vile, not by us who experience it, but by others who look on and condemn.

6. Give salutation to my sportive blood. Compare King Henry VIII., Act II. sc. 3, 1. 103:

Would I had no being,

If this salute my blood a jot.

8. In their wills, according to their pleasure.

9. No, I am that I am. Compare Othello, Act I. sc. 1, 1. 65, "I am not what I am."

Level. See note on Sonnet CXVII. 11.

11. Bevel, "i.e., crooked; a term used only, I believe, by masons and joiners."-STEEVENS.

CXXII. An apology for having parted with the tables (memorandum-book) given to Shakspere by his friend. 1, 2. So in Hamlet, Act I. sc. 5, 11. 98-103:

Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records;

And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain;

and in the same play, Act I. sc. 3, l. 58:—

And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character.

So also Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. sc. 7, 11. 3, 4.

3. That idle rank, that poor dignity (of tables written upon with pen or pencil).

9. That poor retention, that poor means of retaining impressions, i.e., the tables given by his friend.

10. Tallies, sticks on which notches and scores are cut to keep accounts by. So 2 King Henry VI., Act IV. sc. 7, 1. 39.

CXXIII. In the last sonnet Shakspere boasts of his "lasting memory" as the recorder of love; he now declares that the registers and records of Time are false, but Time shall impose no cheat upon his memory or heart.

2. Thy pyramids. I think this is metaphorical; all that Time piles up from day to day, all his new stupendous erections, are really but "dressings of a former sight." Is there a reference to the new love, the "ruined love built anew" (Sonnet CXIX.), between two friends? The same metaphor appears in the next Sonnet (CXXIV.), “ No, it [his love] was builded far from accident;" and again in CXXV., "Laid great bases for eternity," etc. Does Shakspere mean here that this new love is really the same with the old love; he will recognize the identity of new and old, and not wonder at either the past or present?

5. Admire, wonder at, as in Twelfth Night, Act III. sc. 4, 1. 165, "Wonder not nor admire not in thy mind why I do call thee so."

7. And rather make them. "Them" refers to "what thou dost foist," etc.; we choose rather to think such things new, and specially created for our satisfaction, than, as they really are, old things of which we have already heard.

CXXIV. Continues the thought of CXXIII. 13, 14. The writer's love being unconnected with motives of selfinterest, is independent of Fortune and Time.

1. The child of state, born of place and power and pomp. 4. Weeds, etc. My love might be subject to Time's hate, and so plucked up as a weed, or subject to Time's love, and so gathered as a flower.

7, 8. When time puts us, who have been in favour, out of fashion.

9. Policy, that heretic, the prudence of self-interest, which is faithless in love. Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act 1. sc. 2, 1. 95. Romeo, speaking of eyes unfaithful to the beloved:

Transparent heretics be burnt for liars.

11. Hugely politic, love itself is infinitely prudent, prudent for eternity.

12. That it nor grows. Steevens proposes glows.

13, 14. Does this mean, "I call to witness the transitory unworthy loves (fools of time = sports of time. See CXVI. 9), whose death was a virtue since their life was a crime”?

CXXV. In connection with Sonnet CXXIV.; there Shakspere asserted that his love was not subject to time, as friendships founded on self-interest are; here he asserts that it is not founded on beauty of person, and therefore cannot pass away with the decay of such beauty. It is pure love for love.

1. Bore the canopy, i.e., rendered outward homage, as one renders who bears a canopy over a superior. The metaphor was not so far-fetched in Shakspere's day as it

would be in ours. At the funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth, a canopy over the corpse was borne by six knights. King James I. made his progress through London, 1603-4, under a canopy. In the account of the King and Queen's entertainment at Oxford, 1605, we read : "From thence was carried over the King and Queen a fair canopy of crimson taffety, by six of the Canons of the Church."-Nichol's Progresses of King James, vol. i. p. 546.

2. The outward. Compare Sonnet LXIX. 1-5. Staunton proposes "thy outward," or "thee outward."

3. Or laid, etc. The love of the earlier sonnets, which celebrated the beauty of Shakspere's friend, was to last for ever, and yet it has been ruined.

5. Favour, outward appearance, as in Sonnet CXIII. 10. 6. Lose all and more, cease to love, and through satiety even grow to dislike.

9. Obsequious, zealous, devoted, as in Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. sc. 2, 1. 2, "I see you are obsequious in your love."

11. Mix'd with seconds, mixed with baser matter. “I am just informed by an old lady, that seconds is a provincial term for the second kind of flour, which is collected after the smaller bran is sifted. That our author's oblation was pure [an offering of fine flour], unmixed with baser matter, is all that he meant to say."-STEEVENS. Dyce, who at one time spoke of this note of Steevens as preposterously absurd," believed then that the word seconds is a misprint.

66

13. Suborn'd informer. Does this refer to an actual person, one of the spies of Sonnet CXXI. 7, 8? Or is the

"informer" Jealousy, or Suspicion? as in Venus and Adonis, 1. 655:

This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy,
This canker that eats up Love's tender spring,
This carry-tale, dissentious Jealousy.

CXXVI. This is the concluding poem of the series addressed to Shakspere's friend; it consists of six rhymed couplets. In the Quarto, parentheses follow the twelfth line, thus:

as if to show that two lines are wanting. But there is no good reason for supposing that the poem is defective. In William Smith's Chloris, 1596, a "sonnet" (No. 27) of this six-couplet form appears.

2. Sickle, hour. "Lintott reads 'fickle hour;' S. Walker conjectures 'sickle-hour;' Capell, in his copy of Lintott's edition, has corrected 'hower' to 'hoar,' leaving fickle.' Doubtless he intended to read 'sickle hoar.'"-Cambridge Shakespeare.

12. Quietus. As in Hamlet's soliloquy, Act III. sc. 1, 1. 75. "This is the technical term for the acquittance which every sheriff [or accountant] receives on settling his accounts at the Exchequer. Compare Webster, Duchess of Malfi [1. i. vol. i. p. 198, Works, ed. Dyce]:' And 'cause you shall not come to me in debt, being now my steward, here upon your lips I sign your Quietus est.'"-STEEVENS. Quoted by Furness, in his edition of Hamlet, p. 212.