Who meekly yields and is obscured ;-content
With one calm triumph of a modest pride."

The following specimen may be noticed, by the way, as presenting a striking instance of the combined action of reflective and imaginative power.

"In my mind's eye a temple, like a cloud,
Slowly surmounting some invidious hill,

Rose out of darkness: the bright work stood still
And might of its own beauty have been proud,
But it was fashioned and to God was vowed
By virtues that diffused, in every part
Spirit divine through forms of human art:

Faith had her arch-her arch, when winds blow loud,
Into the consciousness of safety thrilled;

And Love her towers of dread foundation laid
Under the grave of things: Hope had her spire
Star-high, and pointing still to something higher.
Trembling I gazed, but heard a voice--it said

Hell gates are powerless phantoms where we build."

The recently published volume of poems by Mr. Wordsworth contains a number of sonnets showing his talent in unabated vigour.

TO THE PLANET VENUS, AN EVENING STAR,

Composed at Loch-Lomond.

"Though joy attend thee orient at thy birth

Of dawn, it cheers the lofty spirit most

To watch thy course when day-light fled, from earth,
In the gray sky hath left his lingering ghost

Perplexed, as if between a splendour lost

And splendour slowly mustering. Since the sun,
The absolute, the world-absorbing one,
Relinquished half his empire to the host,
Emboldened by thy guidance, holy star,
Holy as princely, who that looks on thee,
Touching, as now, in thy humility

The mountain borders of this seat of care,
Can question that thy countenance is bright,

Celestial Power! as much with love as light?"

One word more on this subject of definition before we leave it. Some one perhaps may seek to resolve his doubts on the acceptation of the term "sonnet," by that innocent-hearted method of looking into the dictionary. In the folio edition of Johnson's, he will find the following definition: "Sonnet, a short poem consisting of fourteen lines, of which the rhymes are adjusted by a particular rule. It is not very suitable to the English language, and has not been used by any man of eminence since Milton." And then, in evidence of the lexicographer's conception of the character of the poem in question,

inserted at length is Milton's sonnet written on the detraction which followed his Tetrachordon and other of his prose treatises. It was a piece of scoff at his political foes, and the humour of it, such as it is, seems to consist in the introduction of as many rugged proper names as the poet could manage in the space of fourteen metrical lines. The smile of the great republican poet, at least as far as we trace it in his prose writings, was certainly not his most agreeable expression; it was ten times tinctured with bitterness. If Dr. Johnson meant, as no doubt he did if he had any meaning, to cite that sonnet as a fair specimen, it either evinces a lamentable want of taste, or is additional proof how completely his vision was sealed to the wealth of the best periods of English poetry. The definition which succeeds to the above has caught our eye: "Sonnetteer, a small poet; in contempt." Let us see who they are. To say nothing of a worthy train of early poets, who were small only by comparison with their great cotemporaries, the sonnet was a favourite form of composition with each one of that glorious triumvirate, who kindled the flame of poetry higher than ever since the creation it flamed by mere human kindling, and kept it burning at its brightest for a century: EDMUND SPENSERWILLIAM SHAKSPEARE-JOHN MILTON-sonnetteers all— "small poets, in contempt!" Samuel Johnson! in charity we are bound to hope that you are forgiven, but verily we have our fears.

Our principal object thus far has been merely to illustrate what form of English poetry it is, which is designated by the name of the sonnet, and incidentally to call attention to the true conception and exquisite finish of the specimens, selected with no very great pains, from the pages of a living poet. Let it now be distinctly understood that we do not of course claim for England the invention of the sonnet. It had its birth under a southern sky. Whether Italian or Provençal in its origin would not be pertinent for us at present to discuss. Its date is anterior to Petrarch, though from the fact that it was more developed and rendered more popular by him, it is identified so intimately with his name. There is a theory suggested by Ginguené or Sismondi, if we recollect rightly, which traces to the poetry of the Arabs the fashion of continuing and intermingling the metrical sounds in their verses. Now this is one of the distinguishing features of the sonnet; and the use of rhyme, which is another, is a Gothic fashion, a northern barbarism as it was regarded by all who, like old Roger Ascham, fed in their hearts the hope of living to see their vernacular dialects set to the tune of hexameters. May it not be, then, that the wealth of several different quarters of the globe was laid under contribution to be coined in the diminutive mould of the sonnet?

It would be a singular boast for any thing so humble and unassuming. It is easy we are aware to weave theories, and upon this subject to extract much plausibility from the fact of the singular fusing of the European and Saracenic races together in the south of Europe, during a part of the middle ages. History presents, probably, no more extraordinary instance of the kind than the intermingling of three distinct races in a very limited territory at the time of the Norman establishment in Sicily; there was the remnant of the old Sicilian race-their conquerors, the Arabs-and the final victor, the Norman. Well might their music blend together, where they were girt in by the ocean in this little plot. In all diffidence we offer our fancy -we will not dignify it with the title of theory-that one graft was brought by the Arab from the East, and another from the region of the Goth, and that these grew into one growth under the genial influence of an Italian or Sicilian sun.

