UC-NRLF 
 
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 oa 
 

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ON THE 
 
 SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
LONDON: 
 J'linted by Thomas White, 59, Wych-street. 
 
ON THE 
 
 SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 IDENTIFYING THE PERSON 
 
 TO WHOM THEY ARE ADDRESSED ; 
 
 AND ELUCIDATING SEVERAL POINTS 
 
 IN THE POET'S HISTORY. 
 
 BY JAMES BOADEN. ESQ. 
 
 LONDON .< 
 THOMAS RODD, 2, GREAT NEWPORT-STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXVJL 
 
ON THE 
 
 SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 TO WHAT PERSON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 
 WERE ACTUALLY ADDRESSED. 
 
 THE Sonnets of Shakespeare were first printed in the 
 year 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, the poet himself being 
 then living, and never disavowing the publication, as he 
 did on at least one other occasion. * They make a thin 
 quarto, neither carelessly nor inelegantly set forth, and 
 are inscribed by the publisher, under initials, to the per- 
 son addressed by the poet. It will be proper to bring 
 this dedication immediately forward, because, prima 
 facie, no one can be a competitor for the eternity pro- 
 
 * Some of Hey wood's translations, attributed to him erro- 
 neously in 1612. 
 
 B 
 
 MM5851 
 
2 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 mised in the verses, whose name does not display the 
 initials given to us as a clue by the dedicator. 
 
 The inscription is arranged monumentally, in short 
 lines, with full points after every word. 
 
 To . The . onlie . begetter . of . 
 
 These . insuing . Sonnets . 
 
 Mr. W. H. all . Happinesse . 
 
 And . that . eternitie . 
 
 Promised . 
 
 By- 
 
 Our . ever-living . Poet . 
 
 Wisheth . 
 The . well-wishing . 
 
 Adventurer . in . 
 Setting . 
 Forth. T. T. 
 
 That the words " only begetter" mean the person ad- 
 dressed by the poet, cannot, I should think, be reason- 
 ably questioned - they imply him who, as a cause, ex- 
 cited these verses as effects in the grateful mind of 
 Shakespeare. Indeed, for a long time, it seemed to be 
 the only notion that was entertained ; and accordingly 
 WILLIAM HART, the poet's relation, was mentioned,* 
 without examining whether his age was suitable, or him- 
 self, either in person or fortunes, corresponding with 
 
 * William Hart, the son of our poet's sister Joan, was not 
 born till the year 1600, so he was clearly not the person 
 shadowed under the initials W. H. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 3 
 
 what is stated in the sonnets. A moment's reflection 
 would have rendered it certain, that the child of very 
 humble parents was not the lofty patrician commemo- 
 rated in these compositions: 
 
 " Thou, that art now the world's fresh ornament, 
 And only herauld to the gaudy spring." 
 
 Plainly imitating the sonnet of Spenser to the great 
 courtier Sir Walter Raleigh, published in 1590, with the 
 first three books of the Faerie Queene : 
 
 " To thee that art the Sommer's nightingale, 
 Thy soveraine Goddesses most deare delight." 
 
 Indeed the parallel is strikingly made out in the course 
 of the poet's addresses to this beloved patron, whom he 
 places in a station of such dignity and gravity, that he 
 might not be able from prudential motives to honour him 
 with kindness in public, unless by suffering in the 
 general estimation for his familiarity with a player : 
 
 " Against that time, if ever that time come, 
 When I shall see thee frown on my defects, 
 Whenas thy love hath cast his utmost sum, 
 Call'd to that audit by advisd respects ; 
 Against that time, when thou shalt strangely pass, 
 And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye ; 
 When love converted from the thing it was, 
 Shall reasons find of settled gravity." 
 
4 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 We may therefore dismiss Mr. William Hart, notwith- 
 standing his initial pretensions, and pass a conge d'elire 
 for some other candidate. 
 
 The initials W. H. do not appear to have formerly 
 suggested one suitable ascription ; and at length it was 
 thought advisable to review the obnoxious Dedication, 
 and try whether the language might not bend a little to 
 the necessity of the case. If the " only begetter,'* for 
 instance, could be interpreted to signify procuring a copy 
 of the sonnets for the Publisher, the field of conjecture 
 as to the Patron was expanded ad libitum. W. H. then 
 got his "promised eternity" for merely bringing out the 
 papers; and the person addressed might be any great 
 amiable patron of poetry, who was a male and even a 
 female in the fantastical conception of one great Shake- 
 spearean. The reasoning was formal whoever begets, 
 they said, obtains something: whoever obtains these 
 papers, therefore, is their sole begetter. Mr. W. H. 
 therefore embarrasses no longer; and the late Mr. 
 George Chalmers settled that the person addressed by 
 Shakespeare was, and could be, no other human being 
 than Queen Elizabeth. Common sense stood aghast, 
 as it had frequently done, at the monstrous absurdity of 
 the critic's speculation ; and respectfully enquired how 
 he could reconcile it to the everlasting allusions to the 
 male sex, which are found throughout these poems? 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. O 
 
 Shakespeare calls him every where the Lord of his love. 
 One instance however shall here suffice : 
 
 " Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 
 Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit." 
 
 Sonnet 26. 
 
 And in the 3d Sonnet, when he incites him to marry, 
 and leave an image behind him of his own perfections, 
 he thus pointedly marks the sex of the person addressed : 
 
 " For where is she so fair, whose un-eard womb 
 Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry 9" 
 
 But not to burthen the argument with unnecessary 
 quotations, I shall collectively show the matchless absur- 
 dity of such an hypothesis, as that Shakespeare could 
 have addressed them to Queen Elizabeth. The Sonnets 
 being mentioned by Meres in 1598, in company with the 
 Poet's Venus and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece, &c. we 
 may suppose them written in 1596 and 1597, at least a 
 great part of them. Mr. Chalmers then asserted that 
 in the 64th year of her age, the " Renowned Empress 
 Queen of England" is addressed by William Shake- 
 speare, a player, as "His sweet Boy'' "A manof ahue 
 surpassing that of other men." He invites HIM ( that 
 is Q. Elizabeth) to marry, that he might leave a son like 
 himself. He speaks of the said boy (the Queen,) as 
 " calling familiarly at his door and of his watching the 
 
6 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 clock till the expected visitor arrive." Although a little 
 jealous of him, he yet would not put him "into circunr 
 scription and confine for the sea's worth" though he 
 does venture to chide his sweet boy (the Queen) for some 
 youthful irregularities (at SIXTY FOUR); and when HE 
 (still Elizabeth) has committed a treason against friend- 
 ship, won by the wiles of the poet's own mistress, he 
 excuses him, because " when the woman wooes," what 
 woman's son (clearly the Queen) can be expected " to 
 resist her ?" 
 
 The reader will be apt to exclaim here, with the 
 Comte de Breteuil to Yorick, " Mais vous plaisantez /" 
 I confess the pleasantry, but he may himself verify the 
 facts, for the passages alluded to are here literally given. 
 
 " What's in the brain that ink may character, 
 Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit ? 
 What's new to speak, what new to minister, 
 That may express my love, or thy dear merit ? 
 Nothing, SWEET BOY." SONNET CVIII. 
 
 "A MAN, in hue all hues in his controlling." 
 
 SONNET XX. 
 
 " So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon, 
 Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a SON/' 
 
 SONNET VII. 
 " You had & father ; let your son say so." 
 
 SONNET XIII. 
 
 " Being your slave, what should I do but tend 
 Upon the hours and times of your desire ? 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 7 
 
 I have no precious time at all to spend, 
 
 Nor services to do, till you require. 
 
 Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, 
 
 While I, my sovereign, icatch the clock for you." 
 
 SONNET LVII. 
 
 " Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, 
 Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd ; 
 And when a woman wooes, what woman's son 
 Will sourly leave her till she have prevail'd. 
 Ah me ! but yet thou might 'st my seat forbear, 
 And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, 
 Who lead thee in their riot even there 
 Where thou art forc'd to break a two-fold truth, 
 Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee, 
 Thine, by thy beauty being false to me. " 
 
 SONNET XLL 
 
 " That thou hast HER, it is not all my grief. 
 And yet it may be said 1 loved her dearly ; 
 Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye : 
 Thou dost love her, because thou know'st / love her ; 
 And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, 
 Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. " 
 
 SONNET XLII. 
 
 These passages are, in my opinion, amply destructive 
 of Mr. Chalmers' hypothesis. One of these Sonnets, 
 however, containing a note of time, always of importance 
 in fixing any assertion, let us examine the inference 
 drawn from it. " Three years have elapsed," says the 
 poet, " since he first saw his young friend" the Queen, 
 if Mr. Chalmers wills it so. This, then, as he thinks 
 the Sonnet written in 1597, gives 1594 for the year when 
 
8 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 our great bard first beheld the person of Queen Eliza- 
 beth. Now, does any man, woman, or child believe 
 that the mind of Shakespeare could have remained eight 
 years in the capital of her kingdom, and never profes- 
 sionally, or even at distance in a crowd, lead him to 
 behold the object of all wonder and praise the scourge 
 of Spain the idol of her proud and happy people? 
 
 But where is the improbability that Shakespeare in 
 his youth should have ventured under the wing of 
 Green, his townsman, even to Kenil worth itself? It 
 was but fourteen miles distant from Stratford. Nay, 
 that he should at eleven years of age have personally 
 witnessed the reception of the great Queen by the 
 mighty favourite, and perhaps have even discharged 
 some youthful part in the pageant written by Mr. 
 Ferrers, sometime lord of misrule in the Court ? Was 
 there nothing about the spectacle likely to linger in one of 
 " imagination all compact," a youth of singular precocity, 
 with a strong devotion to the Muses, and little inclined, 
 as we know, to " drive on the affair of wool at home with 
 his father?" Nay, is there no part of his immortal 
 works which bears evidence upon the question of his 
 youthful visit ? We should expect to find such graphic 
 record in a composition peculiarly devoted to Fancy, and 
 there, if I do not greatly err, we undoubtedly find it. 
 
