"as 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 honeytongued 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."

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 his life, if they 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."

* Francis Meres.

+ Illustrations of the Sonnets, Pictorial Edition, p. 114.

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

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 venture to reprint a passage from the Illustrations 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 wellcontented 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 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 indifference, 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, rushing from a heart full of love for his species, at peace with itself and with all the world."

"MANY were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Such is Thomas Fuller's well-known description of the convivial intercourse of Shakspere and Jonson, first published in 1662. A biographer of Shakspere says, “The memory of Fuller perhaps teemed with their sallies." That memory, then, must have been furnished at secondhand; for Fuller was not born till 1608. He beheld them in his mind's eye only. Imperfect, and in many respects worthless, as the few traditions of these wit-combats are, there can be no doubt of the companionship and ardent friendship of these two monarchs of the stage. Ful

ler's fanciful comparison of their respective conversational powers is probably to some extent a just one. The difference in the constitution of their minds, and the diversity of their respective acquirements, would more endear each to the other's society.

:

Rowe thus describes the commencement of the intercourse between Shakspere and Jonson :-" His acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity and good nature. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the players, in order to have it acted; and the persons into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public."* The tradition which Rowe thus records is not supported by minute facts which have since become known. In Henslowe's Diary of plays performed at his theatre, we have an entry under the date of the 11th of May, 1597, of The Comedy of Humours.' This was no doubt a new play, for it was acted eleven times; and there can be little question that it was Jonson's comedy of Every Man in his Humour.' A few months after we have the following entry in the same document :—“ Lent unto Benjamin Jonson, player, the 22nd of July, 1597, in ready money, the sum of four pounds, to be paid it again whensoever either I or my son shall demand it." Again: "Lent unto Benjamin Jonson, the 3rd of December, 1597, upon a book which he was to write for us before Christmas next after the date hereof, which he showed the plot unto the company: I say, lent in ready money unto him the sum of twenty shillings." On the 5th of January, 1598, Henslowe records in the same way the trifling loan of five shillings. An advance is also made by Henslowe to his company on the 13th of August, 1598, "to buy a book called Hot Anger soon cold,' of Mr. Porter, Mr. Chettle, and Benjamin Jonson, in full payment, the sum of six pounds." We thus see, that in 1597 and 1598 there was an intimate connection of Jonson with the stage, but not with Shakspere's company. It can scarcely be supposed that Jonson was a writer for the stage earlier than 1597, and that the "remarkable piece of humanity and good nature" recorded of Shakspere took place before the connection of Jonson with Henslowe's theatre. He was born, according to Gifford, in 1574. In January, 1619, he sent a poetical "picture of himself” to Drummond, in which these lines occur:

My hundred of grey hairs
Told six and forty years."

This would place his birth in 1573.† Drummond, in narrating Jonson's account of "his own life, education, birth, actions," up to the period in which we have shown how dependent he was upon the advances of a theatrical manager,

*Life of Shakspeare.'

† See Jonson's Conversations with Drummond,' published by the Shakespeare Society.