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THE LYRIC POETRY OF EDWARD DE VERE
I
[135] Up to this point we have sought to rest our case upon the judgment of men of some authority in Elizabethan literature. Another step, however, requires to be taken in which there is distinctly new ground to be broken, and where, therefore, such external support can hardly be looked for. This decisive step is to bring the writings of Edward de Vere alongside the Shakespearean writings, in order to judge whether or not the former contain the natural seeds and clear promise of the latter. As this has never been done before, being indeed the special outcome of the particular researches upon which we are at present engaged, no outside authority is available; and, therefore, all we can hope to do is to submit such points for consideration as may give a lead in this new line of investigation, by which eventually, we believe, our case will either stand or fall.
So far as forms of versification are concerned De Vere presents just that rich variety which is so noticeable in Shakespeare; and almost all the forms he employs we find reproduced in the Shakespeare work. When his contemporary spoke of his excellence in "the rare devices of poetry" we recognize at once his affinity with the master poet, and the distinction between him and his rival Sidney, who headed a party, that brought ridicule upon themselves by attempts to set up artificial rules that would have fettered the development of our national poetry. Towards such tongue-tying of art by authority Oxford was instinctively antagonistic, and the rich variety of poetic forms, even in this small collection, is the natural result of the free play he [136] allowed to his genius. At the same time Oxford had his partialities, and the six-lined pentameter stanza, with rhymes as in "Venus and Adonis," was undoubtedly a favourite with him; since it appears in seven out of the twenty-two pieces that have been preserved. How great a favourite it was with "Shakespeare," has perhaps not been pointed out before. In addition to its employment for the first of the two long poems, we find it frequently used in his plays. "Romeo and Juliet" has two such stanzas: the play, in fact, ending with one of them. We find it also in "Love's Labour's Lost," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Taming of the Shrew," and "The Comedy of Errors." In "Richard II" it occurs worked into the text in such a way as easily to escape detection; the six lines beginning:
"But now the blood of twenty thousand men."
(Act III, s. 2.)As it is not the only case of this kind it is probable that it may be found in other plays not mentioned above. These plays, it will be observed, belong mainly to what is regarded as Shakespeare's early work.
This particular form of stanza we were tempted at one time to call the De Vere stanza; for although Chaucer has a six-lined stanza it is quite different from this. Spenser uses it in the first part of the "Shepherd's Calendar"; but De Vere's work in this form had been before the public for some years before the "Shepherd's Calendar" appeared. There is, however, one possible competitor for the honour; and the mention of his name will introduce an interesting little point which may have a bearing upon our argument. In Dr.Grosart's collection, the poet whose work immediately precedes that of De Vere is Thomas Lord Vaux, the representative of another old family whose ancestor, like De Vere's, had "come over with the Conqueror"; a family interesting to people in the North of England as having been [137] lords of Gilsland. Some doubt seems to exist as to whether the poet was really Thomas Lord Vaux, who was a generation older than Edward De Vere and who died in 1562, or his son William, who was De Vere's contemporary. It is possible that both father's and son's work appear mingled together in Dr. Grosart's collection, but the collector himself pronounces emphatically and exclusively in favour of the elder man. In this case the honour of inventing this particular stanza must belong to Thomas Lord Vaux unless an earlier poet should subsequently be found using it. What is of special interest is that this particular form of verse is not the only thing that De Vere appropriates from Lord Vaux. Although his own poetry is of quite a superior order to that of his aristocratic forerunner in verse making, a close comparison of the two sets of verses as they stand together in this important collection leaves little room for doubt that, when as a young man De Vere began to write poetry he was strongly under the influence of Lord Vaux' work, if he did not actually, as is natural to youth, take Lord Vaux as his model. Now, by a curious chance, the last poem in the "Vaux" collection, the poem therefore that immediately precedes the De Vere collection, is the identical song of Lord Vaux which "Shakespeare" adapts for the use of the gravedigger in "Hamlet." This may not have much weight as evidence. Nevertheless, if it can be maintained, as it reasonably may, that Edward de Vere in his earliest poetic efforts built upon foundations that Lord Vaux had laid, then the reappearance of an old song of Lord Vaux, in Shakespeare's supreme masterpiece, forty years after the death of the writer of the song, is certainly not without significance as part of our general argument.
Before leaving this question of the six-lined stanza we would point out that one feature common to the De Vere and the Shakespeare work is the appearance of single isolated stanzas. For example, the only stanza in "The Taming of the Shrew" is in this form; and no less than [138] three of the poems in De Vere's small collection are single stanzas of this kind. A fondness for other six-lined stanzas differing in small details from this one is also characteristic of both sets of work. It is curious, too, how often "Shakespeare," even in his blank verse, casts a speech or a thought into a set of six lines.
Turning now to the question of the theme or subject matter of De Vere's poetry, we find that whatever its surface appearance, its underlying interest is always, as in Shakespeare, human nature. In handling this theme figures of speech borrowed from the classics and taken for the most part from Ovid are as copious and are introduced as naturally as the ordinary words of his, mother-tongue, illuminating his thought as aptly as any homely simile. At the same time we find the same Shakespearean wealth of illustration drawn from the common objects about him: ordinary flowers; common materials like glass, crystal, amber, wax, sugar, gall and wine, and a host of other things; the deer, hawks, hounds; the mastiff, birds, worms, the bee, drone, honey, the stars, streams, hill, tower, cannon, and so on. All these images crowd his lines, not as themes in themselves, but as similes and metaphors for handling his central theme of human life and human nature.
So far as the natural disposition of the writer is concerned, it is fortunate for the name of Edward de Vere that we have these poems collected by Dr. Grosart and the letter included in the collection. The personality they reflect is perfectly in harmony with that which seems to peer through the writings of Shakespeare, though in many ways out of agreement with what Oxford is represented as being in several of the references to him with which we have met. There are traces undoubtedly of those defects which the sonnets disclose in "Shakespeare," but through it all there shines the spirit of an intensely affectionate nature, highly sensitive, and craving for tenderness and sympathy. He is a man [139] with faults, but stamped with reality and truth; honest even in his errors, making no pretence of being better than he was, and recalling frequently to our minds the lines in one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
"I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own."As one reads the poems and then recalls particular references to him one feels that injustice has somehow been done, and that a great work of rectification is urgently needed, quite apart from the question of Shakespearean authorship.
We shall now proceed to place side by side some passages from Edward de Vere's poetry and others from "Shakespeare's" writings which illustrate their correspondence either in mentality or literary style.
Beginning with the poem on "Women" already given in full, we note first of all its similarity to Shakespeare's work in the general characteristics of diction, succinctness, cohesion and unity; and also in the similes employed. The word "haggard," a wild or imperfectly trained hawk, is the word which naturally arrests the attention of the modern reader. Now "Shakespeare" uses it five times, and out of these no less than four are when he uses the word as a figure of speech in referring to fickleness or indiscipline in women. In "Othello" it is used identically as in the poem by De Vere, meaning a woman who "flies from man to man."
"If I do find her haggard,
Though that her jesses, were my dear heart strings,
I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind
To play at fortune" (III, 3).Even the sentiment and idea are exactly the same as in De Vere's poem:
"Like haggards wild they range,
These gentle birds that fly from man, [140]
Who would not scorn and shake them from the fist
And let them fly, fair fools, which way they list?"In the same poem he speaks of making a "disport" of "training them to our lure," which is quite suggestive of this from "The Taming of the Shrew" (IV. 1)
"For then she never looks upon her lure.
Another way I have to man my haggard,
To make her come and know her keeper's call."Again De Vere speaks of the subtle oaths, the fawning and flattering by which men "train them to their lure" in exactly the same vein as that in which Hero in "Much Ado" says (III. 1):
"Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing
Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.
I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock."In making this comparison we have not had before us a large number of instances out of which it was possible to select a few that happened to be similar. What we have in this instance is, as a matter of fact, a complete accordance at all points in the use of an unusual word and figure of speech. Indeed if we make a piece of patchwork of all the passages in Shakespeare in which the word "haggard" occurs we can virtually reconstruct De Vere's single poem on "Women." Such an agreement not only supports us in seeking to establish the general harmony of De Vere's work with Shakespeare's, but carries us beyond the immediate needs of our argument; for it constrains us to claim that either both sets of expressions are actually from the same pen, or "Shakespeare" pressed that licence to borrow, which was prevalent in his day, far beyond its legitimate limits. In our days we should not hesitate to describe such passages as glaring plagiarism, unless they happen to come from the same pen.