 In the Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon, before he 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 9 
 
 despatches his aery attendant, Puck, for a flower of 
 powerful agency, dilates with peculiar fondness upon an 
 important station that he had himself once occupied, 
 and the wonders which his peculiar nature enabled him 
 to perceive, impervious to grosser optics. The whole 
 passage shall be given ; and it will poetically well repay 
 the critical attention which the reader is now, for the 
 first time, called upon to give it, as a record of the 
 " Princely pleasures of Kenilworth." [t is in the first 
 scene of the second act of the play; and, abounding as 
 the previous colloquies do in descriptive beauties of sur- 
 passing splendor, pursues the subject with unabated 
 spirit and affluence. 
 
 The speakers are Oberon and Puck. 
 
 Obe. My gentle Puck, come hither ; thou remember'st 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphins back 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 To hear the sea-maid's musicJc. 
 
 Puck. I remember. 
 
 Obe. That very time I saw, but thou could'st not, 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took 
 At a fair Vestal, throned by the west, 
 And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts ; 
 But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 
10 
 
 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Quench 'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon, 
 And the imperial Votress passed on, 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free. 
 Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell ; 
 It fell upon a little western flower, 
 Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound ; 
 And maidens call it Love in Idleness. 
 Fetch me that flow'r ; the herb I shew'd thee once ; 
 The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, 
 Will make or man or woman, madly doat 
 Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
 Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again 
 Ere the leviathan can swim a league. 
 Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
 In forty minutes. 
 
 In this play we see Theseus, fresh from the war with 
 the Amazons, and full of his recollections of his friend 
 Hercules, is attended by Fairy Oberon, his Queen, and 
 their airy court at Athens, and with his usual contempt 
 of anachronism the poet flies off to eulogize a fair vestal 
 throned by the west, who can be no other sovereign than 
 his virgin mistress Elizabeth, as I am about to prove, 
 paying one of her costly visits to the most powerful of 
 her favourites, the Earl of Leicester : and here he seats 
 Oberon upon a promontory listening to a mermaid on a 
 dolphin's back, uttering such dulcet and harmonious 
 breath that the rude sea grew civil at her song. Now, 
 as the vestal could not but be Elizabeth, to a bold critic 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 11 
 
 the mermaid on a dolphin's back could be no other 
 person than her rival Mary, who had married the Dau- 
 phin of France, and whom Bishop Warburton insists 
 upon it " Shakespeare called a mermaid to denote her 
 beauty and intemperate lust." 
 
 " Ut turpiter atrum 
 Desinat in piscem mulier Formosa superne." 
 
 " which," says the great detector, Edwards, " those who 
 do not understand Latin will perhaps think is a proof 
 of what our critic asserts, or at least something to his 
 purpose." * 
 
 Mr. Steevens, though he cannot dissemble his doubts 
 of Warburton's inference, rashly pronounces that " every 
 reader may be induced to wish that the foregoing allu- 
 sion pointed out by so acute a critic as Dr. Warburton 
 should remain uncontroverted." 
 
 O, no, Mr. Steevens, indeed and indeed, no man, with 
 the feelings of one, can be induced to wish any thing 
 like this. Another of the Bishop's dreams made Virgil 
 guilty of sacrilege. This imputes a more dastardly 
 crime to the generous Shakespeare. But as Gibbon re- 
 placed the veil upon the Eleusinian mysteries ; so Ritson, 
 if he did not show what our poet really pointed to, for 
 
 * See Canons of Criticism, edit. 1765, p. 220. 
 
12 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ever devoted to contempt the cruel and unmanly inter- 
 pretation which had been so unblushingly given of a 
 delicate though obscure allusion. I shall therefore, I 
 hope with more success (I am sure with better taste), 
 attempt to show the objects painted from our Poet's 
 actual remembrance. The words " I remember," in an- 
 swer to Oberon's inquiry, spoke for ONE more personage 
 than Puck, at least. 
 
 A reader of the present day is in truth inexcusable, if, 
 with the MIGHTY SPIRIT'S romance in his hand, he does 
 not recal to his imagination the splendid pageantries of 
 Kenilworth. Have we forgotten the immense lake on 
 which floated a mermaid and a dolphin, in whose centre 
 was the promontory on which Oberon figured himself 
 to be sitting when the events occurred which he com- 
 memorates. 
 
 But we are not bound to the mere text of Shakespeare, 
 which is a loose recollection only of a very orderly and 
 extensive celebration ; we have, fortunately, Gascoigne's 
 Princelie Pleasures at Kenilworth, and Laneham's 
 Letter, and the reader will see what corroboration they 
 supply to our interpretation of the. text of Shakespeare. 
 
 A mermaid on a dolphins back. " When," says Gas- 
 coigne, " her Majestic was entred the gate, and come 
 into the base court, there came unto her a LADIE at- 
 tended with two nimphes, who came all over the poole, 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 13 
 
 being so conveyed that it seemed she had gone upon 
 the water, who spake to her Highnesse as folio we th." I 
 shall omit the seven stanzas of six lines each, which we 
 may be sure were thought dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 for they told the antiquity and the fortunes of the 
 castle. 
 
 The rude sea grew civil refers, I conceive, to the 
 delivery of the Lady of the Lake; but we must hear this 
 from Gascoigne. " Triton in the likenesse of a MER- 
 MAID came towarde the Queene's Majestic as she passed 
 over the bridge, and spake thus: 
 
 " You windes returne into your caves, 
 
 And silent there remaine ; 
 You waters wilde suppresse your waves, 
 And keepe you calme and plaine." 
 
 " Then Protheus appeared sitting on a dolphins back," 
 (the identical words of Oberon,) " and the dolphin was 
 conveyed upon a boate, so that the oars seemed to be 
 his fynnes. Within the which dolphyn a consort of 
 musicke was secretly placed." So the reader sees that 
 we are not compelled into any undue compliment to the 
 lord of misrule, Mr. Ferrers's verses here was " dulcet 
 and harmonious breath" in abundance. 
 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 
14 ON THE SONNETS^OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 alludes to " The fireworkes shewed upon the water, the 
 which were both strange and well executed : as some- 
 times passing under the water a long space ; when all 
 men thought they had been quenched, they would rise 
 and mount out of the water againe, and burne very 
 furiously untill they were utterlie consumed." * 
 
 Laneham describing the same fireworks, still more for 
 our parallel, calls them a blaze of burning darts flying 
 to and fro beams of STARS corruscant. 
 
 Shakespeare's impression of the scene was strong and 
 general ; he does not write as if the tracts of Gascoigne 
 and Laneham lay upon his table. His description is 
 exactly such as, after seventeen years had elapsed, a 
 reminiscence would suggest to a mind highly poetical. 
 
 Well might he then add that his eye could discern 
 what that of a coarser spirit could not 
 
 " Flying between the cold moon and the earth 
 
 Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took 
 
 At a fair Vestal throned by the west, 
 
 And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 
 As it might pierce a hundred thousand hearts." 
 
 Then or never did the magnificent Leicester expect to 
 carry his romantic prize the fair vestal throned by the 
 
 * Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 15 
 
 west. We are, however, told with infinite grace, and 
 with the happiest of all compliments to her virgin 
 obduracy : 
 
 " But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon, 
 And the imperial Votress passed on, 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free." 
 
 But the splendid captivations of Leicester were not 
 disdained by all female minds, and the bolt of Cupid is 
 seldom discharged in vain. Shakespeare has told us 
 where it fell : 
 
 " It fell upon a little western flower, 
 
 Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 
 
 And maidens call it Love in Idleness" 
 
 Why, alas ! can we not ask the kindred spirit, Sir 
 Walter Scott, whether he can conceive his own Amy 
 Robsart more beautifully and touchingly figured than 
 she appears to be in this exquisite metaphor ? 
 
 The princely pleasures here commemorated were the 
 barbarous entertainments of the VIRGIN REIGN. They 
 required only invention, poetry, mythological knowledge, 
 powers of representation ! We look at our theatres 
 royal, and may well triumph in our superiority ! 
 
 Mr. Chalmers has been too long quitted for higher 
 
16 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 matter; I return to his hypothesis, which some may 
 think has been sufficiently refuted already. But I 
 feel here tempted to notice a singular artifice in con- 
 test, which the writer alluded to invariably practised. 
 His opponent unexpectedly finds himself involved with 
 GREAT NAMES, about some undisputed and indeed 
 indisputable position. While he ("good easy man") 
 combats only an absurd hypothesis, advanced by Mr. 
 Chalmers, " that the Sonnets were addressed to Queen 
 Elizabeth," he starts to see himself described as one of 
 those who do not agree with Bishop Butler, Chief Baron 
 Gilbert, and Mr. Locke, that PROBABILITY is THE 
 GUIDE OF LIFE ! It may be matter of curiosity to con- 
 sider what Butler, Gilbert, and Locke would say to the 
 collected probabilities that the reader has now before 
 him. They might be of opinion, that the reference to 
 them and their axiom, was but a flight of occasional 
 spleen against persons who in more than one instance 
 had demonstrated the probable of Mr. Chalmers not 
 merely improbable but impossible. 
 
 On the present occasion he was led into his absurdity 
 by another equally great, namely, that SPENSER ad- 
 dressed his Amoretti, a collection of Sonnets, to the 
 great Queen ; and that Shakespeare, from a feeling of 
 jealousy, would needs pay the same compliment to her 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 17 
 
 beauties. This inference was drawn from an expression 
 in his 80th Sonnet. 
 
 " O how I faint when I of you do write, 
 Knowing a BETTER SPIRIT doth use your name, 
 And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
 To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame !" 
 
 I shall show, in the sequel, who the better spirit really 
 was, and his connection with the subject of Shakespeare's 
 Sonnets. But could our Poet here have really referred 
 to Spenser, no Sonnets would have crossed his mind, 
 and alarmed his jealousy. Shakespeare had too deep a 
 feeling of poetry, and too much modesty, not to know 
 and declare, that the Faery Queene did more to illustrate 
 Elizabeth, than could all the Sonnets in the universe, 
 whoever were the writers. 
 
 Yet as this, however honourable to Shakespeare's 
 taste, is still only my opinion, I shall give " a living 
 reason" that Spenser did not address the Amoretti to the 
 Queen. The 74th Sonnet points distinctly to the real 
 object. 
 
 " Most happy letters ! fram'd by skilful trade, 
 
 With which that happy name was first desynd, 
 
 The which THREE TIMES thrise happy hath me made, 
 
 With guifts of body, fortune, and of mind. 
 
 The FIRST my being to me gave by kind, 
 
 From mother's womb deriv'd by dew descent ; 
 
 The SECOND is my Sovereigne Queene most kind, 
 
18 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 That honour and large richesse to me lent : 
 The THIRD, my love, my live's last ornament, 
 By whom my spirit out of dust was raysed ; 
 To speake her prayse and glory excellent, 
 Of all alive most worthy to be praysed. 
 Ye THREE Elizabeths ! for ever live, 
 That three such graces did unto me give." 
 
 If there be meaning in language, here are three dis- 
 tinct persons indicated. Some of the Sonnets are ad- 
 dressed to the Lady previous to her consenting'to be h s, 
 and some, as the proceeding," subsequent ; the 66th 
 marks the exact point at which the fair Elizabeth of the 
 sister kingdom yielded to his delightful suit : 
 
 " And with obsequious majesty approv'd 
 His pleaded reason/' P. L. 
 
 But, in one of the Sonnets, his fate was in a state of 
 troublesome jeopardy; and on the supposition (that is 
 too weak a word), the positive assertion of Mr. Chalmers, 
 that they were all addressed to one female, Queen 
 Elizabeth must have been mightily astonished, when 
 she read the following : 
 
 Great wrong I do, I can it not deny, 
 
 To that most sacred Empresse, my dear dred, 
 
 Not finishing her Queene of Faery, 
 
 That mote enlarge her living prayses, dead : 
 
 But, LODWICK, this of grace to me aread ; 
 
 Do ye not think th' accomplishment of it 
 
 Sufficient worke for one man's simple head, 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 19 
 
 All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ ? 
 How then should I, without another wit, 
 Think ever to endure so tedious toyle ! 
 Sith that this one is tost with troublous Jit 
 Of a proud Love, that doth my spirite spoyle. 
 
 Cease then, till she vouchsafe to grawnt me rest ; 
 
 Or lend YOU mq anptjjer living brest." 
 
 SONNET XXXIII. 
 
 But the reader may wish to know something of this 
 Lodwick, and I am entirely at his service. 
 
 Lodowick Bryskett, was a particular friend of Spenser's, 
 who, at his cottage near Dublin, frequently enjoyed the 
 society of the great poet, in common with many of the 
 greatest men in the sister kingdom. He has left us, in 
 his Discourse of Civil I Life, a most interesting con- 
 versation, in which Spenser is made to bear a part. 
 Lodowick addresses the Poet in language of high but 
 merited encomium, as a man perfect in the Greek tongue, 
 and very well read in Philosophic, both morall and 
 naturall; and entreats him to open to them the great 
 benefits, which men obtain by the knowledge of moral 
 philosophy. Spenser, as may be anticipated, modestly 
 excuses himself; and one reason he assigns is, that he 
 is already advanced in a work upon this subject in 
 heroical verse, under the title of a Faerie Queene, and 
 he therefore trusts that the expectation of that work may 
 free him from the task of speaking unadvisedly and 
 unpremeditated ly upon the present occasion. 
 
20 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 When Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton was Lord Deputy 
 of Ireland, he nominated Lodowick Secretary of State. 
 It is to this friend, who no doubt personally knew the 
 lady, that he speaks of his PROUD LOVE, and to whom 
 he ingenuously declares the difficulty he finds in pro- 
 ceeding with his immortal labour, in consequence of the 
 repulses of his suit, and the torments he endures from 
 her caprice. The lady knew the full value of his verse, 
 and would not, by hasty compliance, abridge her toilet 
 of its daily Sonnet. The whole collection is beautifully 
 bound together by an epithalamion on their marriage. 
 In the 80th Sonnet he discriminates this lady from the 
 Queen in a way not to be mistaken. 
 
 " After so long a race as I have run 
 Through faery land, which those six books compile, 
 Give leave to rest me being half foredone, 
 And gather to myself new breath awhile, 
 Then as a steed, refreshed after toil, 
 Out of my prison I will break anew, 
 And stoutly will that second work aesoyle, 
 With strong endeavour and attention due : 
 Till then give leave to me in pleasant mew, 
 To sport my Muse,' and sing my Love's sweet praise ; 
 The contemplation of whose heavenly hue 
 My spirit to an higher pitch will raise. 
 But let her praises yet be low and mean, 
 Fit for the handmaid of the FAERY QUEENS." 
 
 In the Faery Queene, he has himself told us, he 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 21 
 
 shadows merely the perfections of his Sovereign. His 
 mistress, however fair and proud, is yet rated infinitely 
 below the towering CYNTHIA, and her praises suited 
 only to the Handmaid of the matchless Elizabeth. Not 
 to admit this inference is to be insensible to the constant 
 import of language : it is, in other words, to live in an 
 ideal world, and imagine that human words convey any- 
 thing but human meaning. 
 
 Enough has now been said, I conceive, to prove that 
 neither Shakespeare nor Spenser addressd their Sonnets 
 to the Virgin Queen. 
 
 NOT ADDRESSED TO LORD SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 It may be proper to concede to Dr. Drake, that he 
 has shown the absolute certainty that 126 of the Sonnets 
 in question were addressed to a male friend and patron 
 of Shakespeare ; and he thinks that friend was Lord 
 Southampton. The reasons must be strong indeed that 
 overturn so natural an ascription. 
 
 The first which I shall adduce, in my opinion, has 
 force sufficient to set his Lordship aside. It is the De- 
 dication of Thorpe the publisher, which is printed at the 
 outset of this essay, who wishes Mr. W. H., as the only 
 begetter of the Sonnets, " all happiness, and that Eter- 
 nity promised by our ever-living Poet." Now it is 
 
22 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 proper to look at this promised eternity in the Poet's 
 own language, that we may be quite sure of its applica- 
 tion to the person addressed by him, and to no other; 
 because it will then follow that no friend or patron can 
 be he, whose name is not figured truly by those initials. 
 Thus he writes in the 8 1 st Sonnet : 
 
 " Your name from hence immortal life shall have, 
 Though I once gone to all the world must die ; 
 The earth can yield me but a common grave, 
 When you entombed in men's eyes shall' lie. 
 Your monument shall be my gentle verse,, 
 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er read; 
 And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse, 
 When all the breathers of the world are dead ; 
 You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen*) 
 Where breath most breathes even in the mouths of men." 
 
 Now the initials do not apply to Lord Southampton, 
 who was named Henry Wriothesly ; and who, ten years 
 before Shakespeare became known to him, was Earl of 
 Southampton and Baron of Tichfield. I state this 
 firmly, because in 1593, when the Poet dedicated his 
 Venus and Adonis, it was at a distance that implied no 
 acquaintance ; for the very dedication was without per- 
 mission, and he says, " I know not how I shall offend in 
 dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship." 
 Tarquin and Lucrece, in 1594, shows that his former 
 offering had been well received. If we suppose him 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 23 
 
 therefore to have begun these Sonnets as soon as his 
 latter poem had done its work, how did the relative ages 
 stand of the Poet and the Patron? In 1594 Lord 
 Southampton was 21, being born in 1573; and Shake- 
 speare exactly 30, being born in 1564. The disparity is 
 nothing ; yet, in the poems, one of the parties is stated 
 to be in the spring of life, and the other in the autumn. 
 One " the sweet boy" " the world's fresh ornament," 
 the other "crush'd and o'erworn by the injurious hand 
 of Time." See the 63d Sonnet, and many others. 
 Southampton therefore could not be the object ad- 
 dressed in the Sonnets. Take the very last of them, 
 and we find him still saluted " O thou, my lovely boy." 
 Dr. Drake thinks the uniformity of the affection borne 
 may justify the iteration of the term at any part of the 
 intimacy. I think, as to Southampton, it was unjustifi- 
 able in any one year of it. 
 
 But out of respect to an hypothesis advocated by Dr. 
 Drake, let us wave this decorous objection. Yet surely 
 we may reasonably ask, why the Sonnets were restricted 
 to the personal beauty of Southampton, (which he does 
 not seem to have had, if his portrait resembled him), 
 and a devoted attachment on the Poet's side, which 
 never seemed to sympathize with the actual circumstances 
 of that nobleman's life? Did his achievements in 1596 
 and 1597, as a great Captain, at Cadiz and in the Azores^ 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 yield nothing? In 1598 he went with his friend Essex 
 to Ireland. On his marriage in 1596 with Miss Vernon 
 being known, he was thrown into prison; had Shake- 
 speare alone been indifferent to these occurrences the 
 latter amatorial, and quite in his line of compliment, 
 his success with the fair ? How did the Poet feel upon 
 his rash daring with Essex ? had he no soothing balm 
 to shed upon the agonies of his trial, sentence, and im- 
 prisonment? and finally, when James had restored him 
 to his liberty and his honours, could his eulogist find no 
 call upon him for secure congratulation? but, amid 
 combats by sea and land, secret attachment and mar- 
 riage, irritation of his Royal Mistress, rebellion against 
 her authority, sentence to an ignominious death, release 
 from a captivity bitter as death, could, I say, this most 
 loving and fertile of all poets " set down in the tables," 
 which his friend had given to him (as the Sonnets inform 
 us), nothing but one cuckoo note upon a theme which 
 that friend, unless he never matured, must have long dis- 
 missed from his attention, I mean his personal beauty ? 
 I answer, I cannot conceive it. If these Sonnets were 
 periodically sent to a man so circumstanced as we find 
 Lord Southampton to have been, he must have nauseated 
 their uniformity. If they were not so dispatched to him, 
 the Poet would chuse his topics out of the passing 
 events, and reserve the series for a time when they 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 25 
 
 might be transmitted without danger. But we should 
 expect a Shakespeare to tell him in a masterly tone that 
 calamity was the nurse of great spirits ; that his afflic- 
 tions had been the sources of his best fame ; that man- 
 kind never could have known the resources of his 
 mighty mind, if he had not been summoned to endure 
 disgrace, and to gaze undaunted upon the menacing 
 preparations of death itself. Nothing of this kind is 
 hinted at, and therefore the Sonnets cannot apply to 
 Lord Southampton. 
 
