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7, 8. Compare Venus and Adonis, 11. 757-761:

What is thy body but a swallowing grave
Seeming to bury that posterity,

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

9, 10. Compare Lucrece, 11. 1758, 1759 (old Lucretius addressing his dead daughter):-

Poor broken glass, I often did behold

In thy sweet semblance my old age new-born.

11. Compare A Lover's Complaint, 1. 14:

Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.

12. Golden time. So King Richard III., Act I. sc. 2, 1. 248," the golden prime of this sweet prince."

13. If thou live. Capell suggests love.

IV. In Sonnet III. Shakspere has viewed his friend as an inheritor of beauty from his mother; this legacy of beauty is now regarded as the bequest of nature. The ideas of unthriftiness (1. 1) and niggardliness (1. 5) are derived from Sonnets I., II.; the "audit" (1. 12) is another form of the "sum my count of II. 11. The new idea introduced in this sonnet is that of usury, which reappears in VI. 5, 6.

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3. So Measure for Measure, Act 1. sc. 1, 11. 36-41. Shakspere imagines Nature, as a thrifty goddess, lending, but, like a strict creditor, exacting thanks and interest.

Spirits are not finely touch'd

But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines

Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

Compare with this sonnet the arguments put into the mouth of Comus by Milton: Comus, 679-684:

Why should you be so cruel to yourself
And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent
For gentle usage, and soft delicacy?

But

you invert the covenants of her trust,

And harshly deal like an ill-borrower
With that which you received on other terms;

and 11. 720-727 :-
:-

If all the world

Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse,

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,
The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised,
Not half his riches known, and yet despised;

And we would serve him as a grudging master,

As a penurious niggard of his wealth,

And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.

4. Free, liberal.

8. Live, subsist. With all your usury you have not a livelihood, for trafficking only with yourself, you put a cheat upon yourself, and win nothing by such usury. 14. Th' executor. Malone reads "thy executor."

V. In Sonnets V., VI., youth and age are compared to the seasons of the year: in VII. they are compared to morning and evening, the seasons of the day.

1. Hours, a dissyllable, as in The Tempest, Act v. 1. 4. "On the sixth hour; at which time my lord."

2. Gaze, object gazed at, as in Macbeth, Act v. sc. 8, 1. 24. "Live to be the show and gaze o' the time."

4. Unfair, deprive of beauty; not elsewhere used by Shakspere, but in Sonnet CXXVII. we find, "Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face."

9. Summer's distillation, perfumes made from flowers. Compare Sonnet LIV. and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act I. sc. 1, 11. 76, 77 :—

Earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

14. Leese, lose. In the Authorized Version of the Bible, 1 Kings xviii. 5, this word occurred, "that we leese not all the beasts; it has been changed to "lose" in

modern editions.

VI. This sonnet carries on the thoughts of IV. and v. -the distilling of perfume from V., and the interest paid on money lent from IV.

5. Use, interest, as in Much Ado, Act II. sc. 1, 1. 288: "Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one." Compare with this sonnet the solicitation of Adonis by Venus, 11. 767, 768.

Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.

And Merchant of Venice, Act 1. sc 3, 11. 70-97. Shylock,

to justify his usury, compares his gold and silver to Laban's ewes and rams, which Jacob caused to breed parti-coloured lambs :—

ANTONIO. Was this inserted to make interest good,
Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?

SHYLOCK.-I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast.

66

"The

The mediæval theologians argued against requiring interest on money, on the ground that "all money is sterile by nature," an absurdity of Aristotle. Greek word for interest (róкoç, from TíкTw, I beget) was probably connected with this delusion." "In England money - lending was first formally permitted under Henry VIII." Lecky, Hist. of Rationalism in Europe,

chap. vi. note.

13. Self-will'd. Delius conjectures, "self-kill'd.”

VII. After imagery drawn from summer and winter, Shakspere finds new imagery in morning and evening. 3. Each under eye. Compare The Winter's Tale, Act iv. sc. 2, 1. 40, I have eyes under my service."

5. Steep-up heavenly. Mr. W. J. Craig suggests that Shakspere may have written "steep up-heavenly."

7, 8. Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act 1. sc. 1, ll. 125, 126:

Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun

Peer'd forth the golden window of the east.

10. He reeleth from the day. Compare Romeo and Juliet, Act II. sc. 3, 1. 3:

Flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path.

Chapman writes in The Shadow of Night: Hymnus in Cynthiam:

Time's motion being like the reeling sun's.

11, 12. Compare Timon of Athens, Act I. sc. 2, 1. 150:Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

13. Thyself outgoing in thy noon, passing beyond your

zenith.

VIII. In the Additional MS. 15,226, British Museum, is a copy, written in James I.'s reign, of this Sonnet.

1. Thou, whom to hear is music, why, etc. Compare Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, Act v. sc. 1, 1. 69, “ I am never merry when I hear sweet music.”

8. Bear. Staunton proposes share.

13, 14. Perhaps there is an allusion to the old proverbial expression that one is no number. Compare Sonnet CXXXVI., "Among a number one is reckon'd none;" and Romeo and Juliet, Act 1. sc. 2, 11. 31, 32:

Of many mine being one

May stand in number, though in reckoning none.

The conceit in the last two lines of the sonnet seems to be that since many make but one, one will prove also less than itself, that is, will prove none.

IX. The thought of married happiness in VIII.-husband, child, and mother united in joy-suggests its opposite, the grief of a weeping widow. "Thou single

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