We shall take next some verses from a poem already [141] referred to in a passage quoted from the "Cambridge History of Literature." This is the "charming lyric" there mentioned, entitled "What Cunning can express?" and which appeared in "England's Helicon" in 1600 as "What Shepherd can express?" How these and others of Oxford's verses have escaped for so long the attention of the compilers of anthologies is one of the mysteries of literature.
"The Lily in the field
That glories in his white,
For pureness now must yield
And render up his right.
Heaven pictured in her face
Doth promise joy and grace.Fair Cynthia's silver light,
That beats on running streams,
Compares not with her white,
Whose hairs are all sunbeams.
So bright my Nymph doth shine,
As day unto my eyne.With this there is a red
Exceeds the Damaske-Rose,
Which in her cheeks is spread;
Whence every favour grows.
In sky there is no star
But she surmounts it far.When Phoebus from his bed
Of Thetis doth arise,
The morning blushing red
In fair Carnation wise,
He shows in my Nymph's face
As Queen of every grace.This pleasant Lily white,
This taint of roseate red,
This Cynthia's silver light,
This sweet fair Dea spred,
These sunbeams in mine eye,
These beauties make me die."This is the only poem in the De Vere collection in which the writer lingers tenderly and seriously on the beauty of [142] a woman's face; and in it, it will be observed, his whole treatment turns upon the contrast of white and red, the lily and the damask rose.
It is a striking fact then that the only poem of "Shakespeare's" in which he dwells at length in the same spirit upon the same theme is dominated by the identical contrast. This is the set of stanzas in which he deals with the, beauty of Lucrece (Stanzas 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11). Indeed, there is hardly a term used by De Vere in the poem quoted above which is not reproduced in these stanzas. Whilst drawing special attention to the red and white contrast, and to the general similarity in tone and delicacy of touch, we also put in italics a number of the subordinate outstanding words that appear in both poems.
Stanza 2.
"To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in the sky of his delight,
Where mortal stars as bright as heaven's beauties,
With pure aspects did him peculiar duties."Stanza 4.
"The morning's silver melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun."Stanza 6
"So rich a thing braving compare."Stanza 8.
"When beauty boasted blushes, in despite
Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white."Stanza 10.
"This heraldry in Lucrece's face was seen,
Argued by beauty's red and virtue's white
Of either colour was the other queen."Stanza 11.
"This silent war of lilies and of roses,
Which Tarquin view'd in her fair face's field."Stanza 11 brings to a close this poem on the beauty of Lucrece; but the conception which dominates it is [143] maintained throughout the work to which it belongs. It occurs in stanza 37:
"First red as roses that on lawn we lay,
Then white as lawn the roses took away."Stanza 56.
"Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under."Stanza 69.
"The colour of thy face,
That even for anger makes the lily pale,
And the red rose blush at her own disgrace."That all this belongs to the personality of "Shakespeare" himself will be seen from the following quotations from the sonnets:
"Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermillion of the rose."
(Sonnet 98.)"The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair.
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair,
A third, nor red nor white had stol'n of both."
(Sonnet 99.)"I have seen roses damask'd red and white.
(Sonnet 130.)It also appears in the play of "Coriolanus" (II. 1)
"Our veiled dames commit the, war of white and damask."
And in "Love's Labour's Lost" (I. 2):
"If she be made of white and red
Her faults will ne'er be known, etc.""A dangerous rhyme, my masters, against the reason of white and red."
In "Venus" this red and white contrast is mentioned no less than three times in the first thirteen stanzas.
[144] Finally we have this from "The Passionate Pilgrim," which bears more than one mark of Shakespearean or De Vere influence, if not of actual origin:
"Fair is my love but not so fair as fickle,
Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty,
Bright as a glass and yet as glass is, brittle.
