and cvIII. 9, 10:

'So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust.'

In a Petrarchan sonnet any such assonance, if it embraced the rhyme, would prove a blemish, but in the Shakespearian quatorzain it is a pleasant and legitimate accessory to the general binding together of the quatrain. Most subtle of all is the pent-up emphasis brought to bear on Rose in 1. 2-a word not easily stressed-by the frequency of R's in the first line and their absence till Rose is reached in the second. (4) For a further binding together of the quatrain the Rhyme, or last syllable, though not accented, is often tied by assonance to the first syllable, though not accented, of the next line:— E.g. 1. lines 3, 4, decease-His; lines 7, 8, lies-thyself; lines 10, 11, Spring-within, lines 12, 13, niggarding-Pity. Shakespeare's effects of alliteration, apart from this use of them for the binding together of the quatrain, are at some times of astonishing strength :

LXV. 7, 8. 'When rocks impregnable are not so stout

Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays' :

and at others of a strange sweetness :

Ix. 5. 'The world will be thy widow and still weep.'

Again, at others he uses the device antithetically in dis

course:

xxxix. 10. Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave' :

and his rhythm is at all times infinitely varied :—

XIX. 14. 'My love shall in my verse ever live long.
xxxIII. 7. And from the forlorn world his visage hide.
LXXXVI. 4. 'Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew.
XI. 10. Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.'

Apart from all else, it is the sheer beauty of diction in Shakespeare's Sonnets which has endeared them to poets. The passages, which I have quoted to other ends, must abundantly have proved this. Yet let me add these :

v. 5, 6. For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there.'

xvii. 7-12. ‘The age to come would say, This Poet lies,

Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song.'

xvi. 1-4. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.'

xiii. 10, 11. 'Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art Within the gentle closure of my breast.'

LIV. 5, 6. 'The canker-blooms have all as deep a die
As the perfuméd tincture of the roses.'

LX. 9, 10. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow.'

LXIV. 5, 6. 'When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore.'

LXV. 1-4. Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?'

LXXXIX. 8. 'I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange.'

XCIV. 9, 10. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die.'

XCVII. 1-4. 'How like a winter hath my absence been,

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year !
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere.'

XCVII. 12-14. And thou away, the very birds are mute :
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

XCVIII. 9, 10. Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose.'

cv. 1. 'Let not my love be call'd idolatry.'

cxxxII. 5, 6.

And truly not the morning sun in heaven
Better becomes the gray cheeks of the East.'

CXLII. 5, 6. Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments.'

CXLVI. 13, 14. 'So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.'

XX

It matters nothing to Art that Titian may have painted his Venus from the Medici's wife: Antinous gave the world a Type of Beauty to be gazed at without a thought of Hadrian. But the case is not altered when the man who rejoices or suffers is also the man who labours and achieves. It matters nothing to Art that Luca Signorelli painted the corpse of his beloved son, and it is an open question if Dante loved indeed a living Beatrice. Works of perfect Art are the tombs in which artists lay to rest the passions they would fain make immortal. The more perfect their execution, the longer does the sepulchre endure, the sooner does the passion perish. Only where the hand has faltered do ghosts of love and anguish still complain. In the most of his Sonnets Shakespeare's hand does not falter. The wonder of them lies in

the art of his poetry, not in the accidents of his life; and, within that art, not so much in his choice of poetic themes as in the wealth of his IMAGERY, which grows and shines and changes: above all, in the perfect execution of his VERBAL MELODY. That is the body of which his IMAGERY is the soul, and the two make one creation so beautiful that we are not concerned with anything but its beauty.

G. W.

P.S.-Let me here acknowledge my great debt to Mr. W. E. Henley for his constant help in the preparation of this Edition. But for his persuasion I should never have attempted a task which, but for his encouragement, I could never have accomplished.

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