had a considerable fortune, which was subsequently increased by an unexpected inheritance. The lady had likewise a will of her own, as she had a right to have, and we daresay there may have been domestic tussles before she was permitted to indulge it. At any rate, the pair ultimately signed terms of peace, and agreed to go each their own way as they liked, coming together on a footing of friendship when they pleased. Winstanley had gone through all the successive grades, from unpaid attaché to first secretary of legation; and then he became a promising Minister, although he had never risen to the rank of ambassador. That, as I said, was very much his own fault. He was able, but only too versatile, for he wanted ballast. He loved change of scene, and was willing to be shifted anywhere, from the Hague or Frankfort to Quito or Pekin. And all that could certainly be predicated of him at the Foreign Office was, that he would scarcely be settled ere he would wish to change again. And a And a change he invariably succeeded in effecting, which may have gone far to account for his complacent submission, though he went revolving in secondary spheres in place of rising to the primary.

So that even in the discharge of his strictly official duties, the proverb of the rolling stone could hardly be said to apply to him, for he rolled out of one good berth into another, and had always respectable pay and appointments. But he was a man who had many irons in the fire, and had a marvellous instinct for never burning his fingers. As to that, we may let him speak for himself, as it was a subject on which he was especially fond of speaking when he could make sure of his audience. Winstanley detested the semblance of boasting, but he loved sympathetic

appreciation. Perhaps it was the unfeigned and only half-conscious flattery of Jack Venables in that respect, which had drawn the elder adventurer most strongly towards the younger one.

Jack had expressed his admiration and astonishment at the number and variety of those irons of Mr Winstanley, though he had merely heard of a few of them in course of conversation.

"Well, you see,' " said Winstanley, complacently, "I have lived in many places in my time, and have always made it a golden rule to turn my opportunities to the best advantage.'

"And such opportunities!" sighingly ejaculated Jack.

"Such opportunities, you may well say. No man can do more in the speculative way than one of her Majesty's diplomatic representatives in foreign parts. The misfortune is, with men sent to Peru or Patagonia, or those sort of places, that very few of them have money. They try to live on their incomes, or to save upon them, and they fail ignominiously. Now I had money, as it happened. Trade is forbidden even to consuls now, very properly, though the poor devils have often to starve upon a pittance, in obedience to peremptory though righteous rules. a free Briton may always invest his money in whatever quarter of the globe he happens to find himself. A diplomatist has always access to the best information, and should be able to count on his position for guaranteeing his being honestly dealt with."

But

"So, sir?" again ejaculated Jack, hanging on the lips of the speaker, in the confident hope of successfully imitating him.

Winstanley was pleased, and went on; perhaps he had his reasons besides.

"Look here, Venables; I have

taken a liking to you, and I don't mind telling you something of my financial story for your guidance. I owe you a debt, and I hope to do more than this to pay it; meantime I am sure I may count on your discretion, for you conceive it is not to every one that I should give a catalogue raisonné of my investments.'

Jack merely bowed and smiled, -he was too deeply interested to interrupt; and Winstanley pro

ceeded :

"I don't pretend for a moment that the list is exhaustive; indeed I have been perpetually selling out and buying again elsewhere, for even a steady run of gains would pall intolerably. I merely give you some illustrative cases, and mention what I consider the turning-points in my career.

"I flatter myself my first hit was an inspiration, and the boldest of all. When in the Foreign Office as a mere boy, I had made friends with Isaacs, the great Jew financier; or rather, Isaacs had condescended to take notice of me. By way of extraordinary favour, he had allotted me a few shares in the Universal Bank. The shares had gone up like balloons, and they came down again as if the gas was escaping through rents, in the panic of- -I don't precisely remember the year.

I was in mortal terror, for the liability was unlimited; and I was in blessed ignorance of the bank's transactions and resources. I rushed off to my friend Isaacs. I think I must have taken his fancy, as you have taken mine. It was after dusk, in his private sitting-room, and before answering he went to see if the door was shut, and if the shutters were safe. Then he came back to me with an air of mystery, and told me that the concern was absolutely safe. 'Schwartzchild' was the only word he dropped

besides, and I could see that he would shut up like an oyster if I cross-examined him. I thanked him, and shook hands, and chewed the cud of meditation through a sleepless night. lose seriously, and might possibly be let in after all. But if the bank was safe, it must be the time to buy, for the falling shares were to be had for a song. It was all a question of Isaacs' good faith, for he was assuredly in the bank's innermost secrets, and as to that I exercised my diplomatic perceptions. I was persuaded that the man meant kindly by me, so I gave commission to sundry brokers to buy Universal shares. The bank was smashed up long ago, but I sold all I had bought afterwards, contenting myself with a modest gain of £8000. Had I chosen to hold on, I might have made half as much again; and had I stuck to the investment, I should have been a ruined man.

