for her acceptance," when it should surely have been "for his acceptance," if the sonnet can be called “an intreaty" at all.

Other examples may or may not be found. The above are all that caught my eye, and I did not think it worth while to look for more.

The most interesting thing about the book is the short preface which tells us, firstly, that Shakespeare during his lifetime had "avouched the purity" of the Sonnets, and implies, secondly, that they failed to attract many readers. The preface opens:

"I here presume (under favour) to present to your view some excellent and sweetely composed Poems of Master William Shakespeare, which in themselves appear of the same purity as the authour himself then living avouched; they had not the fortune by reason of their infancie in his death to have the due accommodation of proportionable glory with the rest of his everliving Workes, yet the lines themselves will afford you a more authentic approbation than my assurance any way can, to invite your allowance."

We do not know where Benson got the statement that Shakespeare had defended the Sonnets, and cannot be certain that the whole story is not an invention; but considering that Benson was writing only twenty-four years after Shakespeare's death, when there were many still living who must have known how the publication of the Sonnets had affected him, and considering also that there is no inherent improbability in what Benson tells us, it will be more consonant with the rules of evidence to accept his assertion, under reserve, than to reject it. As regards the implied statement that the Sonnets fell flat, it is probably correct.

The almost universal reproduction of Benson's medley rather than of Q when the Sonnets were wanted

-a practice which continued until Malone's Supplement to Johnson's and Steevens' edition of the Plays in 1780 -was perhaps due to an impression that the Sonnets wanted bowdlerizing for the public, and that this operation had been sufficiently performed by dislocation, intercalation, and occasional change of sex. As for the omission of eight sonnets, it would remain unknown to all except a very few, for Q appears soon to have become scarce.

I cannot find that there was any other even partial edition of the Sonnets until Lintott published the whole of Shakespeare's Poems, it is believed in 1709, but his edition is undated. The Sonnets are reprinted in the order given in Q, and for the most part with the original spelling. "Bare rn'wd quiers" which became "Bare ruined quires" in Benson's book, is with Lintott "Barren 'wd quiers," and there is no attempt to correct the repetition of "My sinful earth" in line 2 of my Appendix D (146 Q). On the title-page of one of the copies of this edition in the British Museum, the Sonnets are declared to be "all of them" in praise of Shakespeare's Mistress. When, however, we come to them in the book, we find a title-page prefixed to them, "Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke," which seems almost as strange as the statement that they were addressed to a woman. But there are puzzles in connection with the title-pages of this edition with which I need not detain the reader.

CHAPTER TWO: GILDON, SEWELL, THEOBALD, TYRWHITT,

STEEVENS, CAPELL, JOHNSON, BELL

HARLES GILDON (1665-1724), WHOSE name nowhere appears, but whose connection with the work is made known to us by Dr. Sewell, published in 1710, a seventh volume, supplementary to Rowe's edition of the Plays in six volumes. As regards Rowe's edition I would remind the reader that we are hardly less indebted to Rowe than to the editors of the First Folio. If the Folios snatched Shakespeare as a brand from the burning, it was Rowe who kindled the smouldering Folios into that flame of Shakespearean cult which cannot now be extinguished.

Returning to Gildon, his supplement to Rowe professes to give "Venus and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece, and his [Shakespeare's] Miscellany Poems," but as regards the "Miscellany Poems" it is a mere reprint of Benson's medley, with the same dislocation, barbarous headings, omissions, and occasional substitutions of "she" and "her" for "he" and "his.” Sometimes he makes a small and very obvious correction, but it is so very small and so obvious that I am much inclined to credit the printer's reader with it. I do not remember to have seen Malone refer to him, though he occasionally makes a correction which Gildon had already made. He probably never consulted Gildon

at all.

Gildon omits the elegies by Milton, and other poets, and also the "excellent poems by other gentlemen," but he includes the translations from Ovid and other pieces which Benson assigned to Shakespeare. Of these, as well as of the Sonnets, Gildon declares that they "everyone of them carry its Author's Mark and Stamp upon it." Whether he considers the author's mark and stamp to be Shakespeare's does not appear,

but there can be no doubt that he means the reader to think that he considers this.

It is plain that Gildon's work is a piece of mere bookmaking, and I am perhaps dwelling upon it unduly if I give the following extract from the dedication to Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, which is signed S.N. It will at any rate serve to show into what kind of hands Shakespeare had fallen at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It runs:

"What can I, my Lord, say of your Generosity, a heav'nly Quality, and visible in all the Actions of a great Heroe? What, I say, can I speak of it equal to those noble Proofs which are on Record? If I shou'd assert that your Lordship was always liberal of Your own, and always frugal of the Treasure of the Public, are there not a thousand Instances, as well as Witnesses of so evident a Truth? When you took whole Countries almost without Men, and maintain'd Armies without Money? But, my Lord, what can a Poet? What can all the Art of the best Orator say equal to that unparallell'd Act of Beneficence to the Public, when Your Lordship refus'd a Compensation for the Loss of your Baggage at Huete?"

Gildon's own work in connection with this volume consists of an "Essay" some fifty pages long "on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome, and England," of about 150 pages of "Remarks on the Plays," and some fifteen pages of "Remarks on the Poems."

From the Essay I take the following:

"There is likewise ever a Sprightliness in his [Shakespeare's] Dialogue, and often a Genteelness, especially in his Much Ado about Nothing, which is very surprizing for that Age, and what the learned Ben could not attain by all his Industry: and I confess if we make some small

allowance for a few Words and Expressions, I question whether any one has since excell'd him in that particular" (pp. iii, iv).

From the "Remarks on the Poems of Shakespear the following passage may suffice:

"All I have to say of the Miscellaneous Poems [which of course include those of the Sonnets which were published in Benson's medley] is that they are generally Epigrams, and those perfect in their kind according to the best Rules that have been drawn from the Practice of the Ancients, by Scaliger, Lillius Giraldus, Minturnus, Robertellus, Correas, Possovinus, Pontanus, Raderus, Donatus, Vossius, and Vavasser the Jesuit, at least as far as they agree, but it is not to be suppos'd that I should give you here all that has been said of this sort of Poesie by all these Authors, for that would itself make a Book in Folio, I shall therefore here only give you some concise Rules for this and some other Parts of the lesser Poetry on which Shakespear has touched in these Poems; for he has something Pastoral in some, Elegiac in others, Lyric in others, and Epigrammatick in most. And when the general Heads of Art are put down in all these it will be no hard Matter to form a right Judgment on the several Performances" (p. 401).

Gildon's work was republished in 1714 as the ninth and supplementary volume to an edition of the Plays in eight volumes-also edited by Rowe.

The so-called edition of the Poems by Dr. Sewell, published in 1725, a year or so before his death in 1726, as a seventh and supplementary volume to Pope's edition of the Plays, is dedicated to Lord Walpole. From the dedication I take the following:

"YOUR Lordship knowing his [Shakespeare's] Excellencies can happily compare them with the Antients, and have thereby a peculiar Right to this offering. That Nurse of Arts