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gaze upon his trespass and his griefs. Setting aside two pieces printed by a pirate in 1599, not one of these poems, as far as we know, saw the light until long after they were written, according to the most probable chronology, and when in 1609 the volume entitled " Shake-speares Sonnets" was issued, it had, there is reason to believe, neither the superintendence nor the consent of the author.* Yet their literary merits entitled these poems to publication, and Shakspere's verse was popular. /If they were written on fanciful themes, why were the Sonnets held so long in reserve? If, on the other hand, they were connected with real persons, and painful incidents, it was natural that they should not pass beyond the private friends of their possessor.

But the Sonnets of Shakspere, it is said, lack inward unity. Some might well be addressed to Queen Elizabeth, some to Anne Hathaway, some to his boy Hamnet, some to the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Southampton; it is impossible to make all these poems (1-126) apply to a single person. Difficulties of this kind may perplex a painful commentator, but would hardly occur to a lover or a friend living "where the beams of* friendship are imminent." The youth addressed by Shakspere is " the master-mistress of his passion"

(20); summing up the perfections of man and woman, of Helen and Adonis (53); a liege, and yet through love a comrade; in years a boy, cherished as a son might be; in will a man, with all the power which rank and beauty give. Love, aching with its own monotony, invites imagination to invest it in changeful forms. Besides, the varying feelings of at least three years (104)—three years of loss and gain, of love, wrong, wrath, sorrow, repentance, forgiveness, perfected union—are uttered in the Sonnets. When Shakspere began to write, his friend had the untried innocence of boyhood and an unspotted fame; afterwards^[1] came the offence