Now, we find among Shakespeare's works one which, more than any other, enables us to look into his inmost soul--I mean his Sonnets. It is to these remarkable poems that we must mainly address ourselves for the information we require. Public events may, indeed, cast a certain measure of light or shadow over a man's inward world of thought and feeling; but they are never the efficient factors in determining the happiness or melancholy of his fundamental mood. If he has personal reasons for feeling that fate is against him, the utmost serenity in the political atmosphere will not dissipate his gloom; and, conversely, if a deep joy abides within him, and he has personal reasons for feeling himself favoured by fortune, then public discontent will be powerless to disturb the harmony in his soul. But his depression will, of course, be doubly severe if public events and private experiences combine to cast a gloom over his mind. Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets" are first mentioned in the well-known passage in Meres's _Palladis Tamia_ (1598), where they are spoken of as passing from hand to hand "among his private friends." In the following year the two important Sonnets now numbered cxxxviii. and cxliv. were printed (with readings subsequently revised) in a collection of poems named _The Passionate Pilgrim_, dishonestly published, and falsely attributed to Shakespeare, by a bookseller named Jaggard. For the next ten years we find no mention of Sonnets by Shakespeare, until, in 1609, a bookseller named Thomas Thorpe issued a quarto book entitled _Shakespeares Sonnets. Neuer before Imprinted_--an edition which the poet himself certainly cannot have revised for the press, but which may possibly have been printed from an authentic manuscript. To this first edition is prefixed a dedication, written by the bookseller in the most contorted style, which has given rise to theories and conjectures without number. It runs as follows:-- TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF THESE . INSVING . SONNETS . MR . W . H . ALL . HAPPINESSE . AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . PROMISED . BY . OVR . EVER-LIVING . POET . WISHETH . THE . WELL-WISHING . ADVENTVRER . IN . SETTING . FORTH . T . T .