THESE. INSUING. SONNETS. MR. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE. AND. THAT. ETERNETIE. PROMISED. BY. OUR. EVER. LIVING. POET. WISHETH. THE. WELL-WISHING. ADVENTURER. IN. SETTING FORTH. {278}For a dedication composed in the turgid fashion of nearly three hundred years ago, the above would seem to be peculiarly intelligible. All publications were ventures in those days. The printer might get His money back and he might not. But, until he did, he was an adventurer. So Mr. Thorpe, in setting forth on his adventure, wishes well to his publication and to some unknown patron whom he desires--as was the custom--to compliment with wishes of long life and happiness. At least this would seem to be the reading on the face of it. To be sure, there is a slight uncertainty as to whether "Mr. W. H." is dedicator or dedicatee. But the moment the name of Shakespeare appears this little trouble becomes insignificant--and, as usual, difficulties begin to crowd and multiply. The title reads: "Shake-speares Sonnets never before imprinted: at London, by G. Eld, for T. T. And are to be sold by William Apsley. 1609." At that name the commentators appear, and swarm like eagles around a carcass. Mr. Armitage Brown, who flourished in or about the year 1838, and appears to have been the first gentleman who ever took the trouble to read them, has demonstrated * that these sonnets are actually six poems of different lengths **--each poem having a consistent theme and argument (and he made this discovery by the simple process of reading them). * "Shakespeare's Autographical Poems, being his Sonnets clearly developed," etc. By Charles Armitage Brown. London: James Bohn, 1838. ** We find, however, that Coleridge had earlier advanced the same theory.--Table Talk (Routledge's edition), p. 2071. Can any body believe that, if these six poems had been the work of the mighty Shakespeare of the Shakespear{279}eans, they would have waited until 1838 without a reader? And, most wonderful of all, that this mighty poet in his own lifetime would allow six of his poems to be torn up into isolated stanzas by a printer, stirred together and run into type hap-hazard, and sold as his "Sonnets?" The Shakespeareans tell us sometimes of their William's utter indifference to fame, but they have never claimed for him an imperturbability quite so stolid as this. And while we could not well imagine Mr. Tennyson regarding with complaisance a publisher who would print his "Maud," "Locksley Hall," "Lady Clara," etc., each verse standing by itself, and calling the whole "Mr. Tennyson's Sonnets," so we fancy even Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, had he been their author, would have thought the printers were going a little too far.