SONNET. Like most beginnings the genesis of the sonnet is somewhat obscure. On the whole, the most probable account is that it sprang, as the result of endless experiments, from the popular short poems sung, in early mediaeval times, with or with out refrain, to musical accompaniment, as the Idyl of Theocritus similarly arose from simple pastoral strains. A very early specimen of the sonnet of a tolerably finished kind, is ascribed to Piero delle Vigne (d. 1249), the famous chancellor of Frederick II., and this poem, alike by its Sicilian origin and by its formal elabora tion, is sufficient to prove that a long period of experimenting must have preceded. Time is required both for the genre to have reached so far south and for the degree of finish shown by this poem to have been attained. But with every allowance for earlier talent we probably do little injustice if, in accord with the ma jority of critics, we call Guittone of Arezzo (d. 1294) the "only begetter" of the sonnet as we know it. It was he who firmly established its laws. From his time it was recognized that there must be an "octave," with rhymes (in an unusual notation), a, b, b, a; a, b, b, a, and a "sestet," in which, while some variety is allowed, the final couplet is excluded. Between the octave and the sestet there is a distinct break, and, as a rule, the first quatrain of the octave is, though less strongly, marked off from the second. More important still, in spite of a certain looseness of thought and roughness of style, Guittone established the unitary character of the sonnet.
It was the Guittonian sonnet which, in the hands of Dante and Petrarch, became—certain aberrations notwithstanding—the un questioned model for later Italian writers. Especially as used by Petrarch, in his immortal Laura-poems, it set a standard which the greatest poets could hardly hope to overpass, and it was imi tated by such poets throughout the whole of western Europe.
The English Form.—Transplanted to England by Wyatt and Surrey (it is remarkable that it does not seem to have attracted Chaucer) the sonnet was made universally known by the very popular Totters Miscellany of 1557, and almost immediately cap tured the fancy of every poet, great, indifferent, or contemptible. In France, about the same time, it was cultivated with success by Desportes, de Baif, Pierre de Brach, du Bellay, Ronsard and other writers, whose influence was very strongly felt in England—how strongly has been well shown by Sidney Lee. But in England, for many reasons (one, perhaps, being merely the scarcity of rhymes as compared with their abundance in the Romance languages), the rhyme-system was varied and simplified in endless ways.
For the names of the many sonneteers of this period any his tory of literature may be consulted. Most of them tried "se quences"—series of more or less connected sonnets; but while some individual poems are of surpassing beauty, few writers suc ceeded in composing more than two or three that deserve a place in a high-class anthology. Even Spenser was not wholly successful, though he adopted a form which might seem suited to his genius— the rhyme-system, a, b, a, b; b, c, b, c; c, d, c, d; c, c, which reminds us of the stanza of the Faerie Queene. Others came grad ually to adopt uniformly the especially "English" scheme, a, b, a, b; c, d, c, d; e, f, e, f ; g, g; a scheme in which it is immediately obvious that the three quatrains and the "clinching" couplet attain an epigrammatic effect foreign to that of the Petrarchan type. Milton and Wordsworth.—By the date (1609) of the publi cation of the supreme examples of the Elizabethan type, Shake speare's sonnets—which had indeed been probably written long before—the vogue of this style had worn itself out, and the 23 English and Italian sonnets of Milton show, as might be expected, a reversion to a stricter model. Though the poet of the "variously
drawn-out" verse of Paradise Lost was bound to make no attempt to break the sense at the conclusion of the octave, yet in other respects he conforms (in the main) to the Petrarchan system, and is Italian enough to give us one "caudate" sonnet. Apart from questions of relative merit, the tone of these sonnets is thus altogether different from the Elizabethan. Since his time there have been few endeavours to revive the "English" style. Not that, till much later, the rigid rules were observed. Even the scholarly Gray, in his sonnet on the death of West, allows himself extreme licence ; and Cowper's on Mrs. Unwin, beautiful as it is, ends with a couplet. Thus, as the merit of a sonnet is usually in proportion to its strictness, it is perhaps as well that it went out of fashion between 1740 (the date of Gray's sonnet) and 1789 (the date of those of Bowles). The importance of Bowles, again, consists hardly at all in intrinsic worth, but almost solely in the influence he exerted upon Coleridge and Wordsworth; nor are Coleridge's sonnets, few as they are, worth the trouble of reading. It is to Wordsworth that we owe the great and enduring popularity of the form, and possibly even the revived appreciation of Shake speare's sonnets, which, as is well-known, Steevens refused to re print on the ground that they were unreadable. Wordsworth, not merely by the surpassing beauty of 20 or 3o of his sonnets, but by his "sequences," is the modern founder of the genre. It is true that not many even of his sonnets are quite regular, and that it is not to the "Ecclesiastical Sketches" nor to the "Duddon" series that we look for his best work; but his perception that the form lends itself to the expression of connected thoughts inspired Rossetti in his House of Life, Mrs. Browning in her Sonnets from the Portuguese, and Meredith in his Modern Love, which, though not in the sonnet-form, has much of the character. Since Words worth there have never been lacking sonneteers, and at least some of their work has been of great excellence. It is noteworthy how often men not of the highest genius have found in the very con striction of the form "not bonds but wings," and have produced, by a flash of inspiration aided by labour, single sonnets not un worthy to be compared with the best even of Shakespeare's or of Milton's. While, as we saw, Coleridge failed, and while the genius of Shelley was cramped in the "narrow room" (he wrote but one good sonnet, and that not a true one), some great poets, like Keats, and others of a lower order, have moved in it with ease and have attained great heights.
The literature of the subject is large, and but a tithe of it can be mentioned here : for history and criticism Capell Lofft, Leigh Hunt, Mark Pattison (preface to Milton), Trench (preface to Wordsworth), Sidney Lee (Life of Shakespeare), Lentzner (down to Milton), Addington Symonds, Ashcroft Noble,Theodore Watts-Dunton and T. W. H. Crosland. Good and comprehensive selections also abound, many of them with critical and historical prefaces and notes. Of these we may choose Lofft, Hunt, William Sharp, Waddington, Hall Caine and Tomkinson. But as new son nets are constantly being written so new selections are constantly being made. (E. E. K.)