SONNETS.

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“A

BOOK called Shakespeare's Sonnets " was entered in the Stationers' register by Thomas Thorpe, on the 20th of May, 1609, and published the same year. Thorpe was somewhat eminent in his line of business, and his edition of the Sonnets was preluded with a book-seller's dedication, very quaint and affected both in the language and in the manner of printing; the printing being in small capitals, with a period after each word, and the wording thus: "To the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness, and that eternity promised by our ever-living Poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth, T. T.”

There was no other edition of the Sonnets till 1640, when they were republished by Thomas Cotes, but in a totally different order from that of 1609, being cut, seemingly at random, into seventy-four little poems, with a quaint heading to each, and with parts of The Passionate Pilgrim interspersed. This edition is not regarded as of any authority, save as showing that within twenty-four years after the Poet's death the Sonnets were so far from being thought to have that unity of cause, or purpose, or occasion, which has since been attributed to them, as to be set forth under an arrangement quite incompatible with any such idea.

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In the preface to Venus and Adonis I quote a passage from the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, which speaks of the Poet's sugared Sonnets among his private friends." This ascertains that a portion, at least, of the Sonnets were written, and well known in private circles, before 1598. It naturally infers, also, that they were written on divers occasions and for divers persons, some of them being intended, perhaps, as personal compliments, and others merely as exercises of fancy. Copies of them were

most likely multiplied, to some extent, in manuscript; since this would naturally follow both from their intrinsic excellence, and from the favour with which the mention of them by Meres shows them to have been regarded. Probably the author added to the number from time to time after 1598; and, as he grew in public distinction and private acquaintance, there would almost needs have been a growing ambition or curiosity among his friends and admirers, to have each as large a collection of these little treasures as they could. What more natural or likely than that, among those to whom, in this course of private circulation, they became known, there should be some one person or more who took pride and pleasure in making or procuring transcripts of as many as he could hear of, and thus getting together, if possible, a full set of them?

Two of the Sonnets, the 138th and the 144th, were printed, with some variations, as a part of The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599. In the same publication, which was doubtless made ignorantly and without authority, there are also several others, which, if really Shakespeare's, have as much right to a place among the Sonnets as many that are already there. At all events, the fact of those two being thus detached and appearing by themselves may be fairly held to argue a good deal as to the manner in which the Sonnets were probably written and circulated.

We have seen that Thorpe calls the "Mr. W. H.," to whom he dedicates his edition, "the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets." The word begetter has been commonly understood as meaning the person who was the cause or occasion of the Sonnets being written, and to whom they were originally addressed. The taking of the word in this sense has caused a great deal of controversy, and exercised a vast amount of critical ingenuity, in endeavouring to trace a thread of continuity through the whole series, and to discover the person who had the somewhat equivocal honour of begetting or inspiring them. And such, no doubt, is the natural and proper sense of the word; but what it might mean in the mouth of one so anxious, apparently, to speak out of the common way, is a question not so easily settled. That the Sonnets could not, in this sense, have been all begotten by one person, has to be admitted; for, if it be certain that some of them

were addressed to a man, it is equally certain that others were addressed to a woman. But the word begetter is found to have been sometimes used in the sense of obtainer or procurer; and such is the only sense which, in Thorpe's affected language, it will bear, consistently with the internal evidence of the Sonnets themselves. As for the theories, therefore, which have mainly grown from taking Thorp's only begetter to mean only inspirer, I set them all aside as being irrelevant to the subject. I have no doubt, that "the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets" was simply the person who made or procured transcripts of them, and got them all together, either for his own use or for publication, and to whom Thorpe was indebted for his copy of them.

But Thorpe wishes to his Mr. W. H. "that eternity promised by our ever-living Poet." Promised by the Poet to whom? To "Mr. W. H." or to himself, or to some one else? For aught appears to the contrary, it may be to either one, or perhaps two, of these; for in some of the Sonnets, as the 18th and 19th, the Poet promises an eternity of youth and fame both to his verse and to the person he is addressing. Here may be the proper place for remarking that the 20th has the line, “A man in hue all hues in his controlling." Here the original prints hues in Italic type and with a capital, Hews, just as Will is printed in the 135th and the 136th, where the author is evidently playing upon his own name. Tyrwhitt conjectured that a play was intended on the name of Hughes, and that one W. Hughes may have been the "Mr. W. H." of Thorpe's dedication, and the person addressed in the Sonnets. It is indeed possible that the 20th, and perhaps some others, may have been addressed to a personal friend of the Poet's so named, who was the procurer of the whole series for publication: I say possible, and that seems the most that can be said about it.

Great effort has been made, to find in the Sonnets some deeper or other meaning than meets the ear, and to fix upon them, generally, a personal and autobiographical character. It must indeed be owned that there is in several of them an earnestness of tone, and in some few a subdued pathos, which strongly argues them to be expressions of the Poet's real feelings respecting himself, his condition, and the person or persons addressed. This

is particularly the case with a series of ten, beginning with the 109th. Something the same may be said of the 23d, 25th, and 26th, where we find a striking resemblance to some expressions used in the dedications of the Venus and Adonis and of the Lucrece. But, as to the greater part of the Sonnets, I have long been growing more and more convinced that they were intended mainly as exercises of fancy, cast in a form of personal address, and perhaps mingling an element of personal interest or allusion, merely as a matter of art; whatever there is of personal in them being thus kept subordinate and incidental to poetical beauty and effect. For instance, in the 138th, than which few have more appearance of being autobiographical, the Poet speaks of himself as being old, and says his “days are past the best"; yet this was printed in 1599, when he was but thirty-five. Surely, in this case, his reason for using such language must have been, that it suited his purpose as a poet, not that it was true of his age as

a man.

Much light is thrown on these remarkable effusions by the general style of sonneteering then in vogue, as exemplified in the Sonnets of Spenser, Drayton, and Daniel. In these too, though unquestionably designed mainly as studies or specimens of art, the authors, while speaking in the form of a personal address, and as if revealing their own actual thoughts and inward history, are continually using language and imagery that clearly had not and could not have any truth or fitness save in reference to their purpose as poets. In proportion to the genius and art of the men, these Sonnets have, as much as Shakespeare's, the appearance of being autobiographical, and of disclosing the true personal sentiments and history of the authors; except, as already mentioned, in some few cases where Wordsworth is probably right in saying of the Sonnet, that "with this key Shakespeare unlock'd his heart." For, indeed, it was a common fashion of the time, in sonnet-writing, for authors to speak in an ideal or imaginary character as if it were their real one, and to attribute to themselves certain thoughts and feelings, merely because it suited their purpose, and was a part of their art as poets, so to do. And this, I make no doubt, is the true key to the mystery which has puzzled so many critics in the Sonnets of Shakespeare.