In writing Sonnets, he naturally fell into the current style, of the age; only, by how much he surpassed the others in dramatic power, by so much was he better able to express ideal sentiments as if they were his own, and to pass out of himself into the characters he had imagined or assumed.

Taking this view of the matter, I of course do not search after any thread or principle of continuity running through the whole series of Sonnets, or any considerable portion of them. I hold them to have been strictly fragmentary in conception and execution, written at divers times and from various motives; addressed sometimes, perhaps, to actual persons, sometimes to ideal; and, for the most part, weaving together the real and the imaginary sentiments of the author, as would best serve the end of poetical beauty and effect. In fine, I think he wrote them mainly as an artist, not as a man, though as an artist acting more or less upon the incidents and suggestions of his actual experience. Doubtless, too, in divers cases, several of them have a special unity and coherence among themselves, being run together in continuous sets or clusters, and forming separate poems. This avoids the endless tissue of conflicting theories that has gathered about them, and also clears up the perplexity and confusion which one cannot but feel while reading them under an idea or persuasion of their being a continuous whole.

I give the Sonnets in the same order and arrangement which they have in the original edition, believing that this ought not to be interfered with, until the question shall be better settled as to the order in which they should be printed. Nevertheless, I am far from thinking this order to be the right one: on the contrary, I hold it to be in many particulars altogether disordered. It seems quite evident that there is much misplacement and confusion among them; sometimes those being scattered here and there, which belong together, sometimes one set being broken by the thrusting-in of a detached member or portion of another For instance, the three playing upon the author's name clearly ought to stand together; yet they are printed as the 135th, 136th, and 143d; the last of the trio being thus separated from the rest by the interposition of six jumbled together, apparently, all out of their proper connection in other sets. So,

set.

again, the 127th, 131st, and 132d clearly ought to stand together, being continuous alike in the subject and in the manner of treating it. Numerous other cases of like dislocation might easily be pointed out.

Touching the merit of the Sonnets, there need not much be said. Some of them would hardly do credit to a school-boy, while many are such as it may well be held an honour even to Shakespeare to have written; there being nothing of the kind in the language approaching them, except a few of Milton's and a good many of Wordsworth's. That in these the Poet should have sometimes rendered his work excessively frigid with the euphuistic conceits and affectations of the time, is far less wonderful than the exquisite beauty, and often more than beauty, of sentiment and imagery that distinguishes a large portion of them. Many might be pointed out, which, with perfect clearness and compactness of thought, are resplendent with the highest glories of imagination; others are replete with the tenderest pathos; others, again, are compact of graceful fancy and airy elegance; while in all these styles there are specimens perfectly steeped in the melody of sounds and numbers, as if the thought were born of music, and the music interfused with its very substance. Wordsworth gives it as his opinion, that "there is no part of the writings of this Poet, where is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed."

SONNETS.

I.

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase, a
That thereby beauty's rose might never die, A-
But, as the riper should by time decrease,
His tender heir might bear his memory: <
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, d
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy Spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.1▲

g

2.

When forty Winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held :
Then, being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

1 To eat what is due to the world, by burying thyself, that is, by leaving no posterity, seems to be the meaning.

To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer, This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,
Proving his beauty by succession thine!

This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

3.

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd2 womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime :
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

4.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

2 Unear'd is untilled, fallow; as to ear is to plough. See vol. xix. page 282, note 2. — Fond, second line after, is foolish; the more usual meaning of the word in Shakespeare's time.

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend;
And, being frank, she lends to those are free.3
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For, having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,
Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

5.

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads Summer on

To hideous Winter and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd, and bareness everywhere:

Then, were not Summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distill'd, though they with Winter meet, Leese 5 but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

8 Free in the sense of liberal or generous.

4 Unfair is here a verb, meaning make unfair.

5 Leese is an ancient form of lose. Not used again by Shakespeare.