of them in the train, I know the majority by heart, but despair of
finding any cryptogram in them.

The cord on which these exquisite beads of poetry are strung is of the
most flimsy and frayed character. In other words, the characters are all
bad, and the verses that laud them are of the utmost brilliancy and
fascination. The poet himself supplies material that would justify us in
stigmatising his friend as a heartless and dissipated rogue. He also
lets us know that the pale-faced lady was an unwholesome and treacherous
minx. Yet he addresses the one in language that would be too laudatory
for Sir Galahad, and the other he idolises and insults by turns.

How strange it is that the poet, while lingering fondly over the doings
of these two un-moral persons, should give utterance to some of the most
impressive lines in English literature! Certain of the sonnets pierce
the heart as with an arrow: such are those that deal, in broad and
pathetic fashion, with the ceaseless flux of all things human, the grim
realities of the grave, the ruthless sequence of earthly events, and the
measureless melancholy of the reflecting mind. The effect produced is
often like what we experience in reading Ecclesiastes or Omar Khayyam.
"Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney-sweepers, turn to dust."

Though Shakespeare is dolefully impressed by the decay and destruction
of all material things and by the evanescent nature of beauty, he has no
doubt whatever of the immortality of the verses he is writing. He vaunts
as boldly as ever Horace did--indeed, in words that suggest the _Exegi
monumentum_ ode--that his verses will outlast the proudest works of man.
It is a sorry anti-climax to such a boast that the poet harps on the
immortality of the dissolute youth as a consequence of the sonnets
having an eternity of renown. Was there ever such a puzzling and
unworthy association of ideas? The puzzle is rendered more perplexing
still by the fact that Shakespeare took no pains to enlighten posterity
as to the identity of the youth he praises, or even to supervise the
publication of the sonnets. Thorpe's piratical edition was full of
misprints, but Shakespeare, so far as we know, took no notice of it, and
made no attempt, by giving the world a correct and authentic version, to
secure what his verses declare him to be anxious to bring about, viz.,
the renown of his friend among generations to come. For us the youth
still exists, no doubt, but not a