—— "all alike my songs, and praises be
To one, of one, still such and ever so."
Son. 105.
It may be objected, that the opening and closing sonnet of the collection which we conceive to be exclusively devoted to Lord Southampton, admit neither of reconcilement with each other, nor with the hypothesis which we wish to establish. This discrepancy,
however, will altogether vanish, if we compare the import of these sonnets with that of two others of the same series.
It will be allowed that the expressions, "the world's fresh ornament," the "only herald to the gaudy spring," and the epithets "tender churl," in the first sonnet, may with great propriety be applied to a young nobleman of twenty-one, just entering on a public and splendid career; but, if it be true, that these sonnets were written at various times, between the years 1594 and 1609, how comes it, that in the hundred and twenty-sixth, the last addressed to his patron, he still uses an equally youthful designation, and terms him "my lovely boy," an appellation certainly not then adapted to His Lordship, who, in 1609, was in his thirty-sixth year?
That the sonnets were written at different periods, he tells us in an apology to his noble friend for not addressing him so frequently as he used to do at the commencement of their intimacy, assigning as a reason, that as he was now the theme of various other poets, such addresses must have lost their zest:
"Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,