which he sings, one toils steadily upwards in spite of occasional lapses, the other rapidly descends in spite of occasional halts. One ends in independence of all the powers of change, that is, in immortality; the other in a slough of despair, in the self-condemnation of one whose intellect knows that his choice is evil, but whose will is too weak to revise it.

Thus a comparison of the two series of sonnets shows that they run parallel to each other; the first comprises all that the second possesses, and much more besides; for the love of friendship is treated more fully than the love of desire. To the first 125 sonnets are dedicated, to the second only 26. But these 26 are found to correspond with a proportionate number in the first series; and, so far as the parallelism extends, precisely the same order is found in both series. This is surely a great argument to prove that the sonnets remain in the order in which their author intended them to be read.

It will perhaps be worth while to exhibit in a tabular form the points of contact. The numbers in the first column refer to the sonnets of the first series, those in the second column to the corresponding sonnets of the second series. By a glance at this comparative table it will be seen that the two series are correlative, and both arranged on the same principle.

But again, if we examine the first series by the light of the Platonic "scale of love,” we shall find that in its main outlines it rigidly adheres to the prescribed form. That scale, it will be remembered, treats of the transformation of love from a sensible impression to an ideal force. It has two great divisions: the first is imaginative love, the second is ideal love. Each of these divisions separates into three subdivisions. In the first division love is (1) born in the eyes, (2) nursed in the fancy through absence, and (3) generalized in thought. Then after the transition to ideal love, sentiment concurs with sense, the heart supersedes the eyes. In this second division (1) the heart, more truly than

the eye, furnishes the idea; (2) the idea is purified in the furnace of jealousy; and (3) at last it is rendered universal and absolute in the reason.

These six steps are clearly marked in the first series of Shakespeare's Sonnets. First we have the love of beauty kindled through the eyes, and leading to the perfectly chaste desire of creation in the beautiful in Sonnets 1-25. The second step, that whereby the fancy or imagination becomes substituted for the eyes through the absence of the lover from his friend, begins with a solemn dedication in Sonnet 26, and continues to Sonnet 37. The third step, the triumph of fancy over absence, is introduced with another dedicatory Sonnet, 38, and continues down to 43. The two next Sonnets mark the transition of sense into sentiment, through the insufficiency of the sensible powers of imagination. With Sonnet 46 the second great division begins; the heart now shares its creative power with the eye, and the newly born ideal love feeds not so much on the imagination of beauty as on the conviction of the friend's worth and constancy. This first subdivision continues to the end of Sonnet 65. The next Sonnet begins the next stage; it is a general prelude to all the trials of ideal love. The ideal love is led through the chief dangers which beset it, which might destroy it if it yielded, while from their conquest it may acquire its triumph and its glory. Love has to struggle in succession with affectation, slander, death, jealousy, humiliation, and the feeling of utter unworthiness. This continues to the end of Sonnet 96. From thence to Sonnet 125 we have the triumph of ideal love, gradually transformed into a sentiment and volition undistinguishable from religion. For love is the faculty for the infinite, and whatever objects it seizes are invested, by the fervour of its imagination, with the attributes of the infinite. As the judgment gradually becomes clearer and cooler, each object begins to take its proper place, until love, perfectly purified, attaches itself supremely to that which is really infinite. The following table resumes the main divisions of the first series of sonnets according to the Platonic scale of love :

It is natural that the second series of sonnets should not respond to the scale so clearly as the first. For the vulgar love is sensual, not ideal, and it is hard to see how it can be idealized. Yet we shall find that Shakespeare solves the problem. The first step, love through the eyes, is set forth in Sonnets 127-130. The second step, the transfer of love from the sight to the fancy, is included in Sonnets 131, 132. In the former the lover thinks on his mistress's face, in the latter he turns her black eyes into mourners pitying his condition. The third step, the generalization of fancy, is found in Sonnets 133, 134. The poet exhibits this stage of love by making his lover willing to share his mistress with his friend. The transition from the imaginative to the ideal is represented in even a stranger manner in Sonnets 135-137. 'Will," the name of the lover, becomes identified with his mistress's will or volition, and his heart, in spite of his knowledge, is obliged to pass a false judgment upon her. The triumph of this false judgment over falsehood, inconstancy, slander, the disillusion of the senses, the consciousness of wrong, and every cause of jealousy, is shown in Sonnets 138-143. Finally the rest of the series, 144-152, exhibits the vulgar love in all its deformity as a "bad angel" (144), by turns coaxing and leading to despair, and gradually working up to a climax, till it becomes love in hate, with darkened and perverted conscience. The main divisions of this series of sonnets may therefore be thus exhibited :

66

Viewed therefore side by side, either in the light of their obvious parallelisms or in that of the Platonic scala amoris, the two series of sonnets, that which celebrates the higher love and that which celebrates the lower love, are perfectly symmetrical, and arranged in agreement with each other and with the scale. This fact proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the present arrangement is the right one, and by implication proves also the inadmissibility of any theory concerning them which postulates any change in that arrangement. The main outlines of the sonnets are clear. There may remain innumerable

difficulties in detail, arising from repetitions, apparent misplacement of sentiments, anticipations in the earlier sonnets of ideas which ought only to be found higher up in the scale, and in the later sonnets reappearances of ideas which had been dismissed in earlier stages. But these difficulties arise from the nature of the subject. Love is continually bearing "the second burden of a former child;” and “ as the sun is daily new and old," so is it continually “telling what is told." It is in continual revolution, the same side of the wheel turning up ever and anon, but each time with some new growth, some development, something better than at first. It is an undulation, in which each successive vibration grows stronger, but each resembles the other, and causes an appearance of monotony unless the gradual growth is well observed.

WE

CHAPTER V.

IMAGINATIVE LOVE IN THE SONNETS.

HEN Shakespeare had formed the design of exhibiting the gradual ascent of Love through each degree of its scale, from the first conception of fancy in the eyes to the final possession of the whole heart and intellect by ideal love, he naturally began with a definition of the force whose progress he was about to describe. Every word in

this definition is accurate :

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die.

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The

"Fairest," he says, because the lover attaches himself not to the fair in the abstract, but to the one fair which itself to him as the highest: approves creatures," because love, defined as the "desire of generation in the beautiful," applies only to creatures subject to change and death. But this desire of generation is founded on another desire still more general; its roots lie in a still deeper ground, the desire "that beauty's rose might never die." word "" rose here is full of import. In the range of its associations it reaches from the meaning that must be given to it in much of the Romaunt of the Rose to the sublime conception of Dante in the 30th and 31st cantos of his Paradiso. The aspiration for the immortality of the "rose of beauty" is the root of love. The aspiration, when kindled by the beauty of fading creatures, produces the desire of increase from the fairest of them. And the desire, when the lovers are man and woman, is the root of domestic love; and when they are both men, causes the lover to wish to produce an excellent mind in the beautiful body of the beloved youth. But this Platonic creation hardly satisfies the aspiration for immortality, for the mind disappears when