Amazon.com description: Product Description: This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1838. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... HIS SONNETS. The first difficulty, and to that, strangely enough, research has been chiefly confined, is the discovery of who was " Mr. W. H." Thorpe, their first publisher, inscribed them--" To the only begetter of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H." An opinion has been broached that these initials ought to be reversed, because then W. H. would be H. W., and stand for Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton. Dr. Drake was decidedly of this opinion, and backed it by observing the coincidence of expression between the 26th Sonnet and the dedication of the Rape of Lucrece to that nobleman. This is very true and very reasonable, except the reversing of the initials, which may not be perfectly satisfactory to a straightforward understanding. Besides, the title "Mr." never could belong to an Earl. But some of Dr. Drake's predecessors were wild in the extreme. When Gildon republished the Sonnets, he specified, in the title-page, that they were "all of them in praise of his mistress." Dr. Sewell followed with a similar assertion. Stevens gave his edition, but refrained from hazarding an observation. At last Malone rightly declared that one hundred and twentysix of them were addressed to a young man. Tyrwhit pointed out a line, "A man in hue all hues in his controlling," from which it was for awhile inferred that the initials W. H. stood for William Hughes. Dr. Farmer supposed them to be addressed to William Harte, the poet's nephew; but unluckily Malone proved that the nephew could not have been born at the time, or could only have been an infant. Then came Dr. Chalmers, who contended, and pursued his contention in a second volume, that every one of them was addressed to no less a personage than Queen Elizabeth. He seriously tells us that we have merely to change, (than wh...