enjoyed, could have fallen to his share when he composed the thirtyseventh sonnet, the purport of which is to declare, that though

"made lame by fortune's dearest spite,"

he is rich in the perfections of his mistress, and having engrafted his love to her abundant store, he adds,

"So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd."

There is much reason to conclude, however, that by far the greater part of these sonnets was written after the bard had passed the meridian of his life, and during the ten years which preceded their publication; consequently, that with the exception of a few of earlier date, they were the amusement of his leisure from his thirty-fifth to his forty-fifth year. We have been led to this result from the numerous allusions which the author has made, in these poems, to the effects of time on his person; and though these may be, and are without doubt, exaggerated, yet are they fully adequate to prove that the writer could no longer be accounted young. It is remarkable that the hundred and thirty-eighth sonnet, which was originally printed in the Passionate Pilgrim contains a notice of this kind:

"Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best ;”

an expression which well accords with the poet's then period of life ; for when Jaggard surreptitiously published the minor collection, Shakspeare was thirty-five years old.

Among the allusions of this nature in his " Sonnets," the selection of a few will answer our purpose. The first occurs in the twentysecond sonnet :

"But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
'Bated and chopp'd with tan'd antiquity:"

Against my love shall be, as I am now,

With time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn :"

Son. 62.

Son. 63.

and the last that we shall give completes the picture, which, though overcharged in its colouring, must be allowed, we think, to reflect some lineaments of the truth:

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie."

Son. 73.

The comparison instituted in these lines between the bare ruined choir of a cathedral, and an avenue at the close of autumn, has given origin to a short but very elegantly written note from the pen of Mr. Steevens. "This image," he remarks," was probably suggested to Shakspeare by our desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic isle, and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch over-head, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the comparison becomes yet more solemn and picturesque." *

On the principal writers of this minor but difficult species of lyric poetry, to which Shakspeare could have recourse in his own language, it will be necessary to enter into some brief criticism, in order to ascertain the progress and merit of his predecessors, and the models on which he may be conceived to have more peculiarly founded his own practice.

* Malone's Supplement, vol. i. p. 640.

The rapid introduction of Italian poetry into our country, during the reign of Henry the Eighth, very early brought with it a taste for the cultivation of the sonnet. Before 1540, Wyat had written all his poems, many of which are sonnets constructed nearly on the strictest form of the Italian model; the octant, or major system being perfectly correct, while the sextant, or minor system, differs only from the legitimate type by closing with a couplet. The poetical value of these attempts, however, does not, either in versification or imagery, transcend mediocrity, and are greatly inferior to the productions, in the same department, of his accomplished friend, the gallant but unfortunate Surrey. The sonnets of this elegantly romantic character, which were published in 1557, deviate still further from the Italian structure, as they uniformly consist of three quatrains in alternate or elegiac verse, and these terminated by a couplet; a secession from the laws of legitimacy which is amply atoned for by virtues of a far superior order, by simplicity, purity, and sweetness of expression, by unaffected tenderness of sentiment, and by vivid powers of description. To this unexaggerated encomium we must add, that the harmony of his metre is often truly astonishing, and even, in some instances, fully equal to the rhythm of the present age. That the assertion wants not sufficient evidence, will be acknowledged by the adduction of a single specimen :

SONNET.

"SET me whereas the sunne doth parche the grene,

Or where his beames do not dissolve the ise:

In temperate heate where he is felt and sene:
In presence prest of people madde or wise:
Set me in hye, or yet in low degree;

In longest night, or in the shortest daye:
In clearest skie, or where cloudes thickest be;
In lusty youth, or when my heeres are graye:
Set me in heaven, in earth, or els in hell,
In hyll or dale, or in the foming flood,
Thrall, or at large, alive whereso I dwell,
Sicke or in health, in evill fame or good:
Hers will I be, and onely with this thought
Content my self, although my chaunce be nought."

Of the sonnets of Watson, which were published about 1581, we have given an opinion, at some length, in the preceding chapter, and shall merely add here, that neither in their structure, nor in their diction or imagery, could they be, or were they, models for our author; and are indeed greatly inferior, not only to the sonnets of Shakspeare, but to those of almost every other poet of his day.

The sonnets of Sidney, which appeared in 1591 under the title of Astrophel and Stella, exhibit a variety of metrical arrangement; a few which rival, and several which nearly approach, the most strict Petrarcan form. The octant in Sidney is often perfectly correct, while the sextant presents us with the structure which, though not very common in Italian, has been, since his time, adopted more frequently than any other by our own poets; that is, where the first line and the third, the second and fourth, the fifth and sixth, rhime together; with this difference, however, that the moderns, in their division of the sextant, have more usually followed the example of Surrey just quoted, in forming their minor system of a quatrain and a couplet, while Sidney more correctly distributes it into

terzette.

་

On this arrangement is by far the greater portion of Sidney's sonnets constructed; but the most pleasing of his metrical forms, and which has the merit too of being built after the Italian cast, consists in the Octant, of two tetrachords of disjunct alternate rhime, the last line of the first stanza rhiming to the first of the second; and in the Sextant, of a structure in which the first and second, the fourth and fifth, and the third and sixth verses rhime. Thus has he formed the following exquisite sonnet, which will afford no inaccurate idea of his powers in this province of the art :

"O kisse, which doest those ruddie gemmes impart,

Or gemmes, or fruits of new-found Paradise,
Breathing all blisse and sweetning to the heart,
Teaching dumbe lips a nobler exercise.

O kisse, which soules, even soules, together tyes

By linkes of Love, and only Nature's art:
How faine would I paint thee to all men's eyes,
Or of thy gifts at least shade out some part.

But she forbids; with blushing words, she sayes,
She builds her fame on higer-scated praise:
But my heart burnes, I cannot silent be.

Then since, deare life, you faine would have me peace,
And I, mad with delight, want wit to cease,
Stop you my mouth with still still kissing me."

Son. 81.

In 1592, Daniel produced his Delia, including fifty-seven sonnets, of which only two follow the Italian standard; the remainder consisting of three elegiac stanzas and a closing couplet. They display many beauties, and, being a model of easy imitation, have met with numerous copyists.

Of the Diana of Constable, a collection of sonnets in eight decades, we have already, if we consider their mediocrity, given a sufficiently copious notice. They were published in 1594, and were soon eclipsed by the Amoretti of Spenser, a series of eighty-eight sonnets, printed about the year 1595. These, from the singularity of their construction, which not only deviates from the Italian costume, but has seldom found an imitator, require, independent of their poetic value, peculiar notice. The Spenserian sonnet, then, consists of three tetrachords in alternate rhime; the last line of the first tetrachord rhiming to the first of the second, and the last of the second to the first of the third, and the whole terminated by a couplet. That this system of rhythm often flows sweetly, and that it is often the vehicle of chaste sentiment and beautiful imagery must, in justice, be conceded to this amiable poet; but, at the same time, it is necessary to add, that it is occasionally the medium of quaintness and far-fetched conceit. A specimen, however, shall be subjoined, of which, if the first stanza be slightly tainted with affectation, the remainder will be pronounced, as well in melody and simplicity as in moral beauty, nearly perfect.

"The doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre Love, is vaine,

That fondly feare to lose your liberty;

When, losing one, two liberties ye gaine,

And make him bond that bondage earst did fly.

L