Prefented to The Cornell University, 1869, Gold win Smith, M. A. Oxon., Regius Profeffor of Hiitoiy in the Univerfity of Oxford. DATE DUE 4m=^ ^M w^ AV tyw iff *'^Bsrr «m ^^^xm .joafeffig^" CArUORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. Cornell University Library PR 2848.H67 Remarks on the Sonnets of Shakespeare; w 1924 013 143 841 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013143841 REMARKS SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE; WITH THE SONNETS. BHOWnSTG THAT THET BELONG TO THE HEEMBTIO CLASS OP WEITINGS, AND EXPLAINING THEIE GENEEAL MEANING AND PUEPOSE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "EEMAEKS ON ALCHEMY," "8WEDENB0EGA HEEMETIC PHILOSOPHEE," " CHEIST THE SPIRIT," AND " THE EED BOOK OF APPIN \^'ITH INTEEPEBTATIONB." / & ; , ,'.v;-/ If' ; ,-1 ■ "T j NEW YORK : PUBLISHED BY JAMES MILLER, (SDCOESSOK TO 0. B. FRANCIS 4 CO.) 622 BKOADWAT. 1865. ^ I'X Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by JAMES MILLER, In the Clerk's OfB.ce of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. GC L. john f, trow, Printer, Stereotvper, and Electrotypbr, 50 Greene Street, New TorlL ADVEETISEMENT. For the convenience of those who may bo drawn to the study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare by these Ee- marks, the Author has given directions to print the Sonnets with them. E. A. H. "Wabhihgton City, D. 0., Nov. 1864. EEMAEKS SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. CHAPTER I. Heemetic MTiting is a species of painting ; and as no artist upon canvas can be permitted to interpret his own picture, so no artistic hermetic writer can he allowed to translate into didactic statements the meaning of his own scripture or writing. It would be disgraceful for a painter to label a picture "this is a horse," in order to guard against its being mis- taken for some other animal ; and so, in like manner, if an art-writer, like Dante or Goethe, were to set about interjireting his own writings, it would be proof that his labors had fallen short of their object. But while this is true with resjDect to the artist himself, it is entirely proper for a critic to discuss REMARKS ON [CHAP. : and explain, or exhibit the meaning, of artistic labors in any of the fields of art, painting, music, sculpture, architecture, or literature. The highest performances of art reach far beyond the ordinary judgments of man, and remain, for most people, like mountain-tops, to which they are often compared (as Mounts Sinai, Horeb, and Cal- vary), almost inaccessible, where, nevertheless, the atmosphere is always serene, like a beatified soul in the presence of God. Such performances of art seem to call for the labors of a subordinate class of persons, who are not artists themselves, but who have attained to such discernment in art as to enable them, as it were, to stand between the every-day life of the general cur- rent of men, and the higher expressed develop- ments of genius, and by pointing out the scope or inner meaning of great works of art, make them appreciable to those who have not had their atten- tion turned to them. Such appreciation, however, would be impossible if there were not something in common between the highest order of genius, and the subtle pervadings which bind all mankind in a brotherhood as fixed as the everlasting principles of truth. CHAP. I.] shakbspeaee's sonnets. 1 There are so many forms of hermetic writing in the world, that it is next to impossible to give any definition by which they may be distinguished. It may indeed be asserted that they all aim to illus- trate life ; and life may therefore be said to be the secret of all that class of writings ; but no one, by this sort of statement, can be at once placed in a con- dition to enter into the true sense of the writings themselves, since to do this a knowledge of the secret is necessary; and who can lay claim to that knowledge without subjecting himself to the charge of arrogance and presumption ? Here the story of the philosopher occurs to us, who, being asked what God is, requested a day to think before answering, and then another, and an- other day, finally acknowledging that the more he thought of the question, the more difficult he found it to answer. So is it with life. It is in us and around us, visible in myriad forms, but in itself invisible ; and who can say he knows what life is ? It is pre- supposed in both the question and the answer any one may give, and this, too, whether the answer be afiirmative or negative — whether we assume to define it, or, confounded with a sense 8 EEMAEKS OK [OBA.F. I. of the mystery, we deny all knowledge of>it. We cannot hide ourselves from it ; it is with us in our hopes and our fears, in our joys and our sorrows. When we fully appreciate the difficulties of the problem, the question may insinuate itself into the mind, that is, into our sense of life. May not one answer serve for both questions, — what is God, and what is Life ? And just here a student of this subject may be in a fair position for inquiring into some of the forms iu which hermetic writers have treated their subject, and especially the Sonnets attributed to Shakespeare ; and now we declare it to be our purpose to show something of the meaning of those exquisitely beautiful, but still more wonderful Sonnets. The question has long been agitated, as to whom those Sonnets Avere addressed ; but no modern editor, with whose labors we are acquainted, appears to have considered for a moment that they belong to the class of hermetic writings having a profoundly mysterious sense, and no one seems to reflect that perhaps they cannot be explained or understood from any merely literal point of view. The efforts CflAP. I.] SHAKESrEABE'S SONXETS. 9 of all of the critics appear to have been to discover to whom, as a person, the Sonnets were addressed; and the general opinion has been, that it was a young Earl, the Earl of Southampton. This opinion was recently strongly urged in the April number of the London Quarterly Review for this year (1864). "We think we can show, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that this solution of the problem presented in the Sonnets is entirely unten- able ; and this shall follow as a necessary inference from the exhibition we propose to make of the real object addressed, and we will show this from the Sonnets themselves. That the Sonnets present a problem, as yet un- solved, not only appears from the article on Shakes- peare and his Sonnets in the Review just named, but from the many discussions to be found in the various editions of the poet's works whenever the editors have anything at all to say on the subject. Thus, in a recent edition, the editor remarks, " If we could once discover the true solution of that enigma which lies hidden in the Sonnets attributed to Shakespeare, we might perhaps learn much that is now mysterious in the history of his life." * In * Hazlitt's edition. 1* 10 EEMAEKS ON [CHAP. I. another place the same editor gives the opinion, that "his (Shakespeare's) Sonnets were probably among his earliest productions; but when they were written, where, and to whom they were addressed, and of whom they discourse, are all matters of mystery." In the explanation we propose to make of the mystery, it is not denied but that many of the Son- nets have all the appearance of having been address- ed to persons, sometimes to a man, and then again to a woman ; and if this class of Sonnets stood alone they would not invite a mystical interpretation ; but as they are found in a collection embracing a con- siderable number which cannot be understood as addi-essed to persons, while, at the same time, they admit of a decisive interpretation from what may be called the mystical theory, which may also without violence be applied to those apparently addressed to persons, it may properly be contended that the latter class are mystical also. Love is a generic word, and we understand very well that the love of God is not only consistent with the love of man, but always includes and presup- poses it; for which reason it is best figured under some special form of the love of man or woman. CHAP. I.] SHAKESPBAEB'S SONNETS. 