If I sold, I should

"Those were pleasant times in Paris, when I was second secretary in the Faubourg St Honoré, during the golden days of the Empire. As a member of our Legation, I knew nothing and wished to know nothing of such things as that luckless 'Mexican Question,' which came on later, and was handed over to De Morny for the payment of his debts. But I cultivated M. Haussman and the MM. Fould. I used to dine with those magnificent gentlemen pretty frequently, smoking cigarettes over sweet champagne at dessert, and by putting two and two together I exercised my prescience, and picked up sundry lots of house property on the lines of the Prefect's projected demolitions.

"I had got rid of most of them before I was sent on to Vienna, to profit by my Parisian experiences in the Kaiserstadt. I had my knife and fork at Schwartzchild's mansion in the Leopoldplatz, and I

had my little interest in the house speculations, in the Danube Valley Reclamation schemes and the Hun

garian Land-banks. Well, well, perhaps it was lucky for me that the Viennese society and blank days of bear-shooting in the Carpathians bored me. At all events I was in Pekin, having cleared out everything Austrian at handsome profits before the krach came in the great exhibition year. By the way, I remember that relative of yours, Mr Moray, in China, but we will talk about him another time. I soon tired of China, and touched nothing there. No doubt there was money to be made by outsiders in silks and opium. But the fact was, it was the kind of money-making which is likely to leave pitch on the fingers. And as I caught an ague besides, I went to sun myself and get rid of the shivers in the dry uplands of the Columbian Republic. There I dipped into coffee-plantations, and dyed my hands in indigo-growing, -always in the way of legitimate investments, remember; and I should have done a good deal better than I did, had it not been for the moral tone of the country. I give you my word of honour, that when you get mixed up with a syndicate there, the rascals would leave even a British Minister in the lurch; and more than once I had to come down handsomely, to save the credit of those whom malevolent scandal might have called my confederates. But I pray you to observe, my young friend, that though I have made many hits in my time, I never in my life did one dishonourable action, and so I saw my properties in Columbia seriously depreciated. The more was the pity. Had others only run as straight, I might have left the Legation there with a handsome fortune. And I don't know, after all, but what I should have re

gretted it, for satisfactory speculation is the salt of life.

"But I am getting prosaic, and I fear I begin to twaddle. Oh yes, it is no use your protestingI take your civility for what it is worth. And at any rate, I should say little about my squabbles with the Foreign Office.

"As for successive Foreign Secretaries, I always found them the most impracticable of men." And here Mr Winstanley smiled. "They said—and you may imagine how absurd the accusation wasthat I was never to be counted upon from month to month; that the health and digestion which seemed perfect in London were always breaking down in foreign climates; that I was perpetually giving myself leave of absence; and that if they sent a specially important despatch, I was always crossing it en route. You conceive, that to a gentleman of comfortable means, there was no dealing with officials of that stamp. So I intimated courteously, that, leaving my services at her Majesty's disposal, I was quite content to be shelved in the meantime. To do them justice, they took me readily at my word, offering me the ribbon of St Michael and St George, which I declined respectfully with thanks."

"Did you not find it a little dull, sir, that change to a private life?

"Dull, my good friend! dull! Why, I am never dull. I have always been too full of occupations. As for being bored sometimes, I don't say that is a different thing altogether, and the common lot of well-to-do humanity. At this moment I have no end of promising schemes on hand, as you will learn when we improve our acquaintance. But apropos to being bored, having a conscience and some consideration for you, I shall ring for my candle, and wish you good night."

