“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.” Let us suppose that Bacon began to cultivate the Earl’s friendship in 1590. He was then twenty-two years old; three years earlier, when Bacon first saw him, the Earl was “fresh now he is yet green.”(1) 1. A letter from Bacon to the Earl of Leicester, asking for his furtherance in some suit which the Earl of Essex had moved in his behalf, has recently been found, written in 1588. (Sped-ding’s “Bacon,” 1878, i, 50, note.) Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, was born Nov. 10, 1567, and was beheaded for treason [16] Feb. 25, 1601. He succeeded to the title at ten years of age. At twenty he was appointed master of the horse. At twenty-one the Queen created him captain-general of the cavalry, and conferred on him the honor of the garter. In the same year an expedition was undertaken against Portugal, and he secretly followed the armament. This was without the Queen’s permission, but he was quickly reconciled with her after his return, and at once assumed a superiority over Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Charles Blount, rival competitors for royal favor. He was challenged by Blount and wounded in the knee, and the Queen is said to have expressed her gratification that some one had taken him down, as otherwise there would be no ruling him. He was an accomplished scholar and patron of literature. He erected a monument to Spenser and gave an estate to Bacon. But we have omitted one striking characteristic which has an important bearing on the question of his identity with “Mr. W. H.” The young Earl of Essex was a remarkably handsome man. Now the beauty of the person addressed in the “Sonnets” is a constantly recurring theme, and the burden of the poem is an appeal to the beloved and beautiful young man to marry. It begins thus: “From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die.” The next Sonnet begins: “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.” The last line of Sonnet 13 reads: “You had a father; let your son say so.” [17] The father of Essex died in 1576. In 1590 the second Earl married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, Essex being twenty-two years old and she a little younger. The marriage was secret to avoid the opposition of Elizabeth. By October, concealment was no longer possible, and on the 22d of January, 1591, (not 1592 as some have it,) the first child was born. (“Earls of Essex,” 1853.)