In the English Sonnet, which, though not of indigenous growth, has thriven by its transplantation into our soil by SURREY, the canon governing the eight first lines is by no means universally followed. Possibly this may have arisen from the English language being poorer in rhymes than the Italian; but we need only analyse the structure of some of our best Sonnets, to satisfy ourselves of this truth. MILTON and GRAY scrupulously follow the Italian form; but either many of the compositions of SHAKSPEARE,* SPENSER, DRUMMOND, DANIEL, WORDSWORTH, and other poets, cannot be classed under the Sonnet; or we must admit that, whatever may be the stringency of the Italian rule of rhyme, some other quality than that of the arrangement of rhyme must be sought for, as conferring on the Sonnet its peculiar and distinctive character among ourselves.

I believe this is to be found in the law that it shall convey the expression of but one leading thought; and hence one of the main difficulties of this species of composition. The occurrence is not frequent of thoughts capable of being justly expressed in precisely fourteen lines; neither less nor more: for there must not be, on the one hand, any of what is technically termed 'padding,' to eke out a meagre and scan

* Shakspeare's Sonnets are simply three quatrains and a couplet. Spenser's Amoretti are somewhat more complicated, though his two first quatrains do not follow the Italian model. His fifth line rhymes with his fourth. The first of his second quatrain rhymes with the fourth of his first quatrain. He always ends with a couplet

ty idea; nor, on the other, any obscurity or crabbedness, from an effort at brevity and compression. The Sonnet, like a Drama, should be complete in itself; and should flow on naturally, or at least with that art, which, in concealing its working, so successfully imitates Nature, that it is said to be the perfection of Art. Of course, the one leading idea may be subdivided to any extent requisite; an excellent illustration of which occurs in the Vita Nuova, where, after each Sonnet, DANTE adds an analysis explaining the parts of which it is made up. It may be ornamented to the highest degree; so that one Sonnet may present many images, as well as parts, to the reader's mind; although the principal thought ought not to be overlaid, or lost, in its adjuncts and embellishments. An historical picture conveys to us at the first glance the event, and but the event, it is intended to chronicle; the beauty and the appropriateness of its details, the lance against a pillar, the sword upon the floor, the sealed charter upon a table,— only strike us on a longer and calmer observation. It has been remarked, I think hypercritically, that the subject should be set forth in the first quatrain ; illustrated in the second; confirmed in the first tercet; concluded in the last. It has often struck me that the English Sonnet might be improved by ending, like the Spenserian Stanza, with an Alexandrine, which pleases the ear, and rounds the Stanza with a fulness and aplomb, which give it a singular solidity and dignity. Instances are not wanting of

this licence; which in a single Sonnet is agreeable enough, perhaps from its coming unexpectedly on the ear. I am not, however, sure that it would not weary in a series or collection of Sonnets; it certainly destroys the closing cadence, from which the Sonnet, as I have before observed, probably derives its name

"The inaccuracies and faults of a longer work," writes one, "may escape the reader; but in a Son"net, the smallest flaw casts disgrace upon the

whole; the ear is offended if one rhyme be awkwardly introduced, if the whole do not flow with "equal connection and with harmony, or if the "close do not depend neatly upon the subject proposed." BOILEAU declares that Apollo invented the Sonnet to plague the poets;

66

"Vonlant pousser a bout tons les rimeurs francois,
Inventa du Sonnet les rigoureuses lois ;"

and he thus accurately describes the Sonnet:

66

Vonlut qu'en deux quatrains de mesure pareille

La rhyme avec deux sons frappa huit fois, l'oreille;
Et qu'ensuite six vers artistement rangés,
Fussent en deux tercets par le rang partagés.
Surtout de ce poëm il bannit la license,

Lui meme en mesura le nombre et la cadence,
Defendit qu'un vers faible y pût jamais entrer,
Ni qu'un mot deja mis osât 'l y remontrer."

HEYWOOD indeed would exclude all epithets from the Sonnet. He says,

"You should compose a Sonnet clean without them :
A row of stately substantives would march

Like Switzers, and bear all the field before them."

Farther, the Sonnet is in fact the miniature of word

painting; it cannot be finished too delicately or mi

nutely, and it is perhaps from a perception of this, that the Sonnet, in truth a vehicle admirably adapted for chronicling the loftiest, as well as the most delicate thoughts, has fallen into somewhat of disrepute ; from a general idea that there is something frivolous and even finikin in its character. Thus many people imagine that SHAKSPEARE, in bidding the lover pen a Sonnet to his mistress' eye-brow, has pretty nearly defined and limited its use; but SHAKSPEARE, in a noble body of Sonnets, has himself disproved this; nor can that be a mean or frivolous species of composition in which so many of the greatest poets have loved to disport themselves; notwithstanding BYRON declared the Sonnet not adapted for the English language, and Dr. JOHNSON describes a Sonnetteer as a 'small poet.' In its highest form, the Sonnet is doubtless the expression of some burning thought or passionate suffering. With MILTON, 'the thing became a trumpet when he blew ;' it was the sacred love of liberty that prompted his Sonnet on the Piedmontese massacre of the Vaudois. The Sonnets of MICHAEL ANGELO partake of the grandeur of his statues. It was the approach of the invader that drew from WORDSWORTH the Sonnets on the subjugation of Switzerland, on Venice, on Milton, and some others which are among his masterpieces.

But it is adapted for the passionate sigh as well as the trumpet call. PETRARCH's Sonnets on Laura, DANTE'S Sonnets to Beatrice in the Vita Nuova,

8

SPENSER'S Amoretti, and SHAKSPEARE'S Sonnets, teach us that. CAMOENS Soothed an exile's grief with it ; and MILTON immortalized his dead wife in a Sonnet, of which the pathos is only less deep than of that on his own blindness.

It is not even incompatible with humour. HOOD'S Sonnet to his son, spoiled, like HORACE'S Ode Beatus ille, by its very point, is a specimen of this; and I could name others, if need were. Nor is the Sonnet out of place as a mere vehicle of description, of natural scenery, works of art, or the fanciful conceptions of the imagination. Some of the pictures in WORDSWORTH'S Sonnets may be cited as examples. Take that of the Wild Duck's nest, in the Sonnet beginning,

or the Sonnet,

The imperial consort of the fairy, king,'

With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,'

the description of LEORNARDO DA VINCI's immortal picture of the Last Supper, or the twenty-second Ecclesiastical Sonnet. ROSSETTI has written some good Sonnets, each about a picture.

As the Sonnet is the miniature of word painting, it is a good test of a descriptive Sonnet, to consider whether it would bear the process of being thoroughly illustrated by the painter, with all its accessaries and embellishments. As Painting can only seize and fix one point of time, this will show whether or no the Sonnet is complete within itself, totus teres atque