the last six to the thoughts it suggested, he therefore consciously heeded the rules of the legitimate sonnet. If there is a turn in the thought, it is most likely, apart from any rule, to come at the end of the second quatrain, particularly if there are no run-over lines and if the rime-sequence of the sestet differs from that of the octave.1 That the frequent observance of the strict bipartite structure in the Elizabethan and the eighteenth-century quatorzains is to be regarded either as chance or as an unconscious conformity to an esthetic law, is shown by the numerous instances in which the rule is disregarded even by writers who in the main observe it, and by the absence of any mention of such a requirement in the definitions and discussions of the sonnet which abound in the eighteenth century.2 In some of the Elizabethan quatorzains, and in one or two of Milton's, such turn as there is seems to come before the last two lines; but in most of Milton's either there is no turn at all or it falls earlier or later than it should, sometimes in the middle of a line. In these particulars the eighteenth century often followed him. ... But the bipartite structure was not the only aspect of the sonnet regarding which the eighteenth century was ignorant. The first six editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771–1824) explained that the sonnet consisted of "two stanzas of four verses each; and two of three; the eight first verses being all in three rhimes." Chambers's Cyclopaedia said the same in 1728 and 1752, except that it corrected the three rimes in the octave to two and added, "It is to end with some pretty, ingenious thought: the close must be particularly beautiful, or the sonnet is naught."4 Nothing, it should be observed, is said here regarding the bipartite structure or the order of the rimes. It was apparently these articles that led Miss Seward astray and caused her irregular quatorzains to be accepted as legiti 1 This is explained more fully on pp. 533-4 below. Mr. Smart maintains (Sonnets of Milton, 34-8) that in many of the sonnets of Petrarch or of other Italians there is no turn, and that it was first mentioned as a requisite of the form in 1880. But Wordsworth discussed it in 1833 (see p. 532 below). 2 Miss Seward wrote in 1795, "The legitimate sonnet generally consists of one thought, regularly pursued to the close" (Letters, iv. 144-5). In a quatorzain of Capel Lofft's, urging Kirke White to use the legitimate form (see White's Remains, ii. 57), the eighth line is run over! * Milton's failure to fit his form to his thought has seldom been criticized; but surely little is gained by avoiding the couplet-ending if the last two lines of the poem stand apart from the others in sense, as they do in seven of Milton's sonnets. Similarly, there may be no important reason why the thought should not move forward without a break; but, if it does, the rimes and their relation to one another ought not to change suddenly at the beginning of the ninth line. On the other hand, if the poem falls into two parts the rimes should change where the thought does. • Edition of 1752; the 1728 edition stops at "beautiful." mate. She disputed the remark regarding the close (which the Monthly Review repeated in 1795 1), but otherwise the encyclopaedia articles seem to have gone unquestioned. Still more surprising is Coleridge's misconception of the sonnet, which will be noticed later. But strangest of all is the reproof addressed by Capel Lofft - who edited an anthology of sonnets and translated many from the Italian to Kirke White on account of the irregularity of the latter's fourteen-line poems. This stickler for regularity couched his objections in the form of a quatorzain, presumably a model, in which the rimes have the astonishing arrangement a bb a ababcddcee.2 The eighteenth-century sonnet, as has been said, is terra incognita. There are few subjects that have been so inadequately treated by distinguished writers and few about which so much misinformation is available. The received opinion seems to be that "from Milton to William Lisle Bowles . . . few sonnets of any kind and hardly one of note can be found." Charles Tomlinson, in his book on the subject, says that "Milton's sonnets . . . made but little impression on the course of English literature; for in the long interval between Milton and Cowper . . . the sonnet was neglected." He mentions Gray, Mason, and Warton, to be sure, but he regards Bowles as "the reviver of the sonnet in recent literature."4 One critic of fine taste declares that in the eighteenth century "very few essayed the sonnet, and still fewer . . . succeeded in writing sonnets of worth"; and another asserts that "of the best" between Milton and Wordsworth "it can only be said... that they are 'not bad.' "5 Mr. Gosse is responsible for the extraordinary remark, which with slight modifications has often been repeated, that Walsh is "the author of the only sonnet written in English between Milton's, in 1658, and Warton's, about 1750." It is true that, if we omit "Warton's," if we say 1740 instead of 1750 and "published" instead of "written," which may be what Mr. Gosse meant, the remark is not particularly misleading; for, even including translators, only thirteen persons are known to have used the form between 1660 and 1740.7 All 1 Enlarged ed., xvi. 463. For Miss Seward's views, see below, p. 500. 