 This, it may be said, is hypothetical reasoning, and, 
 however plausible, might not have been true. Lord 
 Southampton, admitting the facts, might not find poetry 
 the echo of propriety. Was be by any other poet so 
 addressed ? The answer to this question will leave my 
 inference indisputable. He was addressed precisely in 
 the style which I have above described, and by Daniel, 
 the poet of Wilton House. See the following remarkable 
 extract from his verses to that nobleman : 
 
 " He who hath never warr'd with miserie, 
 Nor ever tugg'd with fortune and distresse, 
 Hath had n' occasion nor no field to trie 
 The strength and forces of his worthinesse : 
 Those partes of judgment which felicitie 
 Keepes as concealed, affliction must expresse ; 
 And only men shew their abilities, 
 And what they are, in their extremities. 
 
26 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " The world had never "taken so full note 
 
 Of what thou arte, hadst thou not been undone, 
 
 And onely thy affliction hath begot 
 
 More fame than thy best fortunes could have done. 
 
 For ever by adversitie are wrought 
 
 The greatest workes of admiration, 
 
 And all the faire examples of renowne 
 
 Out of distresse and miserie are growne. 
 
 " Not to be unhappy is unhappinesse, 
 
 And miserie not to have knowne miserie : 
 
 For the best way unto discretion is 
 
 The way that leads us by adversitie : 
 
 And men are better shew'd what is amisse 
 
 By th' expert finger of calamitie, 
 
 Than they can be with all that Fortune brings, 
 
 Who never shewes them the true face of things. 
 
 " How could we know that thou could'st have indur'd 
 With a reposed cheere wrong and disgrace ; 
 And, with a heart and countenance assur'd, 
 Have lookt sterne Death and Horror in the face ? 
 How should we know thy soule had been secur'd 
 In honest counsels and in wayes unbase ? 
 Hadst thou not stood, to shew us what thou wert, 
 By thy affliction, that descryde thy heart. 
 
 " He that indures for what his conscience knowes 
 Not to be ill, doth from a patience high 
 Looke onely on the cause whereto he owes 
 Those sufferings, not on his miserie : 
 The more he indures the more his glory growes, 
 Which never growes from imbecilitie ; 
 Onely the best compos'd and worthiest hearts 
 God sets to act the hard'st and constant'st parts." 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 27 
 
 Such topics we may be assured saluted the gracious 
 Earl from the pen also of Shakespeare on the occasions 
 here commemorated, probably too in some degree ex- 
 posing the writer from the ardour of his gratitude; and 
 therefore, when once committed to the noble sufferer's 
 memory, consigned to the flames, that the Poet at least 
 might run no risk. We may be sure that Shakespeare 
 who owed so much to the friend of Essex, was in agony 
 during the rash enterprises of that unfortunate favourite. 
 But his reflections are for ever lost in the manner here 
 stated, and it is with pleasure we have above shewn 
 that bis feeling has been at least preserved in the per- 
 haps weaker verse of Daniel. 
 
 The difficulty is, to select a person who, from his 
 youth and station, called for no other topics than the 
 Sonnets afford ; who was beautiful enough to be con- 
 sidered " the world's fresh ornament ;" interesting enough 
 that the Poet should wish his straying youth removed 
 from temptation; great enough to be courted, as willing 
 and able to patronize a condition that could not exist 
 without it, and who actually became the patron of 
 Shakespeare ; one moreover whom, as the Sonnets tell 
 us, rival poets were courting, with all the arts, and more 
 than the charms of verse. Such a person I shall pro- 
 ceed to point out. 
 
 I had proceeded thus far in my disquisition in the 
 
28 ON THE SONNETS OF SH AKESPEAttE. 
 
 original publication, when in the magazine for October 
 appeared the two following letters on the subject ad" 
 dressed to Mr. Urban. 
 
 " Bath, Oct. 20. 
 
 " Mr. URBAN, 
 
 " You will confer a favour on a constant reader 
 and occasional correspondent, by allowing a place to the 
 letter which I now inclose. It is quite unnecessary for 
 me to add one word in corroboration of what Mr 
 Bright has stated in it. Most true it is that many years 
 ago he did me the favour to admit me an acquaintance 
 with this long-concealed and most curious truth ; and 
 that I have from time to time taken the liberty of 
 suggesting to him that it was due to his own literary 
 reputation, and due to other inquirers in this department 
 of literary history, not to withhold the public communi- 
 cation of the fact, and of the curious and most recondite 
 researches by which he had first established and then 
 illustrated it. I may add that not only the fact itself, 
 but the evidence was submitted to me, and the many 
 important conclusions also which follow on the estab- 
 lishment of the connexion between Lord Pembroke and 
 the Poet: the whole disquisition being an admirable 
 specimen of inductive reasoning, from the comparison of 
 facts which could be found only by deep research, equally 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 29 
 
 creditable to the diligence and the power of combination 
 of its author . 
 
 "JOSEPH HUNTER." 
 
 " (Copy.) 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, The communication of J. B. re- 
 specting the person to whom Shakespeare addressed 
 his Sonnets, which occurs in the Gentleman's Magazine 
 of this month, and to which you have so kindly directed 
 my attention, occasions, I am half ashamed to confess, 
 some selfish regrets. 
 
 " It is now more than thirteen years ago, in 1819, I 
 think, since I detailed to you the progress of the dis- 
 covery I had then made, that William Herbert the third 
 Earl of Pembroke was undoubtedly the person to whom 
 Shakespeare addressed the first 126 Sonnets. Another 
 friend, Dr. Holme of Manchester, had been informed of 
 my secret a year earlier ; and from both, as ever since 
 from time to time I have spoken or corresponded on the 
 subject, I have received warnings, that by delaying to 
 give the result of my researches to the public, I was 
 putting to hazard an honourable opportunity of securing 
 to myself some literary reputation. The truth is, I have 
 in the long interval been much and actively engaged in 
 matters more immediately important. I have been oc- 
 cupied too in following out my discovery to its wide and 
 various consequences. I have felt desirous to explore 
 
30 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 deeply, rather than solicitous to appropriate early ; and 
 latterly, my materials have so overwhelmed me, that I 
 have become fastidious and irresolute, as to mode, com- 
 position, and arrangement. 
 
 " Under these circumstances, and before J. B. ac- 
 tually announces his discovery, I thus put in my claim. 
 I readily acknowledge that he who unnecessarily hoards 
 information of any kind, rightly loses the privilege of 
 first communicating it; and I anticipate with my bes* 
 philosophy- the interesting conclusion of J. B.'s very 
 excellent and original paper. 
 
 " When I can again apply myself to the subject, I 
 will come before the public as a fellow-labourer, and it 
 shall'be in the spirit of one who,* whilst he feels for 
 human nature somewhat jealously of his own long- 
 treasured discovery, recollects that the claim he is now 
 preferring may be the cause of similar feelings in another, 
 who has much more justly appreciated what is due to 
 himself, and what the interests of literature demand from 
 all its worshippers. ^ 
 
 " I am, my dear Sir, your obliged friend, 
 
 "B. HEYWOOD BRIGHT. 
 
 "Stone-buildings, Lincoln s Inn, 
 Oct. 16, 1832. 
 
 "Rev. Joseph Hunter." 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 31 
 
 My essay followed them, of course without reference 
 to what I could not then know to be in existence; what 
 notice I took of the writers will be seen at the conclusion, 
 when I put my name to the enquiry. 
 
 I. It is obvious that the Patron of Shakespeare was a 
 person of rank superior to himself: that he was in the 
 may-morn of life : that his personal beauty was re- 
 markable: that he was much addicted to pleasure, 
 courted by the women, and guilty of some breaches of 
 friendship in consequence : that his counsellor and poet, 
 fully aware of his tendency to dissipation, exhorted him 
 to marry, and bequeath to the world a copy of himself. 
 It is also clear that, during the time of writing these com- 
 positions, their object had not coveted public business, 
 he was something more than the mere 'child of state/ 
 and by shunning its perilous honours, might be said, 
 almost alone, to be ' hugely politic.' 
 
 He is announced in the first Sonnet in the tone of 
 Spenser's address to Raleigh, as I have before observed, 
 
 " Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, 
 And only herauld to the gaudy spring." 
 
 This is unquestionably said of a youth of distinction, 
 who had just then offered himself to the public gaze 
 and towards whom every eye was turned, from the cir- 
 cumstances of his descent, and the graces with which 
 he seemed personally accomplished. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 If we were told that the nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, 
 soon after he quitted Oxford in 1594, had been allowed 
 by his father the Earl of Pembroke, to come to London, 
 in \iisfifteenth year ; that with the beauty of his mother 
 the Countess, and the taste for poetry of her and Sir 
 Philip, he had addicted himself to the stage, and 
 among the professors of dramatic art had distinguished 
 Shakespeare, and entertained an ardent affection for so 
 great a master; we should receive such an anecdote as 
 one at all events highly probable. If we were sub- 
 sequently to learn that persons who well knew the poet 
 and his connections, had left their intimacy upon record, 
 it would excite, it is true, no surprise, though it might 
 lead us to expect that the poet himself had also publicly 
 expressed his sense of so honourable a distinction. 
 
