Thy general is my lover:"[62:A]
but it is to his Poems that we must refer for a complete and extensive proof of this perplexing ambiguity of diction, which will gradually unfold itself as we proceed to quote instances in support of Lord Southampton's being the subject of his muse.
That Shakspeare was, at the same time, attached by friendship, and by love; that, according to the fashion of his age, he employed the same epithet for both, though, in one instance, at least, he has accurately distinguished the sexes, positively appears from the opening stanza of a sonnet in the Passionate Pilgrim of 1599:—
"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman, coloured ill."[63:A]
That this better angel was Lord Southampton, and that to him was addressed the number of sonnets mentioned above, we shall now endeavour to substantiate.
Perhaps one of the most striking proofs of this position, is the hitherto unnoticed fact, that the language of the Dedication to the Rape of Lucrece, and that of part of the twenty-sixth sonnet, are almost precisely the same.
The Dedication runs thus:—"The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end;—The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would shew greater."