fascinated by the sonnets. Here the musician who has otherwise played for all generations of humanity, pipes a solitary tune of his own life, its love, its devotion, its fervour, its prophetic exaltation, its passion, its despair, its exceeding bitterness. Veritably we are here face to face with a splendour amid glooms."" Rossetti, the greatest master of sonnet-music posterior to the "starre of poets," declared while expressing his unbounded admiration for Shakespeare's sonnets that "conception-fundamental brain-work is what makes the difference in all art. . A Shakespearian sonnet is better than the most perfect in form because Shakespeare wrote it." Again, the opinion of so acute a critic and genuine a poet as Mr. Theodore Watts may here be appropriately quoted :-"The quest of the Shakespearian form is not," he writes in his article on "The Sonnet" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, "like that of the sonnet of octave and sestet sonority, and, so to speak, metrical counterpoint, but sweetness: and the sweetest of all possible arrangements in English versification is a succession of decasyllabic quatrains in alternate rhymes knit together, and clinched by a couplet-a couplet coming not too far from the initial verse, so as to lose its binding power, and yet not so near the initial verse that the ring of epigram disturbs the linked sweetness long drawn out' of this movement, but sufficiently near to shed its influence over the poem back to the initial verse." This is admirably expressed, and true so far as it goes; but to a far wider scope than "sweetness" does the Shakespearian sonnet reach. Having already given a good example of sonnets cast in this mould, it is not necessary to quote another by the chief master of the English sonnet still I may give one of the latter's greatest, perhaps the greatest of Shakespeare's or any other, which will not only serve as a supreme example of the type, but will demonstrate a capability of impressiveness unsurpassed by any sonnet of Dante or Milton The expense of spirit in a waste of shame THE SONNET. Enjoy'd no sooner but despisèd straight, Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows: yet none knows well xlix Between the sonnets of Shakespeare and those of Milton there is not much to chronicle concerning the history of the sonnet. Its chief intermediate composer was Drummond of Hawthornden, a graceful poet, but assuredly not the master he has again and again been represented to be. His essential weakness may be seen in his inability to adopt any pure mould: his sonnets may either be regarded as English bastards of Italian parentage, or as Italian refugees disguised in a semi-insular costume. Hitherto, and this notwithstanding several noble examples by Shakespeare of a more impersonal scope, most English sonnets were amatory-amatory to such an extent indeed that "sugred sonettes became as much the stereotyped medium of lovers' prayers and plaints as was the borderballad that of the virile energies of a semi-civilised people. In this state they still were after the close of the Elizabethan periodindeed they were, with the minor poets, fast degenerating into florid and insipid imbecilities. But when Milton recognised the form as one well suited even for the voice that had chanted the rebellion of the Prince of Evil, he took it up to regenerate it. In his hands it "became a trumpet." Recognising the rhythmical beauty of the normal Italian type he adopted its rhyme-arrangement, discarding both the English sonnet and all bastard intermediates: but, either from imperfect acquaintance with or understanding of the Italian archetype (which seems improbable, considering the circumstances of his life and the breadth of his culture), or out of definite intention, he did not regard as essential or appropriate the break in the melody between octave and sestet. And here, according to Mr. Mark Pattison, he "missed the very end and aim of the Petrarcan scheme." He considered-so we may infer that the English sonnet should be like a revolving sphere, every portion becoming continuously visible, with no break in the continuity of thought or expression anywhere apparent. Sir Henry Taylor described this characteristic well as the absence of point in the evolution of the idea. I need not quote one of these "soulanimating strains," as Wordsworth sympathetically styled Milton's sonnets, so familiar as they are to all lovers of English poetry: but I may point to an admirable sonnet in the Miltonic mould in this volume, which readers may examine with advantage-viz., the impressive Democracy Downtrodden" of Mr. William Michael Rossetti. A second reference may here appropriately be made to Mr. Hall Caine's claim for the inherent independence of the English sonnet. This gentleman is so accomplished and generally so acute a critic that I differ from him only after the most careful consideration of his arguments. To the