CHAPTER XV. ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE. SHAKSPEARE-I approach the subject with reverence, and even with fear,-is the only poet I am acquainted with and able to appreciate, who appears to have been really heaven-inspired: the workings of his wondrous and all-embracing mind were directed by a higher influence than ever was exercised by woman, even in the plenitude of her power and her charms. Shakspeare's genius waited not on Love and Beauty, but Love and Beauty ministered to him; he perceived like a spirit; he was created, to create; his own individuality is lost in the splendour, the reality, and the variety of his own conceptions. When I think what those are, I feel how needless, how vain it were to swell the universal voice with one so weak as mine. Who would care for it that knows and feels Shakspeare? Who would listen to it that does not, if there be such? It is not Shakspeare as a great power bearing a great name, but Shakspeare in his less divine and less known character,-as a lover and a man, who finds a place here. The only writings he has left, through which we can trace any thing of his personal feelings and affections, are his Sonnets. Every one who reads them, who has tenderness or taste, will echo Wordsworth's denunciation against the "flippant insensibility" of some of his commentators, who talked of an Act of Parliament not being strong enough to compel their perusal, and will agree in his opinion, that they are full of the most exquisite feelings, most felicitously expressed; but as to the object to whom they were addressed, a difference of opinion prevails. From a reference, however, to all that is known of Shakspeare's life and fortunes, compared with the internal presumptive evidence contained in the Sonnets, it appears that some of them are addressed to his amiable friend, Lord Southampton; and others, I think, are addressed in Southampton's name, to that beautiful Elizabeth Vernon, to whom the Earl was so long and ardently attached.* The Queen, who did not encourage matrimony among her courtiers, absolutely refused her consent to their union. She treated him as she did Raleigh in the affair of Elizabeth Throckmorton; and Southampton, after four years of impatient submission and still increasing love, as tenderly returned by his mistress, married without the Queen's knowledge, lost her favour for ever, and had nearly lost his head.† That Lord Southampton is the subject of the first fifty-five Sonnets is sufficiently clear; and * She was the grandmother of Lady Russell. "Was it + Elizabeth Vernon was first cousin to Essex. treason?" asks Essex indignantly, in one of his eloquent letters; "Was it treason in my Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in such cases, can satisfy or appease?" some of these are perfectly beautiful,—as the 30th, 32d, 41st, 54th. There are others scattered through the rest of the volume, on the same subject; but there are many which admit of no such interpretation, and are without doubt inspired by the real object of a real passion, of whom nothing can be discovered, but that she was dark-eyed* and darkhaired, that she excelled in music;† and that she was one of a class of females who do not always, in losing all right to our respect, lose also their claim to the admiration of the sex who wronged them, or the compassion of the gentler part of their own, who have rejected them. This is so clear from various passages, that unhappily there can be no doubt of it. He has flung over her, designedly it should seem, a veil of immortal texture and fadeless hues, "branched and embroidered like the painted Spring," but almost impenetrable even to our imagination. There are few allusions to her personal beauty, which can in * Sonnets 127, 130 † Sonnet 128. See "Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare." any way individualise her, but bursts of deep and passionate feeling, and eloquent reproach, and contending emotions, which show, that if she could awaken as much love and impart as much happiness as woman ever inspired or bestowed, he endured on her account all the pangs of agony, and shame, and jealousy ;-that our Shakspeare, -he who, in the omnipotence of genius, wielded the two worlds of reality and imagination in either hand, who was in conception and in act scarce less than a GOD, was in passion and suffering not more than MAN. Instead of any elaborate description of her person, we have, in the only sonnet which sets forth her charms, the rich materials of a picture, rather than the picture itself. The forward violet thus did I chide : Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, In my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd. The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair: |