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INTRODUCTION

The lines are, indeed, often little better than stumbling prose. The subject is love, exercising itself in extravagant praise of bodily beauty, and profuse complaint at the fair one's unreasoning coldness and indifference. In his other poetry, Wyatt can be simple and sincere, but in the sonnets he is usually paraphrasing, or attempting to translate directly, the work of Petrarch, and with difficulty endeavoring to maintain the emotional fervor of his master. Surrey, dealing generally with the same personal themes, is more musical, has a better command of line, a more graceful and pleasing diction. The work of these poets, done between 1530 and 1540, was not published until 1557, in Tottel's Miscellany. This book appears to have been popular, but, strange to say, few poets sought to imitate the new form of verse.

At this time in France a group of writers, calling themselves the Pleiade, under the leadership of Ronsard and Du Bellay, set about vigorously the complete reformation of French literature. Their assertion was that French, being crude in thought and form, could be elevated only by an imitation of Greek, Latin, and Italian models; hence one of the favorite tasks of these poets was the translation, paraphrase, or imitation of the Italian sonnets, especially those written by Petrarch. This work, carried on with vigor from about 1550 to the death of Ronsard in 1584, had a great influence in England, where the educated read chiefly French books.

English thought, under the stimulus of French enthusiasm, turned again to Italy, and the sonnet soon became the popular form in England. Each of the poets, there being so many of them that Ben Jonson says the name of poet became a term of contempt, tried his hand at it. He not only wrote one or a dozen, but he generally composed a sequence of a hundred or a list approaching that perfect number. Thousands upon thousands of sonnets were written, almost always on the subject of love, the poets seeking, either servilely or reverently, to follow in the footsteps of Petrarch. They succeeded, however, in most cases, in reproducing only the extravagant love-praise and suffering, but failed to attain

INTRODUCTION

the beauty of language and sincerity of emotion that made Petrarch's sonnets live. Yet there is a fascination about the wailing sorrows and the glowing praises of Lodge for Phillis, Fletcher for Licia, Daniel for Delia, Percy for Coelia, Drayton for Idea, Griffin for Fidessa, Smith for Chloris, Sidney for Stella, and Spenser for his "soverayne saynt." The world seems very young, very fresh, and full of harmless feeling for beauty and love. One somehow senses the beauty as real and discounts the pain as only a means of enhancing the loveliness. The sonnets range in poetic grace and emotional sincerity from the happiest creations of Sidney and Spenser to the half-indifferent exercises of Drayton or the banalities of Smith and Griffin. They are, to be sure, in most cases only paraphrases of Petrarch or his French imitators, this Sidney Lee has clearly shown us,- nevertheless, we like the poets who follow so ardently, as a child his toy, their ideal of shining eyes and glowing cheeks.

Shakespeare writes, too, a sequence of sonnets, and he is of and not of this group of lovers who praise and blame their mistresses. Despite all the attempts to find the lady or friend, or both, of his sonnets, the mystery of their meaning has never been satisfactorily solved, yet it is clear that Shakespeare does the same thing his contemporaries are doing, only he does it superlatively well, with far greater power of thought, delicacy of sentiment, and sweetness of music. But the number of really great sonnets from his pen is small; the faults of the time in repetition, involved sentences, and extravagant emotion, mar the most of his sonnets. His best are among the best of all literature, yet they are comparatively few in number.

With the beginning of the seventeenth century the sonneteering vogue had somewhat spent its force, and Puritanism began to frown more sternly upon all such idle vanities as praise of ladies' beauty. William Drummond, "the Scottish Petrarch" and disciple of Spenser, writes sonnets to his lady which are free from glorification of physical charm and full of that which the Puritan sanctioned, religious melancholy and prayer for resignation. They are simpler in language,

INTRODUCTION

with fewer elaborate figures, and less repetition than have the earlier sonnets; they lack, however, freshness and vigor of imagination. Milton, a little later, takes time from the strenuous business of state to write now and then a sonnet. His sonnets begin in English a new type, a new standard of fashioning this difficult poem. With one exception, each stands by itself, unconnected with those that precede or follow, and only one deals with that favorite subject of love. Milton uses the sonnet for expressing his thought regarding people or events, as a way of estimating character, praising deeds, or seeking to stimulate men to action. He combines this freer scope of subject-matter with great simplicity of structure and diction, composing his sonnets without adornment and his sentences to read almost as clearly as prose. Like Shakespeare, however, Milton writes few of the highest quality, not because of imperfect form or faulty subject-matter, but because he is in only a few cases so deeply moved by his theme that emotion makes the lines glow with a compelling vividness and beauty. Before Milton, the sonnet had been sometimes dignified, occasionally simple and sincere, in many cases passionate; yet rarely before his work had these qualities been combined in the same sonnet.

The eighteenth century found its mode of expression in the freer ode, the satire, the more pointed epigram, and the elegy. Very few essayed the sonnet and still fewer, as Cowper in one instance, succeeded in writing sonnets of worth. Gray in 1742 wrote his one sonnet, formal, artificial, correct, and classical. Thomas Warton wrote nine; not one of which attains anything like the simplicity we find in Milton, or the grace by which Spenser delights us. It is not until 1789, when William Lisles Bowles published his little book of fourteen sonnets, that the sonnet becomes again the medium through which the poet speaks simply and plainly his individual thoughts and emotions. Bowles followed Milton's practice in avoiding love-themes and in making each sonnet a unit by itself. Coleridge was enthusiastic over the work of this author, beginning his own sonnet with "My heart has thank'd thee, Bowles," and again remarking, "Surely never

INTRODUCTION

was a writer so equal in excellence." This praise did much to make these sonnets known and read.

It was, however, Wordsworth who re-created and re-dignified the sonnet; he loved and defended it against its detractors, using it separately and in sequence for the expression of philosophy, religion, social reform, nature, friendship, and the common events of family life. Like Milton, he gives the sentence structure the simplicity and directness of prose, and at his best develops the thought within the rigid bounds of the sonnet as easily and naturally as in conversation. Most writers since have striven for this ideal, which lets the thought reveal itself without the obvious show of complexly unrolling phrases. Wordsworth, in his defense and his practice, assured the acceptance of the sonnet by the Romantic School, with which begins its renaissance and its popularity among modern poets. These two writers, Milton and Wordsworth, so stamped the sonnet that in manner it has changed little since, only gaining new poetic fervor with Keats and Rossetti and Mrs. Browning; in subject, it has become possibly more flexible, lending itself equally as well to the old subject of intimate love as to that of the impersonal criticism of church and state, and to themes all the way between these two.

1 The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Macmillan & Company, 1895), p. 40.

ENGLISH SONNETS

THE DESERTED LOVER CONSOLETH HIMSELF
DIVERS doth use, as I have heard and know,
When that to change their ladies do begin,
To mourn, and wail, and never for to lynn;
Hoping thereby to 'pease their painful woe.--
And some there be that when it chanceth so

That women change, and hate where love hath been,
They call them false, and think with words to win
The hearts of them which otherwhere doth grow.
But as for me, though that by chance indeed
Change hath outworn the favour that I had,
I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad,
Nor call her false that falsely did me feed;
But let it pass, and think it is of kind
That often change doth please a woman's mind.
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?-1542).

THE LOVER DESPAIRING TO ATTAIN WHOSO list to hunt? I know where is an hind! But as for me, alas! I may no more, The vain travail hath wearied me so sore; I am of them that furthest come behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore, Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list to hunt, I put him out of doubt As well as I, may spend his time in vain! And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written her fair neck round about; "Noli me tangere; for Cæsar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." Sir Thomas Wyatt.

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