On the other hand, there is not a single indication which the Sonnets contain as to the poet's friend which in any manner disagrees with what we know of Shakespeare. It may be said that being married the invocation to marry could not have been addressed to him. But the test is,--how did he pass, how was he known in London, as married or unmarried? He is supposed to have come to London in 1586, or when he was twenty-two years of age, and he was then married and had three children. He remained in London about twenty-five years, and there is no indication that any member of his family ever resided there or visited him, and the clear consensus of opinion seems to be that they did not.[38] The indications that he had little love for his wife are regrettably clear.[39] When the earlier Sonnets were written he must have been living there about nine years, and must have had an income sufficient easily to have maintained his family in the city.[40] That he led a life notoriously free as to women cannot be questioned. Traditions elsewhere referred to so indicate[41]; and whether the Sonnets were written by or to him they equally so testify. Under such circumstances his friends or acquaintances would not be led to presume that he was married, but would assume the contrary. They would have done or considered precisely as we do, classing our friends as married or unmarried, as their mode of life indicates. Hence the invocation to marry is entirely consistent with the theory that the Sonnets were addressed to Shakespeare. When Sonnet CIV. was written, the poet had known his friend but three years[42]; the Sonnets referring to marriage are printed first, and very probably were written much earlier than Sonnet CIV., and perhaps when their acquaintance was first formed. The fact that the appeal ceases with the seventeenth Sonnet, and that after that there is not even a hint of marrying, or of female excellence and beauty, perhaps indicates that the first seventeen Sonnets had provoked a disclosure which restrained the poet from further reference to those subjects. * * * * *