equalled by his wide and thorough knowledge of poetic literature. Nor should I omit to mention two charming French collections, the Monographie des Sonnets of Louis de Veyrières and Le Livre des Sonnets of M. Charles Asselineau.

The chief reasons for now issuing a new collection are threefold: to place a selection from the best sonnets of this century, from Wordsworth's down to those of the most recent of contemporary writers, in the hands of many to whom Editionsde-luxe or even comparatively moderately priced books are more or less difficult of attainment: to show how much of the poetic thought of our own time has been cast in the mould of the sonnet, and how worthy that mould is of the honour and to meet, by the formation of an anthology of which the first and only absolute principle is the inclusion of no sonnet that does not possess-of course in varying degree-distinct poetic value, the widespread and manifestly increasing appreciation of and liking for this metrical form. Even yet it can with justice only be said that it is limitedly popular, for not only is there still a general ignorance of what a sonnet really is and what technical qualities are essential to a fine specimen of this poetic genus, but a perfect plague of feeble productions in fourteenlines has done its utmost, ever since Wordsworth's influence became a recognised factor, to render the sonnet as effete a form of metrical expression as the irregular ballad-stanza with a meaningless refrain.

Concerning every method of expression, in each of the arts, there is always a pro and contra, but few metrical forms have been more fortunate than

the sonnet, for its contras have almost invariably been pronounced either by persons quite ignorant of what they were discussing or incapable of appreciating any excellence save when meted out as it were by the yard. On the other hand, those who have studied it love it as the scientist loves his microscope-and veritably, like the latter, it discloses through its narrow but magnifying lens many noble and beautiful thoughts which, if embedded in some greater mass, might have been but faintly visible and incoherent. Then some of the greatest of poets have used it, not a few selecting it as the choicest mould into which to cast their most personal, their most vivid utterances : thus did Petrarch, and thus in less exclusive degree did Dante and Milton; thus did Shakespeare, and Mrs. Browning, and Wordsworth, and Rossetti, and many another true poet in our own and other lands. The stirring of the poetic impulse is very markedly at work among us at present-not creatively, but objectively-and there is no more remarkable sign of the times than the steadily growing public appreciation of the sonnet as a poetic vehicle. For one thing, its conciseness is an immense boon in these days when books multiply like gossamer-flies in a sultry June; it is realised that if good a sonnet can speedily be read and enjoyed, that if exceptionally fine it can with ease be committed to memory, and that if bad it can be recognised as such at a glance, and can be relegated to oblivion by the turning of a single page. There is no doubt that a writer in the Dublin Review is correct when he regards "the

increasing attention bestowed on the history and structure of the sonnet as an indication of the growth of a higher and healthier poetical taste." It may be remembered that Leigh Hunt makes a statement somewhere to the effect that the love of Italian poetry has always been greatest in England when English genius has been in its most poetical condition; this has, as I think most will agree, been true in the past, even up to so late a date as the middle of this century, and if a renascence of this interest have a prophetic quality, then we should be on the eve of a new poetic period, for once again early Italian poetry is claiming its students, and its many admirers. And of course nothing in Italian poetry is better worth study than its beautiful sonnet-literature. Whether in Italy or in England, 'no form of verse,' as Mr. Waddington has well remarked, 'no description of poetic composition has yielded a richer harvest than the sonnet.' One can agree to this without fully endorsing Menzini's statement that the sonnet is the touchstone of great geniuses; for it must not be overlooked that some of our truest poets, living as well as dead are unable to write good sonnetsnoticeably, for instance, two such masters of verbal music as Shelley and Coleridge-nor must it for a moment be forgotten that no one form has a monopoly of the most treasurable poetic beauty, that the mould is a very secondary matter compared with the substance which renders it vital, and that a fine poem in not altogether the best form is infinitely better than a poor or feeble one in flawless structure. As a matter of fact, poetic

impulse that arises out of the suddenly kindled imagination may generally be trusted to instinctively find expression through the medium that is most fitting for it. To employ a humble simile, a poetic idea striving towards or passing into utterance is often like one of those little hermit-crabs which creep into whatever shell suits them the moment they are ready to leave their too circumscribed abodes. Poetry I take to be the dynamic condition of the imaginative and ryhthmical faculties in combination, finding expression verbally and metrically and the animating principle is always of necessity greater than the animated form, as the soul is superior to the body. Before entering on the subject of the technique of the sonnet, on its legitimate and irregular variations, and on its chief types, a few words may be said concerning the derivation of its name and its earliest history.

It is generally agreed that sonnet is an abbreviation of the Italian sonetto, a short strain (literally, a little sound), that word being the diminutive of suono = sound. The sonetto was originally a poem recited with sound, that is, with a musical accompaniment, probably a short poem of the rispetto kind, sung to the strains of lute or mandolin. Probably it had an existence and possibly even its name at a period considerably anterior to that where we first find definite mention of it, just as the irregular stanzaic form known as the Ballad existed in England and Scotland prior to any generally accepted definition thereof. As to its first birth-place there is some uncertainty: it is commonly understood to have arisen in Provence,

that mother of poets, but some have it that the sonnet is an outcome of the Greek epigram. This idea has been ridiculed as unworthy of entertainment, but the scoffers seem generally to have had in mind the modern epigram, a very different thing the essential principle of the ancient epigram was the presentment of a single idea, emotion, or fact, and in this it is entirely at one with the rival that has supplanted it—but in technique it was much simpler, as befitted the time, the people, and the language. It is much more likely, however, that the stornello was its Italian equivalent -that fleeting bar of verbal melody, which in its narrow compass of two lines presents one fact of nature and one metaphorical allusion based thereon. The stornello stands in perhaps even closer relationship to the ancient epigram than the rispetto to the modern sonnet. To readers interested in the true epigram, and unacquainted with recent translations of or works thereon, I may recommend Dr. Richard Garnett's delightful little volume, Idylls and Epigrams [Macmillan], and Mr. William Watson's Original Epigrams, with its admirable Note. Housman compares the two forms to the well-known Grecian architectural types, the Ionic column and the Corinthian, the former a specimen of pure and graceful beauty, the latter of more elaborate but still of equally pure and graceful genius. A more far-fetched theory is that the sonnet is an Italian shadow of the ancient ode, its divisions corresponding with the strophe, antistrophe, epode, and antepode. It is of course possible that this may have been its origin; it is more likely that