defends himself for the seeming carelessness of giving away the table-book which in Sonnet 77 he had given to his friend, and which had been returned to him full of notes. His memory needed no such reminders of his friend To keep an adjunct to remember thee Unkindness is turned into kindness, and carelessness becomes a sign of careful memory. In Sonnet 123 he de fies Time and his registers; his love has the character of eternity, and is not helped by any temporal records. In Sonnet 124 he enlarges on the eternal character of his love. It is not the child of state, varying with fortune. It depends not on the accidents of smiling pomp or thralled discontent. It fears not the heretic policy which prefers the temporal to the eternal, but proves itself altogether politic by showing itself invincible and unchangeable. It seeks not (125) external honours, and refuses to base its claims to immortality on favour and form. But its highest act is one of sacrifice : -take thou my oblation, poor but free, Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art But mutual render, only me for thee. As he had used the language of the Lord's Prayer in Sonnet 108, so here he uses the language of an act still more solemn than prayer, the oblation of the Eucharist. The external ceremony is but the offering of a piece of wastel bread; the internal effect is that two hearts, the lover and the ideal love, mingle together, and mutually give themselves to each other. Then, as if the poet remembered that this was a rite of a proscribed religion, he concludes. with the exclamation— Hence, thou suborned informer; a true soul, When most impeached, stands least in thy control. Sonnet 126 is imperfect in form, and though belonging to the series in its general tone, has no special place therein, and hence is appended as a mere tag to it. That it was placed here, and not at the end of all the Sonnets, is a farther proof that the whole first series down to this place have for their object the "lovely boy" who is so rarely alluded to distinctly after Sonnet 27 that Mr. Gerald Massey thinks himself entitled to consider most of the intermediate Sonnets to be addressed to women. The true reason why sex is not mentioned is that in the gradual elevation of love, and in its transformations through successive stages, its object becomes more and more generalized, more spiritual, with less definite sex, or definite human personality. This consideration does not absolutely preclude reference to the "sweet boy," even in so late and religiously toned a sonnet as 108. But it is quite reason enough to account for the sudden cessation of the continuous reference to the manhood and personality of the beloved object after Sonnet 27, when it will be remembered imaginative love is just entering on its second. phase of abstraction and analysis. In this brief sketch of the connection of these sonnets, and of their agreement with the acknowledged philosophy of other sonnet writers, it has been manifestly impossible to do more than trace their leading ideas, the thread of connection which binds them together, and makes them into a consistent series. This thread is often concealed by the variety and splendour of the jewels that are strung upon it; the philosophic poet covers the bare skeleton which we have traced with the most exuberant tissues, with a profusion of thought and images which is simply astonishing. But under all this wealth the main outline of the pre-existing idea which was part of the current Platonism of the epoch may be traced, if not easily, at least with precision and certainty. IN CHAPTER VII. VULGAR LOVE IN THE SONNETS. the second series of Sonnets Shakespeare represents the progress of the "love of despair.' As the beauty which corresponds to the higher love finds its fitting symbol in the "man right fair" of the former series, so the beauty which corresponds to the lower love is betokened in the second series by a gypsy-like woman, with black eyes and hair, and a complexion "coloured ill." The poet represents this love not as an original and natural feeling, but as a sentiment arising from the disappointment of higher aspirations. First, the lover who looks for true beauty cannot find it, but only its counterfeits (Son. 127), and so in his despair he surrenders himself to the black eyes which do not pretend to possess the true beauty, but by their very contradiction to it become its most eloquent representatives. By the side of this beauty the lover stands, resigning himself to its attractions (128), clearly knowing to what a hell it is leading him, but unable to conquer its temptations (129), appreciating its real deficiencies, but confessing its mysterious power over him (130). Secondly, in absence" by himself alone," "thinking on his mistress's face," he wonders how her blackness can seem fair to him; and he concludes that it is only in her deeds, not in her face, that she is black (131); or