Chapter XXXII: The Exile's Return (6)

Monsoor, my chief! how we dash o'er the sand,
Hissing behind us like storm-driven snow!
Flash the long guns of your wild Arab band,
Brandish the spears, and the light jereeds throw,
As, half-winged, through the shrill singing breezes we go!

Monsoor, my chief! send the horses away:
The sports of your tribe I have seen with delight.
Now let us watch while the rose-tinted day
Fades from the desert, and peace-bearing Night
Shakes the first gem on her brow in our sight.

Monsoor, my host! lo, I enter your tent,
As brother by brother, hands clasping, is led:
I sleep like a child in a dream Heaven-sent;
For have I not eaten the salt and the bread?
And Monsoor will answer for me with his head.

GEORGE H. BOKER.

CONSTANTINOPLE, Jan. 10, 1875.

HOW HAM WAS CURED.

This was in slave times. It was also immediately after dinner, and the gentlemen had gone to the east piazza. Mr. Smith was walking back and forth, talking somewhat excitedly for him, while Dr. Rutherford sat with his feet on the railing, thoughtfully executing the sentimental performance of cutting his nails. Dr. Rutherford was an old friend of Mr. Smith who had been studying surgery in Philadelphia, and now, on his way back to South Carolina, had tarried to make us a visit.

"You see," Mr. Smith was saying, "about a week ago one of our old negroes died under the impression that she was 'tricked' or bewitched, and the consequence has been that the entire plantation is demoralized. You never saw anything like it."

"Many a time," said Dr. Rutherford, and calmly cut his nails.

"There is not a negro on the place," continued Edward, "who does not lie down at night in terror of the Evil Eye, and go to his work in the morning paralyzed by dread of what the day may bring. Why, there is a perfect panic among them. They are falling about like a set of ten-pins. This morning I sent for Wash (best hand on the place) to see about setting out tobacco plants, and behold Wash curled up under a haystack getting ready to die! It is enough to--So as soon as you came this morning a plan entered my head for putting a stop to the thing. It will be necessary to acknowledge that two or three of them are under the spell, and it is better to select those who already fancy themselves so.--Rosalie!" I appeared at the window. "Are any of the house-servants 'witched?"

"Mercy is," said I, "and I presume Mammy is going to be: I saw her make a curtsey to the black cat this morning."

"Well, what is your plan?" inquired Dr. Rutherford.

Mr. Smith seated himself on the piazza railing, dangling his feet thereagainst, rounding his shoulders in the most attractive and engaging manner, as you see men do, and proceeded to develop his idea. I was called off at the moment, and did not return for an hour or two. As I did so I heard Dr. Rutherford say, "All right! Blow the horn;" and the overseer down in the yard

Blew a blast as loud and shrill
As the wild-boar heard on Temple Hill--

an event which at this unusual hour of the day produced perfect consternation among the already excited negroes. They no doubt supposed it the musical exercise set apart for the performance of the angel Gabriel on the day of judgment, and in less than ten minutes all without exception had come pell-mell, helter-skelter, running to "the house." The dairymaid left her churn, and the housemaid put down her broom; the ploughs stood still, and when the horses turned their heads to see what was the matter they found they had no driver; she also who was cooking for the hands "fled from the path of duty" (no Casabianca nonsense for _her!_), leaving the "middling" to sputter into blackness and the corn-pones to share its fate. Mothers had gathered up their children of both sexes, and grouped them in little terrified companies about the yard and around the piazza-steps.

Edward was now among them, endeavoring to subdue the excitement, and having to some extent succeeded, he made a signal to Dr. Rutherford, who came forward to address the negroes. Throwing his shoulders back and looking around with dignity, he exclaimed, "I am the great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston! I was far away in the North, hundreds of miles from here, and I saw a spot on the sun, and it looked like the Evil Eye! And I found it was a great black smoke. Then I knew that witch-fires were burning in the mountains, and witches were dancing in the valleys; and the light of the Eye was red! I am the great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston! I called my black cat up and told her to smell for blood, and she smelled, and she smelled, and she smelled! She smelled, and she smelled, and she smelled! And presently her hair stood up like bristles, and her eyes shot out sparks of fire, and her tail was as stiff as iron!" He threw his shoulders back, looked imposingly around and repeated: "I am the great Dr. Rutherford the witch-doctor of Boston! My black Cat tells me that the witch is here--that she has hung the deadly nightshade at your cabin-doors, and your blood is turning to water. You are beginning to wither away. You shiver in the sunshine; you don't want to eat; your hearts are heavy and you don't feel like work; and when you come from the field you don't take down the banjo and pat and shuffle and dance, but you sit down in the corner with your heads on your hands, and would go to sleep, but you know that as soon as you shut your eyes she will cast hers on you through the chinks in the cabin-wall."

"Dat's me!" said Mercy--"dat certny is me!"

"Gret day in de mornin', mas' witch-doctor! How you know? Is you been tricked?" inquired Martha, who, having been reared on the plantation, was unacquainted with the etiquette observed at lectures.

Wash groaned heavily, and shook his head from side to side in silent commendation of the doctor's lore.

"My black cat tells me that the witch is here; and she _is_ here!" (Immense sensation among the children of Ham.) "But," continued he with a majestic wave of the arm, "she can do you no harm, for I _also_ am here, the great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston!"