1 1 This must explain why so many truly religious works appear to the eye as mere love-stories, which were intended to express the divine affection itself. The love of art also participates in the highest form of the aifection, when its action is not corrupted by the mere love of the reputation of an artist, just as the love of knowledge tends to wisdom when it is loved for itself and not merely for its temporal ad- vantages. We expect to show that love, as used in the Shakespeare Sonnets, had not a mortal being for its object, but an Lrrepresen table spirit of beauty, the true source of artistic tirths. Before proceeding to the point we aim at, let us remark that, about the age of Queen Elizabeth, it was quite common for poets to write series of son- nets, generally love-sonnets, ajjparently addressed to some lady, in the fashion of Petrarch in an earlier age, whose sonnets were addressed to Laura — said to have been the wife of a dear friend of the poet ! Spenser wrote love-sonnets entitled, significantly enough, Amoretti; and among the poets of that age we find that Drayton published a series of son- nets dedicated to Lilia, in the preface to which he 12 EEMAEKS ON [CHAP. I. holds this language,— "If thou muse what my Lilia is, take her to be some Diana, at the least chaste, or some Minerva ; no Venua, fairer far. It may be she is Learning's Image, or some heavenly wonder which the preoisest may not mislike : perhaps under that name I have shadowed Discipline." Drayton pubhshed another series of sonnets be- sides those addressed to Lilia, which he expressly called " Ideas." The first remark to be made upon Drayton's intimation in his preface to Lilia, and upon the fact that he entitled a series of sonnets Ideas, is, that we may take leave to suppose he was not alone, in the fact that he wrote sonnets, apparently address- ed to a lady, wliich were, in truth, a series of ideal- istic contemplations upon various subjects of life; and we may use this preface of Drayton's in ex- planation of the sonnets of other poets of the age in which they were written ; for we all know that literature has its fashions like everything else. Among the poets of that age, or about it, Sir Philip Sidney is to be numbered. He published a series of sonnets entitled Astrophel and Stella ; and no one can read them carefully without perceiving in 8uUa a personification of some divine conception, CHAP. :.] Shakespeare's son^^ets. 13 or some conception of the divine, in the mind of the poet. What that conception was we may partly guess j&-om passages in Sidney's Defence of Poetry, where he refers to Songs and Sonnets (the first expression in the sense of Psalms) in these words : " Other sorts of Poetry, almost have we none, but that Lyrical kind of Songs and Sonnets, which, if the Lord gave us so good minds, how well it might be employed we all know, and with how heavenly frtiits, both private and public, in singing the praises of the Immortal Beauty, the Immortal Goodness of that God who giveth us hands to write, and wits to conceive, of which we might well want words, but never matter ; of which we could turn our eyes to nothing but we should ever find new budding occa- sions." In another place of the Defence, Sidney refers to David as a poet in these words : " For what else is the awakening of his musical instrument; the often and free changing of persons ; his notable pro- sopopoeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in Ms majesty ; his telling of the beasts' joy- fulness, and hills leaping, but a heavenly poetry ; wherein almost, he showeth himself a passionate lover of that unspeakable and everlasting Beauty, to 14 EEMARKS ON [cHAP. I. be seen by the eyes of the mind, cleansed by faith." Whoever reads Sidney's Sonnets, with these pas- sages from his Defence of Poetry in mind, will surely see, in Stella, Sidney's idea of the Divine Beauty, or that which Plato — and Sidney was a Platonist — calls the Beautiful ; not as applicable to a beautiful person or thing, but to the principle of Beauty; in one word, Plato means by it, the Di- vine. We have no disposition to enter here upon the old discussion about the real and the ideal, the idea and the imagination, the one and the many, Plato dis- posing of the problem (as in the Philebus) by uniting the two expressions into one, and then discussing what he calls the one-and-many, which however, to the imagination, only adds one more to that which was already many ; yet here also the single idea is recognized, comprehending in unity the one-and- many, just as it had comprehended the many before ; showing, in fact, that there is no eluding the true constitution of the mind by the structure of lan- guage, which is not the master but the servant of the soul. It may domineer at first over the young and the immature, but in the end, that which was first CHAP. I.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONIMBTS. 15 must become the last ; as our poet tells us in the 85th Sonnet, where he declares that, whatever may- be said by others in the praise of the object address- ed, the object of his own passion, he could add some- thing more ; but that addition, he tells us, was in his thought, which, he says, " though words come hind- most, holds his rank before." It may aid a student of the beautiful in Art, to give the Phsedrus a careful reading ; for that dia- logue came from the country, and the time, where and when a sense of the Beautiful was exalted into religion. Because Poets, and Philosophers also, have not un- frequently addressed this divine something as a mas- culine person, particular instances of it, as in the case of the Sonnets before us, have been explained by au appeal to a supposed custom, by which friends are said to have addressed each other in the language of love ; not seeing that this only explains one ano- maly by an apj^eal to a greater ; for the question recurs. What is the meaning of that love-literature of the Middle Ages ? Abused, as it no doubt was, fully justifying Cervantes, still, the truth remains, that in the hands of the adepts, Dante, Petrarch, and others, Love was the synonym for Religion : 16 EBaLiEKS ON [chap. I. and this is tlie explanation of the fact that multi- tudes of the romances of the Middle Ages represent the hero of the story as falling in love at a Church — the church figuring the virgin-mother of the faith derived from it. Nothing is more common than the use of this expression, the mother, as applied to a church, and this is also a virgin-mother. In like manner, all places of education are mothers, it being the custom of all collegiate scholars to speak of what they call their Alma Mater. The analogous use of language led our poet, in the 3d Sonnet, to speak of a mother as applied to a subject of art ; and, again, in the ICth Sonnet, he uses the expression "maiden gardens," meaning virgin or uuAvrought subjects; which, he means to say in that Sonnet, were open to the artist. CHAP. II.] SHAKESPEABE'S SONNETS. 17 CHAPTER II. Asking the reader to bear in mind the extracts from Drayton and Sidney, we will proceed to show that the object addressed in the Shakespeare Son- nets is analogous to what the latter calls Immortal Beauty and Immortal Goodness, only suggesting, as a precaution, that these are not to be regarded under any form of the imagination, but conceived as spiritual. That this may be done, no one need be told who is in the habit of prayer himself, or in the habit of attending prayer in the church ; for to whom or what does the preacher address himself when, with eyes uplifted or closed, he approaches what he calls the throne of grace ? Certainly the object addressed in such cases is no visible or imaginary form what- ever, but a conceived spirit, the spirit revealed in re- ligion, according to the declaration of the gospel — 18 EEMAEKS ON ['''^^- '"- « ri God is a spirit, and they that worship him miist worship him in spirit and in truth." The Beauty of this spirit is addressed by our poet in the first Sonnet under a figurative expression — " Beauty's Rose : " From fairest creatures we desire increase, That tliereby Beauty's Rose might never die. But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory. In this Sonnet the poet addresses the Spirit of Beauty, or the Beautiful, as the fountain of art ; and, as proceeding from an artistic i3oet, the lines are an invocation to the Spirit of Beauty to become, as it were, his mistress, or, in the Helenic sense, his Muse or Inspiration, in order that he might perpetuate his sense of beauty in some adequate poetic form, which, preserving the figure, he calls an heie, j)recisely in the sense in which this word is used in the poet's dedication of Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton, in which that poem is called the first heir of his invention. This poetic heir is the child, the son, &c., so often referred to in most of the first sixteen or eighteen Sonnets of the series of one hundred and CHAP. II.] shakespeaee's sonnets. 