thy of special emphasis. But they
did not strictly adhere to these rules, and, while they often failed to
italicise the words that deserved italicisation, they freely italicised
others that did not merit it. Capital initial letters were employed with
like irregularity. Mr. Wyndham in his careful note on the typography of
the quarto of 1609 (pp. 259 seq.) suggests that Elizabethan printers were
not erratic in their uses of italics or capital letters, but an
examination of a very large number of Elizabethan and Jacobean books has
brought me to an exactly opposite conclusion.

{420} Barnes's _Parthenophil_ in Arber's _Garner_, v. 440.

{421a} After quibbling in Sonnet lxxii. on the resemblance between the
_graces_ of his cruel mistress's face and the _Graces_ of classical
mythology, Barnes develops the topic in the next sonnet after this manner
(the italics are my own):

Why did rich Nature _graces_ grant to thee,
Since thou art such a niggard of thy _grace_?
O how can _graces_ in thy body be?
Where neither they nor pity find a place! . . .
Grant me some _grace_! For thou with _grace_ art wealthy
And kindly may'st afford some _gracious_ thing.

{421b} Cf. _Lear_, IV. vi. 279, 'O undistinguish'd space of woman's
will;' _i.e._ 'O boundless range of woman's lust.'

{421c} Professor Dowden says 'will to boot' is a reference to the
Christian name of Shakespeare's friend, 'William [? Mr. W. H.]'
(_Sonnets_, p. 236); but in my view the poet, in the second line of the
sonnet, only seeks emphasis by repetition in accordance with no uncommon
practice of his. The line 'And will to boot, and will in over-plus,' is
paralleled in its general form and intention in such lines of other
sonnets as

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind (cv. 5).
Beyond all date, even to eternity (cxxii. 4).
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night (cxlvii. 14).

In all these instances the second half of the line merely repeats the
first half with a slight intensification.

{422a} Cf. Barnes's Sonnet lxxiii.:

All her looks _gracious_, yet no _grace_ do bring
To me, poor wretch! Yet be the _Graces_ there.

{422b} Shakespeare refers to the blindness, the 'sightless view' of the
soul, in Sonnet xxvii., and apostrophises the soul as the 'centre of his
sinful earth' in Sonnet cxlvi.

{423a} The use of the word 'fulfil' in this and the next line should be
compared with Barnes's introduction