And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
Have added feathers to the learned's wing
And given grace a double majesty.
Mr. Massey thinks that in this quatrain (which the vulgar mind would accept as it stands, nor expect to treat as other than figurative) Shakespeare was passing in review the writers under the patronage of the earl of Southampton, to whom the sonnet is addressed, and that he can identify the four personifications! Shakespeare of course is the Dumb taught to sing by the favor of the earl; resolute John Florio, the translator of Montaigne, is Heavy Ignorance; Tom Nash is the Learned, who has had feathers added to his wing; and Marlowe is the Grace to whom is given a double majesty! Marlowe's chief characteristic was majesty, says Mr. Massey; therefore, we suppose, he is spoken of as grace. The rest of his "exquisite reasons" may be found at pages 134-143 of the book.
This is nothing, however, to the feats of which Mr. Massey's subtlety is capable. Sonnet 38 begins:
How can my Muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
That is, kindly explains Mr. Massey—lest we should be tempted to accept the obvious meaning of the lines, that the poet could not want a subject while his friend lived, whose worth was too great for every ordinary writing to celebrate fitly—"that is, the new subject of the earl's suggesting and the new form of the earl's inventing are too choice to be committed to common paper; which means that Shakespeare had until then written his personal sonnets on slips of paper provided by himself, and now the excelling argument of the earl's love is to be written in Southampton's own book"! Perhaps it means that Shakespeare had taken to gilt-edged, hot-pressed, double-scented Bath note.