is compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors, of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.

That what is there stated as to another poet refers to an actual
transaction, and is to be read literally, is recognized, I think, by
all critics; and many have thought that the description contained in
the Sonnet quoted indicates Chapman, who translated the _Iliad_ about
that time. It is in this group of Sonnets, referring to another poet,
that we find Sonnet LXXXI. The thought of the entire group is
complaint, perhaps jealousy, of a rival poet; and running through them
all are allusions or statements which seem to have been intended to
strengthen the ties between him and his friend,--to hold him if he
meditated going, and to bring him back if he had already strayed. It
was obviously for that purpose that Sonnet LXXXI., one of the central
Sonnets of that group, was written; and, considered as written for
that purpose, how apt and true its language appears! The poet,
asserting that his verse is immortal, says to his friend, the
immortality it confers is yours; "your name from hence immortal life
shall have," but I shall have no share in that fame; "in me each part
will be forgotten," and "earth can yield me but a common grave."
Though the Sonnet is in the highest degree poetic, as a bare statement
of fact it is perfectly apt and appropriate to that which was the
obvious purpose of this group of Sonnets.

It is sometimes claimed that the author of the Shakespearean plays was
a lawyer. Certainly he was a logician and a rhetorician. The clash of
minds and of speech appearing in _Julius_ _Caesar_, in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, in _Henry IV._, and in many other plays, shows a most
wonderful facility for stating a case, for presenting an argument. Let
us then assume that the poet was simply stating his own case against a
rival poet, presenting his own appeal,--and the verse at once has
added dignity and passion, and we almost feel the poet's heart throb.
Of course the final question--whether or not the two Sonnets printed
at the head of this chapter were founded on the conditions and
situations they state, and whether or not they express actual feelings
and emotions--must be answered by each from a caref