subject (a predetermination also marked in such of his dramas as allegorise sacred ideas, such as The Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, &c.), would no doubt have been expressly named as such. By this wise reticence the poet has gained much, and given a classical air to what otherwise would have borne a controversial one,— "A passion hateful to his purposes."

And thus we have in this series of sonnets one entire poem, containing a protest against an expiring superstition, philosophically conducted, but conveyed in the language of poetry,—a diction divested of technical terms; and this was the method of the Italian poets in treating religious or political subjects, which they disguised in mystical or erotic verses. Love is made the cover of much heterodox sentiment, the object of which is sometimes painted as a mistress, in others as a friend. And thus the danger which might have followed on plain speaking was avoided. We may see the same topics similarly treated in Biron's closing speech in Love's Labour's Lost, act iv.

His foot once on the steps of the "intellectual ladder," Shakespeare mounts with equal rapidity and daring. He is occupied with his work day and night: the subject is ever present with him. Shakespeare, like another Prometheus, is the Friend of Man, and in turn regards Man as his friend. Ever, even in darkness, his "soul's imaginary sight presents the shadow" of that collective Object "to his sightless view." He is filled with its beauty, i. e. the beauty of Man, that "beauty of the world, that paragon of animals," as in Hamlet he so affectionately denominates that total humanity of which he was himself so glorious an example. Addressing it as an imaginary object, he says, in his 28th sonnet,

"I tell the day, to please him, thou art bright,

And dost him grace, when clouds do blot the heaven.

So flatter I the swart-complexioned night:

When sparkling stars twire not, thou gild'st the even."

And in the next he thus disposes of his personal relation therewithhow beautifully, how tenderly, how grandly!

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee-and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

In this fine sonnet I read the biography thoroughly of the actor and the poet. The whole life of Shakespeare is essentialised in it. In all his

sorrows and disappointments, the thought of the ideal man, as he tells us in the next three sonnets, is his great comfort; his hopes, his aspirations, his shortcomings, have all their bourn and limit therein. It is his "sun of the world;" nevertheless, as is the case with all ideals, he has been betrayed by it. The morning opened fair enough, and he was tempted to "travel forth without his cloak;" but he finds a sufficient excuse in the fact, that he was accessory himself to the illusion. After all, the individual is not the ideal; and he thus makes allowance for the necessary disparity:

"Let me confess that we two must be twain,

Although our undivided loves are one;

So shall those blots that do with me remain

Without thy help by me be borne alone."

There is more to the same effect. But whatever the deficiencies of the individual, they are all supplied in the ideal.

"I, in thy abundance am sufficed,

And by a part of all thy glory live."

"How can my muse want subject to invent,

While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent

For every vulgar paper to rehearse?

Oh, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me
Worthy perusal, stand against thy sight,

For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,

When thou thyself dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse-

Yes, it is fit that the ideal should be the poet's inspirer. Yet how shall it be distinguished from himself?

"What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?

Yet distinction is made, and the implied separation is assumed as similar to what "absence" is to a lover. Pursuing the thought, the verse becomes burdened with amorous complaints, allied with many conceits that sometimes claim a license in these days of literal accuracy but grudgingly allowed.

And here the poet, weary of illustrating the theme of Masculine Beauty, turns gradually to the consideration of the second element in the distribution of the subject; namely, Love. Mention is suddenly made of a Woman beloved by the Man, of whom the sonneteer lovingly feigns himself to be jealous. His jealousy is twofold; both on account of her love for the ideal object, and of his for her. And this must needs be so; for as a portion of the universal humanity, the Woman is as ideal as the Man, and as dear to his apostrophiser. The poet is even fond of making a sort of riddle of the necessary correlations, playing with them thus: "That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said, I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,
And for my sake even so she doth abuse me,

Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her;

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,

And both for my sake lay on me this cross;
But here's the joy: my friend and I are one.

Sweet flattery!-then she loves but me alone."

This sonnet might go far to prove the truth of the German's subjective theory. For does not the poet himself declare, that the Ideal Man, the Friend, whom he has addressed, has all along been identified with himself-has simply been his Objective Self? And verily, in some sort, this "Self Love and Social are the same." It is the love of the One for the Many; but the Many, how multitudinous soever, are yet properly but the reflex of the One, and the sum of both is the Universe. That Shakespeare saw this as clearly as any German sage of later times is to me manifest; but he had not theorised it. He deals with it in the Italian manner, as a tissue of conceits, with which the poetic mind delights to sport, and which demonstrates its indefinite activity of thought, as instanced in a variety of associations almost infinite, even condescending to a mere play of words, sometimes even to the perpetration of the poorest puns.

