r sweete patronage in a matter of small moment
without distrust or disturbance, in this work of more weight, as he
approoued his more abilitie, so would not but expect your Honours more
acceptance.'

{405} This is the sense allotted to the word in the great Variorum
edition of 1821 by Malone's disciple, James Boswell the younger, who,
like his master, was a bibliographical expert of the highest authority.
The fact that the eighteenth-century commentators--men like Malone and
Steevens--who were thoroughly well versed in the literary history of the
sixteenth century, should have failed to recognise any connection between
'Mr. W. H.' and Shakespeare's personal history is in itself a very strong
argument against the interpretation foisted on the dedication during the
present century by writers who have no pretensions to be reckoned the
equals of Malone and Steevens as literary archaeologists.

{406} James Boaden, a journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs.
Siddons, was the first to suggest the Pembroke theory in a letter to the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1832. A few months later Mr. James Heywood
Bright wrote to the magazine claiming to have reached the same conclusion
as early as 1819, although he had not published it. Boaden re-stated the
Pembroke theory in a volume on _Shakespeare's Sonnets_ which he published
in 1837. C. Armitage Brown adopted it in 1838 in his _Shakespeare's
Autobiographical Poems_. The Rev. Joseph Hunter, who accepted the theory
without qualification, significantly pointed out in his _New
Illustrations of Shakespeare_ in 1845 (ii. 346) that it had not occurred
to any of the writers in the great Variorum editions of Shakespeare, nor
to critics so acute in matters of literary history as Malone or George
Chalmers. The theory is treated as proved fact in many recent literary
manuals. Of its supporters at the date of writing the most ardent is Mr.
Thomas Tyler, who published an edition of the sonnets in 1890, and there
further advanced a claim to identify the 'dark lady' of the sonnets with
Mary Fitton, a lady of the Court and the Earl of Pembroke's mistress.
Mr. Tyler has endeavoured to substantiate both the Pembroke and the
Fitton theories, by merely repeating his original arguments, in a
pamphlet which appeared in April of this year under the title of _The
Herbert-Fitton Theory_: _a Reply_ [_i.e._ to criticisms of the theories
by Lady Newdegate and by myself]. The Pembroke theory, whose a