vindicated the powers of the language. It is to a living poet that the glory of consummating this victory over a wide-spread prejudice is due. The notes that proclaimed this triumph of the English Muse are uttered by the sonnets of William Wordsworth. From these alone we might readily show the abundant richness of the language in rhymes, its power of expression, and its flexibility of metre. With those, indeed, who are accustomed only to the more prominent rhymes and the more marked forms of verse, the melody of the sonnet may often fall as on a deaf ear. But to a cultivated taste, and to the secret sense of hearing, apt for the music of poetry, we would cheerfully commit almost any one of Wordsworth's sonnets, without an apprehension that the sweetness and variety of its harmony would pass unheeded. The following may be taken after little more than a moment's selection :

"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free:
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea.
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth, with his eternal motion, make

A sound like thunder--everlastingly.

Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear'st untouch'd by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worshippest at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not."

+

Another prejudice, perhaps the most deeply seated, against the sonnet, results from an impression that it always treats a subject exclusively with reference to the feelings of the poet. Hence it is censured as egotistical, and is looked upon as the vent of moping and discontented humours, and of insipid sentimentality. That there are very many sonnets justly obnoxious to these reproaches may be freely admitted; and, also, that a bad sonnet is, for reasons that might readily be stated, one of the worst of failures. Of those who have been able to find none other, I can only say that they have been indeed unfortunate in their selection. But I protest against this indiscriminate grouping of the good and bad. If the sonnet be judged on that principle, how will the epic abide it? A bad epic is very bad, too, and a great deal more of it. It is one of the merits of the English sonnet-writers that they have qualified the subjective character of the poem; the feelings of the poet are not necessarily most prominent: many of the best of the English

sonnets may be read without recognising him as anything more than a voice.

That the sonnet is egotistical is obviously only a comparative censure. Whether this is to be imputed to it for its reproach or its repute will manifestly depend upon whose egotism it is. If it express the feelings of a hollow heart or the thought of an empty head, nothing can be more valueless. But has it not been the key to open the secret cabinet of spirits whose stores were precious? When Shakspeare meditated upon his theatrical profession, it was in the sonnet that he breathed out his sense of degradation in that beautiful lament, of which the tone is a little louder than a sigh and yet not so harsh as a murmur. It is here that his genius, no longer embodied in its creations, appears to us in its individual nature;—he walks upon the earth in his own personal form. What poem can boast of greater interest ?—

"Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,-

A God in love, to whom I am confined.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most, most loving breast."

Again, in reference to the same topic :

"Oh, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide

Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysell, 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
No double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me."

This would be sweet language from any lips; but what can be deeper than the pathos of it, when you reflect that it is the grief of one whose wisdom, for more than two centuries, has been reverently quoted by statesmen, philosophers, and divines, whose plots have wound round so many hearts and moistened so many eyes, whose pictures of passions have moved such sympathies, and whose wit has gladdened so many faces? It is in his sonnets that you find the conclusive proof that he was the gentle Shakspeare." It will be recollected that he retired to Stratford to pass the evening of his days. We quote the following sonnet, which appears to refer to that period, partly for the fine amplification it contains of a well-known phrase in Macbeth, and chiefly for the surpassing beauty of the images illustrative of a poet's silent old age. We challenge the poetry of the world against that one line :

"That time of year thou mayest in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare, ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by-and-by black night doth take away,-
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

One other instance may be cited by way of refutation of the charge of insipidity brought against the sonnet. When Milton addressed the grave appeal of patriotism to his contemporaries, Cromwell and Fairfax

* Of all the epithets that are attached to the name of Shakspeare, there are but two or three that are to be tolerated. You can scarcely, by means of any term, add to the conception of genius which is suggested by the single word "Shakspeare." The phrase, "the gentle Shakspeare," deserves to be a favourite one, because it teaches a truth of deep moral interest: it tells of the blessed union of genius and gentleness,-that there is a natural alliance between the highest powers of intellect and tenderest emotions of the heart. There might, perhaps, be no other objection than the appearance of quaintness to his sharing Hooker's epithet, "the judicious Shakspeare,” as indicating those faculties which, combined with imagination, are found only in poets of the first order. Mr. Coleridge applied to Shakspeare the expression "the myriad-minded," avno μvolovovs, having reclaimed it from a Greek monk, by whom it had been used in reference to a patriarch of Constantinople. As to most other epithets for him, they are as tinkling cymbals.

