Anxious that her son should marry, and the trouble she had taken in 1597 having been, as we have seen, resultless, she may in consequence have suggested to Shakespeare the writing of the first seventeen Sonnets. That she should extend her patronage to Shakespeare is likely enough. The sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and herself a lady of literary taste, she may well have been an admirer of the great genius now approaching its fullest maturity.1 Those proclivities which were afterwards to manifest themselves so conspicuously may very possibly have shown themselves while young Herbert was still in the country; and this may account for the difficulty he had in obtaining permission to reside in London. The Countess would probably come to London with her son; but, having regard to the fact that her husband the Earl was suffering from serious disease, it may very well have occurred that he remained in the country, and that Shakespeare was not brought into personal contact with him. In his letter to Lord Burleigh from Wilton, September 3, 1597, he states (supra, p. 46) that he should be unable to attend Parliament without extreme danger to his health. Thus, in Shakespeare's being personally unacquainted with Herbert's father some explanation is given of the words of 13, "You had a 1 Having regard to the relationship of the Countess and her son to Sir Philip Sidney, there is no difficulty in accounting for such allusions to Sidney's Arcadia in Sonnets 1-17, as Mr. Gerald Massey has pointed out (Secret Drama, &c., 2nd edit., p. 36 seq.). Such quotations or allusions would probably be regarded as complimentary. Spenser's lines on this distinguished lady may be given : "They all (quoth he) me gracéd goodly well, Urania, sister unto Astrofell, In whose brave mind as in a golden coffer, All heavenly gifts and riches locked are; -Colin Clout's Come Home Again. D father;" and it certainly becomes more easy to understand that these words do not imply, as some have thought, that the father of the person addressed was dead. This sense would be here tame and out of place. It is safe to assert that the words in question must be interpreted in accordance with the drift and scope of these first Sonnets. The person addressed is exhorted to do as his father did, namely, beget a son : 1 "Dear my love, you know You had a father; let your son say so." And it may be seen on reflection that, with reference to the sense intended, it would have been less suitable for Shakespeare to write, "You have a father; let your son say so." We are not left, however, to follow merely an inference of this kind. Shakespeare has used elsewhere (Merry Wives, Act iii. sc. 4, line 36) a strictly analogous expression, "She's coming; to her, coz: O boy, thou hadst a father." Shallow thus urges Slender to woo Anne Page in manly fashion. Slender, however, misunderstands the meaning, and in consequence makes himself ridiculous :— "I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell you good jests of him," &c. But, in misunderstanding the words in question, he gives them precisely the sense some have contended for in the Sonnet. In both cases, however, the intention is to exhort to manly conduct, though with an obvious difference of detail. There appear to be no letters of Rowland Whyte's to tell us what William Herbert was doing in the year 1598.2 According to our chronology, however, it was in all pro 1 For this important parallel I am indebted to the Rev. W. A. Harrison. 2 According to a letter of Tobie Matthew's of September 15, 1598, there was then some talk of a contemplated marriage between William Herbert and Lady Hatton, who must have been considerably older than he. With regard to this Mr. Harrison remarks, "As this is London news, William Herbert was presumably there at that time." The letter is in the Record Office. bability during this year that he was concerned in the affair to which the 40th and other Sonnets relate. Herbert's part therein is quite in accordance with the picture drawn of him by Lord Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion (Book i. § 123):-" He was immoderately given up to women. But therein he retained such a power and jurisdiction over his very appetite, that he was not so much transported with beauty and outward allurements, as with those advantages of the mind as manifested an extraordinary wit, and spirit, and knowledge, and administered great pleasure in the conversation. To these he sacrificed himself, his precious time, and much of his fortune." What is here said refers, no doubt, wholly or chiefly to Herbert's more mature years, but his being fascinated in the fair sex by other endowments rather than personal attractions would accord completely with his becoming enamoured of Shakespeare's dark mistress (127 seq.), if what Shakespeare himself says concerning this lady is to be regarded. Shakespeare