FOOTNOTES:

[26]Personal Recollections, Souvenirs, and Anecdotes of Thomas De Quincey and his Friends and Associates.Written and collected by James Hogg.

To a thoughtful reader there is, perhaps, no sadder spectacle than those sixteen volumes which represent all that remains to us of Thomas De Quincey. What superb powers, what noble and manifold gifts, what capacity for invaluable and imperishable achievements had Nature lavished on this extraordinary man! Metaphysics might for all time have been a debtor to that vigorous, acute, and subtle intellect, at once so speculative and logical, so inquisitive and discriminating. Æsthetic criticism might have found in him a second Lessing, and literary criticism a superior Sainte-Beuve. For, in addition to all that would have enabled him to excel in abstract thought, he had—and in ample measure—the qualities which make men consummate critics: rare power of analysis, the nicest perception, sensibility,sympathy, good taste, good sense, immense erudition. He might have contributed masterpieces to Theology, to History, to Economic Science. But they know not his name. He has set his seal on nothing but on English style. About a hundred and fifty articles contributed to magazines and encyclopædias, some of them of a high order of literary merit, many of them simply worthless, the majority of them containing what is inferior so disproportionately in excess of what is valuable that they may be likened to dustbins, with jewels here and there glittering among the rubbish;—this is what represents him. It is as a master of style, by virtue of what he accomplished as a rhetorician and prose poet only, that he will live. But this, comparatively scanty as it is, is of pre-eminent, of unique value, and will suffice to secure him a place for ever among the classics of English prose. He has also another claim, if not to our reverence, at least to our curious attention and interest,—and that attention and interest he can scarcely fail to excite in every generation,—his autobiographical writings give us a picture, and that with fascinating power, of one of the most extraordinary personalities on record.

Indiscriminating admiration is among the most pleasing traits of youth, but in men of mature years it loses its attractiveness. When it is no longer the effervescence of juvenile enthusiasm for which all make allowance, it becomes, likethe levities of boyhood affected in middle life, merely vapid folly. In relation to its object it not only defeats its own ends, but is apt to make recipient and donor alike ridiculous. Nor is this all. By some curious law of association which we cannot pretend to explain, its almost inevitable ally is dulness, and dulness of a peculiarly wearisome and exasperating kind. During the last few years these peculiarities have become so alarmingly epidemic that it really seems high time to form, on the principle of Mr. Morris's Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments, a Society for the Preservation of Literary Reputations. When those "of whom to be dispraised were no small praise" take to eulogy and editing, an unhappy Classic may well look to his true friends. It is nothing less than appalling to behold the mountains of rubbish now gradually accumulating over the work—the real work—of such poets as Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats; rubbish of their own, rescued with cruel industry from the oblivion to which they would themselves have consigned it, rubbish of their commentators and editors, dulness and inanity unutterable. "What, sir," asked an Eton boy of Foote, "was the best thing you ever said?" "Well," was the reply, "I once saw a chimney-sweep on a high prancing, high-mettled horse. 'There,' said I, 'goesWarburton on Shakespeare.'"But it is not in the Warburtons, not in the chimney-sweepers, that the mischief lies; it is inthose who may be called the scavengers and sextons of literature, in those who, utterly unable to discern between what is precious and what is worthless in a man's work, thrust all, without distinction, into prominence, and thus not only enable an author to "write himself down," but, by their indiscriminating eulogies, assist him in his suicide. The subtlest form, indeed, which detraction can assume is over-praise, for a man is thus forced to give the lie to his own reputation.

No one, perhaps, has suffered so much from ill-judging admirers as De Quincey. If ever an author needed a judicious adviser, when preparing his works for publication in a permanent form, and a judicious editor, when the time had come for that final edition on which his title to future fame should rest, it was the English opium-eater. But, unhappily, he had no such adviser in his lifetime, and he has had no such editor since. He consequently reprinted much which ought never to have been reprinted at all, and he omitted to reprint some things which would have done honour to him. His besetting faults, even in his vigour, were loquacity and silliness, a habit of "drawing out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument"—a tendency to peddle and dawdle, as well as to indulge in a sort of pleasantry, so attenuated as to border closely on inanity. As he grew older these habits became more confirmed.His puerility and garrulousness in his later writings are often intolerable. But this was not the worst. In revising some of his earlier papers, and particularly theConfessions, he not only imported into them tiresome irrelevancies and superfluities, but, in emending, ruined the glorious passages on which his fame as a rhetorician and prose poet rests; such has been the fate, among others, of the exquisite description of the powers of opium,—the superb passage beginning, "The town of L.. represented the earth with its sorrows and its graves,"[27]and of the dreams in the second part of theConfessions, particularly of the sublime one beginning, "The dream commenced with a music."[28]

