a perpetual pun on his Christian name, they were solely intended to express, aloof from all individual application, the contrarieties, the inconsistencies, and the miseries of illicit love. Credulity itself, we think, cannot suppose

That this series of sonnets, as well as the preceding, should be considered by Mr. Chalmers as addressed to Queen Elizabeth, is, indeed, of all conjectures, the most extraordinary!