themselves, especially on Venus and Lucrece which he would qualify as inferior works, almost as youthful follies.

We find in the sonnets constant allusions to the physical beauty of the author's friend, just as we find the same allusions in Venus and Adonis. Southampton was known as the fair and gallant youth, par excellence; he closely resembled Sir Philip Sidney, the favourite type of that age, and even with changing æsthetic standards, his portrait by Miervelt, at nineteen, remains to our modern eyes that of a handsome, refined, and interesting young man.

SONNET 53

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.

In all external grace you have some part
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

The mother's beauty and widowhood are re

ferred to in No. 3 and No. 9:

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime

whereas William Herbert's father was living until 1601, and Herbert, to judge from his face, as the darkies say, "never would have been counted no beauty nohow."

There is one sonnet, No. 122 in Thorpe's first series, which seems to me an explanation or apology to Southampton for giving away his own precious copy of these poems.

122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain,
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;

Or, at the least, as long as mind and heart,
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee thy record, never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold
Nor need I tallies, my dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

May not this sonnet mark the moment when Shakespeare handed on his volume to "Mr. W. H." through whom it reached Thorpe?

Another sonnet, No. 77, invites the recipient

to commit his own thoughts to paper.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial, how the precious minutes waste;
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book this learning mayest thou taste.
Look, what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
These children nurs'd, deliver'd from thy brain
Do take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.

I have little doubt that this invitation was accepted and that a few verses were jotted down in the "waste blanks"; it would account for the presence in the collection of one sonnet, at least, which critics agree cannot be from the hand of Shakespeare.

145

Those lips that love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said, "I hate,"
To me that languished for her sake;
But when she saw my woful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue, that ever sweet,
Was used to giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet.

"I hate" from hate, away she threw,
And saved my life saying, "not you.

It has been suggested that Southampton himself was the author of this sonnet and also of the last two marked "Series III." in Thorpe's edition.

Numbers 104 and 102 indicate the duration of time covered between the earlier and later sonnets:

104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still- Three winters cold
Have, from the forests, shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to mellow autumn turned,
In process of the seasons, have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned
Since first I saw you fresh, which still are green.

102

Our love was new, and then but in the spring
When I was wont to greet it with my lays.
As Philomel' in summer's front doth sing
And stops her pipe in growth of happier days.
Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common, lose their dear delight, Therefore like her, I sometimes hold my tongue, Because I would not dull you with my song.

Another confirmation, if needed, of the Southampton theory, is found in the description of the "Rival Poets," which occupies about twenty of the sonnets, and is so interesting that I shall make it the subject of a special chapter. Suffice it to say here, that all these rivals can be identified with men who eagerly sought Southampton's favour, such as Nash, Florio, Marlowe, and Chapman.

The type of Southampton appears in all his romantic, and delightfully human heroes: Prince Hal, Romeo, Bassanio, Benedick, and Florizel; immortal portraits of the careless, brave, and brilliant soldier-poet, sportsman, and lover, such as Shakespeare and Walter Scott alone have given us. The facts of Southampton's life concord perfectly with this hypothesis. We find the quarrels of poet and patron described in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, but their friendship is reflected in all of Shakespeare's work.

A "child of state" or ward of the Crown, Southampton, at the age of twelve, entered St. John's College, Cambridge; the following year he sent his guardian an essay in excellent Latin, on the text, that all men are moved to virtue by the hope