THE SONNET. liii Examples of either will be found among the sonnets in this volume, e.g., "The Dream" (p. 24%) of flow and ebb, “Natura Benigna" (p. 249 of ebb and flow. 9 It is thus evident that the contemporary type is no variation from the Petrarcan, but is simply an artistically understood development thereof. Readers will already have gathered that there can thus only be three genuine sonnet-types. THE PETRARCAN or NATURAL SONNET (comprehending the Contemporary). THE MILTONIC SONNET (any sonnet, whether in the Petrarcan or Shakespearian mould, with unbroken continuity, metrically and otherwise, in its presentation). In the wide scope thus afforded no poet can with justice complain of too rigid limitations: such objection-making must simply be an exemplification of the well-known saying as to the workman and his tools. To these moreover may be addressed Capel Lofft's words (who, however, adapted them from Menzini)-"No Procrustes has obliged you to be lopped to the measure of this bed: Parnassus will not be in ruins even if you should not publish a sonnet." I will not here attempt any adequate survey of the history of the sonnet in England from Milton to the present day. A cursory glance must be sufficient. With Milton the Italian influence in our literature waned, and that of France (inaugurated by Dryden) took its place. A corresponding change in the poetic temperament rapidly took place. After Milton the sonnet almost languished out of existence in this. country. Many years after the great Puritan poet was laid in his grave Gray wrote an often-praised (but to me, I must confess, a very indifferent) sonnet on the death of "Mr. Richard West," and Mason and Warton several of fair quality. Cowper, who died as may be remembered in the last year of the eighteenth century, wrote one fine poem of this class to Mary Unwin. Gradually the sonnet began to awake from its poetic hibernation, and though one or two women writers not altogether unworthily handled it, and though William Roscoe and Egerton Brydges even used it with moderate success, the first real breath of spring came in the mild advent of William Lisle Bowles. His sonnets move us now hardly at all, but when we remember the season of their production we may well regard them with more kindly liberality. Bowles was born. just eight years before William Wordsworth, to whom, more than anyone else, is due the great revival and increasing study and appreciation of the sonnet. Coleridge wrote no fine sonnets, though he just missed writing one of supreme excellence (vide Notes). Blanco White concentrated all his poetic powers in one great effort, and wrote a sonnet that will live as long as the language, as in French literature Félix Arvers will be remembered always for his unique example, that beautiful sonnet commencing "Mon âme a son secret, ma vie a son mystère." Leigh Hunt, true poet in his degree as he was, did truer service by his admirable efforts in critical literature towards the popularisation of the sonnet; and after him (by "after" reference is made to birth-sequence) came a constantly increasing number, the chief of whom will be found represented in this volume-among the most important being Sir Aubrey De Vere, little known, but a true poet and a fine sonneteer, Byron (who wrote some half-dozen compositions of this class, and wrote them well too, notwithstanding his real or pretended dislike of the form), Barry Cornwall, Shelley (whose "Ozymandias" is a fine poem but not a fine sonnet), and Keats. Though Keats has never been and probably never will be a really popular poet, his influence on other poets and on poetic temperaments generally has been quite incalculable. Some of his sonnets are remarkable for their power and beauty, while others are indifferent and a few are poor. With all his love for the beauty of isolated poetic lines-music condensed into an epigram more concise than the Greeks ever uttered—as, for example, his own splendid verse, There is a budding morrow in mid-night and with all that sense of verbal melody which he manifested so remarkably in his odes, it is strange that in his sonnets he should so often be at fault in true harmony. Even the beautiful examples THE SONNET. lv which are included in this anthology afford instances of this; as in "Ailsa Rock," where the penultimate word of the ninth line and the penultimate word of the tenth (not forming part of the rhyme-sound, the two terminals indeed being antagonistic) are identical as in the "Elgin Marbles" where "weak" midway in the first line has an unpleasing assonantal relation with "sleep," the terminal of the second line: as in "To Homer," where after the beautiful eleventh line already quoted, ending in "mid-night" there succeeds "sight" midway in the twelfth. These are genuine discords, and those who are unable to perceive them simply prove their deficiency in ear. Born a year later than Keats, Hartley Coleridge, the poetic son of a greater father, finely fulfilled the impulse that had come to him from Wordsworth, making an abiding name for himself through his sonnet-work alone. His "Birth of Speech"-as I have styled one of his best-known but unnamed sonnets-is a fine example of a sonnet in the Miltonic mould. Thomas Hood, that true poet-so little understood by the public generally-not only wrote some fine sonnets, but wrote two of special excellence, one of them ("Silence") taking place in the very front rank. Ten years younger than Hood was Charles Tennyson-Turner. Charming, even permanently beautiful as many of his sonnet-stanzas are, their form