CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

xi

AN ESSAY

ON THE CULTIVATION, HISTORY, and VARIETIES OF THE SPECIES

OF POEM CALLED THE SONNET.

I. ON THE Desirableness OF CULTIVATING THE SONNET 3

II. OF THE NATURE AND PROPERTIES OF THE SONNET,

PARTICULARLY THE SONNET CALLED LEGITIMATE

III. OF GUITTONE D' AREZZO, AND OF THE SONNETS OF

DANTE AND PETRARCA

8

16

28

IV. OF THE OTHER PRINCIPAL SONNET-WRITERS OF ITALY

V. OF OTHER LEGITIMATE BUT OBSOLETE FORMS OF THE

SONNET, PARTICULARLY THE COMIC SONNET

VI. OF ENGLISH Sonnets, and of the SONNET ILLEGITI-

MATE, OR QUATORZEN.

52

65

(For though you are still young, and I am now indeed old, having outlived the period usually assigned to the age of man, yet, to say nothing of graver reasons, friendship, you know, may exist in its most companionable form between juniors and their elders, when founded on the love of such never-fading things as the beauties of nature and the books which they have inspired,) you gratified me extremely, when you asked for some remarks from my pen on the subject of the class of poems from which you meditated a selection. The interest which with a zeal so generous you take in the Transatlantic welfare of my writings would alone be as sufficient as it ought to be to set me gladly to the task; but you considered, I have no doubt, (for I have learnt to detect your artifices in such matters,) that the subject would be one that I should like for its own sake also; and when you concluded your request with mentioning the names