Professor Palmer's Lecture.

The Sonnets of Shakspere, upon which Professor Palmer lectured last evening in Divinity School Chapel, are the records of the poet's friendship for two persons-one a young man of great personal beauty, and the other a woman who fascinated him although neither beautiful nor intelligent. The main theme of the sonnets is the way in which the ravages of time may be checked. The poet promises eternity to his friend and attempts to preserve him from the accidents of time. In the first sonnets, Shakspere thinks only of the beauty of his friend, and, seeing that the individual must die, looks to the race for immortality and urges him to marry that his beauty may survive in his children. This thought of a merely physical immortality was too narrow, and seemed in-adequate. The poet then imagined that he could triumph over Time by immortalizing his friend in his verse. This hope also proved delusive; for the ideal is not the actual, the remembrance is not the person.

At a later period Shakspere was drawn away from the beautiful boy by a new passion which roused the baser part of his nature. Conscious of his own degradation, he realized that, to attain a true immortality, life must be identified with conditions superior to mortality. Of the various kinds of immortality mentioned by the poet only the one which he thought most doubtful, namely his own reputation, still endures. We have no evidence that his friend had a son, and the sonnets have not preserved for us his name or even his appearance. The words "Time will come and take my love away" have indeed proved truly prophetic.