Softer than wax, and yet as iron rusty;
A lily pale with damask dye to grace her,
None fairer nor none falser to deface her."This is not the place to discuss the mystery of Jaggard's piratical publication. We insert this particular stanza because, if it was not "Shakespeare's," it at any rate shows what was considered at that time to be characteristic of Shakespeare's work. It will be noticed that it is in the familiar "Venus" stanza; it turns upon the idea of feminine fickleness; it brings in the lily and damask contrast; at the same time the similes of glass and wax are distinctive of De Vere's work. Though the stanza contains figures and phrases suggestive of De Vere or Shakespeare, as a piece of versification it is quite inferior in several points. It looks rather like a piece of patchwork from De Vere's poems; and if this is what it really is, to have it put forward as Shakespeare's work suggests that Jaggard either knew or suspected that De Vere was "Shakespeare." In this connection it is interesting to note that the folio edition of Shakespeare, which was published just a generation later, was printed by some one with a different Christian name but with the same unusual surname of Jaggard. Sir Sidney Lee ascribes the printing to the same man, who had associated his son with the issue of the later work.
Returning to De Vere's verses the outstanding word is "damask," associated with the "damask rose." In the small collection of his poems this word occurs twice, and in Shakespeare the word occurs six times, one of which is of doubtful Shakespearean origin. On both of the occasions on which [145] De Vere uses the word it has reference to a woman's complexion, and in four out of the five times when "Shakespeare" uses the word it is used in precisely the same connection.
Before leaving this matter it will be well at this point to emphasize a principle which is vital to the argument contained in this chapter: namely, that we are not here primarily concerned with the mere piling up of parallel passages. What matters most of all is mental correspondence and the general unity of treatment which follows from it. Of this, the poem by De Vere, and the set of stanzas, from "Lucrece," form an excellent example to begin with. Here we have what are virtually two complete poems upon one theme, dominated by an identical conception, permeated by precisely the same spirit, illustrated by the same imagery and clothed in a remarkably similar vocabulary. Such a comparison, it hardly needs pointing out, stands on a totally different plane from the Baconian collations of words and phrases. The kind of criticisms which have quite justly been levelled at these mere text-gathering labours do not, we believe, apply to the main body of the comparisons treated in this chapter.
Turning now from such details of workmanship as have governed the above comparison we may now consider a more general matter: his treatment of the subject of Love. We find first of all in these early poems of De Vere's something very far removed from the conventional or weakly sentimental expressions of affection then in vogue. In some of Philip Sidney's early poetry this kind of thing becomes positively silly. In De Vere's work on the other hand we have a firmly knit personified treatment of Love in the abstract, the dominant notes of which are as unaffected as they are Shakespearean. There is, in particular, a set of lyrics highly praised by more than one writer, which are in the form of a dialogue with "Desire." The prominence of [146] this word and idea in the work of "Shakespeare" and of De Vere will receive special attention later: for the present we shall simply take a few lines from the latter as bearing upon the theme of Love:
"Is he god of peace or war?
What be his arms? What is his might?
His war is peace, his peace is war,
Each grief of his is but delight;
His bitter ball is sugared bliss.
What be his gifts? How doth he pay?
Sweet dreams in sleep, new thoughts in day.
Beholding eyes, in mind received.
* * *
What labours doth this god allow?
Sit still and muse to make a vow.
Their ladies if they true remain.
* * *
Why is he naked painted? Blind?
* * *
Though living long he is yet a child,
A god begot beguiled.
* * *
When wert thou born, Desire?
In pride and pomp of May.
* * *
What was thy meat and daily food?
Sad sighs, and great annoy.
* * *
What hadst thou then to drink?
Unfeigned lovers' tears.As part of our work is to represent the process of investigation, it may be worth while to indicate its operation in this instance. When the contents of De Vere's poem had become quite familiar as a result of repeated reading, the next step was to select the plays of "Shakespeare" in which we were most likely to find the substance of this poem deposited. Amongst these, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" naturally occupied a foremost place. After then, the reader has, in his turn, thoroughly familiarized himself with these lines let' him refer to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (I. 1) and begin reading from, "The course of true love [147] never did run smooth," continuing to the end of the scene and noticing specially such expressions as the following:
"True lovers have been ever cross'd."
