BOOKS.

MR. MAIN'S TREASURY OF ENGLISH SONNETS.* Tins is a very fine collection of English sonnets, and, as far as we know, omits none which would be unquestionably regarded by all good critics as of the first rank in power and beauty. Mr. Main gives it to us in two editions, the more beautiful of which, the handsome quarto, has all the honours that fine paper and perfect type can give it, and is a volume the posses- sion of which will soon be envied by book collectors. The octavo edition, though not enhanced with the same excep- tional advantages of form, is, however, very carefully printed ; nor would it be very easy, we think, greatly to swell the small list of errata with which it is concluded. Whatever errors there may be in the book are, we think, rather errors of criticism, to be found in the notes, than errors of judgment in the original work of selection ; but even the notes are always informing and throw real light on the subjects of the sonnets. We do not mean, of course, that among the second-rate sonnets,—and Mr. Main very frankly says that he has endeavoured to include the sonnets " by those writers who have attained the highest, or nearly the highest, excellence in this species of composition,"—there are not a good many which we would willingly exchange for others by the same hand. Of course, on a question of taste so delicate, the judgment of no two men will ever really coincide. But we can find no sonnet which we should unhesitatingly expunge, as clearly unworthy of such a collection as this. The selection errs, if at all, rather by redundance than by omission. Mr. Main is a little more inclined than we are to appreciate sonnets which we should call over-strained, like some of Julian Pane's, or even affected, like some of Sidney Dobell's and Mrs. Browning's. But, on the whole, we have little to complain of. Perhaps Mr. Main might have weeded a little more, even when dealing with the greatest of the sonnet-writers. There are some even of those selected from Shakespeare's sonnets, which fall far short of the great poet's highest mark, and two at least of Milton's. There are not

a few too of Wordsworth's which we would rather have omitted or replaced. Still, it is much to say that we do not miss one of the very greatest English sonnets known to us, and that of the second rank but a few are absent. As a test of Mr. Main's dis- cretion and judgment, we have compared carefully his selection from Wordsworth with that recently made by Mr. Arnold, and think it, on the whole, the better of the two. Mr. Arnold, in his sixty sonnets, has left out two which seem to us of the very first rank of English sonnets, the exquisite sonnet,— "Surprised by joy, impatient as the wind,

I turned to share the transport,—oh, with whom ?

But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find.

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—

But how could I forget thee ? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss ? That thought's return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more ; That neither present time nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore."

And again, the sonnet to Lady Fitzgerald, in her seventieth year, a sonnet which exhibits Wordsworth's style in its most perfect crystalline beauty, and for mere melody and workmanship is hardly surpassed by anything he has written, is included

here, but omitted by Mr. Arnold. Further, the fine sonnet on the disappearance of the spinning-wheel, beginning, " Grief, thou hast lost an ever present friend," one highly characteristic of Wordsworth, and also very beautiful in substance, is introduced by Mr. Main, and forgotten by Mr. Arnold. On the other hand,

• A Treasury of English Sonnets. Edited from the Original Sources, with Notes and Illustrations. By David M. Main. Manchester : Alexander Ireland and Co.

Mr. Arnold has the two fine sonnets on the comparative in- spiration of Classic and English poetry, those beginning "Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side," and " Adieu, Rydalian laurels, that have grown ;" and the two noble sonnets to Mrs. Words- worth's picture, which Mr. Main gives only in his notes, and not, as he should do, in the body of the text. But, take it all in all, Mr. Main's selection from Wordsworth's sonnets is more ade- quate than Mr. Arnold's. And as each selector has extracted about the same number, sixty sonnets, this is no slight praise.

Mr. Main's selections from Hartley Coleridge,—a quite first- rate sonnet-writer, though not a quite first-rate poet,—is very perfect. And we rejoice to see that he has given us Hood's two magnificent sonnets on " Silence " and " Death," which are less. known than they ought to be :- SILENCE.

"There is a silence where bath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea, Or in wide desert where no life is found, Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound ; No voice is hushed—no life treads silently, But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, That never spoke, over the idle ground : But in green rains, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls, And owls, that flit continually between, Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone."

DEATH.

" It is not death, that sometime in a sigh This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight ; That sometime these bright stars, that now reply In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night ; That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite, And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow ; That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite Be lapped in alien clay and laid below; It is not death to know this,—but to know That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go So duly and so oft,—and when grass waves Over the past-away, there may be then No resurrection in the minds of men."

Blanco White's unique sonnet,—the only sonnet of the first class ever written, we suppose, by a man otherwise unknown as a poet,—is also here. But we cannot at all agree with Mr. Main that the version which he gives us in the Notes as the original version is at all equal,—much less, as he thinks it, superior, —to the one generally known, and which Blanco White himself regarded as the more polished version. We give the two, side by side :— " THE EARLY VERSION.

" Mysterious Night ! when the first Man but knew Thee by report, unseen, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely Frame, This glorious canopy of Light and Blue ?

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting Flame, Hesperus with the Host of Heaven came, And lo ! Creation widened on his view !

Who could have thought what darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, 0 Sun ? or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such endless Orbs thou mad'st us blind ?

Weak man! why to shun Death this anxious strife ?

If Light can thus deceive, where- fore not Life ?"

