The Sonnet is as follows:
"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it."
Here, in the first place, it may be observed, that in his prose, as well as in his verse, our author uses the same amatory language; for
he opens the dedication to His Lordship with the assurance that his love for him is without end. In correspondence with this declaration, the sonnet commences with this remarkable expression,—Lord of my love; while the residue tells us, in exact conformity with the prose address, his high sense of His Lordship's merit and his own unworthiness.
That no doubt may remain of the meaning and direction of this peculiar phraseology, we shall bring forward a few lines from the 110th sonnet, which, uniting the language of both the passages just quoted, most incontrovertibly designates the sex, and, at the same time, we think, the individual to whom they are addressed:—