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There are few topicks connected with Shakspeare upon which the ingenuity and research of his criticks have been more fruitlessly exercised, than upon the questions which have arisen with regard to the poems before us, the individual to whom they were principally addressed, and the circumstances under which they were written. Dr. Farmer's conjecture, we find, has been decisively overthrown by the Stratford Register; and Mr. Tyrwhitt's, even if we should admit it to be well-founded, would furnish us with no very satisfactory information. We shall have made but a slight advancement in knowledge by barely having ascertained that some person of the name of Hughes, but of whose character and history we are wholly ignorant, was the object of the poet's encomiums. But, in truth, the circumstance pointed out by Mr. Malone, as adding support to this notion, is of no great weight. The original printer of the Sonnets appears to have been rather capricious in the employment of his types; and several other words, where no quibble could have been intended, such as intrim, (i. e. interim,) alien, audit, quietus, hereticke, are printed in the same manner as Hews, that is, with a capital letter, and in the Italick type. Mr. Chalmers some years ago made a singular attempt to unravel this question, and contrived to persuade himself that the "lovely boy," whom Shakspeare addressed, was no less a person than our maiden queen Elizabeth. As I cannot permit myself to doubt that Mr. Chalmers (if he ever was serious) must now himself look back to the recollection of this whimsical fancy with a smile, I shall dismiss it without further observation. Another hypothesis has lately been started by Dr. Drake, the probability of which some of his readers, as I have been told, have considered as established; but I fear, like the other conjectures which have been hazarded before, it will not bear the test of examination. For a detailed statement of his opinion, and of the arguments which he has adduced in its favour, the reader must be referred to Dr. Drake's own work on "Shakspeare and his Times; but in substance, he contends that the greater part of the Sonnets were addressed to the poet's early patron, Lord Southampton, and that the first seventeen in the collection were written with a view of remonstrating against a premature vow of celibacy, which that nobleman might have made, in consequence of his union with Elizabeth Vernon being forbidden by a mandate from the Queen. Dr. Drake, it must be observed, at the very outset of his argument, is obliged to rest upon a merely gratuitous assumption. We have no evidence, nor, I think, any probable ground, for supposing that the Earl had ever formed such a resolution as is here ascribed to him; and his subsequent marriage to the object of his attachment, notwithstanding he incurred by that step the resentment of his Sovereign, would lead us to a directly opposite conclusion. If we look to the poems themselves, they will afford no colour for such an interpretation. They have no reference to such a supposed case, nor allude in the

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slightest manner to wounded feelings, or disappointed hopes; but contain only general exhortations in favour of marriage, such as are addressed to Silvio in Guarini's Pastor Fido; and would suggest to us any idea sooner than that of a person who was anxious to marry, and only deterred from doing so by the tyrannical injunctions of power.

In the reign of Elizabeth the distinctions of rank in all their gradations were so scrupulously maintained, that it is difficult to believe that Shakspeare, in a comparatively humble situation of life, would have presumed to employ terms of such familiarity, and even, in one instance, of such grossness, when writing to a distinguished nobleman, his patron, or would have ventured to remonstrate with him on a topick which an equal would scarcely have found himself at liberty to touch upon. But if we were even to allow that the singular condescension of Lord Southampton would have permitted such language to be used; and would not have been offended with the person who interfered in a matter of such painful delicacy; yet the sort of praise which is to be found in these Sonnets was little calculated to conciliate his favour. The reiterated encomiums on his beauty, and the fondling expressions which perpetually occur, would have been better suited to a "cocker'd silken wanton" than to one of the most gallant noblemen that adorned the chivalrous age in which he lived.

But whoever the person might be to whom the greater part of these Sonnets was addressed, it seems to have been generally admitted that the poet speaks in his own person; and some of his criticks have attempted, by inferences drawn from them, to eke out the scanty memorials, which have come down to us, of the incidents of his life. I confess myself to be as sceptical on this point as on the other. Mr. Malone, in a note on the 111th Sonnet, has observed, that "the author seems to lament his being reduced to the necessity of appearing on the stage, or writing for the theatre." The passage alluded to is as follows:

"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 publick means, which publick manners breeds.” But is there any thing in these words which, read without a preconceived hypothesis, would particularly apply to the publick profession of a player or writer for the stage? The troubles and dangers which attend upon publick life in general, and the happiness and virtue of retirement, are among the tritest common places of poetry. Nor was such querulous language likely to have proceeded from Shakspeare. Ben Jonson, who was frequently obliged to exhibit before audiences who were incapable of appreciating the depth of his knowledge, the accuracy of his judgment, or the dignity of his moral, might at one time be desirous of quitting

