WISHETH.
THE. WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER. IN.
SETTING
FORTH.
For a dedication composed in the turgid fashion of nearly three hundred years ago, the above would seem to be peculiarly intelligible. All publications were ventures in those days. The printer might get His money back and he might not. But, until he did, he was an adventurer. So Mr. Thorpe, in setting forth on his adventure, wishes well to his publication and to some unknown patron whom he desires—as was the custom—to compliment with wishes of long life and happiness. At least this would seem to be the reading on the face of it. To be sure, there is a slight uncertainty as to whether "Mr. W. H." is dedicator or dedicatee. But the moment the name of Shakespeare appears this little trouble becomes insignificant—and, as usual, difficulties begin to crowd and multiply.
The title reads: "Shake-speares Sonnets never before imprinted: at London, by G. Eld, for T. T. And are to be sold by William Apsley. 1609."
At that name the commentators appear, and swarm like eagles around a carcass.
Mr. Armitage Brown, who flourished in or about the year 1838, and appears to have been the first gentleman who ever took the trouble to read them, has demonstrated * that these sonnets are actually six poems of different lengths **—each poem having a consistent theme and argument (and he made this discovery by the simple process of reading them).
* "Shakespeare's Autographical Poems, being his Sonnets
clearly developed," etc. By Charles Armitage Brown. London:
James Bohn, 1838.
** We find, however, that Coleridge had earlier advanced
the same theory.—Table Talk (Routledge's edition), p. 2071.