I feel that I have now given the reader the key-note to the interpretation of these sonnets for himself; therefore shall hasten over the remainder, only touching on such points as imperatively demand atten

tion.

We find the necessity that the poet felt, of considering the ideal humanity as bisexual, removes the object to a farther distance from the merely subjective feeling that he would indulge, and strengthens the sense of "absence" under which he had formerly imaged their distinction or separation. In the 50th sonnet, he declares his reluctance to realise this new condition. But it is needful, under the second branch of his subject, Love, that the relations of male and female should be acknowledged, and not alone those between man and man. Hence the state which he designates "absence" must be; nor is it barren of benefit to the complaining poet:

"So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,

Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth, they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you, as my chest,

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest

By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.
Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope.”

The exquisite sonnet just quoted is unparalleled for the beauty and appropriateness of imagery, as well as for subtlety of thought. In the next sonnet he as finely paints his human ideal in the persons of the two sexes-expressly.

"What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit

Is poorly imitated after you;

On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,

And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring and foison of the year;

The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;

And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,

But you like none, none you, for constant heart."

Observe, too, that in the above two and more recent sonnets the second personal pronoun is changed from the singular to the plural. It is no longer "thou" and "thee," but "you." What is said in the last sonnet cannot be meant of any individual;-it is only true of the ideal humanity, which, being but one, is nevertheless manifested in all men and women and nature, as its shadows and appearances. It is, too, the source of virtue and truth in all its human representatives. And the poet proceeds to illustrate these essential attributes of its moral character, which are at once the basis and the evidence of its inevitable Immortality.

"'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity,

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So to the judgment that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes."

He now recognises this universal humanity as his sovran, and makes his submission to its supremacy, while lamenting his distance from it. He would seek compensation, moreover, by finding its

"image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done."

In a word, he would compare the heroes of ancient and modern times, that he may form a better conception of its nature (sonnets 57-59). In a subsequent sonnet (61), the sovran becomes a sacred Power that can send forth its "spirit," so far from home, into his deeds to pry;" adding, "For thee watch I, while thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near."

During this metaphysical "absence," the Adonis and the Helen, in which the ideal had developed, are supposed to disport in some mystic but amorous seclusion, leaving the poet meanwhile to melancholy self-contemplation. The sonnet in which this is expressed again almost justifies the German's theory. It perhaps is entitled to be esteemed the pivot-sonnet

of the series.

"Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,

And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for myself my own worth do define,

As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Bated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read,-
Self so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days."

Shakespeare's course, we have said, is upward. The Ideal has already approached the Divine. Its immortality has been declared; but there is also a mortality confessed: the former of the soul, the latter of the body. On the latter, as equally the condition of every man, the poet sorrowfully meditates, and at some length. But the poet's verses will preserve in everlasting memory himself, or his friend, or both, according to the sense in which we may read them. For death itself, he gives many reasons why we should desire it. And here he hints that he has a rival in another poet, who is equally in favour with his Friend. What between a second acquaintance and a mistress, the sonneteer has to combat both with envy and jealousy. But he is fain to own that his murmurs at these natural dispensations are eminently irrational. He justifies his wronger even, for reasons as subtle as they are numerous, even though he imputes to him many faults, as if he rejoiced that the Removed Object of his addresses, however exalted, should have a fellow-feeling of his own infirmity, derived from personal experience. Whatever his faults, they are capable of vindication by the dignity of his nature,

"As on the finger of a throned queen,

The basest jewel will be well-esteemed."

Again, he dwells pathetically on the "absence," the distance from him, of this still constant friend, though now engaged with other companions, and apparently neglectful of his former pledges. But soon he calls on his Muse indignantly to withdraw all show of blame, and to occupy herself exclusively in praise of the beloved, whose truth we are now told is as indisputable as his beauty. Indeed, the poet Platonises and identifies truth and beauty in the mysterious Person for whom he cherishes so deep a love. Beauty thus at one with Truth is immortal and ever young: "To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were, when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still."

Yet he fears, unreasonably, that unsuspected decay may somehow inhere; notwithstanding he exclaims:

"Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my beloved as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be,
To one, of one, still such, and ever so."