ers of humanity." In the fire which destroyed so many of Jonson's papers other poems addressed to Herbert may have perished, poems answering to Shakespeare's "Every hymn that able Spirit affords." Ben, probably, was the man.

Compare the following with the conduct of Cordelia in the scene where Lear asked his three daughters how much they loved him.

66

Hearing you praised, I say, ''T is so, 't is true,'
And to the most of praise add something more;
But that is in my thought, whose love to you,
Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before."

Then he despairingly sings,

"Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou know'st thy estimate;
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.

Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavʼst it, else mistaking;

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,

Comes home again on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,

In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter."

What can be more touchingly truthful than the revelation in these other lines?

"Is it thy spirit that thou sendest from thee,
So far from home, into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of my jealousy?

O no! thy love, though much, is not so great;

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake;
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near."

When separated from his friend, he tells him, "Since I left you, everything in my mind's eye has appeared in your shape!" Again he adds,

“If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then, despite of space, I would be brought
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay."

And at another time he chants this charming strain :

"How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was Summer's time;
But, thou away, the very birds are mute;

Or, if they sing, 't is with so dull a cheer,

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near."

Two further Sonnets, sharply read, will be found to record a couple of interesting incidents in the friendship of Shakespeare and Herbert. Herbert already possesses a glass and a dial, every reference to which may teach him a moral. Shakespeare makes him a present of a note-book, and felicitously states the additional service it may render.

"Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste:
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.

Look, what thy memory cannot contain

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed delivered from thy brain
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,

Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book."

But when, afterwards, Herbert gives Shakespeare a pockettablet for memoranda, a memento which, it may safely be inferred from the rank and wealth of the giver, was beautiful and costly, Shakespeare transfers it to another person, sending to his friend an apology for the act so full of tender and happy cunning that it must more than have satisfied him.

That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score ;
Therefore to give them from me I was bold
To trust those tables that receive thee more.
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me."

an

We next come to a singular passage in this friendship, injury and quarrel of a most painful and trying character, a forgiveness and reconciliation which reveal a surpassing magnanimity of love. The history of this passage throws an interesting light on Othello's terrible outbreaks of invective against Desdemona, from the personal experience of Shakespeare. He was accustomed to reside a portion of the year at Stratford. It seems that during his absence, here or elsewhere, his mistress, smitten with the beauty and wit of Herbert, succeeded in winning him to her arms. Shakespeare discovered the treachery, and was plunged into the deepest distress. He bitterly denounces the woman.

"Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan,
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is 't not enough to torture me alone,

But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be ?
Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engrossed ;
Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;
A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed." -

"My better angel is a man right fair,
My worser spirit a woman colored ill;
To win me soon to hell my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.”

In the Sonnet beginning,

"The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action,"

he inveighs against sensual vice in a strain of earnest power, which unmasks all its degradation with an edge of truth as energetic and contemptuous as that of the speech of the Duke to Jacques in "As You Like It."

He upbraids his friend with mingled severity and forbearance, a deep sense of wrong and magnanimous palliation and yearning.

"What potions have I drank of siren tears
Distilled from limbecs foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!"
"That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,

A loss in love that touches me more nearly."

He makes excuses for him even while blaming.
“Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman wooes, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ah me! but yet thou might'st my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth
Who lead thee in their riot even there

Where thou art forced to break a double truth."

Was ever an injury so gorgeously depicted, so sublimely excused, as, in the following verses, the one inflicted by Herbert on Shakespeare?

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine;

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.”

With what pathetic depth of feeling he complains, relents, and resigns himself, in the next piece!

"Take all my loves, my Love, yea, take them all :
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my Love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace! in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes."

Again the struggle of resentment and love breaks forth, and through the splendid imagery we can see the traces of suffering.

66

'Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,

And make me travel forth without my cloak,

To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,

Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,

To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face:

For no man well of such a salve can speak

That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace.
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss;
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

Ah! but those tears are pearls which thy love sheds,
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds."

Herbert appears to have soon repented with sincere shame, made overtures to his aggrieved friend,

"and tendered

That humble salve which wounded bosoms fits."

Shakespeare generously writes to him,

"No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,

Thy sins excusing more than thy sins are."

Their former love is restored in more than its original ful

ness.

"That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've passed a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.”