or, in a narrower cycle we follow the Decline of Day :-
xxxiii. Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
LXXIII. 'In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away

Death's second self, that seals up all the rest.'

Taine insists, perhaps too exclusively, on the vivid imagery of Shakespeare's verse; Minto and Mrs. Meynell, perhaps too exclusively, on the magic of sound and association which springs from his unexpected collocation of words till then unmated. The truth seems to lie in a fusion of the two theories. When Shakespeare takes his images from Nature, the first excellence is predominant; the second, when he takes them from the occupations of men.

Often, in the Sonnets, he illustrates his theme with images from Inheritance, or Usury, or the Law; and then his effects

3

1 I. 'tender heir.' II. 'by succession.' IV. 'legacy'; 'bequest.'

2 IV.

dead.'

'usurer.' VI. 'usury'; 'loan.' XXXI. 'tears' are 'interest of the

3 XIII. lease; determination. XVIII. lease; date. XXX. sessions; summon. XLVI. defendant's plea; title; impannelled; quest; tenants; verdict. XLIX. And this my hand against myself uprear,' viz., in taking an oath. LXXIV. arrest; trial. LXXXVII. charter; bonds; determinate; patent; misprision; judgment. CXX. fee; ransoms. CXXVI. audit; quietus, 'a technical term for the acquittance which every Sheriff (or accountant) receives on selling his account, at the Exchequer.' The frequency of these terms in the Sonnets and Plays led Malone to conclude that Shakespeare must at one time have been an attorney. If so, we may the better believe that Ben Jonson intended Ovid for Shakespeare in The Poetaster, i. 1:-'Poetry! Ovid, whom I thought to see the pleader, became Ovid the play-maker!' Ibid, 'Misprize! ay, marry, I would have him use such words now. . . . He should make himself a style out of these.' And passim.

are rather produced by the successful impressment of technical terms to the service of poetry than by the recollections they revive of legal processes :—

'When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past.'

Among such occupations he draws also upon Journeys (L.) ;
Navigation (LXXX., LXXXVI., CXVI.) :-

'O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark (sea-mark)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark' :-

Husbandry (11.); Medicine (cxvIII.); Sieges (11.):-
'When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field' :--

and a Courtier's Career (vII., CXIV.) :—

xxxIII. Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye.

XXV.

'Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
But as the marygold at the sun's eye' :-

and this last was of a more striking application than now in the days of Elizabeth or James. He draws also on the arts of Painting (frequently), of Music (vIII., cxxvIII.), of the Stage (XXII.); on the Dark Sciences:

XV.

CVII.

XIV.

'Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.'

'The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage '—

'Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,

And yet, methinks, I have Astronomy' (Astrology):—

so prognosticating from his friend's 'eyes'; on Alchemy (xxx111.), and Distillation (VI., LIV.) :—

V.

"Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass.

k

CXIX.

"What potions have I drunk of Syren tears

Distill'd from lymbecks (alembics) foul as hell within.'—

When, as in these examples, he takes his illustrations from professions and occupations, or from arts and sciences, his magic, no doubt, is mainly verbal; but it springs from immediate perception (as in the case of annual and diurnal changes), when his images are taken from subtler effects of sensuous appreciation, be it of Shadows; of the Transparency of Windows (III., XXIV.); of Reflections in Mirrors (III., XXII., LXII., LXXVII., CIII.), or of Hallucinations in the Dark:

XXVII.

'Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents their shaddow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewell hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous.

XLIII. 'When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!'
'Is it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?'

LXI.

And this source of his magic is evident also, when, as frequently,
he makes use of Jewels (xxvII., XXXIV., XLVIII., LII., LXV., XCVI.);—
Apparel (11., xxvI., LXXVI.) ;—the Rose (1., xxxv., LIV., LXVII., XCV.,
XCIX., CIX.); the Grave (1., IV., VI., XVII., XXXI., XXXII., LXXI.,
LXXII., LXXVII., LXXXI.);-Sepulchral Monuments (LV., LXXXI.,
CVII.); the Alternation of Sunshine with Showers (XXXIII.,
XXXIV.); the Singing of Birds (XXIX.), and their Silence (xcvII.,
CII.). Realism is the note of these imaginative perceptions, as it
is when he writes:-

XXXIV. "Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face. . . .'

XXIII. As an imperfect actor on the Stage,

Who with his fear is put beside his part.

L. The beast that bears me, tired with my woe
Plods dully on. . . .'

LX. 'Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore.

LXXIII. When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang

Upon those boughs' :—

when he instances the 'Dyer's Hand' (cxı.) and the 'crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air' (LXX.)—a clue to carrion-or when he captures a vivid scene of nursery comedy:

CXLIII. Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch

One of her feather'd creatures broke away,

Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay ;
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent

To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her fair infant's discontent.'

In all such passages the magic springs from imaginative observation rather than from unexpected verbal collocutions. And, while this observation is no less keen, the rendering of it no less faithful, than in the earlier Lyrical Poems, Conceits, though still to be found, are fewer :-e.g., of the Eye and Heart (XXIV., XLVI. XLVII); Of the Four Elements-earth, air, fire, water (XLIV., XLV.); and of the taster to a King (cxiv.).

XVIII

ELOQUENT DISCOURSE.—On the other hand the ELOQUENT DisCOURSE of the earlier Poems becomes the staple of the Sonnets and their highest excellence. It is for this that we chiefly read them :

XXXVI. 'Let me confess that we two must be twain
Although our undivided loves are one.

XL. 'Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? ..

CXXXIX. O call me not to justify the wrong

That thy unkindness lays upon my heart.

.

CXL. Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love to tell me so.
For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee.'

The last, addressed to the Dark Lady, are, it may be, as eloquent as any addressed to the Youth, but they lack something of those others' silvery sadness:—

LXXI. 'No longer mourn for me when I am dead,

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell,

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that wrote it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking of me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

LXXII. 'O, lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me that you should love,
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart :
O, lest your true love may seem false in this,
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am sham'd by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.'