"Opinion will," says Mr. Main, "of course be divided on the comparative merit of the two versions. For my own part, though feeling obliged to recognise the later as the authori- tative text still, I cannot but on the whole agree with Mr. Graves in preferring the earlier; and for the following reasons, which are well put in his own words :—` L. L "the first Man" brings more simply before the mind the dominant idea ; parent embarrasses it. 2. Against the introduction of the word divine, it may be urged that we do not want, it is rather incumbering, to be told the origin of the report. But being told that it is divine interferes with the thought ; for information from such a source would be calculated to take away dread of the approaching change. " THE LATER VERSION.

"Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue ?

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! Creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, 0 Sun ! or who could find, Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind !

Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife ?

If Light can thus deceive, where- fore not Life ?"

If the word is inserted merely to justify the word report, no other man but Adam then being in existence, it indicates a fault in both versions. Perhaps it would have been simpler and better if the approach of the sun to the horizon as observed by the first man, and the decreasing light, had been given as the cause of his imagined terror. 8. in inan's view : a change for the worse in every way. It is most harsh in sound, and the poet has no right to speak of man in the abstract in connection with the momentary effect upon the one man, indicated by the to ! at the beginning of the line. "On his view" reads smoothly, and just says what is wanted. [11. It were to be wished that the recovered version had removed the tautological blemish from which this line suffers, as might easily and happily be done by the substitution of "flower" for fly.] 12. " endless ' seems better to describe the action of the first man's mind as he observes, rather traversing space and the bright objects it contains, than counting, or attempting to count, them ; which would be an exercise of the mind less simple and less likely to be immediate. 13. Here, again, both sound and sense are in favour of the original line. Nothing can be more prosaic and poor than the first five monosyllables in the corrected line ; and then and shun follow each other most cacophonously. The original line, if not much superior—it is superior—in sound, has a pathos which the corrected line has not; and it is properly addressed to the whole family of man," But wherever the earlier differs from the later version, the rhythm of the earlier seems to us very lame, except, in- deed, as regards the trivial alteration of " his " into " man's," at the end of the eighth line, where the grammar rather requires the change, as otherwise, " his " might be supposed to refer to Hesperus, instead of to the first man. The first line of the early version is awkward in rhythm and even inferior in expression to the later, since it is the relative difference between the view of one who, though our own ancestor, had no experience to guide him, and the ordinary view of human beings at the present day, on which the sonnet turns. " Un- seen," again, is a little difficult, the contest not immediately explaining it, which is always a fault in a sonnet. " Endless " is incorrect, as applied to orbs, and does not seem to us to express what Mr. Main and Mr. Graves think it expresses. The thirteenth line in the early version, which Mr. Graves thinks so good, reads to us like the awkward English of a foreigner,—which, of course, Blanco White was,—but which he does not in the least betray in the finished version. The interrogative form, " Why to shun Death this anxious strife ?" is certainly clumsy, and obstructs the thought of the sonnet at the most critical point, the climax of the thought.

It seems to us that Mr. Main, in laying down the re- quisitions of a true sonnet, as he does in the preface,— namely, that it should be in fourteen decasyllabic lines, and should be penetrated by a single thought or emotion,—might have added, as a third requisite, though it would certainly have excluded many of the sonnets here given, that a true sonnet should rise into a climax in the last two lines,—should kindle into flame as it expires. Insisting on this last condition, we should have had Mr. Main's selection diminished by perhaps one-half—one or two even of Shakespeare's, for instance, fade away into baldness and weakness at the end,—but it would have then contained only those sonnets which leave on the mind a really satisfying effect. No sonnet does leave on the mind a really satisfying effect which fades away at the close. For instance, the following sonnet of Wordsworth's leaves on the reader the impression of almost blank disappoint- ment, through this failure in it to rise in significance towards the close :-

" FLOWERS ON TILE TOP OF THE PILLARS AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE CAFE OF STAFFA.

" Hope smiled when your nativity was cast, Children of Summer ! Ye fresh Flowers that brave What Summer here escapes not, the fierce wave, And whole artillery of the western blast, Battering the Temple's front, its long-drawn nave Smiting, as if each moment were their last. But ye, bright Flowers, on frieze and architrave, Survive, and once again the Pile stands fast : Calm as the Universe, from specular towers Of heaven contemplated by Spirits pure With mute astonishment, it stands sustained Through every part in symmetry, to endure, Unhurt, the assault of Time with all his hours, As the supreme Artificer ordained."

Compare that with almost any of Hartley Coleridge's sonnets ; this, for instance, and we do not take in this the best of Hartley Coleridge's :—

" PRAYER.

" Be not afraid to pray—to pray is right. Pray, if thou canst, with hope ; but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay ; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease ; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite.

Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of Heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see : Pray to be perfect, though material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be ; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away."

Or this of Mr. W. C. Roscoe's, of which we see with pleasure that Mr. Main has extracted six of great beauty :— " The bubble of the silver-springing waves,

Castalian music, and that flattering sound, Low rustling of the loved Apollian leaves, With which my youthful hair was to be crowned, Grow dimmer in my ears ; white Beauty grieves Over her votary, less frequent found ; And not untouched by storms, my life-boat heaves Through the splashed ocean-waters, outward-bound.

And as the leaning mariner, his hand Clasped on his ear, strives trembling to reclaim Some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand, So lean I back to the poetic land ; And in my heart a sound, a voice, a name

Hangs, as above the lamp hangs the expiring flame."

Mr. Main could hardly have done better than he has done, unless he had been bent on making a very much smaller and more perfect selection, that is, on excluding all sonnets of the second or third class altogether. For what it aims at, this book is a genuine success.