Mr. James Hogg tells us that his design in publishing the present volume was that he might "place a stone upon the cairn of the man" who had treated him "with an almost paternal tenderness." We sincerely sympathize with Mr. Hogg's pious intention, but we submit that the truest kindness which he, or any other admirer of De Quincey could do him, would be not to augment but to lighten the cairn which indiscreet admirers are so industriously piling over him. To change the figure, the best service which could be rendered to De Quincey would be to relieve him of his superfluous baggage, notto add to it. His fame would stand much higher, if his sixteen volumes were vigorously weeded; if the sweepings and refuse of his study, so injudiciously given to the world by Dr. Japp and Mr. Hogg, were given instead to the flames; and if reminiscents and biographers would only leave him to tell, in his own fashion, his own story, especially as it is one of those stories the interest of which depends purely on the telling. We have already expressed our sympathy with Mr. Hogg's pious intention. It only remains for us to express our regret that Mr. Hogg's piety should have taken the form of the most barefaced piece of book-making which we ever remember to have met with. Addison, if we are not mistaken, somewhere describes a man to whom a single volume afforded all the amusement and variety of a whole library, for, by the time he had arrived at the middle, he had completely forgotten the beginning, and when he arrived at the end, he had completely forgotten the whole. Mr. Hogg appears to proceed on the assumption that it is pretty much the same with the public and its memory, that its capacity for amusement is permanent, but that its recollection of what has amused it is so treacherous, that repetition will be sure to have all the attraction of novelty. This is, no doubt, unhappily true. But it is a truth which no critic has a right to concede.

All that is of interest in this volume is littlemore than the literal reproduction, in another shape, of material embodied in a Life of De Quincey, published by Dr. Alexander Japp, under the pseudonym of H. A. Page, in 1877. Its exact composition is as follows. Eliminating the preface and the index, the book consists of 359 pages. Of these, seventy consist of a drearyréchaufféby Dr. Japp himself of his own Life of De Quincey, and of the additional information contained in his edition of the Posthumous Works. Next comes a series of reminiscences, extracted from Dr. Japp's Life, from Dr. Garnett's edition of theConfessions, from theQuarterly Review, and from other sources all equally accessible. Then Mr. Hogg himself opens fire withDays and Nights with De Quincey. An essay—"On the supposed Scriptural Expression for Eternity"—excellently illustrating De Quincey in his senility, is reprinted, with awe-struck admiration, from the American edition of his works.

For the purpose, presumably, of adding to the bulk of the book, Moir's ballad,De Quincey's Revenge, is included, though its sole connection with De Quincey is, that it deals with a legend concerning the possible ancestors of a possible branch of his possible family. Then we have one of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson LL.D.'sOutcast Essays, "On the genius of De Quincey," the reason for the hospitable entertainment of the outcast being by no means apparent. Amongother dreary trifles is a reprint of a Latin theme, one of De Quincey's college exercises. As Mr. Hogg has chosen to reprint and translate this, it would have been as well to print and translate it correctly. "Quæ ansibus obstant" should, of course, have been "ausibus," and "oculi perstringuntur" cannot possibly mean "are spellbound," but "are dazzled."

The republication of these pieces was, we repeat, a great mistake, another lamentable illustration of the cruel wrong which officious and ill-judging admirers may inflict on a writer's reputation. Talleyrand once observed that, a wise man would be safer with a foolish than with a clever wife, for a foolish wife could only compromise herself, but a clever wife might compromise her husband. Substituting 'unambitious' for 'foolish' and 'ambitious' for 'clever,' we are very much inclined to apply the same remark to a great writer and his friends. It requires a Johnson to support a Boswell, and a Goethe to support an Eckermann.

FOOTNOTES:[27]See Works. Black's Edit., Vol. I. p. 212, compared with original Edit., pp. 113-114.[28]Id., p. 272 and original Edit., pp. 177-178.

[27]See Works. Black's Edit., Vol. I. p. 212, compared with original Edit., pp. 113-114.

[28]Id., p. 272 and original Edit., pp. 177-178.

[29]A Life of Shakespeare.By Sidney Lee.

