248 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[September 1, 1887. 



Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse 



The bounteous largess given thee to give ! 

 Profitless usurer, why dost thou use 



So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live ? 

 For, having traffic with thyself alone. 



Thou of thyself thy sweet self doth deceive. 

 Then how, when nature calls thee to begone, 



What acceptable audit canst thou leave 1 

 Thy unus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee. 



Which, us'd, lives thy executor to be. 



I Here also the words " us'd " and "unus'd" are used in 

 their legal sense, as relating to the usance of money.] 



8o, again, only a little further on (and it is worth 

 noticing that these earlier sonnets were written when 

 Shakespeare was a very young man), we find the hope 

 expressed that " beauty held in lease" may " find no deter- 

 mination " : — 



Then you were 

 Yourself again, after }-ourself "s decease. 

 When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. 



And so, pas.sing on, we find again and again the terms 

 and phrases of law brought in so naturally and so correctly 

 that one might be tempted to say that Shakespeare's vocabu- 

 lary borrowed too much from legal phraseology, did one not 

 notice that scarcely any other subject can be named from 

 which he has not in like manner borrowed. But we also 

 find sonnets in which not casually, but evidently of set 

 purpose, legal imagery (if one may use such an expression) 

 is employed throughout. Consider, for instance, the follow- 

 ing (Sonnet 46), in which a case in equity is fairly tried, 

 though for poetic convenience the trial is called first a 

 •' war " : — 



Mine eye and heart are at a moital war, 



How to divide the conquest of thy sight ; 

 Mine eye my heart thy picture's right would har. 



My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. 

 My heart doth j>leiid that thou in him dost lie — 



(A closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes), 

 But the defendant doth that^^a deny. 



And says — in him the fair appearance lies. 

 To 'cide this title is impanelled 



A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart. 

 And by their verdict is determined 



The clear eye's moieti/ and the dear heart's part : 

 As thus — mine eye's due is thine outward part. 

 And my heart's right thine inward love of heart. 



Sonnet 87 is still more strikingly legal in tone, and should 

 be carefully studied by the believers in the Baconian theory 

 of Shakespeare's plays, as showing them at least that if legal 

 phraseology, correctly employed, proves Bacon the author 

 of the plays, it proves Bacon to be the author of the sonnets 

 also : and in that case the Baconians will have to explain 

 what Bacon meant by saying in the sonnets (written when 

 Bacon stood already before the world a model of sober 

 manhood devoted to most dignified employment) that he 

 had " made himself a motley to the view." The sonnet 

 runs — 



Farewell ! thou art too dear for my possessing. 

 And like enough thou know'st thy estimate ; 



The charter of thy worth gives thee rehasing ; 

 My bonds in thee are all determinate. 



For how do I hold thee but by thy granting 1 

 And for that riches where is my deserfing .' 



The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting. 

 And so my patent back again is sn-crring. 



Thyself thiu gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing, 

 Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking : 

 So thy great gift, upon misprision growing. 

 Comes homo again on hettevjudgment-mahiui/. 

 Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth Hatter, 

 In sleep a king, but waking, no such matter. 



In Sonnet 134 we not only note the use of many legal 

 phrases, but we also seem to recognise sonje suggestion of 



unpleasant recollections of those home difficulties which, as 

 we know% troubled Shakespeare's father. It runs ; — 

 So now have I confessed that he is thine, 

 And I myself am mortgaged to thy will, 

 Myself V\\ forfeit, so that other mine 



Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still ; 

 But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free. 



For thou art covetous and he is kind ; 

 He learn'd but surety-like, to n-rite for me. 



Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. 



The statute of thy beauty thou wilt t-eihe. 



Thou usurer, that put'st forth all to use. 



And sue a friend came debtor for my sake. 



So him I lose through my unkind abuse. 



Him have I lost : thou hast both him and me ; 

 He pays the whole, and yet am I not free. 



Surely, by the way, no one but Shakespeare could suc- 

 cessfully have brought into poetry such legal expressions as 

 " underwriting a bond," " taking benefit of the statute," to 

 say nothing of such legal terms as " mortgaged," " forfeit," 

 and " surety," here, and elsewhere in the sonnets, " de- 

 barred," "separable," "arrest,"* "bail," "vassalage," and the 

 like. To Shakespeai-e even law, medicine, and chemistry 

 had their poetical aspects. He who could find " tongues in 

 the trees, books in the running brooks, and sermons in 

 stones," could find also " good in everything." 



We may conveniently turn next to those chemical touches 

 in the plays which (because Lord Bacon dealt with 

 chemistry) have been regarded as suggesting that Shake- 

 speare was the great Lord Chancellor's alttr ego. Chemical 

 terms are as freely used as legal ones in the sonnets. In 

 sonnets five and six we have a striking example, because a 

 chemical process not seemingly poetical in itself is made 

 poetically useful in most ingenious fashion. The poet, after 

 speaking of beauty's winter, goes on to say : — 

 Then were not summer's distillation left, 

 A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass. 

 Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft. 



Nor it nor no remembrance what it was. 

 But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, 

 Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet, 

 Then let not winter's ragged band deface 



In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled ; 

 Mahe sweet .lome phial; treasure thou some place 

 With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-killed. 



Of the astronomy and astrology of his day Shakespeare 

 evidently had what was considered ample knowledge — the 

 Shakespeare of the sonnets had certainly the same ideas on 

 these subjects as the Shakespeare of the plays, though it 

 may here be frankly admitted that Bacon knew more than 

 either, especially in regard to technical terms. In Sonnet 14, 

 Shakespeare says : — 



Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck ; 



And yet methinks I have astronomy. 

 But not to tell of good or evil luck. 



Of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality; 

 Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, 



'Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind. 

 Or say with princes if it shall go well, 

 By oft predict that I in heaven find. 



It is evident Shakespeare rather doubted the trustworthi- 

 ness of the Raphaels and Zadkiels of his day. Yet had he 

 some faith in the influences of the heavenly bodies. For he 

 writes in Sonnet 15 : — 



When I consider everything that grows 

 Holds in perfection but a little moment. 



That this hug<j state presenteth naught but shows 

 Whereon the stars in secret influence comment. 



* It has been objected by some one, I forget whom, that only a 

 man of legal turn of mind would ever have made Hamlet saj* " this 

 fell sergeant. Death, is strict in his arrest." But in Sonnet 79, 

 Shakespeare, speaking of his own death, says ; — 

 When that fell arrest 

 Without all hail shall carry me away. 