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"the loathed stage," or Massinger might have murmured at a calling which scarcely procured him a subsistence; but our poet appears, from the commencement to the close of his dramatick career, to have met with uninterrupted success, and would scarcely indulge in such bitter complaints against a profession which was rapidly conducting him to fortune as well as to fame. The mention of his harmful deeds, and the still stronger expressions which occur in this and the following Sonnet, will be afterwards considered. If Shakspeare was speaking of himself in this passage, it would follow that he is equally pointed at upon other occasions. We must then suppose him to have written them when he was old; for such is the language of many of these poems. Yet, if they were composed before Meres's publication, he could not have been at a more advanced age than thirty-four; and even if we were to adopt the theory of Dr. Drake, and suppose that most of them were produced at a subsequent period, and fix upon the latest possible year, 1609; yet still the description of decrepitude, which is found in the 73d Sonnet, could scarcely, without violent exaggeration, be applicable to a man of forty-five. But he must not only have been old, he must also have been grossly and notoriously profligate. To say nothing of the criminal connection, (for criminal in a high degree it would certainly have been in a married man,) which is frequently alluded to in those Sonnets which are said to be addressed by him in his own character to a female; we find him, in a passage already quoted, speaking in terms of shame and remorse of his "harmful deeds," of something from which his "name had received a brand;" and of "the impression which vulgar scandal had stamped upon his brow." I trust it will not require much argument to show that this picture could not be put for gentle Shakspeare. We may lament that we know so little of his history; but this, at least, may be asserted with confidence, that at no time was the slightest imputation cast upon his moral character; and that, in an age abounding, as Mr. Steevens has observed, with illiberal private abuse and peevish satire, the concurring testimony of his contemporaries will confirm the declaration of honest Chettle, that "his demeanour was no less civil, than he excellent in the quality he professed."

Upon the whole, I am satisfied that these compositions had neither the poet himself nor any individual in view; but were merely the effusions of his fancy, written upon various topicks for the amusement of a private circle, as indeed the words of Meres point out: "Witness-his sugred Sonnets among his private friends." The Sonnet was at that time a popular species of poetry, and was a favourite mode of expressing either the writer's own sentiments, or of embellishing a work of fiction. The novels of Lodge and Greene, and their contemporaries, are full of them; and something, which in the lax language of that day may be

classed under the same title, is even to be found in the early dramatick productions of our author. See particularly the Comedy of Errors, vol. iv. p. 199. Any short composition in verse, indeed, seems to have gone under that name. In Turberville's Songs and Sonnets there is not one that can properly be so called; and the same may be said of many other publications of that time. It has been observed, indeed, as a proof of these poems having some man of high rank as their object, that Shakspeare, upon several occasions, has declared that one person alone is the object of his praise, and that the language which he employs could only be applicable to a peculiarly dignified individual; but such, I apprehend, is the constant strain of amatory or encomiastick poetry.

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In the selection of his topicks, Shakspeare has been exposed to no small censure; but Mr. Malone, in a note on the thirty-second Sonnet, has fully vindicated him by the practice of his times, and it would be easy to multiply examples of those who, like him, have adopted language, when addressing a male object, which the more correct taste of the present day would consider as appropriate only to the other sex. The origin of this singular mode of writing may be traced to a fondness for classical imitation. The second eclogue of Virgil appears to have been particularly admired, and was translated into English hexameters, both by Webbe and by Abraham Fraunce, the friend of Spenser. Care, however, was taken to rescue Virgil's allegory, for so it was deemed, from any unbecoming interpretation. The poet, as we are told by Webbe in the argument prefixed to his version, " blameth the youth for the unsteadfastness of his witt and wandering appetite, in refusing the freendly counsayle which he used to give him." There were, indeed, some curious heades" who objected to this style of composition, and who thought, not without reason, that moral instruction might be conveyed in a less questionable garb; and some were so rigid in their notions on this subject that even the unspotted bays" of Spenser did not wholly escape from animadversion. Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie, has thus defended his fourth eclogue (by a slip of his memory, or the printer's mistake, it has erroneously been called the sixth,) from these censures, and has at the same time taken an opportunity to assert the prerogative of poets: "One only thing therein haue I hearde some curious heades call in question: viz. the motion of some vnsauery loue, such as in the sixt [fourth] Eglogue he séemeth to deale withall, (which say they) is skant allowable to English eares, and might well haue béene left for the Italian defenders of loathsome beastlines, of whom perhappes he learned it; to thys obiection I haue often aunswered and (I thinke truely) that theyr nyce opinion ouershooteth the Poets meaning, who though hee in that as in other thinges, immitateth the auncient Poets, yet doth not meane, no more did they before hym, any disordered loue, or the filthy lust of the deuillish Pederastice take

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in the worse sence, but rather to shewe howe the dissolute life of young men intangled in loue of women, doo neglect the fréendshyp and league with their olde freendes and familiers. Why (say they) yet he shold gyue no occasion of suspition, nor offer to the viewe of Christians, any token of such filthinesse, howe good soeuer hys meaning were: wherevnto I oppose the simple conceyte they haue of matters which concerne learning or wytt, wylling them to gyue Poets leaue to vse theyr vayne as they sée good it is their foolysh construction, not hys wryting that is blameable. Wée must prescrybe to no wryters, (much lesse to Poets) in what sorte they should vtter theyr conceyts. But thys wyll be better discussed by some I hope of better abillity."

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The poetical merits of Shakspeare's Sonnets are now, I believe, almost universally acknowledged, notwithstanding the contemptuous manner in which they have been mentioned by Mr. Steevens: the contest between that gentleman and Mr. Malone on this subject will be found at their close. Whatever may be the reader's decision, he has here an opportunity which Mr. Steevens would have wished to withhold from him, of judging for himself,

BOSWELL.

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