19 fifty-four, as published in the modern editions of Shakespeare's works. We do not consider that the Sonnets, in their present order, were written throughout under one rigid idea, incapable of variation, or that they were written in the precise order in which Ave now have them. We admit, also, that there may possibly be some, now embraced in the series, which the writer of them might have excluded or modified, if the collection, when first made, had been under his control ; and we have but little doubt that the collection, as it comes to us, may be wanting in some few Sonnets which may be found elsewhere, or may have been lost alto- gether. We also suppose that the Sonnets were written at various periods or stages of life, some of them in early life, when the ideal stood before the poet's mind in all its power, and others at a later period, when the vision had either partially left or threatened to leave him, or had undergone some transformations, though without ever being absolutely denied. We can believe that the poet ultimately outgrew, not the ideal itself, but some of the forms in which it had presented itself to his early imagination; and finally, we 20 EEMABKS ON [OBA.F. II. think we, see where the poet probably ceased to indulge his imaginative faculty in the pure or ab- stract ideal, and confined himself to the more sober realities of practical life, though with improved powers of understanding the great world, which, as- suredly, is but a fragment of life, when its unseen counterpart is not recognized and acknowledged. In the first Sonnet the poet expresses a desire that Beauty's Rose might never die ; but that as the riper should decease, his tender heir might bear his memory. The meaning of this is, that the forms in which the beautiful has been exjjressed in former ages, are liable to become antiquated, insomuch as measurably to lose the power of expressing the beautiful. This is figured by their " decease ; " and the poet's desire is, that he might be so endowed himself as to be able to take tip the theme in some new form to keep alive the " memoi-y " of it. In the 108th Sonnet the poet himself refers to the classics of antiquity as being included among the class of writings subject to decease in the sense here stated ; for, as we may observe in that Sonnet, the poet saw, in those classic works. CHAP. II.] shakespbaeb's sonnbts. 21 the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead. Not that Beauty itself can ever die, for this the poet tells us (Sonnet 18) has an "eternal summer ; " hut that in the progress of ages, owing to the mutability of language, its forms of expression become so antiquated that we may speak of them as dead : and yet it is one of the precious fruits of this study, that the adept is enabled to recognize the traces of the spirit wherever it has appeared in the world. That the opening Sonnets are to be understood as invocations to the higher spirit of Beauty, or of life, may apipear, in part, from the ^Sth Sonnet, where the object, figured as Beauty's Rose in the 1st Sonnet, is thus addressed : 16. So oft have I invoked thee for my muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse ; etc. and the Sonnet concludes with these lines : Yet be most proud of that which I compile, Whose influence is thine and born of thee : In others' works thou dost but mend the style. And arts with thy sweet grace graced be ; But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning my rude ignorance. 22 EEMAEKS ON [CHAP. U. It is plain here, though we shall soon make it more so, that the poet's Sonnets, the verses which he "compiles," are the fruit, the very born of that which, in the 1st Sonnet, is figured as Beauty's ■Rose ; and the reader is expected to see, ia the course of the explanation we have undertaken, that this is the Spirit of Beauty, or the BeautiM in the Platonic sense; and this spirit is in perfect har- mony with the spirit of nature. Hence we may here, in this 78th Sonnet, have a glimpse of the sense in which Shakespeare may be regarded as himself nature's child. He has often been so called, be- cause he drew his inspiration from nature, this being, as he says, all his art ; or, to use his own expression in Hamlet, he, of all men who ever wrote, was enabled " to hold the mirror up to nature." There may be more, but there are certainly two" species of poetry ; and it is necessary to show that our poet, while he knew that he was in posses- sion of the subordinate form, as the result of educa- tion and a certain imitative power, desired to be- come the medium for the expression of that higher form of poetry which is'the direct result of the spirit of life becoming active in the soul, under the power of which the poet becomes impersonal : and here we CHAP. II.] SHAKESPEAEE'S SONNETS. 23 see one of the peculiar characteristics of Shake- speare, as seen in his dramas ; or, rather, one of his characteristics is, that he is not seen at all in his writings as a man, but as life — the very object addressed in the opening Sonnets. The principle here stated, that nature, seen in her spirit as life, is " all the art " of the poet, -will appear in several of the Sonnets ; but, for the pres- ent, it will suffice to point to the 16th, in which the poet seems to beseech the spirit to take a " mightier way to make war ujjon the bloody tyrant time," than to depend upon what he calls the harren rhyme of his pupil pen, — meaning the results of his mere imitatiye power — ^by becoming, itself, his im- mediate muse or insjiiration ; adding. To give away yourself keeps yourself still ; And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill. This sweet skill is no other than nature's skill; for nature always works divinely and sweetly. We may make it appear otherwise when we undertake, following a blind or perverse will, to work in contra- vention of the divine laws as expressed in nature. We are now prepared to show more directly how 24 BBMAEKS ON [cHAP. 11. the spirit is regarded by the poet of the Sonnets, for which purpose we appeal first to the 39th Sonnet, in which the object, or Beauty's Rose, is addressed as the better part of the poet himself, meaning un- doubtedly the spirit of life, — the poet contemplating himself as having a double nature, which, for con- venience, we may for the present define as natural and spiritual. 39. how thy worth with manners may I sing, When tlwu art all the better part of me ; etc. If this does not appear plain, it may become so by turning to the "Zith Sonnet, where we see that the poet speaks of consecrating his own better part to the object addressed, which, we must recollect, is figured as Beauty's Rose ; and then he tells us that this better part is his own spirit : 74. My spirit is thine, the better part of me. If the reader will scan these two Sonnets closely, the 39th and the '74th, he will see, as it were, the two spirits, the inner and the outer, regarded by the poet as ONE ; and here the reader may discover the principal secret of the Sonnets. This unity is the CHAP, n.] SHAKESPEARE'S SO>':XKTS. 25 " precious one," -n-Hch the poet tells us in the 22d Sonnet he will be as chary of as a tender nurse of its babe. In its beginning it is a babe, the new birth of genius, and no less the blessed child of faith, or faith itself, the one thing needful, as seen in the field of art ; for although the poet is filled with a reli- gious spirit, we must regard him as treating of Art, which, in his age, he tells us, in Sonnet 66, was " tongue-tied by authority ; " — and here we may dis- cover a hint of the reasons inducing the poet to use the hermetic form of writing. But there is something which disturbs the poet's vision of the unity, and operates as a separation, between himself and his " better part." By turning to the 44th Sonnet we shall see, beyond a doubt, that this disturbing element is no other than ma- terial nature, called " the dull substance of the flesh." This is that which troubled the poet, and gave occasion for that " sour leisure," which never- theless gave him " sweet leave to entertain the time with thoughts of love," meaning divine love ; and yet, this fleshly obstacle was a great grief to the poet : " Ah ! " says he, " thought kills me, that I am not thought." His vision of the spirit was so 26 REMARKS ON [CHAP. II. delightful and absorbing that, like Plotiniis of old, he could not bear the thought of the interposed body, or flesh, which, in the 36th Sonnet, is referred to as the separable (or separating) spite, by which he was compelled to feel as if " removed " from the spirit — in which state his only consolation was, as just stated, from the 39th Sonnet, to entertain sweet thoughts of love, that is, of the spirit, the spirit of beauty. We may find some confirmation of this view in the beautiful scene between Lorenzo and Jessica : How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears : soft stillness, and the night. Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica : look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold ; There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins : Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Mer. of Ven. This " muddy vesture of decay," this " dull sub- CHAP. II.] SHAKESPEAEE's SOIS^NETS. 27 stance of the flesh," is referred to in the 20th Sonnet as the " addition " to the otherwise feminine nature, which in that Sonnet is seen as double, and is called the master-mistress of the poet's passion — this being a mystical expression for the object addressed in the 1st Sonnet as Beauty's Rose. 28 EBMAEKS ON [chap. hi. CHAPTER m. We might stop here, satisfied that enough has been disclosed to conTinee any candid student, and enable him to proceed by himself in searching out the arcane beauties of these wonderful Sonnets ; but as we have undertaken to put a face upon them which, it is believed, is quite if not altogether un- known in this age, we will proceed to point out the meaning of some of the Sonnets, which are liable to be misunderstood by those who are unacquainted with hermetic writings. Beauty's Rose, recognized as life, is seen by the poet as the spirit of humanity ; and because this is viewed as having no direct relation to time, the poet sees it both in the past and in the future. Thus, in Sonnet 5 9, the poet casts his eye backward, so to speak, desiring to see the image of his idea in some " antique book," five hundred years old, in order that he might CHAP. III.] SHAJiESPEAKE'S SONNETS. 