CRITICAL NOTES. Page 13. Those that much covet are with gain so fond, For what they have not, that which they possess -The first They scatter and unloose it from their bond, &c. four editions read, in the second line, "That what they have not." The edition of 1616 reads "That oft they have not." sense of the passage with either of these readings. Staunton's. See foot-note 8. I can make no That in the text is P. 20. And griping it, the neeld his finger pricks. — The old copies have needle instead of neeld. The latter was in common use, and is required here for the metre. P. 22. Which gives the watch-word to his hand full soon To draw the cloud that hides this silver moon. - So Walker. The old copies read "hides the silver moon." As the reference is to Lucretia, this seems fairly required for the sense. P. 29. As, when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat, So his unhallow'd haste her words delays, &c. - In the first of these lines, the old copies have But instead of As. Malone reads Look, as Capell proposed. As was conjectured by Sewell; and the same occurred to me before I was aware of its having been proposed. See, in a later stanza, “Look, as the full-fed hound or gorgèd hawk," &c. P. 38. And let thy misty vapours march so thick, &c. So the third and later editions. The first two have musty instead of misty. In confirmation of the latter, Dyce aptly quotes from Venus and Adonis, "Like misty vapours when they blot the sky." P. 65. To me came Tarquin armed; so beguiled With inward vice, &c. - The old copies have "to beguild." Corrected by Malone. P. 70. With sad-set eyes, and wreathèd arms across, &c. - The old copies have wretched instead of wreathed. The correction is Walker's, and is right surely. Arms wreathed, that is, folded, across the breast, as an attitude of grief or sadness, was a frequent expression. P. 72. While with a joyless smile she turns away Her face, that map which deep impression bears Of hard misfortune, &c.—So Walker. The old copies have The instead of Her. P. 76. Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?· Instead of the first help, Walker would read heal. Rightly, I suspect. SONNETS. "A BOOK called Shakespeare's Sonnets was entered in the Stationers' register by Thomas Thorpe, on the 20th of May, 1609, and published the same year. Thorpe was somewhat eminent in his line of business, and his edition of the Sonnets was preluded with a book-seller's dedication, very quaint and affected both in the language and in the manner of printing; the printing being in small capitals, with a period after each word, and the wording thus: "To the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H, all happiness, and that eternity promised by our ever-living Poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth, T. T.” There was no other edition of the Sonnets till 1640, when they were republished by Thomas Cotes, but in a totally different order from that of 1609, being cut, seemingly at random, into seventy-four little poems, with a quaint heading to each, and with parts of The Passionate Pilgrim interspersed. This edition is not regarded as of any authority, save as showing that within twenty-four years after the Poet's death the Sonnets were so far from being thought to have that unity of cause, or purpose, or occasion, which has since been attributed to them, as to be set forth under an arrangement quite incompatible with any such idea. 66 In the preface to Venus and Adonis I quote a passage from the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, which speaks of the Poet's sugared Sonnets among his private friends." This ascertains that a portion, at least, of the Sonnets were written, and well known in private circles, before 1598. It naturally infers, also, that they were written on divers occasions and for divers persons, some of them being intended, perhaps, as personal compliments, and others merely as exercises of fancy. Copies of them were most likely multiplied, to some extent, in manuscript; since this would naturally follow both from their intrinsic excellence, and from the favour with which the mention of them by Meres shows them to have been regarded. Probably the author added to the number from time to time after 1598; and, as he grew in public distinction and private acquaintance, there would almost needs have been a growing ambition or curiosity among his friends and admirers, to have each as large a collection of these little treasures as they could. What more natural or likely than that, among those to whom, in this course of private circulation, they became known, there should be some one person or more who took pride and pleasure in making or procuring transcripts of as many as he could hear of, and thus getting together, if possible, a full set of them? Two of the Sonnets, the 138th and the 144th, were printed, with some variations, as a part of The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599. In the same publication, which was doubtless made ignorantly and without authority, there are also several others, which, if really Shakespeare's, have as much right to a place among the Sonnets as many that are already there. At all events, the fact of those two being thus detached and appearing by themselves may be fairly held to argue a good deal as to the manner in which the Sonnets were probably written and circulated. We have seen that Thorpe calls the "Mr. W. H.," to whom he dedicates his edition, "the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets." The word begetter has been commonly understood as meaning the person who was the cause or occasion of the Sonnets being written, and to whom they were originally addressed. The taking of the word in this sense has caused a great deal of controversy, and exercised a vast amount of critical ingenuity, in endeavouring to trace a thread of continuity through the whole series, and to discover the person who had the somewhat equivocal honour of begetting or inspiring them. And such, no doubt, is the natural and proper sense of the word; but what it might mean in the mouth of one so anxious, apparently, to speak out of the common way, is a question not so easily settled. That the Sonnets could not, in this sense, have been all begotten by one person, has to be admitted; for, if it be certain that some of them |