It is a pleasure to turn from the slovenly and perfunctory work, from the plausible charlatanry and pretentious incompetence which it has so often been our unwelcome duty to expose in these columns, to such a volume as the volume before us. It is books like these which retrieve the honour of English scholarship. A wide range of general knowledge, immense special knowledge, scrupulous accuracy, both in the investigation and presentation of facts, the sound judgment, the tact, the insight which in labyrinths of chaotic traditions and conflicting testimony can discern the clue to probability and truth—these are the qualifications indispensable to a successful biographer of Shakespeare. And these are the qualifications which Mr. Lee possesses, in larger measure than have been possessed by any one who has essayed the task which he has here undertaken. A ranker and more tangled jungle than that presented by the traditions, the apocrypha, the theories, the conjectures which have gradually accumulatedround the memory of Shakespeare since the time of Rowe, could scarcely be conceived. In this jungle some, like Charles Knight, have altogether lost themselves; others, like Joseph Hunter, have struck out vigorously into wrong tracks, and floundered into quagmires. Halliwell Phillipps, sure-footed and wary though he was, certainly had not the clue to it. But Mr. Lee, who can plainly say with Comus,—

"I know each lane, andevery alley green,Dingle or bushy dell of this wild wood,And every bosky bourne from side to side,My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood,"

"I know each lane, andevery alley green,

Dingle or bushy dell of this wild wood,

And every bosky bourne from side to side,

My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood,"

has thridded it, and taught others to thrid it, as no one else has done. And he will have his reward. He has produced what deserves to be, and what will probably become, the standard life of our great national poet.

Mr. Lee's book is substantially a reproduction of his article on Shakespeare, contributed to theDictionary of National Biography, the high merits of which have long been recognised by scholars; and he has certainly done well to make that article popularly accessible by reprinting it in a separate form. But the present volume is not a mere reproduction of his contribution to the Dictionary; it is much more. He has here filled out what he could there sketch only in outline; what he could there state only as results and conclusions, he here illustrates and justifies by corroboration andproof. He has, moreover, both in the text and in the appendices, brought together a great mass of interesting and pertinent collateral matter which the scope of the Dictionary necessarily precluded.

More than a century ago George Steevens wrote: "All that can be known with any degree of certainty about Shakespeare is that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon, married and had children there, went to London, where he commenced actor, wrote poems and plays, returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried there." And, if we set aside probable inferences, this is all we do know of any importance about his life. His pedigree cannot certainly be traced beyond his father. Nothing is known of the place of his education—that he was educated at the Stratford Grammar School is pure assumption. His life between his birth and the publication ofVenus and Adonisin 1593, is an absolute blank. It is at least doubtful whether the supposed allusion to him in Greene'sGroat's Worth of Wit, and in Chettle'sKind Heart's Dreamhave any reference to him at all; it is still more doubtful whether the William Shakespeare of Adrian Quiney's letter, or of the Rogers and Addenbroke summonses, or the William Shakespeare who was assessed for property in St. Helens, Bishopsgate, was the poet. We know practically nothing of his life in London, or of the date of his arrival in London; we areignorant of the date of his return to Stratford, of his happiness or unhappiness in married life, of his habits, of his last days, of the cause of his death. Not a sentence that fell from his lips has been authentically recorded. At least one-half of the alleged facts of his biography is as purely apocryphal as the life of Homer attributed to Herodotus.

But probability, as Bishop Butler says, is the guide of life, and on the basis of probability may be raised, it must be owned, a fairly satisfactory biography. Mr. Lee has not been able to contribute any new facts to Shakespeare's life, which is certainly not his fault; but he has given us a recapitulation, as lucid as it is exhaustive, of all that the industry of successive generations of memorialists from Ben Jonson to Halliwell Phillipps has succeeded in accumulating, and he has been as judicious in what he has rejected as in what he has adopted. From the curse of the typical Shakespearian biographer—we mean the statement of mere inference and hypothesis as fact—he is absolutely free. He has done excellent service in giving, if not finishing, at least swashing blows to the monstrous fictions of the theorists on the sonnets, particularly to the Fitton-Pembroke mare's nest, fictions which have been gradually generating a Shakespeare, as purely apocryphal as the Roland of the song or the Apollonius of Philostratus.

