strikes us as exquisite; but the allusion to Phoebus in the second line may grate on modern ears. Hear then what Mr. Leigh Hunt has to say in its favor. He defends it on the same ground that he would defend the Lycidas of Milton, and avers that men so imbued with the classics can speak from their hearts in such language. Perhaps," he says, "had they not both so written they had not spoken so well. They would not have used language so accordant with the habits of their intercourse." And he adds, "The image in Gray's sonnet is beautiful for its own sake, and beautifully put: 66 Thomas Warton, a man of considerable culture, a wit, a college don, and favorably known as an imitative poet, who had studied chiefly in the school of Milton, was Gray's friend and contemporary, and a friend also of poor Collins, whose work, accomplished in a short and unhappy life, is very exquisite and precious. Warton is best known by his prose works, but some of his short descriptive poems are of marked excellence, and he wrote nine sonnets, two of which, although not to be ranked with the best, deserve at least honorable mention. We allude to the sonnet "Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon," and to that addressed to the river Loddon, which is gracefully and tenderly written. Contemporary with Warton was a poet of a far higher order, whose work is, much of it, destined to live, because based upon the eternal truths of Nature. William Cowper may be said to have commenced the poetical revolution, which more thoroughly, and on a far wider scale, was accomplished by Wordsworth. Verse is not the fitting vehicle for theology; and Cowper, as a theologian, frequently loses his cunning, but in his expression of religious feeling apart from dogma, and in his loving, careful description of Nature and of the feelings called forth by natural objects, he takes a distinguished place among the poets. Truly does Southey say of The Task, that "the descriptive parts everywhere bore evidence of a thoughtful mind and a gentle spirit, as well as of an observant eye, and the moral sentiment which pervaded them gave a charm in which descriptive poetry is often found wanting." Cowper, one of the most sorrowful of men, is also one of the most pathetic of poets, and this pathetic charm will be felt in the exquisite sonnet addressed to Mrs. Unwin: Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, At the end of the last century two women, Charlotte Smith and Ann Seward, wrote a great number of sonnets which gained a temporary popularity. Charlotte Smith's are simple and unaffected. Miss Seward, who attained much local reputation, will be remembered from her friendship, if, indeed, friendship is the correct term to use, with Sir Walter Scott. The great novelist visited her at Litchfield, corresponded with her, and liked her far better than her writings. Unhappily the lady's estimate of her poetry differed from Scott's, and when she died, in 1809, she bequeathed her posthumous verses to him, with injunctions to publish them speedily, and to give a sketch of her life. Scott felt bound by the lady's wishes and produced three volumes of what he is forced in his correspondence to call "execrable poetry." It frequently happened that Scott's kindliness of heart got the better of his critical judgment, and, in this case, he was severely punished for his good nature. "He had been," says Lockhart, "as was natural, pleased and flattered by the attentions of the Litchfield poetess in the days of his early aspirations after literary distinction; but her verses, which he had with his usual readiness praised to herself beyond their worth, appeared, when col lected, a formidable monument of mediocrity." From a mass of rubbish, however, one sonnet of sound quality may be rescued, upon "Rising Early to Read on a Winter's Morning." It is good, but not highly good, and deserves notice rather for the feeling expressed in it, the genuineness of which many early risers will acknowledge, than for the instrumentation: I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light, (Winter's pale dawn;) and as warm fires illume, And cheerful tapers shine around the room, Through misty windows bend my musing sight, Where round the dusky lawn, the mansions white With shutters closed, peer faintly through the gloom That slow recedes; while yon gray spires as sume, Rising from their dark pile, an added height, By whose best use we lengthen life, and free There are some sonnets that possess a literary rather than a poetical interest. Thus, for example, Miss Williams's sonnet To Hope scarcely advances beyond the rank of respectable mediocrity, but it is noteworthy as having been liked by Wordsworth and retained for many years in his memory. These sonnets of Bowles, too, many of them excellent specimens of mellifluous versification, are chiefly to be remembered as having awakened the poetic life in Coleridge, whose poetry, small in compass, ranks with the most purely poetical that has been produced this century. As a sonnet-writer, Coleridge (differing herein from his son Hartley) may be said comparatively to have failed, although that addressed to Schiller, and Fancy in Nubibus, will be known to most readers. The amazing genius of "the Highgate sage" was obscured and partly rendered inoperative by his fatal irresolution. "I will begin to-morrow," he says, " and thus he has been all his life long letting to-day slip."* The same curse beset the gifted Hartley, who has left little to testify to his uncommon powers. Probably his best and most characteristic poems are sonnets, and one of them, descriptive of his wasted life, is deeply pathetic. S. T. Coleridge, by the way, declared that the foreigner Blanco White had written the "finest and most grandly-conceived sonnet in our language," adding, "at least, it is only in Milton and in Wordsworth that I remember any rival." The execution, unfortunately, is not equal to the conception; but, notwithstanding some trivial defects, it is a noble poem, and justifies, or nearly so, this high eulogy: TO NIGHT. Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find, The names of Blanco White and of Coleridge remind us that our rapid course has brought us within sight of the affluent and wide-spreading river of poetry that flowed at the beginning of this century. The little rivulet of the sonnet which we have lately followed swells again, as in the sixteenth century, into a broad stream; and standing upon its banks, and seeing the wealth it bears, one feels how impossible it is to do more than note a few of the choice treasures that attract the eye. The two most popular poets of sixty years since, Byron and Scott, have no claim upon our regard as sonnet-writers, nor should we look for much workmanship of this kind from a singer like Shelley, whose passionate emotion, uttered in many a winding bout of linked sweetness, could scarcely find free utterance on an instrument which demands reticence of language and stern compression of thought. One grand sonnet, however, has been produced by Shelley, which fills the imagination as only the work of a great master can: I met a traveler from an antique land, Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear :'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty! and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away!" Young as Keats was when he "awakened from the dream of life," he gave evidence in his last years of a maturity of thought, and a power of execution which prove that had he lived he would have taken rank with the worthiest. As it is, the small volume that contains all he wrote, is of priceless value, and will ever be read and loved by the student of poetry. He will find in it the immaturity of the youth as evinced in the lovely poem of Endymion, and the strength of perfect manhood as displayed in Hyperion, Ode to Nightingale, or the Ode on a Grecian Urn, and will marvel that this ripe and golden fruit of poetry was produced by one whose little life was comprised within twenty-six years. The luxuriant freedom of the earlier poems does not augur success to this poet as a sonneteer, and the opinion that might reasonably have been formed from them is not wholly fallacious. Keats wrote about forty sonnets, some of them loose in construction, some not in any wise remarkable, but in the collection will be found one at least that may claim a place with the best. We allude to the sonnet composed On first looking into Chapman's Homer. Much have I travel'd in the realms of gold, Oft of one wide expanse had I been told bold. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken; Or, like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific-and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmiseSilent upon a peak in Darien. But the greatest of all English sonnetwriters is Wordsworth. Not only has he composed a larger number of sonnets than any other of our poets, he has also written more that are of first-rate excellence. There is no intensity of passion in Wordsworth's sonnets; and herein he differs from Shakspeare and from Mrs. Browning; neither has he attained the severe dignity of style which marks the sonnets of Milton; but for perfect purity of language, for variety and strength of thought, for the curiosa felicitas of poetical diction, for the exquisite skill with which the emotions of the mind are associated with the aspects of nature, we know of no sonnetwriter who can take precedence of Wordsworth. In his larger poems, his language is sometimes slovenly, and occasionally, as Scott said, he chooses to crawl on all-fours; but this is rarely the case in the sonnets; and though he wrote upwards of four hundred, there are few, save those on the Punishment of Death, and some of those called Ecclesiastical, (for neither argument nor dogma find a fitting place in verse,) that we could willingly part with. To write of them here as they deserve is obviously impossible, and happily the task has been so ably done already by Sir Henry Taylor-himself a great poet, whose dramas will, we think, be even more appreciated in future years than they are now-that a few brief remarks may suffice. Wordsworth's belief that the very language of the common people may be used as the language of poetry, was totally inoperative when he composed a sonnet. He wrote at such times in the best diction he could command, and the language, like the thought, is that of a great master. His theory, indeed, was altogether set at nought in his finest poems, and there is no trace of it in the Ode on Immortality, Tintern Abbey, Laodamia, The Eclipse of the Sun, or in many other of the glorious poems to which he owes his fame. Much of that fame is, no doubt, due to the sonnets, which embrace almost every theme, except the one to which this branch of the poetical art has been usually dedicated. The passion of love has no place in the sonnets of Wordsworth, but some of the noblest are dedicated to liberty, some describe with incomparable felicity the personal feelings of the writer, some express, with a more perfect instrumentation than any other poet has attained, the connection between the external world and the human soul; some might be termed simply descriptive, were it not that even these are raised above the rank of descriptive poetry, by the pure and lofty imagination of the poet. The light that never was on sea or land pervades the humblest of these pieces, and throughout them there is inculcated a cheerful, because divine, philosophy. When he writes mournfully, it is from no fanciful melancholy such as that in which Byron imitators used at one time to indulge, but because he fears lest the eager toil after wealth should deprive