 Now Messieurs Heminges and Condell, when publish- 
 ing the folio edition of Shakespeare's Plays in the year 
 1623, in their dedication fo William then Earl of Pem- 
 broke, and Philip Earl of Montgomery his brother, 
 testify to this friendly connexion, and, as it appears 
 certain that Ben Jonson held the pen for them, the facts 
 stated acquire his full knowledge, in corroboration of 
 the assertion made by the actual dedicators. Jonson 
 himself knew these noblemen well. Thus he writes for 
 the dedicators, as to the plays now collected : 
 
 " But since your Lordshippes have beene pleas'd to 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 33 
 
 thinke these trifles some-thing heereto-fore ; and have 
 prosequuted both them, and their authour living, with so 
 much favour : we hope that (they out-living him, and he 
 not having the fate, common with some, to be exequutor 
 to his owne writings,) you will use the like indulgence 
 towards them, you have done unto their parent. * 
 
 " It hath been the height of our care, who are the pre- 
 senters, to make the present worthy of your H. H. by 
 the perfection. But there we must also crave our 
 abilities to be considered, my lords. We cannot go 
 beyond our owne powers. Country hands reach foorth 
 milke, creame, fruites, or what they have: and many 
 nations (we have heard) that had not gummes and 
 incense, obtained their requests with a leavened cake. 
 It was no fault to approach their gods by what means 
 they could : and the most, though meanest of things are 
 made precious, when they are dedicated to temples. In 
 that name, therefore, we most humbly consecrate to your 
 H. H. these remaines of your servant SHAKESPEARE; 
 
 * It will no doubt appear remarkable to those who have 
 never heard but of Shakespeare's first patron, Lord South- 
 ampton, that HB should not even be alluded to on this occasion* 
 Whether he disputed this homage, or was offended by its alie- 
 nation from him, cannot now be known. He probably sent 
 for the book on its publication, and re-perused the plays. In 
 the following year, 1624, he accepted a command in the Low 
 Countries, and died of a fever at Bergen-op-Zoom, on the 1 Oth 
 of November, aged 52. 
 
 D 
 
34 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 that what delight is in them, may be ever your L. L. the 
 reputation his, and the faults ours, if any be committed, 
 by a payre so carefull to shew their gratitude both to the 
 living and the dead, as is your Lordshippes most 
 bounden, JOHN HEMINGE, 
 
 HENRY CONDELL." 
 
 It is my opinion, then, that Shakespeare addressed 
 126 of these Sonnets to Mr. WILLIAM HERBERT, subse- 
 quently third Earl of Pembroke, and that a variety of 
 circumstances alluded to in these Sonnets, as well as 
 the initials, apply fully, personally, and unequivocally 
 to the said young nobleman ; and that the other Sonnets, 
 though not addressed, were sent to him, as alluding to 
 matters mentioned in the 126; and that it is probable 
 the Earl sanctioned their publication in 1609 under his 
 untitled initials. There will appear an obvious propriety 
 in thus restricting Thorpe to his designation when they 
 were written, if we consider that the Earl in 1609 had 
 become a statesman, and, as his poet had predicted, 
 attentive to his own dignity and importance at court. 
 To justify me in the hypothesis just laid down, every 
 circumstance in the 126 Sonnets addressed to one 
 person, should apply to an intercourse between Shake- 
 speare and Mr. William Herbert, and apply moreover 
 easily. There should be no straining of words, no 
 wringing of a poor phrase to torture it into a lame sup- 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 35 
 
 porter of an hypothesis. As I have already proved that, 
 without such torture, these productions cannot be 
 applied to other candidates, so I shall now in detail pro- 
 ceed to show, that they do strictly, fairly, and unde- 
 niably apply to the young nobleman I have named. 
 
 II. It will, therefore, in the outset, be necessary to 
 look at his life and character, as they have been de- 
 lineated by the Oxford historian, A. a Wood, and the 
 great Lord Clarendon. And first for the Athenee 
 Oxonienses. 
 
 " William Herbert, son and heir of Henry Earl of 
 Pembroke, was born at Wilton, in Wilts, the 8th of 
 April, 1580, became a nobleman of New College, 
 Oxford, in Lent term. 1592, aged 13, continued there 
 about two years, succeeded his father in his honours 
 1601, made Knight of the Garter 1st of James I. and 
 Governor of Portsmouth six years after. In 1626 he 
 was unanimously elected Chancellor of this University, 
 being a great patron of learning, and about that time 
 was made Lord Chamberlain of the King's Household. 
 
 O 
 
 He was not only a great favourer of learned and in- 
 genious men, but was himself learned, and endowed 
 to admiration with a poetical genie, as by those amorous 
 and not inelegant Aires and Poems of his composition 
 doth evidently appear ; some of which had musical 
 notes set to them by Henry Lawes 
 
36 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 He died suddenly in his bouse called Baynard's Castle, 
 in London, on the 10th of April in 1630, according to 
 the calculation of his nativity, made several years before 
 by Mr. Tho. Allen of Gloucester Hall ; whereupon his 
 body was buried in the Cathedral Church at Salisbury, 
 near to that of his father." 
 
 And also in the Fasti, where he thus speaks of him : 
 
 " William Herbert Earl of Pembroke, the very 
 picture and viva effigies of nobility, a person truly 
 generous, a singular lover of learning and the professors 
 thereof, and therefore by the academicians elected their 
 Chancellor some years after this. [30th of August, 
 1605, when he was created M. A. the King being then 
 at Oxford.] 
 
 " His person was rather majestic than elegant, and 
 his presence, whether quiet or in motion, was full of 
 stately gravity. His mind was purely heroic, often 
 stout, but never disloyal ; and so vehement an opposer 
 of the Spaniard, that when that match fell under con- 
 sideration in the latter end of the reign of K. Jam. 1. he 
 would sometimes rouze, to the trepidation of that King 
 yet kept in favour still ; for his Majesty knew plain 
 dealing, as a jewel in all men, so in a Privy Counsellor 
 an ornamental duty; and the same true-heartedness 
 commended him to K. Ch. I." 
 
 My Lord CLARENDON'S character is much fuller, but 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 37 
 
 so exact and eloquent, so fine a model of sincere his- 
 torical painting, that I will not mutilate it, to hurry on 
 the argument founded upon it. 
 
 " William Earl of Pembroke was the most universally 
 beloved and esteemed of any man of that age; and, 
 having a great office in the court, he made the court 
 itself better esteemed, and more reverenced in the 
 country. And as he had a great number of friends of 
 the best men, so no man had ever the confidence to 
 avow himself to be his enemy. He was a man very well 
 bred, and of excellent parts, and a graceful speaker 
 upon any subject, having a good proportion of learning, 
 and a ready wit to apply to it, and enlarge upon it ; of a 
 pleasant and facetious humour, and a disposition affable, 
 generous, and magnificent. He was master of a large 
 fortune from his ancestors, and had a great addition by 
 his wife, a daughter and heir of the Earl of Shrewsbury, 
 which he enjoyed during his life, she out-living him ; 
 but all served not his expence, which was only limited 
 by his great mind, and occasions to use it nobly. 
 
 " He lived many years about the court before in it 
 and never by it ; being rather regarded and esteemed by 
 King James, than loved and favoured. After the foul 
 fall of the Earl of Somerset, he was made Lord Cham- 
 berlain of the King's house, more for the court's sake 
 than his own; and the court appeared with the more 
 
38 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 lustre, because he had the government of that province. 
 As he spent and lived upon his own fortune, so he stood 
 upon his own feet, without any other support than of his 
 proper virtue and merit; and lived towards the favourites 
 with that decency, as would not suffer them to censure 
 or reproach his master's judgment and election, but as 
 with men of his own rank. He was exceedingly be- 
 loved in the court, because he never desired to get that 
 for himself which others laboured for, but was still readie 
 to promote the pretences of worthy men. And he was 
 equally celebrated in the country, for having received 
 no obligations from the court which might corrupt or 
 sway his affections and judgement : so that all who were 
 displeased and unsatisfied in the court, or with the 
 court, were always inclined to put themselves under his 
 banner, if he would have admitted them ; and yet he did 
 not so reject them as to make them espouse another 
 shelter ; but so far suffered them to depend on -him, 
 that he could restrain them from breaking out beyond 
 private resentments and murmurs. 
 
 " He was a great lover of his country, and of the 
 religion and justice which he believed could only 
 support it ; and his friendships were only with men of 
 those principles. And as his conversation was most 
 with men of the most pregnant parts and understanding, 
 so towards any such, who needed support or encourage- 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 39 
 
 ment, though unknown, if fairly recommended to him, 
 he was very liberal. Sure never man was planted in a 
 court that was fitter for that soil, or brought better 
 qualities with him to purify that air. 
 
 " Yet his MEMORY must not be flattered that his 
 virtues and good inclinations may be believed ; he was not 
 without some alloy of vice, nor without being clouded 
 with great infirmities, which he had in too exorbitant 
 a proportion. He indulged to himself the pleasures of 
 all kinds, almost in all excesses. To WOMEN, whether 
 out of his natural constitution, or for want of his 
 domestic content and delight, (in which he was most 
 unhappy, for he paid much too dear for his wife's 
 fortune, by taking her person into the bargain) he was 
 immoderately given up. But therein he likewise retained 
 such a power and jurisdiction over his very appetite 
 that he was not so much transported with beauty and 
 outward allurements, as with those advantages of the 
 mind as manifested extraordinary wit and spirit and 
 knowledge, and administered pleasure in the conversation. 
 To these he sacrificed himself, his precious time, and 
 much of his fortune. And some who were nearest his 
 trust and friendship, were not without apprehension, 
 that his natural vivacity and vigour of mind began to 
 lessen and decline by those excessive indulgences. 
 
 " About the time of the death of King James, or pre- 
 
40 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 sently after, he was made Lord Steward of his Majesty's 
 house, that the staff of Chamberlain might be put into 
 the hands of his brother the Earl of Montgomery, upon 
 a new contract of friendship with the Duke of Buck- 
 ingham ; after whose death he had likewise such offices 
 of his as he most affected, of honour and command ; 
 none of profit, which he cared not for ; and within two 
 years after, he died himself of an apoplexy, after a full 
 and cheerful supper. 
 
