And yet the tyranny is meekly borne by the lover:

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought,
Save, where you are how happy you make those :
So true a foot is love, that in your will
(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.

57

That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure'
O, let me suffer (being at your beck)

The imprisoned absence of your liberty,

And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check
Without accusing you of injury.

Be where you list; your charter is so strong,
That you yourself may privilege your time:
Do what you will, to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.

I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

58.

66

was a

The Sonnets last given are the 57th and 58th. These are cspecially noticed by Mr. Brown as evidence that the person to whom he considers the Sonnets are addressed W. H.man of rank.” He adds, "Reproach is conveyed more forcibly and, at the same time, with more kindness, in their strained hu

mility, than it would have been by direct expostulation." The reproach, according to Mr. Brown, is for the "coldness" which the noble youth had evinced towards his friend. The "coldness" is implied in these stanzas, and in that which precedes them :

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,
To-morrow sharpened in his former might:
So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
To-morrow see again and do not kill

The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness.
Let this sad interim like the ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted-new
Come daily to the banks, that, when they see
Return of love, more blessed may be the view;
Or call it winter, which, being full of care,

Makes summer's welcome thrice more wished, more

rare.

56

We believe, on the contrary, that the three Sonnets are addressed to a female. It appears to us that a line in the 57th is decisive upon this :

"When you have bid your servant once adieu."

The lady was the mistress, the lover the servant, in the gallantry of Shakspeare's time. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady" we have, "Was I not once your mistress, and you my servant?' The three stanzas, 56, 57, 58, are completely isolated from what precedes and what follows them; and therefore we have no hesitation in transposing them to this class.

We are about to give a Sonnet which Mr. Brown thinks "should be expunged from the poem." We should regret to lose so pretty and playful a love-verse:

Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said I hate,
To me that languished for her sake:

But when she saw my woful state,

Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue, that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus anew to greet:
I hate she altered with an end,
That followed it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away.
I hate from hate away she threw,
And saved my life, saying—not you.

145.

It is, however, strangely opposed to the theory of continuity, for it occurs between the Sonnet which first appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim,

"Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,”

and the magnificent lines beginning

66

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth."

This is a

This sublime Sonnet Mr. Brown would also expunge. hard sentence against it for being out of place. We shall endeavor to remove it to fitter company.

We have now very much reduced the number of stanzas which Mr Brown assigns to the Sixth Poem, entitled by him, "To his Mistress, on her Infidelity." There are only twenty-six stanzas in this division of Mr. Brown's Six Poems; for he rejects the Sonnets numbered 153 and 154, as belonging "to nothing but themselves." They belong, indeed, to the same class of poems as constitute the bulk of those printed in The Passionate Pilgrim. But, being printed in the collection of 1609, they offer very satisfactory evidence that "the begetter" of the Sonnets had no distinct principle of connection to work upon. He has printed, as already mentioned, two Sonnets which had previously appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim. But if they were taken out from the larger collection, no one could say that its continuity would be deranged. There are other Sonnets, properly so called, in The Passionate Pilgrim, which, if they were to be added to the larger collection. there would be no difficulty in inserting them, so as to be as con tinuous as the two which are common to both works. We have no objection to proceed with our analytical classification without in

cluding the two Sonnets on "the little love-god;" because, if we were attempting here to present all Shakspeare's love-verses which exist in print, not being in the plays, we should have to insert six other poems which are in The Passionate Pilgrim.

What, then, have we left of the Sonnets from the 127th to the 152d which may warrant those twenty-six stanzas being regarded (with two exceptions pointed out by Mr. Brown himself) as a continuous poem, to be entitled, "To his Mistress, on her Infidelity"? We have, indeed, a “leading idea," and a very distinct one, of some delusion, once cherished by the poet, against the power of which he struggles, and which his better reason finally rejects. But the complaint is not wholly that of the infidelity of a mistress; it is that the love which he bears towards her is incompatible with his sense of duty, and with that tranquility of mind which belongs to a pure and lawful affection. This "leading idea is expressed in ten stanzas, which we print in the order in which they occur. They are more or less strong and direct in their allusions; but, whether the situation which the poet describes be real or imaginary whether he speak from the depth of his own feelings, or with his wonderful dramatic power · there are no verses in our language more expressive of the torments of a passion based upon unlawfulness. Throes such as these were somewhat uncommon amongst the gallants of the days of Elizabeth:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner, but despiséd straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated; as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, -and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream;

All this the world well knows; yet none knows

well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

VOL. VIII.

21

129.

Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
That they behold, and see not what they see?
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.
If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
Why of eyes, falsehood hast thou forgéd hooks,
Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
Why should my heart think that a several plot
Which my heart knows that wide world's common
place?

Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,

To put fair truth upon so foul a face?

In things right true my heart and eyes have erred, And to this false plague are they now transferred.

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies;
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have age told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

138.

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note ;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.

Nor are mine ears with thy tongues tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,

137