"Doctor," inquired Edward in a loud voice, "can you tell who is conjured and who is not?"

"I cannot tell unless robed in the blandishments of plagiarism and the satellites of hygienic art as expunged by the gyrations of nebular hypothesis. Await ye!" He and Mr, Smith went into the house.

The negroes were very much impressed. They have excessive reverence for grandiloquent language, and the less they understand of it the better they like it.

"What dat he say, honey?" asked old Mammy. "I can't heer like I used ter."

"He says he will be back soon, Mammy, and tell if any of you are tricked," said I; and just then Edward and the doctor reappeared, bearing between them a pine table. On this table were arranged about forty little pyramids of whitish-looking powder, and in their midst stood a bottle containing some clear liquid, like water. Dr. Rutherford seated himself behind it, robed in the black gown he had used in the dissecting-room, and crowned by a conical head-piece about two feet high, manufactured by Edward and himself, and which they had completed by placing on the pinnacle thereof a human skull. The effect of this picturesque costume was heightened by two large red circles around the doctor's eyes--whether obtained from the juice of the pokeberry or the inkstand on Edward's desk need not be determined.

In front of the table stood the negroes, men, women and children. There was the preacher, decked in the clerical livery of a standing collar and white cravat, but, perhaps in deference to the day of the week, these were modified by the secular apparel of a yellow cotton shirt and homespun pantaloons, attached to a pair of old "galluses," which had been mended with twine, and pieced with leather, and lengthened with string, till, if any of the original remained, none could tell the color thereof nor what they had been in the day of their youth. The effect was not harmonious. There was Mammy, with her low wrinkled forehead, and white turban, and toothless gums, and skin of shining blackness, which testified that her material wants were not neglected. There was Wash, a great, stalwart negro, who ordinarily seemed able to cope with any ten men you might meet, now looking so subdued and dispirited, and of a complexion so ashy, that he really appeared old and shrunken and weak. There was William Wirt, the ploughboy, affected by a chronic grin which not even the solemnity of this occasion could dissipate, but the character of which seemed changed by the awestruck eyes that rolled above the heavy red lips and huge white teeth. There was Apollo--in social and domestic circles known as 'Poller--there was Apollo, his hair standing about his head in little black tufts or horns wrapped with cotton cord to make it grow, one brawny black shoulder protruding from a rent in his yellow cotton shirt, his pantaloons hanging loosely around his hips, and bagging around that wonderful foot which did not suggest his name, unless his sponsors in baptism were of a very satirical turn. There were Martha, and Susan, and Minerva, and Cinderella, and Chesterfield, and Pitt, and a great many other grown ones, besides a crowd of children, the smallest among the latter being clad in the dishabille of a single garment, which reached perhaps to the knee, but had little to boast in the way of latitude.

There they all stood in little groups about the yard, looking with awe and reverence at the great Dr. Rutherford, who sat behind the table with his black gown and frightful eyes and skull-crowned cap.

"You see these little heaps of powder and this bottle of water. You will come forward one at a time and pour a few drops of the water in this bottle on one of these little heaps of powder. If the powder turns black, the person who pours on the water is 'witched. If the powder remains white, the person who pours on the water is _not_ 'witched. You may all examine the powders, and see for yourselves whether there is any difference between them, and you will each pour from the same bottle."

During a silence so intense that nothing was heard save the hum of two great "bumblebees" that darted in and out among the trees and flew at erratic angles above our heads, the negroes came forward and stretched their necks over each other's shoulders, peering curiously at the little mounds of powder that lay before them, at the innocent-looking bottle that stood in their midst, and the great high priest who sat behind. They stretched their necks over each other's shoulders, and each endeavored to push his neighbor to the front; but those in front, with due reverence for the uncanny nature of the table, were determined not to be forced too near it, and the result was a quiet struggle, a silent wrestle, an undertone of wriggle, that was irresistibly funny.

Then arose the great high priest: "Range ye!"

Not knowing the nature of this order, the negroes scattered instanter and then collected _en masse_ around Mr. Smith.

"Range ye! range!" repeated the doctor with dignity, and Edward proceeded to arrange them in a long, straggling row, urging upon them that there was no cause for alarm, as, even should any of them prove 'witched, the doctor had charms with him by which to cast off the spell.

"Come, Martha," said Edward; but Martha was dismayed, and giving her neighbor a hasty shove, exclaimed,

"You go fus', Unk' Lumfrey: you's de preacher."

Uncle Humphrey disengaged his elbow with an angry hitch: "I don't keer if I is: go 'long yose'f."

"Well, de Lord knows I'm 'feerd to go," said Martha; "but ef I sot up for preachin', 'peers to me I wouldn' be'feerd to sass witches nor goses, nor nuffin' else."

"I don't preach no time but Sundays, an' dis ain't Sunday," said Uncle Humphrey.

"Hy, nigger!" exclaimed Martha in desperation, "is you gwine to go back on de Lord cos 'tain't Sunday? How come you don't trus' on Him week-a-days?"

"I does trus' on Him fur as enny sense in doin' uv it; but ef I go to enny my foolishness, fus' thing I know de Lord gwine leave me to take keer uv myse'f, preacher or no preacher--same as ef He was ter say, 'Dat's all right, cap'n: ef you gwine to boss dis job, boss it;' an' den whar _I_ be? Mas' Ned tole you to go: go on, an' lemme 'lone."

