Most of Mr. Watts' sonnets have appeared in the Athencum; though three of them-Natura Benigna,' 'Natura Maligna,' and 'The Dream'-are taken from the powerful Romance of Aylwin, several of them (notably Foreshadowings and A Dream; and the two 'Nature' sonnets) have attracted wide notice and much comment. It was natural that the work of one who is generally regarded as our most thorough critic of contemporary poetic literature should be subjected to exceptional scrutiny and comparison, and while some of Mr. Watts' sonnets have not been found to be wholly satisfactory (for my own part, I refer to those which are piéces d'occasion, such as those to Mrs. Garfield, and others of like description), the majority are really noteworthy productions. Elision, which can be such a 'lift' to a fine line, threatens to become a mannerism with this writer: there are very few, indeed, of his published sonnets without its occurrence somewhere.

Those which I have selected seem to me to represent their author at his best; they are certainly powerful and imaginative sonnets, flawless in form, and altogether the productions of a poet of high order. Possibly there are others of Mr. Watts' which may be finer, but those which I have chosen are those which most appeal to me.

The first five have appeared in the Athenæum, and the first, fourth, and fifth in Mr. Hall Caine's Sonnets of Three Centuries. The Heaven that was is, by the courtesy of the author, printed here for the first time. I must find space for the following:

A TALK ON WATERLOO BRIDGE.

(A Reminiscence.)

We talked of " Children of the Open Air,"
Who once in Orient valleys lived aloof,
Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof
Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair,
Till, on a day, across the mystic bar

Of moonrise, came the "Children of the Roof,"
Who find no balm 'neath evening's rosiest woof,
Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star.

We looked o'er London where men wither and choke,
Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies,
And lore of woods and wild wind-prophecies--

Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke:
And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke
Leave never a meadow outside Paradise.

This sonnet is printed at the close of the second of two papers that appeared in the Athenæum in the autumn of 1881, under the signature of Mr. Watts. Entitled "Reminis. scences of George Borrow," they form as brilliant and fas cinating a chapter of biography as has been given us by any writer of our time. Mr. Watts was an intimate friend of "Lavengro," an acquaintanceship begun during the former's boyhood, and, characteristically enough, while swimming in the rough seas off the Yarmouth coast. As the concluding sentences of these deeply interesting biographical reminiscences are in close connection with the sonnet here given, I append them. "The last time I ever saw him (Borrow) was shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the West-end. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like inost people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air-a peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with 'the last of Borrow' I shall never forget it."

No. ccxlvi. AUGUSTA WEBSTER. Mrs. Augusta Webster comes second to Robert Browning as a dramatic poet, among living writers. From her earliest book down to her latest, the very beautiful In a Day, she has shown a mental vigour and poetic power and insight to which it may be doubted if justice has been ever fully done, notwithstanding the high reputation in which Mrs. Webster is undoubtedly held. She has written very few sonnets, and the form does not seem natural to her. 'The Brook Rhine' is distinctly her

best.

X

No. ccxlvii. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE (1775-1841). Blanco White owes an enduring fame to a single sonnet-but this sonnet is one of the noblest in any language. There is quite a 'Blanco White' literature concerning the famous fourteen lines headed 'Night and Death.' It is strange that the man who wrote this should do nothing else of any importance, and its composition must either have been a magnificent 'fluke' or the outcome of a not very powerful poetic impulse coming anexpectedly and in a moment to white heat, and therein exhausting itself for ever. Coleridge spoke of it as "the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language;" and, later, Leigh Hunt wrote that in point of thought it "stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language: nor can we ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence.' I may refer those who wish for further particulars to the highly interesting notes compiled by that indefatigable and enthusiastic editor, Mr. Main (Treasury of English Sonnets). From these notes I excerpt an earlier reading of this famous sonnet, which Mr. Main obtained from the Rev. Dean R. Perceval Graves, of Dublin, who some fifty years ago copied it either from an autographi or from an early printed copy.

Mysterious Night! when the first man but knew
Thee by report, unseen, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of Light and Blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the Host of Heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened on his view!

Who could have thought what darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such endless Orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Weak man! why to shun Death this anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

I have ventured on an important alteration of the accepted text, an alteration which every commentator has yearned to make-or ought to have so yearned. This is the substitution of flow'r for fly in the 11th line. Even if White did not write 'flow'r,' we may at least credit him with the intention of doing so. Mr. Main mentions that in The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1835, is the earliest known

appearance of 'Night and Death,' but Mr. Hall Caine was able to point to a still earlier one, viz.:-in the Bijou (Pickering) 1828.

No. ccxlviii. HENRY KIRKE WHITE (1785-1806). The star of Kirke White's reputation has waned considerably of recent years. His poetic work is certainly not calculated to withstand the stress of time.

No. ccxlix, CHARLES WHITEHEAD (1804-1862). Whitehead was and is best known through his novel, Richard Savage. The fine sonnet which I have quoted is as Whitehead really wrote it: the finer version in Hall Caine's anthology was taken down to Rossetti's dictation. It had long been a favourite with Rossetti, and it gained greatly by passing through the poetic atmosphere of his mind. All interested in Whitehead as a man and a writer, and in the tragic story of his life, should read Mr. Mackenzie Bell's monograph, A Forgotten Genius (Elliot Stock, 1884).

No. ccl. WILLIAM HENRY WHITWORTH, Mr. Whitworth was a head-master in a large public school. Mr. Housman had a great admiration for his sonnets, and printed several of them in his anthology.

Nos. ccli.-cclii. OSCAR WIlde. Mr. Oscar Wilde has written some excellent sonnets. No. cclii. appears in his Poems, but its companion is printed here for the first time.

Nos. ccliii.-cclxv. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850). Some of the noblest work of one of the greatest of English poets is enshrined in his sonnets. In these it was comparatively rare that he walked-on-all-fours, to use Sir Walter Scott's phrase, for in them he was wont to express with a conciseness and dignity, a lucidity and poetic fervour, many of his finest conceptions and most clearly defined thoughts. Every good sonnet of Wordsworth's is like a mirror wherein we see his poetic nature reflected; and is there another man who would so well stand the test of such a multitude of mirrors? His fatal habit of rhyming upon everything resulted, in his sonnet-work, in the many more or less indifferent productions to be found in the "Duddon," and more especially in the Ecclesiastical Series: but speaking generally his sonnets

are freer from his besetting sins than one would naturally expect. He is and must always be considered one of the greatest of English sonneteers. At his very best he is the greatest. His sonnets are mostly as beautiful and limpid as an amber-tinted stream, and the thoughts that are their motives as clear as the large pebbly stones in the shallows thereof. In a word, he at his best knew what he wanted to say, and could say it in his own manner supremely well. In selecting thirteen of what seem to me Wordsworth's very firest sonnets (not altogether an easy matter) I have allowed personal preference to bias me whenever critical estimates were closely balanced.

Printed by WALTER SCOTT, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne.