Shakspeare left one hundred and fifty-four,
which exhibit rare poetical power, and which are most of them addressed to
a person unknown, perhaps an ideal personage, whose initials are W. H.
Although chiefly addressed to a man, they are of an amatory nature, and
dwell strongly upon human frailty, infidelity, and treachery, from which
he seems to have suffered: the mystery of these poems has never been
penetrated. They were printed in 1609. "Our language," says one of his
editors, "can boast no sonnets altogether worthy of being placed by the
side of Shakspeare's, except the few which Milton poured forth--so severe
and so majestic."
It need hardly be said that Shakspeare has been translated into all modern
languages, in whole or in part. In French, by Victor Hugo and Guizot, Leon
de Wailly and Alfred de Vigny; in German, by Wieland, A. W. Schlegel, and
Buerger; in Italian, by Leoni and Carcano, and in Portuguese by La Silva.
Goethe's Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister is a long and profound critique
of Hamlet; and to the Germans he is quite as familiar and intelligible as
to the English.
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