29 see -what the " old world " had said of the greatest wonder of the world, Man ; that he might judge whether we, of modern times, are mended, or wheth- er man in former times was the better. In the 106th Sonnet we may see that the poet's wish was at least i>artially accomplished ; for he saw the purpose of the class of books known as tales or romances of chivalry, containing the " praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights." He saw that their purpose was a mystical one, and that it was, in fact, to express " such a beauty " as was then before the poet's eyes. Referring to the romancers, he says : 106. I see their antique pen would have expressed Such a Beauty as you [addressing Beauty's Rose] master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring ; And, for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your praise to sing : For we, which now behold these present days. Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. But whilst we see the poet, in the 59th and 106th Sonnets, casting his longing eyes backward in time, to discover what the old world had said of the miracle then under his own eye, we may see him, in 30 EEMAEKS ON [OHAP. III. the 32d Sonnet, looking forward inquiringly, anxious in regard to the point, as to how his own work in art-writing was likely to be viewed. 32. It thou [says he, addressing the sjiirit of humanity, his own " better part," seen as the spirit of life] : If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl death with dust my bones shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time ; etc. These lines are addressed to any modern reader who recognizes the spirit of the poet, by sharing it ; and the poet asks, of such a reader, that he will judge of the poet's verses with a due consideration of the improvements of knowledge, &c., which he calls the " bettering of the time " — evidently antici- pating a progress in knowledge ; and then he pro- ceeds, referring to his own verses : And though they be outatripp'd by every pen, Preserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. then CHAP, in.] shakespeaee's sonnets. 31 [he continues, as if addressing us in this so-called enlightened century], then vouchsafe me but this loving thought ! Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth [the reader should mark this expression — a dearer iirth, the very son invoked in the first sixteen or eighteen Sonnets — ] A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage : But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love. It is scarcely possible for an adult reader to mis- take the meaning of this Sonnet, which, with the 59th and the 106th, shows us the poet in the act of casting his eyes both backward and forward for ages, to catch a glimjDse of the view which might have been entertained in the past, or was likely to be in the then future, of the object before his own clear vision under the figure of Beauty's Rose. If we are not mistaken in the meaning of these Sonnets, the 32d, 59th, and 106th, then the ordinary method of interpreting the Sonnets, as addressed to 32 REMARKS ON [chap. III. a person, oontemporaiy with the poet, must not only be abandoned, but we must conclude that the object addressed is something conceived to be as permanent in life as life itself. That this is the true point of view will appear from many of the Sonnets, but particularly from the 83d, in which the object is addressed as " ex- tant " (in the 84th as an " example"), in the sense of being an exemplar, by which to judge of what has been said of it in ancient times, compared with the power of a " modern quill " to represent it. Thus far the view we have presented is simple and natural, and hardly admits of being questioned. There is nothing strained or forced in this interpre- tation, while, on the supposition of a person as the object addressed in the Sonnets, the student is per- petually embaiTassed with inexplicable difficulties. But the reader must not expect to enter easily into this field of study. The Sonnets are full of mysteries, and need the closest attention for their comprehension ; but with patient thought on his own j)art, the student may gradually feel that he is being drawn into something like an acquaintance with the mode of thinking of the most wonderful mind that has ever appeared in literature ; for, in CHAP. III.] SHAKESPEARE'S SOIfNETS. 33 the Sonnets before us, we may discover what may be called the principles of thought in Shakespeare. Many have supjDosed that in the Sonnets we are to find some account of the outward life of the poet • but it is not so much his outward as his inward life that is ia some degree to be understood from those starlike manifestations of his spiritual nature. Students of the Sonnets have supposed them ad- dressed to more than one person ; that, while the earlier portion are addressed to some man, at all events, whether to the Earl of Southampton or not, the latter portion must have been addressed, they think, to one or more women, and certainly, as they imagine, to some one of no very reputable char- acter. To clear up some of these points, let the reader consider that the object addressed, although con- ceived as a unity, or perhaps Ave should say a per- fect harmony, as may be seen in many of the Son- nets, particularly in the 105th and 108th, is never- theless of a composite nature (though not in a me- chanical sense), as designated in the 20th Sonnet, where Beauty's Rose is called the master-mistress of the poet's passion, that is, of his love. We have al- ready intimated that for convenience this double 2^^ 34 EBMAEKS ON [cHAP. III. nature may be regarded as soul and body — not that by the mere use of words the nature of these expres- sions can be understood. The dramatic writings of the poet will show some illustrations of this point. Thus King Richard, in the dungeon at Pomfret, soliloquizes : I have been studying how I may compare This prison, where I live, to the world ; And for because the world is populous, And here is not any creature but myself, I cannot do it : but I'll hammer it out. My brain I'll prove the female to my soul ; My soul, the father : and these two beget A generation of still breeding thoughts. And these same thoughts people this same little world ; In humors like to the people of this world ; For no thought is contented. If in this solUoquy we change the expression train, and compare the body to the female, we shall be even nearer the truth, and be in a better position for .1 comprehension of the Sonnets under a still broader theory of soul, body, and spirit, three in one. It would be easy to point out other parallels to the Sonnets in other portions of the soliloquy, — ^for CHAP. lU.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS. 35 example, the allusion to music, as compared with the 8th Sonnet, — the soul itself being a musical in- strument, though it may require a David to awaken it into expression. But we will not go too much into detail. In the soliloquy of Richard, the soul, we see, is compared to a father, and the brain to a mother ; yet the two are one in the poet, who may be im- agined as addressing that same soul in the opening Sonnets, supposed by many to have been some per- son, and generally believed to have been the Earl of Southampton. In the Prologue to Henry the Fifth there is a passage which may very well be here considered, as it serves to show how the poet conceived the unity of man as expressing at the same time the many : — " into a thousand parts," says he, " divide one man, and make imaginary puissance," — as if by this process the individual could, as it were, bring into his pi-esence the entire drama, and all its personce. In the 1st Sonnet the object addressed is figured as Beauty's Rose ; but in the 20th the double nature appears, and Beauty's Rose is 36 BEMAEKS ON [cHAP. III. called the master-mistress of the poet's love. This view presents no diificulty, for the object, though double, is still a unity.; but in this unity the student must perceive on the one side (the feminine side), a sufficient provision for an end- less generation of " still breeding thoughts ; " while on the masculine or soul side, so to say, there is no division conceivable ; and this is the characteristic of what some call the pure reason ; for this is always one and the same : we do not say this of reasoning, but of reason. Let the reader catch the poet's idea in the drama, and then see how it is expressed in the abstract Son- nets, particularly in the 144th and 147th Sonnets. The 144th commences — 144. Two loves [or tendencies, the poet means to say, precisely in the sense of St. Paul in the Vth chapter of Romans] Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me stiU ; [that is, the two loves or tendencies drew or instigated the poet in contrary directions : he pro- ceeds] : CHAP, in.] shakespeaeb's soitnets. 