his own gratification than for that of his poet-friend. If he concealed his name because of their shameful revelations of his own character-as some assert-it would be much more reasonable to conclude that he would have suppressed them altogether, both for Shakspere's sake and his own;-both of them were married men, and socially amenable to reputation's laws. The present writer suggested William Hathaway, brother-in-law and namesake of the poet, born November 30, 1578, and Professor V. E. PhilareteChasles has proposed a new reading of the dedication, which Mr. Bolton Corney has accepted, which interprets the enigma thus :"Mr. W. H. wisheth to the only begetter of these sonnets all happiness, and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet," &c. Though this latter reading might be accepted, it would not invalidate our conjecture, though it would still leave the question open, Who was "the only begetter"?

The next question that arises in this connection is, Are the sonnets autobiographical? as C. A. Brown asserts, and many following him believe. Of course all poetry is more or less autobiographical, for it is the issue of the author's thought, experience, passion, observation, and life: the actuality of that particle of life which the poet works into his writings is seldom readily distinguishable, and in the writings of any one so specifically dramatic in the bent of his genius as Shakspere was, it must be far more difficult to find out. It is true that a large proportion of the sonnets are reflective and philosophical-surcharged, even to a degree, with conceitsand so differ vastly from his other writings. That, however, was the peculiarity of the sonnetteering of the age, and is perhaps characteristic of the best sonnets in any language. The painter and the analyst of passion are, however, in these poems almost as much combined as they are in his "Venus and Adonis," and "Lucreece;" while the selfsameness of many of the leading ideas with some of the best passages in these works and in his plays not only proves that they are the product of the same author's mind, but that they indicate some of the prevailing root-lying thoughts of the man. Thus far we hold with Wordsworth that, "with this key, Shakspere unlocked his heart;" but we fail to read in the sonnets that romance of a dark lady doubly forsworn, and of a noble poet writhing, yet rioting, in an unholy life, which some of the interpreters of Shakspere assert they see in them.

A priori, we should not expect a gentleman, however skilled,

"To cloak offences with a cunning brow,"

just on retiring into home-life in his own birth-town, to publish his own amorous intrigues, another's sin, his friend's disgrace, his wife's woe, and his children's disrepute. To find him glorying in his own shame thus would sink him fathoms deep in our esteem. Besides, such conduct could not but have left a residuum of tradition in his birthplace, and we should have been spared the pains of thinking out the poet's romance from his sonnets. Slanders are

well remembered in villages, especially if they refer to men of any mark in the place.

Back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes." But no tradition of such sin and sorrow, such impure life and agonized repentance, fills the village annals; it has to be spun out of the commentator's brains,

"Malicious censurers which ever,

As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow
That is new trimmed."

Sonnets 109 and 121 ought, in our judgment, to close this page of speculation for all time coming; and when we learn that "his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be buried in the same grave with him," we are certain that they attached no vile interpretation to Shakspere's sonnets. Farther, in sonnet 22 he asks,

"How can I then be elder than thou art ?"

Could this be said to Southampton (born 1573), or Pembroke (born 1580)? Could he speak of himself even in 1609 (ætate 45) as→ แ "Beaten and chopped with tanned antiquity"—(62);

As I am now

With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn "?—(63.)

66

In 1598, in "The Passionate Pilgrim," sonnet 138 was published, and therein he says (of himself or either of these noblemen?), My days are past the best." We do not think these indicate anything autobiographical, any more that we thought it necessary to fancy their writer" living a wild and irregular life between the court and the theatre," to explain their moral significance. Sewell and Glidon have looked upon the sonnets as loosely amorous; Chalmers thought they were addressed to Queen Elizabeth. Tyrwhitt, Farmer, Steevens, Malone, Drake, Brown, Bell, Knight, &c., regard them as indicating, in some measure at least, an irregular passion. Schlegel thought them the confessions of a wasted youth, and expressive of the conflict of passion and perplexity produced by conscious sin. Coleridge inclines to believe that they are addressed to a loved but unrespected woman, taking their key-note from sonnet 142, "Love is my sin," &c. We object, to these suppositions, the absence of authentic tradition of such a love-the want of continuity in the sonnets themselves-their irreconcilability with any single interpretation-the impossibility of such a series being "sugred sonnets among his private friends"-the improbability of his publishing or allowing the issue of self-criminating writings-and, last of all, the purity of Shakspere's women,-Imogen, Viola, Constance, Portia, Rosalind, Cornelia, Ophelia, Juliet, and Desdemona.

It has been asked, "Was Shakspere a Catholic ?" "He died a Papist," is the assertion of Davis (1688-1708). His father, as alderman, was a professed Protestant-could not have been aught else; if so, Shakspere was baptized in the English Church; his own

children must have been baptized as Protestants, and he himself got burial as a Protestant in Stratford Church. He was favoured by two Protestant sovereigns and by a Protestant people. His children were almost puritan in faith, Susannah being expressly stated to have been "wise to salvation." In his day, Archbishop Whately's ancestor, William Whately, was busy often in Stratfordon-Avon, as "a stirrer up of faction ;"-he may even have been the preacher who was entertained in New Place in 1614. Did this not influence Milton to read his works? He evidently did not know of Shakspere's Papistry when he wrote (1630). Ben Jonson did not claim him as a brother convert. Vicar Ward, in 1663, had not heard the tradition. The revival of religion, which arose from the issue of the Authorized Version of the Scriptures in 1611, could scarcely leave him unaffected. If "he died a Papist," he must have been a surpassing hypocrite, and he did not in this, as in other matters, show "his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty." We unhesitatingly reject the statement as mistaken-if not false.