Mr. Lee's most remarkable contribution tospeculative Shakespearian criticism, in which, we are glad to say, he does not often indulge, is his contention that the W. H. of the dedication to the sonnets was William Hall, a small piratical stationer. It is never wise to speak positively on what must necessarily be, till certain evidence is obtainable, a matter of speculation. But we are very much inclined to think that Mr. Lee's contention has at least something in its favour. Our readers will remember that one of the chief points in the enigma of the sonnets is the dedication, and it runs thus: "To the onlie begetter of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness and that eternitie promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth. T. T." It has generally been assumed that the "W. H." is the youth who is the hero of the first group of sonnets, and the poet's friend, and he has commonly been identified either with William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, or with Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The difficulties in the way of either hypothesis—and on each hypothesis not Babels merely, but cities of Babels have been raised—are to an unprejudiced mind insurmountable. Mr. Lee maintains with plausible ingenuity, but not, we think, conclusively, that there is no proof that the youth of the sonnets was named "Will" at all. His analysis of the "Will" sonnets is a masterpiece of subtle ingenuity, and well deserves careful attention.He then proceeds to adopt the theory that the word "begetter" is not to be taken in the sense of "inspirer," but simply as "procurer" or "obtainer" of the sonnets for T. T.,i.e., the publisher, Thomas Thorpe. In other words, that Thorpe dedicated the sonnets to W. H., in return for W. H. having piratically obtained them for him. This is at least doubtful. In the first place it may reasonably be questioned whether "begetter" could have the meaning which is here assigned to it; the passages quoted fromHamlet("acquire and beget a temperance") and from Dekker'sSatiro-mastix, "I have some cousins german at Court shall beget you the reversion of the Master of the King's Revels," are anything but conclusive. Still, Thorpe, who is by no means remarkable for the purity of his English, may have used it in the sense which Mr. Lee's theory requires.

Shakespeare's sonnets, as is well known, were circulating among his friends in manuscript, and Mr. Lee has discovered that one William Hall was well known as an Autolycus among publishers, and had already edited, under the initials W. H., a collection of poems left by the Jesuit poet, Southwell—in other words had already done for the publisher, George Eld, what it is assumed that he now did for Thomas Thorpe. Mr. Lee's theory is, it must be admitted, plausible, and few would hesitate to pronounce it far more probable than the theory whichwould identify the enigmatical initials with the names of Pembroke or Southampton.

The chapters dealing with the sonnets are, in our opinion the most valuable contribution which has ever been made to this important province of Shakespearian study, and it may be said of Mr. Lee, as Porson said of Bentley, that we may learn more from him when he is wrong than from many others when they are right. His contention is, and it is supported with exhaustive erudition, that these poems are, in the main, a concession to the fashion, then so much in vogue, of sonnet writing; that their themes are the conventional themes treated in those compositions; that some of them were dedicated to Southampton, that some may be autobiographical, but that they are wholly miscellaneous, and tell no consecutive story, as so many critics have erroneously assumed. We cannot accept all Mr. Lee's theories and conclusions, but one thing is certain, that they are supported with infinitely more skill and learning than any other theories which have been broached on this hopelessly baffling problem.

We will conclude by noticing what seem to us slight blemishes in this admirable work. There is nothing to warrant the assertion on p. 158 that most of Shakespeare's sonnets were produced in 1594, which is to cut the knot of a most difficult question. Indeed, with respect to the whole question of the sonnets, Mr. Lee is, we ventureto submit, a little too dogmatic. It is a question which no one can settle as positively as Mr. Lee seems to settle it. There is surely no good, or even plausible reason for doubting the authenticity ofTitus Andronicus, whatever innumerable Shakespearian critics may say, external and internal evidence alike being almost conclusive for its genuineness. There is nothing to warrant the supposition that Shakespeare was on bad terms with his wife. The famous bequest in his Will was probably a delicate compliment, and we are surprised that Mr. Lee should not have noticed this. Among the testimonies to Shakespeare in the seventeenth century, Mr. Lee should have recorded that of Archbishop Sharp, who, according to Speaker Onslow, used to say "that the Bible and Shakespeare had made him Archbishop of York."

Mr. Lee must also forgive us for adding that, in this work at least, æsthetic criticism is not his strong point, and he would have done well to keep it within even narrower bounds than he has done. Many of those who would be the first to admire his erudition and the other scholarly qualities which are so conspicuous in every chapter of his book, will, we fear, take exception to much of his criticism, especially in relation to the sonnets. It is too positive; it is unsympathetic; it is too mechanical. But our debt to Mr. Lee is so great, that we feel almost ashamed to make any deductions in our tribute of gratitude.

[30]The Mystery of Shakespeare's Sonnets: an attempted Elucidation.By Cuming Walters.Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearian Plays and Poems.By Jesse Johnson.Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered and in part Re-arranged, with Introductory Chapters, Notes and a Reprint of the Original 1609 Edition.By Samuel Butler.