37 The better angel or [tendency] is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman, color'd ill. In the nth line of the Sonnet the yioet tells us that both of the spirits were " from," — that is, they proceeded from himself; or, in other words, they were in himself: and, to be brief, these two spirits are no other than those popularly known as the reason and the affections, the latter being the feminine side of the master-mistress ; and here we miist see the E\fe or evil side of Adam, where- in corruption becomes possible, when the affections pass into passions in a bad sense. This is the meaning of the expression colofd ill, color being a figurative word for the changeable passions. * We do not look in the direction of the passions for truth and reason ; and although the reason in itself is incorruptible, yet, in the composite nature of man, the man himself, when under the dominion of the passions, comes under a cloud ; and then, in the way of a metonym, the reason is said to be clouded or corrupted. This view will fully prepare the reader for the li'/'th Sonnet, to wit : 147. My lo¥e [here regarded as the passion side of life] 38 EBMAEKS ON [OHAP. III. My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nourisheth the disease ; Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, The uncertain sickly appetite to please ; My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, etc. Here the reason and the love are the man and the woman of the 144th Sonnet, the former being the physician, who is said to have left the poet : that is, as expressed in the 144th Sonnet, the female evil had tempted his better angel untU he is said to have left his side. CHAP. IV.] shakespeaee's sonnets. 39 CHAPTER IV. • At this stage of the development exhibited in the Sonnets, the poet had become deeply sensible of the evil nature of the affections when, refusing obedience to reason, they degenerate into pas- sions; though, at the first, they had not appeared so, but had worn an angel-like face, which the poet had thought both "fair and bright." Hence the closing lines of the 14'7th Sonnet : I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. We have already taken one or two confirma- tions of these views from the poet's dramas, and will here take one from the closing scene of the 2d Act of Cymbeline, where the poet has evidently framed a scene as if on purpose to place a character 40 EEMAEKS ON [chap. IT. in a suitable dramatic position for an appropriate expression of the doctrine just indicated, in whicli the evil side of life is placed to the feminine ac- count. Posthumous is artistically placed in a position to doubt the fidelity of Imogen, and then ex claims : >■ * * Could I find out The woman's part in me ! For there's no motion That tends to vice in man, but I affirm It is the woman's part : be it lying, note it. The woman's ; flattering, hers ; deceiving, hers ; Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers ; revenges, hers ; Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, Nice longings, slanders, mutability, All faults that may be named, nay that hell knows. Why, hers, in part, or all ; but rather all ; For even to vice They ate not constant, but are changing still One vice, but of a minute old, for one Not half so old as that. I'll write against them, Detest them, curse them, — Yet 'tis greater skiU, In a true hate, to pray they have their will : The very devils cannot plague them better. If the poet is to be condemned for thus figuring the eyil side of life by charging it upon woman, it CHAP. IT.] shakbspeaeb's sonnets. 41 must be recollected that lie has an ancient and a high authority for it in Genesis. On the other hand, all writers, ancient and modern, have united in setting truth before us under the image of a virgin, usually described as a king's daughter, and thus called a princess, always described as a sur- passing beauty, Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth. We understand very well that the poet does not apply all this denunciation to " lovely woman," but to what he calls the woman's part in man ; and so far as there is any truth in it at all it is as applicable to what may as appropriately be called the woman's part in woman ; for the double nature of the master- mistress is shared by both man and woman, these expressions signifying, in the Sonnets, the reason and the affections. Hence, in several of the Sonnets, th-e two natures are referred to as separate persons; as in the 42d and also in the 133d and 134th Sonnets, the poet himself making a third person in the unity, in some cases even a fourth ; for the unity always re- mains, no matter how many of the composite ele- ments are referred to. The 13Sd and 134th Sonnets are extremely 42 EBMABKS ON [chap. IV complicated, but they are to be explained upon tbe theory we have assumed. To understand the 133d Sonnet, we must consider that the poet has been reflecting upon the pain which his own misconduct has brought upon his better nature, as if this " better part" of himself was separated from him (Sonnet 36) ; and he condemns that (woman's part) in him which has misled him. Hence he exclaims, line 1,- as we will paraphrase it, — Beshrew that heart (or affection in me) which has misled me, and induced the pain I feel from the thought of having wounded the higher spirit, as well as me ; proceeding, line 3 : — is it not enough that I should suffer alone, for what I have done, but must my better spirit be brought into slavery, or suffering, in addition to my own pain ? and he continues, line 5 : that cruel affection (human) has made a division in my own nature, separating me from " my most true mind " (as expressed in the 113th Sonnet), and hast made my better part suffer even more than me ; thus dis- uniting my whole self, leaving me in utter desola- tion ; or, as in line V, " utterly forsaken : " and now he prays, line 9, that his better self would take his (human) heart into its own steel (or strong) bosom (or nature) : — where he proposes to " bond " himself CHAP. IV.] SHAKBSPBAEE S SONXETS. 43 for the release (from suffering) of his higher self; and will constitute himself a guard for the faithful execution of the bond. This being all (metaphy- sically) arranged, he says, line 12, addressing his " better part," — Thou can'st not be rigorous with me, thus imprisoned in your steel bosom, because I, being pent in thee, am thine (or thee). "Yet thou wilt be so " because, as we explain it, notwith- standing all this wrestling with the spirit, he could not free himself from a sense of his demerits ; as appears also in the 134th Sonnet. The expression in the 13th line, "being pent in thee," carries us to the poet's sense of the unity, just as, in the last line of the 135th Sonnet, the language " think all but (or only) one," is a clear indication of the same doctrine. This may appear to be an overstrained solution of the mysticism in these Sonnets, but a careful con- sideration of the poet's doctrine of the duality and triplicity, all in the unity, as seen in the 42d Son- net, will reconcile the difficulties. In the Sonnet just named, the poet declares : " My friend and I are one," the friend being the object addressed, called the better part of himself in the 39th Sonnet. That this direct was not a merely contemporary 44 EEMAEKS Oi>r [chap. it. person, ^Y\\\ become more and more apparent as the reader becomes familiar with the idea, that the poet is addressing what Emerson charmingly calls tho Over-Soul. Thus, the 53d Sonnet is surely address- ed to the Source of all being : 53. What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend ? Since every one hath, every one, one shade. And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you ; On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set. And you in Grecian tires are painted new : Speak of the spring, and foizon * of the year ; The one doth shadow of your beauty show. The other as your bounty doth appear, And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart. This Sonnet clearly recognizes the constancy or permanence of the spirit in variable nature. It may remind us somewhat of the maya doctrine of the Hindoos, as it also reminds us of the doctrine of those who would have us see God in all things, or all things in God. * Plenty, or harvest. CHAP. IV.] Shakespeare's sonnets. 45 As between Jaoobi and Goetlie, onr poet would undoubtedly have sided witb the latter, who de- clared that nature reveals God, while Jaoobi was of opinion that nature conceals God. To those who do not perceive God in nature, the latter must wear a " black," terrible aspect, to bo Ukened only to death ; but to our poet this material existence was illumined by the sijirit, 2Y. Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Made black night beauteous and her old face new. If the reader still doubts as to the object address- ed, let him turn to the 122d Sonnet, and study its meaning. The " gift," the " tables," referred to in the 1st line, are two expressions for one thing, the written law of Moses — often called the gift of God, said to have been written on tables of stone. St. Paul speaks, in the 3d chapter 2d Corinth., of tables in the same sense, and tells us of the law written upon the fleshly tahles of the heart by the Spirit of God, which gave him life, and by which he was enabled to leave the written law — called Christ in the flesh — " behind," calling the same written law elsewhere a schoolmaster, who may be dismissed after his lesson has been taught. In like manner. 46 EBMAEKS ON [OHAP. IT. our poet tells us of the tables (or law) being full charactered (or written) within his brain, where, he was sure, it would remain " beyond all date, even to eternity ; " or, at the least, so . long as brain and heart have faculty by nature to subsist ; adding that, until each be lost in oblivion, the true record of the spirit upon the heart can never be missed : and then he refers to the written law, as a " poor retention," unable to hold so much as the spiritual writing upon the heart — in keeping with the true sense of the clos- ing verse of the gospel of John : and then he says : Nor need I tallies [or writings] thy dear love to score, — adding therefore, to give [the writings] from me was I hold ; [that is, he left them beJiind] to trust [as he says], those tables [of the heart and brain] which receive thee more ; and he concludes : To keep an adjunct [an artificial reminder] to remember thee, Were to import forgetfulness in me. We do not see how this 122d Sonnet can have any other meaning than the one here assigned to it ; and if this is its true sense, then it discloses the object addressed as clearly as figurative language can do it, when used by a mystical writer. It must be observed that, in making this and other interpretations, the interpreter is not express- CHAP. IV.] shakespeakb's sonnets. 47 ing his own individual opinions with regard to the divine law. He is merely showing how the poet felt related to it ; but the reader should perceive that the poet by no means repudiates or denies the law. On the contrary, by implication, he fully sus- tains it, only saying, with St. Paul, that he found it written in his " brain and heart." There is another and a very mystical allusion to the Mosaic law in the two concluding Sonnets of the series, both of which refer to the same mystery, which is, the mystery of the spirit in the letter. In the 153d Sonnet, Cupid signifies love, in a religious sense ; the maid of Dian is a virgin truth of nature ; the cold valley-fountain is the letter of the law — called a cold well in the 154th Sonnet : and truth, we all know, is said to be at the bottom of a well. In this cold valley-fountain Moses, by the aid of a genuine (a virgin) nature-truth, steeped love's brand, at a time when the world, not Cupid indeed, had fallen asleep with regard to religion. The letter is then said to have borrowed the holy fire of love (holding it like the fire in the bush — which was unconsumed, as is the letter of the law) ; and the fire gave to the law of Moses, " a dateless lively 48 EBMAEKS ON [CHAP. IT. heat still to endure," making it a " seething bath, which yet men prove against strange [spiritual] maladies a sovereign care." 153. But [continues the poet] But at my mistress' eye love's brand new-fir'd ; The boy for trial needs would touch my breast ; I sick withal, the help of bath desired, And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest. But found no cure ; the bath for my help lies Where Cupid got new fire, — ^my mistress' eyes. What, now, are the eyes of the mistress here re- ferred to, but the reason and affections, which, when rightly understood, will disclose the true unity in their own harmony ; for the affections are so far from being evil in themselves, that they are truly divine. The sickness of the poet, when touched by Cupid, signifies only the common experience, that whoe'N'er makes any progress in what is called spiritual life, discovers, by discovering a higher measure of truth, that his own previous life falls short of the true " stature of Christ," as St. Paul calls it, and he must needs feel heart-sick at the discovery if he still has in him the elements of improvement. CHAP. IV.] shakespeaee's sonnets. 49 The poet was sick in that sense, and sought the help of the law ; but found, upon trial, no benefit — because he had discovered already, as we have seen in the 122d Sonnet, the true law written upou the tablet of his heart. His recourse, then, was to turn more devotedly to the spiritual powers of the soul, the hermetic sun and moon, and endeavor rightly to understand them. It was to accomplish this end that many of the Sonnets were written, for they are essentially soul- studies; and we venture to say that no one will truly understand them who does not study them from a religious stand-point. The word love, as used in the Sonnets, must in the main be understood as religious love, in the sense of St. John, who tells us that God is love. The poet's soul was filled with it ; and he saw that the universe was filled with it. In the 41st Sonnet we may see something of the truth of this remark : 43. Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all ; What hast thou then more than thou had'st before ? No love, my love, that thou may'st true love call ; All mine was thine, before thou had'st this more. Here we see that no love can be truly called love 3 50 EEMARKS ON [CUAF. IT. but the love of the object addressed in the Sonnets under the figure of Beauty's "Rose ; and it abundant- ly appears that that object was the higher spirit of life, the better part of the poet himself, before which the student may see the poet surrendering himself in the deepest sense of genuine humility, as in Sonnets 88, 89, and several others, — a humility, except before the supreme spirit of truth, which would be nearly below contempt. In our poet, however, this humili- ty is perfectly consistent with a lofty exultation under a conscious sense of the immortality he foresaw must wait upon his labors, — as in Sonnets 55, 63, 65, 81, lOV, and many others. The poet's humility has nothing in it to humble him before man, but only before God ; and this is truly the source of his perfect independence of the judgments of man, so strongly set forth in the 121st Sonnet. The perfect independence of the poet is shown also in the 123d Sonnet. There are no men so truly independent as those who live in the fear of God, and walk humbly before him. In the 41st Sonnet we have shown the poet's sense of the unity as seen in love. In the 135th and 136th Sonnets the unity is seen in its power, under the symbol of the will ; for these Sonnets, far from CHAP. IV.] shakespeaee's sonnets. 51 being a play upon the poet's name, as many suppose, contain the poet's metaphysical view of God as Power. His doctrine is, that the will, or the power of God is supreme, and the poet's prayer is that his own individual will might be included or taken up, as it were, in the will or power of God. There is no refinement in metaphysical disquisitions which can surpass the mingled acuteness of thought and holy aspiration exhibited in the two Sonnets, the 135th and 136th. The poet is sure of the doctrine of om- nipotence ; but he feels, also, a sense of his individ- uality ; and yet he sees that his own individuality must be absorbed in the supreme. He is to think " all but one, and himself in that one." From this point of view these two Sonnets are very beautiful, and truly religious ; whereas, in the ordinary mode of interpretation they are nothing but a ridiculous play upon a word. We do not deny, however, but that the poet had his eye upon his own name, but only as a symbol of himself, and he saw himself in his soul or life ; and that he saw in the one life of the universe. And thus, in part, at least, we may see the doctrines of the poet in his dramas, where fitting dramatic scenes make occasions for declara- tions of them ; as in Romeo and Juliet, the Capulet thus addresses the Montague : 52 EBMAEKS ON [OHAP. IT. What 's Montague ? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. ! be some other name. * * Romeo, doff thy name ; And for thy name, which is no part of thee. Take all myself. We regard the Sonnets as containing the abstract doctrines of the poet, developed under the most in- tense contemplations of life ; and that, in symbolic form, the poet has enclosed in them what were to him eternal principles. In the dramas, these same principles are expressed under images of time, through imaginary persons and imaginary scenes. Many will no doubt suppose that the language of Romeo, in the 1st Scene of the 1st Act, expresses a merely local truth, where he says, of Juliet : she is rich in beauty ; only poor, That when she dies with beauty dies her store. For beauty starv'd with her severity, Cuts beauty off from all posterity. Here is language similar to that of the opening Sonnets, as addressed to Beauty's Rose, supposed to be a young man, the Earl of Southampton ; but in CHAP. iT.J shakespeaee's sonnets. 