May 14. 1833
Wilson — Shakspeare’s Sonnets — Love
Professor Wilson’s character of Charles Lamb in the last Blackwood, Twaddle on Tweed-side[1], is very sweet indeed, and gratified me much. It does honour to Wilson, to his head and his heart.
How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write what so often soothes and suspends my bodily miseries, and my mental conflicts! Yet what a waste, what a reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius, too, in his I know not how many years’ management of Blackwood! If Wilson cares for fame, for an enduring place and prominence in literature, he should now, I think, hold his hand, and say, as he well may,—
“Militavi non sine gloria:
Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hic paries habebit.”
Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine by himself would be very delightful. But he must not leave it for others to do; for some recasting and much condensation would be required; and literary executors make sad work in general with their testators’ brains.
I believe it possible that a man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object—an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In Elizabeth’s and James’s time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling; and perhaps we may account in some measure for it by considering how very inferior the women of that age, taken generally, were in education and accomplishment of mind to the men. Of course there were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher— the most popular dramatists that ever wrote for the English stage—will show us what sort of women it was generally pleasing to represent. Certainly the language of the two friends, Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the Arcadia, is such as we could not now use except to women; and in Cervantes the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in the novel of the Curious Impertinent. And I think there is a passage in the New Atlantis1 of Lord Bacon, in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feeling, but hints the extreme danger of entertaining it, or allowing it any place in a moral theory. I mention this with reference to Shakspeare’s sonnets, which have been supposed, by some, to be addressed to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom Clarendon calls2 the most beloved man of his age, though his licentiousness was equal to his virtues.
I doubt this. I do not think that Shakespeare, merely because he was an actor, would have thought it necessary to veil his emotions towards Pembroke under a disguise, though he might probably have done so, if the real object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It seems to me that the sonnets could only have come from a man deeply in love, and in love with a woman; and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, I take to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary sonnets form, in fact, a poem of so many stanzas of fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with a variety of expression,—continuous, if you regard the lover’s soul,—distinct, if you listen to him, as he heaves them sigh after sigh.
These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, are characterized by boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power teach more ease—praecipitandum liberum spiritum.
Every one who has been in love, knows that the passion is strongest, and the appetite weakest, in the absence of the beloved object, and that the reverse is the case in her presence.
Notes
1 “Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not Christopher forgive to genius and goodness! Even Lamb, bleating libels on his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their bower of rest.”
Some of Mr. Coleridge’s poems were first published with some of C. Lamb’s at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page have been aptly cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, p. 198.: “Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camcoenarum,—quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas.” And even so it came to pass after thirty seven years more had passed over their heads,—ED.
1 I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach to it seems to be:—“As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of any such chastity in any people as theirs.”—ED.
2 “William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and making, and of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age.” …….”He indulged to himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses.”—Hist. of the Rebellion, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication by T. T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to “the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H.” and Malone is inclined to think that William Hughes is meant. As to Mr. W. H. being the only begetter of these sonnets, it must be observed, that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed to a woman. I suppose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one conceived by Mr. C. to be a blind; but it seems to me that many others may be so construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet was a woman.—ED.