strange that both Lucrece and Hamlet, in their moments of
distraction, turn to the image of Troy blazing with the punishment of
treachery.

_The Passionate Pilgrim._--This little collection of poems was published
in 1599, under Shakespeare's name, by William Jaggard, a dishonest
bookseller. It contains poems by Richard Barnfield, Bartholomew Griffin,
Christopher Marlowe, and one or more unknown hands. It also contains two
genuine Shakespearean sonnets, three more from the text of _Love's
Labour's Lost_, and three (less certainly his) on the subject of _Venus
and Adonis_, which have the ring of his freshest youthful manner.
Whether any others in the collection be by Shakespeare can only be a
matter of opinion. The nineteenth poem has a smack of his mind about it.
If it be by him it must be his earliest extant work.

* * * * *

_The Sonnets._--_Written_ between 1592 and 1609. _Published_
(piratically) 1609.

These personal poems have puzzled many readers. Many writers have tried
to interpret them. Although their first editor tells us that they are
"serene, cleare, and elegantlie plaine (with) no intricate and cloudie
stuffe to trouble and perplex the intellect," much good and bad brain
work has been spent on them. Some have held that they are poetical
exercises. Others find that they are confessions. Others wrest from dark
lines dark meanings, till they have laid bare a story from them. Others
interpret spiritually. Others find evidence in them that Shakespeare was
guilty of an abnormal form of passion. The facts about them may be
stated--

1. They are personal poems. Some of them are of great beauty;
others are unsuccessful.

2. They were written in many moods. Some were written in a mood of
the intensest tranquil ecstasy, others in a fit of earthly passion,
others in a trivial mood.

3. They were written to more than one person. Many were written to
an attractive, handsome, young, unmarried man, Shakespeare's dear
friend. Men with imagination enjoy sweeter and closer friendships
than the many know. The many, mulish as ever, therefore imagine
evil.

4. Some of the sonnets were written to a woman, of the kind
described in two or three of the plays, viz. a black-haired,
black-eyed, white-faced, witty wanton, false to her marriage vows
and the cause of similar falseness in Shakespeare himself, and in
his fri