How is a nation's claim to any form of composition, whether metrical or not, to be established? Not, we contend, by discovery or pre-occupation. Parnassus is as free and illimitable as the ocean or the wind. If there be any method of taking a ceremonious possession, as territory is acquired by planting a standard or erecting a pile of stones, we have yet to learn what it is. It would not be more presumptuous and irrational to attempt to check the free current of a breeze that has wafted over Italy, than to contend that a certain arrangement of poetic melodies first uttered there must therefore remain Italian to the end of time. The domain of letters is no more susceptible of private exclusive dominion, than is the open sea. If there should be perceived a disposition on the one hand to assert, and on the other to yield to such a claim, it would be time for some one, invoking the spirit of old Grotius to his aid, to compile a Helicon Liberum. What would it be but reviving the principle of the old Portuguese claim? Petrarch, like De Gama, may have all the fame of discovery, but we yield nothing of long maintained possession and of present title. We claim our ancient English rights of sailing on the wide sea wherever the winds may carry us, and of tuning our language to any note to which it will answer.

Any form of writing, no matter how artificial in its structure, or how remote in its origin, may be naturalized into a language, if it is adapted to the character of that language, and if writers can be found who have shown this by actual experiment. In reference simply to origin, the sonnet is an exotic, but so is the epic or the ode. We cheerfully admit as much in one case as in the other, but nothing more; and this admission is but equivalent to the acknowledgment that Homer came into the world before Milton, Pindar before Dryden and VOL. XIX. -NO. 38.

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Gray, and Petrarch before Surrey. A seed from this southern plant has been sown in the soil of English literature, and, exposed to all the inclemency of a northern climate, it has been followed by a growth as vigorous and flourishing as the parent stock. What we take exception to, is the propensity still to regard it as an unnatural transplantation, or a forced and artificial growth. When we dwell with an exulting national pride upon the pages of the Paradise Lost, our own English epic-we are never rebuked by being reminded of the claims of Homer. And when we read the English sonnet, able as we are to cite hundreds of them which would adorn the literature of any country, we cannot consent to stand always cap in hand to the shade of Petrarch. A brief reference to a few of the English sonnet writers of different periods will firmly establish our claim, and serve at the same time to correct the prejudices against the form itself.

The most obvious of these prejudices is directed against the narrow and precise limits of the sonnet. How, it is asked, can the free spirit of poetry breathe in such bondage-the certain bounds of fourteen lines, never to be passed over, yet always to be reached? How can fancy or imagination survive? If the sentiment be expansive or the imagery abundant, all must be cramped or curtailed. If, on the other hand, it can touch the reader's heart in an expression more brief, it must, notwithstanding, be stretched out to the standard. Such is the argument, and, as a matter of course, Procrustes' bed is usually rolled in by way of illustration. Richness of thought and fancy must be reduced, and poverty must be eked out. Now all of this, if true, is very objectionable, and that it is often true there is many a luckless sonnet on record to testify. But what does it prove? Not that the sonnet is an inappropriate form of poetry, but only that it is often employed upon subjects that are not adapted to it, and by writers who are unequal to it. The objection establishes nothing more than that there may be an incompetent poet or an injudicious selection of the topic-an objection surely not peculiar, but which would form an equally reasonable prejudice against the ode, the drama, or the epic. But the complaint does not stop here. One fault, it is alleged, leads to another, violations of literary propriety, like breaches of veracity, being of a very social tendency. Unnatural forms of expression are traced as a necessary consequence of an unnatural form of composition. The poet, unable, by reason of his artificial restraints, to give sufficient developement to his feeling or his imagery, finds himself obliged to produce his impression by resorting to points and antitheses, and all the devices of artificial expression. Hence, it is said, the conceits for which the Italian sonnet is signally noted, and which may

be observed also in no inconsiderable degree in so many of those of other nations. Again we might resist this attack by charging the fault upon the individual poet; it proves his weakness and nothing else. But we are willing to take the burden of proof upon ourselves. We maintain that these faults are not naturally or necessarily inherent in the sonnet; and how can the question be better settled than by reference to what has actually been accomplished by it? Let us conceive proposed as a topic for a sonnet, a vindication of the form of poetry itself, to be effected by an enumeration of the famed poets of various countries who have made use of it, with allusions to their general character, the prominent circumstances of their lives, and their several purposes in writing; this to be done adequately, without restraint or prolixity, in language at once poetical and natural, and with a strict regard to the requisitions of versification. The conception would be surely ample enough for a poem of fourteen lines, under peculiar metrical laws. Whether the sonnet be equal to it, may be best ascertained by the perusal of another of Mr. Wordsworth's, in which the reader will recognize the execution of the conception which we have just sketched in a very lifeless paraphrase:

"Scorn not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours: with this key
Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
Camoens soothed with it an exile's grief:
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp

It cheered mild Spenser, called from faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The thing became a trumpet whence he blew
Soul-animating strains-alas, too few!"

What could be more finished, more perfect, whether you regard it for its mere fancy, or as a piece of eulogy or criticism? What more natural in the expression, more free from every thing like false effect; more varied in its harmonies-what melody could be sweeter than the fall of its close? Is there a word that could be taken away, or one that could be added? Well would it alone sustain the fine illustration, which has been given of Mr. Wordsworth's sonnets, and which is also in a great measure applicable to all the best sonnets in the language: "Mr. Wordsworth's sonnet never goes off, as it were, with a clap or repercussion at the close; but is thrown up like a rocket, breaks into light, and falls in a soft shower of brightness." Another, very characteristic of his general manner, may serve