this preposterous suggestion was hazarded in support of a desperate case-the Ireland forgeries " (p. 8). Readers of my chapter 4 will see how incorrect this statement is. Mr. Chalmers admitted in both his books that young Ireland's documents were forged. Mr. Massey makes no attempt to justify the attaching an unusual meaning to the word "begetter." All he says on this head is: "Drake contended that as a number of the Sonnets were most certainly addressed to a female, it must be evident that ' W. H.' could not be the only 'begetter' of them in the sense which is primarily suggested. He therefore agrees with Chalmers and Boswell that Mr. W. H. was the obtainer of the Sonnets for Thorpe, and he remarks that the dedication was read in that light by some of the earlier editors." I have dealt with this last contention earlier, and must decline to follow Mr. Massey or any other of the Southamptonites further, being convinced that in dealing with the earliest and latest of them I have shown the reader the strongest points of their argument. Mr. Lee may be quite trusted not to have ignored any tolerably effective argument that had been urged by any of his predecessors. CHAPTER EIGHT: THE IMPERSONAL, AND THE WILLIAM T W. H. HE READER WILL OBSERVE THAT THE greater part of the three preceding chapters has been occupied in showing that no such case has been made out in support of the opinion that Lord Southampton was the friend addressed in the Sonnets as will justify the attempt to take the words "only begetter" in an unusual sense. There is, however, another theory concerning the Sonnets which is also based on the supposition that "only begetter" means "only procurer," or obtainer "; it is to the effect that the Sonnets are merely creations of Shakespeare's fancy, having no reference to actual persons or occurrences. This theory made its first appearance in 1821, in Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakespeare, published nine years after Malone's death; it has since been adopted unreservedly by Staunton, reservedly by Dyce, and in great measure, as we have seen, by Mr. Sidney Lee-not to mention others whose names will carry less weight. It is rejected, however, by all the Herbertites, by all thorough-going Southamptonites, by all those who put the only reasonable interpretation on the words of Thorpe's preface, and, I think I may add, by far the greater number of those most competent to form an opinion on the subject. If such a case had been made out for it as should compel us to set Thorpe's preface aside, we might have had to submit, as we might have had to do if an overwhelming case had been made out in favour of Lord Southampton; but there has been no attempt at making out a case, and if ground for doing so had existed it would have been as easy to state it as regards the other sonnets as it would be, if it were worth while, in regard to five of those that I have excluded from my series. These are obviously impersonal, but no one has attempted to show that any of the others suggest their not having been written to, or for, a real person. The opinion, when advanced, has always been put forward ex cathedra, as by Boswell, whose gross disingenuousness we have seen, by Staunton, Mr. Lee (in so far as he adopts it), and Dyce, which last writer, however, only goes so far as to say that he is "well-nigh convinced of its truth, and we know what "well-nigh" means. I credit the upholders of this theory with adopting it mainly because they hope by doing so to free Shakespeare from an odious imputation; they fail, however, to see what will appear more plainly later on, I mean, that the imputation under which they would thus leave him is far worse than any for which there is a shadow of evidence. To me it is unthinkable, and as repulsive, as I believe the reader will also find it, when he sets himself to consider what it involves; I therefore dismiss it with no greater display of argument than that adduced by its upholders. Neither do I propose to spend much time in arguing against the view that the Mr. W. H. of Thorpe's preface was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. This opinon, first put forward in private conversation and letters by Mr. Heywood Bright about the year 1819, and advanced publicly some years later by Mr. Boaden, was warmly espoused by Hallam, and by several other writers who command respect; but it was refuted, one would have thought sufficiently, by Dyce in the Life of Shakespeare which precedes his edition of Shakespeare's works published in 1864,' and more recently by Mr. Sidney Lee in the Fortnightly Review for January 1898. Both Dyce and Mr. Lee point out how impossible it is to suppose that Thorpe would have ventured to address 1 Pp. 97, 98. 1 VII] Impersonalites and Herbertites the Earl of Pembroke as "Mr." Their arguments appear as conclusive against Lord Pembroke's claim to be in any way connected with the Sonnets, as those of Mr. Archer in the preceding number of the Fortnightly had done against the claims of Lord Southampton; but I will not repeat them here, for I propose to show that there is nothing in the Sonnets which indicates that the friend to whom they were mainly addressed was titled, or even rich, and in a later chapter shall endeavour to establish, that when the last of the Sonnets was written Lord Pembroke was under nine years old, which is an impossible age for the addressee of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As regards the social status of the youth whom Shakespeare is addressing, almost all who have written about the Sonnets in this century assume that he was a man of exalted rank and great wealth. I have dealt in the preceding chapter with the passage on which they mainly rely for this opinion, but there is another which is also brought forward, I mean the opening line of sonnet 147 (124 Q): "If my dear love were but the child of state," Surely, however, as Mr. Archer pointed out in his article in the Fortnightly for December 1897 the line that follows, "It might for fortune's bastard be unfathered," shows by the word "it" that the " dear love" of the preceding line refers not to the person to whom the sonnet was addressed but to Shakespeare's affection for that person. The lines should be construed, "If my love for you depended only on outward circumstances, it might prove to be no lawfully begotten offspring, but a mere base-born child, subject to the vicissitudes of Fortune "; this line, therefore, fails as completely as the one in sonnet 37 to afford any presumption that Mr. W. H. was highly born. No other passages than these two singularly inconclusive ones have ever been, or are ever likely to be, brought forward-for we cannot take seriously Mr. Lee's contention that "beauteous roof" in sonnet 10, or so fair a house " in sonnet 13, refer to the line of the addressee's ancestry; it would be as easy to believe that they referred to an actual roof and an actual house. Is it conceivable that in the first seventeen sonnets, when the poet is urging his friend to marry, there should be no plain indication that he had other and weightier reasons for marrying than his mere good looks? Is it possible, again, that Shakespeare should apparently regard his own verse as the only thing that was likely to rescue his friend from oblivion, if that friend was one before whom a great career presumably lay open? If the friend is to be remembered after death, it will, according to the Sonnets, be Shakespeare's doing, not his own; but great noblemen are not apt to remain long on intimate terms with an inferior in rank who harps on such a theme whether with reason or without it. It is not unnoteworthy that Shakespeare should have been so elated with his own compositions as to assert their immortality so repeatedly, even when addressing one who was socially his equal; the explanation of this is probably to be found in the newness of his discovery that he was a poet-a discovery over which he was as exultant as a father over his first-born son; but if Shakespeare was addressing a man of exalted rank, and if he was also the cringing parasite which Mr. Lee requires us to suppose him, would he not rather have congratulated his own muse at being |