forgave the offence, but the Sonnets relating thereto, and especially the commencement of 41 ("Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits," &c.), convey a somewhat unpleasant impression. One would rather have seen more of indignation, and somewhat less of obsequious compliance. Still in this matter the character of the lady, as depicted in 137 and elsewhere, would naturally have no small influence. Whyte's letters in 1599 give several notices of Herbert. In August there would seem to have been an intention, whether afterwards fulfilled or not, that Herbert should be placed at the head of two hundred horsemen, “to attend her Majesties person." And at this time, with the view, it would seem, of qualifying himself for his new duties, he was "swagering yt among the Men of Warre, and viewing the Maner of the Musters." During the next month, September, his father, the Earl of Pembroke, became dangerously ill, and Herbert went down to him from town with all speed. Whyte says that Herbert, after his departure, was "much blamed for his cold and weake Maner of pursuing her Majesties fauour, having had soe good steps to lead him unto it. There is want of Spirit and Courage laid to his charge, and that he is a melancholy young man." Whyte seems to have thought that Herbert might prove unfit for a courtier, and in consequence might have to go back to the country. Whether Herbert's alleged melancholy proceeded from his mind being preoccupied with other matters, and what those matters were, it would be perhaps rash to conjecture. It may be of some importance, however, to observe that, in the same letter in which Whyte speaks of Herbert's uncourtier-like melancholy, he also divulges a plan he had formed for bringing about a marriage between Herbert and the niece of the Lord Admiral. At Herbert's father soon became, for a time at least, convalescent. A surgeon, no doubt celebrated at the time, had gone down from London by the Queen's order or permission, and an operation was successfully performed. this time (September 19, 1599), in a letter to the Queen, preserved in the Record Office, Herbert's father speaks of his son in terms which tend to show that too much weight should not be given to the rumours about Herbert's melancholy and coldness of manner, although the rumours may have been not without some grounds. The Earl is exceedingly comforted by the Queen's gracious opinion of his son, which in Her Majesty's letters to him not long since she had expressed, and with his son's joyful acknowledgments of the Queen's favour. On October 6 Whyte records that Herbert "is at Court and much bound to her Majestie for her gracious Fauor." Again, on November 24, "My Lord Harbert is exceedingly beloued at Court of all Men. He goes to Ramsbury to see his Father on Wednesday next." And on November 29, using, as he frequently does, ciphers to represent names, he writes, "9000 [Lord Herbert] is highly fauored by 1500 [Queen], for at his departure he had access vnto her, and was priuate an Houre; but he greatly wants advise. This day he has gone to see 2000 [his Father], but wilbe heare again before Christmas." ... According to our chronology, it would seem likely that about this time Sonnets 90 to 96 were written. Identifying Herbert with the friend of the poet to whom these Sonnets were addressed, it is not difficult to discern one probable cause for the complaint of diminished affection which these Sonnets contain. Herbert's attendance at Court and other occupations may have prevented frequent personal association with Shakespeare; and thus it may have seemed to Shakespeare that Herbert wanted to leave him (90), and steal himself away (92), and thus to bring the acquaintance to an end. Sonnet 91, with its mention of "high birth" and "wealth," "hounds," "hawks," and "horse," and "garments new-fangled ill," is entirely in accordance with the supposition that Shakespeare has in view Herbert's courtly associations and employments. But it would appear that there must have been also at this time certain particulars in Herbert's character and conduct deserving of grave censure. Shakespeare compares him to "Eve's apple" (93), and in 95 and 96 speaks out pretty broadly concerning rumours unfavourable to Herbert's moral conduct which were in circulation. With respect to these rumours the reader should compare Whyte's statement that "he greatly wants advice;" and, notwithstanding Herbert's advance in favour at Court, it is quite probable that there may have been much truth in the rumours in question. It is Clarendon who records Herbert's great licentiousness, who also asserts that he " was the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." On November 28, 1599, Herbert left London for the country, and did not return for between three and four months. In December, according to Whyte, he became ill with an ague, and about the middle of January, when L |