volunteers in the days of Elizabeth and James, who embarked on naval enterprises, hoping to make their fortunes by discovery or conquest; so he with good wishes took his risk on the sea of public favour in this light venture of the Sonnets.1

The date at which the Sonnets were written, like their origin, is uncertain. Individual sonnets have been in

dicated as helping to ascertain the date.

I.—It has been confidently stated that CVII., containing the line,

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

must refer to the death of Elizabeth (1603), the poet's Cynthia; but the line may well bear another interpretation. (See Notes.)

II. Mr. Tyler (Athenæum, Sept. 11, 1880) ingeniously argues that the thought and phrasing of lines in Sonnet LV. are derived from a passage in Meres's Palladis Tamia, 1598, where Shakspere among others is mentioned with honour:

"As Ovid saith of his worke:-
:-

Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas:

And as Horace saith of his :

Exegi monumentum aere perennius,

Regalique situ pyramidum altius ;
Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum :

1 See Dr. Grosart's Donne, vol. ii. pp. 45, 46.

So say I severally of Sir Philip Sidney's, Spenser's, Daniel's, Drayton's, Shakespeare's, and Warner's worke:

Nec Jovis ira, imbres, Mars, ferrum, flamma, senectus, Hoc opus unda, lues, turbo, venena ruent.

Et quanquam ad pulcherrimum hoc opus evertendum tres illi Dii conspirabunt, Chronus, Vulcanus, et Pater ipse gentis;

Nec tamen annorum series, non flamma, nec ensis,
Aeternum potuit hoc abolere decus."

III. The last line of Sonnet XCIV.,

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds,

occurs also in the play King Edward III. (printed 1596), in a part of the play ascribed by some critics to Shakspere. We cannot say for certain whether the play borrows from the sonnet, or the sonnet from the play. The latter seems to me the more likely supposition of the two.

The argument for this or that date from coincidences in expression between the Sonnets and certain plays of Shakspere has no decisive force. Coincidences may

often be found between Shakspere's late and early plays. But the general characteristics of style may lead us to believe that some Sonnets, as I.-XXIV., belong to a period not later than Romeo and Juliet; others, as LXIV.-LXXIV., seem to echo the sadder tone heard in Hamlet and Measure for Measure. I cannot think that any of the Sonnets are earlier than Daniel's Delia

(1592), which, I believe, supplied Shakspere with a model for this form of verse; and though I can allege no strong evidence for the opinion, I should not be disposed to place any later than 1605.

Various attempts have been made by English, French, and German students to place the Sonnets in a new and better order, of which attempts no two agree between themselves. That the Sonnets are not printed in the Quarto, 1609, at haphazard, is evident from the fact that the Envoy (CXXVI.) is rightly placed; that poems addressed to a mistress follow those addressed to a friend; and that the two Cupid and Dian Sonnets stand together at the close. A nearer view makes it apparent that in the first series, I.-CXXVI., a continuous story is conducted through various stages to its termination; a more minute inspection discovers points of contact or connection between sonnet/ and sonnet, and a natural sequence of thought, passion and imagery. We are in the end convinced that no arrangement which has been proposed is as good as that of the Quarto. But the force of this remark seems to me to apply with certainty only to Sonnets I.-CXXVI. The second series, CXXVII.-CLIV., although some of its pieces are evidently connected with those which stand near them, does not exhibit a like intelligible sequence; a better arrangement may perhaps be found; or, it may be, no possible arrangement can educe order out of the struggles between will and judgment, between blood and reason; tumult and chaos are perhaps a portion of their life and being.

A piece of evidence confirming the opinion here advanced will be found in the use of thou and you by

Shakspere as a mode of address to his friend. Why thou or you is chosen, is not always explicable. Sometimes the choice seems to be determined by considerations of euphony, sometimes of rhyme; sometimes intimate affection seems to indicate the use of you, and respectful homage that of thou; but this is by no means invariable. What I would call attention to, however, as exhibiting something like order and progress in the arrangement of 1609, is this: that in the first fifty sonnets you is of extremely rare occurrence; in the second fifty you and thou alternate in little groups of sonnets, thou having still a preponderance, but now only a slight preponderance; in the remaining twenty-six you becomes the ordinary mode of address, and thou the exception. In the sonnets to a mistress, thou is invariably employed. A few sonnets of the first series, as LXIII.-LXVIII., have "my love," and the third person throughout.

The table on next page presents the facts. Thou and you are considered only when addressing friend or lover, not Time, the Muse, etc. Five sets of sonnets may then be distinguished, as in the table. I had hoped that this investigation was left to form one of my gleanings. But Professor Goedeke in the Deutsche Rundschau, March 1877, looked into the matter. His results seem to me vitiated by an arbitrary division of the sonnets using neither thou nor you into groups of eleven and twelve, and by a fantastic theory that Shakspere wrote his sonnets in books or groups of fourteen each.

A.-Sonnets using thou.

B.-Sonnets using neither thou nor you, but belonging to a thou group. C.-Sonnets using you. D.-Sonnets using neither thou nor you, but belonging to a you group. E.-Sonnet using both thou and you.

All Sonnets after the Envoy, 126, i.e., all the Sonnets to a Mistress, use thou.

Whether idealising reality or wholly fanciful, an Elizabethan book of sonnets was--not always, but in many instances-made up of a chain or series of poems, in a designed or natural sequence, viewing in various aspects a single theme, or carrying on a love story to its issue, prosperous or the reverse. Sometimes advance is made through the need of discovering new points of view, and the movement, always delayed, is rather in a circuit than straight forward. In Spenser's Amoretti we read the progress of love from humility through hope to conquest.