But platitude is the very last charge that can be brought against Mr. Jesse Johnson’s contribution to the curiosities of Shakespearian criticism. The theory advanced here is, that Shakespeare never wrote the Sonnets at all, that he was quite unequal to their composition, that the author of them “was probably fifty, perhaps sixty, and that he was besides a man of genius, which Shakespeare certainly was not. I would not,” says Mr. Jesse Johnson, “deny to Shakespeare great talent. His success in and with theatres certainly forbids us to do so. That he had a bent or a talent for rhyming or for poetry, an early and persistent tradition and the inscription over his grave indicate. And otherwise there could hardly have been attributed to him so many plays, besides those written by the author of the Sonnets.” Shakespeare may have been equal to trifles like _Hamlet_ or _Lear_--for Mr. Jesse Johnson would be the last to dispute the claim made for Shakespeare as a hard-working playwright clearing his twenty-five thousand dollars a year (Mr. Jesse Johnson is calculating his income according to the present time)--but “to Shakespeare working as an actor, adapter or perhaps author came a very great poet, one who outclassed all the writers of that day, and it is the poetry of that great unknown which, flowing into Shakespeare’s work, comprises all or nearly all of it which the world treasures or cares to remember.” If we told Mr. Jesse Johnson, and all who resemble Mr. Jesse Johnson, the truth about their productions, we are quite certain of one thing--but the one thing of which we are certain it would, perhaps, be good taste in us to leave unsaid. Of a very different order is Mr. Samuel Butler’s _Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered_. This is the work of a scholar, but of a scholar mounted on a hobby-horse of unusually vigorous mettle. Mr. Butler begins with a tremendous onslaught on the theories of the Southamptonites, the Herbertists and the anti-autobiographical party; and in this part of his work he has certainly much to say which is both pertinent and plausible, nay, in our opinion, convincing. But he is less successful in construction than in demolition. His own contention is, that the Sonnets are undoubtedly autobiographical, and very derogatory to Shakespeare’s moral character. He is satisfied that “Mr. W. H.” was the youth who inspired them, not the youth who simply collected, or procured them, and gave them to Thorpe, but that this youth was neither the Earl of Southampton nor the Earl of Pembroke, nor, indeed, any one of superior social rank to the poet, though this has always been assumed. Adopting the theory of Tyrwhitt and Malone that the key to the youth’s name is to be found in the seventh line of the twentieth sonnet,-- “A man in hew all _Hewes_ in his controlling.”