Meres' phrase, "his sugared sonnets among his private friends," that I wonder not to have met it in my Shakesperian reading. A few of these Sonnets may have expressed his own feelings, and may have been addressed to his wife, whom I am persuaded he loved, and often saw. The allusions to the old age of the writer, or supposed writer, in some of the Sonnets, the 62d and 63d, for instance, show plainly that Shakespeare could not have written them in his own person at any time of his life, at least before 1609, when they were first published, and certainly not before 1598, when it is quite evident that they were well known among his private friends; for then he was but thirty-two years old. In some, the 71st and 72d, for instance, the self-degradation is sufficient to prove that Shakespeare spoke not for himself. Nos. 80, 83, 86 and 121, were evidently written to be presented to some lady, who had verses addressed to her by at least one other person than the supposed writer of these; for the praises of another poet are explicitly mentioned in them. No. 78 was addressed to one who was the theme of many pens, for it contains these lines:

"So oft I have invok'd thee for my muse,
And found such fair assistance in my verse,

As every alien pen hath got my use,

And under thee their poetry disperse.

*

In other's works thou dost but mend the style,
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be."

The reiteration of the immortality secured for the subject of the Sonnets, supposing them to have been addressed to one person or written by Shakespeare in his own name, would be entirely inconsistent with such a character as his must needs have been. He might possibly have uttered such a sentiment once, but never could have put it into

verse written in his own person again and again and again. But if we suppose the Sonnets to have been addressed to different persons, on the part of different persons, the difficulty does not exist; as it was the fashion of the day to claim immortality for the subject of laudatory poetry. I cannot but think that No. 111 was written as an expression of his own feeling.

The supposition that Shakespeare's Sonnets were written in his own person, involves also the ridiculously absurd and inconsistent supposition, that the man who could be indifferent to the fate of A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Lear, Othello, and Hamlet, saw the promise of immortal fame in the Sonnets; and that he who, when he became rich, did not think it worth his while to obtain from his fellow proprietors the right of issuing correct editions of plays already published surreptitiously, regarded these Sonnets as a sure passport to undying fame both for the subject and the writer. It is also important to notice, that inferior as the Sonnets are to the Plays, they are as much superior to Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece; and yet Shakespeare did not publish either of the former, eager as the public of that day was for any production of his pen, while he did publish the latter. Now why did he thus carefully put his most unworthy performances before the public, and allow his Dramas, and his Sonnets, only inferior to his Dramas, to "lie in cold obstruction and to rot," until they were brought out entirely without his agency or aid? We know the cause as far as his Plays were concerned: they were not his: they belonged to the stock of the theatre. An actor of no eminence, he rapidly rose to be one of the two largest proprietors in the theatre; his contribution to the stock being those matchless plays, which, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, continually filled "cockpit, galleries, boxes," so that "you would

scarce find room" with the same public which was indifferent to the works of other dramatists. He had sold these plays, and had no power over them; and so also he had sold the Sonnets; else he certainly would have published what the public would so eagerly have bought, For Shakespeare, be it remarked, was a prudent, thrifty man. He went to London penniless, and without profession or friends, except in the theatre; and yet he retired at forty-five with a real and personal estate, the yearly income of which was equal to $8000. As the author of thirty-seven such plays as he produced between 1588 and 1612, as one of the principal managers and shareholders of the theatre, and as an actor besides, he had little time or occasion to write one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets; and we have the testimony of Meres that these Sonnets were well known among his private friends in 1598, when their author was but thirty-four years old, although some of them allude to the age and decay of their supposed writer. Could it be more clearly established, except by direct testimony, that Shakespeare did not write these Sonnets in his own person; but that, as the custom was, he furnished them to those who, though no poets, were good paymasters, and thus obtained a part of the money which made him, when only twenty-six years old, an important shareholder in the theatre, as appears by the well known remonstrance from the Company dated Nov. 1589, and now in the possession of Lord Ellesmere?

Again, it is possible to think of Shakespeare in early youth writing such a sonnet as No. 151 for another, but impossible to admit that he would, in his own person, address to any woman such gross double entendres as are contained in its last seven lines.

[Since writing the above I have read Mr. Charles Armytage Brown's very interesting book upon Shakespeare's Sonnets, in which he sets forth the extraordinary theory

that they were written as six entire poems in the sonnet stanza,-five of them to William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, and the sixth to Shakespeare's own mistress. Mr. Brown certainly shows the true appreciation of Shakespeare in his book, and very great ingenuity in the support of his favorite theory; but in my judgment he leaves the latter but just where it was when he first stated it. Mr. Brown alludes to "an ingenious supposition" of the Rev. Mr. Dyce's with regard to the Sonnets. I am familiar with all of that gentleman's critical writings upon Shakespeare, but have not met with this supposition. Mr. Collier, as I find, had forestalled me in my deduction that Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets for other persons; but he briefly states it, merely to abandon it without assigning any reason for or against it. I may be pardoned for thinking that the arguments which I have brought forward make the probability of the hypothesis which they sustain amount almost to moral certainty.

An observation on one of these Sonnets may interest some of my readers. The 127th is addressed to a brunette, -called a 'black beauty' in Shakespeare's day,-and commences thus:

This is an allusion to the remarkable fact, that during the chivalric ages brunettes were not acknowledged as beauties any where in Christendom. In all the old contes, fabliaux, and romances, the heroines are blondes. Such a thing as a brunette beauty is unknown in chivalric poetry : more than that, the possession of dark eyes and hair, and the complexion which accompanies them, is referred to by the troubadours as a misfortune. But the brunettes have changed the fashion since that day.

SHAKESPEARE'S NAME.

Or late years the attempt has been renewed, chiefly through the agency of Mr. Charles Knight, to change the orthography of Shakespeare's name to Shakspere, on the ground that it is but proper to spell a man's name as he himself spells it; Sir Francis Madden having shown, beyond a question, that in four of the six genuine signatures of Shakespeare which have come down to us, the name is written by the poet himself,-Shakspere. The remaining two, though most illegibly written, plainly contain ten or eleven letters. More than this, it is very evident that the name was originally, and, indeed, as late as the earlier years of William Shakespeare himself, pronounced Shaksper. The manner in which it is spelled in the old records in which it is found, varies almost to the extreme capacity of letters to change places and produce a sound approximating to that of the name as we pronounce it. It appears as Chacksper-Shaxpur-Shaxper-Schaksper-Schakesper-Schakespeyr-Shagspere - Saxpere-Shaxpere— Shaxpeare-Shaxsper-Shaxspere-Shaxespere - Shak

spere Shakspear-Shakspeere-Shackspeare-Shackespeare-Shackespere-Shakspeyr-Shaksper-Shakespere -Shakyspere-Shakespire - Shakespeire-Shakespear— Shakaspeare; and there are even other varieties of its orthography.