RECONSIDERED, AND IN PART REARRANGED WITH INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS NOTES, AND A REPRINT OF THE ORIGINAL 1609 EDITION BY SAMUEL BUTLER EREWHON," 66 LIFE AND LETTERS OF DR. SAMUEL BUTLER," ETC. PREFACE. I was led to take up the thorny questions which Shakespeare's Sonnets so abundantly raise, by the appearance of two articles in the Fortnightly Review for Dec. 1897 and Feb. 1898. In the first of these, Mr William Archer, inclining to the theory that the Mr W. H. of Thorpe's prefatory address was William Herbert Earl of Pembroke (which involves that the Sonnets were mainly inspired by him), shewed how baseless was the contention that most, or indeed any, of them were addressed to Henry Wriothesley Earl of Southampton. In the second of the articles above referred to, Mr Sidney Lee, inclining to the theory that many of the Sonnets were addressed to Lord Southampton, shewed how baseless was the contention that Mr W. H. could have been Lord Pembroke, and declared him to have been a mere go-between, who procured the copy for Thomas Thorpe the publisher. Convinced that neither Mr Archer nor Mr Lee had made out a case, except in so far as each of them was destructive of the other, and fired by the success which, I believe, the simple method of studying text much and commentators little, had obtained for me as regards the Odyssey, it occurred to me |