that if she is black, it is only in mourning for his pain (132); and this compassion of hers makes her beautiful in his Thirdly, his own fancy is strengthened by his friend's judg ment. His friend has carried messages to and from his mistress, and has ended by supplanting him. The friend's fancy therefore has been caught by the hooks that captivated the poet, whose judgment is thus confirmed by eyes. another's (133, 134). And these three steps complete the imaginative stage of sensual love. The ideal stage of this lower love begins with Sonnet 135. In the previous sonnet the poet had confessed to his mistress that "he [the friend] is thine, and I myself mortgaged to thy will " -"thou hast both him and me." First, then, he tells her "thou hast thy will, and Will to boot, and Will in overplus," confounding by a verbal quibble his own and perhaps his friend's name Will with his mistress's volition, and aiming no longer at her beauty, but at her consent and her kindness, even though her kindness was that of an abandoned woman. For as his imagination had overpowered his eyes, so his corrupt partiality had overpowered his heart's judgment, and made it "think that a several plot" which it knew to be "the wide world's common place" (137). It is possible that as Shakespeare drew largely on Sidney, who was called " Willy" by his friends, these later sonnets, intended to illustrate the progress of lawless love, are purposely made to suggest Sidney's notorious intrigues with his "Stella," Lady Rich, and to be a kind of translation into their real meaning of the famous sonnets which he dedicated to her. Secondly, having thus idealized corrupt love, and given it its bias towards a vicious indulgence, the next step is to make its vices bear the semblance of virtues. Its falsehood becomes truth (138), its inconstancy kindness (139), and hypocrisy its life (140); its folly becomes its torment, and therefore in some sense its atonement (141); its sinful loves and virtuous hates become thoroughly confused (142), and the lover finally contents himself with the mere dregs of his mistress's love; asking only that he may have his will with her, because she has her will with others; and thus setting up inconstancy as the ideal qualification of the lower love (143): for communism in morals, scepticism in philosophy, and pantheism in religion are the idealizations of the "love of despair." And thirdly, the last stage of the lower love in its ideal state exhibits the real incompatibility between it and the higher love. In their imaginative states the two kinds of love can coexist, as we see in Sonnets 40, 41, compared with 133-135. Now, however, "the female evil tempteth the better angel from" the lover's side, and "would corrupt his saint to be a r devil" (144). But the man who abandons the higher love prefers to be dependent on his female evil's unkind kindness (145), though it leads him to all sorts of outward luxury, to pamper his body and starve his soul (146). This love conducts its victim to frantic, and at the same time conscious, madness For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, to voluntary blindness (148), to a complete and fawning submission of his acts and sentiments to his mistress's caprices (149); to an abeyance of reason, which loves the more, the more it sees just cause of hate (150), to a halfplayful, half-serious devotion of conscience even to the most brutal enjoyments (151); and to the loss of all honesty through devotion to one whose kindness, love, truth, and constancy he had defended while he knew them to be utterly incapable of defence (152). Mr. Thus it will be seen that both series of sonnets go regularly through all the steps of the scale of love; and in each, the corresponding step is treated in an analogous way. As the first series begins with the earnest desire to see the beauty of the beloved one immortalize itself in offspring, so the second begins with declaring that beauty is dead, and its offspring bastard. This despair for the future of beauty is naturally connected with the immorality of this lower love-with the "murderous, bloody, savage, rude, cruel" nature ascribed to it in Sonnet 124. Gerald Massey wishes to prove that as the “ mourning eyes" of the mistress in these sonnets are clearly borrowed from Sidney's Sonnets to Stella, the same woman, Penelope Rich, was their heroine also; and he takes great pains to identify the "black wires" which grew on the head of Shakespeare's gypsy with the golden locks which Sidney sings. It would have been more to the purpose to refer to Shakespeare's own conception of black-eyed women in his dramas. Biron in Love's Labour's Lost talks of his mistress's eyes and hair mourning for the false hair and complexion which women put on-just as the lover speaks in Sonnet 127; and in Shakespeare's earliest play, Titus Andronicus, he had made Aaron say that the only face which needs no paint is the black one |