THE argument for the identification of Dante as the "other poet" referred to by Shakespeare in Sonnets lxxviii.-lxxxvi., as conducted in this Magazine for June of last year, consisted exclusively of a comparison of the description given by Shakespeare of that other poet and his writings with what is known of Dante and with the prominent characteristics of his verse. Although that argument is in itself conclusive and complete, yet the position established by it admits of being confirmed and illustrated by an argument founded on the resemblances observable between the Sonnets of Shakespeare and certain of the writings of Dante. The conclusion. to which this special argument leads is, that it is highly probable that Shakespeare, in writing his Sonnets, set some of the writings of Dante before him as the model according to which he framed the structure of his sonnetic poem, and developed the thought, idea, or device expounded in it. But the probability thus arrived at becomes a certainty, when to the argument from resemblances is added another founded on identities in the thought, imagery, and phraseology occurring in the Sonnets of Shakespeare and in some of the writings of Dante. And the certainty thus attained, when combined with the demonstration given in our

former argument, will "make assurance doubly sure." 2

The argument from the resemblances between the Sonnets and certain of Dante's writings may be

restricted to a comparison of the structure of Shakespeare's sonnetic poem with the structure of one very notable poem of Dante; and to a comparison of the method of the poetic argument in the Sonnets with the poetic method according to which Dante develops his idea of Beatrice in the "Vita Nuova," the "Commedia," the "Convito," and the "Canzoniere," or minor poems.

The resemblance of the structure of Shakespeare's sonnetic poem to a poem of Dante's in the "Vita Nuova," is such as seems to prove that Shakespeare framed the structure of the Sonnets, considered as a continuous poem, according to the pattern set before him by Dante.

As we have had no pioneer in the process of investigation which has led us to the conclusions to which we have come respecting the Sonnets of Shakespeare in relation to the writings of Dante, it is necessary that we should here distinguish between the structure of the individual sonnets and the structure of the sonnetic poem. This distinction is the same as that between the shape of the several stones in a building, and the shape of the building as made up of the stones fitted into their respective places. The stones may be all of one shape or size,-in this respect their structure is the same. But by their adjusted relations to each other, and their subordination to the main purpose and idea of the architect, they make up the one whole called the building, or the architectural effect designed by the builder. So is it in the structure

2 Macbeth, iv. 1. 83.

and adjustment of the sonnets in relation to the sonnetic poem considered as a whole.

2

By the conjectural and grosswitted criticism, Shakespeare's "deep - brained sonnets" have been regarded and treated as if they were a miscellany or jumbled madrigal of poetical exercises written without a purpose, and thrown together without a plan. By legitimate criticism prosecuted according to the inductive or Baconian method, these sonnets found to be not only carefully numbered and detailed by their author or "only-begetter," but also to be set in their adjusted places according to their designed relation to the main idea and purpose of the poet.

are

Each sonnet is composed according to the idea, form, or structure of a sonnet indicated in "Certayne Notes of Instruction for the making of Verse or Rhyme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati by George Gascoigne, Esquire." This enchiridion or little handbook was published in 1575. In it Gascoigne says: "Some think that all poems (being short) may be called sonets, as, indeed, it is a diminutive word derived of sonare; but yet I can beste allowe to call these sonnets which are fouretene lynes, every lyne conteyning tenne syllables. The first twelve to ryme in staves of foure lynes by cross metre, and the last two ryming togither do conclude the whole."4 With only two exceptions, all the Sonnets of Shakespeare consist of

fourteen lines. Of these two, the one Sonnet xcix.is made up of fifteen; and the other-Sonnet cxxvi.-of only twelve lines. This latter sonnet seems to have been intentionally left unfinished. It is in another respect marked and peculiar; for in it there is no alternation in the rhyme. The six successive couplets of which it consists, rhyme with each other, without the 66 cross metre" of which Gascoigne speaks in his "Notes of Instruction." With only one exception-Sonnet cxlv.-all the sonnets consist of lines made up of ten syllables. The lines of this Hermit Sonnet contain each only eight syllables. These three-xcix., cxxvi., and cxlv.— are, as we think, designedly exceptional in their form or structure, each of them being intended to serve a special purpose in relation to the poetic development of the thought and the adjusted distribution of the several parts of the poetic whole. Another sonnet -lxvi.-is at least unique, if it is not exceptional in its form and structure. It is framed according to a method by no means uncommon at the time, although it is the only instance of the kind in Shakespeare's Sonnets. It holds the mirror up to the Elizabethan age; and it bears a very marked resemblance to certain places in Gascoigne's "Steel Glass,"-more particularly to the place beginning with the words

"For whyles I mark this weak
wretched world,"
and ending with the sentence-