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"Underneath this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all verse;
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Wise and fair and good as she,

Time shall throw a dart at thee."

The first reason for selecting this person from among the known acquaintances of Shakespeare as the subject of the Sonnets is, that his initials meet the exigency of the dedication page without the application of the least force or ingenuity. The only shadow of an objection is, that at the time of the publication he was not simply Mr. William Herbert, but was Earl of Pembroke. The objection has but a specious and apparent weight, and there are two sufficient replies to it. First, many of the Sonnets, perhaps the majority, were written to the youth before he became Earl, and all were addressed to him in a strictly private and personal relation, in his character as a man, not as a public dignitary or official noble; and it would be most natural to dedicate them to him in the character in which they were written to him. Secondly, a sense of modesty, a feeling of good taste and propriety, on the part of the unauthorized publisher, a fear lest his surreptitious enterprise might give offence if the personality of the chief party, then occupying a high station, were too glaringly blazoned forth, would obviously induce the adventuring Thomas Thorpe to suppress the title of the person whose attractions and deeds had called out from his poet-friend such glowing, and in some cases questionable addresses. The same motive that would cause the withholding of the title would also cause the employment of the initials instead of the full name. Not with any intention to disguise or hide the party aimed at, but simply with a motive of modesty and deprecation. It would make a vast difference in the feelings of a sensitive man moving in an exalted sphere, when such a volume was placed before the public, whether it was inscribed to Mr. W. H., or to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

The second reason for fastening upon this man, joined with the foregoing, gives it much greater weight. When Shakespeare's theatrical comrades, Heminge and Condell, after his death, published the first edition of his Plays, they, who must well

have known his intimacies and preferences, would naturally choose as their fittest patron the dearest friend of the deceased author, provided he were a suitable person in the eye of the world; and every page of the Sonnets shows that their object was of princely birth and station, as well as of princely spirit. Now to whom did Heminge and Condell actually dedicate the immortal folio volume of 1623? To William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, in conjunction with his brother Philip, Earl of Montgomery." Since your lordshippes have been pleased to think these trifles something, heeretofore; and have prosequuted both them, and their author living, with so much favour: we hope, that (they outliving him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be exequutor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them, you have done unto their parent." The fact that Montgomery is joined with Pembroke in the dedication does not weaken the foregoing argument: for having selected William for his exclusive claim and fitness, many easily conceivable motives may have induced the editors to unite Philip with him, — their common patronage, their brotherhood, their exalted social rank and influence, a fear uncourteously to offend one by palpably disconnecting him from the other in this honoring literary homage.

The third reason for believing him to be the long hidden but now unmasked Unknown of the Sonnets is, that not only he has the right name and age, and is known to have been a chief patron and friend of Shakespeare, but also all the particulars associated with his person, station, character, and life correspond with surprising exactness and felicity to the requirements of the poems themselves; and he is the only man of whom this can with even the slightest degree of truth be said. His picture painted by Vandyck, although taken after he had much passed his prime, meets the demand which the reader of the Sonnets must make. On first gazing at it, the lines of his celebrator rushed into memory with a thrill:

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

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived;
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,

Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead."

Herbert's splendid appearance and bearing, combined with his unapproached culture, courtesy, and disinterested generosity, drew all eyes and hearts after him. Lodge says: "This noble person has scarcely ever yet been named but to be praised." Anthony Wood writes of him: "He was the very picture and viva effigies of nobility; a person truly generous, a singular lover of learning and the professors thereof. His person was majestic, and his presence, whether quiet or in motion, was full of stately gravity. His mind was purely heroic. He was not only a great favorer of learned and ingenious men, but was himself learned, and endowed to admiration with a poetical genie." Ben Jonson dedicated the most popular of his works, the Book of Epigrams, to Herbert. Among these is a hearty and eloquent poem addressed to Herbert himself, beginning thus:

"I do but name thee, Pembroke, and I find

It is an epigram on all mankind;

Against the bad, but of and to the good,

Both which are asked, to have thee understood."

