Serious and competent critics for a long time inclined to the opinion that the "W. H." was a transposition of "H. W.," and represented none other than Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whose close relation to the poet had long been known, and to whom his two narrative poems had been dedicated. This theory was held by Drake and Gervinus. But so early as 1832, Boaden advanced some objections to this view. He urged that Southampton never possessed the personal beauty incessantly dwelt upon in these poems. Finally, the Sonnets fit neither his age, nor his character, nor his history, full of movement, activity, and adverse fortune, to which no smallest allusion appears. There is not the slightest doubt that these poems are addressed to a patron of rank; but our knowledge of the history of Shakespeare is so inconsiderable, that with regard to his patrons at the court, we have nothing to judge from but the dedications of Venus and of Lucrece to Southampton, and the dedication of the First Folio to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, in which reference is made to the favour they had always shown these plays and their author, while he was alive. Bright and Boaden had already, in 1819 and 1832 respectively, advanced the opinion that Pembroke was the hero of the Sonnets. This view was shared by almost every one (Charles Armitage, Brown Hallan, Massey, Henry Brown, Minto, W. M. Rossetti), and towards the end of the nineteenth century this opinion could be considered as having established itself, since it was concurred in by the chief Shakespeare students (Dowden), and seemed to have obtained its final confirmation in the penetrating criticisms of Thomas Tyler (1890). All the above-mentioned authors agree about the fact, that there is only one person whose age, history, appearance, virtues, and vices accord in every respect with those of the young man to whom the Sonnets are addressed, just as his initials agree with those of the "Mr. W. H." to whom they are dedicated, and that is the young William Herbert, who in 1601 became Earl of Pembroke. Born on April 8, 1580, he came to London in the autumn of 1597 or spring of 1598, and very soon, in all probability, made the acquaintance of Shakespeare, whose patron, as the first folio edition of the dramas prove, he remained until the poet's death.