"Uncle Humphrey," said Edward, "there is nothing whatever to be afraid of, and you must set the rest an example. Come!"

Uncle Humphrey obeyed, but as he did so he turned his head and rolled--or, as the negroes say, _walled_--his eyes at Martha in a manner which convinced her, whatever her doubts in other matters pertaining to theology, that there is such a thing as future punishment. The old fellow advanced, and under direction of the great high priest poured some of the contents of the bottle on the powder indicated to him, and it remained white.

"Thang Gord!" he exclaimed with a fervency which left no doubt of his sincerity, and hastened away.

Two or three others followed with a similar result. Then came Mercy, the housemaid, and as her trembling fingers poured the liquid forth, behold the powder changed and turned to black! The commotion was indescribable, and Mercy was about to have a nervous fit when Dr. Rutherford, fixing his eyes on her, said in a tone of command, "Be quiet--be perfectly quiet, and in two hours I will destroy the spell. Go over there and sit down."

She tottered to a seat under one of the trees.

One or two more took their turn, among them Mammy, but the powders remained white. I had entreated Edward not to pronounce her 'witched, because she was so old and I loved her so: I could not bear that she should be frightened. You should have seen her when she found that she was safe. The stiff old limbs became supple and the terrified countenance full of joy, and the dear ridiculous old thing threw her arms up in the air, and laughed and cried, and shouted, and praised God, and knocked off her turban, and burst open her apron-strings, and refused to be quieted till the doctor ordered her to be removed from the scene of action. The idea of retiring to the seclusion of her cabin while all this was going on was simply preposterous, and Mammy at once exhibited the soothing effect of the suggestion; so the play proceeded.

More white powders. Then Apollo's turned black, and, poor fellow! when it did so, he might have been a god or a demon, or anything else you never saw, for his face looked little like that of a human being, giving you the impression only of wildly-rolling eyeballs, and great white teeth glistening in a ghastly, feeble, almost idiotic grin.

Edward went up to him and laid his hand on his shoulder: "That's all right, my boy. We'll have you straight in no time, and you will be the best man at the shucking to-morrow night."

More white powders. Then came Wash, great big Wash; and when his powder changed, what do you suppose he did? Well, he just fainted outright.

The remaining powders retaining their color, and Wash having been restored to consciousness, Dr. Rutherford directed him to a clump of chinquapin bushes near the "big gate" at the entrance of the plantation. There he would find a flat stone. Beneath this stone he would find thirteen grains of moulding corn and some goat's hair. These he was to bring back with him. Under the first rail near the same gate Mercy would find: a dead frog with its eyes torn out, and across the road in the hollow of a stump Apollo was to look for a muskrat's tail and a weasel's paw. They went off reluctantly, the entire _corps de plantation_ following, and soon they all came scampering back, trampling down the ox-eyed daisies and jamming each other against the corners of the rail fence, for, sure enough, the witch's treasures had been found, but not a soul had dared to touch them. Dr. Rutherford sternly ordered them back, but all hands hung fire, and their countenances evinced resistance of such a stubborn character that Edward at length volunteered to go with them. Then it was all right, and presently returned the most laughable procession that was ever seen--Wash with his arms at right angles, bearing his grains of moulding grain on a burdock leaf which he held at as great a distance as the size of the leaf and the length of his arms would admit, his neck craned out and his eyes so glued to the uncanny corn that he stumbled over every stick and stone that lay in his path; Mercy next, with ludicrous solemnity, bearing her unsightly burden on the end of a corn-stalk; Apollo last, his weasel's paw and muskrat's tail deposited in the toe of an old brogan which he had found by the roadside, brown and wrinkled and stiff, with a hole in the side and the ears curled back, and which he had hung by the heel to a long crooked stick. On they came, the crowd around them following at irregular distances, surging back and forth, advancing or retreating as they were urged by curiosity or repelled by fear.

It was now getting dark, so Dr. Rutherford, having had the table removed, brought forth three large plates filled with different colored powders. On one he placed Mercy's frog, on another Wash's corn, and on the third the muskrat's tail and weasel's paw taken from Apollo's shoe. Then we all waited in silence while with his hands behind him he strode solemnly back and forth in front of the three plates. At length the bees had ceased to hum; the cattle had come home of themselves, and could be heard lowing in the distance; the many shadows had deepened into one; twilight had faded and darkness come. Then he stood still: "I am the great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston! I will now set fire to these witch's eggs, and if they burn the flames will scorch her. She will scream and fly away, and it will be a hundred years before another witch appears in this part of the country."

He applied a match to Apollo's plate and immediately the whole place was illuminated by a pale blue glare which fell with ghastly effect on the awestricken countenances around, while in the distance, apparently near the "big gate," arose a succession of the most frightful shrieks ever heard or imagined. Then the torch was applied to Mercy's frog, and forthwith every nook and corner, every leaf and every blade of grass was bathed in a flood of blood-red light, while the cries grew, if possible, louder and fiercer. Then came Wash's corn, which burned with a poisonous green glare, and lashed its sickly light over the house and yard and the crowd of black faces; and hardly had this died away when from the direction of the big gate there slowly ascended what appeared to be a blood-red ball.

"There she goes!" said the great Dr. Rutherford, and we all stood gazing up into the heavens, till at length the thing burst into flames, the sparks died away and no more was to be seen.