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The portrait drawn of him by Clarendon, that incorruptible and masterly delineator, is of an exceedingly attracting and impressive character. "He was the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." "He stood upon his own feet, without any other support than of his proper virtue and merit." "A disposition affable, generous, and magnificent," shedding lustre around, asking no favor for himself, liberally dispensing favors to others. "Sure never man was planted in a court who was fitter for the soil, or brought better qualities with him to purify that air." "His conversation was most with men of the most pregnant parts and understanding." "His large fortune served not his ex

pense, which was only limited by his great mind, and occasions to use it nobly." He gave himself extremely to licentious pleasures, "yet was not so much transported with beauty and outward allurements as with those advantages of the mind as manifested an extraordinary wit and spirit and knowledge, and administered great pleasure in the conversation. To them he sacrificed himself, his precious time, and much of his fortune." "Some who were nearest his trust and friendship were not without apprehension that his natural vivacity and vigor of mind began to lessen and decline by those excessive indulgences." Here we have all the separate features of the portrait, so marvellously varied, combined, and elaborated in the Sonnets, great beauty, high station, extreme kindness, rich talent, boundless popularity, over-addiction to pleasure. Compare especially with the last sentence quoted from Clarendon the following Sonnet:

"How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
O, what a mansion have those vices got,
Which for their habitation chose out thee!
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife, ill used, doth lose his edge."

The latest discussion of the subject before us is to be found in a privately printed work by Bolton Corney, of which the London Athenæum for August 2, 1862, gives an account. The work is called, "The Sonnets of William Shakespeare; a Critical Disquisition suggested by a Recent Discovery." The discovery, warmly adopted by Mr. Corney, and indorsed by so considerable an authority as the Athenæum, was made by M. Philarète Chasles, Conservateur de la Bibliothèque Mazarine, whose own elaborate announcement and justification of it will soon issue from the press, if it have not already

appeared. The suggestion of M. Chasles, which Mr. Corney considers a discovery equivalent to a demonstration, is this. The person to whom the bulk of the Sonnets were written was, as Drake and others long ago contended, the Earl of Southampton, but the initials in the Dedication are those of William Herbert. The Dedication has been falsely punctuated, and so misunderstood. The real meaning of it is that Mr. W. H. collected the Sonnets, and put them into the hands of a printer for publication, prefixing an inscription to the effect that he hoped the person to whom they were written would experience the joy and reputation promised to him by the author of them. Here the inscription proper ended, but the publisher appended to it his wishes for the success of the pecuniary enterprise on which he had embarked. One might search in vain for a more insignificant, puerile, and useless conceit. How so bright and able a mind as that of M. Chasles could be bewitched and misled by it, can only be explained by the insane fondness of a critic for new readings, making the most absurd speculation which is acute and original more attractive than the most solidly grounded perception which is obvious and familiar. The objections to the "Discovery" are overwhelming. It creates real and fatal difficulties in obviating a single purely imaginary one. It leaves wholly untouched the obstinate truth, that scarcely any of the facts connected with Southampton are reconcilable with the facts, the assertions, and descriptions in the Sonnets. It violently breaks apart the inscription, originally printed as a unit in unbroken continuity of sequence. It puts an arduous and extremely arbitrary interpretation on words whose meaning lies naturally clear and apparent. The Dedication ran connectedly from the first word to the last. With the exception that it was arranged in lines of unequal length, after the usual manner of inscriptions, it stood thus: "TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF. THESE. INSUING. SONNETS. MR. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE. AND. THAT. ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY. OUR. EVER-LIVING. POET. WISHETH. THE. WELL. WISHING. ADVENTURER. IN. SETTING. FORTH. T. T." We submit to any candid reader, that the explanation of M. Chasles, making W. H. the subject instead of the object of the inscription, and making a new inscription, by another

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