its source may have been the ancient epigram ; but it seems to me most likely that it was either of Provençal or Sicilian birth, gradually forming or being moulded into a certain recognised type, very probably not uninfluenced by the Greek epigrams with which the more cultivated of the poet-musicians ('sonneteers') were probably in some degree acquainted, and by the stornelli which every contadino sang as he pruned his olive-trees or tended his vines. It ought to be mentioned, also, that another origin has been claimed for the word, viz.-that it is the French sonnette, and that its parentage may be primarily ascribed to the tinkling sheep-bells of Provençal days.

Like a plant of slow growth, the seedling of the sonnet, having fallen into suitable ground somewhere in the 11th century, gradually forced its obscure and tortuous way towards the light. In the 12th century it seems to have sent up a green shoot here and there, only to be nipt, or to perish of untoward circumstances; and it is not until the 13th century that we find it in fulfilled bud, in due time to open into the mature Petrarcan flower, the true stock whence such a multiplicity of varieties has arisen. Many buds did indeed arise about the same period, and there is still preserved at Milan (according to Muratori, in his Perfetta Poesia) a manuscript Latin treatise on poems in the Italian vernacular-Poetica volgare-written in the year 1332 by a learned and ingenious judge of Padua named Antonio di Tempo, wherein mention is made of sixteen distinct species of sonnet, most of them posterior to the unfolding of the finest and

most energetic bud, but some anterior thereto. To carry on the metaphor a little further, the gardener who tended and cultivated this choice bud was a certain clerical poet known widely as Fra Guittone d'Arezzo-not the least worthy among the illustrious little band which that small Italian town has produced. Fra Guittone flourished during the greater part of the 13th century, and he it was who first definitely adopted and adhered to what was even then recognised as the best modern form for the expression of an isolated emotion, thought, or idea. His sonnets are not only the model of those of his great successor, Petrarca, but are also in themselves excellent productions, and especially noteworthy when considered in relation to the circumstances under which they came into existence. From the work of Guittone d'Arezzo-whom Capel Lofft called the Columbus of poetic literature, he having discovered the sonnet even as the Genoese navigator discovered America-to that of the sweetest-voiced of all Italian poets, there is a considerable step. The period was eminently an experimental one, and in sonnet-literature as elsewhere. While the Guittonian sonnet remained the most admired model, many variations thereof and divergencies therefrom became temporarily popular, exerting an unfortunate influence by allowing free scope to slovenly or indifferent workmanship. But Petrarca and Dante laid an ineffaceable seal on the Guittonian form, not prohibiting minor variations, and even themselves indulging in experimental divergencies in the hands of the one it gained an exquisite beauty, a subtle music abidingly

sweet, and in those of the other a strength and vigour that supplied as it were the masculine element to the already existent feminine. Tasso and the other great Italians followed suit, and the sonnet became the favourite Italian poetic vehicle, as it remains to this day, though alas! but the body still lives, the soul having fled or-it may be— lying deeply dormant in a profound and apparently undisturbable trance. In due course Camoens in the south, Bellay and the early French poets in the west, and Surrey and Spenser in England, turned towards this form as birds towards a granary unroofed by the wind. Concerning Mr. Hall Caine's theory that the English sonnet is an indigenous growth, I shall have something to say later on.

It will be well to consider the Sonnet in a threefold aspect: the aspect of Formal Excellence, that of Characteristic Excellence, and that of Ideal Excellence. By the first I refer to technique simply; by the second to individuality, expression; by the third to the union of imagination, suggestiveness, melody of word and line, and harmony of structure. The section of this Introductory Note devoted to the consideration of Formal Excellence may be comprehensively headed Sonnet-Architecture, though there is this essential difference between a fine work of architecture-say a cathedral-and a sonnet, that in the former all the unsightly_details-planks, plaster, bricks, beams, straw, wedges, and so forth-are hidden from view, like the coarse substance behind the polished enamel of an oyster-shell; while in the latter nothing can be slurred over or in

anyway

disguised, but the whole must show no perceptible trace of the craftsman's touch, must as slightly betray its ever having been a shapeless germ as any rose-diamond or many-facetted brilliant after it has left the hands of an accomplished cutter.

Sonnet-Architecture. It is extraordinary that even now there are many well-read people who have no other idea of what a sonnet is than that it is a short poem, but what kind of short poem they very vaguely apprehend. I have heard it described as any short poem of one or more stanzas used for filling up blank spaces in magazine-pages -a definition not so very absurd when we remember that a poet and critic like Coleridge pronounced it 'a medium for the expression of a mere momentary burst of passion.' But the majority of readers of poetry know that it is limited to fourteen lines in length beyond this the knowledge of all save a comparative few does not go. Even among versewriters themselves there is some vagueness of conception: I have heard one well-known writer say that so-and-so's sonnet was a very fine one, when the piece in question consisted of three octosyllabic quatrains; another spoke of In Memoriam as made up of a number of linked sonnets; and one of the contributors to this volume lately remarked to me that any one could write a sonnetit was simply to say something in fourteen lines instead of in ten or twenty!

The commonest complaint against the sonnet is its supposed arbitrariness--a complaint based on a complete misconception. In the sense that a steersman must abide by the arbitrary law of the

compass, in the sense that the engine-driver must abide by the arbitrary machinery of the engineer, in the sense that the battalion must wheel to the right or the left at the arbitrary word of command-in this sense is the sonnet an arbitrary form. Those who complain seem to forget that the epic, the tragedy, the ode are also arbitrary forms, and that it is somewhat out of place to rail against established rules of architecture in the erection of a cottage, and to blink those in the building of a mansion or a palace. Any form of creative art, to survive, must conform to certain restrictions: would Paradise Lost hold its present rank if Milton had interspersed cavalier and roundhead choruses throughout his epic? what would we think of the Æneid if Virgil had enlivened its pages with Catullian love-songs or comic interludes after the manner of Plautus or Terence? The sonnetstructure is arbitrary in so far that it is the outcome of continuous experiment moulded by mental and musical influences: it is not a form to be held sacred simply because this or that great poet, or a dozen poets, pronounced it to be the best possible poetic vehicle for its purpose. It has withstood the severest test that any form can be put to: it has survived the changes of language, the fluctuations of taste, the growth of culture, the onward sweep and the resilience of the wave of poetry that flows to and fro, 'with kingly pauses of reluctant pride,' across all civilised peoples: for close upon six hundred years have elapsed since Fra Guittone and Dante and Petrarca found the perfected instrument ready for them to play their sweetest music

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