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These arguments might be multiplied, but enough has, I think, been said to convince the unprejudiced that the arrangement of the Sonnets in the Quarto is unsatisfactory and unauthoritative. And this result is in exact agreement with the hypothesis of piratical publication which appears for other reasons so highly probable.

The practical outcome of these considerations is to discourage dogmatism and a too elaborate theorising. The materials at our disposal are too scanty; we shall have to be largely satisfied with negative results. Because, for example, we cannot accept the present order of the Sonnets, we shall not, therefore, feel called upon to propound a new one. For the same cause which makes the arrangement wrong, will prevent us from ever putting it right. Thorpe's collection was a stolen and surreptitious one, and it was therefore incomplete; and because it was incomplete, we cannot do much to mend its defects of arrangement. And as to the reference of particular Sonnets, the facts of Shakespeare's life are so little known that we can never be quite sure of anything, and in most cases even the more ingenious conjectures can hardly show a decent appearance of probability. The wisest course would seem to be to accept the Sonnets as they stand, and definitely to abandon a problem for the solution of which there are no sufficient data.

It is certainly very refreshing to turn from all the tedious twistings and turnings of controversy about the Sonnets to the Sonnets themselves, and to the unfailing admiration which their remembrance or the re-perusal of them excites.

In this, at least, all classes of commentators and expositors agree. The judgment of recent years has overborne the neglect of two centuries, and contradicted the coarse censure of supercilious critics. We wonder only that these priceless poems had to wait so long for the seeing eye and the understanding heart. There are certainly some Sonnets which we can hardly like at all, and some which are not altogether admirable, but there are others which we feel can never be praised or admired enough. In this narrow nook of poetic work, no less clearly than in the great field of the drama, Shakespeare has out-done all his contemporaries; he stands well-nigh as far above Spencer or Sidney, Daniel or Drayton, as he does above the contemporary masters of tragedy and comedy.

In the best of these Sonnets we get in full development all the resources of Shakespeare's art-the pregnant phrase, the melodious verse, the majestic diction. But beyond all these external graces we mark the force and fulness of these Sonnets, their strong sincerity, and the depth of feeling from which they spring. This intensity

of tone is at its highest in Sonnet 129, which is perhaps the grandest, as well as the gloomiest, of the whole series.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trus;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream:

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Here we have the severest simplicity and an absence of all ornament; nothing disturbs or distracts the inward vision while, with an awful fidelity, the recesses of the conscience-stricken soul are laid bare.

Perhaps, for most readers, the biographic interest comes first. There is something very fascinating in the dark allusions of the Sonnets and the scanty glimpses they give us of Shakespeare's life.

And, though they tantalise us with their half-lights and their unsolved enigmas, they still reveal much. We get the story of the dark lady and the faithless friend, and we have an indication of a literary rival, a glimpse at some figure which seemed more imposing and majestic than Shakespeare's genial and sympathetic personality. Very significant, too, is the line

And art made tongue-tied by authority

which stands in that catalogue of "the whips and scorns of time" which made the poet, tired of so sad a world, cry out for "restful death." For this is enough to show that the poet's genius brought him now and again into conflict with aristocratic or official prejudice, and that he had sometimes to say, not what he wanted, but what he was allowed.

But it is rather as "fragments of inner autobiography" that the Sonnets are so immeasurably precious. They take us into the sanctuary of the poet's mighty heart, and show us some of those hidden springs from which the mighty stream of his creative energy was fed. In their sadness and melancholy we find the secret of that perturbed working of the soul which lurks behind the remorse of Macbeth and the divine discontent of Hamlet. We see the poet in his moments of depression and dejection, and of what those call weakness who

apply the word to a Titanic strength of feeling. But surely they reveal nothing which need astonish us overmuch. For, we know that there is a Nemesis that waits on the might of genius, and that the extreme and exquisite sensibility of the divine singer must needs have its painful side.

The Sonnets are sad because, for the poet, the times were out of joint, and his sympathetic eye was heavy with all the oppression that is done under the sun. The Sonnets are sad, because the inner conflict, "the flesh warring against the spirit," is at times grievous and not to be borne. The Sonnets are sad, because the great mind must often be misunderstood, and the great heart go solitary and unsatisfied.

But sad as the Sonnets are, there is nothing in them which really falls below Shakespeare's natural and native loftiness of soul, no trace of unworthy anger, nothing of the weakness of wounded vanity. Shakespeare was deeply wronged, and a nature less beautiful than his might have cherished an implacable resentment. But he found it easy to forgive. "His life was gentle," and not even his deepest despondency could induce an ignoble bitterness.

