Star.
London, England, 1829-12-03 00:00:00

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I am aware, nevertheless, such is the spell of interest connected
AV it h Shakspeare's name, that the mind starts with avidity at the
tilo.t distant prospect of any novelty respecting him, and submits
with impatience to believe, that if any new fact can be ascertained'
it may not be made a practicable stepping-stone to some farther
formation. It may be feared, too, that the circumstance of such
intelligence justifying a little alarm about the spotless sanctity .of
he poet, instead of acting as a sedative to human interest, has ra-
:her tendency to increase the palpitation and solicitude, apd mor-
bid vigilance of the curiosity. I am, therefore, not unprepared
for being told that in this suspicious love language of Shakspeare
there is room for a world of profound reflection and meditation.
The stern moralist, keeping to the letter of the sonnets, will find
them a text for no unfair inculpation of Mr. Malone, who. has
8 bitindle•sly insinuated that the bard was jealous of his wife. He
will turn aU the pathos of this matter of scandal to the aide of our

. •
•ympatby with Mrs. Shakspeare, who was, perhaps, poor soul !

with her own bandit, watering the •ery mulberry-tree of her
graceless bard in their Staffordshire garden, at the moment when
he in London was gadding after a married woman, and recording
in rhyme their double adultery and compound fracture
or the marriage vow. How humbling it is to the
species, be will add, to find the man, who held up, as it

were, a mirror to nature, thus detected in its reflection, playing
A uch fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep !"
It will be also pleaded, perhaps, that these illicit effusions seem to
illustrate that alleged contempt for his wile which is so acutely
discovered in the poet's will. It will save us, however, from being
plunged into such deep moralization by a few sonnets, if we re-
flect that all ibis conjugal contempt assigned to the mighty poet, is
screwed by the hardest inference out of circumstances most lm.

perfectly known to us, and that in spite of his interlineated will,

and this sonnet-sung attachment, we see him retiring, when but
little past the prime of life, very unlike a man who bad been
weaned from domestic affections, to spend the resislue of his days
with the mother of his children.
I have said, that the addition which these sonnets afford to our
knowledge of Shakspeare, is insignificant u an index to his bio-

graphy, and I shall not feel the assertion fahified, though I should
see persons of more ingenuity than I can pretend to, eliciting many
brilliant conjectures from their contents. I can only say that I
have outlived all taste for conjectural biographies, and that the
truths ►rought to view by these effusions seem to be neither nu•
merous nor momentous. We learn from them that Sbakspeare
had a friend, to whom he was devotedly attached, (the nature of
his language to that friend I shall by and by consider,)and a poetical

mistress, who, not satisfied with inroads on the poet's heart, car-
tied her conquests even to that of his friend, and made Shakspeare
sonnetize on his jealottrf of too much tenderness subsisting be-
tween them. It appears, however, that he never broke with his
friend on this account, so that his love-passion must have been a
humbler sort of lodger in his heart that could put up without either
the whole or the best of its apartments. Other casual moods of
his mind are expressed with an air of sincerity, which I deny not to
be interesting as insulated records of his feelings, though I still re•
fuse them the character of new or indicative importance as to his
history. lie speaks to his friend. in certain passages, with extreme
modesty as to his own poetical merit, and aUudes, with an admira-
tion that is beautifully unenvious, to some other poet of the time

who had won the favour of his friend. He writes on one or two
occasions in apparent dejection under the frowns of fortune, and
in one sonnet, distinctly laments being obliged to live by the voca-
tion of a player. If there be any other interesting allusions in
these sonnets to his personal circumstances, it is from want of me-
mory that I have unintentionally omitted them.
I am making no hair-splitting distinction when I would empha-
tically distinguish the general, and even vague, but still actual
pleasure, which we enjoy in these sonnets, from hearing the wel-
come voice of Shakspeare express his casual and transient feelings,
and the falsely-imagined pleasure that he is telling us something
new about himself, which tradition, or his other poems, had
not told us, and which may consequently be regarded as new
aestimonies for tracing his life. We learn from a hundred son-

