Shakespeare, with one or both of these sonnets very evidently in his mind, writes of his mistress:

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:

If snows be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare."

Here we find Shakespeare, far from being governed by the "exacting conventions of the sonneteering contagion" and giving an imaginary "dark lady" "a poetic being," flying directly in the face of conventions, and painting with most strongly realistic strokes a very flesh-and-blood being. In this, as in several other instances in the Sonnets, Shakespeare refers to or parodies other sonneteers, who write to imaginary mistresses, or else write extravagantly to and almost deify real ones; not reflecting nor indorsing their extravagances, but directly opposing and mocking them with his reality.

While what has been called "the sonneteering

contagion," lasting in England from about 1590 to 1598, in all probability influenced Shakespeare to the use of this form of verse, and while he necessarily is somewhat influenced by the form and expressions used by other writers whose poems he read, these facts do not detract from the value of his Sonnets as personal documents, as it is only in form and expression that he is influenced.

To anyone who, having read Shakespeare's Sonnets, fails to find the intimate and personal note, I would say, read them again, and again, and again. if necessary; it is there. Shakespeare wrote his Sonnets as private epistles to his patron and to his mistress, who circulated them amongst their friends, but that they were not written for publication or for sale, we have his own plain avowal in the 21st Sonnet:

"I will not praise that purpose not to sell."

That this is the correct meaning of this line I will prove in a later chapter.

CHAPTER III.

AN ANALYSIS OF THORPE'S ARRANGEMENT OF THE

SONNETS.

THE order which Thorpe used in his issue of the Sonnets, in 1609, is still generally recognized as correct by Shakespearean critics. I may, therefore, be deemed presumptuous in assailing that which has been so long accepted without question; however, after many years of interested and analytic study of the Sonnets, I am forced to take issue. against the infallibility of Thorpe's arrangement. The regard in which this arrangement has been held has arisen largely from the fact that Thorpe issued the Sonnets during the poet's life, and, therefore, possibly with his cognizance or under his supervision. I am fully convinced, and believe I can give fairly conclusive proof, that Shakespeare had no hand in their arrangement or publication.

Someone has said that, if one Sonnet can be shown to be out of its place and away from its context, the whole value of Thorpe's order is at once destroyed.

I shall adduce several very plain instances where this is the case, and yet I admit a very great sequential value for his arrangement. In order to properly estimate this value, it is necessary to understand the conditions under which Thorpe produced his edition.

I believe I shall clearly show that many of the Sonnets were written previous to 1595, and that the period of the production of the whole series antedates 1601. As the Sonnets were not published till 1609, they were, then, held in manuscript for from ten to fifteen years. We know that the Sonnets were produced at different times during a period of at least three years.

In the 108th Shakespeare says:

"What's in the brain that ink may character,
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name."

This plainly proves that Sonnets were written in the earlier, as well as the later periods of the friendship revealed in the Sonnets.

Sonnet 104 says:

"To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumns turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green."

This extract shows that the sonnet-writing had at the date of its production lasted for three years. We may then assume that the manuscripts from which Thorpe worked were detached books or sequences, and not one large manuscript containing the whole of the Sonnets as we know them. Though they were written as private epistles to the poet's patron, and mistress, they were evidently shown by their recipients to their friends, and passed amongst them to be read. In 1598 Meres mentions Shakespeare's "Sugred sonnets amongst his private friends," and I believe I shall show that Chapman had read some of them in manuscript many years before their eventual publication. We see, then, that the Sonnets were passed among Southampton's friends as they were written.

If we can get any idea of the number of the groups or sequences, we will begin to understand Thorpe's difficulties in chronologically arranging the whole series: to get any such idea, we must necessarily go to Thorpe's edition. We will, therefore, begin at the beginning and seek for palpable sequences.

We see very clearly that the first seventeen Sonnets are closely connected and plainly of the same group; the 18th and 19th Sonnets, while differing somewhat in subject, are also very evidently connected with the first group, but neither the 20th, 21st, 22d, 23d, 24th, or 25th are in any way related, either in sense or figure; the 26th Sonnet, however, is very similar in tone, and is plainly the last Sonnet of a sequence. In nearly all of the later Sonnets