Shakespeare's Sonnets Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tion. But in connection with this preliminary view it is unnecessary to adduce further evidence. The burden of proof lies on those who object to the order in whi... more »ch the Sonnets were first printed. It is for them to show that the order thus given is not the right order. § 5. Poetical Merit.—As to the poetical merit of the Sonnets, a few remarks may not be out of place, though it is scarcely necessary that very much should be said; and the enumeration of single lines or phrases which excel in strength or beauty cannot be attempted. Some inequality with regard to poetical merit was of course inevitable. Moreover, the laudation of the youth addressed, and especially of his personal beauty, may seem sometimes overstrained,1 and perhaps, on a first perusal, a little monotonous. Of this fault, if such it be, the poet appears himself to have been conscious:— " Therefore my verse, to constancy eonfin'd, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,— Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords " (105). 76 also may be compared, where the poet speaks of his verse being " barren of new pride," and of his " writing still all one, ever the same." That there should be sometimes exhibited the tendency of the age to quaint conceits is not wonderful. Moreover, since Shakespeare is the author, we may expect to find highly metaphoric language and not infrequent obscurity. But there is also Shakespeare's exuberant strength, like "teeming autumn, big with rich increase." There is majesty and surpassing beauty. In majestic strength the Sonnet on sexual passion (129) must claim pre-eminence. 1 Compare some severe but not quite unjust remarks of Hallam (Liter...« less