"Now, that is the last of her!" impressively announced the witch-doctor of Boston; "and neither she nor her sisters will dare come to this country again for the next hundred years. You can all make your minds easy about witches."

Then came triumph instead of dread, and scorn took the place of fear. There arose a succession of shouts and cheers, laughter and jeers. They patted their knees and shuffled their feet and wagged their heads in derision.

"Hyar! hyar! old gal! Done burnt up, is you? Take keer whar you lay yo' aigs arfer dis!" advised William Wirt in a loud voice.--"Go 'long, pizen sass!" said Martha. "You done lay yo' las' aig, you is!"--"Hooray tag-rag!" shouted Chesterfield.--"Histe yo' heels, ole Mrs. Satan," cried one.--"You ain't no better'n a free nigger!" said another.--"Yo' wheel done skotch for good, ole skeer-face! hyar! hyar! You better not come foolin' 'long o' Mas' Ned's niggers no mo'!"

The next night was a gala one, and a merrier set of negroes never sang at a corn-shucking, nor did a jollier leader than Wash ever tread the pile, while Mercy sat on a throne of shucks receiving Sambo's homage, and, unmolested by fear, coyly held a corncob between her teeth as she hung her head and bashfully consented that he should come next day to "ax Mas' Ned de liberty of de plantashun."

"But, Edward," said I, "why did those three powders turn black?"

"Because they were calomel, my dear, and it was lime-water that was poured on them," said Mr. Smith.

"Well, but why did not the others turn black too?"

"Because the others were tartarized antimony."

"Where did you get what was in the plates, that made the lights, you know?"

"Rutherford had the material. He is going to settle in a small country town, so he provided himself with all sorts of drugs and chemicals before he left Philadelphia."

"But, Edward," persisted I, putting my hand over his book to make him stop reading, "how came those things where they were found? and the balloon to ascend just at the proper moment? and who or what was it screaming so? Neither you nor Dr. Rutherford had left the yard except to go into the house."

"No, my dear; but you remember Dick Kirby came over just after dinner, and he would not ask any better fun than to fix all that."

"Humph!" said I, "men are not so stupid, after all."

Edward looked more amused than flattered, which shows how conceited men are.

JENNIE WOODVILLE.

ON THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

The last thing which the student learns, the last thing which the world, that universal student, comprehends, is how to study. It is only after our little store of facts has been laboriously accumulated, after we have tried path after path that promised to take us by an easy way up the Hill Difficulty, and have abandoned each in turn,--it is only when we have attained a point somewhere near the top, that we can look down and see the way we should have come, the one road that avoided unnecessary steepness and needless windings, and led by the quickest and easiest direction to the summit. The knowledge that we have thus gained, however late to profit by it ourselves, should at least be valuable to others. But, unfortunately, as Balzac has said, experience is an article that no one will use at second hand. When the great teachers of the world, who have been its most patient scholars, shall go to work to teach us how to study, and when we are content to learn, then we shall all be in a fair way to become sages.

But, in the mean time, there are two things we must apprehend--truisms both of them, but, like all truisms, better known theoretically than practically. The first is, that we must not use a microscope if we want to study the stars; and the second is, that we must beware of having a fly between the lenses of our telescope, unless we wish to discover a monster in the moon. If a discriminating public would not consider it an insult, one might add, in the third place, that it is useless to look for lunar rainbows in the daytime.

It is true that all this sounds like child's play, but it is astonishing how many of our Shakespearian critics commit one or all of these faults. Forgetting entirely that criticism demands common sense, impartial judgment, intense sympathy, a total absence of prejudice, and a great deal of general information, they bring to their task minds deeply tinctured with preconceived systems of truth, goodness and beauty, upon whose Procrustean bed the unfortunate poet must be stretched; while, as if ignorant of the history of thought, they judge the productions of another age and another atmosphere by the canons of criticism that hold good to-day among ourselves. Not only this, but they snuff enigmas in every line, and scent abstruse theories behind the simplest statement. They take up passages of Shakespeare whose obvious meaning any person of average intelligence can understand, and turn and twist them into such intricate doublings that they cannot undo their own puzzle. They attack his poetry as if it were a second Rosetta Stone, or as if it had to be read, like the lines in a Hebrew book, backward. They study him in the spirit of the fool, who, being given a book upside down, stood on his head to read it--a position naturally confusing to the intellect.

Nor is it only in their methods of investigation that many of our Shakespearian critics are at fault. Their fondness for rearing vast temples of possibilities upon small corner-stones of fact is proverbial. We know that Shakespeare went to London, where he both wrote and acted plays, and upon this slender basis you may find, in almost any of his commentators, such added items of biography as this sentence from Heraud's book upon Shakespeare's _Inner Life:_ "That he had a house in Southwark, that his brother Edmund lived with him, and that his wife was his frequent companion in London, are all exceedingly probable suppositions." So they may be to Mr. Heraud's mind, but the next biographer shall form a totally different set of "exceedingly probable suppositions" equally satisfactory to himself. The same critic says that when Shakespeare, in his Sonnets, spoke of "a black beauty" (a phrase universally used to express a brunette as late even as the age of Queen Anne), the poet had his Bible open at Solomon's Song, and meant the Bride "who is black but comely;" in other words, the Reformed Church. Mr. Page, the artist, finds in the Chandos portrait, after it has been cleaned and scraped, and upon the photographs of the German mask, a certain mark which he thinks the indication of a scar. Two gentlemen, one an artist, who have seen the mask itself, assure him that they find his scar to be merely a slight abrasion or discoloration of the plaster; but Mr. Page, secure in his position, quotes Sonnet 112,

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,

and triumphantly asks, "If that doesn't refer to the scar, what does it refer to?"