2 White's Remains, ii. 57. * Norman Hepple, Lyrical Forms in English (Camb., 1911), 97–8. Cf. Dublin Rev., xxvii. 423 (1876). 4 The Sonnet, its Origin, Structure, etc. (1874), 79. L. E. Lockwood, Sonnets Selected, etc. (Boston, 1916), p. xiii; J. A. Noble, The Sonnet in England (1893), 37. • Ward's English Poets, iii. 7. Cf. the books on romanticism by H. A. Beers and W. L. Phelps (pp. 53 and 44 respectively), and John Dennis's Age of Pope, p. 247. 7 I have come upon only five or six between 1660 and 1700. Matthew Stevenson's Poems, or a Miscellany of Sonnels, Satyrs, etc. (1673), I know only by title. Samuel their productions are on either the Elizabethan or the Italian model, and none of them seem to have had any connection with those that followed. The course of the sonnet between 1740 and 1750 resembles the progress of a strange infectious disease which appears here and there, no one knows how or why, and spreads at first slowly and then with increasing rapidity. The earliest appearance of the new form seems to have been in the London Magazine for July, 1738, A Sonnet, in Imitation of Milton's Sonnets. This anonymous piece is typical of most of the eighteenth-century quatorzains that succeeded it, simple, direct, and dignified in style, noble in sentiment, Petrarchesque in the arrangement of its rimes, addressed to a person (with whose name, in the vocative, it begins), and yet clearly uninspired.1 Apparently the second example of the new type was that addressed by Philip Yorke, second earl of Hardwicke, to his brother Charles, June 8, 1741. It seems to have been first printed in 1806.2 As it is earlier by a year than Gray's well-known sonnet, and has hitherto escaped the notice of writers on the subject, it may well be quoted here: O Charles! replete with learning's various store; The poet's lay, or philosophic lore, Thy thoughts from these high studies disengage. Woodford's Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679) includes in an appendix nine quatorzains, four of which are translations. Philip Ayres's Lyric Poems, made in Imitation of the Italians (1687), contains thirty sonnets, of which twenty-four deal with love, eleven are translations, seven have the Shakespearean and two the Petrarchan arrangement; the preface mentions Spenser, Sidney, Fanshaw, and Milton, "the success of all which," adds Ayres, "cannot much be boasted of." Jane Barker's Poetical Recreations (1688) has one poem in seven couplets that is not called a sonnet, and one in four quatrains that is. In Charles Cotton's Poems on Several Occasions (1689) there are four sonnets on four young ladies and one translation (all riming a bb a c d d ce e f g gf), besides a number of fourteen-line octosyllabics called sonnets; all are on love. William Walsh's sonnet on death (in his Letters and Poems, 1692), has a Spenserian octave, with d dceec in the sestet. In 1715 John Hughes spoke of the sonnet as "a Species of Poetry so entirely disus'd, that it seems to be scarce known among us at this time.... Milton... is, I think, the last who has given us any Example of them in our own Language" ("Remarks," etc., in his Spenser, vol. i. pp. cviii, cx). For sonnets published after 1700, see Bibl. IV, below. 1 An anonymous stanzaic poem of forty-two lines, To Aristus, in Imitation of a Sonnet of Milton (Steele's Poetical Miscellanies, 1714, pp. 116–19), which adapts, with omissions and some changes, Milton's sonnets To a Virtuous Young Lady, To Mr. Lawrence, and the first to Cyriack Skinner, is of interest because of its early date. There may be some importance in two sonnets by "Signior Nenci, an Italian poet now in London," which were published and translated in the London Magazine for 1740 and 1741 (ix. 555-6, x. 47). 