* * *
"It is a customary cross
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears."
* * *
"By all the vows that ever men have broke
In number more than women ever spoke."
* * *
"We must starve our sight from lover's food."
* * *
"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind."
* * *
"Therefore, is winged Cupid painted blind."
* * *
"Therefore is Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled."As De Vere's lines are from lyrics on Desire it is interesting to note that the word "desire" occurs no less than three times in the part of the scene that precedes the lines we quote from "Shakespeare," whilst the idea of Desire presides over the whole scene. In both cases we have passing allusions to the skylark and the month of May, revealing not only a similar concatenation of ideas, but also of their associated words and figures of speech. Had the lines been culled from different parts of De Vere's work on the one hand, or from different parts of Shakespeare's on the other, their force would not have been the same. It is the unity of treatment in each case and a similarity extending to identical words and even rhymes ("Child" with "beguiled") which is so suggestive of a single mind at work in both cases: a theory strengthened by the absence of anything analogous in the work of contemporary poets.
This is further supported by the appearance of similar rhetorical forms in dealing with the same theme. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" we have the following:
Hernia. The more I hate the more he follows me.
Helena. The more I love the more he hateth me.[148] In another poem of De Vere's we have the following
"The more I followed one the more she fled away
As Daphne did, full long ago, Apollo's wishful prey.
The more my plaints I do resound the less she pities me."This idea of Love's contrariness runs right through the poem of De Vere's from which the last lines are quoted; and we might almost describe "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as a burlesque on the same idea. With the two passages just quoted in mind turn to Act II, scene 1, in the play, and read the encounter between Demetrius and Helena, where the former enters with the latter following him.
D. "Get thee gone and follow me no more. Do I not in plainest truth tell you I do not nor I cannot love you."
H. "And even for that do I love you the more. The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: only give me leave, unworthy as I am to follow you. Run when you will, the story shall be changed; Apollo runs and Daphne holds the chase."Here again it will be noticed we have an exact correspondence in conception, heightened by the introduction of Apollo and Daphne in both cases; and Demetrius's treatment of Helena's "plaints" is exactly described in De Vere's line:
"The more my plaints I do resound the less she pities me."
A most signal instance of the essential unity of the two sets of work we are now comparing, is presented in connection with this idea of "Desire." By far the longest of De Vere's poems, containing no less than nineteen stanzas, and representing nearly a quarter of the entire collection of his poetry, is on this theme: a theme which frequently reappears in the other three quarters.
As to its position in Shakespeare's works it will suffice to quote the following passage from Mr. Frank Harris's work on "The Man Shakespeare":
[149] "Shakespeare gave immortal expression to desire and its offspring, love, jealousy, etc. . . . Desire, in especial, has, inspired him with phrases more magically expressive even than those gasped out by panting Sappho."
In De Vere's work, again, Desire is personified just as we find it in stanzas 101 and 102 of Shakespeare's "Lucrece"; and the word "desire" ranks, for importance, in the vocabulary of the great dramas, with the word "will," to which, as Sir Sidney Lee points out, it was closely allied in Shakespeare's day. This single word, then, forms an important bridge between the two sets of writings; and, by itself, makes quite a significant addition to the evidence in support of a common authorship.
In a somewhat different strain is "Shakespeare's" treatment of Love in the dialogue between Valentine and Proteus in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." (I. 1):
"To be in love where scorn is bought with groans,
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment's mirth
With twenty watchful weary tedious nights.
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost why then a grievous labour won:
However, but a folly bought with wit
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.
. . . . . . As in the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.
. . . . . . By love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly . . .
Losing all the fair effects of future hopes.
* * *
But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee
That art a votary to Fond Desire?
* * *
Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,
War with good counsel, set the world at nought;
Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.Again we must ask the reader first of all to make himself thoroughly familiar with these lines, noticing the wit and folly paradoxes, wasted time, defeated hopes, and, [150] though last not least, the concluding rhyme. Now compare this with the following from two of De Vere's poems:
"My meaning is to work
What wonders love hath wrought;
Wherewith I muse why men of wit
Have love so dearly bought.""It's now a peace and then a sudden war,
A hope consumed before it is conceived.