But sad as the serious Sonnets for the most part are, they are not all sad. Here and there we have signs of the working of a brighter and happier mood, as when the poet celebrates his enduring and unselfish affection, or looks forward to the immortality which his pen can give. One Sonnet, more than any other, breathes this serener spirit, and seems to announce the calm and tranquil mood of Shakespeare's maturer years. In this the poet becomes once more, not the actor in Life's perplexed drama, but its serene spectator, and rises above all private woes and wrongs to sing of the "marriage of true minds" and Love's triumph over all the "millioned accidents" of Time. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love, Which alters when it alteration finds;

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ nor no man ever loved.

ROBERT SHINDLER,

THE

THE FUEL OF THE SUN.

'HE dazzling brilliancy of the sun far exceeds all artificial sources of illumination. It has been shown experimentally that, compared with a standard candle placed at a distance of one metre from the eye, the sun's light is equal in quantity to 1575 billions of billions of such candles! (1575 followed by 24 cyphers). The intensity of the solar light—or the amount of light per square inch of surface-is found to be 90,000 times greater than that of a candle, and 150 times as bright as the lime light! The blackest portion of a sun-spot exceeds the lime-light in intensity; and even the electric arc, when placed between the eye and the sun's disc, appears as a black spot!!

The question has often been asked, What is the fuel of the sun? What is the origin of the vast amount of heat and light which is constantly being radiated by our central luminary into surrounding space? The question is a difficult one to answer, if looked at in the light of actual combustion. The amount of fuel necessary to produce the observed results is so enormous that it seems almost impossible to imagine where the fuel could come from.

Sir William Thomson has calculated that the quantity of fuel required for each square yard of the solar surface would be no less than 13,500 lbs. of coal per hour !-equivalent to the work of a steam engine of 63,000 horse-power! This enormous expenditure of fuel would be sufficient to melt a thickness of about 40 feet of ice per minute at the sun's surface. Sir John Herschel says, "Supposing a cylinder of ice 45 miles in diameter to be continually darted into the sun with the velocity of light, and that the water produced by its fusion were continually carried off, the heat now given off constantly by radiation would then be wholly expended in its liquefaction, on the one hand, so as to leave no radiant surplus; while, on the other, the actual temperature at its surface would undergo no diminution." He also says that the ordinary expenditure of heat by the sun per

1 Young's General Astronomy, pp. 212-214.

minute would suffice to melt a cylinder of ice 184 feet in diameter, and in length extending from that luminary to a Centauri !

66

As to the actual temperature at the sun's surface, very various estimates have been made by different computers. Secchi supposed it to be about 10,000,000 degrees of the Centigrade thermometer ! and Spörer 37,000 degrees of the same scale; while M. Pouillet thinks that it lies between 1,461 and 1,761 degrees Centigrade. M. Becquerel, Professor Langley, and Sir William Thomson consider that the temperature of the solar photosphere cannot exceed 3,000 degrees Centigrade. According to M. Saint-Claire Deville, the temperature is somewhere about 2,500 to 2,800 degrees, and this agrees with subsequent experiments by Bunsen and Debray. Sir Robert Ball says that we shall probably be well within the truth if we state the effective temperature of the sun to be about 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit" ("The Story of the Heavens," p. 495). Secchi's estimate is probably very excessive, and the smaller determinations nearer the truth. The actual heat of the sun must, however, be very great. Professor Young says: "When heat is concentrated by a burning-glass, the temperature at the focus cannot rise above that of the source of heat, the effect of the lens being simply to move the object at the focus virtually towards the sun; so that, if we neglect the loss of heat by transmission through the glass, the temperature at the focus should be the same as that of a point placed at such a distance from the sun that the solar disc would seem just as large as the lens itself, viewed from its own focus. The most powerful lens yet constructed thus virtually transports an object at its focus to within about 250,000 miles of the sun's surface, and in this focus the most refractory substances-platinum, fire-clay, the diamond itself— are either instantly melted or dissipated in vapour. There can be no doubt that if the sun were to come as near to us as the moon, the solid earth would melt like wax." Messrs. Trowbridge and Hutchins consider that in the solar atmosphere, where carbon is volatilised, the temperature is about equal to that of the voltaic arc.

It may be shown that were the sun's mass composed of coal it would all be consumed in about 6000 years. It has been suggested that the solar heat may possibly be maintained by the fall of meteors on its surface. A pound of coal falling on the sun's surface from an infinite distance would develop by concussion 6000 times the heat that would be produced by its combustion. But the enormous quantity of meteors required for the purpose-about 3,800 lbs. per square foot per annum-renders this theory very improbable. If the carth were to fall into the sun it would maintain its heat for a period

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