It immediately, indeed, and most satisfactorily accounts for four circumstances, not to be explained on any other plan. It affords, in the _first_ place, an easy and natural clue to the poet's expostulatory language, who, being ardently attached to his patron, wished, of course, to see him happy either in the possession of his first choice or in the arms of a second, and, therefore, reprobates, in strong terms, such a premature vow of celibacy: it gives in the _second_ place, an adequate solution of the question, why so few as only seventeen sonnets, and these the earliest in the collection, are employed to enforce the argument? for when His Lordship, on his return to London from the continent in 1598, embraced the resolution of marrying his mistress, notwithstanding the continued opposition of the Queen, all ground for further expostulation was instantly withdrawn. These seventeen sonnets, therefore, were written between the years 1594 and 1598, and were consequently among those noticed by Meres in 1598, as in private circulation: in the _third_ place, it assigns a sufficient motive for withholding from public view, until after the death of the Queen, a collection of which part was written to counteract her known wishes, by exciting the Earl to form an early and independent choice: and in the _fourth_ place it furnishes a cogent reason why Jaggard, in his surreptitious edition of the _Passionate Pilgrim_ in 1599, did not dare to publish any of these sonnets, at a time when Southampton and his lady were imprisoned by the enraged Elizabeth, as a punishment for their clandestine union. Having thus, satisfactorily as we think, not only removed the objection but strikingly corroborated the argument through the medium of our defence, we shall select a few passages from these initiatory sonnets in order still further to show the _masculine_ nature of their object, and to give a specimen of the poet's expostulatory freedom:— "—— Where is _she so fair_, whose _un-ear'd womb_ Disdains the _tillage of thy husbandry_? Or who is _he_ so fond, will be the tomb Of _his_ self-love, to stop posterity." Sonnet 3. "—— thou — — — — Unlook'd on diest, unless thou _get a son_." Son. 7. "The world will be _thy widow_ and still weep— No love toward others in that bosom sits, That on _himself_ such murderous shame commits." Son. 9. "—— —— —— —— Dear my love, you know, You had a _father_; _let your son say so_." Son. 13. "Now stand you on the top of happy hours; And many _maiden_ garlands yet unset, With virtuous wish _would bear you living flowers_." Son. 16.