At hand it fears; it menaceth afar;
And he that gains is most of all deceived.
Love whets the dullest wits, his plagues be such,
But makes the wise by pleasing dote as much."Love's a desire, which, for to wait a time,
Doth lose an age of years, and so doth pass
As, doth a shadow sever'd from his prime,
Seeming as though it were, yet never was.
Leaving behind nought but repentent thought
Of days ill spent on that which profits nought."Here again we have an exact correspondence short of mere transcription, even to the extent of an identical rhyme; whilst Valentine's raillery of his friend, that he had become "a votary to Fond Desire," is redolent of De Vere's verses on this theme, which finish with the words:
"Then Fond Desire farewell,
Thou art no mate for me,
I should be loath, methinks, to dwell,
With such a one as thee."As a final remark on the question of love, we shall merely point out, that if the reader wishes to have a summary of Edward de Vere's treatment of the subject, let him turn to Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" and read the first five of the last ten stanzas of the poem, in which Venus is prophesying the fate of love.
When the passages we have quoted are weighed carefully side by side, phrase by phrase and word by word, hardly any one will question the similarity of mind behind them, and most people, we believe, will agree that there are striking resemblances of expression. Exact repetition, of [151] course, is not to be looked for; for one of the astonishing features of "Shakespeare's" work is the freshness and constant variety maintained throughout so great a mass of writing. But, to the modest contention that one contains the possible germs of the other, few readers will have any difficulty in acceding. An intensified interest in De Vere's work will doubtless cause everything he has written to be subjected to a most careful scrutiny, and its comparison specially with the lyric work of Shakespeare with appropriate allowances for the differences between early and matured work will probably settle conclusively the claims we are now making on his behalf.
As reflecting the correspondence, alike in mental constitution and general literary style in another vein, take first of all the following three verses, each of which forms the opening stanza of a separate poem of De Vere's:
"Fain would I sing but fury makes me mad,
And rage hath sworn to seek revenge on wrong.
My mazed mind in malice is so set
As death shall daunt my deadly dolours long.
Patience perforce is such a pinching pain,
As die I will or suffer wrong again.""If care or skill could conquer vain desire,
Or reason's reins my strong affections stay,
There should my sighs to quiet breast retire,
And shun such sights as secret thoughts betray;
Uncomely love, which now lurks in my breast
Should cease, my grief by wisdom's power oppress'd.""Love is a discord and a strange divorce
Betwixt our sense and rest; by whose power,
As mad with reason we admit that force
Which wit or reason never may . . . . . " (word lost through an obvious misprint in Dr. Grosart's collection).We would draw attention first to the "double-barrelled alliterations" contained especially in the first of these stanzas - an artifice of Shakespeare's upon which writers have commented.
[152] We have quoted stanzas from three separate poems in order to show that the frame of mind they express - a restlessness of the emotional nature - was characteristic of the poet. Now take the sentiment and manner of expression represented by the three stanzas as a whole and compare them with the following passages from two of Shakespeare's sonnets (140 and 147)
1. "For if I should despair I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be."2. "My reason, the physician to my love,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve;
Desire is death, which, physic did except.
Past cure I am now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest.
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are
At random from the truth, vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright
Who are as black as hell and dark as night."We might safely challenge any one to find in the whole range of Elizabethan literature another instance of a poet expressing the same kind of thought and feeling in lines of the same distinctive quality as is represented by the two sets here presented for comparison. Unsupported by any other evidence they would justify a very strong ground of suspicion that Edward de Vere and "Shakespeare" were one and the same man. It is of first importance to keep in mind that the lines here quoted from "Shakespeare" are not extracted from a drama, but are from the most realistic of personal poetry. Even those who would deny an autobiographical significance to many of the sonnets admit the intensely realistic character of the particular group from which the above are taken. We have therefore, in each case, the simple and direct expression of the private mind of the poet in a vein so distinctive as to leave hardly any room for doubt that both are from one pen.