deed have come down to Rowe through the many intimates of Ben Jonson, and it is confirmed by the notice in Jonson's own edition, that the play was first acted in 1598, and by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, Shakespeare's company, he himself taking one of the principal parts. It is one of many that cannot be positively proved, but can be readily believed; the existence of the tradition is probably proof enough that the act is one that Shakespeare was capable of, nay, that if he did not do precisely this he did some other kindness to Jonson very much like it, however indifferently reported. Jonson had need this year of all the friendship at his call, for in September he had a duel with Gabriel Spencer, a player in Henslowe's company, and slew him, receiving himself a wound in the arm from his adversary's sword, "ten inches longer" than his own.

The ill-starred absence of Essex in Ireland, in 1599, extended from March to September, and it was in the summer comprised in this interval that Henry V. was first brought out at the Globe, and the chorus expressed the national hopes for the success of the popular favourite. Later in the year, after his return and disgrace, we meet in a private letter with an allusion to the occupation of his friend Lord Southampton, the patron also, if not rather, friend of Shakespeare." My Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland come not to the court (it was then at Nonsuch); the one doth but very seldom. They pass away the time in London, merely in going to plays every day. 11th October, 1599." The two noblemen were connected by marriage with Essex, and were under a cloud with him.

In this year a small collection of poems was published under the title of "The Passionate Pilgrim," with William Shakespeare's name on the title-page, though many of them, it may be most, were notoriously by other poets. Ileywood, in claiming his own, referred to Shakespeare's displeasure; "but as I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he hath published them, so the author I know much offended with M.

Jaggard, that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name."

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We have seen that in the previous year Meres alluded to "sugared sonnets" by Shakespeare circulated among his private friends, and it is probable, that at this date he had already written the series that did not get into print until 1609, when they came out with the "Lover's Complaint." Jaggard's collection includes two, which with slight variations correspond with two in the larger collection, numbered 138 and 144. The first of these is addressed to a mistress by a lover, who speaks of himself as old," as 66 past the best." The other alludes to a friend, and also a mistress,-a fair youth, a dark woman, and expresses mistrust of a design of the latter to seduce the friend. These themes recur in the larger collection, of which the origin to this extent is carried up to the year 1599 at latest, and probably to a year before the mention of them by Meres, when Shakespeare was thirtythree. This is not too early for his allusions to age to be applicable to himself, considering that he speaks of the fortieth year as confirmed old age.

The first nineteen sonnets are addressed to a youthful friend, and their common purport is to urge his personal beauty as a motive for him to marry: the argument is pursued in much the same terms which Viola addresses to Olivia, Theseus to Hermia, Parolles to Helena, even we may say, Venus to Adonis,—the provident anticipation of beauteous offspring, to succeed and continue existing but transitory beauty. There is, however, something very remote and constrained in the anxiety of a friend, as it comes forward here, and hence a forced artificiality pervades the verses, ingenious as they are, and the effect is far from congenial. I presume the explanation of this must be, that the tone as well as the form of the sonnet was accepted as conventional; this is pretty clear from comparison of the sonnets of the time: subtlety and ingenuity in varying and wire-drawing a sentiment, and art in completing an idea within the settled limits, in making it quite fill them and but just

fill them, these were achievements of more consequence than the subject itself, and most esteemed when most independent of subject. Sonnet writers for generations had sacrificed primary interest to dexterity in plaiting and twining and interlacing the motives of a very restricted subject, and hence it was natural, indeed was fitting, for him who would write sonnets, to choose a theme that would not suffer by, and would rather assist, such treatment; whether it were worth while attempting such theme or style at all may be a question, but the attempt prescribed the conditions, and whims will have their vent as well as stronger impulses. Felicities of expression, fantasies of imagery, flutter among the lines of the sonnet as various-feathered birds among the tanglement of a summer thicket.