nets that be was a devoted friend, but if we possessed not are
of these, would it ever enter into our suspicions that he was
cold-blooded in friendship ? We find him, in effusions of the
same sort, confessing to the influence of the softer flame; and will
thosewho have ever felt to their hean's core his power in the drama
of describing love pretend that they would have repudiated their
sympathy, if they had suspected that he had drawn his amatory ex-
perience from the admiration of any other woman than his own
good old Anne Hathaway ? Some of the Sonnets indicate that he
was subject to casual misfortunes; and what ghost or sonnet was
required to make us believe as 'much ? It may be alleged that
these complaints seem to contradict the general prosperity which
is attributed to the course of his life, on the supposition of which
Dr. Johnson, using the bard's own beautiful simile, says, that he
seems to have shaken off the difficulties of fortune like " dew-drops
from the lion's mane !" But what man, even the most prosperous,
were he to journalize his feelings in sonnets, would not record him-
self a thousand times poorer, and more unhappy on one day than
another ?
He praises one of his contemporaries in the sonnets, and he could
well afford to do so. Drummond's account of him supersedes the
necessity for any other proof that he was gentle, good-natured, and
amiable. He speaks very humbly of himself in certain passages.
This leads us, however, to no discovery that he was blind to his
own mighty endowments ; for in other passages he freely para-
phrases, and applies to himself the " nee monumental's" of Ho-
race. The only very striking phenomenon in the Sonnets is, dot
he predicts immortality to himself from those effusions, and not
from his dramas—an opinion which the world has thought proper
to falsify. Lastly,the Sonnets allude to his being a player, and to
his disliking the profession—had they told us the reverse, there
would• have been some novelty in the information. Only twenty-two
of these Sonnets are addressed to a lady, whose name has not even
been guessed at; and of whom, if we except what the poet himself
calls his " mad slanders," nothing is known, but that she had dark
eyes, dark hair, and played the virginal. More than 100 of his Son-
nets are addressed to his male friend, of whom still less, if possible.
is discoverable. We may be told, perhaps, that these poems are,
nevertheless, the record of a deep and strong personal friendship,
and that if you divest those effusions of an exaggerated amatory
garb, the mere fashion of the age, in Shakespeare's language 'to a
male friend, they illustrate the strength of his friendly attachment.
I believe that they record a very strong and pure friendship, but I
deny that they unequivocally paint his passions, and the true cha-
racter of his sentiments. Of the love Sonnets to the lady let us
think as literally as we please—but to take his friendship Sonnets
according to the letter of their phraseology, I should be very sorry.
Those friendship Sonnets are not the work of Shakspeare writing
in his own unaffected character, how sincere never the friend-
ship itself may have been, but the fantastical language of a friend
in poetical masquerade, exaggerating friendship into love, and
painting his sentiments in hyperbolical colours. This is surely not
the unequivocal language of passion. That the fashion of the age
makes Shakspeate's real sentiments unblanvable, is unquestionable;
for persons of the same sex, in those days, wrote downright erotic
sonnets to each other most innocently, and a man subscribed him.
self, your lover, meaning no more than at present he means by
" your humble servant." But keeping the poet's own real senti-
ments in unquestioned sincerity apart—the poems themselves are
tinged by the chartered hyperbole of the age, with a jealousy and
misery in the sentiment of friendship which ere foreign to its na-
ture. The great heart of Shakspeare, when it bestowed Its friend-
ship, most have bestowed it largely; but, believing this as I do,
I would rather refresh.my deep and sacred impressloo of the be-
lief by a reperusal, of his other tvor,ks, 'than of mote of the.e awn•
nets, in looking to whisk it is one thing to adjure most soimuly
and sincerely any moral blame of him for his esaggerstion, and
another thing to admire the hyperbolical as a matter of taste, or
to admit it as an index to the history of his life. As a guide to