his pure being; for what is there in nature more wonderful than man; or, in his perfected nature, more beautiful!

66

The 2d Sonnet is addressed to the poet himself, though its structure seems to convey the idea that the poet is addressing another; but he is that other, though in a mystical sense. The simple meaning is this: the poet is giving himself a sort of warning, in the form of a rebuke for not putting his ideal into poetic form. The fair child" referred to is the child or heir of genius, as conceived in some poetic production. The poet is striving to bring himself to the point of expressing in adequate form his ideal of beauty, as the spirit of life; urging that, when forty winters shall have passed over him, it would be "an all-eating shame" not to have it in his power to point to some work, in a poetic field, as the evidence of his not having neglected his great endowment of genius, of whose presence he was conscious.

In the 3d Sonnet the word mother is twice used, but in different senses. In the fourth line it means simply a subject (in nature) for poetic invention to work upon, in a sense similar to that of an expression in the 16th Sonnet, where the poet speaks of maiden gardens; this expression signifying maiden,

or virgin, that is, unwrought-upon subjects, suitable for the genius of a poet to exercise itself upon.

66

In the 9th line, Sonnet 3, the poet is himself the

'glass "the glass of nature, nature being the mother. The simple idea here is, that the poet felt himself to have been a true child of nature; and in this idea he realized the beauty, which he felt ought not to be lost to the world, but should be expressed in some work of art, called an “image” of the beauty he contemplated in man.

The 4th Sonnet has a similar meaning, and furnishes a fine illustration of the parable of the talents in the gospel; teaching that talents, not money, but mental powers, unexercised, must be lost; they are said to be taken from the sluggard and given to the industrious; and this is not by an arbitrary will, but by a law of nature.

There is a passage in Measure for Measure which not only furnishes a fine comment upon the 4th Sonnet, but will go far toward demonstrating that the opening Sonnets had no view to a fleshly progeny, and will explain also much of the language employed in them, especially in the 1st Son

net:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

In the 1st Scene of Act 1st (Measure for Measure), the Duke clothes Angelo with his full power to act in his stead during his proposed absence from Vienna, and, in tendering his commission, he addresses Angelo as follows:

* * Thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee.

Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do,

Not light them for ourselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd,

But to fine issues; nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

In the 4th Sonnet we read:

4. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

And being frank, she lends to those are free, etc.

To see the application of the passage from Measure for Measure, we have only to suppose that Beauty's Rose, or a sense of the Beautiful, is the endowment of the poet, nature's "loan," which must be put to use, or it must be lost.

The 5th Sonnet has a similar meaning: the poet is simply warning himself that, unless he expresses himself, meaning as a poet, his ideal of beauty will be lost to the world, but, if he will write (the idea is), he shall live in his writings after what, in the 74th Sonnet, he calls his "show," that is, his body, shall perish. This will appear very plainly the true meaning from the 74th Sonnet.

The 6th Sonnet has the same purpose: the 7th has also a similar purpose,

work of art.

وو

the " son being some

In like manner the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th are so many persuasions addressed by the poet himself to himself, to beget a copy of himself in a poetic sense; precisely as expressed in the 74th Sonnet, as if accomplished.

The root-idea is perfectly simple, but the application is exceedingly complicated.

The poet, in speaking, assumes the entire unity which he conceives: he sometimes addresses that unity, and then again, what may be called the elements of the composite nature of man. Thus, in the 146th Sonnet, the poet addresses his own soul (surely himself), and calls it the centre of his sinful earth, which is also himself, in another sense.

The 18th Sonnet contains a key-line (the 12th), similar to that of the 9th in Sonnet 21. The poet here addresses the higher spirit; which is to be placed beyond the power of death, by being made grow" to time in "eternal lines."

to "

The 78th Sonnet has already been referred to, in which the poet attributes whatever he " compiles" (or writes), to the influence of the object addressed, and speaks of it as having been born of that object.

Let the reader compare the 12th and 65th Sonnets, and he will see that the "breed " spoken of in the 12th Sonnet, is not a mortal son; but it is Beauty expressed by means of "black ink” in "immortal verse: or, as expressed in the 63d Sonnet,