If more instances were wanting to prove that Shakspeare's object was a _male_ friend, a multitude might be quoted from the remaining sonnets; we shall content ourselves, however, with adding a few to those already given from the first seventeen:— "O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; _Him_ in thy course untainted do allow, For beauty's _pattern to succeeding men_." Son. 19. "_His_ beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and _he_ in them still green." Son. 63. The transcription of one entire sonnet will spare further quotation, as it must prove, against all the efforts of sophistry, the sex for which we contend: "AH! wherefore with infection should HE live And with HIS presence grace impiety. That sin by HIM advantage should atchieve, And lace itself with HIS society. Why should false painting imitate HIS cheek, And steal dead seeing of HIS living hue? Why should poor beauty indirectly seek Roses of shadow, since HIS rose is true? Why should HE live now Nature bankrupt is, Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins? For she hath no exchequer now but HIS, And proud of many, lives upon HIS gains. O, HIM she stores, to show what wealth she had, In days long since, before these last so bad." Son. 67. The subsequent sonnets, likewise, as far as the hundred and twenty-seventh, which appear to have been written at various periods anterior to 1609, not only bear the strongest additional testimony to the mascularity of the person addressed, but in several instances clearly evince the nature of the affection borne to him, which without any doubt consisted solely of ardent friendship and intellectual adoration. Two entire sonnets, indeed, are dedicated to the expression of these sentiments, in the first of which he tells his noble patron, that he had absorbed in his own person all the friendship which he (Shakspeare) had ever borne to the living or the dead, and he finely terms this attachment "_religious love_." In thy bosom he exclaims— "—— there reigns love and all love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye, As interest of the dead, which now appear But things remov'd, that hidden in thee lie! Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers[67:A] gone; Who all their parts of me to thee did give; That due of many now is thine alone:" Son. 31. and in the second he says, addressing the same friend, that when Death arrests him, his verse