us of the simple pleasures, the serene happiness, which belong to us by birthright: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! And in another sonnet he gives expression to a like feeling. After saying that our life is only dressed for show, he adds: We must run glittering like a brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest: The wealthiest man among us is the best; No grandeur now in Nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore: Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws. And in another sonnet he adjures his countrymen, who at that time were anticipating a French invasion, not to place too much reliance on the "barrier flood" which separated them from France: Winds blow and waters roll Strength to the brave, and Power and Deity; Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree Spake laws to them and said that, by the soul Only, the nations shall be great and free. But if for a moment Wordsworth fears for England and feels for her "as a lover or a child," he acknowledges that such fears are “unfilial," since it is not to be thought of that the most famous stream of British freedom should be lost in bogs and sands: Which Milton held. sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. Indeed courage and cheerfulness are noticeable virtues in Wordsworth's poetry. His prevailing mood is one of steadfastness and hope : In every thing we are A cheerful life is what the Muses loveA soaring spirit is their prime delight. If we were asked by a young reader, hitherto ignorant of this great poet, to select from the sonnets, almost all of which deserve careful and patient study, a few of preeminent beauty, or that are specially characteristic of the poet, we could but point him to those with which the admirers of Wordsworth are already perfectly familiar-the two sonnets on the "Sonnet," the four on " Personal Talk," "London from Westminster Bridge," the three to "Sleep," that on the "Departure of Sir Walter Scott for Naples," and several of those dedicated to "Liberty." We may add that the series on the "River Dud don" are worthy of special study, and that those who desire to appreciate Wordsworth's power, and to enjoy the intellectual wealth that is stored up in his poetry, must be willing to give time and labor to the study of his works. Writing of the poet when he was still living and singing, Sir Henry Taylor observed, and the words come with equal force still," Mr. Wordsworth never intended so to write that those who ran might read. To detain for a brief moment these run-away readers is the proper aim of those who are snatching at a transient popularity, and this writing for a cursory perusal has been the bane of literature in our times, and the ruin of But neither to this aim nor to this way of writing has Mr. Wordsworth ever lent himself." art. Wordsworth is sometimes obscure from the weight and variety of his thoughts, but never from the lack of careful handling and artistic skill. He had always perfect command of his instrument; Mrs. Browning, on the contrary, exhibits more wealth of imagination and originality of thought, than skill in execution. She was a great poet, but not a consummate artist, and in the mechanical part of her art she is often faulty. In the sonnet, however, the necessity of a rigorous method was forced upon her, and some of her most remarkable poems are produced in this form. They may be divided perhaps, but not with any sharp line of demarcation, into two classes: religious sonnets and love-sonnets. Among the former the highest place may be assigned to the three sonnets on St. Peter and to the four sonnets headed Bereavement, Consolation, Comfort, and Cheerfulness taught by Reason. The love-sonnets, forty-three in number, and professing to be "from the Portuguese," abound in wealth of thought, in glow of passion, in felicity of expression, in the high imagination which is the poet's prime possession. These are no "fancy pieces," but express in noble language the innermost soul of the writer. Limited as our space is, we must find room for one sonnet out of the series, and we insert it all the more willingly because we believe that this great poem "from the Portuguese" which, although divided into many portions, is but one in design and action is less known, and therefore less admired, than Aurora Leigh or Casa Guidi Windows : If thou must love me, let it be for nought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Here we must close this brief and very imperfect account of our sonnet-writers. To include living names would demand another Paper of equal length to this, for the sonnet is a favorite form of composition with recent poets, several of whom have employed it with a felicity that has rarely, if ever, been surpassed. Enough, however, has been said to show that for three centuries the sonnet has held a place among the legitimate forms of English verse, and with what affection it has been regarded by the great poets of England. The sonnet will not be appreciated by the "idle reader," who cares only for the amusement afforded by an "idle lay." All noble verse, indeed, demands studious regard; but "the sonnet is a form of poetry in which style is put under high pressure," and the delight it affords is generally the reward of toil. [From the Cornhill Magazine. SPRING MESSENGERS. HAPPY the ear which first perceives, Spring's herald he; for when the rain A certain sobbing music fills The rust-incrusted oak is mute, And in the woods, yet soft for showers-In Winter's wild, disheveled bowersThe violet takes heart and flowers. Happy the eye which then can see, The watchful, kind Divinity. Seasons of hurtling storms and snows Hold i' the dark the early rose, But fair the honeysuckle blows. From breezy hedges, cottage-walls, Where most at morn the sunshine falls, Its odor comes, at intervals; |