SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.
A New Study of the SOWiS of Shakespeare. By Parke Godwin. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. Gs. net.)—It is difficult to know what acertain type of writer would do without the perennial problem of Shake- speare's sonnets. Mr. Godwin in the volume before us offers yet another attempt at arranging these long-suffering poems and at extracting from them, or reading into them, a new meaning, In his preface he makes the usual attempt of the amateur criti to disarm criticism, by admitting beforehand to possible " mis- takes of detail" (i.e., misstatements of facts), but these are of a rather more serious nature than he seems to anticipate, for they argue complete unfamiliarity with the literature of the period. Thus within the first two pages we may note that the sonnet was introduced into English directly from the Italian, and not through the medium of French ; that the one poet selected as representing the sonneteers between Wyatt and Spenser, namely, Thomas Watson, has only left two specimens of the form ; and that before Shakespeare wrote the particular arrangement he adopted could in no sense be styled the " conventional " form. To select a few of the points that strike us as we proceed, we may mention that on p. 14 Mr. Godwin seems unaware of the date of Shakespeare's death, for he speaks of the second edition of the sonnets (1640) as appearing " within twenty years after his decease," while on p. 29 he implies that the " spurious plays " were added in the folio of 1685, whereas they had already appeared in that of 1664. He elsewhere makes the mistake of all unacquainted with the literary history of the time,--namely, of supposing that Shakespeare's supremacy, which is so clear to us now, was far more generally acknowledged among his contemporaries than was actually the case. But when he solemnly pronounces in favour of " Mr. W. H." standing for "Will Himself "—a conjecture which in his case has not even the poor merit of originality—we find it difficult to take his book seriously. However, his exposition, though sufficiently fantastic at times—the " begetting," of the early sonnets, is to refer to poems, not posterity ; a group of love sonnets are to be regarded as addressed to Anne Hathaway during courtship, and so on—is not by a long way the most unreasonable we have come across. We should perhaps be grateful that Mr. Godwin has given us neither tavern scandal nor mystic philosophy.
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