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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
sonnets was that ‘the consideration’ that they made their appearance with Shakespeare’s name, and in his lifetime, ‘seemed to be no slender proof of their authenticity’. Of their literary value, Steevens announced shortly afterwards a very low opinion. He excluded them from his revision of Johnson’s edition of the plays which came out in 1778.
Malone produced the first critical edition of the sonnets in 1780, in his ‘Supplement to the Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays published in 1778’, vol. i. This revision of Thorpe’s text proved of the highest value. Steevens supplied some notes and criticisms, and in the annotations on *Sonnet CXXVII*, Malone and he engaged in a warm controversy, which occupied nearly six pages of small type, regarding the general value of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A year before Steevens borrowed of Malone a volume containing first editions of the *Sonnets* and *Lucrece*. On returning it to its owner, he pasted on a blank leaf a rough sketch in which Shakespeare is seen to be addressing William Atkinson, Malone’s medical attendant, in these words:—
> If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
> The water of my sonnets, find their disease,
> Or purge my editor, till he understood them,
> I would applaud thee, &c.
Steevens now insisted that ‘quaintness obscurity and tautology’ were inherent ‘in this exotik species of com-
1 The volume containing this drawing is in the Malone collection in the Bodleian Library (Mal. 34). It contains the following note in Malone’s handwriting:—‘Mr. Steevens borrowed this volume from me in 1779 to peruse *The Rape of Lucrece* in the original edition, of which he was not possessed. When he returned it, he made this drawing. I was then confined by a sore throat, and was attended by Mr. Atkinson, the Apothecary, of whom the above figure, whom Shakespeare addresses, is a caricature.—E. M.’
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