the 4th of November, in the same year, Sturley again writes a very long letter "to his most loving brother Mr. Richard Quiney, at the Bell, in Carter Lane, in London,” in which he says of a letter written by Quiney to him on the 21st of October, that it imported, amongst other matters, "that our countryman Mr. W. Shakspere would procure us money, which I well like of, as I shall hear when, and where, and how; and I pray let not go that occasion, if it may sort to any indifferent conditions." Quiney himself at this very time writes the following characteristic letter to his "loving good friend and countryman, Mr. William Shakspere: "_"Loving countryman, I am bold of you as of a friend, craving your help with thirty pounds upon Mr. Bushell and my security, or Mr. Myttens with me. Mr. Rosswell is not come to London as yet, and I have especial cause. You shall friend me much in helping me out of all the debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet to my mind which would not be indebted. I am now towards the Court in hope your answer for the dispatch of my business. You shall neither lose credit nor money by me, the Lord willing; and now but persuade yourself so as I hope, and you shall not need to fear but with all hearty thankfulness I will hold my time, and content your friend, and if we bargain farther, you shall be the paymaster yourself. My time bids me to hasten to an end, and so I commit this to your care and hope of your help. I fear I shall not be back this night from the Court. Haste. The Lord be with you and with us all. Amen. From the Bell in Carter Lane, the 25th October, 1598. Yours in all kindness, Ryc. Quiney." The anxious dependence which these honest men appear to have upon the good offices of their townsman is more satisfactory even than the evidence which their letters afford of his worldly condition.

In the midst of this prosperity the registers of the parish of Stratford-upon-Avon present to us an event which must have thrown a shade over the brightest prospects.

August

Hamnek frhub William &haks peze

This is the register of the burial of the only son of the poet in 1596.

Pyunma hall

Hamnet was

born on the 2nd of February, 1585; so that at his death he was eleven years and six months old. He was a twin child; and it is not unlikely that he was constitutionally weak. Some such cause interfered probably with the education of the twinsister Judith; for whilst Susannah, the elder, is recorded to have been "witty above her sex," and wrote a firm and vigorous hand, as we may judge from her signature to a deed in 1639 (see p. 227), the mark of Judith appears as an attesting witness to a conveyance in 1611.

Shakspere himself has given us a most exquisite picture of a boy, who, like his own Hamnet, died young, in whom the imaginative faculty was all-predominant. Was this a picture of his own precocious child?

With the exception of this inevitable calamity, the present period may probably be regarded as a happy epoch in Shakspere's life. He had conquered any adverse circumstances by which his earlier career might have been impeded. He had taken his rank among the first minds of his age; and, above all, his pursuits were so engrossing as to demand a constant exercise of his faculties, but to demand that exercise in the cultivation of the highest and the most pleasurable thoughts. This was the period to which belong the great histories of "Richard II.," "Richard III.,” and "Henry IV.," and the delicious comedies of the "Merchant of Venice," "Much Ado about Nothing," and "Twelfth Night." These productions afford the most abundant evidence that the greatest of intellects was in the most healthful possession of its powers. These were not hasty adaptations for the popular appetite, as we may well believe some of the earlier plays were in their first shape; but highlywrought performances, to which all the method of his cultivated art had been

*"Winter's Tale," Act II., Scene 1.

strenuously applied. It was at this period that the dramatic poet appears not to have been satisfied with the applause of the Globe or the Blackfriars, or even with the gracious encouragements of a refined Court. During three years he gave to the world careful editions of some of these plays, as if to vindicate the drama from the pedantic notion that the Muses of tragedy and comedy did not meet their sisters upon equal ground. “Richard II." and "Richard III.” were published in 1597; "Love's Labour's Lost," and "Henry IV.," Part I., in 1598; "Romeo and Juliet," corrected and augmented, in 1599; "Henry IV.," Part II., the "Merchant of Venice,” “A Midsummer Night's Dream," and "Much Ado about Nothing," in 1600. The system of publication then ceased. It no doubt interfered with the interests of his fellows; and Shakspere was not likely to assert an exclusive interest, or to gratify an exclusive pride, at the expense of his associates. But his reputation was higher than that of any other man, when only four of his plays were accessible to the readers of poetry. In 1598 it was proclaimed, not timidly or questionably, that " Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for tragedy and comedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage:" and "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare."* It was certainly not at this period of Shakspere's life that he wrote with reference to himself, unlocking his heart to some nameless friend :—

