Sonnets of Mr. Coleridge, that he is obliged to confess that he totally differs from him in the opinion given in the succeeding part of that composition: after having laid it before his readers, he will conclude this little address with the reasons which induce him to dissent in opinion from so great an authority in almost all questions, and particularly in any one connected with poetry.

66

Respecting the metre of a sonnet, the writer should consult his own convenience.-Rhymes, many or few, or no rhymes at all-whatever the chastity of his ear may prefer, whatever the rapid expression of his feelings will permit;—all these things are left at his own disposal. A sameness in the final sound of its words is the great and grievous defect of the Italian language. That rule, therefore, which the Italians have established, of exactly four different sounds in the sonnet, seems to have arisen from their wish to have as many, not from any dread of finding more. But, surely, it is ridiculous to make the defect of a foreign language a reason for our not availing ourselves of one of the marked excellences of our own. The Sonnet,' says Preston, 'will ever be cultivated by those who write on tender pathetic subjects. It is peculiarly adapted

to the state of a man violently agitated by a real passion, and wanting composure and vigour of mind to methodize his thoughts. It is fitted to express a momentary burst of passion,' &c. Now, if there be one species of composition more difficult and artificial than another, it is an English sonnet on the Italian model. Adapted to the expression of a real passion! Express momentary bursts of feeling in it! I should sooner expect to write pathetic axes, or pour forth extempore eggs and altars!”

The Author replies, that experience affords the test by which this question is to be tried. Milton, Warton, and, later than these, Miss Seward, and especially Mr. Wordsworth, have produced beautiful, and the latter most sublime, English sonnets on the Italian model. Where Mr. Coleridge learned that "the sameness in the final sounds of its words is the great and grievous defect of the Italian language," the Author cannot tell. No reader perceives such a defect in Ariosto, Tasso, or Dante.-It is certainly more easy to rhyme in that, than in almost any other language, since most of its words terminate with a vowel; but to this very circumstance, must the melody of that language be in some measure attributed. Again, the Author recurs to what

he has already said, that in a poem so tottering on the brink of insignificancy as is the sonnet, it is well, in order to give an artificial value to it, that in the mode of its composition some difficulty be overcome. Yet, were his experience allowed as of any weight, he should say, that when once the mind is resolved upon such a restraint, no more difficulty is perceived in writing a sonnet on the Italian model, than on the more loose one of three elegiac stanzas and a couplet. -Besides, it should seem that the very argument deduced from custom, in the composition of the sonnet, which Mr. Coleridge brings for the restriction of fourteen lines, might equally apply to the further one of confining the termination of its lines to four sounds,-taking for granted, that the author is justified in asserting, that, when the will is bent upon it, it is almost as easy to write a sonnet on the Italian model, as to compose one without any restraint than that of the fourteen lines, he shall, in further extenuation of the former rule, assert with Mr. Coleridge, that "when no reason can be adduced against a thing, custom is a sufficient reason for it."-As for the quotation made by Mr. Coleridge from Mr. Preston, the language there adopted seems a begging of the

question; a position is gratuitously laid down, in order to vindicate an inference. The author always considered the sonnet rather as a severe and terse composition; he never dreamed of it as peculiarly "fitted to express a momentary burst of passion."-Rather did he look upon it as a poem of a meditative and thoughtful cast. There would be no end to theoretical innovations, if persons are thus to frame factitious theories as an apology for them.

SONNETS.

SONNET I.

TO CRAIG-MILLAR CASTLE.

1796.

THIS hoary labyrinth, the wreck of time,
Solicitous, with timid step I tread;

Scale the stern battlement, or vent'rous climb, Where the rent watch-tower bows its grassy head:

These dark, damp caverns breathe mysterious dread,

Haply still foul with tinct of ancient crime; Methinks some spirit of the ennobled dead High-bosom'd maid, or warrior chief sublime Haunts them: the flappings of the heavy bird Imagined warnings fearfully impart;

And the dull breeze below, that feebly stirred, Seemed the deep breathing of an o'er-charged

heart.

Proud Tower, thy halls now stable the lean herd,

And musing Mercy smiles that such thou art!