Herbert was a poet, too: a patron
unparagoned! "If Southampton gave me a thousand pounds," Shakespeare may
well have argued, "perhaps Lord Herbert will get me made Master of the
Revels, or even give me a higher place." An aristocratic society tends
to make parasites even of the strong, as Dr. Johnson's famous letter to
Lord Chesterfield proves. But let us leave supposition and come to the
sonnets themselves, which are addressed to the youth. The first sonnet
begins:
"From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die."
This is a very good argument indeed when addressed to a woman; but when
addressed to a man by a man it rings strained and false. Yet it is the
theme of the first seventeen sonnets. It is precisely the same argument
which Shakespeare set forth in "Venus and Adonis" again and again:
"Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty;
Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty."
"And so, in spite of death, thou dost survive,
In that thy likeness still is left alive .
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