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have been quite too much neglected by the lovers of his plays, and Stevens said that the strongest act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service. Two classes of minds, however, have always pondered over them--the poets, who could not fail to appreciate their wonderful power and beauty, and the psychologists, who have found in them an ample field for speculation. The variety and extent of the theories of these latter gentlemen can only be rivaled by the feat of the camel-evolving German. Indeed, it is the true German school of thought to which these speculations belong, and it is but just that to a genuine Teuton belongs the honor of the most extraordinary solution of the mystery yet given. It would take too long to sum up all the theories that have been broached upon the subject, but two or three will do as an example. Without stopping to dwell upon the ideas of M. Philarète Chasles, or of Gen. Hitchcock, who believes the Sonnets to be addressed to the Ideal Beauty, we will pass on to the book of Mr. Henry Browne, published in London in 1870. His idea is that the Sonnets are dedicated to William Herbert, afterward earl of Pembroke, and are intended chiefly as a parody upon the reigning fashion of mistress-sonneting and upon the sonneteers of the day, especially Davies and Drayton; that they also contain much which is valuable in the way of autobiography, and that "the key to the whole mystery lies in _Shakespeare's_ conceit (_i. e_., Mr. Browne's conceit) of the union of his friend and his Muse by marriage of verse and mind; by which means, and for which favor, his youth and beauty are immortalized, but which theme does not fully commence till the friend had declined the invitation to marriage, which refusal begets the mystic melody." Mr. Browne graciously accepts the Sonnets in their order, and professes to be unable to name the real mistress of Herbert, though he considers Lady Penelope Rich to be the object of their allegorical satire.

Mr. Heraud also accepts the order of the Sonnets as correct. His book contains an article on the Sonnets published by him in _Temple Bar_ for April, 1862, the result, he declares (and far be it from us to dispute it), of pure induction. He has evolved the theory that Shakespeare in writing against celibacy had in view the practice of the Roman Catholic Church; that the friend whom he apostrophizes was the Ideal Man, the universal humanity, who gradually develops into the Divine Ideal, and becomes a Messiah, while the Woman is the Church, the "black but comely bride" of Solomon. "Shakespeare found himself between two loves--the celibate Church on the one hand, that deified herself, and the Reformed Church on the other, that eschewed Mariolatry and restored worship to its proper object.... Thus, Shakespeare parabolically opposed the Mariolatry of his time to the purer devotion of the word of God, which it was the mission of his age to inaugurate."

This is pretty well for a flight of inductive genius, but it is quite surpassed by the soaring Teutonic mind before mentioned, who, in the words of the reflective Breitmann,

Dinks so deeply
As only Deutschers can.

This mighty philosopher, of whom Mr. Heraud speaks with becoming reverence, is Herr Barnstorff, who published a book in 1862 to prove that the "W.H." of the dedication means _William Himself_, and that the Sonnets are apostrophes to Shakespeare's Interior Individuality! Mr. Heraud thinks this idea is rather too German, but, after all, not so very far out of the way, for in Sonnet 42 the poet certainly declares that his Ideal Man is simply his Objective Self.[009] For, as Mr. Heraud beautifully and lucidly remarks, "the Many, how multitudinous soever, are yet properly but the reflex of the One, and the sum of both is the Universe." And herein, according to Mr. Heraud, we find the key to the mystery.

In 1866, Mr. Gerald Massey published a large volume on the same subject, with the somewhat pretentious title. _Shakespeare's Sonnets, never before interpreted; his private friends identified; together with a recovered likeness of himself_. The first chapter contains a summary of the opinions of Coleridge, Wordsworth and others upon the Sonnets; a notice of the theory of Bright and Boaden (_Gentleman's Magazine_, 1832), afterward confirmed by a book written by Charles Armitage Brown (1838); the theories of Hunter, Hallam, Dyce, Mrs. Jameson, M. Chasles, Ulrici, Gervinus and many others (most of them, by the way, confirming the theory originated by Boaden and Bright); and having thus gone over the work of twenty-five _named_ authors, and a space of time extending from 1817 to 1866, Mr. Massey begins his second chapter by saying that as yet there has never been any genuine attempt to interpret the Sonnets, "nothing having been done except a little surface-work." Mr. C. Armitage Brown in particular (who, by the way, must not be confounded with Mr. _Henry Browne_) appears to be Mr. Massey's special aversion. The very name of Brown irritates him as scarlet does an excitable bull. Armitage Brown was the intimate friend of Keats and Landor, and, Severn says, was considered to know more about the Sonnets than any man then living, while the "personal theory," as Mr. Massey styles it, has had a far larger number of supporters than any other. Unfortunately, the opinions of others have not the slightest weight with Mr. Massey, and words are too weak to express his scorn of this theory and its supporters. Mr. Brown wraps things in a winding sheet of witless words (delicious alliteration!); he leaves the subject dark and dubious as ever; his theory has only served to trouble deep waters, and make them so muddy that it is impossible to see to the bottom; in short, Mr. Brown and his fellow thinkers, in the opinion of Mr. Massey, are arch-deceivers and audacious misinterpreters, and have no more idea of what Shakespeare meant than they have of telling the truth about it. Why Mr. Massey should have worked himself into a passion before he began to write is a mystery darker than any he attempts to solve, but the intemperate, bitter and self-conceited tone of the whole book is alone an immense injury to its critical value.