There goes a story that an ingenuous youth, who had the privilege of an introduction to Lord Beaconsfield, resolved to make the best of the occasion, by extracting, if possible, from that astute political sage the secret of success in life. It might take the form, he thought, of a little practical advice. For that advice, explaining the object with which it was asked, he accordingly applied. "Yes," said Lord Beaconsfield, "I think I can give you some advice which may possibly be of use to you. Never trouble yourself about The Man in the Iron Mask, and never get into a discussion about the authorship of the Letters of Junius." In all seriousness we think it is high time that the "closure" should beapplied to a debate on another "mystery" of which every one must be tired to death, except perhaps those who contribute to it. If some progress could be made towards the solution of the Mystery of Shakespeare's Sonnets, if there was the faintest indication of any dawn on the darkness, even the wearied reviewer would be patient. But the thing remains exactly where it was, before this appalling literary epidemic set in. During the last three or four years scarcely a month has passed without its "monograph," many of these treatises, mere replicas of their predecessors, differing only in degrees of stupidity and uselessness. Mr. Cuming Walters' volume, sensible enough and intelligent, we quite concede, simply thrashes the straw. It professes to be an original contribution to the question. There is not a view or theory in it, which is not now a platitude to every one who has had the patience to follow this controversy. It analyses the Sonnets; they have been analysed hundreds of times. It asks who was W. H.; it answers the question as it has been answeredusque ad nauseam. It discusses the dark lady, and lands us in the same shifting quagmire of opinion in which Mr. Tyler and his coadjutors and opponents have been floundering for the last four years. It assumes, it rejects, it questions, it suggests, what has been assumed, rejected, questioned, and suggested over and over again. Indeed, it may now be said with literal truth that, unlesssome fresh discovery is made, nothing new, whether in the way of absurdity or sense, can be advanced on this subject. But books are multiplied with such rapidity and in such prodigious numbers in these days, that they thrive, like cannibals, on one another. The last comer is simply its forgotten predecessor in disguise.

But platitude is the very last charge that can be brought against Mr. Jesse Johnson's contribution to the curiosities of Shakespearian criticism. The theory advanced here is, that Shakespeare never wrote the Sonnets at all, that he was quite unequal to their composition, that the author of them "was probably fifty, perhaps sixty, and that he was besides a man of genius, which Shakespeare certainly was not. I would not," says Mr. Jesse Johnson, "deny to Shakespeare great talent. His success in and with theatres certainly forbids us to do so. That he had a bent or a talent for rhyming or for poetry, an early and persistent tradition and the inscription over his grave indicate. And otherwise there could hardly have been attributed to him so many plays, besides those written by the author of the Sonnets." Shakespeare may have been equal to trifles likeHamletorLear—for Mr. Jesse Johnson would be the last to dispute the claim made for Shakespeare as a hard-working playwright clearing his twenty-five thousand dollars a year (Mr. Jesse Johnson is calculating his income according to the presenttime)—but "to Shakespeare working as an actor, adapter or perhaps author came a very great poet, one who outclassed all the writers of that day, and it is the poetry of that great unknown which, flowing into Shakespeare's work, comprises all or nearly all of it which the world treasures or cares to remember." If we told Mr. Jesse Johnson, and all who resemble Mr. Jesse Johnson, the truth about their productions, we are quite certain of one thing—but the one thing of which we are certain it would, perhaps, be good taste in us to leave unsaid.

Of a very different order is Mr. Samuel Butler'sShakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered. This is the work of a scholar, but of a scholar mounted on a hobby-horse of unusually vigorous mettle. Mr. Butler begins with a tremendous onslaught on the theories of the Southamptonites, the Herbertists and the anti-autobiographical party; and in this part of his work he has certainly much to say which is both pertinent and plausible, nay, in our opinion, convincing. But he is less successful in construction than in demolition. His own contention is, that the Sonnets are undoubtedly autobiographical, and very derogatory to Shakespeare's moral character. He is satisfied that "Mr. W. H." was the youth who inspired them, not the youth who simply collected, or procured them, and gave them to Thorpe, but that this youth was neither the Earl of Southampton nor the Earl of Pembroke,nor, indeed, any one of superior social rank to the poet, though this has always been assumed. Adopting the theory of Tyrwhitt and Malone that the key to the youth's name is to be found in the seventh line of the twentieth sonnet,—

"A man in hew allHewesin his controlling."