 "A short story may not be unfitly inserted, it being 
 very frequently mentioned by a person of known in- 
 tegrity, who at that time being on his way to London, 
 met at Maidenhead some persons of quality, of relation 
 or dependence upon the Earl of Pembroke. (Sir 
 Charles Morgan, commonly called General Morgan, 
 who had commanded an army in Germany and de- 
 fended Stoad; Dr. Field, then Bishop of St. David's; 
 and Dr. Chafin, the Earl's then chaplain in his house, 
 and much in his favour.) At supper one of them drank 
 a health to the Lord Steward ; upon which another of 
 them said, ( that he believed his Lord was at that time 
 very merry, for he had now outlived the day, which his 
 tutor Sandford* had prognosticated upon his nativity 
 
 * Sandford may be a mistake of Lord Carendon for Allen 
 of Gloucester Hall ; if not, it will follow that two astrologers 
 calculated Herbert's nativity, and that they concurred in their 
 interpretation of his horoscope. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 41 
 
 he would not outlive ; but he had done it now, for that 
 was his birth- day, which had completed his age to fifty 
 years.* The next morning, by the time they came to 
 Colebrook, they met with the news of his death. 
 
 " He died exceedingly lamented by men of all 
 qualities, and left many of his servants and dependants 
 good estates, raised out of his employments and bounty. 
 Nor had his heir cause to complain; for though his 
 expences had been very magnificent (and it may be the 
 less considered, and his improvidence the less, because 
 he had no child to inherit,) insomuch as he left a great 
 debt charged upon the estate; yet considering the 
 wealth he left in jewels, plate, and furniture, and the 
 estate his brother enjoyed in right of his wife (who was 
 not fit to manage it herself) during her long life, he may 
 be justly said to have inherited as good an estate from 
 him,a.s HE had from his father, which was one of the 
 best in England." 
 
 Although the above admirable character conducts the 
 Earl to the close of his life, and I am chiefly concerned 
 in the early part of it, yet, besides the ornamental effect 
 of so complete a production, the anecdote which refers to 
 judicial astrology is necessary, to make out some points 
 of parallel in the Sonnets themselves. 
 
 Greatly to the honour of Clarendon, the above 
 character has one feature, which biographers of the 
 
42 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 present day are careful to omit. It speaks fearlessly of 
 the "exorbitant proportion of his infirmities," and yet 
 shows him to have been one of the most amiable of the 
 race of men. One of these infirmities is pointed at in 
 the Sonnets, and the great poet himself seems impli- 
 cated with him. Dr. Drake wishes that 22 of the 
 Sonnets had never been published " because if we 
 dismiss these confessional Sonnets, not the slightest 
 moral stain can rest on the character of Shakespeare." 
 But why should he be so anxious, in the case of Shake- 
 speare, to exhibit " a faultless monster which the world 
 ne'er saw ?'' a being transcending us so immeasurably 
 in the powers of the mind, and not evincing his kindred 
 by the slightest error in his personal conduct ! Surely, 
 as repented error excites no imitation, it is better to 
 keep down our arrogance, by showing the greatest of us 
 not entirely spotless. It is not for the purpose of 
 common-place morality, that we hear authoritatively 
 from the reading desk " If we say that we have no sin, 
 we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us/' 
 
 I at length proceed with the investigation, having 
 established much relative matter on unquestionable 
 authority. It will be now readily admitted that when 
 Mr. William Herbert came up to town from college, he 
 was in the vernal blossom of existence ; and all that the 
 Sonnets express as to the beauty of his person may be 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 43 
 
 credited upon a sight of Vandyke's picture of him in his 
 maturity. The poet seems to be merely transposed by 
 the biographer in the account of his attentions to the 
 sex, which previous quotations have placed before the 
 reader. Even the particular temper of our youth, who 
 was addicted, says Rowland Whyte, to melancholy, is 
 marked by Shakespeare in the 8th Sonnet. 
 
 " Musick to hear, why hear'st thou musick sadly 9 
 Why lov'st thou that, which thou receiv'st not gladly?" 
 
 III. There are many passages in these Sonnets, which, 
 as they infer the superior condition of his young friend, 
 express also the fear that reasons of rank and state 
 might separate them : that an intimacy with the Player 
 might sully the future Peer, and that it would be 
 incumbent on the latter to "hold his honour at a wary 
 distance. 7 ' This reflection induces the poet to lament 
 his degraded condition, which made him " a motley to 
 the view" of an unworthy crowd. A few such complaints 
 shall follow. 
 
 " Let me confess, that we two must be twain. 
 In our two loves there is but one respect, 
 Though in our lives a separable spight. 
 I may not evermore acknowledge thee, 
 Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame ; 
 Nor thou with publick kindness honour me, 
 
 Unless thou take that honour from thy name." 
 
 SONNET xxxvi. 
 
44 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Against that time, if ever that time come, 
 When I shall see thee frown on my defects, 
 When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, 
 Call'd to that audit by advisd respects ? 
 Against that time, when thou shalt strangely pass, 
 And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye ; 
 When love, converted from the thing it was, 
 Shall reasons find of settled gravity." 
 
 I reasoned upon the latter passage in the opening, 
 without pointing to the particular person addressed; it 
 is here repeated to establish my hypothesis. Even the 
 sage and moral Spenser apologizes for presenting the 
 Faery Queene to the grave Lord Treasurer of England ; 
 and only hopes acceptance from its deeper sense, which 
 such an eye as Lord Burleigh's might rest upon with 
 approbation. 
 
 " To you, right noble Lord, whose carefull brest 
 
 To menage of most grave affaires is bent, 
 
 Unfitly I these idle rimes present, 
 
 The labour of lost time, and wit unstaid : 
 
 Yet, if their deeper sense be inly waid, 
 
 And the dim veile, with which from common view 
 
 Their fairer parts are hid, aside be laid, 
 
 Perhaps not vaine they may appear to you.'* 
 
 Spenser's follower, Chapman, thought heavenly 
 poetry the true aliment of great minds ; and proudly, 
 but not vainly, said so. See the Sonnets with his 
 Homer. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 45 
 
 Burleigh however, it is well known, frowned upon 
 such levities, and considered 
 
 " That poesie was a removed thing 
 From grave administry of publike weales." 
 
 How Shakespeare conceived himself degraded by the 
 profession to which he owes his immortality, it is worth 
 while to show fully. 
 
 " Alas ! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, 
 And made myself a motley to the view/' 
 
 SONNET ex. 
 
 " O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 
 Than publick means, which publick manners breeds. 
 
 Thence comes it that my NAME receives a brand; 
 
 And almost thence my nature is subdu'd 
 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." 
 
 SONNET cxr. 
 
 One more struggle of the Poet to bear himself above 
 the reach of illiberal obloquy, by the shield which his 
 Patron's favour threw before him. 
 
 " Your love and pity doth the impression fill, 
 
 Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow ; 
 
 For what care I who calls me well or ill, 
 
 So YOU o'er-green my bad, my good allow ? 
 
 You are my all-the-world, and I must strive 
 
 To know my shames and praises from your tongue. 
 
 In so profound abysm I throw all care 
 
 Of others' voices, that my adder's sense 
 
 To critick and to flatterer stopped are." 
 
46 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 That Shakespeare's sensibility would be shocked by 
 the usual treatment of his profession, may be obvious 
 from the language even of King James's licence to his 
 own company acting at the Globe. That monarch wills 
 and command sail Justices, Mayors, Sheriffs, Constables, 
 Headboroughs, and other officers, to allow them to act 
 throughout his dominions, " without any letts, hindrances, 
 or molestations : and not only so, but to be aiding or 
 assisting to them, if any ivrong be to them offered; and 
 to allow them such former courtesies as hath been given 
 to men of their place and quality." 
 
 As Lord Pembroke received the garter in the first 
 year of the new reign, there is every reason for thinking 
 that his friendship for our Poet procured the above 
 licence from King James. 
 
 IV. The 80th, 82nd, 85th, and 86th Sonnets contain 
 references to the better spirit, who studiously celebrated 
 the same object with Shakespeare, and whom I promised 
 to make distinctly known to the reader. 
 
 " O, how I faint when I of YOU do write, 
 Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, 
 And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
 To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame !" 
 
 SONNET LXXX. 
 
 The modern reader would be apt to think that Shake- 
 speare could only regard Spenser as his superior but 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 47 
 
 this is to be unacquainted with the estimates of poetry 
 in the age of Elizabeth. Acknowledged learning 
 greatly predominated over genius. The modern stage 
 had not drawn aside the veneration for the classic 
 drama, and the scholar still indulged his followers with 
 plays upon the ancient model. He thought the best of 
 modern plays but gross and barbarous ; and, in imitation 
 of Sir Philip Sidney, called upon scholars like himself, 
 to resist the barbarian of the north, who threatened with 
 oblivion their more classical productions. Notwith- 
 standing " the divinity that stirr'd within him/' I have 
 no doubt that Shakespeare actually vailed his bonnet, 
 not only to Spenser, but to Daniel and Chapman, to 
 Harrington, and to Fairefax. We see them invariably 
 " pass him by/' not deigning to consider him of their 
 fraternity ; and a modern worshipper of our Poet, after 
 toiling through names with which he is little acquainted, 
 wonders by what strange blindness that Jupiter was 
 ever unobserved, to whom the rest have become merely 
 satellites, invisible to the common eye, and only known 
 to exist from the telescopic discoveries of the antiquary. 
 But that Spenser was not so absolute a sovereign in 
 the period to which I have referred, is proved by Ben 
 Jonson, who points out that poet's rival and his own, in 
 his delightful comedy of Epico2ne, or the Silent 
 Woman. It is one of the topics chosen by Truewit, to 
 
48 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 deter Morose from marriage ; whose lady, he tells him, 
 will not care how his acres melt, " so as she may bee a 
 stateswoman, know all the news, what was done at 
 Salisbury, what at the Bath, what at Court, what in 
 Progresse ; or, so she may censure Poets, and authors, 
 and stiles, and compare them, DANIEL with SPENSER, 
 Jonson with the tother youth, and so foorth." 
 