In another series, more or less continuous, but for very disorderly arrangement, this theme is dropt, and the beauty of the youth is celebrated with his moral excellence and the affectionate regard of the poet, and the perishableness of beauty is placed in contrast with the persistence of affection. This series is much more profound and genuine than the former, but still not so much so as to forfeit the charter of sonneteers, which forbids that sentiment should ever extricate itself quite from sentimentality. Neither is sentimentalism wanting, though it stoops its very lowest in the other sonnets that upbraid the friend for robbing him of his mistress, and forgive him in the same breath. Had we a full biography of the poet with all its surroundings, we might explain much that is obscure in these remarkable effusions, but by no process that I can conceive, may we hope to recover from them allusions to facts and gain assistance to illustrate and reanimate the life.

The publication of 1609 was dedicated by the publisher to "Mr. W. H. as the only begetter of the sonnets," -the cause and occasion of them, we interpret,—with wish for the eternity promised by the poet, an allusion to the eighty-first sonnet. The sonnets 134 and 135 have been understood rather rashly as showing that the friend's

name, like that of the poet, was William. From the general tone of the poems, and from some particular expressions, it has also been assumed that the friend addressed was superior in social rank to the writer.

Who was he? Was he in truth any one, or a mere phantasma of sonneteering brain? Some have conjectured the Earl of Southampton, and taken the initials in reverse order for Henry Wriothesley; more consistently, at least, it has been held by others, that they indicate William Herbert, who was, it is true, Earl of Pembroke, in 1609, when the collection was published, but not when they were probably written, having only become so in 1601-in 1597 he was only seventeen. The terms in which the dedication of the first folio declares the attachment of this noble pair to the person and poetry of Shakespeare, have been further quoted to show that such familiarity as he assumes, was not improper or impossible. Clarendon speaks of Pembroke as the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age, of excellent parts and a graceful speaker upon any subject, having a good proportion of learning and a ready wit to apply it." In elder life he was not exempt from the weaknesses and frailties, that as we have said, beset the sensitive and the sympathetic—here, however, we leave the discussion, convinced that for my own part I am not likely to advance, still less to settle, even the preliminaries of a decision,

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Turning back for the notes of domestic and personal incidents during these last four or five years, we soon come upon a series of indications of the poet's worldly prosperity, and of his disposition to make his native place the scene of his enjoyment of it. Here not only still lived his father and mother, but his own wife and family, and here, in August, 1596, his only son Hamnet, in his eleventh year, died and was buried. It is as futile to speculate as to sentimentalize on a loss of which we only know the fact. It may have been sudden, may have been expected, a blow or a blessing, variously mingled as are the elements of good and evil. Who without proof

at hand shall speak of their proportions in a special case? Still, we may say thus much; Shakespeare's disposition of his property by his will proves that he had a feeling for transmitting the bulk of his acquisitions in a mass,— of founding a family in the sense of providing, by strict entail, that the chief of his descendants should be always able to maintain the standing of gentleman that he himself had won, or as he might be disposed to say—recovered. In this very year of 1596, is found a draft of arms—the sanction of gentry, which had been applied for at the herald's office, probably somewhat earlier, in the name of his father, but doubtless on the motion of his now wealthy and distinguished son. The hope and joy of male succession is naturally bound up with these feelings, and the loss of it causes them a pang that is severe even when from the suffering of tenderer affections it is entirely secondary. A domestic affliction is constantly the turning point in the busiest and most eager lives; there is proof enough that however severe the stroke may have been, it did not paralyze the energies or the imagination of Shakespeare, but I am not certain that we may not trace its effect on some of his views, and some of his habits, from the changes he makes at this time in his property. In the Easter term of the following year he bought a dwelling-house, one of the best at Stratford, known as New Place, where he settled his family and at last died himself, and in succeeding years we find him bent on transferring his gains from London to Warwickshire, still guided in his investments by a certain regard for advancement or establishment in standing, as dependent on their form.

New Place is described in an instrument of the purchase as consisting of one messuage, two barns, and two gardens, with their appurtenances; the site is the angle of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane, immediately adjoining the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, (qy. Holy Cross,) the purchase money was £60, to be reckoned as equal to about five times that sum at present.

In the same year his father sold a small portion of the