98 



the eternal remembrance of his muse. To presume that 

 he believed his sonnets alone entitled to this distinction, 

 is to presume such an absence of discrimination and 

 judgment in the poet as would be well nigh impossible, 

 if not absurd. It is scarcely less, to assume that they 

 were simulated expressions, and that the circuit of his 

 great soul was bounded in itself, and lacked, that last 

 infirmity of noble minds, ambition. 



On the evidence, then, of these verses from this sonnet 

 poem, which by their undoubted authenticity, and be- 

 cause they do not fall under the restrictions proper to th© 

 plays, I believe I am justified in using, I assume that it 

 is positively incorrect, and even ridiculous, to assert that 

 Shakspere was not sensible to considerations of fame. 

 There is no proof extant, but the negative one adverted 

 to, that he was so far exceptional to our common nature 

 as to lack that ordinary self-consciousness attendant on 

 all genius, perhaps on all intellect whatevei*. 



Next, the allusion in his dedication to the " Venus and 

 Adonis" as "being the first heir of his invention," to which, 

 however, very little attention need be attached. Mr. 

 Knight and Mi*. Brown have each explained this expres- 

 sion fully and reasonably. Shakspere may have written 

 nothing completely or entirely for the stage before this 

 poem, or he may have written it at a very early age, 

 though he published it many years after, when he found 

 a patron to whom to dedicate it. In either sense it 

 would have been the first heir of his invention ; and it is 

 not necessary therefore to assume that he considered his 

 dramas inferior to his poems, and in this deferred to the 

 prejudice of his age in its preference of this kind of compo- 

 sition. The fact of his not having written an entire play 

 at this date solves every difficulty. The third objection, 

 that he alloAved the issue of piratical and incorrect 

 editions of his plays without protest, which I may couple, 