:

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least ;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

as

Sonnets of Shakspere were in existence in 1598, when Meres tells us of "his sugared sonnets among his private friends." We have entered so fully into the question, whether these poems are to be considered autobiographical, that it would be useless for us here to repeat an argument not hastily entered upon, or carelessly set forth. We believe that the order in which they were printed is an arbitrary one; that some form a continuous poem or poems, that others are isolated in their subjects and the persons to whom they are addressed; that some may express the poet's personal feelings, that others are wholly fictitious, dealing with imaginary loves and jealousies, and not attempting to separate the personal identity of the artist from the sentiments which he expressed, and the situations which he delineated. "We believe that, taken as works of art, having a certain degree of continuity, the Sonnets of Spenser, of Daniel, of Drayton, of Shakspere, although in many instances they might shadow forth real feelings and be outpourings of the inmost heart, were presented to the world as exercises of fancy, and were received by the world as such.”+ Even of those portions of these remarkable lyrics which appear to have an obvious reference to the poet's feelings and circumstances, we cannot avoid rejecting the principle of continuity; for they clearly belong to different periods of life, if they "Studies." p. 484.

*Francis Meres.

are the reflection of his real sentiments. We have the playfulness of an early love, and the agonizing throes of an unlawful passion. They speak of a period when the writer had won no honour or substantial rewards—“ in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes," the period of his youth, if the allusion was at all real; and yet the writer is

"With time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn."

One little dedicatory poem says,

"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."

Another (and it is distinctly associated with what we hold to be a continued little poem, wholly fictitious, in which the poet dramatizes as it were the poetical character) boasts that

"Not marble, not the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme."

Without attempting therefore to disprove that these Sonnets were addressed to the Earl of Southampton, or to the Earl of Pembroke, we must leave the reader who fancies he can find in them a shadowy outline of Shakspere's life to form his own conclusion from their careful perusal. We have endeavoured, in our analysis of these poems, to place before him all the facts which have relation to the subject. But to preserve in this place the unity of our narrative with reference to the period before us, we reprint a passage from the "Studies" to which we refer : "The 71st to the 74th Sonnets seem bursting from a heart oppressed with a sense of its own unworthiness, and surrendered to some overwhelming misery. There is a line in the 74th which points at suicide. We cling to the belief that the sentiments here expressed are essentially dramatic. In the 32nd Sonnet, where we recognise the man Shakspere speaking in his own modest and cheerful spirit, death is to come across his 'well-contented day.' The opinion which we have endeavoured to sustain of the probable admixture of the artificial and the real in the Sonnets, arising from their supposed original fragmentary state, necessarily leads to the belief that some are accurate illustrations of the poet's situation and feelings. It is collected from these Sonnets, for example, that his profession as a player was disagreeable to him; and this complaint is found amongst those portions which we have separated from the series of verses which appear to us to be written in an artificial character. It might be addressed to any one of his family, or to some honoured friend, such as Lord Southampton :—

'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 public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.'

But if from his professional occupation his nature was felt by him to be subdued to what it worked in,-if thence his name received a brand,—if vulgar scandal sometimes assailed him,—he had high thoughts to console him, such as were never before imparted to mortal. This was probably written in some period of dejection, when his heart was ill at ease, and he looked upon the world with a slight tinge of indif

ference, if not of dislike. Every man of high genius has felt something of this. It was reserved for the highest to throw it off, 'like dew-drops from the lion's mane.' But the profound self-abasement and despondency of the 74th Sonnet, exquisite as the diction is, appear to us unreal, as a representation of the mental state of William Shakspere; written, as it most probably was, at a period of his life when he revels and luxuriates (in the comedies which belong to the close of the sixteenth century) in the spirit of enjoyment, gushing from a heart full of love for his species, at peace with itself and with all the world."