and deducing, with them, from Sonnets cxxxv., cxxxvi. and cxliii. that the youth's Christian name was William, Mr. Butler believes, as they did, that the youth's name was William Hughes, or Hewes; and Mr. Butler is inclined to identify him, though he speaks, of course, by no means confidently, with a William Hughes, who served as steward in theVanguard,SwiftsureandDreadnought, and who died in March, 1636-7. Mr. Butler supports his theories with hypotheses which an impartial judge of evidence will find it difficult to concede. In the face of Sonnets xxxvi., xxxvii. and cxxiv. the contention that the youth was not in a superior social station to the poet cannot be maintained with any confidence. There are still graver difficulties in the way of supposing that the Sonnets were written between January, 1585-6 and December, 1588. That they could be the work of a young man between his twenty-first and his twenty-fourth year, and have preceded by some four years the composition ofVenus and Adonisand theRape of Lucrece, is simply incredible; but it is a question which cannot be argued, for we havenothing but mere hypothesis to go upon. Mr. Butler's arrangement and interpretation of the Sonnets are, moreover, purely fanciful. When Mr. Butler would have us believe that some of the Sonnets in the second group, from cxxvii. to clii., are addressed to and concern not the woman, but the youth, he asks us to accept a theory which is not only revolting, but which sets all probability at defiance. Similarly absurd, he must forgive us for saying, is his grotesquely repulsive interpretation of Sonnet xxxiv. Nor is there anything to justify the interpretation placed on Sonnets xxxiii. and xxxiv. or the collocation of cxxi. All that can be said for Mr. Butler's exceedingly ingenious and admirably argued theory is, that it supports a view of the question which, if it admits of no positive confutation, produces no conviction. No theory, based on an arbitrary arrangement of these poems and on positive deductions drawn, or rather strained, from most ambiguous evidence and from pure hypotheses, can possibly be satisfactory.

The problem presented in these Sonnets is undoubtedly the most fascinating problem in all literature, and it is as exasperating as it is fascinating. It appears to be so simple, it seems constantly to be on the verge of its solution, and yet the moment we get beyond a certain point in inquiry, the more complex its apparent simplicity is discovered to be, the morehopeless all prospect of explaining the enigma. Take the difficulty of assuming, what seems to be obvious, that they are autobiographical. Here we have the poet, and that poet Shakespeare, admitting the world into the innermost secrets of his life, taking his contemporaries, without the least reserve, into his confidence, inviting and assisting them to the study of his own morbid anatomy, and, in a word, stripping himself bare with all the shameless abandon of Jean Jacques and of Casanova. Everything that we know of Shakespeare seems to discountenance the probability of his having any such intention. No anecdote, with the smallest pretence to authenticity, couples his name with scandal. The theory which identifies him with the W. S. of Willobie'sAvisahas no real basis to rest on, and without corroboration is absolutely inadmissible as evidence. Whatever Shakespeare's private life may have been, it is quite clear that he carefully regarded the decencies, and would have been the last man in the world to pose publicly in the character presented to us in the Sonnets. If the poems are autobiographical, we can only conclude that they were published without his consent, and even to his great annoyance. This may certainly have been the case, and is indeed often assumed to have been so. But even then it is, to say the least, curious, that there should have been no tradition about the extraordinarystory which they tell, especially considering the distinction of thedramatis personæ. Assuming that the youth, who is their hero, was a real person, he must, judging from Sonnets xxxvi., xxxvii. and cxxiv., have been conspicuous in the society of that time; assuming the rival poet to be a real person, he must have been equally conspicuous in another sphere, while Shakespeare himself, at the time the Sonnets were published, was the most distinguished poet and playwright in London. It is, therefore, extraordinary that all traces of an affair in which persons of so much eminence were involved, and which would have furnished scandal-mongers with the topics in which such gossips most delight, should have entirely disappeared. We must either conclude that posterity has been very unfortunate in the loss of records which would have thrown light on the matter, or that Shakespeare's contemporaries knew nothing of the facts, and contented themselves with the poetry; or, lastly, that what we may call the fable of the Sonnets, the drama in which W. H., "the dark lady," and the rival poet play their parts, is as fictitious as the plot ofThe Midsummer Night's DreamorThe Tempest.