and Vane, he chose this form. When he invoked a higher power, it was the sonnet by which he uttered the prayer, "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered hosts," -a note so fearful and so loud that we can almost fancy it echoing over the valleys in which the bones of the martyrs lay covered with snow. And when, at last, no longer able to resist the belief that he had been labouring for an unworthy age, that he had been prompting to freedom a race that was sluggish and sensual, it was in the sonnet that he expressed his solemn resignation. It was a fitting close for his eventful career. The storm that had risen on the meridian of his life had slowly abated, and, while the fragments of it were yet strewn on every side and the thunders of his controversial voice were echoing in the distant sky, there broke forth, at sunset, a placid gleam of that light which had beamed upon his youth. His sight extinguished, a hostile dynasty restored,-" Darkness before and Danger's voice behind,” --he bowed his head with the unsoured cheerfulness of his early days. In that spirit we find him in the sonnets communing with a few chosen friends and with his God. To appreciate Milton's sonnets fully, we should refresh our recollections of some of his prose-writings; we should recall the fierce indignation and the bitter scorn hurled against Salmasius; we should recur to the closing passages of his tract of Reformation in England," the most awful imprecation ever uttered by the voice of man, save when it has been prophetic of the vengeance of the Almighty. Then let either of the sonnets addressed to Cyriac Skinner be read :

66

"Cyriac, this three years' day these eyes, though clear

To outward view of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,

Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied

In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe talks from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content, though blind, had I no better guide."

Can it be that the torrent which before leaped so madly and so loudly from rock to rock has passed into this gentle current? How full, how tranquil, is its flow!

Spenser's sonnets are of secondary merit. Inferior to his other minor

poems, they are unimpassioned productions, of a character which seems to be suggested by the title "Amoretti" prefixed to them. The poet who, as a sonnet-writer, has gained a place by the side of Shakspeare and Milton, is Wordsworth. And when it is considered that all of these have given to the world works of a more enlarged form and of the highest order of poems, it would seem that the sonnet was used as a kind of private tablet to preserve the detached and passing thoughts which must ever be rising in the ceaseless fountain of a great poet's heart. It is the record of

"The sessions of sweet, silent thought,"

to borrow from a sonnet of Shakspeare one of those exquisite phrases which fell so naturally and so gracefully from his tongue, and which justify us in saying (not irreverently, we trust) that he spake as never man spake. Let no one look upon the little poem with a hasty superciliousness. I have shown that it has been the retreat of poetic genius of the first rank,—an oratory for those who have worthily ministered in the solemnities of cathedral service.

The sonnets of Wordsworth would richly deserve a separate examination. He, more than any other poet, has shown its adaptation to a very great variety of subject and of feeling. If there were none other in the language, there would be reason enough to claim the sonnet as a form of poetry completely naturalized into English literature. The public is at last rendering him justice; the sound of the war that was waged against him has died away. It is his singularly-happy fortune, in which his early admirers especially sympathize, to witness the beginning of the maturity of his fame. It will be completed by the reputation of his sonnets, which will probably be the last of his works to gain very general favour. For this reason we have quoted from them freely, and if the reader desire the eloquence, the pathos, and the philosophy of poetry, with all its harmonies, we commend him to the several collections of sonnets among the poems of Wordsworth.

In adverting to contemporary poetry, we cannot suppress a regret that Coleridge that other great light, but recently extinguished-did not, in the later periods of his life, revive his early attachment to the sonnet. In expressing this regret, I would not be understood as participating in the charge of inactivity that has so inconsiderately been brought against him. Of that injustice we wash our hands, for we entertain too deep a gratitude for what he has done, and too firm conviction that few writers have contributed more to the thoughts of their fellow-beings. Coleridge has been our friend, our companion, our