cannot be admired if we have been correct in considering the so-called pure types to be the true expression of certain metrical laws, then certainly these compositions of his are not sonnets, but only (to repeat Mr. Ashcroft Noble's appropriate term for similar productions) sonnet-stanzas. The rhythm is much broken up, and the charm of assured expectancy is destroyed. But a greater poet than Tennyson-Turner, true singer as the latter was, came into the world about the same time. No more impassioned soul ever found expression in rhythmical speech than Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and there is nothing in her poetry that is finer than that famous love-record, the so-called "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Impetuous as was her genius, hasty and frequently careless as she was in production, she never found the archetypal sonnet too circumscribed for her. The pathetic beauty, the fascinating personality, the pure poetry displayed in these sonnets have touched many and many a heart since the tired singer was laid to rest under the cypresses not far from that beloved river whose flow she had so often followed in thought down to the far-off Pisan sea. Only those who have thoroughly studied contemporary poetry, and not only the poetry which is familiar to many but that also which is quite unknown, and by minor writers of no reputation or likelihood of reputation, can realise the potency of Mrs. Browning's influence, especially among women. Even to mention by name all those who have charmed, or interested, or transiently attracted us by their sonnets throughout the last fifty years, would take up much more space than I have to spare, nor can I even refer in detail to those who are no longer with us. One name, however, stands out from all others since Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning, like a pine-tree out of a number of graceful larches. Dante Gabriel Rossetti is not only one of the great poets of the century, but the one English poet whose sonnet-work can genuinely be weighed in the balance with that of Shakespeare and with that of Wordsworth. No influence is at present more marked than his its stream is narrower than that of Tennyson and Browning, but the current is deep, and its fertilising waters have penetrated far and wide into the soil. The author of The House of Life holds a remarkable place in the literary and artistic history of the second Victorian period, and no critic of his work will have any true grasp of it who does not recognise that "Rossetti" signifies something of far greater import even than the fascinating work of, personally, the most dominant and fascinating man of his time-even as the historian of the brilliant period in question will work in the dark if he is unable to perceive one of the chief well-springs of the flood,-if he does not recognise the relationship between certain radical characteristics of the time and the man who did so much to inaugurate or embody them. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning, Rossetti. Italy herself cannot present a finer body of pure poetry in the mould of this form than is to be found in the collective sonnets of these great English writers. As to the vexed question of priority among these sonneteers, I need not attempt to gauge the drift of capable opinion. THE SONNET. lvii For myself and this I set forward the less reluctantly as I know the opinion is shared by so many better judges than I claim to be— I would simply say (1) that the three greatest sonneteers of our language seem to me to be Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Rossetti ; (2) that the two greatest, regarding their work en masse and not by this or that sonnet, or this or that group of sonnets, seem to me to be Shakespeare and Rossetti: and (3) that no poet of our own or any language could show ten sonnets equal in breadth of thought, verity of poetry, and beauty of expression to the ten greatest of Wordsworth. In "fundamental brain-work," to use Rossetti's phrase, or in the composition of "Deep-brained sonnettes," to quote Shakespeare's, these two poets stand above Wordsworth; but in impersonal humanity Shakespeare rarely, Rossetti a little less rarely, approach the highest reach of one who in general is their poetic inferior./For what great poet at his poorest is so poor as Wordsworth : in what other great poetic nature has there ever been so abundant a leaven of the prosaic? One of the chief poets in our country, his garden has more desert-spaces in it than any other, and the supreme beauties are almost lost to all who have no guide to the labyrinth. But these super-excellent treasures, when once found, how we are carried away by their exquisite perfume, their extreme beauty: we forget the sand and the many weeds, and for a time believe that in no other of the many gardens of verse blooms there such loveliness breathes there such fragrance. But in one thing Rossetti is greater than Wordsworth, greater even than Shakespeare, and that is in weight and volume of sound. As a wind-swayed pine seems literally to shake off music from its quivering branches, so do his sonnets throb with and disperse deep-sounding harmonies. What sonority of pure poetic speech there is in this from "The Dark Glass": Not I myself know all my love for thee: How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh Shall birth and death and all dark names that be Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray; And shall my sense pierce love, the last relay And ultimate outpost of eternity? 1 |