It is not our intention to support any of the numerous theories which pretend to give us the key to these Sonnets, still less to propose any new one, but simply to show that the enigma presented by them is as insoluble as ever, andthat all attempts to throw light on it have served to effect nothing more than to make darkness visible and confusion worse confounded. Let us briefly review the facts. In 1609, Thomas Thorpe, a well-known Elizabethan bookseller, published a small quarto volume, entitledShakespeare's Sonnets, having apparently not obtained them from the poet himself, and to this volume was prefixed the following dedication:—"To the onlie begetter of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness and that eternitie promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth. T. T." Here begins and ends all that is certainly known about W. H. and his relation to these poems. No one knows who he was; no one knows what is exactly meant by the word "begetter," whether it is to be taken in the sense of inspirer, whether that is to say W. H. is the youth celebrated in the Sonnets—"the master-mistress" of the poet's passion, or whether it simply means the person who got or procured the poems for Thorpe,—in which case the identification of the initials is of no consequence, unless we are to suppose that the youth who inspired them presented them to Thorpe. Mr. Sidney Lee, in his very able paper in theFortnightly Reviewfor February, 1898, and in his Life of Shakespeare, argues that there is no proof that the youth of the Sonnets was named "Will," though this has always been assumed to be the case.The evidence on which the point must be argued will be found in the puns on "Will" in Sonnets cxxxiv.-vi. and cxliii. It seems to us, we must own, that the balance of probability, though not certainly in favour of the affirmative, decidedly inclines towards it. Granting then,—for it is, after all, only an hypothesis,—that the initials W. H. are those of the youth celebrated in the Sonnets, to whom are they to be assigned? The youth, whoever he was, is represented as being in a social position superior to that of the poet; he has apparently rank and title; he has wealth; he is young and eminently handsome, his beauty being of a delicate, effeminate cast; he is highly cultivated and accomplished; he is on terms of the closest intimacy with the poet, by whom he is passionately beloved; he lives a free, loose life, and he intrigues with his friend's mistress.

Passing by all preposterous theories about William Harte, William Hughes, William Himself and the like, we come to the two names which seem worth serious consideration, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, and Henry Wriothesly, third Earl of Southampton. The Pembroke theory, with Mr. Thomas Tyler's corollary identifying the "dark lady" with Mary Fitton, has been adopted by Dr. Brandes in his work on Shakespeare just published. But the difficulties in the way of accepting it are insuperable. They have been admirably discussedby Mr. Sidney Lee in the article to which we have referred. In the first place, while Shakespeare must have been on terms of more than brotherly intimacy with the youth of the Sonnets, there is no evidence at all that he had ever been in any other relation with the Earl than in the ordinary one of servant and patron. The words of Heminge and Condell, in the dedication of the first folio to Pembroke and his brother, merely state that they had both of them "prosequted" him with favour; in other words, been to him what they had been to many other dramatists and men of letters; and that is the only evidence of any connection between Shakespeare and Pembroke. Tradition was certainly silent about any relations between them, for Aubrey, as Mr. Lee has pointed out, though he has collected much information about both, says nothing about their acquaintanceship, though he mentions Pembroke's connection with Massinger, and Southampton's with Shakespeare. But Thorpe's dedication is conclusive against Pembroke. In 1609, Pembroke, who had succeeded to the title on the death of his father in January, 1601, was Lord Chamberlain, a Knight of the Garter, and one of the most distinguished noblemen in England. Is it credible that Thorpe would address him as Mr. W. H., more especially as in the other works which he inscribed to him,—and he inscribed several,—he is careful to give him allhis titles, and to address him with the most fulsome servility? Again, Pembroke, as Mr. Lee points out, was never a "Mister" at all. As the eldest son of an earl, he was designated by courtesy Lord Herbert, and as Lord Herbert he is always spoken of in contemporary records. The appellation "Mr." was not, as Mr. Lee observes, used loosely, as it is now, and could never have been applied to any nobleman, whether holding his title by right or by courtesy. Whatever allowance may be made for a poet's passion and fancy, some weight must be attached to the insistence made in the Sonnets on the youth's delicate and effeminate beauty. It is true that we have no portraits of Pembroke before he arrived at middle age, but those portraits justify us in concluding that he could never, at any time, have been distinguished by beauty of the type indicated in the poems.

Against all this the advocates of the Pembroke theory have nothing to place but conjectures, a series of insignificant coincidences and the assumption that the woman in the Sonnets is to be identified with the woman who bore Herbert a child, Mary Fitton. The publication of Sonnet xliv. by Jaggard, in 1599, shows that the intrigue between the youth and the dark lady, which is the central event of the Sonnets, was already, and had probably been for some time, in full career, while there is no evidence that Pembrokewas involved with Mary Fitton before the summer of 1600. But what finally disposes of this theory is the testimony afforded by Lady Newdigate-Newdegate's recently publishedGossip from a Muniment Room. Indispensable requisites in the lady of the Sonnets are, that she should be dark, a "black beauty" with "eyes raven black," with hair which resembles "black wires," and that she should be a married woman; but the portraits—and there are two of them—of Mary Fitton, show that she had a fair complexion, with brown hair and grey eyes; and she remained unmarried, until long after her connection with Pembroke had ceased.

