HE little species of poem called a sonnet, which is limited in general to fourteen lines, and is rhymed and arranged according to particular laws, made its first known appearance at the beginning of the twelfth century, and in Italy. Like almost all the forms of Italian poetry, it is supposed to have originated in Provence; and it derived its name, like the composition called a Sonata, from being sounded or played; that is to say, accompanied by a musical instrument. To sound, in Italian, still means to play music; and the sonnet, of old, was never without such accompaniment. The Canzone, or Ode, like the Canzonetta, or Song, the Chanson and Chansonette of the French, might be chanted, or sung, with the voice. only; and so might the Canto, or division, of the narrative poem; as was the case with the stanzas of Tasso, that were sung up to a late period by the Venetian gondolier. The Ballata, or ballad, - from ballare, to dance, whence our word Ball, a species of song, the name of which has strangely wandered from its first meaning, might be danced to, also with the voice only.

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The Madrigal, sometimes called Madriale, or Mandriale, a small, irregular set of verses, often of the briefest and humblest description, and so named, according to the received opinion, from Mandra, or Mandria, a sheepfold, but more probably, I conceive, from the song of the mother (madre), or nursery song, implied nothing directly musical either way; though it subsequently came to mean a particular species of vocal composition in parts. But the sonnet, agreeably to its appellation, was never heard without the sounding of the lute or the guitar. This connection, as we shall see, lasted a long time; and when it ceased, it left upon the little poem a demand for treatment more than commonly musical, and implying, so to speak, the companion which it had lost.

When I first began this Essay, I had entered more at large into these and other matters relative to the name and rise of the sonnet; such as a late etymology from the French word Sonnette, a sheep-bell; the strange, pedantic question, whether the species of poem originated in the Pindaric Ode, or in the Greek or Latin Epigram, things either too long or too short, and quite out of the beat of its early writers; the demand of a certain logical mode of treatment, which it was long the fashion to consider indispensably necessary; and, lastly, certain recondite musical analogies, which a late enthusiast on the subject, Mr. Capel Lofft, found between its fourteen lines and the gamut.

Two of these points, however, are scarcely worth the mention here given them; and the other two, which contain germs of truth, may be briefly despatched.

The fourteen lines of the Sonnet Proper, or what is called the Legitimate Sonnet, that is to say, the one

written according to the laws which have prevailed in Italy ever since the time of Petrarca, are divided into two distinct portions, Major and Minor, each of which is subdivided into two also. The Major division consists of eight lines, called the Octave, which possesses but two rhymes; the Minor, of six lines, called the Sestette, which possesses never more than three; and the subdivisions or halves of these eight lines are called Quatrains, and those of the six lines Terzettes. The two rhymes of the Major division almost invariably occupy the same places; the two or three rhymes of the Minor may be varied at pleasure, but seldom close with a couplet.

A few glances, however, at the sonnets themselves will be worth a hundred directions of this kind; only the student is to bear in mind, that the music of the lines is to be at once as sweet and as strong and as varied as ́possible, and that there should be something of a difference of tone discernible in the Major and Minor portions, as there is in the divisions of music so called, or in the two strains of an air or melody.

The logical notion of the treatment of this construction of verse arose in the times when Aristotle and the schoolmen were all in all with men of letters; and it was probably not unassisted by the musical instinct which perceives questions, and replies, and solutions, in tones and cadences. The musical notion, as pushed to its excess by Mr. Lofft,* would appear to have been suggested to him by his confusion of Friar Guittone of Arezzo, who is understood to have first given the sonnet its right modulation, with another Friar of the same

*In his collection of sonnets entitled "Laura," Vol. I., Preface, p. v.

name and place, who flourished a long time before him, and who was supposed to be the inventor of counterpoint.

The logical notion prevailed so long with critics of a certain scholarly and conventional turn of mind, that, so late as towards the middle of the last century, Quadrio, one of the most distinguished of them, tells us, that the business of the first quatrain of the sonnet is to state the proposition of it; of the second quatrain to prove the proposition; of the first terzette to confirm it, and of the second terzette to draw the conclusion;* and the good Father Ceva, in his selection of pieces of this kind for the use of schools, likens the sonnet to a syllogism, in which, if the conclusion is not strictly drawn from the premises, the whole is a mere play of words and of rhymes.†

That such a system could never prevail over the manifest temptations to be more free and easy, need hardly be observed. The sonnet was too obvious a resource for expressing any emotion whatsoever, to be restricted to formalities so pedantic; and accordingly it finally obeyed no laws in general but those that are essential to all good poetry, with the exception of such as were necessary to render it what it was, and to secure for it that completeness, and that freedom from blemish, which alone can render a small thing precious.

On the other hand, it would be rash to affirm that logic had no involuntary concern, or music no artistical concern, in forming the sonnet. There is an instinct of music in every kind of verse; and there is, or ought to

Della Storia e della Ragione d' Ogni Poesia, (Milano, 1742,) Tom. III. p. 16.

† Scelta di Sonetti, (Torino, 1735,) P. 42.

be, a beginning, a middle, and an end in every kind of composition. Reason must naturally reason, and emotion speak, as well and consistently as it can; and music is only emotion singing. The poets who flourished while the sonnet was maturing were all, more or less, musicians as well as poets; the minstrels, their predecessors, had invariably, in the first instance, written both the words and the music of their compositions, though the tasks gradually became divided; but every poet played on the lute or guitar; every poet accompanied his chant or his recitation with it; and the more musical the poet, the more he would feel the musical capabilities of what he composed. One improvement in this respect would produce another; verses, like musical bars, would be found to have their claims on variety of accent and pause; and final satisfaction of the ear might, naturally enough, suggest the settlement of a determinate amount of size in the sum total. Theories on such points may be pushed to extremes by enthusiasts, and niceties of intention be attributed where they did not exist; but as verse itself is often written without a knowledge of prosody, and music itself composed with little insight into the subtleties of its grammar, so feeling alone might have suggested those analogies of majors and minors, of tones, modulations, cadences, and harmonical progressions, the reality of which in sonnets of masterly execution will be admitted, more or less, by every good ear which is not unacquainted with the terms of the musical

art.

A sonnet is, in fact, or ought to be, a piece of music as well as of poetry; and as every lover of music is sensible of the division even of the smallest air into two