53 truth, the figure in the Sonnets encloses the abstract eternal truth in the heaven of art ; while, in the drama, the poet uses the ideal truth in the region of time. Truth, in itself, is one only ; but it admits of infinite forms of expression in time. Thus love, in its truth, is but one, and St. John, in telling us that God is love, sufiiciently defines love itself, by a mere conversion of the language. But just here the " addition " (Sonnet 20) seems interposed to obstruct, as it were, the pure action of the spirit. This so-called " addition " takes many names in the course of the Sonnets, besides that of the " separable spite " (Sonnet 36), and several others already referred to. In Sonnet 137 this " addition " is " the bay where all men ride," as it is also " the wide world's common place " of the same Sonnet. This is the " painted beauty " of Sonnet 21 — simply nature, considered as visible merely, and not conceived in the spirit of beauty. It is that which " covers " the spirit (Sonnet 22). It is " beau- ty's form " of Sonnet 24, which had been " stelled " (or engraved) by the eye upon the poet's heart (or " bosom's shop "). It is the " ghastly night " of the 27th Sonnet, when not illumined by the spirit, or "jewel," so "precious" to the poet. It makes the 54 EEMARKS ON [CHAF. IV. " base clouds " of the 33d Sonnet, sent with " ugly rack " across the " celestial face " of the spirit, or it is the "region cloud" (of the same Sonnet) "mask- ing " the spirit from the mental sight of the poet. While the poet attaches himself to the external, or to things of time, he represents himself as " absent " from the spirit, as in Sonnelfs 41, 97, 109, &c. The " addition " is the " wardrobe " of the 52d Sonnet, which is said to hide the " robe " — the robe here figuring the spirit. This same " addition " is called, in the 125th Sonnet, a " suborned informer," above which the " true soul " is said to stand, absolutely- free from its control. In the 126th Sonnet it is called by its usual name, simply nature, " sovereign mistress over wrack;" and the poet sees that her " quietus " is only to be secured by that sort of a surrender of one's self which is implied in a perfect obedience to its laws, wherein the spirit reigns. But the student should be careful not to imagine he ftilly conceives the true subject of the mystery under any mere names, and should especially guard against supposing that this so-called " addition " can be understood through the eye alone, or through any or all of the five senses, as set out in the 141st Son- net ; yet the 69th Sonnet was designed to teach that CHAP. IT.] shakespeake's sonnets. 55 even visible nature is perfect in its own simple truth, as likewise is the heart or inner life when accepted in its own true life, and is not " confounded " by- attempting to look into its beauty by " guess," which only adds to the perfect " flower " " the rank smell of weeds." 50 EEMABKS ON [cHiV. T. CHAPTER V. We could proceed thus, and notice something of a universal character in almost every Sonnet, hut might then deprive the student of the satisfaction of making discoveries for himself. The so-called "extern" of the 125th Sonnet is another of the many references to the mere material side of nature. It is the "dull substance of the flesh " of the 44th Sonnet. This flesh it was, that " canopied " the spirit within, but which benefited the poet nothing ; or, as expressed in the 20th Son- net, it was " nothing to his purpose." His desire was to be " obsequious " in the heart, that is, the essence, or spirit of life : and this he saw required the self-denial of Scripture, demanding a complete surrender of the " me," or self, for the spirit, as set out also in the 126th Sonnet ; for the truth of the doctrine does not depend upon its having been de- CHAP. T.] shakespeaee's soxnets. 57 clared in an " antique book ; " but its truth is recog- nized there, because it is now " extant " in the na- ture of things. In the 127th Sonnet "black" signifies eye? y and the poet means to say, that in the early age of the world, sometimes called the golden age, or the age of innocence, evil was not counted good ,• and he means also to represent that the sj)irit of truth was in mourning over the degeneracy of his age, which is figured by the " black eyes " of his mistress ; and this simply signifies that the poet's own spirit mourned over the depravity of the times in Avhich he lived. There are many evidences in the Sonnets that the poet looked upon the age in which he lived as rude and " unbred ; " (he means, uncultivated in art, this being his particular field.) Thus, in the 108th Sonnet, he evidently refers to classical " antiquity," where he saw " the first conceit of love;" and there he saw, Sonnet 104, what he calls the " summer " of Beauty, telling his own " un- bred age," as he calls it, " Ere you were born, was ieautifs summer dead." Mystical writers have sometimes comjjared the mere physical " extern " of life to wood, fashioned 3* 58 EEMAEKS ON [CHAP. V. by the spirit into infinite shapes ; but this class of writers despise nothing in nature, and there- fore honor the material in which the spirit works. This must serve as a hint for understanding the 128th Sonnet. 128. How oft, when thou, my Musick, musick play'st, Upon that blessed wood whose motion soimda With thy sweet fingers, &c. In this Sonnet, as elsewhere, the poet shows his desire to penetrate the essence of things, here wish- ing to " kiss the tender inward of the [spiritual] hand " whose sweet touches bring all nature into harmony, figured by music. Beauty's Rose is here styled the poet's Musick, being the principle of harmony, when in harmony itself. The reader may or may not recognize a pas- sage in the last scene of Cymbeline as having some connection with the idea expressed in the 128th Sonnet. When the very involved and com- plicated events of that drama are finally brought into clear day and perfect consistency, a sooth- sayer is brought forward, who, speaking as an oracle, declares that " the Jingers of the powers above do tune the harmony of this peace." CHAP. T.] shakespeake's sonnets. 59 There appears to be some error, perhaps typo- graphical, in the 129th Sonnet. If in the place of "till," in the second line, we read in, there will at least be some sense in that part of the Sonnet ; whereas, as it now reads, we do not see what to make of it, and are willing to let it pass as incom- prehensible. The student of the Sonnets should not form in his mind a rigid image of the object addressed, but should conceive that object poetically through the mind of the poet himself as far as possible ; and then he will have no difficulty in understand- ing such Sonnets as the 138th, which commences : 138. When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do beUeve her, though I know she lies. Here the poet does not address a woman, as all the critics appear to think, thereupon making pointed inferences touching the poet's life ; but he has in his mind an idea of the feminine side of the double object originally conceived as the master- mistress of his passion ; and the purpose here is to show that however " bright " and " fair " the mere passion side of life may appear to be, it is not to 60 EEMAKKS ON [cHAP. T. be trusted when separated from the masculine or reason side of our rational nature. We have already said that in the 144th Sonnet the poet lets us see his double nature, the man and the woman, his reason and his affections — the latter as the passions. In the 146th Sonnet, the poet concludes to sacri- fice the passion side of the master-mistress, the body being called, in the 1st line, sinful earth; in the 4th line, outward walls ; in the 6th line, fading mansion ; and in the 9th line, the servant. The arraigning powers (2d line) are of course the pas- sions, by which the poet had been misled. These are the fallen angels ; for, as already stated, the passions in their own nature are not evil, and it is a mistake to teach that they are so. But now the poet resolves (the same 140th Sonnet) to "buy terms divine, by selling hours of dross ; " that is, he determines to surrender the temporal for the eternal ; and this he calls " feeding on death, which feeds on men ; " and he concludes that, death being dead, there will be no more dying then. In the 147th Sonnet the feminine side of the poet's nature is called love, and is compared to a (%i^ CHAP, y.] shakespeaeb's sonxets. 61 fever. Reason, the man of the 144th Sonnet, as already intimated, is the physician (5th line), whose "prescriptions " are said not to have been followed, and therefore it is that the poet finds_^ himself aban- doned by his reason : and now he sees clearly, that the affections, when not under the control of reason, are " as black ash ell," though they had not appeared so in tSe^lory of his first idea, in which they were full of feminine grace.' Here it is that the poet feels the need of what, in the 153d Sonnet, he calls a "seething bath." In one word, in his affliction, he looks toward those external ceremonies or writings where the world, for the most part, finds relief in spiritual troubles and trials. But here, as we have seen, he found no relief, for he had himself touched the very foun- dations of them, as he shows in Sonnet 122. In several of the closing Sonnets, from about the 127th, we must consider the poet as in a transitional state. He is in a suffering condition, and is uncer- tain, for a time, whether to look for relief to Ins ideal, or to the "cold valley-fountain ' (Sonnet 153). The tendency of the poet to a transitional state is shown in the 102d Sonnet, where he says: 62 KEMAKKS ON [CHAP. T. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays ; As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days, &c. Shelley's Ode to Intellectual Beauty may throw some light upon the state of mind of our poet as manifested in several of the closing Sonnets of the series, for Shelley too, like our poet, had looked on "nature's naked loveliness," and not without some of the consequences of that vision (vide his Adonais). In the 148th Sonnet the self-complainings con- tinue. In the 149th the sufferer assents to the justice of God, though somewhat in a querulous mood. The sufferer's faith is supreme in the midst of his trials ; hut it is plain, from this Sonnet, that whilst he could not clearly see the justice (or love) in his afflictions, he, like Job of old, would not relinquish his faith or trust, but preferred to consider himself " blind," admitting that there were those who could comprehend the mystery of evil in life. Those that can (says he), that is, those who are able, " see thou lov'st," but for himself, he acknowledges himself " blind." In the 150th Sonnet the poet wonders at the CHAP, v.] Shakespeare's sonnets. 63 power of the unseen spirit over him. To understand this Sonnet, the student (for we do not address the mere careless everyday reader) may do well to con- sider, that the object of the poet's contemplations is described, in the 27th Sonnet, as a "jewel, hung in ghastly night ; " in the 24th Sonnet, as a " picture," hanging in the poet's "bosom's shop;" in Sonnet 22, its beauty is said to be but " the seemly raiment of the poet's heart ; " in Sonnet 43, it is seen in con- templation (as in a dream), " as shining brightly dark, and darkly bright ; " or, as he might have said, it is seen here as through a glass darkly. In the 31st Sonnet, it is " the grave where buried love doth live," — the very thought of which, in Sonnet 30, ends all sorrows, and restores all losses — almost the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah. In the 67th Sonnet the poet exclaims, " Ah ! why with infec- tion must he live," — referring to (his) presence in the flesh, which is subject to corruption ; but in Sonnets 95 and 96 we see that the presence of the spirit beautifies its tabernacle, covering every blot and turning all things to fair which eyes can see. This does not arise from its mere presence, for it is omnipresent ; but it proceeds from the soul's recog- nition of it. 64 EEIIAEKS ON [chap. t. In view of these allusions — and there are many- others similarly illustrati-ve — let the student trans- late, as we may say, the 150th Sonnet, and he may see that the poet had his spiritual eye upon a divine principle, which has the power to make " ill things appear becoming," and whose presence is such a manifestation of " skill " (or wisdom) that the very refuse of its works exceeds in worth all that is com- monly called good in life. But the chief wonder is, that a sense of this marvellous thing makes its pos- sessor love what others " abhor," including, of course, death itself; and the poet considers that, as he has so passed to what the Scripture calls " the other side," as to fall in love with what the world calls "un worthiness," he might, on that account, hope to be received into favor. The expression, " thy unworthiness," will doubt- less be a stumbling-block to many. It is not that the poet sees any real unworthiness in the object addressed as Beauty's Rose. But that object is double, as we see in the 20th Sonnet, and from this it comes that, in contemplating either portion by it- self, there are apparent defects ; as, to be plain, the soul, regarding the material side alone, sees what is called unworthiness ; but this not only disappears CHAP, v.] Shakespeare's sonnets. 65 when seen in the spirit, but there is then seen a certain " skill " (or -wisdom) in those apparent de- fects which compels the love of the poet ; for the presence of the spirit " turns all things to fail- that eyes can see," Sonnet 95. We can proceed no further in this direction ; but must leave the reader to determine the sense of these mysterious allusions, the discovery of which may make him reconciled " to look even upon sin and crime, not as hinderances, but to honor and love them as furtherances of what is holy," — which is said to be the last step in the Christian's life. There are still a few other Sonnets which may be separately noticed, trying the patience, it may be, of those who feel sufficiently acquainted with the whole series ; but this class of readers may consider that an attempt of this kind must necessarily be ad- dressed to all classes of readers, some of whom may be entirely unacquainted with what is called her- metic " learning." The Sonnets, we say, belong to the class of her- metic writings. They carry one sense to the eye and the ear, but have another (" ensconced " in them, Sonnet 49) for the head and the heart. That 66 EEMAKKS ON [CHAP. V. the Sonnets belong to this species of writing may be made sufficiently apparent even by expressions and allusions in the Sonnets themselves. The designation of the object addressed, in the 20th Sonnet, as the master-mistress of the poet's passion, is mystical, and has no literal sense what- ever. The last two Sonnets in the series, the 153d and 154th, are so utterly destitute of literal sense, that some editors have considered them as out of place with the Sonnets, and discreditable to Shake- speare; though to an eye practiced in hermetic writings they are full of meaning, and are known to be of the highest importance to the collection — even a sort of key to the whole ; for, when understood, they show that the poet developed under a perfect freedom from all the trammels of traditional conven- tionalisms. In the 52d Sonnet the poet feels that he is in possession of a certain " key," which opens to him a " sweet up-locked treasure." This is the secret key of the spirit, the very secret of the Lord, which, though disclosed or revealed in the Scripture, is only disclosed or made known under certain conditions. We will not dwell upon this solemn and sacred mystery, and will only remark that this mysterious CHAP. T.] shakespeaee's sontstets. 61 key is not acquired from books solely, but from a true life. In its acquisition books are only instru- mental, and truly accomplish nothing, except under the blessing of God. In the 75th Sonnet we may see the spirit referred to as serving, for the poet's thoughts, " as food for life," — ^for the security of which the poet holds such strife, he tells us, " as 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found." Now he " counts it best to be with his treasure alone ; " that is, he considers it best to hold his secret hermetically in his own bosom, or, to use the language of Sonnet 24, his " bosom's shop," where, on the " table of his heart," the secret hangs as a "jewel" (Sonnet 27), illumining the surround- ing darkness of material nature, which, destitute of the jewel, is compared to " ghastly night." But the weakness of man is such that the mere possession of the secret in " silence " is not always and of itself enough, and the possessor is sometimes seduced abroad without his "cloak;" i.e. his hermetic veil (Sonnet 34), allowing others "to see his pleasure" (Sonnet 75), which brought the poet into difficulties ; because the outer world never tolerates a too ojjen exhibition of truth, though it be in itself the highest attainment possible to man. 68 REMARKS ON [CHAP. y In the 102d Sonnet the poet refers to the open expression of the secret as bringing a taint upon it : " That love is merchandized [says he] whose rich esteeming the owner's tongue doth publish every- where." And he tells us, in the 21st Sonnet, that he has no purpose to " sell," — to sell what ? — the secret of the Lord — for it is the gift of God, which St. Paul tells us cannot be bought with money. The reader n^ed not be startled at these allusions to the Scrip- ture, for he who brought grace and truth to light, teaches us that the truth was before Abraham, — as it now is and shall be for ever. The 77th Sonnet contains a reference to what the poet calls "this learning," which is no other than hermetic learning ; and this 77th Sonnet, when studied, may show that the secret learning is a true knowledge of one's self, acquired, under the blessing of God, by accurately noticing the interior action of life, as it discloses itself in the soul. We must sup- pose the poet, in "compiling" the 77th Sonnet, seated with " blank leaves " before him ; and then he addresses himself: 77. Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste ; These vacant leaves thy mind's imprint mil bear. And of this book CHAP. T.] shakespeaeb's sonnets. 69 [the book o