Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/40

 sonnets are simply variations upon established poetical themes. But we cannot say that his emotion must have been caused by some thrilling events when it is at least equally likely that he merely took a trifling event as a pretext for expressing his emotions. Shakespeare was certainly dramatist enough to discover a motive for poetry in a commonplace experience. The attempted identifications do little more than illustrate a common fallacy. The impossibility of proving a negative is confounded with the conclusive proof of the positive. 'It is just possible' becomes 'it is certainly true.' The whole Pembroke-Fitton hypothesis rests (as Mr. Lee seems to show) upon the interpretation of the famous initials. The fact that a nobleman had an intrigue with a lady about the time when the sonnets, or some of them, may have been written, cannot prove that they refer to the intrigue. Shakespeare could hardly have managed to write at a period when some intrigue was not going on. If, then, 'W. H.' did not mean William Herbert, the peg on which the whole argument hangs is struck out. Now 'Mr. W. H.' could not possibly suggest the Earl to any contemporary, and, in fact, did not suggest him to any one for more than two centuries. That,