In constructing his elaborate theory of the Sonnets, Mr. Massey has committed many grave offences against the rules of criticism. He has gone to his work with the strongest possible prejudices; he has begun it with certain preconceived ideas of what Shakespeare meant to write; he has found it necessary to destroy entirely the order of the poems, and to rearrange them, even sometimes to alter the text, to fit his own notions; and he has carried his investigations into such puerile and minute twistings of the text as can only be paralleled by Mr. Page's quotation in support of his scar. For instance, in Sonnet 78 occur these lines:

Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
Have added feathers to the learned's wing
And given grace a double majesty.

Mr. Massey thinks that in this quatrain (which the vulgar mind would accept as it stands, nor expect to treat as other than figurative) Shakespeare was passing in review the writers under the patronage of the earl of Southampton, to whom the sonnet is addressed, and that he can identify the four personifications! Shakespeare of course is the Dumb taught to sing by the favor of the earl; resolute John Florio, the translator of Montaigne, is Heavy Ignorance; Tom Nash is the Learned, who has had feathers added to his wing; and Marlowe is the Grace to whom is given a double majesty! Marlowe's chief characteristic was majesty, says Mr. Massey; therefore, we suppose, he is spoken of as _grace_. The rest of his "exquisite reasons" may be found at pages 134-143 of the book.

This is nothing, however, to the feats of which Mr. Massey's subtlety is capable. Sonnet 38 begins:

How can my Muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?

That is, kindly explains Mr. Massey--lest we should be tempted to accept the obvious meaning of the lines, that the poet could not want a subject while his friend lived, whose worth was too great for every ordinary writing to celebrate fitly--"that is, the new subject of the earl's suggesting and the new form of the earl's inventing are too choice to be committed to _common paper_; which means that Shakespeare had until then written his personal sonnets on slips of paper provided by himself, and now the excelling argument of the earl's love is to be written in Southampton's own book"! Perhaps it means that Shakespeare had taken to gilt-edged, hot-pressed, double-scented Bath note.

Mr. Massey's ingenuity in getting over a difficulty is as great as his faculty of construction. Having assumed Lady Rich (that Stella whose golden hair makes half the glory of Sidney's verse) to be the "black beauty" of the Sonnets, he finds that Sonnet 130 perversely says, "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head"--a bit of evidence that would seem to upset this theory. But Mr. Massey is not to be put down so easily. This is ironical, he says in effect; Shakespeare did not mean this; "it is a bit of malicious subtlety to call the lady's hair black wires, which was so often besung as golden hair; and _she had been so vain of its mellow splendor!_ ... And there is the '_if_' to be considered--'much virtue in an _if'!_--'_If_ hairs be wires,' says the speaker, 'black wires grow on her head!' So that the 'black' is only used conditionally, and the fact remains that 'hairs' are _not_ 'wires.'" If we are to interpret Shakespeare in this manner, where is such foolery to cease?

To sum up the principal facts of Mr. Massey's elaborate theory in a few words, we find that he considers the Sonnets to be dedicated to William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, as "their only begetter" (or obtainer) for the publisher, Mr. Thomas Thorpe; that they consist properly of two series, the first written for Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, the second for the earl of Pembroke; that they begin with the poet's advice to Southampton to marry; that when the earl fell in love with Elizabeth Vernon, he suggested a new argument (see Sonnet 38), wherein is no such thing as a _new_ argument, by the way; and that then the poet begins to write love-poems in the person of his friend. This continues up to the year 1603, when the earl of Southampton was released from prison, the dramatic sonnets being interspersed with personal ones. These dramatic sonnets also include sonnets written for Elizabeth Vernon of and to Penelope Lady Rich, of whom she is supposed to be jealous; sonnets from Southampton to herself upon the lovers' quarrel, and the desperate flirtation of Elizabeth Vernon to punish her lover (which Mr. Massey says ensued upon this jealousy); together with various other sonnets between them, and upon the earl's varying fortunes, his marriage, imprisonment, etc., which make up the first series. The second series are love-poems written for William Herbert, and addressed to Lady Rich, who is supposed by Mr. Massey to be the "black beauty" (or brunette) of the closing sonnets, although it is well known that Lady Rich was a golden blonde, with nothing dark about her but her black eyes. To make out this complicated story, Mr. Massey arranges the Sonnets in groups to suit his fancy, baptizes them as he chooses, and does not scruple to vilify the fair name of man or woman in order to make out his argument and to defend the spotless purity of Shakespeare's moral character.

_Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems_, by Charles Armitage Brown (1838), is the book which more than all others on the subject seems to have excited Mr. Massey's indignation, chiefly because it is the leading advocate of "the personal theory"--that is, the autobiographical and non-dramatic character of the poems. This implies an acceptance of the statement clearly made in the Sonnets of Shakespeare's infidelity to his wife; and this Mr. Massey pronounces an outrageous and unwarranted slander. But in order to leave the name of Shakespeare pure from any stain of mortal imperfection, Mr. Massey arranges a dramatic intention for the Sonnets which involves, with more or less of light or evil conduct, no less than four other names--the earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon (daughter of Sir John Vernon), whom he afterward married; William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and Lady Rich, for whom Mr. Massey finds no words too abusive, and whom he considers the "worser spirit" of the later Sonnets. The history of this lady is sufficiently well known, and, so far as I can ascertain, there is no historical warrant for supposing her to have been the mistress of Herbert, or the beguiler of Southampton into such a lapse of duty to his beloved Elizabeth Vernon as should inspire the expressions of Sonnets 134, 133, 144, which Mr. Massey says are written in the person of this lady to Lady Rich. Lady Penelope Devereux, sister of Essex, was born in 1563, and her father, who died when she was but thirteen, expressed a desire that she should be married to Sir Philip Sidney. For some unknown reason the intended match was broken off, and the fair Penelope, who is described as "a lady in whom lodged all attractive graces of beauty, wit and sweetness of behavior which might render her the absolute mistress of all eyes and hearts," was married in 1580 to Lord Rich, a man whom she detested. Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_, a series of one hundred and eight sonnets and poems addressed to Lady Rich, and celebrating the strength and the purity of their love for each other, was first printed in 1591. Sidney had died five years before, and so long as he lived, at least, no whisper had been breathed against Lady Rich. In 1600 we have the first notice of her losing the queen's favor from a suspicion of her infidelity to her husband, and in 1605, having been divorced, her lover, the earl of Devonshire, formerly Lord Mountjoy, immediately married her. He defended her in an eloquent _Discourse_ and an _Epistle to the King_, in which he says: "A lady of great birth and virtue, being in the power of her friends, was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after." Lord Rich treated her with great brutality, and having ceased to live with her for twelve years, "did by persuasions and threatenings move her to consent unto a divorce, and to confess a fault with a nameless stranger." In spite of Mountjoy's noble pleadings for his wife, the whole court rose up against his marriage. The earl's sensitive heart was broken by the disgrace he had brought upon one whom he had loved so dearly and so long (for he was Sidney's rival in his early youth, and had been rejected by Lady Penelope's family before her marriage with Lord Rich), and he died of grief four months after their marriage, April 3, 1606. His countess, "worn out with lamentation," did not long survive him.

Does that look like the conduct of a light and fickle heart? or was it likely that so noble a man as Charles Mountjoy would have died of grief for the disgrace he had brought upon a notoriously bad woman? As to Lord Southampton's alleged flirtation with Lady Rich, which so excited Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy, Mr. Massey has not one circumstance in proof of it but the forced interpretation he chooses to put upon certain lines of certain sonnets which he has wrested from their proper places, as well as their proper meaning. After using such sonnets as the 144th to express this jealousy, he quietly confesses at the end of the chapter that it could not have gone very deep, as the intimacy of the two fair cousins (for such was their relationship) continued to be of the closest--that it was to Lady Rich's house that Elizabeth Vernon retired after her secret marriage to the earl in 1598, and there her baby was born, named Penelope after her cousin and friend! There was only matter enough in it for poetry, Mr. Massey concludes after having upset the whole order of the Sonnets to prove its reality.

Now, as to the story of Lady Rich's having been the mistress of Herbert, for whom Mr. Massey says that twenty-four of the Sonnets were written. William Herbert, afterward earl of Pembroke, was born in 1580. He came up to London in 1598, being then eighteen years of age, and made the acquaintance of Shakespeare, who was then thirty-four years old. Lady Rich, at that time, according to Mr. Massey's own statement, was "getting on for forty." The fact is that she was just thirty-five, having been born, as he tells us, in 1563. According to the obvious meaning of the Sonnets, the lady spoken of is much younger than Shakespeare, instead of a year older, and, according to Mr. Massey, Lady Rich was at that time (1597) in the midst of her love-affair with Mountjoy. The lady of the Sonnets, if we take them literally, could have borne no such high position as Lady Rich: she seems to have been neither remarkably beautiful and high-bred, nor virtuous, and was evidently a married woman of no reputation. (_Sonnets_ 150, 152.)

It is impossible to bring up separately, in a single article, the items contained in a volume of 603 pages, so we must be content to leave Mr. Massey's theory with these meagre allusions to its principal statements, and pass on to that of Mr. Charles Armitage Brown. Upholding the opinion that the Sonnets are autobiographical, he maintains that they are in reality not sonnets, but poems in the sonnet stanza, there being but three sonnets, properly so called, in the series. The poems are six in number, terminating each with an appropriate _envoi_, and are addressed, the first five to the poet's friend, "W.H.," and the sixth to his mistress. That friend must have been very young, very handsome, of high birth and fortune; and to all this the description of William Herbert exactly answers. The divisions made by Mr. Brown are as follows: First poem, 1 to 26--to his friend, persuading him to marry. Second poem, 27 to 55--to his friend, who had robbed the poet of his mistress, forgiving him. Third poem, 56 to 77--to his friend, complaining of his coldness, and warning him of life's decay. Fourth poem, 78 to 101--to his friend, complaining that he prefers another poet's praises, and reproving him for faults that may injure his character. Fifth poem, 102 to 126--to his friend, excusing himself for having been some time silent, and disclaiming the charge of inconstancy. Sixth poem, 127 to 152--to his mistress, on her infidelity. In this last poem, says Mr. Brown, we find the whole tenor to be "hate of my sin grounded on sinful loving." However the poet may waver, and for the moment seem to return to his former thralldom, indignation at the faithlessness of his mistress and at her having been, through treachery, the cause of his estrangement from a friend, at the last completely conquers his sinful loving. "For myself," continues Mr. Brown, "I confess I have not the heart to blame him at all, purely because he so keenly reproaches himself for his own sin and folly. Fascinated as he was, he did not, like other poets similarly guilty, directly or by implication obtrude his own passions on the world as reasonable laws. Had such been the case, he might have merited our censure, possibly our contempt."

