, which his reason abhors while his heart is
led captive. His is the battle and the defeat: who is he that he should
judge with indignant virtue the failing of another?--

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury. (40.)

He pardons the penitent as freely as only so great and magnanimous a
soul can, but gently reminds him that "though thou repent, yet I have
still the loss:"

The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross. (34.)

Hereafter we two must be twain, the poet says, although our undivided
loves are one, for fear thy good report suffer, which is to me as my
own. Do not even remember me after I am dead, if that remembrance cause
you any sorrow, nor rehearse my poor name, but let your love decay with
my life;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

Such is the story of the Sonnets, the saddest of all stories, as it
comes to us from the simple and unbiased reading of the series as it
stands, without alteration or transposition. The meaning is sufficiently
obvious without making any change, although, judging from the purely
eulogistic character of some of the first series of the Sonnets, and the
purely reflective style of others, it seems probable that those which
are more or less reproachful in tone may belong together, nearer the
second series. Still, even to this rearrangement there are objections
when we consider the alternations of feeling and the different
conditions that must have affected the poet during the space of time
covered by these poems. In the 104th Sonnet three years are mentioned as
having elapsed since the friends first met, and the time covered by the
whole series was probably still longer. Conjectural evidence points to
William Herbert as the person to whom the Sonnets are addressed. His
name, his age, his beauty, his rank, all agree with Shakespeare's
description. As for the earl of Southampton, the poet's early patron, to
whom the _Venus and Adonis_ and the _Lucrece_ are dedicated, his name
was Henry; he was but nine years younger than Shakespeare, and therefore
not likely to have been called by him "a sweet boy;" he was a remarkably
plain man, instead of an Adonis, and noted, not for his devotion to
women in general, but for his arde