2 Thomas Park's enlargement of Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors (1806), iv. 400. Let Horace rest and Locke, and quick repair When honours crown thy well-spent early days. Notwithstanding its irregular rime-scheme, the general Miltonic character of this poem is as unmistakable as is its specific debt to the first of the sonnets to Cyriack Skinner. If there were any doubt about the matter, it would be dispelled by the two similar quatorzains, frankly entitled "in Imitation of Milton," which Charles Yorke (to whom the one quoted above is addressed) wrote to his brothers in 1743, and by his explanation in a postscript to one of them, "Colonel is to be pronounced as a word of three syllables on the authority of Milton. . . . A scripture allusion, as that of the Leviathan, is in Milton's manner, as you will readily recollect." 2 All three poems are addressed to persons, all begin with vocatives, all are direct, dignified, serious, and somewhat stiff, and none of them deal with love; all make free use of run-over lines and internal pauses, and all are irregular in rime-scheme. Gray's admiration for Dante and Petrarch was probably responsible for his use of the sonnet to lament the death of his friend Richard West, as well as for the particular rime-scheme he employed.3 The absence of run-over lines in his poem, the preservation of the pauses at the end of the first and second quatrains and of the turn at the beginning of the sestet, also seem to point to an Italian model; 1 Compare the fourth and fifth lines given above with Milton's fifth, sixth, and seventh: To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench The general idea of the two sonnets is also the same, that one works better for having 2 P. C. Yorke, Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke (Camb., 1913), i. 292–3, ii. 147. 3 I find that Mr. Gosse (Gray, 60) is of the same opinion. For Gray's knowledge of Italian literature and his love of Dante, see Paget Toynbee's Dante in English Literature (1909), vol. i, pp. xxxvii, 231-2. Gray had but recently returned from Italy and had "run over" Petrarch only a few months before composing his poem (letter to West, May 8, 1742). I do not remember finding the rime-scheme a b a b a b a b c d c d c d in preceding English sonnets. It is common in the early Italian poets, and is also that of Dante's 29th, and of the 13th, 39th, and 42d of Petrarch's Morte. yet, as Gray certainly knew some Elizabethan quartorzains and presumably had read a good many,' the richness of his opening lines and their embroidery of the idea they express may be due to Shakespeare, Spenser, or their contemporaries. On the other hand, there may be some influence from Milton, whom Gray strongly admired and by whom his other pieces were affected. This seems the more probable because the poem was written about a person and was called forth by a definite occasion, because it contains three verbal borrowings from Paradise Lost,2 and because certain lines exhibit a simple sincerity and depth of feeling which even the stilted phraseology of the eighteenth century cannot conceal. Yet the main influence was certainly Italian. The poem was not published, or apparently even shown to friends, until 1775, after Gray's death; and therefore it had no influence upon the revival of the sonnet. In structure and language it is quite different from any of the quartorzains that succeeded it. The sonnets that seem to come next in chronological order met with a fate singularly like that of their predecessors: remaining for many years unpublished, they appear to have been practically unknown and so to have had no traceable influence. These pieces were the work of Benjamin Stillingfleet, the littérateur who is best known for having given rise to the term "blue-stocking." H. J. Todd, who examined the manuscripts, tells us that one of the sonnets was dated 1746.3 As Stillingfleet edited Milton's poems and arranged an oratorio from Paradise Lost, one might expect him to have been influenced by the elder poet. On this point his biographer leaves no doubt, for he writes: "The study of Milton and the preparations for an edition of his works, led Mr. Stillingfleet to an imitation of his style; and soon after this period, copying the example of his favourite bard, he addressed to his beloved friends and companions of the common room, a Series of Sonnets." But even without these facts there could be little question as to the "truly Miltonick" character of poems like the following: Grandson to that good man, who bravely dared Withstand a Monarch's will, when crowds around Of noble serving men stoop'd to the ground 99.66 1 See his Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 249–50. "Smileing mornings,' 'amorous descant,” “attire” (for a covering of the fields); cf. P. L., v. 168, iv. 603, vii. 501. 3 In his edition of Milton (1801), v. 446. Internal evidence gives approximately the same date. 4 Literary Life and Select Works [by William Coxe], 1811, i. 94. • Todd's Milton, preface. |