Having thus glanced over the work of the principal commentators upon the Sonnets, let us try the simple plan of reading them as we read Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, for instance, or the _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, by Mrs. Browning. In Mr. R.G. White's admirable edition of Shakespeare he confesses that he has no opinion upon the subject: "Mr. Thomas Thorpe appears in his dedication as the Sphinx of literature, and thus far he has not met his Oedipus." But herein have we not the main difficulty stated? The first great error committed by almost all students of the Sonnets, if we may be pardoned the opinion, is to take it for granted that they are a mystery whose key is lost. Just so long as the Sonnets are considered as a species of enigma they will be misunderstood and misinterpreted. It was not Shakespeare's habit to talk in riddles or to propound psychological problems: of all poets except Chaucer he is the most simple, direct and straightforward.

We have in the _Amoretti_ of Spenser, and in the _Astrophel and Stella_ of Sir Philip Sidney, admirable examples of autobiographical poems written mostly in sonnet stanza, of irregular and varied construction and subject, although the general theme is the same. Surely we may bring to the study of Shakespeare's poems the same simple method used in reading these. Poets of his own day, and using in their highest flights the form which was Shakespeare's familiar relaxation, nobody has tried to ascribe to Sidney and Spenser metaphysical mysteries and psychological conceits. Let us hope that some day this mistaken idolatry of Shakespeare, which besmokes his shrine with concealing clouds of incense, will be done away with, and that we shall be allowed to behold the simple truth, which never suffers in his case for being naked.

In his 76th Sonnet, Shakespeare says,

Why write I still all one, ever the same.
And keep invention in a noted weed,
_That every word doth almost tell my name_,
_Showing their birth and whence they did proceed_?
Oh know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument.

With this explicit declaration of Shakespeare, the general character of the poems, and the similar writings of his friends and contemporaries, we can but consider the Sonnets as autobiographical poems, written during a period of time beginning certainly as early as 1598 (when Meres speaks of Shakespeare's having written sonnets), and ceasing some time before their first publication in 1609. In the same way were written the poems composing Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, which, although dedicated to "A.H.H.," close with a long poem addressed to the poet's sister.

The first and principal series of the Sonnets (divided from the second in many editions of Shakespeare by a mark of separation) is clearly addressed to a male friend. The extremely lover-like use of language by which they are characterized was a common trait of the age; and here again we see the necessity of thoroughly understanding the atmosphere that Shakespeare breathed. To us, with our frigid vocabulary of friendship, such a style sounds unnatural, and undignified perhaps: with the Elizabethans it was an every-day habit. Lilly, the author of _Euphues_, says in his _Endymion,_ "The love of men to women is a thing common and of course; the friendship of man to man, infinite and immortal." And indeed it is to the influence of the _Euphues_ that much of the poetic ardor of language characterizing the masculine friendship of the time was due. A man's beauty was as often the theme of verse as a woman's, and the endearing terms only associated by us with the conversation of lovers were used continually among men. The friends in Shakespeare's plays, as in all the other dramas and novels of the period, continually address each other as "sweet," and even "sweet love" and "beloved." Ben Jonson called himself the "lover" of Camden, and dedicated his eulogistic lines to "my beloved Mr. William Shakespeare." There is therefore no reason for considering the language of the first series of Sonnets as necessarily inapplicable to a masculine friend. The second series, beginning with the 127th Sonnet, is as evidently addressed, as Mr. Brown says, "to his mistress, on her infidelity;" and the Sonnets end with two upon "Cupid's Brand," admitted by all to be separate poems, and wrongfully tacked on to the Sonnets proper.

Taking it for granted, then, from this very literal survey of the text, that the Sonnets are autobiographical, we find their study divided into two branches: (1) the story that the poems themselves tell by the most simple and direct statements; and (2) the conjectural explanation of the personages of that story, involving a careful historical comparison of names and dates, but amounting, after all is said that can be said, simply to conjecture, incapable of direct proof. The first part is to the real lover of Shakespeare and of poetry the only important one; the second concerns that which is mortal and has passed away. The first implies a knowledge of the friendship and the love of Shakespeare; the second the discovery of the names of his friend, of the poet who was his rival in the praises of that friend, and of the mistress who was unworthy of them both; not to mention such other items concerning time and place as might be ascertained by a persevering antiquarian.

It is impossible, within less than a volume, to quote from the Sonnets very freely, therefore we shall be compelled to trust to the reader's recollection of them, assisted by an occasional reference; this explanation of them being simply a record of the impressions they have produced upon an unbiased mind reading them as one would read any other poetry of the same character.