only by a few; and by the mass of sonneteers, especially in Italy and France, it has been converted into a mere plaything -an exponent of commonplace thought, a chronicle of everyday impressions, or a register of pretty conceits. Few English sonnets from the end of the seventeenth century to the Revolution are deserving of the name, and the poor and commonplace character of the great mass of the sonnets of that period has brought discredit on the entire class. Yet all true lovers of poetry have known how to distinguish the gold from the false metal. Whatever erroneous notions have prevailed among the less cultivated, there are few scholars who will not cordially sympathize with the warm and indignant protest of Mr. Aubrey de Vere against the loose and uncritical judgment out of which the unpopularity of the Sonnet has grown.

There are some who attach to a sonnet no idea beyond that of a love-poem,-a medium for the graceful expression of sentiment or passion. Others regard it as an ingenious exercise of rhyme-craft, and judge its excellence simply by the polish and minute delicacy of finish which it exhibits. Even more pretentious thinkers imagine that they recognize its best and most philosophic function when they look to it as a higher form of epigram-a poetical vehicle for moral or metaphysical problems, and at times a mere "penfold for luckless stray thoughts." It is pleasant to turn from these superficial or unworthy criticisms to a more just and farreaching estimate, and especially when it comes from one who is entitled to speak with authority on a subject in which he is himself a master. Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in the very interesting Memoir prefixed to the new edition of his father's Sonnets, has eloquently vindicated the true conception of this composition, so often and so entirely misunderstood.

Nor is it, perhaps, a matter of surprise that such misunderstanding should prevail. Readers for the most part take up a sonnet just as they take up any other short poetical piece ;as a light and pleasant literary exercise, expecting to find the meaning upon the surface, in vivid and graceful lines which they may read as they run. They are unprepared for the peculiar and highly artificial character of a composition of which it has been wittily said that in it "style is at high pressure." Condensation of thought, precision of language, unity of design, are among its first requirements; but in a good Sonnet these qualities are accompanied by a dignity and grace which raises them beyond the sphere of commonplace, and redeems them from that formal and didactic tone which is fatal to the genuine poetic character. With all this

care of external form-with all the varieties of emotion which his subject may suppose, the sonnet-writer has to maintain one leading idea, which must run through the whole composition. In the most approved classical form of sonnet this leading idea is simply introduced in the first member, and is developed or applied in the second; and in the Italian school the conditions of structure are further fettered by many minor technical rules even more embarrassing than these.

Now it is not easy to combine the logical precision which these requirements of the Sonnet suppose with the depth of emotion, the graceful play of fancy, and the dignity of tone that are essential in order to secure for it, in these fastidious days, even bare acceptance as a poetical composition. Either one or other of the two qualities may easily be found separately. Some of the most profoundly thoughtful sonnets in the language are utterly without metrical effect; while others, which to the ear are masterpieces of harmonious combination of sound and of skilful use of picturesque poetical language, nevertheless fail altogether to satisfy the intellect, or to stir the deeper emotions of the heart. It is in the union of these qualities, as in Milton, Wordsworth, and some others of our best sonnet-writers, that the secret of success is found. "A true sonnet," says Mr. Aubrey de Vere, "is characterized by greatness, not prettiness; and, if complex in structure, it is in substance solidly simple. Its oneness is its essence. It is not a combination of many thoughts but the development of a single thought so large as to be, latently, a poem."

With that profound sense of the analogies of Religion and of Nature which pervades everything that Mr. Aubrey de Vere has written, he ingeniously suggests that "the Sonnet is in poetry what the Collect is in devotion." Within the narrow limits to which its structure confines it, "there is room at once for meditation and for observation, for the imaginative and the impassioned; and these four blended elements, far from impairing, intensify its unity." He carefully distinguishes, too, the dry didactic tone which, in some of the minor sonneteers, has brought discredit on the craft, from that "philosophy of Intuitive Reason" which lends to the grand thought embodied in a genuine sonnet, a combination of sublimity, appropriateness, and truth; which convinces while it awes; and which, although it compels intense and concentrated thought in order to realize its higher meaning, yet captivates and charms the imagination, and, through the imagination, subdues the intellect and the will.

Indeed we know no more healthy exercise of these blended faculties of the mind than the reading of some of the higher

class of sonnets, whether English or foreign. The very difficulty which the reading sometimes involves " stimulates power where real power exists, and the spontaneity of poetic genius accepts the bracing discipline and survives within it." The sympathetic reading of a good sonnet is an exercise of poetic faculty hardly different in order, although inferior in degree, from that involved in its production. The variety too of the Sonnet is endless. "In its solemn mood," says Mr. De Vere, "it seems as if it should be graven on marble; yet it can be buoyant as a flower and light as a dewdrop. While enriched by rhymes, it also demands, like the Miltonic blank verse, a nobler music, varying from the simplest to the subtlest cadences of metrical harmony. It requires a diction strong, pure, felicitous, and lucid. It should end with an increased ascent and elevation or else with a graduated dying away,

rising loudly

Up to the climax, and then dying proudly."