independent existence of the English sonnet as such I am of course, as will have been seen, no opponent but there is a difference between a poetic form being national and its being indigenous. An English skate, for example, is at once recognisable from that of any other northern country, has, in a word, the seal of nationality impressed on its familiar aspect but everyone knows that originally that delightful means towards "ice-flight" came to us from the Dutch, and was not the invention of our countrymen. So is it with the national sonnet. Wyat and Surrey did not invent the English form of sonnet, they introduced it from Italy; Spenser played with and altered it ; Shakespeare as it were translated it into our literature; Drummond ---half-Italian, half- English, regarded critically-used it variously; the Elizabethan sonneteers piped through it their real or imaginary amatory woes; and at last caine Milton, and made it shine newly, as if he had cut his diamond in such a way that only one luminous light were visible to us. The Shakespearian or English sonnet is no bastard form, nor is the Miltonic; each is derivative, one more so than the other to all appearance, and the only bastard forms THE SONNET. li are those which do not belong to the pure types-those sonnets, for instance, which have the octave regular and a sestet consisting of a quatrain and a couplet, or those which, like the Love-Sonnets of Proteus, are irregular throughout. Mr. Hall Caine was desirous to remove the charge of illegitimacy against the English sonnet: where I differ from him is only that I can see no real basis for bringing up the charge against the pure types at all. What is known as the Contemporary, and sometimes as the Natural sonnet, was first formulated by Mr. Theodore Watts. With the keen insight that characterises the critical work of this writer, and that no less gives point to his imaginative faculty, he recognised not only the absolute metrical beauty of the Petrarcan type, but also that it was based on a deep melodic law, the law which may be observed in the flow and ebb of a wave; and, indeed, the sonnet in question was composed at a little seaside village in Kent, while the writer and a friend were basking on the shore. It was Mr. Watts who first explained the reason why the separate and complete solidarity of the octave was so essential to perfect harmony, finding in this metrical arrangement nothing less than the action of the same law that is manifested in the inflowing wave solidly gathering into curving volume, culminating in one great pause, and then sweeping out again from the shore. This is not only a fine conception, but it was accepted at once by Rossetti, Mr. J. A. Symonds, Mr. Mark Pattison, Mr. Caine, Caine, and others who have given special attention to the sonnet. "The striking metaphorical symbol," says Mr. J. A. Symonds, "drawn by Mr. Theodore Watts from the observation of the swelling and declining wave can even, in some examples, be applied to sonnets on the Shakespearian model; for, as a wave may fall gradually or abruptly, so the sonnet may sink with stately volume or with precipitate subsidence to its close." In France the revival of the sonnet has been only less marked than in England, and among French poets it is also now recognised as indubitable that the octave must be in the normal mould, and that the sestet should have no more doubtful variation than a commencing couplet. Mr. Theodore Watts' theory naturally excited much comment and his sonnet on the Sonnet, wherein that theory was first formulated, may be appropriately quoted here. THE SONNET'S VOICE. (A metrical lesson by the seashore.) Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, From heaving waters of the impassioned soul At the same time Mr. Watts is no mere formalist, mere formalist, and he has himself expressed his conviction both in The Athenæum and in the Encyclopædia Britannica, that the same form is not always the best for every subject. I, for my part, think that, broadly speaking, the Contemporary Sonnet, as formulated by Mr. Watts, may be regarded in a dual light. When it is a love-sonnet, or the emotion is tender rather than forceful, the music sweet rather than dignified, it will be found to correspond to the law of flow and ebb-i.e., of the inflowing solid wave (the octave), the pause, and then the broken resilient wash of the wave (the sestet): when, on the other hand, it is intellectually or passionately forceful rather than tender or pathetic, dignified and with impressive amplitude of imagery rather than strictly beautiful, then it will correspond to the law of ebb and flow-i.e., of the steady resilient wave-wash till the culminating moment when the billow has curved and is about to pour shoreward again (the octave), and of the solid inflowing wave, sweeping strongly forward (the sestet)-in Keats's words Swelling loudly Up to its climax, and then dying proudly. |