{275}Whoever wrote Hamlet's soliloquy and Antony's oration might well have written the "Venus and Adonis" and the "Lucrece," and was quite equal to the bold stroke of describing the former (the most splendidly sensuous poem in any language--a poem that {276}breathes in every line the blase and salacious exquisite), as the first heir of the invention of a busy London manager and whilom rustic Lothario among 'Warwickshire milkmaids. The question as to the authorship of the one hundred and fifty-four "Sonnets," which appeared (with the exception of two, printed in 1598, in a collection of verses called for some un-suggested reason "The Passionate Pilgrim") in 1609, need not enter into any anti-Shakespearean theory at all. Except that one Francis Meres, writing in 1598--eleven years before--had reported William Shakespeare to have circulated certain "sugared sonnets among his private friends;" * and that the one hundred and thirty-sixth of the series says the author's name is "Will" (the common nickname of a poet of those days), ** there is nothing to connect them with William Shakespeare except his name on the title-page--in the days when we have seen that printers put whatever name they pleased or thought most vendable, upon a title-page. (When the aforesaid "Passionate Pilgrim" was printed in 1598--also as by William Shakespeare--Dr. Ileywood recognized two of his own compositions incorporated in it, and promptly claimed them. "No evidence," says Mr. Grant White, *** in commenting on this performance, "of any public denial on Shakespeare's part is known to exist. It was not until the publication of the third edition of the poem, in 1612, that William Shakespeare's name was removed.") * Hallam does not think these are the sonnets mentioned by Meres.--("Literature of Europe," vol. iii., p. 40, note. ** See ante, p. 090, note. *** "Shakespeare's Works," vol. iii., p. 77. But what involves the authorship of the sonnets in still {277}deeper obscurity is the fact that their publisher, Thomas Thorpe, himself dedicates them to a friend of his own. He addresses his friend as "Mr. W. H.," and signs the dedication with his own initials "T. T." Perhaps it was just as the name "Shakespeare" was fastened to the title-page of "The Passionate Pilgrim," and the plays to which, as we shall notice the Shakespeareans declare it never belonged, that Mr. Thomas Thorpe calls his book "Shakespeare's Sonnets, never before imprinted," and makes in the pages of the Stationers' Company the entry: "20 May, 1609. Tho. Thorpe. A book called Shake-speare's Sonnets." They appear conjointly with a long poem entitled "A Lover's Complaint," and two of them (as we have said) had already been printed in "The Passionate Pilgrim," published by Jaggard in 1598. This unhappy dedication has been so twisted by the commentators to serve their turns, that the only safety is to print it as it stood in this first edition: "TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF