ashore with Essex and a small band of sailors on the island of St. Michael, they were attacked by a hostile force, which, says the chronicler, "was received with so much spirit by the small band whom they expected to have found an easy prey, that many were put to the sword and the mob obliged to retreat. Southampton behaved with such gallantry that he was knighted by Essex 'ere he could wipe the sweat from his brows or put sword in scabbard.'

Here then is the explanation of the principal sonnet subjects: advice to the youth, to make the brilliant marriage his mother had arranged; reproach for the dissipated life he was leading in 1595 and 1596. The exquisite lines, beginning "Let us not to the marriage of true minds," celebrate his union with Miss Vernon. The interesting historical sonnet, No. 107, is generally supposed to refer to the release of the poet's friend from the Tower:

107

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit, to a confined doom.
The Mortal Moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
Incertainties now crown themselves assured
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes.
Since spite of him I 'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou herein shalt find thy monument
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

Gerald Massey says in regard to this sonnet:

King James came to the throne as the personification of peace, peace in himself and in his policy, peace, "white robed or white livered," peace at home and abroad; peace anyhow, so that he might not be scared with his antenatal terror, a sword. I will make a very curious parallel to that of the 107th sonnet, from a bit of contemporary prose. This is the first paragraph of the dedicatory epistle to King James, still to be seen at the beginning of our English Bibles:

"For whereas it was the expectation of many, who wished not well to our Sion, that the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth, of most happy memory, some thick and palpable clouds of darkness would have overshadowed this land that men should have been in doubt which way they were to walk and that it should hardly be known who was to direct the unsettled state; the appearance of Your

Majesty as of the Sun in its strength, instantly dispelled those supposed and surmised mists, and gave unto all exceeding comfort; especially when we beheld the Government established in your Highness and your hopeful seed by an undoubted Title, and this also accompanied with peace and tranquillity at home and abroad."

It is impossible to doubt that the same spirit pervades the two, the same death is recorded; the same fears are alluded to, the same exultation is expressed: the same peace identified. The sonnet tells us in all plainness, that the poet had been filled with "prophesying fear" for the fate of his friend whose life was supposed to be forfeited to a "confined doom" or, as we say "his days were numbered": that the instinct of the world had forboded the same, but that the Queen is now dead and all uncertainties are over: those who augured the worst can afford to laugh at their own predictions. The new King smiles on the poet's friend, and with this new reign and release, there opens a new dawn of gladness and promise for the Nation.

Stowe's Annals give us the exact date of Southampton s release from the Tower, April 10, 1603, in one of the balmiest springs England had ever seen, and, though Mr. Acheson and Prof. Tyler ascribe this sonnet to an earlier date, I cannot believe with

the latter, that the peace of Vervins could elicit such a sonnet nor that Southampton's risk as a soldier in 1597 was sufficient to be referred to as a confined doom." I can believe still less, with Mr. Acheson, that the "domestic and international happenings" which he assigns to the autumn of 1594 could produce this triumphant Spring Song! The year of Thorpe's publication of the sonnets, 1609, must have put an end to the close personal relations between author and friend, for in that year Southampton was made Governor of the Isle of Wight, where, says Sir John Oglander, "his just, affable and obligeing deportment, gained him the love of all ranks of people."

He died in command of six thousand men in the Low Countries, of a fever contracted while tending his young son, who expired a few days before his father, November, 1624.

Lady Southampton survived many years, signalising herself by her loyalty to King Charles whom she concealed in her "Noble Seat of Tichfield" after his escape from Hampton Court in 1647. Though there is little documentary evidence concerning Lady Southampton, Mr. Massey be

lieves that just as the "Dark Lady" served as a model of the Cleopatras and Cresseids of the plays, so she whose curls resembled the poet's description of "buds of marjoram" suggested, in her loving and gentle femininity, the Desdemonas and Ophelias.

The letter which follows lends colour to this theory. It was written while Southampton was in Ireland with Essex, having left his wife in the care of Lord and Lady Rich.

July 8th 1599. My dear Lord and onlie joy of my Life, I beseech you love me ever and be pleased to know that My Lady Rich would needs have me send you word how importunate My Lord Rich is with her to come to London. She is, she tells me, very

loth to leave me here alone and very desirous, I thank her, to have me with her in Essex [House] till your return unto me.

For myself, I protest unto you, that your will, either in this, or in any thing else, shall be most pleasing to me and my mind is alike to all places in this ill⚫ time of your absence being quiet in no place. I was most unwilling to give you cause of trouble thinking of me in this matter and this last, protesting unto you again that where you like best I should be, that place shall be most pleasing and all others most hateful