The Sonnets certainly reveal their author in an attitude of appeal, more or less open and direct, for the love or favor of his friend. No fervor of compliment or protestation of affection allows him to forget or conceal this purpose. When, as is indicated by Sonnets LXXVII. to XC., he feared that his friend was transferring his favor or patronage to another poet, his anxiety became acute, and in that group he compared not only his poetry, but his flattery and commendation with that of his rival. In Sonnets XXXII. to XXXVII., portraying his grief at his friend's unkindness, he hastens to forgive; and, as already stated, in Sonnets XL. to XLIII. and CXXVII. to CLII., chiding his friend for having accepted the love of his mistress, he crowns him with poetic garlands of compliment and adulation. Smitten on one cheek, not only does he turn the other, but he bestows kisses and caresses on the hand that gave the blow. All we know of the character of Shakespeare indicates that he was neither meek and complacent, nor quick and eager in forgiving; but that his character in those aspects was quite the reverse of the character of the author of the Sonnets. Mr. Lee states the effect or result of the various traditions as to Shakespeare's poaching experiences, and his resentment of the treatment he had received, as follows[24]: 'And his [Shakespeare's] sporting experiences passed at times beyond orthodox limits. A poaching adventure, according to a _credible_[25] tradition, was the immediate cause of his long severance from his native place. "He had," wrote Rowe in 1709, "by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and among them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, _as he thought, somewhat too severely_; and, _in order to revenge_ that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, _yet it is said to have been so very bitter_ that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in London." The independent testimony of Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire, late in the seventeenth century, is to the effect that Shakespeare "was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native county to his great advancement." The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz., cap. 21) punished deer-stealers with three months' imprisonment and the payment of thrice the amount of the damage done.