comparative scorn with which it was treated. Heads have been "carved on cherry-stones," and very beautiful heads too; though it must be admitted that, like some other curious pieces of human art, they need the microscopic glass to discover the wonderful proportions of their beauty. But here, in beautiful verity, we have the heads of weeping Madonnas, and of fiery Apostles, of Satyrs peeping from the woody ambush, and Nymphs, with the thick clustering hair and speaking eye. There has frequently been felt a difficulty in reading the sonnet; its very ease has made it cumbersome to some minds; and our language is not so pliant and flexible as to tolerate, with good temper, innovations, and more especially, innovations from Italy. It is only the pen of a master that can bend the language to speak thus. The sonnet requires in its composition great fullness of thought and power of diction. Weak voices blow faintly through the best constructed pipes, and the mightiest organ depends for its inspiration upon the organist; but the accomplished player can call magnificence from insignificance: the one string in his hand shall stir you more effectively, than all the chords of music placed at the command of an indifferent player.

"In his hand

The thing became a trumpet."

Wordsworth saw little of the cherry-stone in Milton's sonnets. Shrill and high-sounding they thrill through the souls of those capable of receiving the afflation of the sound. In truth, Johnson's criticism is not to be received at all. The eighth and twenty-first, (so commended,) are really amongst the inferior. Let the reader turn to his edition of Milton, and judge for himself. Sir Egerton Brydges enters at length into the merits of Milton as a sonnetteer; and with his opinions, for the most part, we have a perfect sympathy. No one will claim for him the post of the Prince of sonnet-writers that place must be awarded to Wordsworth alone. But even in the period at which he wrote, he did not reach the height of the models offered him from Italy. Mellifluousness he has none. His sonnets have a rugged spiritual grandeur : they rely upon some one sentiment for their effect: they have little of the pictorial of imagination: there is none of the pomp of language: a thought has to be uttered, and it must be uttered at once in a condensed lightning-stroke. Profound feeling is certainly the characteristic of them. Reflec

tion for the most part, although one or two are glorious pieces of exalted declamation,-as for instance the magnificent Ode on the "Massacre in Piedmont;'

"Avenge, oh Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whese bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."

After all we suspect Johnson's political prejudices again; for most or many of the sonnets have a reference to his political views. Thus he was scarcely likely to relish that to Cromwell, and the closing apostrophe, noble as it is:

"Yet much remains

Te conquer still: Peace hath her victories

No less renowned than War: new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw."

Sonnets are usually the productions of minds loving to revolve their own mental volitions. They are a colloquy with thought, and only used by those capable of intense reflection.Perhaps it may be said that they have generally been the method by which the mind of genius has flung off its egotism. It is thus with Shakspear, Dante, Petrarch, Wordsworth: it was so with Milton. The finest allusions to himself are in the sonnets. The mind records

in them its solemn warnings, its holy joys. In that on his blindness :

"When I consider how my light is spent."

the mind revolves upon what it might have performed, had the eyesight only been spared; what might have been done for God, but now it must be left undone. Instead of an active service, the body has to sit still: what then? immediately a clear steady lamp sheds its lustre through the soul. If God can not be glorified and honoured by performance, he can by patience; and patience is a kind of performance; the soul looks resolutely out through the darkness of the night.

"God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly: thousands, at his bidding, speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

How touching and deep is the consolation conveyed in the last line! How lovely the resignation of this great spirit! How truly had he learned the lesson which was the great one to be learned by the people of God in that time, when some had to wait in prison, and

some in the hopelessness of outcast poverty, and some upon the scaffold. Sometimes the consolation coming to his darkness was of another kind. He had not wasted the hours of his light: he had worked while it was day: the night had come, but it brought out for him the track of splendour: he had not to meditate upon wasted days, or promise amendment if restored to vision. No! and therefore a cheerful day brightens round the soul, and beneath the lustre of it he indites the sonnet to Cyriac Skinner.

"Cyriac, this three years' day these eyes, though clear To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me? dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overply'd In Liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque,

Content though blind, had I no better guide."

We will only cite one other illustration from these "Poor Sonnets," and this, the last, is