sonnet, I am quite ready to admit that this Protean sort of verse may be a diamond, or anything else that's either rich or rare that an active fancy may please to term it." "Now that you are once more clothed and in your right mind, your juvenility may be able to comprehend my reasons for likening the sonnet to the diamond. Briefly, then, they are these: that like the diamond it is brilliant, compact, the most perfect when it is the most skilfully cut and most highly polished, and the most precious when its rude richness is the most elaborately perfected by art. And, finally, to complete the simile, the perfect sonnet is as rare as the perfect diamond." "By George! old fellow, you order your pack of metaphors with great skill, and keep them on the track of the devoted sonnet with as much stanchness as a pack of hounds is made to follow the scent of an unfortunate fox. But now that you have run your victim to earth, give me leave to interpose a plain question: In the fine lines by Wordsworth which you recited, he speaks of the sonnet as a favorite form of poetical composition with several among the greatest of modern poets, but he says nothing of its use by the ancients. Was it not, then, equally a favorite with them also?" No; it was unknown to the ancients, and we owe its invention to comparatively modern times. By some writers it is. held, with considerable ingenuity, that the sonnet originated with the Provençal poets, and was derived from them by the Italians. But I am inclined to the opinion that the ascription of its origin to the Provençals has its rise in the circumstance that they wrote in stanzas of seven verses the same as was afterward first introduced into England by Chaucer in his 'Troilus and Creseide.' It was very easy, where the unity and completeness of the sense would permit, to unite two of these. stanzas when they might pass muster for and be claimed as sonnets. The length of the verse would seem to vindicate such a claim; but in other important particulars the differences are so many and essential as to disallow it. Be this as it may, I shall assume that the oldest extant specimens of it are the productions of two Italians-Ludovico Vernaccia and Piero della Vigne-of whom pretty much all that we know besides is that they flourished very early in the thirteenth century. Later in the same century, and near its close, Fra Guittone, of Arezzo (also the birthplace of Petrarch), who died A.D. 1294, composed a number of sonnets, and is noteworthy for having been the first to give this kind of verse its regular and legitimate form. Dante and Petrarch were both familiar with his poetical productions; and the former, in one of his Latin treatises-'De Vulgari Eloquio '-criticises him for preferring the plebeian to the courtly style in his poetry. A capable judge, Cary, the translator of Dante, tells us that Guittone's sonnets were marked by a peculiar solemnity of manner;' and he cites one of them, which he also translates, as an example. This fine specimen of the early sonnet will serve to illustrate the degree of perfection to which this poetical pioneer in the field of sonneteering had brought his favorite form of composition. Thus sings the old Italian : "Great joy it were to me to join the throng That thy celestial throne, O Lord, surround, All this, dear Lord, were welcome to my soul. "Love's bondman, I from him might never part." "The first poet of renown, however, who adopted the sonnet and gave it the sanction of genius, together with the currency that such a sanction only could command, was the great Florentine, Dante. But it was Petrarch, pre-eminently, who secured for it, by the perfection to which he brought it, and by his large and impassioned use of it, the assured rank in poetry which it immediately gained and still maintains. So, then, although the sonnet may not be able to boast a hoar antiquity, it comes of good stock and gentle lineage." "I suspect, however, if there is anything in the ridicule which proverbially attaches to sonneteers and sonnet-making, that, like the 'blood of all the Howards,' the sonnet has deteriorated in these later days." "Ah! my friend, there are and there always have been sonnets and sonnets. Just as ostentatious prudery has presumed to pass for shrinking modesty, and by its false pretence has made some men doubt the existence of that shy, sweet virtue; just as the glitter of worthless paste has rivalled or outshone the lustre of the real gem, and by its successful deceit has caused even the diamond to be looked upon with distrust, so this noble verse has been made to share the doubt and discredit which the counterfeit productions of spurious makers earned and merited. Because small wits and barren poetasters have indited sonnets to sparrows or to their ladies' eyebrows, it has become fashionable to sneer at all sonnets and sonneteers. The Poets and the Sonnet. 15 Nevertheless, true poets of every rank stand as loyally by the sonnet to-day as their brethren did in times past; and they are as eager as ever to test their powers by its severe and exacting limitations. Since its first invention nearly every great poet, and multitudes who were not great, have essayed their capabilities on the sonnet; but it must be confessed that those who have attained or even approximated excellence in it have been very few. For, as the Rosicrucians and alchemists of earlier days failed, by the most skilful combinations of their abstruse arts, to convert baser materials into gold or precious stones, so has it fared with those who have relied upon mere art or learning, however consummate either might be, for the fabrication of this most difficult of all verse. The genuine sonnet has eluded their grasp, and could only be produced from the mine of native genius, just as the diamond is only to be found by patient delving in the rich earth. And so it has happened that usually a few efforts at sonnet-mongering have satisfied pseudo or inferior poets; and, repelled by the difficulty and their failure to master it, they have desisted from the unproductive labor. On the other hand, the really great poets, with many and signal exceptions, it is true, have been the most voluminous and successful composers of sonnets. You will remember that in the line 'A thousand times this Pipe did Tasso sound,' Wordsworth intimates that the author of 'Gerusalemme Liberata' wrote a thousand sonnets. Petrarch, we know, sounded his love plaints and rung the changes in praise of Laura-of her grace, beauty, virtue, and womanly excellence, and of his perplexities and anguish-in more than three hundred." "Hold! my learned friend," I exclaimed; "are you conscious. that you have been reeling off quite a formidable lecture ?— Why, you 'talk like a book;' nay, you must have been writing a book on the sonnet, which I have brought about my ears by my unlucky question." "My lad," he replied, laughing gayly, "you remind me of an anecdote which I must tell you: In my younger days the commandant of a crack military company in my native place was a fine-looking and very intelligent tailor. The colonel, for such was his rank, was also an influential politician, a glib and even eloquent speaker-and when he was away from home, where his occupation was not known, he uniformly sunk the goose and affected the elegant gentleman. Well, this fine fellow was visiting the city of Washington with his company, where they won merited applause by the excellence of their drill and the novelty and skill of their evolutions, and the colonel himself became quite the rage because of his martial appearance and his unquestionable military accomplishments. One day, after his company had been reviewed and heartily praised by 'Old Hickory,' who was then President, on returning to his quarters with his men, our colonel discovered that his pantaloons had suffered a serious rupture under the extraordinary strain to which they had been subjected while he was on parade. A number of officers of other companies, who were also visiting Washington at the same time, had gathered at his company head-quarters to enjoy his frank companionship and extend their congratulations, and they were all very merry over the unfortunate casualty. When the fun was at the highest, the colonel, with the abandon of a genuine soldier, drew off his pantaloons, and, standing in his drawers, began to inspect the damage. It was indeed an 'envious rent;' and as a military ball was to come off in their honor that evening, and he was without a change of uniform, he determined to mend the breach |