Mr. De Vere could hardly have enforced these views as to the true character of the Sonnet more impressively than by giving to the world the pretty volume of his father, Sir Aubrey de Vere, whose "Mary Tudor" was noticed at some length in a recent number. These Sonnets are possibly known to some of our elder readers already, having appeared originally more than thirty years ago, in a volume entitled "A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises, and other Poems," published in 1842; but they well deserve a separate publication, and we gladly take advantage of their appearance in order to enter at some length into the history of this too-little-known form of poetical composition, and especially to bring under the notice of our readers the high merits of our own Catholic writers in a department of poetry which for serious and thoughtful readers has always had special attraction.

The general character of the Sonnet is of course sufficiently known, but the details of its structure have, at different times and in different hands, admitted almost endless variety. That it consists of fourteen lines, distributed into certain groups with rhymes arranged in an order different from that of ordinary lyric, romantic, or epic poetry, is of course known to every one; but beyond this the utmost license has at times prevailed and Archbishop Trench, in his interesting "Afternoon Lecture on the History of the English Sonnet," truly observes that "there is hardly a single rule except that which limits the Sonnet to fourteen lines, which has not been sometimes transgressed."

The normal structure of the Sonnet, it need not be said, is derived from Italy; and it is hardly too much to add that the ultimate standard of the conditions of the classic sonnet must be sought in Petrarch. It would carry us quite beyond our prescribed limits to enter into the minor details of structure. It will be enough to say that the Sonnet proper consists of fourteen lines, distributed into two groups, of eight (octaves) and six (sestets) lines respectively-the first divided into two quatrains, the second into two tercets. Each of these groups, although they are, of course, connected and interdependent, is, in the strictest form of sonnet, complete in sense, and in the Italian sonnet the first commonly terminates with a full-stop. The first, or major group, properly admits but two rhymes, although in England three rhymes are freely admitted, even by the severest composers; the minor group assumes different forms with different artists, two or three rhymes being admissible, and the verses being susceptible of three different forms of arrangement.

Mr. Tomlinson has taken the trouble to examine the structure of the Sonnet as it is found in all the best Italian masters, Petrarch, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, Michael Angelo, and Vittoria Colonna. The Italian sonnet, he tells us, "resolves itself into an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six, these being further subdivided into two quatrains and two tercets, each of the two parts having its own system of rhymes. Thus the most common form of the quatrains is for the first line to rhyme with the fourth, fifth, and eighth, and the second with the third, the sixth, and the seventh." There is, however, a second mode of arranging the quatrains, in which the rhymes alternate; but in the Italian sonnet this is more sparingly employed. The tercets "have much greater powers of variation than the quatrains. They may be either in rima incatenata, or interlaced rhymes'; or rima alternata, or 'alternate' rhymes." From an examination of the sonnets of Petrarch, Mr. Tomlinson has reduced the structure of the Sonnet (except in a few quite abnormal cases), to three principal types, which he represents by numerical formulas, exhibiting the order and succession of the rhymes in the quatrains and the tercets respectively. The same formulation is by other writers, and we think more conveniently, marked by the letters of the alphabet.

I took the trouble to make a metrical arrangement of the three hundred and seventeen sonnets of Petrarch, and to place them in a tabular form according to the order of the times. The result of this analysis is that one hundred and sixteen sonnets, or upwards of one-third of the total

number, belong to what I venture to name type I., or the normal Italian type, as expressed by the formula—

Upwards of another third, or one hundred and seven sonnets, have the tercets alternately rhymed, and this arrangement, which may be named Type II., has the formula—

Now it will be seen that in the three types, which include two hundred and ninety out of the three hundred and seventeen sonnets, the variations are but slight. The structure of the quatrains is the same in all three types, and in the tercets three lines rhyme with three lines. Of the remaining twenty-seven sonnets, which do not fall under any one of the three types already given, the quatrains in eleven sonnets are arranged as in the three types; in another eleven they are in alternate rhyme, and in the remaining four they are arranged thus

1 2 1 2 2 1 2 1

As to the arrangements of the tercets, many of them follow one or other of the first three types, and a few fall under one or other of the following formulæ :

To the forty sonnets ascribed to Dante, it is difficult to apply the same standard, as they are by no means uniform in structure with those of Petrarch; but in the arrangement of the quatrains thirty-three correspond with the first type, while the tercets can hardly be said decisively to follow one type rather than another. Tasso's sonnets number about two hundred and twenty-three.

Of these sixty-four belong to type I., thirty-four to type II., and fortyfour to type III. Of the remaining eighty-one, the quatrains are regular in seventy-one examples. As to the tercets, they are thus arranged in twentysix examples :-3 4 5 5 4 3; and in twelve thus-3 4 5 4 5 3; and in fifteen-3 4 5 3 5 4; and in eighteen-3 4 5 5 3 4. Tasso deals but little in alternate rhymes.

Most of Ariosto's sonnets, on the other hand, follow type II.; but in Michael Angelo the preference for type I. is even