In the controversy between commemorationists and anti-commemorationists, our reason goes with the latter, but our sympathies with the former. On the special question being debated in this serial, now we are not called to speak. "An instinct so widely dif fused and so deeply implanted," says Hugh Miller, "cannot surely be an accident; it must form-however far astray of the proper mark it may wander-one of the original components of the mental constitution which we have not given ourselves;" and Douglas Jerrold continues the reflection thus:-" "Whoever is deeply embued with any great writer's works, but most especially with those which are the greatest of all, cannot but feel admiration, gratitude, and affection, towards their author. We delight that he is human, that we may love him; and as he is human, we indulge a human affection." To gratify this human craving, a Commemoration has been appointed. It will assuredly not manufacture a new Shakspere for us, neither will it benefit him who sleeps by Avon's murmuring waters, so sepulchred

"That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

But it may evoke appreciation for his works, and so educate the present age by contact with England's loftiest mind; it must quicken admiration, it may prove how much the world is indebted to literature and to literary men, "and teach a lesson of duty. Thus does genius ever emanate from its centre fresh suggestions, teaching alike the many and the few, the gifted and the average mind, the nation and its writers, what is due to the one, what is owing from the other." We hope that in the nooks and corners of the land the true commemorative spirit may not be left unused, but that, if only by a perusal of his goodly works, we may remember that England has had such a worthy among her sons. Of these works we shall not speak:

"Some second Shakspere must of Shakspere write."

S. N.

Social Economy.

ARE OUR EXISTING PATENT LAWS PRODUCTIVE OF PUBLIC BENEFIT?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I.

THE importance of this subject can scarcely be overrated, whether considered in relation to the public generally, or to those very numerous and important sections of it who rank as manufacturers and inventors. In maintaining the affirmative of the proposition, that patent rights are beneficial to the public, we shall do well to consider the basis or principle on which the monopolies involved in patent rights are granted. It has of late been disputed as to whether persons have any inherent rights in virtue of their inventions. But surely if it is right to grant a monopoly to an artist, by which he not only prevents any person making a fac simile of his picture or statue, or from engraving a likeness of the same, and which even prohibits the sun's light being used to photographize it for the purpose of sale; and if an author should be permitted exclusively to enjoy the pecuniary advantage from his literary productions, and not only the author, but his heirs and assigns for thirty years after his death; then it must be admitted to be right also to let an inventor reap such reward as the usefulness, or appreciation by the public, of his invention may offer to him. If a statue in marble by Marochetti be guarded by law from being copied by artists of less genius, why not a statuette in silver by Elkington, a brass candlestick by Jones, or the process by which Perkins eliminates the brilliant magenta, or the charming mauve, from a noxious and comparatiely worthless residuum? There has recently died a Mr. Hall, who made some of the most notable discoveries or inventions in the cotton and lace trade. He had reaped a large reward by his patents, and no artist or author did more for society than he; and I think it must be admitted he was as fully entitled to all he obtained as Macaulay or Sir Walter Scott was.

I hold that the principle by which any property whatever is held in a community applies with equal force to the production of a man's inventive genius.

Among those who object to the granting of a monopoly of the pecuniary benefits arising from inventions, a most fallacious theory finds favour, viz., that inventors should be rewarded by Government. How men of such large experience and knowledge as the estimable chairman of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, R. A. Macfie, Esq.; Sir William Armstrong, of Elswick; or Michael Chevalier, of Political Economical fame, can advocate such a scheme is incomprehensible. Who shall decide what is useful? and who shall

measure the reward that would be fitting? and when is the period at which the award shall be determined? Shall it be when the idea is in embryo? or when, after years of patient toil, it has been perfected? or when, perhaps a generation later still, society has begun to appreciate it? We are satisfied the most impartial judges in the world would fail satisfactorily to assess the value of a tithe of the inventions daily patented in this country.*

Assuming that it will be granted that inventors have equal rights with other property-holders-though the opposite has been, and will doubtless again be maintained,- —we cannot think it likely that any of the enlightened contributors to the British Controversialist will support the converse. We shall briefly endeavour to show that the present system works, on the whole, for the public weal, and add some statistical and other information on the subject that may interest some of our readers.

As regards inventors, doubtless they are greatly stimulated by the knowledge that their inventions will result in gain. Nothing is more powerful to stimulate a man to exertion than the prospect of reaping a pecuniary advantage for a number of years, which will be free from the ordinary fluctuations of business, and which it will not need close application hereafter to insure. Doubtless Watt was a public benefactor by the adaptations which he discovered steam was capable of: but for the profit which he hoped to obtain by means of patents, another generation might have passed before its marvellous applications were made known. If there had been no patent laws, many of the originators of the most valuable methods of manufacture, or the inventors of the most useful contrivances, would have been as unrewarded as our Comptons or Corts.

As a rule, manufacturers, though themselves not inventors, consider the patent law an advantage. It may be they have not yet availed themselves of its protection, but they deem it neither impossible nor improbable that, in the course of their business, they may develop some new principle which will be to them a source of wealth.

As to the public at large, if it can be shown they are injured by the protection given to inventors, then the interests of the few would certainly have to be set aside. But we are assured the

* A recent number of the Building News contained the following pertinent paragraph on the patent laws:-"A most important motion on this much-vexed subject was made at the annual meeting of the Association of Chambers of Commerce, held recently. Mr. Wright moved, That the granting of patents for improvements and discoveries in manufactures is right in principle, and has been found beneficial in operation.' Colonel Akroyd seconded the motion; and, after an amendment to the effect that the patent laws ought to be abolished had been negatived, the original motion was carried. We know of no body of men more concerned in all that appertains to patent right and patent reform than the representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, and such a motion as the above, carried as it was, compensates for a thousand senseless attacks by men who wish to reap the fruits of the inventor's labour without toiling themselves."