be rivaled by the feat of the camel-evolving German.
Indeed, it is the true German school of thought to which these
speculations belong, and it is but just that to a genuine Teuton belongs
the honor of the most extraordinary solution of the mystery yet given.
It would take too long to sum up all the theories that have been
broached upon the subject, but two or three will do as an example.
Without stopping to dwell upon the ideas of M. Philarete Chasles, or of
Gen. Hitchcock, who believes the Sonnets to be addressed to the Ideal
Beauty, we will pass on to the book of Mr. Henry Browne, published in
London in 1870. His idea is that the Sonnets are dedicated to William
Herbert, afterward earl of Pembroke, and are intended chiefly as a
parody upon the reigning fashion of mistress-sonneting and upon the
sonneteers of the day, especially Davies and Drayton; that they also
contain much which is valuable in the way of autobiography, and that
"the key to the whole mystery lies in _Shakespeare's_ conceit (_i. e_.,
Mr. Browne's conceit) of the union of his friend and his Muse by
marriage of verse and mind; by which means, and for which favor, his
youth and beauty are immortalized, but which theme does not fully
commence till the friend had declined the invitation to marriage, which
refusal begets the mystic melody." Mr. Browne graciously accepts the
Sonnets in their order, and professes to be unable to name the real
mistress of Herbert, though he considers Lady Penelope Rich to
be the object of their allegorical satire.

Mr. Heraud also accepts the order of the Sonnets as correct. His book
contains an article on the Sonnets published by him in _Temple Bar_ for
April, 1862, the result, he declares (and far be it from us to dispute
it), of pure induction. He has evolved the theory that Shakespeare in
writing against celibacy had in view the practice of the Roman Catholic
Church; that the friend whom he apostrophizes was the Ideal Man, the
universal humanity, who gradually develops into the Divine Ideal, and
becomes a Messiah, while the Woman is the Church, the "black but comely
bride" of Solomon. "Shakespeare found himself between two loves--the
celibate Church on the one hand, that deified herself, and the Reformed
Church on the other, that eschewed Mariolatry and restored worship to
its proper object.... Thus, Shakespeare parabolically opposed the
Mariolatry of his time to the purer devotion of the word of God, which
it was the mi