ssion of his age to inaugurate."

This is pretty well for a flight of inductive genius, but it is quite
surpassed by the soaring Teutonic mind before mentioned, who, in the
words of the reflective Breitmann,

Dinks so deeply
As only Deutschers can.

This mighty philosopher, of whom Mr. Heraud speaks with becoming
reverence, is Herr Barnstorff, who published a book in 1862 to prove
that the "W.H." of the dedication means _William Himself_, and that the
Sonnets are apostrophes to Shakespeare's Interior Individuality! Mr.
Heraud thinks this idea is rather too German, but, after all, not so
very far out of the way, for in Sonnet 42 the poet certainly declares
that his Ideal Man is simply his Objective Self.[009] For, as Mr. Heraud
beautifully and lucidly remarks, "the Many, how multitudinous soever,
are yet properly but the reflex of the One, and the sum of both is the
Universe." And herein, according to Mr. Heraud, we find the key to the
mystery.

In 1866, Mr. Gerald Massey published a large volume on the same
subject, with the somewhat pretentious title. _Shakespeare's Sonnets,
never before interpreted; his private friends identified; together with
a recovered likeness of himself_. The first chapter contains a summary
of the opinions of Coleridge, Wordsworth and others upon the Sonnets; a
notice of the theory of Bright and Boaden (_Gentleman's Magazine_,
1832), afterward confirmed by a book written by Charles Armitage Brown
(1838); the theories of Hunter, Hallam, Dyce, Mrs. Jameson, M. Chasles,
Ulrici, Gervinus and many others (most of them, by the way, confirming
the theory originated by Boaden and Bright); and having thus gone over
the work of twenty-five _named_ authors, and a space of time extending
from 1817 to 1866, Mr. Massey begins his second chapter by saying that
as yet there has never been any genuine attempt to interpret the
Sonnets, "nothing having been done except a little surface-work." Mr. C.
Armitage Brown in particular (who, by the way, must not be confounded
with Mr. _Henry Browne_) appears to be Mr. Massey's special aversion.
The very name of Brown irritates him as scarlet does an excitable bull.
Armitage Brown was the intimate friend of Keats and Landor, and, Severn
says, was considered to know more about the Sonnets than any man then
living, while the "personal theory," as Mr. Massey styles it, has had a
far larger number of supporters than any other. Unfortunately, the
opinions of other