5. For fear of trust, fearing to truft myself. Schmidt explains doubting of being trufted', but the comparison is to an imperfect actor, who dare not truft himself. Obferve the conftruction of the first eight lines; 5, 6, refer to 1, 2; 7, 8, to 3, 4. 9. Books. Sewell has 'O, let my looks'. But the Quarto text is right; fo l. 13.

O learn to read what filent love hath writ.

The books of which Shakspere speaks are probably the manuscript books in which he writes his fonnets. In support of looks H. Isaac cites Spenser : Amoretti, 43.

12. More than, etc., more than that tongue (the tongue of another) which hath more fully expreffed more ardours of love, or more of your perfections.

XXIV. Suggested by the thought, XXII. 6, of Shakspere's heart being lodged in his friend's breast, and by the conceit of XXIII. 14; there eyes are able to hear through love's fine wit; here eyes do other fingular things, play the painter.

1. Stell'd, fixed: fleeld, Quarto. Compare Lucrece, 1444:

To find a face where all diftrefs is ftell'd.

2. Table, that on which a picture is painted. Compare All's Well that Ends Well, A& 1. fc. I, 11. 104-106:

To fit and draw

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table.

4. Perspective. Perfpective meant a cunning picture, which feen directly feemed in confusion and feen obliquely became an intelligible compofition; also a glafs fo cut as to produce optical illufion. See King Richard II., A& 11. fc. 2, 1. 18. But here does it not fimply mean that a painter's highest art is to produce the illusion of distance, one thing seeming to lie behind another; you must look through the painter (my eye or myself) to see your picture, the product of his skill, which lies within him (in my heart).

The strange conceits in this sonnet are paralleled in Constable: Diana (1594); Sonnet 5, (p. 4, ed. Hazlitt) :

Thine eye, the glasse where I behold my heart,

Mine eye, the window through the which thine eye May fee my heart, and there thyfelfe efpy In bloody colours how thou painted art.

Compare alfo Watson's 'The Teares of Fancie', (1593), Sonnets 45, 46 (p. 201, Thomas Watson, Poems, ed. Arber, p. 201):

My Mifres feeing her faire counterfet

So fweetelie framed in my bleeding brefl

But it fo faft was fixed to my heart, etc.

XXV. In this fonnet Shakspere makes his first complaint against Fortune, against his low condition. He is about to undertake a journey on fome needful business of his own (xxvI. xxvII.), and rejoices to think that at least in one place he has a fixed abode, in his friend's heart (1. 14).

Thoughts of the cruelty of Fortune reappear and become predominant in XXIX.-XXXI.

6. The marigold: Compare Conftable: Diana; Sonnet 9:

The marigold abroad his leaves doth spread
Because the fun's and her power are the fame,

and Lucrece, 1. 397.

There are three plants which claim to be the old Marigold: 1. The marsh marigold; this does not open and close its flowers with the fun. 2. The corn marigold; there is no proof that this was called marigold in Shakspere's day. 3. The garden marigold or Ruddes (calendula officinalis); it turns its flowers to the fun, and follows his guidance in their opening and shutting. The old name is goldes; it was the Heliotrope, Solfequium, or Turnefol of our forefathers. (Condensed from 'Marigold', in Ellacombe's' Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare'.) 9. Famoufed for fight. The Quarto reads for worth. The emendation is due to Theobald, who 'likewife propofed if worth was retained to read razed forth'.- Malone. Capell fuggefted for might.

XXVI. In xxv. Shakspere is in diffavour with his stars, and unwillingly-as I suppose-about to undertake fome needful journey. He now fends this written embaffage to his friend (perhaps it is the Envoy to the preceding group of fonnets), and dares to anticipate a time when the 'ftar that guides his moving', now unfavourable, may point on him graciously with fair aspect (1. 10).

Drake writes (Shakspeare and His Times, vol. ii. p. 63):-'Perhaps one of the most striking proofs of this position [that the Sonnets are addressed to the Earl of Southampton] is the hitherto unnoticed fact that the language of the Dedication to the Rape of Lucrece, and that of part of the twenty-fixth Sonnet are almoft precisely the fame. The Dedication runs thus: The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end. . . . The warrant I have of your honourable difpofition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it affured of acceptance. What I have is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part of all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater'. C. [Capell] had previously noted the parallel.

1, 2. Compare Macbeth, А& ш. fc. 1, ll. 15-18, • Duties . . . knit'.

8. Beflow it, lodge it. As in The Tempest, A& v. 1. 299:

Hence, and beftow your luggage where you found it.

Shakspere fays—I hope some happy idea of yours will convey my duty, naked as it is, into your foul's thought.

12. Thy fweet refped, regard. The Quarto reads their for thy, an error which occurs several times.

XXVII. Written on a journey, which removes Shakspere farther and farther from his friend.

3. Modern edd. put a comma after 'head'. But is not the construction ' a journey in my head begins to work my mind'?

6. Intend, bend, purfue: ufed frequently of

travel.

'Cæfar through Syria intends his journey' Antony & Cleopatra, A& v. sc. 1, l. 200. 10. Thy. The Quarto reads

XXVI. 12.

their. See

11, 12. Compare Romeo & Juliet, A& 1. sc. 5, 11. 47, 48:

It Seems fhe hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.

13, 14. By day my limbs find no quiet, for myself, i.e. on account of business of my own; by night my mind finds no quiet for thee, i.e. thinking of you.

XXVIII. A continuation of Sonnet xxvII.

9. Cambridge edd. and Furness read I tell the day, to please him thou art bright'.

12. Twire, peep. Compare Ben Jonson, Sad Shepherd, A& II. fc. 1 :—

Which maids will twire at, tween their fingers, thus. Marfton: Antonio & Mellida, A& iv. (Works, vol. i. p. 52, ed. Halliwell), 'I fawe a thing stirre under a hedge, and I peep't, and I fpyed a thing, and I peer'd and I tweerd underneath'.

Malone conjectured 'twirl not'; Steevens, 'twirk not'; Maffey, 'tire not', in the fenfe of attire. 12. Gild'ft. The Quarto reads '

guil'ft'.

13, 14. Dyce and others read' And night doth nightly make grief's ftrength feem ftronger', which poffibly is right. The meaning of the Quarto text must be: Each day's journey draws out my forrows to a greater length; but this process of drawing-out