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dence for the opinion, I should not be disposed to place any later than 1605.

Various attempts have been made by English, French, and German students to place the Sonnets in a new and better order, of which attempts no two agree between themselves. That the Sonnets are not printed in the Quarto, 1609, at haphazard, is evident from the fact that the Envoy, CXXVI. is rightly placed; that poems addreffed to a mistress follow thofe addressed to a friend; and that the two Cupid and Dian Sonnets ftand together at the close. A nearer view makes it apparent that in the first series, I.-CXXVI., a continuous story is conducted through various ftages to its termination; a more minute inspection discovers points of contact or connexion between fonnet and fonnet, and a natural sequence of thought, paffion and imagery. We are in the end convinced that no arrangement which has been proposed is as good as that of the Quarto. But the force of this remark seems to me to apply with certainty only to Sonnets I.-CXXVI. The second series, CXXVII.-CLIV., al

though fome of its pieces are evidently connected with those which stand near them, does not exhibit a like intelligible fequence; a better arrangement may perhaps be found; or, it may be, no poffible arrangement can educe order out of the struggles between will and judgement, between blood and reason; tumult and chaos are perhaps a portion of their life and being.

A piece of evidence confirming the opinion here advanced will be found in the ufe of thou and you by Shakipere as a mode of addrefs to his friend. Why thou or you is chosen, is not always explicable; fometimes the choice feems to be determined by confiderations of euphony; fometimes of rhyme; fometimes intimate affection feems to indicate the use of you, and refpe&ful homage that of thou; but this is by no means invariable. What I would call attention to, however, as exhibiting fomething like order and progrefs in the arrangement of 1609 is this that in the first fifty fonnets, you is of extremely rare occurrence, in the fecond fifty you and thou alternate in little groups of fonnets,

thou having ftill a preponderance, but now only a flight preponderance; in the remaining twentyfix, you becomes the ordinary mode of address, and thou the exception. In the fonnets to a mistress, thou is invariably employed. A few fonnets of the firft feries as LXIII.-LXVIII. have 'my love', and the third perfon throughout.1

Whether idealising reality or wholly fanciful, an Elizabethan book of fonnets was—not always, but in many inftances-made up of a chain or series of poems, in a defigned or natural fequence, viewing in various aspects a single

1 I cannot here prefent detailed statistics. Thou and you are to be confidered only when addreffing friend or lover, not Time, the Muse, etc. Six fets of fennets may then be diftinguished: 1. Ufing thou. 2. Ufing you. 3. Ufing neither, but belonging to a thou group. 4. Ufing neither, but belonging to a you group. 5. Ufing neither, and independent. 6. Using both (xxiv.). I had hoped that this investigation was left to form one of my gleanings. But Profeffor Goedeke in the Deutsche Rundschau, March 1877, looked into the matter; his refults feem to me vitiated by an arbitrary division of the sonnets using neither thou nor you into groups of eleven and twelve, and by a fantastic theory that Shakfpere wrote his fonnets in books or groups of fourteen each.

theme, or carrying on a love-story to its issue, profperous or the reverse. Sometimes advance is made through the need of discovering new points of view, and the movement, always delayed, is rather in a circuit than straight forward. In Spenfer's Amoretti we read the progrefs of love from humility through hope to conqueft. In Aftrophel & Stella, we read the ftory of paffion ftruggling with untoward fate, yet at last mastered by the resolve to do high deeds:

Sweet! for a while give refpite to my heart

Which pants as though it ftill would leap to thee;
And on my thoughts give thy Lieutenancy
To this great Caufe.

In Parthenophil & Parthenophe the story is of a new love fupplanting an old, of hot and cold fevers, of defpair, and, as laft effort of the defperate lover, of an imagined attempt to fubdue the affections of his cruel lady by magic art. But in reading Sidney, Spenfer, Barnes, and ftill more Watson, Constable, Drayton, and others, although a large element of the art-poetry of the Renascence

is common to them and Shakspere, the student of Shakspere's fonnets does not feel at home. It is when we open Daniel's 'Delia' that we recognise clofe kinfhip. The manner is the fame, though the mafter proves himself of tardier imagination and lefs ardent temper. Diction, imagery, rhymes, and, in fonnets of like form, verfification diftin&tly resemble those of Shakfpere. Malone was furely right when he recognised in Daniel the master of Shakspere as a writer of sonnets—a master quickly excelled by his pupil. And it is in Daniel that we find sonnet ftarting from fonnet almost in Shakfpere's manner, only that Daniel often links poem with poem in more formal wife, the last or the penultimate line of one poem fupplying the first line of that which immediately follows.

Let us attempt to trace briefly the sequence of incidents and feelings in the Sonnets I.-CXXVI. A young man, beautiful, brilliant, and accomplifhed, is the heir of a great house; he is expofed to temptations of youth, and wealth, and rank. Poffibly his mother defires to fee him married; certainly it is the defire of his

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