The theory which identifies W. H. with the Earl of Southampton is slightly more plausible, but the difficulties in the way of accepting it are, in truth, equally insuperable. This theory has at least one great point in its favour. Shakespeare was acquainted, and it may be inferred intimately acquainted, with Southampton, as the dedications ofVenus and Adonisand theRape of Lucreceindicate. Of his affection and respect for this nobleman he has left an expression almost as remarkable as the language of the sonnets. "The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end.... What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours: being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater." This bears a singularly close resemblance to Sonnet xxvi.,—

"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalageThy merit hath my duty strongly knit,To thee I send this written embassageTo witness duty, not to show my wit,Duty so great, which wit so poor as mineMay make seem bare, in wanting words to show it."

"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,

To thee I send this written embassage

To witness duty, not to show my wit,

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it."

And there is much in the Sonnets which can be made to coincide with what we know of Southampton. But, as we push inquiry, difficulties of all kinds begin to swarm in on us. The first is, as in the case of Pembroke, with the dedication. To say nothing of the fact that "W. H." is not "H. W."—the possibility of the appellation of "Mr." being applied to one who had been an Earl since 1581, and who had twice been addressed in dedications by his full titles, and that by Shakespeare himself, is a wholly inadmissible hypothesis. To argue that this was merely "a blind," is simply to beg the question. If the Sonnets were addressed to Southampton, they must have been written between 1593 and 1598. In 1593 Southampton was in his twenty-first year, in 1598 in his twenty-sixth; Shakespeare, respectively, in his thirty-first and thirty-fifth year. Now, what is especially emphasized in the sonnets is the youthfulness of the young man to whom they are dedicated, and the advanced age of the poet. In Sonnet cviii. the youth is addressed as "a sweet boy," in cxxvi. as "a lovely boy," in liv. as "a beauteous and lovely youth"; in xcv. his "budding name" is referredto, while the poet speaks of himself as "old," as "beaten and chopped with tanned antiquity," as being "with Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn." And so, as has been more than once pointed out, we have this anomaly—a man of thirty-four describing himself as a thing of "tanned antiquity" in writing to "a sweet and lovely boy" of twenty-five. No one could have been less like the effeminate youth of the Sonnets than Southampton. All we know about him, including his portraits, indicates that he was eminently masculine and manly. Again, it is matter of history that he greatly distinguished himself on the Azores expedition in 1597, acquitting himself with so much gallantry that, during the voyage, he was knighted by Essex. To this expedition, which must have involved one of those absences of which we hear so much in the Sonnets, to this exploit and this honour, which afforded so much opportunity for peculiarly acceptable compliment, Shakespeare makes no reference at all. There is nothing to indicate that the youth of the Sonnets had gained any military or political distinction, had taken any part in public life, or had ever been absent from England. To assume with Mr. Lee that the Sonnets were written in or before 1594, and therefore before Southampton had become distinguished, is to involve ourselves in inextricable difficulties. Even Mr. Lee admits that Sonnet cvii. must have reference to the deathof Elizabeth in 1603. With regard to the supposed references to Southampton's relations with Elizabeth Vernon, no certain, or, to speak more accurately, no even plausible inferences can be drawn in any particular: all that they can be reduced to are degrees of improbability.

If, again, we accept the theory of Tyrwhitt and Malone, supported by Mr. Butler, and suppose that W. H. was some obscure person, we are proceeding on mere hypothesis, and a hypothesis seriously shaken by the plain meaning expressed in Sonnets xxxvi., xxxvii., and cxxiv.

The enigma of these Sonnets is, we repeat, as insoluble now as it was when inquiry was first directed to them. Whether they are to be regarded as autobiographical, as dramatic studies, as a mixture of both, as a collection of miscellaneous poems, as written to order for others, as mere exercises in the sonnet-cycle, or as all of these things, is alike uncertain. Our knowledge of the time of their composition begins and ends with the facts, that some of them were, presumably, in circulation in or before 1598, that two of them had certainly been composed in or before 1599, and that all of them had been written by 1609. The rest is mere conjecture; and on mere conjecture and mere hypothesis is based every attempt to solve their mystery. If certainty about them can ever be arrived at, it can only be attained by evidence of which, as yet, we have not even aninkling. The probability is, that it was Shakespeare's intention, or rather Thorpe's intention, to baffle curiosity, and, except in the judgment of fanatics, he has certainly succeeded in doing so.

For our own part we are very much inclined to suspect, that they owed their origin to the fashion of composing sonnet-cycles, that those cycles suggested their themes and gave them the ply; that the beautiful youth, the rival poet, and the dark lady are pure fictions of the imagination; and that these poems are autobiographical only in the sense in whichVenus and Adonis, theRape of Lucrece,Romeo and JulietandOthelloare autobiographical.

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