of
friendship, such a style sounds unnatural, and undignified perhaps: with
the Elizabethans it was an every-day habit. Lilly, the author of
_Euphues_, says in his _Endymion,_ "The love of men to women is a thing
common and of course; the friendship of man to man, infinite and
immortal." And indeed it is to the influence of the _Euphues_ that much
of the poetic ardor of language characterizing the masculine friendship
of the time was due. A man's beauty was as often the theme of
verse as a woman's, and the endearing terms only associated by us with
the conversation of lovers were used continually among men. The friends
in Shakespeare's plays, as in all the other dramas and novels of the
period, continually address each other as "sweet," and even "sweet love"
and "beloved." Ben Jonson called himself the "lover" of Camden, and
dedicated his eulogistic lines to "my beloved Mr. William Shakespeare."
There is therefore no reason for considering the language of the first
series of Sonnets as necessarily inapplicable to a masculine friend. The
second series, beginning with the 127th Sonnet, is as evidently
addressed, as Mr. Brown says, "to his mistress, on her infidelity;" and
the Sonnets end with two upon "Cupid's Brand," admitted by all to be
separate poems, and wrongfully tacked on to the Sonnets proper.

Taking it for granted, then, from this very literal survey of the text,
that the Sonnets are autobiographical, we find their study divided into
two branches: (1) the story that the poems themselves tell by the most
simple and direct statements; and (2) the conjectural explanation of the
personages of that story, involving a careful historical comparison of
names and dates, but amounting, after all is said that can be said,
simply to conjecture, incapable of direct proof. The first part is to
the real lover of Shakespeare and of poetry the only important one; the
second concerns that which is mortal and has passed away. The first
implies a knowledge of the friendship and the love of Shakespeare; the
second the discovery of the names of his friend, of the poet who was his
rival in the praises of that friend, and of the mistress who was
unworthy of them both; not to mention such other items concerning time
and place as might be ascertained by a persevering antiquarian.

It is impossible, within less than a volume, to quote from the Sonnets
very freely, therefore we shall be compelled to trust to the reader's
recollection of