 This leads me easily to my decision, that Daniel was 
 the better spirit alluded to. He was in fact brought up 
 at Wilton, the seat of the Pembrokes, and in 1601, in- 
 scribed his Defence of Ryme to William Herbert. In 
 this dedication, he tells him, 
 
 " I was first encouraged or fram'd thereunto by your 
 most worthy and honourable mother ; receiving the first 
 notion for the formall ordering of those compositions at 
 Wilton, which I must ever acknowledge to have beene 
 my best schoole, and thereof alwayes am to hold a feeling 
 and gratefull memory. Afterward, drawne farther on 
 by the well-liking and approbation of my worthy Lord 
 [your father,] the fosterer of me and my muse." 
 
 Therefore, when Shakespeare wrote the 82nd Sonnet, 
 he hints at the actual ground of his jealousy Daniel 
 had dedicated to William Herbert. 
 
 " I grant thou wert not married to my muse, 
 And therefore may'st without attaint o'erlook 
 The dedicated words, which writers use 
 Of their fair subject, blessing every book." 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 49 
 
 Spenser, let me add, did not live to dedicate to Wil- 
 liam Herbert, though it is admitted he eulogized his 
 parents. This establishes Daniel firmly. 
 
 That Shakespeare had chosen Samuel Daniel, the 
 favourite poet of the Countess of Pembroke, for his 
 model in these Sonnets, addressed according to the 
 present hypothesis to her elder son, is pointed out by 
 Mr. Malone with his usual accuracy. But the imitation 
 of that poet had an earlier commencement. When he 
 had determined upon the " graver labour" which was to 
 follow his Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, he cast 
 the Rape of Lucrece in the Stanza of Daniel's Rosa- 
 mond, consisting of seven lines ; whereas his first pro- 
 duction was limited to six. Shakespeare appears also 
 in his second work, to have been during a considerable 
 portion of it, infected by the almost prosaic plainness of 
 Daniel. The Fair Rosamond, in enjoining her poet* 
 his task, invests herself with the prescience, (or shall I 
 call it historical knowledge?) of times subsequent to her 
 own ; and talks as familiarly of Jane Shore, as if the 
 
 * Perhaps this term for Daniel may be questionable, for 
 Michael Drayton, (not an ordinary Poet, as Warburton styled 
 him, but) an admirable writer with a purer taste than Daniel, 
 has composed a legend of fair Rosamond ; and in his heroical 
 Epistles has also honoured the pleasant Mistress Shore and 
 her Royal lover, by framing two letters for them, which it may 
 be no profanation to say exceed infinitely the amatorial 
 effusions of the fifteenth century. 
 
50 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 heroines had changed masters, or Edward the 4th had 
 reigned before the second Henry. A few stanzas may 
 not much offend, as a sample of Shakespeare's rival. 
 
 " Out from the horror of infernall deepes, 
 My poore afflicted ghost comes heere to plain it, 
 Attended with my shame that never sleepes, 
 The spot where-with my kinde and youth did staine it. 
 My body found a grave where to containe it. 
 A sheete could hide my face, but not my sin, 
 For Fame findes never tombe t'inclose it in. 
 
 And which is worse, my soule is now denied 
 
 Her transport to the sweet Elysian rest, 
 
 The joyfull blisse for ghosts repurified, 
 
 The ever-springing gardens of the blest ; 
 
 Caron denies me waftage with the rest, 
 And saies, my soule can never passe the river, 
 Till lovers' sighes on earth shall it deliver. 
 
 No muse suggests the pity of my case, 
 Each pen doth overpasse my just complaint, 
 Whilst others are preferd, though far more base ; 
 Shores wife is grac'd, and passes for a saint ; 
 Her legend * justifies her foule attaint. 
 
 * " Her legend" This unquestionably refers to the " Le- 
 gend of Shore's wife," written by Churchyard. See the Mirror 
 for Magistrates, a work greatly admired and imitated in its day 
 by Drayton and others, though now little more of it is read than 
 the Induction by Sackville ; which Capel selected for a prin- 
 cipal decoration to his " Prolusions," one of the purest volumes 
 of our ancient poetry, most carefully edited, the hopeful pre- 
 cursor to his Shakespeare, 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE." 51 
 
 Her wel-told tale did such compassion find, 
 That she is pass'd, and I am left behind." 
 
 The Poet is of course too gallant and generous, to 
 leave the delight of Woodstock to the merciless rigour 
 of Charon ; among those who 
 
 Centum errant annos, volitantque hsec littora circum ; 
 Turn demum admissi stagna oxoptata revisunt. 
 
 VIRG. jEneid vi. v. 32930. 
 A hundred years they wander on the shore ; 
 At length, their penance done are wafted o'er. 
 
 Dryden B. vi. v. 4512. 
 
 Rosamond is lavish enough in the eulogy of her own 
 charms, but her royal lover being " cleane past his 
 youth," is exposed to the derision of his youthful 
 mistress. 
 
 " Whom Fortune made my king, Love made my subject, 
 Who did commaund the land, most humbly pray'd me, 
 HENRI E the second that so highly weigh'd me, 
 Found well (by proofe) the priviledge of beutie, 
 That it had power to countermaunde all dutie. 
 No armour might be found that could defend, 
 Transpearcing raies of cristal-pointed eyes : 
 No stratagem, no reason could amend, 
 No not his age, (yet olde men should be wise) * 
 But shewes deceive ; outward appearance lies. 
 Let none for seeming so, thinke saints of others, 
 For all are men, and all have suckt their mothers. 
 
 * The very exclamation, by the way, of Goneril to another 
 King (Lear) : " You, as you are old and reverend, should be 
 wise." 
 
52 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Her candour, in unfolding " the cause of this defect/' 
 is at all events striking. The close of this poem is the 
 return of Rosamond to attend again the Stygian flood ; 
 armed now in the panoply of her poet's muse, of which 
 she thus gratefully and elegantly speaks : 
 
 " And were it not thy favourable lines 
 Re-edified the wracke of my decayes, 
 And that thy accents willingly assignes, * 
 Some farther date and give me longer dayes, 
 Few in this age had knowne my Beautyes praise. 
 
 But thus renew 'd, my fame redeemes some time, 
 
 Till other ages shall neglect thy rime. 
 Then when Confusion in her course shall bring, 
 Sad desolation on the times to come : 
 When mirthless Thames shall have no Swanne to sin 
 All musicke silent, and the Muses dombe. 
 And yet, even then it must be knowne to some, 
 
 That once they flourisht, though not cherisht so, 
 
 And Thames had Swannes as well as ever Po." 
 
 As Daniel lived among astrologers, and we shall 
 soon have to say more of Dee, and Allen, and their asso- 
 ciates, one is tempted to think that some political Seer 
 had opened to his view the ruffian scenes of the fol- 
 lowing century, during which all music was really 
 silent, and the muses dumb; and the sweet swan of 
 
 * Assignes, give. This anomalous construction, from a 
 scholar like Daniel, shews that, in his time, nothing was more 
 common, than to make grammar yield to the necessities of 
 rhyme. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAK1 SPEAR E. 
 
 Avon, and the Thames, himself, proscribed as profane, 
 immoral and licentious. 
 
 Having thus introduced to the reader some satis- 
 factory specimens of Daniel, whom Shakespeare imitated 
 palpably in the stanza of his Rape of Lucrece, we come 
 naturally to the Sonnets which were equally founded 
 upon those of Daniel to his Delia. But I am very far from 
 thinking that the collection published by Thorpe in 
 1609, were any of them alluded to by Meres in his 
 Wits Treasury, 1598 for thus that observer expresses 
 himself: " As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to 
 live in Pythagoras, so the sweet soul of Ovid lives in 
 mellifluous and honey tongued Shakespeare. Witness 
 his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred SONNETS 
 among his private friends, &c." that is, he addressed to 
 his private friends a number of these sugred com- 
 positions, which they were proud of receiving from the 
 new poet, and imparted pretty generally, so that Meres 
 had seen many of them. Indeed it could scarce be 
 otherwise : a vein so abundant would throw itself out in 
 the received modes of composition, anxious to prove 
 that, neither Spenser, nor Daniel, solely had strength 
 enough, to bar his way, in whatever walk his muse 
 chose to expatiate. But, as to the collection of Sonnets 
 addressed to W. H., I confess I doubt whether they 
 were ever seen by any eye but his, to whom 126 of them 
 
54 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 were addressed ; they are entirely personal, and never 
 intended for the public view, and such as the peculiar 
 connexion between the parties could alone prevent from 
 being even ludi&rous. Nay, when at length they are 
 ' set forth? the person addressed by the writer is ob- 
 scured, rather than revealed by the Initials affixed: 
 he himself would recognise the ascription, but few 
 others would attain very decisive information. 
 
 But, as Daniel himself in the prose Dedication to 
 William Herbert, mentions his mother, Sidney's sister, 
 "the subject of all verse;" the reader might justly 
 complain, were we entirely to sink that beautiful writer's 
 verses, addressed to herself. They were prefixed to his 
 tragedie of Cleopatra, and this play written upon the 
 classic model, he was enjoined to compose by the 
 Countess, because she had herself dramatised Antony : 
 
 " Who all alone ; having remained long, 
 Required his Cleopatra's company." 
 
 Daniel in his address to the Countess, thus com- 
 memorates her own poetry. She had versified the Psalms 
 of David, and achieved an immortality for her illustrious 
 name. 
 
 " Those Hymns which thou dost consecrate to heaven, 
 Which Israel's singer to his God did frame, 
 Unto thy voice Eternitie hath given, 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 55 
 
 And makes thee dear to him from whence they came, 
 
 In them must rest thy venerable name, 
 
 So long as Sion's God remaineth honoured ; 
 
 And till confusion hath all zeale bereaven, 
 
 And murthered Faith and Temples ruined. 
 
 By this (great ladie) thou must then be knowne, 
 When Wilton lies low, levell'd with the ground ; 
 And this is that which thou maist call thine owne, 
 Which sacrilegious Time cannot confound ; 
 Heere thou surviv'st thy selfe, heere thou art found 
 Of late succeeding ages, fresh in fame : 
 This monument cannot be overthrowne, 
 Where, in eternall brasse remaines thy name." 
 
 Every reader of feeling and taste would complain, if 
 to the above eulogy, we neglected to add the consum- 
 mation of all human praise, the epitaph upon her 
 remains in Salisbury Cathedral : 
 
 " Underneath this marble hearse 
 Lies the subject of all verse, 
 Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother : 
 Death, ere thou hast slain another, 
 Wise, and fair, and good as she, 
 Time shall throw a dart at thee." 
 
 V. But the Sonnets not only allude distinctly to 
 Daniel, but very critically point out some other retainers 
 of the Pembroke family. The poet hardly preserves 
 his temper when describing the combination against 
 him : 
 
56 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write 
 Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead ? 
 No, neither he, nor his compeers, by night 
 Giving him aid, my verse astonished. 
 He, nor that affable familiar ghost, 
 Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
 As victors, of my silence cannot boast." 
 
 "Alluding perhaps," says Mr. Steevens, "to the 
 celebrated Dr. Dee's pretended intercourse with an 
 angel, and other familiar spirits." There can be no 
 doubt about it the fact is upon record. Queen ELIZA- 
 BETH and the PEMBROKE family were Dee's chief 
 patrons. Their exalted minds and various accomplish- 
 ments did not exempt them from the mania of their 
 times though the sounder philosophy of Shakespeare 
 led him thus to denounce tbe Charlatans, who then 
 infested the great, and upon fantastical science grounded 
 predictions, which hung like a mildew upon a long 
 existence. 
 
 The reader will refer back to Antony a Wood's 
 memoir, where he will find that THOMAS ALLEN, of 
 Gloucester Hall, calculated Pembroke's nativity. He 
 was deemed in those days tbe father of all learning, and 
 an unfeigned lover of all good arts and sciences. This 
 mathematician was closely associated with JOHN DEE, 
 Tho. Harriot, Walt. Warner, Nath. Torporley, and many 
 others, and Dee pretended to an intercourse with fa- 
 miliar spirits. I have shown that Daniel was domi- 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 57 
 
 ciliated at Wilton, within the very lime-twigs of the 
 Necromancer's spells. Who shall say that " he came 
 off safe ?" The amiable Countess, however learned and 
 virtuous, was herself, alas ! unprovided of 
 
 " That MOLY 
 Which Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave." 
 
 Allen lived to verify his prediction of William 
 Herbert's death: the subject of his calculation, perhaps 
 its victim, died in 1630; and Allen himself followed, 
 two years after, at the great age of 90. What he knew 
 of astronomy, mathematics, and natural philosophy, 
 may be estimated from the praises of Selden and 
 Camden. But judicial astrology was his " favourite 
 and first pursuit," and he left a manuscript commentary 
 upon the 2nd and 3rd books of Ptolemy de asCrorum 
 judiciis, which fell into the hands of William Lilly. 
 
 Thus, by a most extraordinary concurrence indeed, the 
 Sonnets seem to have only graced with verse the bio- 
 graphical sketches of a Wood and Clarendon ; and the 
 character of Lord Pembroke in prose only establishes 
 him to have been the hitherto concealed friend and 
 patron of Shakespeare's muse. 
 
 I have been unwilling to multiply quotations, by 
 which my essay would have been merely dilated ; for 
 when a point is clearly established, enough has been 
 done. The enquiry, now brought to its close, will I 
 think be found to have proved : 
 
58 ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 1. That in the bookseller's dedication of the Sonnets to 
 Mr. W. H., the object of them, and not their bringer 
 
 forth, is certainly intended . 
 
 2. That the person to whom the initials were first applied, 
 could not be the object of them, either as to age or rank. 
 
 3. That it is impossible Queen Elizabeth could ever have 
 been the object of Shakespeare's Sonnets, even though 
 Spenser had addressed his Amoretti to her. 
 
 4. But that Spenser never did so: but to the lady whom 
 he married ; whose name was also Elizabeth. 
 
 5. That Shakespeare's Sonnets do not at all apply to 
 Lord Southampton either as to his age,' character, or 
 the bustle and activity of a life distinguished by 
 distant and hazardous services to some of which 
 they must have alluded, had he been their object. 
 
 6. That they were really addressed to Mr. William Herbert, 
 in his youth, to whom the initials do apply ; and that 
 he was a patron and friend of Shakespeare. 
 
 7. That the two biographers of Mr. William Herbert, 
 afterwards Lord Pembroke, establish his right to the 
 Sonnets, by echoing the contents of them. That they 
 display the same merits, and the same faults in the 
 person, and thus prove the identity in the most re- 
 markable manner. 
 
 8. That the poet Daniel, and not Spenser, was the 
 better spirit, of whom Shakespeare expresses his 
 
 jealousy in the Sonnets. That Daniel also dedicated 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 59 
 
 to William Herbert, and that Shakespeare literally 
 alludes to such dedicationm the Sonnets themselves. 
 9. That even the astrologers DEE and others, whom 
 Shakespeare mentions in those Sonnets, were, like 
 Daniel, retainers of the Pembroke family ; and that 
 Allen, who calculated Herbert's nativity, as his bio- 
 grapher informs us, was one of that set of impostors. 
 
 So that it is conceived, from these united proofs, the 
 question to whom Shakespeare's Sonnets were ad- 
 dressed, is now decided, and that in future, W. H. as 
 William Herbert, subsequently Earl of Pembroke, 
 will be deemed, as Mr. Thorpe says, fully entitled to 
 "THE ETERNITY PROMISED BY OUR EVER-LIVING 
 POET." 
 
 " Nov. 1, 1832. 
 " MR. URBAN, 
 
 " I THANK you for the accurate manner in which you 
 have given my Essay on the Sonnets of Shakespeare to 
 the public. 
 
 " For my hypothesis I am willing to answer by name, 
 though you have kept to the initials with which I sub- 
 scribed my inquiry. You, who know me, will not 
 suspect that, at seventy, I should be conceiving theories 
 as to the object of addresses, by a poet even so venerated 
 as Shakespeare. The truth is, that it was more than 
 
60 ON 7 THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 twenty years ago, in the life-time of our friend Malone, 
 that the Apology of G. Chalmers, for the believers in 
 Mr. IRELAND, drew me to examine his very wild ? 
 conceit, that our poet's Sonnets were addressed to 
 Queen Elizabeth. I wrote rny Essay, and selected my 
 hero while I was enamoured of the subject; and the 
 same volume contains -other enquiries (I was going to 
 say discoveries), which I may copy out, if the public at- 
 tention can be recovered to matters of so slight moment. 
 " It would be a bad compliment, in a case like the 
 present, to suppose that my hypothesis occurred only to 
 myself, it is a great presumptien of its truth, that 
 other minds have, by similar evidence, come to the same 
 result; and it was, therefore, without surprise that I 
 read the letter of Mr. B. Heywood Bright, in your last 
 Magazine. But I can safely assure him, thatl never heard 
 of his concurrence with me, as to William Herbert's 
 having been the object of the Sonnets. From the Rev. 
 Joseph Hunter, and Dr. Holme of Manchester, I could 
 never have heard what he had confided to their secrecy ; 
 for, indeed, I have not the honour (such I should 
 esteem it) to be known to them; and having done 
 something for Shakespeare in my day, I should have 
 seen without any regret the precedence of Mr. Bright in 
 publication; and have rejoiced that a gentleman, so 
 modest and liberal, had secured to himself, even by my 
 subject, an opportunity of literary distinction. 
 
ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 61 
 
 " How far we have trodden the same ground, I shall 
 still be glad to know, and hope that he will not think 
 himself precluded, by my enquiry, from the commu- 
 nication of his own. Unlike the coxcomb ephemera of 
 the press, the Gentleman's Magazine still advocates the 
 interests and the pleasures of sound literature ; the 
 arena afforded is sufficiently ample ; and, though we do 
 not meet as combatants, we may equally arrive at the 
 same'end, our own exercise, and perhaps the public in- 
 formation and amusement. 
 " Yours, &c. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 A recommendation much too flattering for neglect, 
 obtained rny consent to the re-appearance of this essay 
 in its present form ; which was adopted as being that 
 chosen by Mr. J. Payne Collier, for the publication of 
 his interesting New Facts respecting Shakespeare. 
 
 I have done my utmost to render it not only stronger 
 as to the general hypothesis, but more entertaining, by 
 collateral illustrations relative to either the poet or his 
 friends. 
 
 The Sonnets of Shakespeare have been minutely scru- 
 tinized of late for occurences in his life, and treated as a 
 sort of auto-biography. Perhaps the imaginations of 
 the writers have overleaped the bounds of just inference, 
 
62 * ON THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 and the love of the mighty Bard has not slightly tres- 
 passed upon the respect due to the great moral duties. 
 Whoever be the defaulter, the irregular passion of no 
 husband should be defended ; nor should a decided 
 wanton and jilt, however accomplished, be treated with 
 admiration and indulgence; because accident, and 
 absence from his home, led the greatest genius in the 
 world to become a dupe to her fascinations. 
 
 Having expressed my obligation to Mr. Collier for 
 suggesting to me the form of my publication, I must be 
 indebted still further to him, by addressing it, as he 
 has done, to some equally ardent admirer of Shake- 
 speare, whose intimacy he has the happiness to enjoy. 
 I therefore beg Sir GEORGE ROSE to accept this mark of 
 my long cherished respect for his family and himself; 
 seated as he is upon the bench, such subjects as I treat 
 cannot be deemed absolutely unsuitable to his attention, 
 when it is remembered, that a most acute series of com- 
 mentaries upon our Poet, under the signature E,* pro- 
 ceeded from the pen of that illustrious lawyer, Mr. 
 Justice Blackstone. 
 
 JAMES BOADEN. 
 LONDON, Nov. 1836. 
 
 * By this he indicated that it was the last letter of his name, 
 and not ihe first, which would have been guessed, <?. g. (Black - 
 ston) E, and so Malone accordingly printed it E. 
 
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